the S series on the switch does have absolutely bonkers bonus puzzles if youve got data from early entries (theyre literally like 30x30 its madness) and i think every entry from like, 4-onwards has all the same extra modes. also quality of life things (like high-contrast for color picross and the 30x30 puzzles having an easier-to-parse grid) which were added in later games eventually got patched backwards
basically if you pick up S4 onwards you’ll be getting a good time. i do think theyve improved as level designers as the series has gone on, but aint none of em bad
One reason Apex is the best BR is they streamlined this process so it takes probably 60 seconds to get into a new game once you have died. Same goes for the looting process. The looting in, say, Pubg is sooo terrible especially on controller.
yeah i think there’s a high skill floor in most BRs, partially due to a good % of the playerbase ONLY playing that game and nothing else.
practicing for like 5 minutes in the shooting range before playing helped me a lot when i was trying to improve at the game.
beyond that, traditional shooters train you do the opposite thing (e.g. react quickly and take every fight) you should be doing in BRs. especially when starting out, try to only take fights where you know you have the advantage (and notice what advantages the other players had when they killed you.) information, height, surprise, weapons engagement distances, explosives, player numbers, ammo or health can all be advantages. these factors are also dynamic and better players will reliably force you into temporary disadvantageous states. isolate someone from their team, sneak up with a shotgun, etc etc.
That was also my favorite thing against matchups of anyone vs Baiken in GGST. Whiffing my meaty attack is a hard counter to her wakeup parry so I’m like automatically doing a rock-paper-scissors mindgame just by being sloppy with my inputs
Playing 68000 games on this MiSTeR is where it really feels different from emulation. I gotta sit there in silence for 4 minutes as some floppies load. It really hits different without all the mechanical noises. A friend might stupidly have a 68000 soon so want to go over there and just listen to the sounds the Sharp Computer makes.
I played some tiny doujin game where a million claws attack Blanka and a few random shooters. There are like a 100 visual novels pre-loaded on this thing. I keep waffling between archivist and come on Rudie delete them for the room you are not going to play Nobunaga’s Revenge and absolutely not the 68000 version you twerp.
I also spent an evening trying to move to a larger SD card and eventually gave up and assume that care is in someway busted and will deal with the smaller card that already has 1000s of games on it because what if SNEX starts up again and they need someone to hastily translate a shougi game? I need to be at the ready.
There’s apparently a game about landing a plane at night and that reminds me of childhood so gonna go try and play that on a controllee, later parrots and parakeets.
owning a 68000 is my most delusional “i want this” prospect
just seems way too expensive to import, though
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i beat Dragon Quest! i think playing the SNES version helped a lot - i had a whole lot written about the game but don’t have the time to edit it down to something that makes sense, so i’ll just write that the game is great, and is probably the only DQ i’ll replay with some regularity. it feels much more like “an NES game” than others in the series, if that makes sense. like it’s a really big version of an early NES game, which…it is in actuality as well as metaphorically. kind of a shame there aren’t more jrpgs this restrained
i started up DQII, since it’s on the same cart (ok ROM on my SD card). at first i was put off by multiple enemies in one battle but i guess i’ll let it slide. this game is also pretty cool and i’m liking it more than i did when i tried it many years ago. i think, in general, i don’t really enjoy playing DQ games on the NES. i’ll give it a shot again sometime, but they always strike me as…too ugly.
DQII definitely would have been the sequel i’d have wanted to DQ, though, had i played it at release.
Haven’t posted much about this here but I am an absolute freak about 100%ing a pokemon collection
I currently am missing only 5 total Pokemon from my “Living Dex” (a collection of 1 of each Pokemon, held simultaneously in a box) on Pokemon Home, the current mobile/Switch version of Pokemon Bank. Three of those five I’ll get after completing BD/SP. I’m so close!!!
Because I have collected almost all the Pokemon, period, this gives me an instant win switch for the major objectives in those games. I can just transfer in hundreds of pokemon from Home, turn the game on, and get rewarded for catchin’ them all!! I can ruin the fun for myself in this way, for sure… but I feel ACCOMPLISHED.
As a result, I’ve gone back to Arceus this week to get my fill of playing it before I transfer in all the missing Pokemon and get credit for owning them. Spent this week finishing the last hour or two of the Arceus main quest and doing a ton of side quests. I’m really enjoying myself! This game is a lot of fun to noodle on long-term. I think the next game they make in this format, with some learnings and polish from PLA, will absolutely be “more fun” for me than a traditional pokemon JRPG.
I will probably transfer in all the remaining Pokemon I haven’t caught yet this weekend. Interestingly, This won’t “beat” the game for me in the same way it would “beat” the lategame objectives in traditional Pokemon games. Arceus’s Pokedex has a little grindy checklist of mini-objectives for each individual Pokémon, and you must satisfy most of the checklist for EVERY Pokémon to get the game’s final reward. That reward is the “shiny charm”, which makes it easier to find shiny Pokémon (and I’m trying to make a Living Dex for shinies, too).
I think one of the reasons they changed the Pokedex in Arceus was for this specific reason–it makes “completion” more resilient to the effects of trading these animals between games. I think this is the first time that I’ve seen a Pokemon game’s core features seemingly-intentionally resist how the interoperability of these games can let people shortcut the lategame. Even as it becomes harder and harder to actually transfer Pokemon between generations, and even as Gamefreak abandons the expectation that all your Pokémon can always go to every game, Pokemon is becoming more and more ecosystem-oriented in a couple of these really weird ways. Interesting stuff!!
Good podcast. I listened the other day and I’ve been listening to Jack Bros. music off and on since. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a Virtual Boy song previously.
The video games I’ve been playing are Drainus, Yoshi’s Woolly World, and Mudrunner.
Solatorobo has very clunky adventure/rpg/action mechanics but its a very pretty game, has a lot of charm, and a lot of funny writing. It’s worth playing imo.
20 minutes of Dusk just kinda made me wish I was playing Blood or maybe Quake again. Like it’s fine? They nailed a vibe. The gunplay is fine. But I dunno, I think maybe somehow the outdoor environments all feel kinda chintzy?
A Juggler’s Tale is a short physics-platformer thing a la Limbo and the twist here is that your character (and all others) are puppets in a show. You can’t progress past things that will tangle your strings so you have to solve puzzles to get the protagonist, Abby, past them. This rule also applies to any hostile characters.
Abby escapes from her captivity in a circus and the ringmaster hires some goons to track her down, etc.
The more interesting part of this is that, in the early going, the narrator/puppeteer is warm, but a little smug/condescending toward you (the player) and Abby. He helps you make a few impossible jumps, scolds you for wreaking havoc with your strings carelessly, etc. A few times you defy his expectations and he gets quite bent out of shape about it.
As you can guess this eventually escalates into Abby rebelling against the puppeteer and him more and more desperately trying to reassert his control over the story. It’s not a bad angle! It’s actually pretty well done, and the narrator is performed well. He starts off rhyming everything (in kind of a ham-fisted way that I think really drives home what a self-satisfied dipshit he is, though perhaps unintentionally?) and as he gets more and more frazzled he starts to drop the rhymes and fumble. It’s effective, it works.
It’s a beautiful game visually, imho, and pretty enjoyable for what it is. I bailed out about 8/10 of the way through the game because it starts demanding tight execution from you that the controls get in the way of and it turns tedious. That’s actually a really common complaint I have about these artsy puzzle platformers – they try to ramp up the action at the end with control schemes that just don’t work for it. Little Nightmares did this, too.
I don’t think this game has great gunplay or anything buuut the first 20 minutes are definitely the worst 20 minutes IMO. Every level is better than the previous and the third act is full of really great tricks.
Anyway if you’re done you’re done but i can’t help but advocate for this game. Its one of my favorites in a long time
but it’s been fun so far. invasions are exciting. glad my sister got the game for me now when the multiplayer is going to be most active. maybe still too easy on hard mode but I wanted the bullet indicator thing. how am I supposed to know what the wind is doing in a videogame
Ya know what, fuck it, I’ll jump back in. The levels are generally short enough that I should be able to get to The Good Stuff before long in that case.
edit: Okay @VastleCania this is picking up a bit. I’m not 100% sold but I’m feeling it a bit more.
