Huh can still download and play the Driveclub: PlayStation Plus Edition we were all granted back in the day even though I no longer have PS+. Only some uninspired-feeling India tracks and kinda janky though, also a scrolling red message keeps appearing in the middle of the screen WHILE DRIVING to say that it’s having trouble contacting the server. ; )
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I got to play some more Stargrave, this time my only casualties were free members of my squad. We still haven’t started the campaign but if we did it would have been a good start!!
All I could talk about or think about was Yafsiga… That game looks really cool
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I played some Sniper Elite 5 on Game Pass and I think I got it all out of my system in one sitting
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I’m never going to play any of the Netflix things because I will probably never download the app on to my phone
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hilariously i cannot use netflix on my phone, apparently because i am…one version behind in android? baffling
anyway poinpy is available as a separate app i guess
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Yeah you just download the game then it asks you to sign in to netflix when it starts
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I’ve been playing a lot of Exile: Escape from the Pit, released in 1995 for Macintosh and Windows systems. Getting it to run was a pain but I’m kind of in love with it. Probably the most dragon quest-y western rpg I’ve played. I think its mostly from the writing. Its quite mindful and concise in a way most rpgs (and ESPECIALLY crpgs) aren’t. Like most npcs and events don’t get more than a few lines but wha’ts there is effective in setting the scene or giving you a brief idea as to what someone’s like. I especially like how the sole developer didn’t lean into a grimdark direction with the prison colony setting and make everyone ‘realistic’ asshole dudes a la Gothic. Instead everyone is written in a sympathetic light whereby they’re just ordinary people who were sent to EXILE because they ‘stood out’ for various reasons. It frames the typical dungeon crawls and quests as outcasts helping each other out and I appreciate that sort of mindfulness. Idk when I’m going to escape from the pit but I just bought a boat and I’m in no hurry.
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Started up Final Fantasy XIII (thanks everyone in the quick questions thread, there were way too many of you to thanks individually there) and while I only got through the first 30-40 minutes or so… they really weren’t joking about the “you walk in a straight line” deal, were they.
It seems fairly braindead so far as I got 5 stars on every fight until the first character change except for the initial tutorial fight where I was screwing around, but I assume that is more of a tutorial deal than a whole game one. Still glad to know I should just be attacking as fast as possible and prioritizing offense and quick wins over everything else, gives me time to ponder all these odd terms while reading through the datalog.
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yeah, they don’t even introduce the actual battle system until almost 2 hours in (for story reasons lol)
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of the maybe unorthodox opinion that the Proper Nouns and narrative theme are some of the best in the series and a bright spot for the game
mostly though the battle music is good enough to carry 30 hours easy, perfectly timed to swell with your turn at a fast clip
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Yeah, the game is great and the bleak environment is something I missed in Snowrunner, at least in the early areas (there ARE still Russian levels later in the SR campaign).
And yes, like Snowrunner, driving over the same spot in Mudrunner can make things a lot worse.
This game is so good too! Can’t remember the last time I liked a phone game this much. I beat it today, but I’ll still pluck away at it (there are essentially challenge modes in the form of medals/achievements).
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the plot was just each character having an individual crisis, leading to a boss fight, after which someone pulls them aside and says ‘you have to have hope! hope for the future!’
Every single character has to learn this lesson individually, even the one whose name is literally Hope.
I hear that the english translation really leaned into the proper noun soup and the original was much less heavy on the technobabble.
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That being said, I think it was worth trudging through ff13 just to get to ff13-2, which really ups the weirdness and drops all the repetitive emotional beats
having spent various nights throughout this year watching the gf play through the whole XIII trilogy, i fucking love these games and their bullshit lmao. real good stuff
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xiii-2 fucked up the combat system by overreacting to criticism, but it definitely has some bonkers plotting. fantastic final cutscene.
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more FFXIII stuff
I’ve gone back and forth on this game so many times, I think I need to just make a pros/cons list
PROS
- Combat gave me the feeling of, like, juggling vectors on a graph: a fun mix of planning and improvisation. Practically a rhythm game
- The encyclopedia was very comprehensive? That made up for a lot
- They took the FF narrative structure and just turned it up to 11: a long straight line, followed by aimless noodling. Good cheek
- The game really inspired Christine Love, and her discussion/appreciation made me like it more, too.
CONS
- Really wanted to like the characters, but “I don’t like this” was ringing in my ears any time Vanille or Hope were on the screen, slightly less so for Sazh and Snow. Couldn’t decide how to feel about Lightning for like 80% of the game, but I decided I was okay with her. No complaints on Fang, other than the fact that her storyline required Vanille to be on the screen so much.
- I’m not invested in the party’s status as fugitives because we get such little exposure to what everyday life is like in this setting. There’s, what, one playable flashback? Am I remembering that right?
- Can’t remember anything about any of the villains, other than… space pope, I think? Utter garbage.
- There’s a late-game difficulty spike that means it’s no longer rewarding to try to sneak through with suboptimal equipment or abilities by just outperforming the battle system; you really need to grind out a lot of seemingly-optional stuff to have an easy time. I was too ground down by this point to continue.
Gosh, seems like I’m still pretty split! Oh well.
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It’s been a long time but that may as well be a fair synopsis — I didn’t praise the plot 
but! I do like the state of the world and its unsubtle visual metaphors. I have an inexplicable-to-me appreciation of technobabble to disclaim as well
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Achieved level 9 in poinpy so now I am playing with three upgrade slots and five jump orbs and this experience is extremely wild now. I got to the Red Zone. Love this game.
Tried out Rhythm Doctor’s story mode on the steam deck. I wasn’t sure what to expect from this game but it’s definitely more… handcrafted?? than I expected. Instead of merely applying the same rhythm and music mechanics to every song a la DDR or Guitar Hero etc, each song has a weird dynamic visual treatment, including scripted glitching sequences, one-off mechanics and visual effects, erratic zooms on various parts of the screen for emphasis, weird intrusions from NPCs mid-song, etc. I’m kind of impressed! I have barely scratched the surface on this one but it seems like they did the opposite of what most rhythm games do here–I’m still pressing only ONE button to play this rhythm game, but they’ve introduced like 3 mechanics about when to hit that button, with different visual and audio cues, and they’re occasionally slamming me with whole ass animated character-development music videos in the background of some songs. Interesting stuff!
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After 120 hours I finally feel ready to leave Liurnia in Elden Ring and make my way into the Altus Plateau or Mt. Gelmir, whichever comes first. Or I was, until I took a few minutes to play Jumping Flash and realized that game still holds up. I’d been accepting of the fact that Elden Ring might be the only video game I play this year, but Jumping Flash might be breaking that rhythm. I can’t get this 20 second loop out of my head.
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