i really liked playing iconoclasts when it came out! i stopped playing basically immediately before the very end for reasons i almost don’t wanna talk about just because frankly the exact directions the game takes are kinda fascinating? like i definitely didn’t expect some of the ideas it ends up tackling but mostly i just didn’t expect it to be so goddamn nihilistic, holy shit, it’s so depressing, it’s just constant bad things happening to people leaving only the worst motherfuckers around to keep making things worse cute graphics, pretty good mechanics. really liked the character designs.
iconoclast’s really evil in several parts during the “ending gauntlet” (from the capital onward) and has one specific spot that is quite literally designed to torment you emotionally (having to leave royal behind) and i love that for it. the emotional / interpersonal payoff really resonated with me. it’s super dark but in a way that doesn’t feel hopeless. like struggling through trauma and survival, staunching the open wound as best you can before more blood is lost.
the tone swerve is what makes me adore it. that and the way everything starts to break down.
been very slowly dividing time between DQII on SNES, Neon White, and TMNT.
Neon White is going slow but steady - i’m just really vibing with this game. normally i’d hate stuff like “find all the presents,” but i WANT TO. not because the story or characters intrigue me very much, but because i enjoy hanging out in these levels. it’s fun to first play a level and figure it out, then speedrun it, THEN slow waaaayyyyy the heck down and actually examine every inch of the level to find its secrets (and gift) and THEN speedrun it once more.
TMNT - i need friends to play this with. that’s my lasting opinion of it; not a thing that’s super fun to solo, for me
DQII - inching ever so close to the ending. i need to get some more crests, it seems, before making my way to the final area of the game. i’m ready to end it, soon.
the way the game’s tone crashes into depressing is definitely most of why i still think about it or would call it good! i definitely don’t fault it for it, i think it’s great, especially the way it recontextualizes your experience of the game prior. for me though it definitely felt like, exhaustingly nihilistic by the final few bits. i spent 30 minutes in the final fight with black, because there was some stupid little part of me that was like 'well this is a time-sensitive moment in the game, and konjak is the type of fucker who might program an entire alternate end to this fight if you just refused to kill her! and then that never came, and then i had to immediately kill the character who i empathized with the most crushingly deeply, twice in a row, like her suffering was just on display. and then i was left in a little shuttle with the worst motherfucker in the entire cast besides your awful brother.
I played through Milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk… today. It’s like 50 cents on the steam store. I didn’t realize until just now it has like 10k reviews, so I guess it’s fairly well known.
Anyway it’s a short and haunting little visual novel that I liked a lot. But huge CW for mental illness. It’s not violent or anything but I found it to be really…sharp, somehow. Made me remember being young and slightly unstable and imagining situations and frameworks so that I could get through the day. Except moreso.
No plans on looking into the author nor the sequel - this was enough for me. Seems like this game is some sort of meme so I’m just gonna close the steam page and never look into this any more deeply than i need to.
I just played this through with four other players, some on PC and some on XBOX. It worked surprisingly well, though there were some glitches. (I probably wouldn’t have played this game at all had some friends not suggested it and had it not also been free on Game Pass.)
It feels pretty much like the old arcade game, which I played a lot as a kid. I like the animation. No idea what difficulty level we were playing on, but being able to revive other players helped.
Capcom Fighting Collection. I don’t have PS+, but the single-player seems solid. Pretty responsive input delay: measured 4 frames of input lag in the collection’s version of Vampire Savior using my own set-up’s crude comparative test (vs 3 in Darkstalkers 3 on PS1, 5 in Vampire: Darkstalkers Collection on PS2, and 4 in Vampire Resurrection on PS3).
Surprisingly, under the EX Options tab for some of the games there’s a “Light Reduction” option; it defaults to On, and this seems to remove screen strobing effects. For instance, in The Night Warriors: Darkstalkers’ Revenge, with Light Reduction on, the strobing effect as the title spells out in the intro sequence only flashes white on the letters now, not on the entire screen, and the red screen strobe when a character is KOed is completely removed. So this is somewhat miraculously a version of Revenge I can actually play without risking a migraine, cool! : D (In videos I’ve seen it doesn’t seem to have removed the flashing kaleidoscopic effect on Pyron’s new boss attack though so eh well we’ll see. ; )
The option is not available for Puzzle Fighter, Red Earth, Vampire Savior, Hunter 2, and Savior 2, presumably because those don’t have screen strobing effects. I wish they could have had an option to remove single screen flashes like after KO in Savior (the PS1 version removed those, so I play that version), and just icky flashing in general like the color strobing on bosses or whatnot that I’ve seen in videos of Red Earth. Oh well. The option to kill strobes is a significant step in the right direction, at least. : )
Oh, there IS a rather iffy menu quirk: you can toggle most of the games between Japanese and English ROMs, but it toggles that setting for all the games at once; if you toggle it to English, then scroll the game menu through the two Japanese-only games, the toggle gets set to Japanese–for all the games–and stays there until you notice and toggle it back. : P
Playing Devil Summoner 2 on PS2/PCSX2, it emulates quite well on my little Lenovo office pc. Enjoying the vibe, battles and pre-rendered backdrops. I played this when it was new and I don’t know what was going on at the time but I just blew past where I quit last time in like 2 hours.
Makes me want to give other Shin Megami stuff a shot.
Forza Horizon 5 is finally mostly playable with a Fanatic wheel, but there’s at least one mountain that crashes the game if you’re driving a Mitsubishi Starion up it still in there, which is, unfortunate to say the least
Playing that new Pocky & Rocky. Game’s gorgeous and way harder than I was expecting (maybe because I’ve only played the SFC game in 2 player co-op), thankfully story mode has checkpoints so it’s a good learning mode. The only real thing I don’t like that much is one of the new things they added is a special attack you do by tapping shoot and it feels a little awkward to use and I’d probably get tired of it really fast if I wasn’t using a controller with arcade buttons.
Puttin’ some time into Iconoclasts when I can, as well some Borderlands 3 whenever my brother feels up for co-op.
Otherwise, I’ve mostly been too busy and had my attention focused elsewhere to have much energy for videogames of any sort.
[Edit]
Guess I forgot to do the “talk about what you’re playing” part of the post.
So, this is my first time playing BL3 since it had a free weekend sometime ago. Beat it then with my brother. I’ve been taking a lazier approach to it than before and mostly enjoying it. Well, enjoying the jumping, climbing, dive bombing, shooting, and gibbing parts of it. I’ve heard a couple of the DLC make for much more engaging story bits, but honestly the main story and side story stuff, and the general writing suck about as much ass as it did before.
As far as Iconoclasts… I’ve gotten a bit into it (I’m just a hair past the first reunion with Elro) and it’s kind of, I dunno. I made it as far as the last bossfight a couple years ago (or more, it’s hard to recall). I guess I’ve really enjoyed the music thus far? Yeah, I don’t have a lot to say yet.
fyi you can change to pure black/white on there by leaving specific messages and reloading— i was messing around with that some when i played through a few months ago
