tbh everything i’ve read here makes me find this game way funnier than i would with a lot of other Annapurna. it seems like kind of the most disastrous/ill-advised version of an Annapurna game which makes it automatically more appealing to me than something like Maquette. my biggest problem with the indie game space is people making stylish but forgettable games, and this game def doesn’t seem forgettable if for no other reason than just the sheer “why does this exist and who is this for???” factor
12 Likes
Yeah even though we were told “please never play it” I now really want to play it because I kind of want to try and understand how the Virginia people screwed something up so bad
@HOBO how long did this take you to beat
4 Likes
A few observations from a tigress:
*A post brexit game about not trusting possibly foreign people and siding with teens stalking and harassing one such person is a hell of a choice
*As someone without a kid, I was right there with bachelor in trying to figure out how custody would even work if the guys didn’t swap their bodies back. They brought this up like once and it bizarrely never came up again even after the kid‘s functionally legal dad decided he was gonna pack up and leave to go to community college ‘up north’
*The entire subplot about Spy Lady’s dad being an aging leftist who takes LSD is incredible but is literally 10 minutes out of sevenish hours of boredom. This is extra funny because aside from one avocado toast joke he constantly makes legit good points that are seemingly supposed to be annoying but are way more likeably delivered and sympathetic that anything else in the game. On top of that, the creators of this game seem to think LSD is addictive
*the alien planet was transparently going to be a bigger deal at some point in development. Not only do we never even get an inkling of what the point of the Xbox green glow portals is, but the Xbox glow danger stranger who knows the age of cosent in every dimension is Aparently even weird on tatooine and has nothing to do with the other two sub plots
20 Likes
Also as pointed out by @HOBO there is no actual subway riding except on the menus and seemingly the characters can get everywhere just by walking. The subway only factors into the opening cut scene and the other portals are in different places.
why is this game called last stop??
8 Likes
I saw a trailer for this a while back and could smell the odor. I ran a mile.
4 Likes
Last night I looked up a long play – had to make sure I wasn’t mistaken about the game dev getting evicted within hours of losing his job – and it was 5 hours long. Probably took me at least 6 cuz I kept pausing to complain.
I’ve been streaming games like this on the Beautiful Game Discord cuz if I had to play them by myself I would just fucking fall asleep. Or die, sometimes I do feel like these games are going to make me die, sometimes I dislike these things so much I feel I’ve reached a 13.0 on the Charles Grodin anger scale. And usually these streams are a hoot, we do lots of laughing and groaning and shouting. But Last Stop mostly felt like a fuckin’ drag, its execution was rarely tasteless enough or tone deaf enough or dumb enough or frustrating enough to inspire any intense emotions. It is very very funny and memorable! But only, like, after the fact. Very glad I played it, recommend other people do not, but if anyone does please please let me know how it goes, would love to know if you had more fun in the moment than we did. It’s leaving Game Pass soon! Please choose to miss out. Please.
11 Likes
i feel sorta curious about the british aspect bc i watched the first five minutes of the game and in that five minutes we see: a london street sign based title screen, an opening establishing shot of Big Ben, which is then undercut(?) by turning out to be a poster on The Tube, and then someone runs in holding a policeman’s helmet and saying “bollocks”. didn’t see anybody eating marmite, riding a double decker bus or dying in the falklands war, maybe that all happens later in the game.
idk every so often something comes out where the devs are like, we’re gonna do an Authentically British setting… we’re gonna make up for the cultural deficit of everything being set in USA or Japan… i know i’m petty but come on now. there are two The Getaways. imagine if your options in terms of videogame depiction were either a brief puzzle about outwitting a goat in Broken Sword or that one ps3 rpg where you play a guy who looks like WB Yeats but is weirdly named “Keats” instead.
19 Likes
90% sure they say bollocks at some point
4 Likes
there should be a dynasty warriors game where you play as striking miners in 1980s south yorkshire
25 Likes
Half Life Alyx is a hell of a thing isn’t it? The chunk I played seemed to double down on the best parts of HL2 (the enviromental sense of place, physics, and valve storytelling style) while also actually functioning as a real-ass game in VR. Valve’s slightly exaggerated but theoretically realistic style has looked great since HL2 and it looks even better here.
Most impressive is just…how it feels like you’re in a horrifiying military occupation. The tension is thick, and the vibe is excellent. The combine still looks great after nearly twenty years, and the high poly upgrade just makes them look scarrier when they’re threatening your goddamn face in 3d
12 Likes
they’re welsh instead but immediate flashback to the tunnellers from Stronghold
9 Likes
These 1-second animation loops, oh my god
I’ve been playing Ico and, before calling it quits tonight, I got to the ICOnic windmill room. Having lots of fun. Really enjoying the architecture, its scale and repetition, the thin hallways tucked around a corner which lead to huge spaces, and all the cool stairs.
8 Likes
The new HD-2D Live a Live looks like an 1:1 remake of the original. Like Funny Games US. And adding HD-2D is a lot worse than adding Naomi Watts. OG Live a live wasn’t exactly a looker, so this is still overall an improvement, but it’s impossible for me to secrete any froth when I’ve already played the original like 3 times. I’ll wait for the OST to drop on youtube
4 Likes
all roads lead to laputa
(not south yorkshire, but it’s crazy to know that such an influential movie was itself influenced by the miners strike)
14 Likes
I played through two games recently. One was Nier, the other was Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes.
I had a good time with Nier. There were two peaks for me. One was after I had left Facade and entered the Forest of Myth. The other was when I got to see through Kaine’s perspective and hear the dialogue from Shades. There were also two valleys: When I found the mom at the end of the Junk Heap, I just thought it was so stupid that she would be having an affair down there. Makes no sense at all. Right after, I got to hear Weiss and Nier talk about how Devola gets handsy when she drinks. The VO goes “Oh yeah” in such a gross way. The second valley was when I played through a third time with so little new. The climax should be dramatic and intense but the camera just zooms up on Kaine’s butt and cleavage. It was so hideously dumb I almost respect it. Like sure, I guess humans are pathetic if this is something you all think is worth putting into the game.
All in all, I enjoyed playing a 360 game again. That’s a pretty good time for B-games.
Clash of Heroes was made by Capybara and I had started playing it years ago. After I had finished the first scenario, I stopped. This time, I made it a point to play through to the very ending, but now that it’s all over, I think I would’ve been better off leaving things be.
It’s a fairly innovative match-3 puzzler where matches can create formations for attack or defense. The issue for me, is that the computer is a little dumb. Its behavior becomes predictable and evenly matched rounds are not hard to win. To make up for this, the scenario is almost never evenly matched. Either the computer player is at a higher level than me or there is a unique condition I have to puzzle out. This means that it really doesn’t change that much after the first scenario ends. Even worse, matches can last over 30 minutes due to the back and forth nature of it all.
The final boss was brutal in a way that I found insulting. I always find games with problem solving to be insulting when I lose. I will not be made a fool. I did actually defeat it and felt this wave of liberation. I thought, I’m free. Except the only thing chaining me to it was my own hangups.
Oh well, I wonder if multiplayer is any good.
13 Likes
i was deeply invested in this game for like multiple years. the multiplayer is (was?) pretty good but its very buggy. also like most games some of the people you will inevitably fight are like impossibly good at the game in a way that sort of defies comprehension. maybe they’re cheating? i have no idea
3 Likes
I’m glad the computer isn’t smarter because I bet there’s a whole other way of seeing the board and how everything fits and accessing that sight would destroy my mind.
2 Likes
I’ve been enjoying Redo!, which is sort of an odd mix between survival horror and Metroidvania/search action/keyring
It looks like this
Survival horror and metroidvania are the most at odds here when it comes to save spots. Here the game chooses the Souls approach (saving restores health, ammo and enemies) , which leaves behind the survival horror long term resource management, and obviously removes a lot of the tension. But personally I think knifing or avoiding enemies to save ammo for the boss in Resident Evil completely blows so I’m glad
For a Metroidvania there’s very little ability gating: only two kinds, with one being unlocked very early on (and the other being dumb as hell (= you need shotguns to destroy statues. Rockets don’t work))
The game does use a lot of « enemy gating » instead, placing dangerous and intimidating enemies that force you to search for the path of least resistance until you can scavenge a few upgrades.
In that context every upgrade and every shortcut unlocked is significant as they very naturally expands the parts of your mental map of the world you’re allowing yourself to go through. And there’s no mini map, forcing you to very actively engage with the world. It’s really good! It makes all Metroidvanias that use Ledges You Can Only Access With The Double Jump look very inelegant
Oh there’s also an energy/battery system shared between all enemies that sort of reads like our collective expectation of Radio The Universe’s one. Enemies will spend energy using energy attacks and lose some upon getting hit by a melee attack. If an enemy’s battery gets to 0 they’ll stay as sitting ducks to recharge for a while. With a few exceptions. If you find a taser you can quickly deplete an enemy’s energy, but that’s not always optimal
13 Likes
Yeah! I played Redo when it came out and tried to recommend it here a couple of times. I love the world concept, and the flow reminds me of harsh mid-80s NES games like Zelda 2/Metroid (in how you’re continually bleeding health and increasingly desperate for a savepoint) and Castlevania (in how deliberative and commital the combat is).
Make sure to try the NG+ hard mode which reshuffles the order you get items in along with the map, and so forces you to try abilities you didn’t find necessary the first playthrough.
Also this game introduced me to Tsutomu Nihei’s manga, since the dev mentioned a few times the grey-goo organo-robot world was inspired from that. Abare especially is spectacular if you’re into that kind of thing.
5 Likes