I think they are bad at what you’re saying they’re bad at for sure, but I also think that’s exactly what makes them good at these textural interaction explorations - I feel like there’s some kind of brain-in-a-vat-esque argument you could make about games where they’re always going to be bad at simulating kinesthetic human experiences because there’s never going to be a way to make a videogame without the use of an interface of some sort, and if you use an interface the game is never going to be able to be kinesthetic in the way that we’re naturally kinesthetic because the focus will always be on the interface, to the point where videogames are just semantically tied to interfaces forever
and then the interactions between entities within spaces become bound by those interfaces, but it’s possible to change the ways that the entities interact, creating the texture of the game
but because we already kind of (i said kind of, ok) intuitively know what it’s like to be in our bodies, any interaction with videogames becomes about how different they are when it comes to kinesthetic sensation
My wife left for a >2 week trip last Wednesday, and I’ve been reacting in strange ways. Case in point: I’m playing Donkey Kong 64. I should stop now, today. I saved all of my Kong family and got them all guns, drugs, and musical instruments. The one reason I’m playing is that I had played it a bunch as a kid but didn’t actually make it very far. I wanted to surpass child-me. I thought it would be pretty easy to outdo an 8-year-old, but maybe I’m wrong.
You see, I spent nearly 15 minutes on one golden banana because I couldn’t let it go. I was the girl Kong, shrunken down, and a beetle wanted to race me. We were going to slide down this wooden racetrack floating over an abyss. He told me I could get a golden banana if I beat him and collected 50 coins while doing it. I careened into him and lost coins, fell off the track, watched his exoskeletal body march in front of me to the finish line so so so many times. Friends, after 20 tries, I did it and I told the beetle to go fuck himself.
I’ve figured out a lot more about how to play Caves of Qud, but I’m still too scared to play as anyone but the easiest preset character, the centaur. Centaur is really fun though! I like how axes work, you have a random chance to cleave through an enemy’s armor, reducing their defense every time you do it.
The game is still pretty intimidating (and you really can just die in an instant after hours of hard work), but it’s so mysterious, expansive, and fun. I’m into it so far!
I’m also playing Final Fantasy 4 for the first time. As someone who’s only ever really played much of FFVII and FFXIV, it’s fun to see all the little FF motifs and tropes in their natural habitat. The swings this story takes are wild… Your character accidentally kills a woman, and then he abducts her daughter so he can take care of her. And the daughter comes around and becomes a faithful party member 3 minutes later after 4 dialogue boxes. All these dark twists and turns rendered in goofy sprite art pantomime, almost completely drained of pathos for childhood legibility.
I’m playing the recent PC remaster. It has enough quality of life additions that I think it’s worth it, despite a truly awful font choice. Chiefly, having in-game maps is such a luxury. And you can speed up battles use auto-battle, and you can run through towns. It makes the game so breezy, which is really what I want out of a classic JRPG. The new graphics look terrible by default, but there’s a “classic mode” with a weird but pretty robust CRT filter that actually makes the game look fantastic. The redone music is nice, but I wish I could toggle it back to the original SNES music (which I’ve never even heard).
felt that way about deedlit as well. it’s got the monster corridors of a later castlevania but without the variety that makes it satisfying. like, a sotn clone without massive amounts of STUFF just feels hollow.
I finished Archvale a third and final time, with a melee character.
The strongest melee weapon makes you constantly attack clockwise like that goofy Zelda soldier
Someone played Zelda and thought « THIS guy should be the main character » and they made it happen. Very commendable
Here’s me very sloppily beating a boss with this incredible weapon in 20 seconds
Good news, apparently the FF pixel remasters are very moddable and there are now tons of ways you can improve them, including sticking the FFVI SNES font into them! With this guide, I was able to get the game looking way better with 5 minutes of work.
I got to The Big City and Sable and was worried this game was going to have plot. I did the quest to turn on the power then didn’t go back. Instead I explored 3 really incredible areas. I just like exploring. Who cares the rewards are pants and a counter for eggs.
All the environments existing in the world is great. This is like the promise of Ico et al. Except often times these places look like an actual place and not just a bunch of square rooms.
Reading internet chatter I apparently did “the best dungeon” really early on which, well. If you think putting things in order is a puzzle.
No for me ,a sicko who has beat Alundra, a puzzle is carrying power cubes all over a room to power elevators. None of them have been particularly hard and I’ve been able to cheat! Hell yeah. I am not gonna work hard.
Now I quit arriving at the last zone I hadn’t explored. I don’t know what kind of person Sable is yet! Guess I have to keep playing. Tell you what the big city had me playing detective and ratting to the cops and I went nope to that! I’m a teen solve your own crimes asshole. I also turned on the power and played hide and seek with kids.
I have picked up FF XIII and finally figured out the way forward after backtracking over the same stretch too much due to hunts telling me to do so (it turns out that yellow thing on the mini-map was telling me the rough direction to head and was not in fact just north). Stumbled upon an optional not very hidden boss (you just go right off the intended path) and thought I could slowly manage to kill it, but after ten minutes it managed to one hit kill me and was only down maybe a third of its health so I decided to leave it be.
What’s funny is that the hunts lead me to a different area where I triggered a hunt that cleared out all the other enemies so that I could fight what was basically a mini-boss, and when I defeated it on the far end of the area a weird almost giant raindrop shaped thing magically formed and when the cutscene ended I was standing next to it. There was no dialogue before or after this saying what it is and I couldn’t like interact with it as far as I could tell. It makes me wonder if I accidentally ended up off path and did some things out of order as Vanille just casually dropped how she was the one who transformed into ragnarok hundreds of years back and no one acted very taken back by it while I was going “wait, what?!?”
I am also trying my best to forget that upgrading is a thing and seeing how long I can get away with it.
Oh man, the reminds me of when i first played Cave Story on a modern PC and I experienced modern PC font rendering with the way upscaling works on LCD screens. I’m pretty convinced that windows font rendering is always going to be terrible if you implement it in your games and there’s no way around it but to do it with graphics yourself
