Frog Detective is a short little converse-em-up where you wander around talking to folks to solve a “mystery”. It’s got a couple of sequels. It actually did get a couple of laughs out of me. The dialogue isn’t great but managed to tickle me, along with a few sight-gags.
I might watch Let’s Plays of the sequels.
it’s a kids game, pretty fun one at that tho youngest is a bit creeped out at the mole fan
by the end of the game you can use the tree root passages, and they have no/minimal loading when switching worlds. I can see technically why (low view distance and broken LoS in the twisty tunnels) but it makes the long loading times of using a seed even more questionable
NES Metroid is one of my favorite Metroids, and IMO all its other quirks add a lot of flavor, but I agree this specific part of the experience is mostly just a waste of time. The game is probably best played nowadays with this hack: Romhacking.net - Hacks - Antigrinding
I kept forgetting these were an option but you’re right. I think I was going mad midway through the big swapper marathon.
Was just talking last might how the next to last-puzzle is real sicko stuff.
Just FYI, DIing out of combos in Rivals is like the most important skill when you’re starting out. Rivals has a ton of moves with low knockback, so you’ll get punished super hard until you internalize how to escape. Definitely focus on that if you’re getting blown up.
I starting playing Multiverses and I like it, especially the focus on 2v2. Not a huge fan of the air mobility – feels a bit like Brawlhala in that way – but it’s pretty competently designed!
People LOVE to bemoan the death of fixed camera angles in JRPG’s and how their modern counterparts like FF7R/DQ11 et al feel manufactured and corporate compared to more ‘curated’ composition which makes the touch controls in Fantasian feel even more like a sick joke, piecing together LITERAL diorama’s only maneuverable through placing a greasy fingerprint on the screen and hoping your characters bothers to move in the pixel wide vertex that shifts to camera to reveal a secret that might have required a bit of thought in a more mainstream title.
I never played The Last Story or any other exciting Mistwalker IP but all this game’s system definetly feel like a team that thought Final Fantasy went to shit the exact point floats onto the screen like a wet fart. This is split into two parts (complete with Limited Run Exclusive disc scratches whenever the apple money runs dry) and the second half especially feels like a course corrective of the entire genre when after the Big Twist you’re introduced to some new gameplay mechanics and additions to the cast 30+ hours as Sakaguchi and co wait patiently for your Apple Arcade subscription to roll over, draining you of another hard earned $4.99.
Outside of everything else (if this was an actual FF game it’d be in the top 3 easily), the part that most surprised me wasn’t the diorama’s, which admittedly were very hit and miss in aesthetic appeal but how the game would frame a lot of the key art into the dialogue which lovely mix of 2D and 3D art that feels way more in line with a first rate visual novel wrapped in a JRPG, if anything I was much more interested in going through the story to see what potential desktop wallpaper I’d find over however many hours they spent on each dirt folicle.
Uematsu would later do an interview saying this was the best soundtrack he ever worked on and if the retirement rumours are true I can see why he’d want this to be the crown jewel in his legacy. Much like the games Dimensionagon this game is more than the sum of its parts although it’s a hell of a fight to see it through to the end.
This is a great patch wow.
Trackmania Turbo’s multiplayer is somewhat lacking, but it sure has a lot of single player content!
There are 200 tracks split across 5 difficultly levels and 4 environments. Each “environment” has completely different car physics. Canyon focuses on speed and drift, valley focuses on jumps and offroad, lagoon has very sticky grip on the road, but very slippery grip on wood and sand, and stadium is sort of a midpoint between grip and drift, where speed management on turns is very important.
The black series tracks require you to get gold medals on every previous track to unlock them. According to Xbox achievements, less than 0.01% of players even unlock the black series tracks in the first environment, let alone beat them.
I’ve been playing this game on-and-off for like 6 years now (~200 hrs. in-game) and I still have a lot to learn!
This is the track I’m currently working on. I lost my grip on the last turn, but it was otherwise a very good run.
Speaking of Trackmania, I just started playing Hot Lap League on Switch. It’s like Trackmania with power sliding and no track editor. Pretty fun stuff.
So far I’ve only seen two environments: metro and alpine, which seem to be background swaps for Trackmania-style stadium tracks. Each environment does have exclusive cars, but I haven’t really noticed the need to change driving styles.
Game is loud though. Had to crank the music down to 10% in the settings, yet it’s still perfectly audible.
I really think I should try this!!
It can be pretty frustrating, especially at the beginning because it makes you learn 4 different physics models and switch between them every 10 levels. It is super rewarding, though!
I usually throw on some music and just vibe for an hour or two, restarting the same track over and over again. If that sounds like your thing, I highly recommend it!
The game also rewards persistence – if you get 3 silvers on the same track in the same play session it will count as a gold. Those are the slightly darker squares on my board.
As a Jak II enjoyer, this sounds great.
Much respect for Act V for removing the player ego almost entirely. I didn’t take a single screenshot because I was rapt. I’m hanging a poster of 5 Dogwood Lane as a symbolic hearth.
Acts III and IV capture the feeling of being out well into the night in mildly malicious environments. The 60 hz hum running through the sound design threatened to overwhelm me.
Junebug and Johnny felt important eight years ago and in retrospect the allegory is not subtle. It’s a long time specifying.
In the end what strikes me is that each character’s reasons for being in and around the Zero are so practical. I don’t know many other games that deal with e.g. undocumented benefits eligibility, stimulant abuse, medical debt, or sobriety so seriously. The game is never so cute as to say it but we often say debt to mean entropy: one favor creates a larger obligation, systems and relationships untended create complexity, and so on. The flood feels like a relief among friends and neighbors.
My White Mage, who seems to always be blinded, wound up dying a few battles later, so I shut it off because now 50% of my party is out of sync with each other before we’re even an hour in.
Finished (Cheated) Moon Crystal. Wow that game requires you to be pixel perfect towards the end.
Kick Challenger proves video games really can be about anything. About a Sentient Tomato getting pair of shoes, rayman style, and then kicking every spider he sees.
Wakusei Aton Gaiden is a boring shooter that every 20 seconds is interupted with bizarre trivia questions for either a Japanese Second Language Student or a Child. “in what branch og government are tax collections held?” “Which of these buildings were built with tax dollars?” “If you buy goods from another country you…” “if you suddenly feel very sick you call a…”
Maybe there is a patch to make Metroid FDS not grindy but it is always fun to load that up and be confronted with the FDS soundtrack. Feel like we lucked out with that cartridge version.
Kickmaster is…well I guess I always forget that game is jank.
Dicey Dungeons is good! I cannot believe each character has 6 episodes though, not sure i have the stamina for this. Absolutely perfect phone game tho
Over the Moon is such a weird hack. It’s such a weirdly high-effort thing from somebody who was an outsider to the community, but is not helped in any way by its outsider status (unlike Junkoid).
I’d argue that after the stupid initial hump the middle of the game is pretty decent as far as these things are concerned. The world is small, dense, and non-repetitious. I had enough fun exploring it, though I think I might be overrating it in my head since I played it after playing through dozens of garbage-tier M1 hacks from the '00s.
The final area, however, is a legit crime and should not be attempted by anybody of sound mind — just a constant barrage of cheap hits while navigating densely packed hidden morph ball mazes all while praying that your missile count stays afloat. So many of the issues there (like the lack of refill stations) could have been resolved if the author just had people playtest it before releasing it.
In conclusion: Go play Junkoid y’all.
Does the morph ball turn you into a rolling udder
Cuz that’s what I was hoping for
