I also got Boneraiser Minions cuz I saw Cania had played it and it was the first time I enjoyed any of these Vampire Survivals
3 Likes
oh some versions of garegga have stage edit which is neatā¦ you can play 2 / 3 / 4 in any order you prefer or skip any to stage 5. you can do 1-3-5, or 1-4-3-2-5, or 1-5, or w/e, for examples. so this makes acclimating to different stages a lot easier if youd like to just focus on idk practicing grabbing the 1up in stage 3.
like autofire idt the devs would include these features if they didnt intend for you to use them!! i guess some people wonder what is the Intended Experience for these games tho idt anyone on here is really like a shmups puritan either. i guess thatās just my take that, like, cave games are very obviously designed around modulating between holding c for autofire and holding c+a for laser shot.
itās kind of like playing souls game with like pure phys two hand literoll buildsā¦ yeah of course you can play the games like that but youre playing with a hand behind your back in a way that wonāt necessarily always be harder in a more enjoyable way.
anyways garegga is diff from a lot of cave games bc it kind of demands engagement with its weird subsystems, like if youre just ignoring medal chaining and grabbing tons of powerups the game will get to an unmanageable rank fast!! or if you arent trying to keep your gold chain going in mars matrix youll be underlevelled
a lot of cave games let you engage with scoring to ur own contentment tho. they only have two extends from scoring each (and usually you can get the first one without trying much) so in a lot of them you really can just fly around and grab powerups and make stuff explode and focus on not getting shot, or those are like, good things to focus on before trying to hit scoring landmarks like the 2nd extend, just getting nice and familiar with stages.
anyways i guess i was relieved to find that cave games are all only like 5 stages long after assuming they were 8 which would just be sooo arduous for games where i couldnt consistently get past stage 3ā¦ before that i was just like āi dont have what it takes for these probablyā¦ā and obvs most of the discussion around them focuses on stuff like doj death label, doom in ketsui:
or mushi futari ultraā¦ which are kind of all experiences that the Average Gamer is not meant to have like, unmediated. like, i remember when my bloody valentine had a comeback tour and ppl were talking about how they were playing the Loudest Shows Everā¦ you arent really āsupposedā to go to something like that without earplugs idt. both are kind of stunts, just to show they can.
idk what my point is. just some thoughts as i get back into emulating tf out of garegga / ketsui / ddp dojā¦ i think the latter two in particular just have the most purely sexy vibes out of the cave softography.
5 Likes
@VastleCania got me Boneraiser Minions for birthday and it was indeed very good. I like it the most of all the Crimsonland-likes (what Iām gonna call these games from now on, nobody can stop me!!!) Iāve played.
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This but x100 when the story ends up benching one of your mains and you end up stuck with one of the underleveled B team.
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I hate that too, but playing FFIX a few weeks ago I really liked how frequently they did that and the weird combinations they made me play with. Most of the time it just feels inconvenient, but for once I thought it was instructional and challenging. Later on it gets kind of annoying when you get to the open world.
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My favorite thing is FF6ās World of Ruin where they do level up outside your group so you can grind dinosaurs early with your first 4 characters up to say level 80 and then every other character you pick up from there is also level 80. Itās like a secret 5x multiplier on your XP
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yeah itās ridiculously easy to basically never have to fight random battles in the world of ruin, just get the moogle charm early on and then vanish+xzone some dinosaurs for 90 minutes before you recruit everyone else. makes it feel even more like the postgame
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The last time I played FF6 I really wanted to go dinosaur ASAP so didnāt actually have doom/Xzone when I started endgame grinding. So I simply Vanish/Float myself and Vanish/Ice3 the enemy.
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I adored all the stupid battle tricks in FFVI, like killing the ghost train with a Fenix Down
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Did more quake maps from the copper map pack. Robert Yangās is really good. It circles the tree, then you go up the tree, then take a huge elevator down. It was really nice.
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holy lord. i am constantly amazed (and pissed) that quakeās light and occlusion mapping is so good compared to every other engine iāve had to use to make games. and trenchbroom really kicks the shit out of like 90% of its competition. why am i using unity again? oh yeah sunk cost. 
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So you wanna promote your band with a videogame?
We Are OFK has such low-key, slice of life, millefeuille stakes. Characters just bumble and text their way through minor personal dramas. I canāt put out of my head how obviously horrible LA is as a premise from my personal experience. This is the most sanitized wrinkle-free version of it I think Iāve ever seen in media. It betrays the fact that our protagonistās lifestyles are seen through the lens of success and nothing really drastic or magical happens to them.
Is this the best way to promote a virtual band? Iām not against interaction-lite visual novels/animatics but surely itās gotta be a story worth telling or an aesthetic experience to behold. A petty gripe I canāt let go of is that named side-characters arenāt given character models but are just static silhouette images. I know you gotta save money but it felt weird, especially since the characters donāt ever really act much beyond idle conversation. It probably couldāve been a more traditional visual novel with 2D character art without losing much.
When I think of virtual bands, I generally associate the idea with gimmicks which have some kind of purpose commercial or otherwise. They stem from an existing commercial product in a novel form of marketing (Hatsune Miku, The Archies, K/DA, The Banana Splits), a trendy mask that creators can use to avoid the issues celebrity normally brings (Gorillaz, Studio Killers), or just pure one-offness (Crazy Frog). Gorillaz is probably the big example but almost all virtual bands are generally fun goofs even when the creators are seriously interested in music. The Gorillaz website was ahead of its time in terms of engaging people in a sort of post-celebrity musical vehicle and it wasnāt trying to craft or suck people into the lives of its members in such an autobiographical way. You just played with a big crass toymaze full of art and sound.
There are even interactive music videos that outdo what is the gameās supposed trump card. None of the MVs so far allow the player to control the camera directly and interaction just comes and goes which makes it unclear when and why you should do anything. Itās basically a sort of Warioware āguess what to doā montage of the characters twirling around abstract spacey backgrounds and there are no stakes or things to unlock, achieve, make cool etc. Good music videos are quite hard to make, and the best ones are usually highly iconic visual concepts or tightly directed shorts strongly supported by the general vibe of the music. We are OFK feels more like it wants to be a pop musical in a way. It has more parallels with something like Crazy Ex-Girlfriend than Gorillaz. Playing/watching the game is just too anodyne an experience for the most part. Itās so vacuous you kinda zone out and the interactive music video segments are something I dread rather than look forward to.
Save the cats why? This isnāt a cool visual, fun to do, or even relevant in the context. What is this?
The game feels more concerned with pitching a miniseries, alongside a band, alongside a visual novel, alongside a musical videogame. I just donāt really get who the band (or any of this) is for ā the broadest concept of Gen Z? Most bands of this type either focus on the music or are a musical extension of the other entertainment they might provide via a variety show or a preexisting media franchise. We Are OFK just doesnāt really feel strong at doing anything. Itās music (so far) is just a vague, echoey, dreampop, soup. Thereās not much of an attempt to take the virtual concept and let that free up the musicians to do something strange or experimental. It sounds rote because its characters arenāt detached from reality. In a sense their forlorn, big break, vibe make the music end up feeling generic rather than special as a story of musicians āmaking itā. They arenāt underdogs (musically) and their narratives attempt groundedness rather than embracing the freedoms virtuality allows.
Eventually the cast gets to fucking which I wasnāt expecting but still almost nothing generally happens except people sort of struggle to get a job/motivation to do much. The messy fling stuff is notable probably because you donāt see this much beyond itch.io. At one point the older, more experienced industry producer very quickly hooks up with the young, bubbly keys player and thereās an awkwardness to it thatās kinda neat. Itās briefly interesting to see a weird power imbalance relationship develop but itās only really noteworthy in the context of the whole project, not like the most compelling romantic drama that could exist here. āMy parents want me to marry a husband but, alas, I am closeted. At least my job as a successful record company engineer prevents this from being too relatable.ā
Games industry dead-endness is kinda a secondary theme by having one of the characters write narrative bios for an esport or people make brief small-talk about obscure(?) indie games at parties. It never really ends up saying much about games though other than a vague resentment at games being corporate or conservative. Itās somewhat relatable but understated. Thereās a nagging feeling that the project has far more funding than a project this minimal really needs. That itās just an agglutination of ideas which could probably be done more cheaply as smaller things elsewhere. We Are OFK just ends up feeling like many different vanity projects colliding and I find it hard to imagine anyone ever recommending it as a game, as a band, or even as an interesting experiment.
Opera sucks
How did you get a grand piano in this booth!? OK iām done.
25 Likes
that is one thing about this game that kinda fascinates me. it has gotten several positive reviews in publications, but i canāt imagine people organically getting really into this game unless they have some kind of parasocial attachment to someone involved with it. maybe there is some zeitgeisty element to this that iām missing, but it does feel like a vanity project under the guise of some kind of bigger commentary. also i found out a certain indie game person with the initials TD was very involved with this project, so that aspect makes a little more sense now.
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Iām guessing they have all 5 chapters since its episodic. Maybe thereās some incredible payoff but the game as it is is just very light on all fronts. Not even a case where a short but sweet thing leaves you with something to chew on or think about.
I mean this is literally a written, directed and starring (lead actor and singer) situation. I donāt know them but if itās a vanity project this is probably the nexus.
3 Likes
started playing Digimon Survive. i havenāt played any other modern VNs so i donāt really have much comparison point, (the most recent VN Iāve played was probably fucken like, Katawa Shoujo) but this game has kinda incredible graphics? The characters even have situational shaders based on the environment, which is an unexpected nice touch! i like most of their designs too, i would die for the sibling duo of ātiny gremlin with a cat-ear beanie and squid alien bag and too-big hoodieā and āolder brother with unbleached roots, one earring, and a rattail in cargo pantsā. thereās also a like maybe minute or two long fully animated cutscene thatās reminiscent of the Digimon Tri look introducing the main cast at the start that really took me by surprise. Iām used to āanime cutsceneā in videogames being CG so much these days that honest-to-god 2D animation absolutely floored me. also the main character has goggles so you know itās real
iām only an hour and a half in so far, but i do have some very unimportant gripes. for one - still waiting on seeing any digimon (iām not counting the very brief battle tutorial at the start with the flashback from characters who arenāt the mains as seeing digimon). The characters are still trying to figure out whatās going on with where they are. Cowardice! Look motherfucker, this is a Digimon game, it is both a strategy RPG AND a VN, and the language option doesnāt change the VO (which is always japanese) it only changes the text. I think we both know that this game is for the freaks like me. You do not need to play coy. show me the digimon.
also, extremely petty, but in the isometric tactics battles, down on the d-pad moves down and to the left. if you ask me, god intended for down on the d-pad to move down and to the right.
anyway as a non-japanese speaker I obviously canāt speak with certainty here, but this translation definitely has that āprobably coulda been better localizedā vibe to it. There are some aspects where theyāve done this, namely some of the kids using english internet slang, but then thereās other parts where the grammar of the translation just feels a little off. Itās not like itās uncommon for translations to just be āokayā, but it still kinda stuck out to me.
anyway i thought this line was pretty good
āWhat crawled up your backside and died?ā
āSearch me.ā
11 Likes
iām madly in love with dungeon encounters. what a nice, infinite-pringles-can of a videogame about maps and mathematics and making up characters.
that they include modern tech / sci-fi and apply it as some sort of ancient magic hidden deep in the bowels of the dungeon is just exactly the type of thing that makes my brain go crazy. so, so good.
(a certain special enemy: )
17 Likes
yeah one of the things iām struck by is how similar the destination is to the origin - to everyone except for the smallest niche of people both of these positions that the first two characters start in are totally great ādream jobsā that donāt seem that bad?
but then any chance the game has to deconstruct the idea of creative labor being not all that itās cracked up to be is immediately thrown out when given opportunities because the characters are literally, actually Characters In A TV Show - early in the first episode one of the characters is tasked with a bunch of writing that they have to stay over the weekend to do and when they attempt to inject their own personality into the writing the person taking this first character with the writing talks about how they crunched a bunch just to get the character design out there
and instead of being like āyou crunched too? that sucksā and examining anything outside of the preordained pop star story that person becomes the ostensible āvillainā, merely an obstacle to be dispatched on the road to pop stardom
itās entirely possible that this is better later on because iām only halfway through the first episode but wow this isnāt a great first impression
i want this whole thing to be out already so i can finish it and write my thoughts because iām being struck by how easily i could have made exactly the same story if there was an alternate universe version of me
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Itās frustrating because thereās a chance it gets a bit better but the episodic release strikes me as somewhat self-involved. I have to presume itās all done, so why bother especially when thereās only three episodes left after the launch? Itās not like theyāre taking the next three weeks to make it. Itās simply an artificial enthrallment.
1 Like
am tootling around the Cathedral Ward while my kids point out the items I missed. explaining the difference between nerds (trash mobs) and haters (other trash mobs but I whiff the parries) to them while they eagerly goad me to rush forward to the next boss to rate how gross it is
they still donāt trust the guy in the chapel who asks to send sane survivors his way heh heh
14 Likes
For the sequel to a game I played in spasmodic bursts on a PSVITA about a decade ago while waiting for takeout orders I was endlessly fascinated how Jetpack Joyride 2 manages to take every single one of the worst innovations mobile games have offered in recent years and squashed them into one bloated 140MB package.
The first thing that happens is a cutscene where the concept of jumping to you is explained in labourious late 00ās penny arcade web dialogue. One thing in a game with long term consequences but a bit different where each level takes like three minutes to get through while achiements cover up like a third of the screen congratulating you for murdering minimum wage service workers. This is bad enough but THEN after every āstageā (remember when infinite runners meant something?) you get introduced to MORE shit like health bars and extra weapons making this the first Euroshmup under Tim Cookās apple tenure.
Once it introduced the concept of a boss fight I unsubscribed from apple arcade until Fantasian 2 comes out but the irony of one of the game at the forefront of introducing this micro genre then RE introducing common game mechanics hit me a bit as maybe some sign of the industry and the genreās reinvention similar to the similarly non played Super Meat Boy Forever or whatever Fez II might have been. I gave a slight chuckle then threw my steam deck out the window of my flat like a boomerang after valkyrie profile 2 wouldnāt emulate properly.
6 Likes