Games You Played Today Oratorio Tangram

bunch of baldur’s gate 1. it’s nice.

I played like… 7 hours of skyrim? And I dunno what I even did, so I uninstalled

2 Likes

Walked through a cave, ate twenty apples in a row, killed a small army of necromancers?

5 Likes

I like Okami a lot. The writing is fine. Ammy and Issun are good times pals. The worst things about the game are the gibberish sounds when characters talk, the talk speed, and that a couple of bosses are recycled.

I had zero problem with how long the game is. Its a grand adventure, with a ton of variety in side plots and the places where they happen. And its all freaking beautiful and grounded in nature.

I’m indifferent about the combat. On one hand, its pretty cool. On the other, its very easy. On the secret third hand, using the celestial brush to draw bombs and other combat stuff, is the greatest.

5 Likes

I have now played some Super Hot VR. Throwing things is tricky. Best trick I found is to go for a wrist flick instead of a baseball throw with the whole arm. Not only to save real energy but because it keeps the motion smaller and I guess the game can read that better.

VR games tend to do throwing as “vector of w at time of release, averaged over past few frames”. This makes sense, of course, but I think you get unpredictable throws due to the difference in un-clicking buttons and releasing a ball; those microseconds make a huge difference. We may also still not be accurate enough in wrist tracking (a 1% error would be hugely noticeable after thirty feet of flying).

WI games had the same issues with throwing, but they were able to use strong auto-aim. It’s much more obvious if you try to pull that in VR.

I kinda wish there were some controller options so I could make where pressing the touch pad didn’t drop but was a way to “prime” a throw and when I let go of the button it released to feel a bit more natural.

Yeah, on button release would be way better than on button down. The game was first designed for the Oculus touch controllers which track fingers, so you just have to open your hand to release – I imagine it’s much, much better.

lost a game of cards in the witcher 3 with some halflings and they made geralt put on a pair of donkey ears
they stay in your inventory after the event, so geralt is going to be wearing donkey ears for the entire rest of the game

10 Likes

have a working controller for once so just playing braintape psx games that i either hadn’t gotten around to before or else experienced like 10minutes of at a cousin’s house or something. preliminary reports

resident evil 2 - picked this instead of the first one bc i’m more interested in like mangled action movie pacing resi than mangled horror movie and also bc i read the novelisation as a teen <|:) it’s ok!! i like how the opening areas keep pushing you forward. the safe parts are these barren corridors and back alleys and it gives you the prospect of a safe resting point in the form of the gun shop before taking it away again. i was surprised how brutal it was in terms of pacing and lack of health, saves etc at the start… i’m still curious about it but tank running past the zombies is a hassle and idk if i really care about having it in my muscle memory.

tomb raider 2 - these games are good! everyone talks abt that kings field game that starts you out on the edge of a pier where moving forward instantly kills you but as famous as this is i don’t think i’ve ever seen it mentioned just how jarring it is to be dropped instantly into the middle of this inscrutable, unreadable tangled cluster of lowpoly wall textures and then slowly having to figure out how it maps into a terrain which can be traversed with your clunky analog moveset. and whenever you fuck up you slide to the bottom again. also there’s a tiger. it’s weird to me that the subsequent games and marketing of this franchise seemed to be all about emphasising ease and control and speed while the real appeal i can see is the dogged back and forth between an extremely rigid set of movements and uneven, slippery and confusing sets of terrain. getting over it with lara croft. not excited for the shoot parts though.

ff7 - yea i started it mother FUCKERS but it’s too moody for me i think. i’m a dragon quest man now…

breath of fire 3 - i liked playing as the baby dragon!! this looks more charming and my speed. i also like megaman legends so far.

star ocean psx - i think this has the worst writing i’ve ever encountered in a videogame.

klonoa - klonoa is very cute. i like the mix of 2d and 3d elements and the camera movement constantly bringing them into and out of play with each other. it feels very toyboxy in atmosphere and the gameplay is fine but also has some of the… generic purposeless videogameyness that i crave as well. like you have your magic grab thing and your jumps but neither of them seem like they’re really exerting influence on the world, they’re just these little actions you perform within it. all the characters seem like they’re just living in little niches of these large abstract structures without really knowing how they connect or being able to control them. and most of the encounters feel less like they’re designed to throw you off or challenge you so much as that they’re just kind of there and you get past them and forget about them instantly as you continue climbing a tree or something. is this the videogame equivalent of those action movies where it’s like just a regular day in the life of the cops from the raid or something rather than being the biggest most important mission they ever face… regardless i love it and klonoa is very fun so far. 100 stars.

legend of mana - i only played a little bit bc it seemed unintelligible but i’m really interested in how chopped up it really is, what with deciding your starting position in this big world and laying houses and towns around yourself on a big grid…

spyro the dragon - i never got this series bc it looked so sterile, it’s like gex or something, everything’s “cartoony” but in this empty clipart stylisation way where it doesn’t look like any particular cartoon. spyro is so sassy!!! i always thought he was just a regular kid. meanwhile klonoa wears a baseball cap and all but is always very courteous. it just goes to show…

aquanaut’s holiday - i like to bump the shark

19 Likes

i beat RE2 for the first time about a month ago (well, i beat Claire’s “A” scenario and got about halfway thru Leon’s “B” scenario). It really throws you in at the beginning, but slows down and becomes much less brutal once you reach the police station. I highly recommend completing at least one A game if the idea of a 3D graphical adventure but with guns sounds appealing. One of my favorite games is Grim Fandango and i never played a survival horror until 2016 so that’s totally how i approached.

The 1st one is also pretty cool and is one of the few games i’ve played that i may try speed running sometime.

1 Like

14 Likes

I am a jelly

1 Like

yr read of tomb raider is highly accurate

Tomb Raider OG is favourably rigid and weird and grid-based compared to its successors. I feel like the more responsive and 1-to-1 kinaesthetics get in a 3D game, the more…shitty and airy it feels. Tomb Raider OG’d maps and jumpy movements are kind of unresponsive, but they adhere to a grid so it’s weighty and friendly at the same time

2 Likes

dont be i just have too much free time, and generous family (this was funded by an Amazon card from my little bros. (so also an evil organization!))

i just. Got to a part early on where you open a door, and behind it there’s a SKELETON!

i got real spooked and hit him with my sword. He refused to leave the doorway so i kept opening it and hitting him, backing up so it closed, and repeating until he fell apart into a bone pile.

i walked up to the treasure chest he was guarding it and opened it and another SKELETON jumped out! i yelled “SHIT” and laughed until i broke into coughs. It’s the funniest thing i’ve ever experienced in a video game, 10/10

6 Likes

You got it about right. The shooting blows.

Time for some shameless self promotion

Find out all my Tomb Raider Series thoughts within!

2 Likes

i too have been curious to play resident evil 2 more than the first one specifically because it seems more cop-representative so im curious if you can speak to how it relates to the theme of the police/ policing

1 Like

Keep plugging away at Nier: Automata (it is no longer making me feel any kind of motion sickness, I’m curious if it was actually the frame rate’ s fault) and it seems alright but coming off of the original I’d kinda kill for an interesting character or any kind of emotional investment/stakes. The comedown from Papa Nier, Weiss, Emil and Kaine trying to save his daughter’s life and all the various emotional gut punches to 2B and 9S’s unfeeling android in an ill-defined war is dramatic. While I assume there will be a development or shift on this front at some point I’m about a dozen hours in and am very ready for it to take place.

2 Likes

Nier Automata is a much slower burn than the first game. The hook isn’t quite as strong since everything is a machine or android so you can’t really empathize as much as you could with Papa Nier or the rest. But the last stretch is def an emotional experience. I loved that I played N:A but I still feel the cold claws of the first one digging at me.

1 Like

There is a code that you can input while controlling Lara that just loads you up with ammo/health packs. As a veteran of the the Tomb Raider 1-3 Wars I highly recommend just using this code to make the combat sections more bearable because almost all of the platforming in this game is amazing, and I still have no idea why they went from having the like, 2 humans total you fight in TR1 to dropping dozens beef-muscle bullet sponges in the latter levels of the sequel that all shoot at you with hitscan uzis.

Something you need to know: you can press the turn around button while jumping to flip Lara’s orientation in the air.

1 Like