this is exactly how I felt after 45 minutes with it, that was enough for me. eldest is working their way through all the content, I don’t recall seeing any surprises (I’m very smart and work out everything)
3 Likes
Did you see the banker thing coming in advance? If you did, hats off to your shrewdness, but I think most people were very surprised by that one
2 Likes
I missed the intro and the conclusion & only heard about them second-hand, but I’ve seen enough Souls NPCs to know that what people say and what they do don’t match up
me pointing to the screen “that’s Patches”
3 Likes
This NPC doesn’t send Patches/Yurt signals even slightly. It feels more like getting betrayed by Stockpile Thomas
2 Likes
i played rainworld for 30 minutes for the first time just the other day and hated it. looked ugly as hell for one thing, i couldnt tell what was scenery and what was actual geometry, and the fiddly controls where annoying. dont have time for games where the challenge comes from shitty controls
6 Likes
Tunic 
Celeste 
Hollow Knight
The Messenger
Panzer Bandit
Panzer Bandit Credits 
3 Likes
I liked Celeste but can understand why other people wouldn’t… hyper-polished game that has a prestige indie vibe to it. Like it’s TOO clean, for us filthy folk.
4 Likes
I never tried Rain World despite several SBers liking it as I’ve seen several people with opinions and tastes I respect have fairly middling to harsh things to say about it (I looked one up, had the terrifying line “I estimate that if I didn’t copy-paste my save to get around the karma system, the game would have taken me 60 hours rather than 30, and most of that extra time would have been spent grinding for food.”) and every so often SB collectively likes a game that I despise (waves at Killer 7). Deep down I think y’all are suckers for aesthetics and games that do things different even if they are done poorly 
FWIW I liked Celeste a lot but I also am a sucker for precision platformers of any sort of quality so probably not worth listening to me on that.
Will probably get to Hollow Knight in the next month or so, I hope it is alright!
13 Likes
Hell yeah!!
12 Likes
Celeste is such a good example of a precision platformer, so even if the tone/aesthetic is a bit exasperating I can’t find it in myself to dislike it.
7 Likes
I am a proud advocate of Eurojank
11 Likes
Wario Land 4: Treasure-esque in a good way
Wario World: Treasure-esque in a different way, Treasure’s way
Wario’s still feeling “off brand” but not like the handheld games, more of a “ToeJam & Earl for XBox” kinda off brand, the photorealistic, noisy, washed out wood and rock textures
recurring assets like this “W” panel
weirdly generic/generically weird enemy designs and ghoulish flashlight-under-the chin dynamic lighting
(there are vertical stages where you can catch Wario’s shadow below, through platforms that oughta block its being cast, the uncanny feeling of Peter Pan’s disembodied shadow hanging out down there, obviously it was important for them that they implement this impressive lighting but it comes with unintended consequences, loose ends, this game is all loose ends! and) I am here for this new flavour of offbrandedness, style-wise.
Not as much when it comes to gameplay. Clearly they were proud of the yellow “Glue Globes” that Wario full-body straddles to leap from point to point mid-air, conceptually amusing, functionally pretty boring, platforming remains basic, probably for the best, probably out of necessity as the fixed camera doesn’t always convey depth and distance so well and Wario is frustratingly featherweight and fiddly: idle → full speed is instantaneous, no follow through momentum when jumping, super sensitive hairpin turning when running around and, most baffling to me, when moving out of idle, Wario snaps to one of four directions (his forward, 180° or his left or right 90°) in a way that makes small adjustments/positioning for jumps a real headache, strange! Dashing has been relegated to close encounters mostly since stages aren’t designed for long charges (not open enough while still managing to feel a little empty and the dash long jump is too unwieldy to risk it in the air) also you never die from falling (feels like another admitted design limitation morphed into conceptual hook) instead you fall into a maze where you have to smash crates at random to find the exit while being chased by ghosts…
And it’s also a brawler. Which makes sense for Wario but like the platforming, it’s thin stuff. Some enemies go down with a punch, some get dazed and can be picked up to either be: thrown, pile-driver’d or spun around (so long gay Bowser-style). When the game wants to be clever, it’ll required you to pile drive an enemy through a trap door to bust through or spin an enemy on a special type of platform to wind it up (spinning the stick gets old fast though it did just occur to me, maybe that strange 4-directional snapping out of idle has something to do with better initiating spinning…?) You get coins from beating up enemies. You can spend coins to buy health from the Garlic Vendor found mid-level or to continue playing upon death (making it very easy to avoid a Game Over ever, fine by me).
My friend who lent me Wario Land 4 also gifted me Pizza Tower. It seems neat but I’m still too worn out after Alien: Isolation to give a game a sincere fair shot at appreciation. I needed a low bar. I needed junk with only the slightest promise of nourishment or nutritional value.
Wario World is delivering
Dev 1: “During lunch break I made it so you can do this to the arrow”
Dev 2: “Cool, put it in!”
Me: “Thanks for putting that in”
ditto for this ice crystal shader
and the pretty shadows in this bonus room and the heat distortion in front of the fireplace
plenty of neat touches! it never really captures the concentrated cartoon creepiness of the handheld games, the vibes have been diluted in the transition to 3D, but if you squint, you can kinda see Treasure’s gesturing towards that better distilled surrealism with things like this extreme angle (possibly some kind of fish eye effect?) of the hub area here
37 Likes
I think I even pre-ordered this, but ended up really disappointed. I’d have been happy with a bad game that had Wario mood but both this and the Wii platformer kind of misunderstand it.
Somehow Treasure-weirdness and Wario-weirdness didn’t really mesh and it ended up clown-flavored.
Just look at that arrow bouncing so…lasciviously. It’s so very Treasure but kind of an obscene motion for a squat stiff Wario game.
A brawler makes sense on the box but ended boring, and with a little more thought it’s actually a bad fit. Wario fights are about bullying and picking on little guys: you smush 'em, you smash 'em, you breath fire, then they come back and poke you in the butt. Wario deserves everything he gets…
11 Likes
That sure is the stretch panic sub-team I’m seeing there
7 Likes
Not sure how Breath of the Wild became such an industry darling when it has jump on the top face button and run on the bottom face button. Did the claw grip become industry standard while I wasn’t looking?
10 Likes
UNTIL DAWN: this felt like a pretty decent modern take on the interative movie thing, was enjoying it until it got too SAWish. for one, why would i want to be in a torture porn movie, and for two, the situations felt forced and contrived, the game forcing me to make choices that i wouldn’t really have to. i also felt none of the choices really mattered, and just read the plot summary on wikipedia which confirmed my suspicions
i can see why people would enjoy this, but it just felt like watching a way too long mediocre horror movie to me, plus the whole native american folklore stuff felt very appropriated
WOLF 3D ON JAG: this is actually a pretty cool port. i mean it’s SUPER cut down, with a fraction of the levels and the ones included are cut down themselves BUT… it has a map, which is very useful, but the real interesting thing is that you have no lives, if you find a life you get 200 health instead (going over the original max of 100), and treasure allows your health to go over 100 too, encouraging you to find secrets because no one gives a shit about score. plays pretty well too, and has quick saves. i mean, i would take the original dos version over it any day, but i found it interesting how it changed up the mechanics (and even think they work well)
3 Likes
yeah this is like, the most bizarre fucking decision in that game. the fact that it’s the only pair of buttons you can remap is telling
1 Like
I just learned you can follow guys with the camera, like when you hold down target switch in Ace Combat, in IL-2 because I didnt understand what the “padlock enemy” key did for 20 years. To be fair, what the fuck does that mean…
2 Likes
There’s still a lot pulled from Ico and Shadow of the Colossus in these games, though they’re past the worst of it
1 Like
I couldn’t bother with checking out Tunic because it looked like a puzzle game in disguise (like that pee jug guy’s rotating platformer) and Songbringer already did a pitch perfect modern Zelda 1 tribute act that everyone in the world slept on somehow.
3 Likes