It may not look like much but this against the built in bots is unironically a supreme mindless gameing experience
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played years ago, didnāt play today but just watched GTA IV: The Ballad Of Gay Tony cutscenesā¦
gta iv plays with the idea of being human in america, no, it spreads the human race on a table. gta ivās legacy is the idea that its main storyās ākilling is badā theme is ludonarrative dissonant or something, or hypocritical. all machines run on flesh the more you spiral down
niko bellic fights in yugoslav wars against communism (among many other things), does horrible shit and regrets what he did constantly, his job after the war is working for a russian human trafficker who smuggles people from broken ex-soviet countries into slavery until one slave ship sinks killing everyone and he gets marked for death, moves to america to see his cousin is just as worse off than they were there and maybe worse, does horrible shit and regrets what he does constantly, the best ending leaves him feeling empty and his cousin asks āwhy? we won!ā. credits roll. the brightest light in his life is a jewish street racer named brucie KIBBUTZ who takes steroids and gets bullied by his older brother mori who was in the israeli military and a real estate mogul and is all natty but has a fake tan.
gay tony as a dlc campaign becomes more about new york as new york instead of new york as a symbol. perhaps nothing is more new york than a second generation dominican immigrant teaming up with āPeter Gatienā¦ but gayā and struggling to keep nightclubs open against the italian forces that be
the lost and the damned has you play as a jewish biker in new jersey in a motorcycle club. you were able to purchase your bike because you were a lawyer. you were the interim president of the club because the old one was in rehab, you go pick him up and now answer to him. he is becoming more racist. you are sick of it, the poc in the club are also tired of it when you talk to them. niko kills the youngest member of your club and infighting stops for a bit. you see a guys penis and its the only time you can do so on 360 or PS3. i forgot the rest of the story for this one.
but all three stories are connected via blood diamonds. the story that isnāt told is at the mine. something is implied that you are small, all the chases all of these characters are sent on, all the extremes of emotion you put your partner or family or self through is never exactly worth it.
the only characters that feel relief at the end of their troubles are luis and tony. GTA IV: The Ballad Of Gay Tony has the seriesā first instance of non-diagetic licensed music during the final mission. you blow up nikoās former human trafficking boss and then parachute into flushing meadows-corona park to this:
no securityā¦
something about gta ultimately being an arcade game about driving violently from point A to point B, but then what happens when thereās no point to anything. i think thatās the great utility of contemporary GTA having the virtual hang-out sessions with the protagonistās friends, going to see katt williams, etc. gracias a la vida
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Are there any games in the Bonk/Zonk series that I should absolutely play?
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I enjoyed the Game Boy Bonkās Revenge but I wouldnāt call it a must-play or anything. : )
Itās a different game than the second Bonk game on PC Engine / TurboGrafx, which I liked at first
but ended up passionately hating. ^ D^
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I think Bonk 1 is worth playing just to see it is pretty weird and not on the level of Sonic/Mario. Along with that the PS2/GC Remake is charming.
Air Zonk is actually great.
The thrill of the series is to play a new one and just see how weird it gets.
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I played this game at like 6 or 7 years old and I remember what it feels like to read those quiz questions without like adult reading comprehension (let alone the knowledge). I would try to do the 100-question final quiz for hours just by memorizing different choices and have that fucking music on loop the whole time which i can hum rn.
- How many atmospheres can a 30-meter water resistant watch stand?
This one was such a mindfuck even as I got a little older. I remember asking adults what this meant and even they had no clue what it was saying which made it feel even more mysterious
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playing a bit of Ghostlore, a charming but rough around the edges Diablo clone based on Malay folklore with gorgeous pixel art in a very 90s PC RPG style that i havenāt seen a lot in indie releases
the gameplay is very Diablo, you pick a class, kill a lot of jiangshi and other ghoulies thru moody moonlit streets and forests, get gear, build skills, etc. sometimes you run into other players on maps and can help each other out. so far itās not doing much new with the genre but its been fun to fiddle with numbers on my little exorcist and soak in the vibe
the game pad controls could be better and the UI feels very sloppily ported to pad for a gamepass release but i want to root for any dev that puts this delicious 90s web quality food photography in the cooking menu
32 Likes
iām so conflicted! the thought of playing a diablo-like is repulsive to me, but the idea of a vaguely action-adjacent game in such beautifully rendered pixel neoghbourhoods is very alluring.
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I played too much Conker yesterday
if I find the person responsible for programming the physics and collision boxes for the lava surfing segment, Iām going to smash their hands and every keyboard they have touched and ever will touch with a hammer
14 Likes
Thanks a lot. Your findings mirror mine, I am playing Bonk and it controls and jumps like crap. I will not bother with Bonk 2 at this point.
I will try Airzonk as Rudie was suggesting
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the closest rival to metal torrent in terms of dsiware shooting games is score attacker (which you might remmeber from that compilation cartridge). it might actually be better, since it doesnāt rely on procedural generation. wonder land is pretty good too.
i mentioned it a while ago, but the best dsiware game iāve discovered is pinball pules: the ancients beckon. just an unbelievably good pinball game. wish iād discovered it early enough to pay money for it, honestly.
i should charge my vita and make a shiren v post
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Playing Neon Abyss for some reason. Well ,the reason is that it was free on Epic like a year ago and i wanted something kind of dumb to play
The aesthetic is not nearly as neon as one would think with a name like that. Itās just the standard Incredibly Rich Pixel Art that slides right off my eyeballs anymore, despite someone probably pouring blood into their tablet to get it right.
I also hate that there are at least 5 levels yet they all look basically the same? Why would you do that? They drew a bunch of art for each level but theyāre all boring! why
the enemies also have no god damned character, theyāre just like. Little monsters. I guess. But no real consistency in design or anything interesting, they mostly have big eyes or are robots.
The game itself is clearly going for the Binding of Isaac template of roguelike, including familiars, different types of health, and weird items that do inexplicable things that would probably help if I was more familiar with the mechanics. But for being a shot at the Binding of Isaac it is comparatively flat. Not a lot of stuff interacting, doesnāt feel like the game is getting any more complex with unlocks, AND unlocks are very slow. At least itās not aesthetically repulsive like isaac is though.
Moving and shooting feels okay not great. Itās a bad-feeling jump in particular and navigating each room feels like a bit of a chore.
Anyway Iāll probably do a couple more runs and uninstall. Itās Fine.
6 Likes
Damn. This looks great. Time to get into this right when the Gamer World is launching into Diablo 4
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ok so, there are the sokoban and minesweeper dungeons and 17 other dungeons in the dungeon center
other dungeons iāve found are
lost well - at the sparrowās inn, which is in the miracle tower, which is unlocked after finishing fortune tower
heavenly lake - thereās an old man stood next to the river in the starting village
genās turf - look at the glowing cauldron thing in genās house. i think you have to give him catnip before youāre allowed to enter it?
inori cave - in ābeginner houseā
primordial chasm - unlocked at the hermitage, which i think is also in the miracle tower?
thereās apparently tons more i havenāt found, too.
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Gen wonāt talk to me yet I just want him to be my friend
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You got further than I did. I couldnāt take how much the jokes were horrible and the sexism worse.
1 Like
this next dungeon isā¦UNDERWATER. That doesnāt mean there are swimming mechanics or anything, everything is just 2x as slow and gravity is halved. This sucks. No wonder there isnāt a MML3 everybody got to this dungeon and was like ānahā
12 Likes
I wanted to play an interesting batch of games this week, so I followed up that Outlast co-op game I posted about yesterday by playing through the entirety of Halo 4 in one day. It really is as mediocre as it was initially graded at launch. I think itās actually outright bad, myself. But we had fun in co-op.
Besides the obvious complete loss of identity on display in this game, there are just so many sins. First off, 343s idea of art direction is just put greebles on everything and make it shiny, and then change any detail about the UI or appearance of things established by Bungie down to the reticles in weapon scopes. Needless changes abound. Worst of all is the outright removal of melee lunging, even for energy swords, which is such a cursed changed that I donāt think I landed more than three melee hits the entire time we played. I died a lot attempting to melee dudes, way too much. Another issue is that the arsenal of weapons in Halo 4 is just so gigantic and itās mostly the appearance of the weapon and their scope that set them apart, as I think this game has like two or three different weapons for every classic weapon archetype you can think of. Your suit abilities are also totally inconsequential in the main game, except maybe the one that spawns a small turret. In a baffling move I cannot understand, the ability that gives you a energy tower shield to hold out in front of you just does not let you recover health while you use it, meaning you canāt be aggressive with it, you canāt really do anything but eat a blast of rounds with it. This is a deliberate design choice that points to boring and static combat encounters, and you just gotta wonder who thought 343 could make a Halo game lol.
Halo 4 may have been the game to teach me not to give a shit about the story in big franchise games. The big bad of this one is a guy named the Didact. Everybody recognizes him from his very first appearance, but 2015 me was just left confused because I did not know that Halo 4 was actually a sequel to a trilogy of shitty Halo novels, wherein the Didact and his various crimes were introduced and made essential knowledge. Itās not played as though you arenāt supposed to know who Didact is and then learn; you are supposed to have read three videogame novelizations to understand everyoneās motivation in this game. And I wonāt say anything about the the amount of goofy proper nouns that get vomited by characters during the cutscenes.
Halo 4 is the metric by which I start to measure how written into a corner a franchiseās story is starting to become, and lately the mistakes on display in this game are, funnily enough, starting to make appearances in the latest Destiny 2 expansion and seasons.
How the head will eat the tail soon enough!!
7 Likes
Started Stray, if one is curious how little attention I paid to it before now I thought it was a polygonal 2-and-a-half-D platformer. Anyways got up to the village, it certainly looks pretty but feels a bit slight so far. They certainly animated the heck out of the cat though, I assume that is likely responsible for 90% of the kudos the game received.
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The Mantle of Responsibility is a groan inducing one lmao
3 Likes