Games You Played Today Part 007 Goldeneye

[tacotaskforce]

Gundam Battle Operation 2 has reawakened the part of me that gets mad at video games, which I think is positive because that is a stronger emotion then the apathy I’ve been feeling when playing most games. And I know I’m invested in it because I keep logging in each day to do my dailies and try to boost my rank despite the matchmaking service’s best efforts to make everyone quit. Thankfully you just have to power through it, after 4-5 failed attempts you’ll always get in a room that will be stable until it’s filled, but at this point it sure seems like it’s just the sickos who are sticking with the game.

And speaking of apathy towards playing a game I’m not sure why I’m still playing Diablo IV. I guess it’s to unlock stat bonuses on my account to get ready for the first season, with the expectation that the season will include whatever part of the game still feels like its missing. I can tell you this, if I had to put up with GBO2’s connection errors in D4 I would not play another hour of it.

[Tuxedo]

@Rudie

I just recommended it to a friend with a new switch along with Ringo Ishikawa, No More Heroes 3, Immortality, Sakuna of Rice and Ruin, The Forgotten City which weirdly has become the games I would recommend people that are not Breath Of The Wild.

Good picks but Immortality isn’t on the switch! Also Forgotten City is cloud only there, I’d avoid it

[parker]

you know how every fromsoft game has like 4 wikis each and they’re each one dogshit, but you know what game series has a good wiki, ganbare goemon. informative and clean hires box art of about every region’s release of every game. you wouldn’t believe how hard it can be to find good box art of even popular old games sometimes.

[FrequentPilgrim]

Just beat Spelunky 2 first ending no shortcuts while at work on the steam deck. Best run by far. Found a new trick on the final run that combined with my slow accumulation of tricks, put me over the top.

Got the camera to raid vlad’s castle for the double jump cape and crown. Used the cape to beat the torch challenge. Used the clone gun reward to clone pet dogs that I sacrificed on the altar for royal jelly bringing me up to 37 health (most I’ve ever had by far)Pulled Excalibur from the stone. Fucked up at the ice cave and blew myself up on a UFO but I had so much health that I regained consciousness with 12 hit points remaining. Used Excalibur to One Shot a shop keeper and steal his shotgun. Shotgun spammed the final boss on a rope to win the game

[meauxdal]

@meauxdal

Paradise Killer (PS5)

finished this. fantastic game! it is ultimately much more of a straight-up visual novel than it initially seems. the exploration and open world stuff is kinda neat at first, but tests patience eventually as the traversal mechanics simply aren’t very interesting for how much moving around it asks you to do, including scaling janky hills and doing some (thoroughly mid) platforming here and there

the story is simply fantastic. great writing, great characters, interesting dynamics. there’s a touch of romance, too, which i thought was very well-executed.

the detective stuff is pretty great, too - the open structure makes a case for itself in a few ways, most importantly that you are very free to take your own path in gathering the clues. however, it isn’t as free-form as it might appear - you are ultimately collecting all the clues and interactions, sorta like an N64 collectathon but with a tasteful and bold aesthetic veneer. but yeah, the story and characters are clearly the real focus here

the trial is visually flashy but could be disappointing if you were hoping for some kind of ace attorney thing. you kinda just pick your suspect and run down all your collected evidence, but you do have to really collect and review all the evidence to deduce the correct suspects, which gives this sequence enough stakes to feel earned

it’s a masterclass in doing a lot with a little. the game feels low-budget while never really feeling compromised, and that’s a great facet in my eyes

EDIT 6/16/23:

blammo, this game kicks ass

[bib]

boy howdy i thought i’d played a little spelunky 2 but i understood about four words of that

[smbhax]

Wolfenstein 3D (PS3)

This PS3 720p 4:3 version with unchangeable clunky pad controls (run / fast turn on L2, fire on R2, open/activate on X)

must be far from the best way (update: or maybe not!*) to play id’s classic fps Wolfenstein 3D …but I can’t seem to stop. = oo

As long as you maintain your death grip on the Run trigger, the game moves at blistering speed.

It’s surprisingly mild on the eyes: getting shot, and to a lesser degree picking things up, causes only faint screen flash*, and your gun muzzle flashes are about as tame as possible.

Sound-wise, it sounds like a surprising mix of technologies and volumes. ; ) Nothing too awful, though.

The game starts with the screen scaled down a few steps from the max screen size available in the game option settings.

At first I thought the AI didn’t open doors; I soon found this was incorrect. ; ) I DID play this back in the day–or, well, close to it, since I had an Amiga so it would have been on a friend’s PC. ^ _^ But it’s been a while since then. Not sure how far I played through it but I’m pretty sure I never got anywhere close to finishing the game.

Forgot there was no automap! The game definitely pushes my “I can sorta remember the rooms I explored as long as I don’t come to a few more intersections” brain limit constantly; kind of ingenious actually, how it keeps you in constant trepidation over losing track and getting lost; it’s definitely part of the play dynamic.

It looks like this version has the six original episodes, but not the later stand-alone Spear of Destiny prequel episode. (Although the versions on Steam and GOG do include Spear.) (And it looks like https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps3/960484-wolfenstein-3d/answers/73570-spear-of-destiny the PS3 does NOT have Spear.) (So I guess if I finish this version I’ll then have to get the PC version; of course if I wanted the best play experience I should probably get the PC version and run it in About - ECWolf or something like that.

*Hm although the red screen flash on being hit appears to be a lot more intense in straight Steam version Wolfenstein 3D (Steam) Quick Video Game Review - YouTube , GOG Wolfenstein 3D GoG gameplay PC HD [1080p/60fps] - YouTube , DOSBox Wolfenstein 3D Full Playthrough (DOS) - YouTube , and ECWolf Wolfenstein 3D (ECWolf) - E1L1 - 100% No Commentary - YouTube – vs for instance 1438: Wolfenstein 3D PS3 \\ clunky controls but can't stop playing = o - YouTube in this PS3 version. Huh! Still pretty mild in the other versions, but still.

ALSO this version appears to run the game in the correct 4:3 ratio, whereas the others (although it’s corrected in ECWolf, which then adds widescreen) run it in 320:200 screen ratio, ie too wide–which can also be seen in the screenshots shown on the Steam Wolfenstein 3D on Steam and GOG Wolfenstein 3D on GOG.com store listings.

More on the screen ratio issue in the bottom half of this page: GitHub - fabiensanglard/Chocolate-Wolfenstein-3D

Maybe I’ll just stick to this PS3 version?)

[ellaguro]

Wolfenstein 3D is the video game of all time. hopefully one day i will translate this sentiment to a 3 hour video essay or something.

also the game was made to run in the 320:200 ratio, though i’m sure that ratio makes it not so playable for consoles.

[iguferon]

If you play 6 eps of wolfenstein 3d you can probably skip spear of destiny and its slop xpacks.

[Tulpa]

a lot of dos era games render at 320x200 but with a 1:1.2 pixel ratio and it drives me nuts how long it took for emulators and ports to accurately stretch the graphics to match classic crt displays

[skelephone]

Glad you liked it. I remember when I played the game I had a lot of complaints with it but frankly I cannot remember them anymore, which really says something. I basically only remember the shit I liked, haha. It’s very, very good and special at making you feel like you’re doing some actual detectiving.

Re: a lot with a little… I believe it was made with a very small team, and the thing I admire most about it is how it turned the things it had to do in order to remain low-scope (the art style, the VN stuff, etc) into strengths instead of weaknesses. I strive to bring that to my own projects. Every game has some dumbass dev problem that limits you in some horrible way, and I wanna believe there’s always a solution to pick which feels more like a “”“feature”“” than a scope-limiting concession or hack. This one is really elegant about that shit.

[ellaguro]

yeah some people will say Spear of Destiny is better than default Wolf 3D but i never remotely found that to be the case at all. i guess some of the bosses are fun. and the Formgen “lost episodes” are garbage outside of some fun wacky sprites.

[iguferon]

wolf3d already has arguably too many levels so its really not fun to play more of them that have literally zero improvements or differences from how levels are designed in the original especially because spear and the xpacks are like umm yes you love the hitscan mutants who can kill you before the door is even open right? heres a final level that sucks fucking shit too. Fuck you

[ellaguro]

i really love wolf3d but they really mined what you can do absolutely dry in those 6 episodes of the original game. not tons of places you can really go after that. and a good percentage of episodes 1 and 6 are kind of bullshit.

[Mr_Mechanical]

I played Wolf3d back in the day on an MSDOS pc, probably a 286hz processor, no sound card so I got all the loud programmer-created sound effects coming straight out of the computer or wherever it came from. I used the arrow keys to move and the control key to shoot. I don’t remember ever learning how to strafe properly in Wolf3d or Doom. You had to hold the alt key I think? I never managed it. Playing those on a game pad with a twin stick setup is a godsend and takes the edge off the difficulty level a good bit since it makes it so much easier to aim and move.

The Xbox Live Arcade version of Wolf3d was the first Xbox game where I got all the achievements. It’s a good maze game. I never played Spear of Destiny but I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t hold up. It’s hard to design a good maze.

[meauxdal]

Scarlet Nexus (PS5) - they aren’t that similar, but this game keeps reminding me of Code Vein. (CV is alright, but i don’t think the souls approach really benefits that game. it’s a tonal mismatch and feels capricious when you start struggling with a boss or setpiece)

conversely, SN’s Tales-meets-DMC combat feels pretty good, even not having all the interesting skills and SAS stuff unlocked yet.

amazing soundtrack is really making it all work so far

[Tegiminis]

CnC Remastered update

I have finished all of the Nod variants and both GDI and Nod Covert Operations missions on hard. Just as I figured, every Nod variant was a nightmare slog where I had to sandbag the AI every mission just to barely squeak by. Clear times of almost an hour for almost all of them. I have no clue how they expect people to finish these missions on Hard without mazing the AI. It honestly feels intentional sometimes with how deliberate the AI is about targeting, I just wish it didn’t mean the CPU gets 2400 cash from a single harvester’s drop-off.

However, even those missions pale in comparison to this one: Twist of Fate.

You start with all of your units completely surrounded by their counters, except for a dinky Orca outpost to the south. The moment you unpause the game they all open fire you on you. Naturally, I turned the speed all the way to lowest, because the unit AI in Command and Conquer is very stupid.

The goal of the start is to micro the Mammoth Tanks at the top of the map well enough that they can survive and auto-repair. They’re the main way you have to clean out the tiberium fields infested with stealth tanks. It took me probably 15 tries before I was able to save both in the same attempt.

After that you get your MCV, which naturally immediately runs into a group of rocket launchers and a tank if you hadn’t cleared them out with those Mammoths. The game tells you to move it to the bottom of the map to build, but that’s fake news: you actually want to build at the top, because you have to get a base ASAP or get steamrolled by bikes, SSRMs, and light tanks.

The main enemy base has 5 obelisks, 6 SAMs, and more infantry-obliterators than you can shake a stick at; the only way to meaningfully win is to kill harvesters and waves until the AI starves or sandbag them.

This single fucking mission took me 3 hours, at least half that time comprised of restarting to save the mammoths.

12 left. 12 missions until I have the rarest cheevo in this game, and can say to the world: auuuuuegh ouuegh ghuuuuuh

[Tulpa]

all the enemies in wolf 3d are hitscan so there’s no real point to learning how to strafe. I didn’t start strafing until quake came out iirc though it would certainly have helped me play doom better as a child.

I didn’t switch to WASD controls until half-life, so I was just doing arrow keys + ctrl, shift, enter, and numpad for all my inputs in old fps games

[Mr_Mechanical]

Yeah I didn’t start using WASD+mouse until Half-Life as well. I can’t believe it now but I played Quake entirely on keyboard using arrow keys plus the page up and page down keys to look up and down.

[captainlove]

If you google ‘Katamari’ right now you get a neat lil thing