oh hell yeah this game rules!!!
3 Likes
I donāt know if this is just a super hacky gimmick or if Iām just too old for haunted PokĆ©mon cart ācreepypastaā to have been part of my life. Seems like so many things on itch are going for this though.
3 Likes
tomb raider underworld kept glitching out on me so
THE VANISHING OF ETHAN CARTER
good suggestion, iāll turn this game off and crank it instead
iām actually not far enough to judge yet, except it told me the game wont hold my hand yet it wont let me jump off a cliff smdh
EDIT: i enjoyed the mapping out a house puzzle, i thought this was going to be a strict walking sim. also surprised by the lovecraftian themes, not sure if iām pleased about it or notā¦ feels a bit overdone, but still very early in the game so who knows how it pans out
the voice acting is very unconvincing
7 Likes
Still playing Breakpoint.
If any SBāers want a Pathfinder, hmu.
1 Like
New 1CC!!
Good music, fun characters; canāt believe this isnāt in every āhidden gems of MAMEā list out there.
16 Likes
Demon Lord isnāt a hipster slenderman vibe. Itās going for a CRT-era / goth metal feel and succeeds at it reasonably well. Reincarnation seems to be after the same thing. The dev also composed the music. It pretty much comes across in the gameplay trailer:
5 Likes
I just realised I was probably supposed to go to the big house in Ethan Carter to figure out how to map it out, but I didnāt go there until after visiting the small one (which is where the mapping is done)ā¦ I mapped it out by instead building the space in my head logically which I really enjoyed. Now Iām kinda bummed that the puzzle was actually much more simple and my enjoyment was from misunderstanding it lol
1 Like
what game is this
1 Like
Tacoma (PS4) - oh hey this is the best one of these iāve played. Gone Home was alright for me but this one is much more interesting premise-wise, and everything lands really well. voice acting is good. the sequence scripting is great; the way the recordings have multiple parties intermingling, with conversations crisscrossing over the runtime is extremely well-done. very short game, only a few hours long (this is a positive in my mind), but consistently intricate and detail-obsessed and willing to imply rather than outright state just enough
mainly i just find the premise vastly more interesting than Gone Home
5 Likes
Judgement: I started dating a 19 year old singer (as 35 year old Yagami) went through all the hoops, including 5 dates, multiple texts, some fights. Then I thought that Yagami was probably just enjoying someone falling for him but didnāt care about the girl after all and would ultimately reject the girl after her declaration of love.
Knowing Ryu Ga Gotokuās writing I really expected the girl to go Ā« I understand, sorry, Iām still happy for all the time weāve spent together, weāve both grown so much, see you whenever! Ā» Instead she just went Ā« oh god oh no, I guess thatās itā¦ Ā» and she left dejected and was gone for the game forever. Great!
ā¦ For all that the mini games are completely underbaked I think this is my favourite Ryu Ga Gotoku game yet. I just love the detective angle and lack of Kiryu (not that I dislike the guy)
13 Likes
i bought two cheap low budget retro FPSes in the Steam sale: Anopek, an Egyptian-themed Wolfenstein 3D-style shooter that i instantly bounced off of and uninstalled because i hated how the game felt to play. and then Vomitoreum, a Metroidvania commercial Doom mod+ which i just finished.
Vomitoreum made me think of older indie game designers like Locomalito or Daniel Remar who sort of have a workmanlike retro sensibility arenāt exactly doing anything revolutionary in terms of design features in their games or whatever (Locomalito literally advertises his work as ātraditional video gamesā which is a bit of aā¦ reactionary framing), but their games still are well-executed and have a distinctive mark. Locomalito is basically the John Ford-style director of indie game designers i guess, to be heavy-handed, lol.
anyway there are times when Vomitoreum felt like it could use more work or it just didnāt feel that refined - some areas were a bit empty, there were a few times where it felt buggy or overly grindy or there were random death traps for no reason, and a lot of the bosses were just ācircle strafe and hold down fire to winā - in general thereās not exactly deep inspiring combat. itās definitely a game that just runs in the Doom engine - you even get the Doom percentage stat screen at the end of the game. the plot is a bit like a Dark Souls fanfiction and feels amateurish at times.
and yet still i had very positive feelings about the game! the mood is great, and the game feels like it had a lot of heart put into it. even if itās pretty short, itās one of the more solidly executed metroidvania type games iāve played in recent years. it did feel like exploring a unique world, where each area kept having new surprises or interesting traits. and i excuse a lot of the other weaknesses partially because it reminds me of a time when the character and feeling of a game like this was much more important than the little details you do to make it a fully tightened product. especially when itās coming from a developer with limited resources and time.
also same
anyway itās a game that i was cheering for to be good and there were enough things in there that kept me going and kept me interested. and it definitely didnāt overstay its welcome, in spite of some of the shortcomings. def makes me hope for more things in the future from this developer.
and yeah i enjoyed this section in the dark with graffiti.
17 Likes
its ghost recon. naturally. unfortunately
I FINALLY FINISHED ALL THE FUCKING DLC AND STUPID EVENTS i just have some side missions left and the OPERATION MOTHERLAND mode which is ubisofts attempt to salvage public opinion by having the wildlands team design the entire campaign instead. its called OPERATION MOTHERLAND because Russians and the french developers know approximately 4 things about russia: people call it the motherland, novichok, the spetsnaz, and ultranationalism. so please look forward to that i guess
anyway the third dlc is called RED PATRIOT (jesus christ please euthanize me) and its actually sort of strange because you get attacked by steve blum, who might be the first actual voice actor in the game who doesnt come across like a machine wearing a humans skin. in deep state i started to suspect that the missions were being made by different people but here he gives you 8 missions that are clearly by different developers, because theyāre actually sort of interesting and involve scenarios other than āclear out an outpost more or less lolā, like some of the standout ones i can think of are the one where you have to find a chopper crashed on a glacier and follow the trail up through an abandoned mining village in the mountains til you find the survivors, theres a huge firefight to protect them against the airsoft boisā¦theres one where your target is identical to all the other guys in the base but he does one thing that gives him away hitman styleā¦another where the enemy commander starts rigging civilians to barrel bombs and pressure plates and taunting you to stop him like the fucking joker LOL
the russian swastikoids (seriously check out their fucking logo)
are bringing in NERVE GAS SHIPMENTS so the PMC guys can load the drones with them and gas the continental US because i guess they are now really impotent after having all their other master plans destroyed, and are kind of running out of ideas so they are getting sort of derivative of themselves. like in the main game you use the drone swarms to blow up a submarine loaded with killer drones that will attack the world, and in RED PATRIOT you scuttle a submarine loaded with killer drones (poison gas ver) that will attack america. but it is kind of nice to get up close to the sub this time instead of seeing it in a cutscene
you can also tell the wildlands team made this because you keep getting phone calls from the creator of south park who is really mad at you all the time
and his boss fight is better than bernthals, you hit some switches to unlock his room and then you just shoot him in the head like a bitch. oh well. your CO gives you a pat on the back and just kind of leaves you to your own devices after that
so after you do that theres TWO world events which i guess were games as service things they ran between the DLCs. the first one is called RESISTANCE and disables the predator drones and has the outcast rebel scientist guys declare war on the PMC, so they start patrolling the roads and taking over checkpoints and theres just constant gunfire wherever you go. this is an attempt to recreate some of the faction warfare from wildlands because a common complaint about breakpoint is that the NPCs do more ambient shit in wildlands or whatever. it is supposed to take place between DEEP STATE and RED PATRIOT but i did it afterwards because i forgot it existed
theres 9 missions and they are of 3 types:
- rescue prisoners who have guns aimed at their heads at all times while all the NPC guards say shit non-stop like āI did 6 tours in the middle east and got medals for bravery, why do they have me guarding DETAINEES?ā
- big firefight where you help them clear a camp
- convoy ambush where you cant let any of the cars get away
its kind of anti-climactic like most content in tis game in that you just get a call that theyre not fighting the rebels as much anymore and they give you a laser designator you can call infinite airstrikes with which is an emulation of another wildlands feature that IIRC actually cost resources in that game.
the last world event is operation amber sky, which concludes the games main story, its a rainbow six tie-in so you have to hang out with 3 annoying people from siege who call you ROOKIE every time you shoot someone because despite being like literally 40 years old all the rainbow operators act like you are a child even though you were literally in charge of a military operation and 32 other people at the beginning of the game. its just sort of strange and patronizing writing that i dont get thats also a huge hallmark of the wildlands DLC, like the previously mentioned paragraph of dialogue your character has sucking sam fishers dick in that game. this event puts a bunch of evil gas over huge stretches of the map so you have to manage your GAS FILTERS like your plaing metro and mostly it just ends up being kind of a tedious mechanic. the worst thing is that like half the missions are ābreach identical prefab buildings w the same entrances every timeā and the other half are āyou cant make anyone suspicious at allā which sucks because you have to do everything with a drone and then try to meticulously tag the three things in each camp without anyone noticing at all, while having a timer because limited gas filters.
oh also can you believe this CHEMICAL WEAPONS DLC is incredibly tasteless
besides shit like this pretty much everywhere you go with the gas is littered with dozens of contorted civilian corpses buzzing with flies
anyway eventually tracking the buyers down leads to the guy who made the gas and he dumps a bunch of exposition on you at literally the last moment. his plane has a GPS tracker in it though and you have to fight off waves of enemies for so long that i almost thought the mission was bugged because they kept spawnin over and over again from the same three spots (this happens A LOT in this game)
NATO EQUIPMENT CANT DETECT IT the only reason westerners know anything about novichok et al is because of all the people the FSB have poisoned in the past 10-15 years so its presence here is funny, especially because explicitly in this story the FSB is giving us intel to help us stop these evil russian ultranationalist guys so they dont fuck with the legitimate government of russia. its kind of a hilariously rosy view of the russian government in modern times, that it DOESNT support ultranationalists who put the soviet flag on everything and invade neighboring countries. the tom clancy boomer timeline is real and we live in it
13 Likes
Iām a good ways into Hollow Knight now (I would guess halfway to the normal ending as I have half the charms and rescued half the grub things), just got the double jump (which has been rather unnecessary so far as you can just draw enemies towards high ledges and do a jumping downward slash onto them to boos yourself up high enough) and it has been a neat world to explore with one caveat: bosses are starting to take a lot to take down as for whatever reason Iāve still yet to stumble upon whoever is responsible for upgrading or selling you a new weapon. I know someone like that exists because someone told me Iāve collected three things with the description āsomeone could use this to upgrade your weaponā. As far as I can tell whoever this is isnāt super hidden or anything, and Iāve revisited most areas a few times thanks to gaining new abilities and having a poor sense as to the proper path forward at times, I just literally have managed to miss whatever room or whatever they are chilling out in.
This feels typical as I am prone to bad luck/overlooking things, I feel like I may end up jumping from a level 1 weapon to whatever the endgame one is as I may find all the upgrade material in the game before I figure out how to actually use it.
4 Likes
If you got the double jump youāre nearing the endgame stuff, Iād say probably 2/3 through it. Most of the latter half of the grubs and charms are found in the victory lap through the map once youāve got all the movement upgrades unlocked. Thatās where I usually bounce off metrovanias but Hollow Knight has plenty of endgame material to keep me interested and hopefully you too.
3 Likes
Pinball FX (PC / Steam)
At first I thought I basically had to run the game at 120+ fps in order not to have either insane input delay or super-janky ball movement/tearing, and even then that it still had a few frames more input lag than the PS4 version, at least on my set-up.
Iāve since re-tested the input delay and found it actually improved significantly under this new-ish version 1.07, in which they focused on optimizing the PC version. Maybe I was suffering flashbacks to my pre-1.07 test when I first re-installed : P; anyway, what I actually counted for input delay now, in PC version 1.07, is
Vsync ON, 60 fps: 3-4 frames
Vsync ON, Unlimited fps: 5-6 frames
Vsync OFF, Unlimited fps: 2 frames
Compare w/ 6-7 frames delay in the pre-1.07 test (vs 4 for the then-PS4-version).
So I could run the game at 60 fps and itād be fine. ā¦ But I guess Iāll keep cooking at Unlimited fps because man, 2 frame delay is sweeeeet.
The UI in the PS4 version is janky, but the increased input and video options on PC open many more avenues for unchecked bugs on the PC version. : P The one thatās really chafing my buttercups currently is that if I remap the keyboard controls, in the next session theyāll all be reset to default, except for the Ball Launch key (which still only accepts the default Enter key value to pass one of the THREE game over screens); if you then set your keys back to what you wanted, in the NEXT session, the Ball Launch key will be reset to default. If you set Ball Launch back to the key you wanted, in the NEXT session, all the other keys will be reset to defaultā¦
UPDATE: Found a workaround! Can seem to set up to 7 keys without trouble; trouble starts when setting 8 or more. I only REALLY need to set 6 keys, so I guess Iāll get by with that for now. ; )
(And I found that the dev-created BUG REPORT MEGATHREAD for the Steam version is BUG REPORT MEGATHREAD :: Pinball FX General Discussions .)
Buuuut my dumb old beat-up shoulder canāt seem to use a standard pad controller for anything except Wolfenstein 3D without giving itself cramps, so keyboard on PC seems to be my best less-continuing-nerve-pinching option. ^ _^ And it loads way faster from my laptopās SSD than on the PS4. And the Temporal AA is way sharper, so I can actually read the point values and funny stuff printed on the Williams tables playfields. : ) And at high framerates, the ghost ball artifacts arenāt really visible. And the gamma isnāt messed up like on the PS4 version. : P And I can have Windowsā Night Light on to reduce the eyeball strain of table light flashing FX.
So yeah Iāve now bought my tables from Zen for the third time. Very few people seem to have re-bought theirsāwhich was required, with NO discount for prior ownership, going from PBFX3 to (new) PBFX, so now I can place real high on the leaderboards. : P Party while Zen burns!
I was thinking maybe contractual language with Williams was preventing them from altering default dip settings so they had to do these silly (and often buggy) workarounds like to skip game-over match sequences instead of just turning them off with a dip setting, but they do seem to be doing other stuff that would normally take dip access, like switching off EBs in Pro Mode, so I dunno.
Ran into three what seem like table-specific bugs on Twilight Zone:
- Ball falls back into the launch lane ~80% of the time after hitting the Red Award skill shot, instead of going through the diverter
- Canāt skip the game over match sequence, even with the āWilliams Pinball Attract Modeā setting set to ON, which is supposed to allow skipping match sequences
- After draining the ball, after an earlier multi-ball, the game didnāt seem to realize I had no more balls in play; after a pause it dumped locked balls down the playfield for me to keep playing! Got rank 34 on the Pro Mode leaderboard thanks to that glitch : P
3 Likes
That is interesting to hear! FWIW I got those three I assume bosses marked on my map that Iāve yet to get to, plus a fountain or statue that marked something else towards the middle of it that I havenāt managed to get to yet so I assumed that meant I couldnāt have gotten too deep in yet, plus all those weird black barriers are still blocking my access to a few places.
ā¦Maybe I can accidentally beat it with my starting weapon~
2 Likes
You are skipping all sorts of stuff. Iād already visited the temple that the fountain marks on your map near the beginning of the game. There really isnāt a defined āsequenceā to break in hollow knight, and you definitely can beat it with the starting weapon. Some later bosses and post game bosses scale to your weapon upgrades so that it doesnāt get too terrible.
1 Like
I am less skipping stuff and more getting very lost 
4 Likes
For what itās worth, Iām pretty sure the gas DLC was made during the Abe-administration before he got his back blown out by a homemade quad-shotty.
thumbing another round into my shotgun
Still tasteless, though.
2 Likes
THE VANISHING OF ETHAN CARTER
spoilers
i was starting to enjoy this, the puzzles were so simple that they could barely count as puzzles and it feels like they gave up on the detective stuff in the second half because it becomes so straightforward, but i enjoyed walking around this pretty world and uncovering this pulpy, trashy lovecraftian tale. it was nice to play a walking sim with no pretensions!
then i got to the ending and OH BOY HOWDY THE PRETENSIONS. totally unearned that (over-used) twist that trivialises domestic abuse. iām also disappointed in myself for not seeing it coming, it was obvious in hindsight.
at least it was short. also pretty.
4 Likes