Oh wow, yeah this works great as long as I just maximize Nox instead of full-screening it. My eyeballs aren’t blown out now. ^ _^ Fabulous, thanks! : D
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it does. it also supports (and uses by default) analog face buttons, thanks to the PS2’s pressure-sensitive DualShock 2 buttons - you can turn that off in the options
actually, every ridge racer game released on a sony platform supports analog steering. the first 3 games only thru the NeGcon, later thru DualShock / Jogcon. there are a few wheels for the PS1 as well (i have one actually), but i haven’t been able to dig up a comprehensive compatibility list on that front yet
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i think some ps1 (and maybe also ps2?) wheels had a mode that told the console you were using a negcon
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Just installed it through Steam and it worked out of the box. Switching the screen resolution to the right one was the only pain really.
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nice, thanks!! that gives me the confidence to try it again
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Demon Lord Reincarnation (PC)
Uses public domain char art from Javardry: とり夫 - pixiv
It’s a significantly expanded and enhanced version of Demon Lord, their free game jam game from earlier this year Demon Lord by Surt R.
What was already a brutal combat and exploration game has become even more brutal: you’ve got to survive multiple floors of a confusing mazelike dungeon now, enemies may have AoE attacks, and your party’s attacks are spread across all the enemies in a group, instead of just hitting a single enemy–so more of them are alive longer to keep hitting you; then again, once they start dropping, they drop fast. ; D
All this and I basically haven’t advanced past the first dungeon square yet! ; DDD
Can’t take multiple characters of the same class in the four-person, formationless party this time, so I’ve gone with the beefiest I could find: General, Dwarf, Executioner, and Guard. HP max! Maybe eventually I’ll learn to use fragile ranged types…
Defend actually works this time, and you pick your action on a per-character basis, so you can’t quite mash through as quickly as in the Jam version–but there is a “Repeat” command to repeat the previous round’s commands, which speeds things up a lot as long as you don’t have to switch a wounded party member to Defend.
Feels like this is gonna be a heck of an adventure. ^ _^ With multiple floors I don’t think my brain will quite be able to hold the path in my head, so I’ll be mapping in Photoshop as I go (this time you’ve got the Check command that tells you your coords and facing; 0,0 is the SW corner of the 20x20 floor space).
For a while I thought there was a bug where the enemy group counter would go from like 1/1 to 0/1 then back to 1/1; finally looked through the manual (gee ; ) and found the left number is number of enemies who are able to attack, so stunned or whatever enemies would drop out of that momentarily. Also didn’t think the battle UI showed SP–the resting one doesn’t, which seems odd–wait, yes it does! Argh I was looking for a xx/xx readout like for HP, not just a xx readout, so I overlooked it repeatedly darg–but yes, it does. ; ) And didn’t think the battle UI showed when you don’t have the SP (Skill Points, forgot that for a bit : P) to use a skill, but it does–the graying-out is a bit subtle.
Does indeed have the option to turn off screen shake that the developer said they’d add when I asked about such an option pre-release. : ))
5 Likes
I decided to give Returnal a shot while working through various PS+ catalog options as I had a friend tell me a bit back that it was a good game for this type of service (i.e. not worth a blind $60-70 purchase, but worth trying in case it tickles one’s fancy). I basically automatically ignore a game if it mentions randomization, permadeath or roguelike, but I figured I’d at least give this a run or two to see what’s up and if I needed to yell at said friend.
Put probably a bit more than an hour into it last night, only had two deaths, one which felt like a mandatory story one (got the title screen afterwards) and another that restored me at a save point in the same world, so things felt rather fair so far. Put the game to sleep, came back to it today and… my PS5 downloaded and installed a firmware update that forced a restart, game read that as a death, knocked back to zero.
Why do people like these mechanics again?
Anyways for the sake of fairness I gave it that second run, spent another 45+ minutes to basically get back to where I was before, which ironically was likely just short of visiting my house and getting my blade so basically shortly before the boss fight for the first region. Gave it a shot, got a second chance due to having a mystery revival item, still died on the bosses third phase (BTW people designing games, the very first boss in your games don’t need 3+ phases). Back to zero, except I kept that last I assume permanent ability which I believe let me get back to the boss quickly this time (whether that or randomization felt pity on me), except now I have the default weak weapon and no revival things. Died again, realized I’d have to go wander the lightly randomized world raising why weapon proficiency (each run) to the point where I’d get a decent weapon drop so I could fight the boss on better terms, or just keep doing said boss repeatedly with my pea shooter until I got it down (got to the third phase both runs, so not impossible)…
…and I was just hit with this overwhelming feeling of “why?”. In every other game like this up until the last few years this would never be the case, you’d keep whatever weapon you had, have reasonable checkpoints, and based on everything I’ve seen be done with this game in probably 7-10 hours. Instead they add in numerous player-hostile measures so the same game takes you 25-30 hours instead. I didn’t feel any “aha, I’ve learned some trick to deal with the chaos”, this is a relatively rote third person shooter mechanically speaking. If you want to make a run-based game the first area alone shouldn’t take me the better part of an hour to get through.
I feel like various Ubisoft lawnmower sims respect my time more that this.
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analog is mapped to the freakin xbox button which opens the game bar thing, so I had to bind it to “A” but after I did it all worked.
RRV is like, uh, much chiller than RR4. Probably the most chill Ridge Racer game I’ve played. It feels like an afternoon breeze of a game in late summer.
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I can’t get over the fact that jagged alliance 3 is telegraphing I will be betrayed later in the game by having the lady in charge of both the mines and the military immediately make an ominous phone call in the first 5 minutes of the game which would be enough to raise my suspicions if her name was not also fucking Corazón Santiago
I know the disclaimer at the beginning of the game said they were going to be taking on Contemporary Issues but literally every single reference in this game so far is to something Jagged Alliance 2 would have also referenced because it was current in 1999, but the game is set in 2001, so like why not just commit to making fun of the Bush years I mean the game starts before 9/11 and all, just imagining getting an email in October 2001 from Bobby Ray’s because the Department of Homeland Security is interfering with their ability to ship you stinger missiles from Florida. ah fuck I’m making a better game again oh shit
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Remember Sky Gunner? Sky Gunner is like “What if we took Porco Rosso and made it a score attack air combat game”. I remember playing this game on easy mode and feeling like I only scratched the surface. So with the benefit of emulators it’s time to dive back in. Also this intro fuckin rules.
My mans sleepin in the garage on a damn lawn chair
Start the engines with…a fuckin gun
Look at these fuckin controls yall. The tutorial is like an hour long explaining the game’s many many systems. I spent all night on the tutorial trying to figure out how to do chains right. I’m using the simplified baby controls, I want to go back and learn how to do advanced mode, because it’s 20 years later and I have better brain functions.
There’s a temp gauge that you have to watch when using special attacks. Your cannons do double damage when you use air brakes. you can combo enemies by targeting them, and subsequent combos increase your score exponentially. The airship designs are really good. What’s really cute is all the enemies in the airplanes parachute out before their planes crash, so technically I don’t think anyone dies?
I remember the campaign lasting like a handful of missions and the real meat of the game being using Advanced Controls and then playing on Hard Mode. I can’t wait to, uh, play more than an hour of this.
25 Likes
After being curious about it for a while, I’ve finally taken the plunge into something that has a reputation of being one of the best furry visual novels: Echo.
Very gay, very dark, kind of sweet in the first route (although I’ve heard that…doesn’t last and most of the routes are much more fucked and kinda get moreso as they go in the reccomended playthrough order)
A group of childhood friends re-unite in their shitty small town, a few folks got out, a few stayed behind. The writing is way, way, way more tense than I’m used to in one of these. I don’t know how intentionally it’s trying to like…subvert cute gay romance VNs but a lot of the structure is pretty much the same. Just…much much more perceptive trauma writing and willingness to have people be assholes in really believable ways. These are some of the most college-student-ass college students I’ve seen in stuff.
It…yeah you’ve probably noticed it has a a lot in common with the Testimony of Trixie Glimmer Smith (if you played that, and YOU SHOULD). But it doesn’t have the sharp comedy writing and transgender stuff. It replaces that pulling it’s punches less with the horror elements. And also a very gay dude perspective which is definitely something I’m not used to in these.
One of it’s writing quirks is that it spends a lot of time thinking about the various quirks of furry physicality. There’s a lot of time and effort focused on like, somebody having horns, or dogs being able to smell things. The biology of a lizard guy vs an otter. That kinda thing.
It’s also very very gay. First playthrough didn’t exactly have any porn but like…it’s definitely on the table about sexuality and horniness. Very on the table. [EDIT: This contains explicit sex scenes, which you should know if you were curious about playing it]
It’s surprisingly beefy, with my playthrough of my first route, which is allegedly the shortest, already taking like, four hours. Going by the recommendation I started with the chubby ram, Carl. The stoner rich kid.
Spoilers for Carl’s route:
It’s actually kinda nice that the game says that even though he’s been through legit trauma he is still a rich kid, and his arc is about realizing that. Equally cool is that it’s one of the few times I’ve seen a story in a video game (or really, anything) directly engage with the idea of ancestral wealth and the fucked up reasons it exists and the ways wealthy folks write history. Especially not in like a…perpetual doom cult way. It also does this in a way that while not exactly…subtle. It’s not like it hits you over the head with it by making sure you Learned the Lesson either. Also Carl despite not really being my type definitely made me want to hug him a lot so like, score one for the writing on that
I will say that one of the weird bits in the story is that some parts of it feel like you’re watching someone else solve a puzzle in an adventure game? Including pretty decent puzzle design in a few places. But instead of solving it yourself you watch the characters solve the puzzle for you?? I also don’t know how hard it branches because I kinda accidentally did all the right choices.
The writing is keeping me engaged, though. I do love messy queer relationship dissolution, and this game definitely is…that.
I’ll keep folks posted as I go?? I’m trying very hard to not just do the hot wolf guy route right this second because I need sleep and I know I could be up all night doing this.
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The devs did update the game to give you a mid-run save option at some point, but this doesn’t automatically happen when you sleep the console. I don’t think it’s a “game mechanics” failure so much as it is “we will force the user to do this manually because we are stubborn” failure (or tbh I don’t even know if games can run code as a console enters sleep)
I’m also a bit shocked preventing data loss when automatic firmware updates occur is not part of certification (are Sony games exempt from the cert process?)
3 Likes
Should I play Lisa The Painful?
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this was a normal way to start an aircraft engine in the 30s and 40s
Also this game looks amazing
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hard disagree! Returnal is by far the best modern thirps mechanically. the way enemy attacks work (not to mention the speed and agility of your traversal options) is vastly different than everything in the gears mold (most thirps)
just navigating the concepts of “cover” and “positioning” in this game relative to something like, idk, Outriders - it’s pretty fundamentally different in how you actually interact with the world in combat
i really don’t think anything about returnal is player-hostile beyond having a bunch of monsters try to kill you in the game (which is like, most games)
idk, i’ve never once felt that Returnal was wasting my time or attempting to pad length or was lazy in its design. it’s razor sharp. the death mechanics are folded into the game more elegantly than nearly any other roguelite i can think of. yeah, you have to start at the beginning when you fail, but the game is extensively generous with permanent upgrades. i’d say i made permanent progress in the game on the vast, vast majority of my runs. weapon proficiency is permanent as well. just by playing the game you’ll naturally be getting your weapon levels up. the game is littered with stuff like this that makes the bitter pill of death easier to swallow
if you fundamentally disagree with permadeath/roguelite design then this game certainly won’t convince you, but it uses those mechanics in extremely effective and elegant ways
4 Likes
oh, does the ps5 not have quick-resume?
i do remember reading an article around launch where there was a problem where crashes were losing save files. i think devs of run-based/roguelike games should be a lot more careful with saves in general. basically every traditional roguelike saves backups at regular intervals in case of crashes. this is really basic stuff and prevents one of the worst feelings in games.
sure, the player might be able to abuse it in some way, but idk, let them? why make the experience markedly worse for players who are trying to play the way you intended them to just to stop a few players that want to circumvent it?
3 Likes
PS5 has “Switcher” and “Rest Mode”
Switcher holds 1 game and 1 media app in memory. You can return to where you were in-game or in-app immediately from anywhere in the PS5 UI, and it’s much, much faster than cold-booting the game. you only get 1 of each, tho. if you launch a different game/app, the previous one will be offloaded.
Rest Mode puts the console in a low-power state. when the console is turned back on, you’ll be exactly where you were when you put the console in rest mode
However, when the PS5 is completely shut down, it loses anything running in Switcher. if you have a game open like Returnal, which you need to manually save before exiting, the game will just count it as a death.
If possible, save and exit games like Returnal before you stop playing - the console might do an update or something and you get hit with bullshit like this
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ah, yeah, that’s much more constrained than xbox. i can quick resume ~5 games there, and it can even do that from a cold boot (although i don’t trust that feature as much because i don’t have a lot of experience with it). you can even lock in games to guarantee they are quick-resumable.
i will say, basically any game that requires you to be connected to a server at all times shits the bed when you try to quick resume. almost no game handles that scenario well, even first-party microsoft titles, so they clearly don’t have any certification requirements around it. halo infinite, for instance, i have to hard restart if it quick-resumes because it can’t connect to the server at all. i wish they added a feature to blacklist games from quick-resume, but that’s a tacit admission that their feature doesn’t exactly work well all the time, so i suspect they’re not too keen to push that feature out.
for singleplayer games, though, it works great and i’ve never had a problem with it.
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hyup, it’s a nuisance on the PS5 as well
some games get stuck in a state where they can never again connect to PSN/their servers without being completely killed off after returning from Rest Mode
Rocket League manifests some strange glitches (the “Joining” lights start flashing at 10x speed, for example)
there’s at least one recent game (possibly already patched) where you can’t reconnect “in-game” at all, and if you play after resuming from Rest Mode all your subsequent progress will be lost as it won’t keep any of that save data since it was done “offline” lol
2 Likes