Games You Played Today Part 007 Goldeneye

[username]

I ended up finishing Spiritfarer today and… let me ponder how to say this: I worry it is an evil game in very pretty clothing? Love the visuals, storyline is pretty neat but the game loop felt the most “need X more of these so I can work towards Y, which will let me get more Z” treadmill I’ve put myself on in quite a while, just designed to keep me playing to knock one more thing out and poof another hour is gone. I know people criticize many modern lawnmower sim-esque games as basically being dopamine slow drips to keep you hooked but this felt a level beyond those. TBF I never bothered with the various Stardew Valleys or Animal Crossings which I could buy even being more extreme at this, but yeah as a mechanical “thing” I am actually a bit bothered by it and will consider this my one time trip into this realm to know what the hell is going on in that vast region of video gaming I rarely visit.

If you want to know why I tried it in the first place, Thunder Lotus’s aesthetic is so my thing I’ll basically give anything they animate a shot eventually.

[hellojed]

Hmm yeah I’m always talking about “vibes” and “racing games” and this game keeps getting touted as “great concept but difficult execution”. So I decided to give it a go. The presentation, music, and style are all incredible. But the game? ohh…

The game’s story pacing is slow as molasses, text and screens fade in and out slowly. Every time the camera starts to rotate and fade out into a dialog section I start to groan, because they are so slow and drag on, despite being interesting. The text itself is a pretty good translation, I feel like they captured the spirit of the characters.

So let’s talk about…The driving

The physics are incredibly twitchy, I have to kind of tap the accelerator button and nudge the steering very lightly to maneuver tracks. Tracks are really narrow, and hitting anything will slow the car down excruciatingly. Sometimes you do hit a corner correctly and the car feels like it hooks up, and you can really gain on opponents by cornering right, but they are few and far between. Often I’ll hit one wall or another, or hit an opponent’s car, and wince at how much I slowed down. Races are often one shot point to point, and the screen fades + scene transitions make everything very slow. Often it’s just a lot of dialog and then a moment of racing, then back to dialog.

However, the upgrade system in this game is really interesting: you can grab whatever you want out of your opponent’s parts bin and put it on your car, down to engines and bodies. Right now I have a Honda Civic body on the AE86 chassis, so a RWD Civic, and it has the old body kit on it. It’s impressive how expressive this system is.

IDK If I’ll keep playing more than an hour. It’s interesting! It’s excruciatingly slow! and the driving mechanics are bad. if I were to savestate-scum races so I could restart, I think that would make things easier, so I might do that.

I am really impressed by the translation though because I’m not sure how you do that with a PSX game, especially one like this. Regardless of game quality it’s a triumph in bringing the game to a larger audience.

[skelephone]

@username

I worry it is an evil game in very pretty clothing?

I felt this also but more for some of the plot stuff. I thought the plot line about the character with memory problems was pretty fucked. You essentially end up deceiving this character to convince them to “move on” which seems like ghost murder to me

I also disliked the wobbly worldbuilding.

It felt very much like a survival boat game with the afterlife themeing bolted on, often in ways I found manipulative, shallow, or otherwise coarse

[meauxdal]

Dysmantle (PS5) - somehow, against all odds, this game is Good. it doesn’t look good, in fact it looks like it lacks any potential to be good. however, it emerges Good from the smoke and rubble. i have played this game for 89 hours and i’ll probably play 10 or so more to mop up the platinum trophy.

it’s another case of doing a lot with a little (see also: Paradise Killer). the game isn’t very aesthetically compelling, but give it some of your time and it finds a way to get its innocent-seeming hooks into your dopamine centers. you will either really hate this and quit immediately or you’ll probably play it as long as i have lol.

i am really not down with nakedly Skinner box-feeling games too often, but this one really works. the world design is pretty strong, the lore is consistently interesting(?), and there are lots of neat environmental details (even if the voice acting or random licensed tune drop-ins are sometimes just straight-up bewildering).

the combat is really quite poor, and it’s the worst bit of the game. it’d be OK if there wasn’t so much of it. i feel if they had solved the “combat is resolutely mid” issue, this could have risen to even greater heights. as it is, though, the combat doesn’t feel bad so much as just uninspired and shallow.

still, the game was able to take me thru all 89 hours of my experience with a pretty consistently happy player. chop chop chop hack hack hack.

do yourself a favor and put on a nice record, maybe listen to one of those podcast thingies in the background or something. the aural ambience is nice but the game is too long to do that to yourself lol

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Assault Suit Leynos (PS4) - i love the AS games, and this is possibly the pinnacle of the series. widescreen and HD means you can actually see what’s going on way better than in the 16-/32-bit games, and the controls are smooth and sensible on a modern pad. there are two modes - the default story mode as well as “classic” mode which more faithfully recreates the Mega Drive original with the assets from the new game. notably, Classic mode uses a more zoomed-out camera than the default mode. both are great, but Classic mode is considerably more difficult (again, true to the MD original).

the game itself is a riot. maybe a hair too short, but e.g. the last mission has like 7 submissions so it’s a bit longer than it looks on paper

unlike some of these retro releases that just emulate the game and call it a day, this is a pretty transformative package that is well worth playing even if you’ve played the older AS games to death

[VastleCania]

@meauxdal

Dysmantle

i’ve wishlisted this, i definitely want to try it. seems like my kind of shit

[meauxdal]

DARIUSBURST: Another Chronicle EX+ (PS4) - i’ve only really played Dariusburst (and its descendents) on PSP and Vita, so i was not prepared for how amazing the soundtrack was going to sound coming out of my TV speakers. the OST in this game is mind-meltingly good.

the game is also great. love being able to play the full 32:9 ratio in co-op. melody was hanging back on the left screen while i was diving in deep on the right screen, occasionally using R1 to turn around and blast enemies to my left. i love the way this game likes to throw dozens or sometimes what feels like hundreds of popcorn enemies at you - different than your typical danmaku feel, for sure. i also love all the ship variety and how differently they play.

one detail i absolutely love about co-operative play: when any player picks up a power-up, it lingers on the screen for a few seconds before disappearing, allowing your comrades to power themselves up as well. the window is somewhat short, so you need to gently coordinate here - good design, adds another wrinkle to things

haven’t dug into Event Mode yet but i’m pretty happy with this so far. if you already have Chronicle Saviours, you probably don’t need this; if you don’t, it’s a good pickup

[ty]

I feel this so much, in addition to the braindead mode of engagement you describe here I really felt another layer of evil with this game. There’s this philosophical angle that it’s trying to push the player to agree that it’s ok to just die- and problems you have in life are basically unsolvable but you can fix it and self actualize after you die. It really resonates poorly with things like the Canadian MAID scandal and a deeper feeling of deathwish. It may not have been this strong of a sense if not for the lawnmower gameplay grind you’re describing here, very much like we’re all doomed to being Tantalus or Sisyphus in hell and should like it.

[Father.Torque]

Apparently the pulse rifle listed in the weapon inventory as “Overwatch Standard Issue,” so my kid was like “they put a gun from Overwatch in this game randomly,” and it made me think a lot about how children are freely floating in history and have no way to understand context and the order things came in

[Mr_Mechanical]

Just children?

[daphaknee]

I did this too after I played overwatch. never heard the word used outside that really

[Victor]

A couple years ago they built this new place here in town called Cidercade. I believe it originates from ^gasp Dallas? and there are a few locations around the state. I think it is owned by a brewery company and they only sell said ciders, you can bring in your own food, kids allowed during the day but adults only at night, etc. But what with it opening in prime covid times, various other factors, I never got around to visiting. Also, for reasons I can’t exactly remember I was under the impression that the game selection was weak and for noobs, etc.

Well, my younger brother is in town visiting and we decided to check it out. You pay $12 entry and everything is freeplay, seems pretty fair to me. Or, you can pay $20 and come back as much as you want for a month. Oh? Hmm.“Can I be sure this will be worth it?” I ask shortly before spotting the Super Turbo Versus City cab through the windows. We got the $20 membership. Turns out they had some pretty cool stuff in there, and more games than I had anticipated (website counts 275). I was surprised and had a real good time.

A full big-boy 4p Dariusburst

Giant trackball + air jet Irritating Maze

Was not expecting candy cabs at all so a working ST Versus City setup and a New Astro running KOF Neowave (of all things) were a treat. They also had a another copy of ST running in a nice looking Capcom USA Big Blue cab.

Bloody Roar? Ok. I see the kind of degenerates we’re patronizing here.

Three-screen Ninjawarriors. They had this cab for a while at our longstanding once-a-monthly publicly-opened freeplay arcade Joystix, haven’t visited since before covid, wonder if this is that cab now living here?

Just to name a few, lots of other neat stuff (weeb rhythm, classics, etc). Didn’t really spend much quality time with anything in particular with the family all there. Gotta strap on the n95 and putter out back over here alone for some more actual sicko time soon. There were lots of people in there, nice to see an arcade seemingly working out nicely, good luck guys.

[Rudie]

What properitary cabs did they have? Seems like a grear place.

[Father.Torque]

You live with @iguferon, you have absolutely heard the word overwatch 100 times before

[daphaknee]

I played overwatch and heard it for the first time a few years before I met veronica

[aislesgrises]

i played one loop of realm of impossibility and i honestly wish second loop added like 20 enemies to the rooms so i felt a reason to keep going until death.

that one loop was pretty worth it tho. most dungeons were just like, walks to the treasure and back, but there’s a lot of expression in room layouts. like, i think this is a good case sample for how to do a LOT with a limited tileset. also, player character waving to the player while idle is really cute!

[wourme]

I used to play Realm of Impossibility all the time as a kid.

I loved the evocative place names, though at the time few of the references were familiar to me.

[VastleCania]

Pikmin 4 is pretty good but I think I’ve finally figured out why I don’t like caves in Pikmin games: they ruin the flow! Pikmin 1 has this perfect system where each day is exactly the same length every time. This means I know the stakes - I have about 15 minutes to get as much done as possible.

But since caves are necessarily more time consuming (and imagine surfacing from a cave and it’s already night and the creatures just kill you (actually this would rule)), they made it so time passes more slowly inside a cave. Which is a decent solution, I guess, but it completely ruins the flow of the game. Now a day could be 15 minutes or 45 minutes or 90 minutes or whatever. So why would I try to be efficient? Where’s the pressure?

Well, the pressure is now a resource one. The pikmin you bring with you are the only ones you get, so any that die can’t easily be replaced. But that’s just a different game! It doesn’t mesh well with the dual pressures of time and resources in the overworld.

The other issue with the time dilation is that it makes any day where you don’t go into a cave sub-optimal. So just gathering things efficiently on the surface isn’t a good day. You’d better take at least one trip into a cave, simply because it means you have more time to gather treasures.

Anyway, Pikmin 4 smooths a lot of this over by making the game way easier. You can now leave caves whenever you want and start right where you left off, there are multiple ways of gathering stray pikmin at sundown, etc. I think these were good decisions, but I think it’s telling that my favorite thing to do in this game so far are the timed challenges where you have to be efficient and thoughtful with your resources.

[aislesgrises]

oh yeah, some of these words are still unfamiliar to me. and others i might have seen but never thought about what they might refer to.

also, i don’t think i ever saw that many enemies at once. some dungeons were entirely empty even

[MintyJuffowup]

I think a lot of decisions were made with the Switch in mind, so they wanted to give players opportunities to accomplish something in varying lengths of time. I don’t think about efficiency at all because it doesn’t matter. The game is too long for me to want to play it in the most condensed timeframe possible.

So yeah, I agree! The changes they made cheapen it somewhat.

[parker]

I used to be a children