So it’s also referencing Mario?
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It does my heart good to see others criticizing Sea of Stars. I played the demo back when it came out, and boy, that game is hot garbage. Still haven’t gotten over its sense of humor. The 10 minute long cutscene of ad nauseam jokes about what if a pirate was named Keenathan… Kill me now.
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warning: incoming phone game post
hi I want to talk about phone shoot game Snowbreak for a minute
I enjoy this janky, PS2-ass idiot action shootman
but
and this is going to sound insane for a number of reasons
I’m getting increasingly frustrated that the game isn’t hard enough
the best content is the boss fight mode thing where you can pump bosses up and that’s fun because it encourages learning bosses and actually leveling characters (metagame fun?) and the abyss, where they let wackier combinations of enemies fly
everything else thus far is stuff I could run wild over in my sleep
and then I read in patch notes that they made stuff easier (which, fair, there are probably some poor souls playing this on their phones)?
no, guys, I want you to fuck me up
there’s absolutely no damage pressure that would make me spend money on the game (note: I have not spent money on the game), and that seems odd
again, this is a weird complaint because I’m effectively mad that the game is fair to people not spending and, perhaps, even skill based
maybe I hate myself
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Wargroove is part of the line of untrained pixel art games that are technically impressive but kind of incomplete with regards to art direction. There are so many of these. It’s kind of… Sad? But then it is clearly apparent in the game design, too. It’s all a facsimile of something good, has shine and polish like something good, but fails to have a complete vision on its own. I guess there might be a naysayer that describes what WG is and then pretends that’s a vision, so maybe vision isn’t the right word for those people. But then again maybe it is the right word and those people just have boring visions.
Edit: this sounds really horrible so I’m sorry but also like… There’s a reason why Japanese pixel art games kept going for so long. There’s genuine aesthetic decisions being made for the pieces as a whole. Less so for so many modern indie games with “great” pixel art.
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Yeah like Sea of Stars and
going through Switch own game list
Timespinner, Souldiers, Blazing Beaks, Children of Morta, Moonlighter, Wizard of Legend, Cadence of Hyrule.
Lol
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A Friend said the devs wrote the Jordan Peterson line when they were very early in development and in the mean time the world happened and when everyone found it when the game release they apologized.
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To give a more pointed criticism of it. What is the story of the game? You watch some children trained from birth to do some special task. The entire 10 years they are training the only personality trait is “I miss our third friend”. They aren’t formed or condition or given anything approaching character for those 10 years as the adults say mysterious shit. Got it say “it” and “them” while also saying FLESHMANCER and Hole of Regret.
Booji said this is framed within two flashbacks. Because we need to see them training and that they miss their friend so then we see them meet their friend and decide okay gues we’ll go on the adventure with our friend anyways.
In the demo the 3rd Friend goes “wow pirates cool!” And I screamed “WHY DO YOU KNOW WHAT PIRATES ARE?”
It’s like…a couple who constantly posts photos online about how happy they are when you’ve met them once and know the relationship is about to explode. This paper thin veneer that “lore” and “joeks” (as opposed to “jokes”) can cover up a hero’s journey.
I’ve spent like two hours with the 2 protagonists I couldn’t tell you a damn thing about them outside of one is call Sunny and the other is called Mooncrater. Can you guess what magic powers they have?
Final Fantasy at it’s best actually considers what happens and forms a character’s reaction to an experience. Dragon Quest gets out of the way entirely. Tales of (which is the closest) makes character motivation everything.
Hell Pier Solar did a better job.
That’s the biggest disappointment looking at this going “Why are they doing this? Why do I care?” Oh because the ecclipse is coming? Who cares? That’s not a fucking motivation. Because the ancient evil is coming? The fucking earth out my window is on fire.
The reviews mention the plot is exactly what you think it is and that is the biggest insult. Take it from me someone that has played 40 of the most mediocre RPGs ever made this year.
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I’m ready for more games where the stakes are much more personal instead of being The Fate of the World
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Just dropping in to thank for all the posts about Sea of Stars, it’s been a while since I was this confused about an overwhelmingly positive reception of a game. Trying to figure it out and the best thing I came up with is that it’s as if the developers set out to perfect this Golden Sun school of writing where no one ever says anything surprising, it’s all this cozy droning hum of the exact tropes and reactions and references you’d expect? I felt dread when the second line in game stated that curiosity is “An important trait, to be sure.” because it reeked of an incredibly clumsy attempt to give a character a unique voice, then it turned out that most characters straight up don’t have one. (The moment that broke me was when the pirate lady broke the fourth wall to straight up describe the opening of Final Fantasy II - the game specializes in the, uh, most accessible forms of wit.)
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this reminds me that for all of jagged alliance 3s posturing about understanding the writing of 2 or “satire” or being funny they have villains in that game literally say shit like “i would have gotten away it too if it werent for you meddling kids”
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I wanted to push back on the Golden Sun comparisons as someone that played half that game early this year, but it has the same training montage and “what exactly is this journey?” And it definitely fits with anyone’s memory of Golden Sun.
You can look up my posts on that game. I was definitely depressed when I played it.
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sea of stars makes me want to give FFX another shot
it’s really quite something
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tidus’ menu portrait in final fantasy x advance
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every time someone says “sea of stars” it reminds me of one of my favorite game series of all time: infinite space. precisely because the third entry is “sea of stars”
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The Making of Karateka (PC / Steam)
I wish there was a no filter option; you can turn off the obvious filters, but there’s always a very slight rescaling blurriness, ie there’s no aliased completely unfiltered output option. Also that you could remap all the controls, not just the main ones, that there was a confirmation each time you saved, that you had more than one save slot per game, and that the UI was a little more streamlined for starting the games–like, just give me an instant pick list.
The historical timeline stuff is sort of neat but, aside from new videos of Mechner and his dad, who composed the game’s music,
and videos interviews with the Digital Eclipse people who worked on this compilation–turned out I did not have enough interest to watch any of these new videos for more than a few seconds–you can get the actual historical stuff
from Wikipedia and from Mechner’s own YouTube channel, @JordanMechner .
The new Digital Eclipse remakes of Karateka and another game Mechner made around the same time, Deathbounce,
for all their very intentional and artificial modern smooth pixel art look,
don’t play particularly well, which feels like entirely missing the point of Mechner’s own meticulous Karateka design (Mechner’s Deathbounce prototypes
Mechner Apple II Asteroid/Deathbounce prototype screenshots
don’t play very well either ; ).
Still, very smooth presentation–aside from my constant fumbling with where PC “A,” “B,” and “X” buttons mapped on my arcade stick–love being able to play the Karateka prototypes
Karateka prototype screenshots
and historical ports (the two ports that are here, at least: C64
and Atari 8-bit
; I’d have vastly preferred to get more historical ports instead of the two contemporary Digital Eclipse remakes) and see the original manuals, the Enhanced Frame Rate setting’s
slight speed boost is real cool, and Mechner’s Apple II Karateka
is still fabulous: what a lovely, fabulously choreographed
single player fighting game adventure,
with immensely satisfying action.
Now I’ll have to come back and get through it, save scumming to avoid instant death by portcullis
and other devious traps. ; )
(I stupidly assumed at first that the six button control scheme
was added for this collection for some reason–but it appears to go back to the original, judging from the included manuals, and scans and references I’ve found elsewhere to them. When I tried it prior to recording, I found the six button scheme a lot more cumbersome than using just two buttons
plus up/down on the stick.)
The upside-down disk
loading the game with upside down graphics
was a real trick Mechner put in as a joke; a second version of the game was written on the otherwise unused side B of the disk, where “The programmer doing copy protection for the game figured out that by messing with the bit table, the whole game could be played upside down”; Mechner thought this would be funny:
‘“We figured of all the people who buy the game, a couple of them would accidentally put the floppy in upside down,” he continued. “That way, when that person calls tech support, that tech support rep would once in blue moon have the sublime joy of saying, ‘Well sir, you put the disk in upside down,’ and that person would think for the rest of their life that’s how software works.”’
I’m not sure that’s how tech support works, though–sounds like Mechner just gave them unnecessary work. : P
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Went 1-2 at Magic night.
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i watched rudie and booji play sea of stars, and everything they said about it being bad was true. above all else, that game has an art style that looks like it’s about to write a lengthy twitter callout post about me for using the word queer, which is [in rich white person from connecticuit voice] totally a slur, ya’ll.
also i placed 9th in a king of fighters xv tournament on monday. i had a good time.
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New 1CC!! It’s basically the same game as the previous one!!
OK, this one is actually somewhat harder due to cranking up the speed a lot more near the end, but the absence of those annoying item blocks clogging the next queue helps a bit. My overall advice for this game is “pick a top tier”.
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darkness over daggerford for neverwinter nights was pretty good, like it wasnt a sublime rpg experience or anything but i felt like i was able to enjoy the character they were presenting to me (BG1 style plucky adventurer meddling in big conspiratorial plans) so i didnt mind how few times i got to persuade people or all the goofy jokes in the dialogue. also it had pretty decent combat encounters which i honestly took for granted until i started playing…
…the neverwinter nights original campaign…
lol like i get its a showcase of what the toolset can do and is clearly designed for multiplayer but oh my god it literally starts with you exploring a giant square area that loops back into itself filled to the brim with fucking trash mobs that my ROGUE was literally gibbing in one hit at level 1, while you jog around at a snails pace. dozens of copy paste goblins and skeletons. and none of it fucking matters because your only allowed to level up at specific points in the prelude. I guess if you had some kind of problem you could run past all the enemies, level up at the points and then go back and kill all the trash mobs to get to level 4 early? why would you do this if you are not lilura1?
I have a vague memory of having to slaughter like 200 prisoners in the peninsula district but it sure is something to experience when you arent like 8 years old and sort of understand game design more. also I had to install a mod so i could freely customize my armor appearance to get rid of the titty window on my scalemail, but on the plus side now i can make my greatsword look cool as shit too. im really looking forwards to experiencing this trashfire again
also the first side quest you get is from a druid who enlists you to kill like 25 humans to save 4 animals who were kidnapped for the zoo in the rich people district. The game treats this as a completely neutral action and nobody can tell me that is a bad quest. A fair trade
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A bit more It Takes Two. The two leads deliver every line with an exclamation mark. Some cutscenes begin with them falling down and grunting/barking about 12 times. We’re both enjoying taking the piss out of the game and I wonder if it’s constant goofiness was intentional for co-op design. The toy-themed level feels like it was designed to get players asking each other which of the toys they played with in childhood, and it works well if that is the intent. You also kill a lot of animals/sentient objects which also felt like a way to spur dialogue between the two players.
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