I went back to look at what exactly I was thinking of with the pixel hunting comment, and I think I was thinking about the skull in the IX map from BLOPS4. There is a large room where hundreds tiny skulls cover the walls and pillars, and you need to find and shoot one particular skull with a mark on it. And the skull in question can vary from a few different locations. Crazy stuff.
Also I just want to say I dislike how anachronistic and ugly the pack-a-punch weapons are.
Iâve been playing Inscription until past midnight so I guess I like it.
Okay I hate it has a 4th-wall-breaking framing device like that hasnât been done. Now let me stop myself, because I do try to not complain about a reasonable concept being reused. This Shark Movie is just a rip off of Jaws (so youâre saying there should never be shark movies again?)
It isâŚmuch more of a card game than I was led to believe. I thought it would be about breaking the card game through outside forces, but really you are just playing the card game until more âplotâ happens.
I think I am inclined to like any stripped down card game. Iâve put like 60 hours into Slay The Spire.
The 4th wall trick really only works the first time you see it wherever the first time is. Oh the game has turned to attack and talk to me The Player! Ahhh. I can actually just turn the game off and win. And frequently, frequently the game asks me to do this. I can go outside whenever I want game, donât patronize me because I wanted to play you.
Iâm not saying Inscryption does this, but itâs suggesting it is going to, and uggghhhâŚ
I think the only recent example Iâve liked of this is when you start Deltarune Chapter 1 it says Are you ready to accept the consequences? i always assume thereâs some fucking spyware in that game.
okay one thing i failed to mention in the positives camp RE: Dysmantle is that while this island is huge, itâs clear that most of it was designed quite deliberately and by hand.
the map was obviously created in some sort of grid-based editor because the land is distributed in these fairly large square chunks, and normally that would feel like a cop-out. but it seems like they took this tradeoff to design this gigantic map by hand, and it really shows. it reminds me of dragon quest (the first one) in the way that each little piece of the map feels like a standalone adventure. itâs cool!
the other thing that occurred to me is that this game is not ashamed to be a video game. itâs very video gamey and itâs not really trying to be something else.
so yeah i guess all i need from a game anymore is to not be ashamed of itself, and to be designed by someone who cared. i think thatâs probably gonna cover like 90% of what i like
It took me three restarts but I finally completed the system shock remake without save-scumming or using a guide under the time limit.
I have basically no complaints â even about the off-the-rails, confusing end sequence. I canât say Iâd recommend playing this way your first time through, unless youâre exceptionally patient and are okay with the prospect of having to restart multiple times.
Iâm just so impressed with how committed this remake is to not only being diligently faithful to the original, but also specifically with regards to hand-holding. all the information you need is there, but you really have to pay attention to not only every log you come across, but environmental detail. I definitely got stuck several times (and wasted a ton of time) because I couldnât figure out the next objective, only to finally figure it out and realize that all the information was right there in front of me the whole time. it makes me yearn for an alternate universe where this style of writing was more the norm. I feel like Iâm ready to play more experiences like this, but I donât know if any exist.
Street Fighter 6 (PC/Steam)
With Jamie Siu you have to do a move (down, down, punch) to chug a âdrinkâ to raise your drink meter thingy by one point; higher drink meter levels unlock more moves he can do. Not really into this sort of additional complication and feeling like Iâm starting out underpoweredâalthough itâs not as bad as w/ Shun Di in VF who also needs his meter to raise his base damage. But like, Jamie canât even do his dive kick w/o 1 drink.
Jamie also moves in a kind of dance step rhythm which probably takes some getting used to for its involuntary motion, or the feeling of such, anyway; between that and accidentally swigging drinks after moves (some of them also trigger a follow-up chug automatically), I felt a bit out of control. On the other hand, if you can get in the flow, heâs got some very fluid and easy combos. But in the end I found I was skipping his drinking mechanic entirely because I didnât know when I could get away with a swig without getting hit, and didnât like having to worry about chugging all the time anyway.
Luke is Jamieâs boss, too! Argh! â ;D
You can swap commentatorsâEnglish or Japanese-language, two each for both âPlay by Playâ and âColorâ commentatorsâby hitting Y on the Play by Play option in Story mode set-upâbut only after youâve cleared the Story mode per character. : P Same with options to turn off the Story junk and the Bonus Stages; so I do the 5-stage Story for a character, then do their 12-stage Story w/ Japanese commentators (fav combo so far is ARU & H.E.DEMON KAKKA), w/o Story & Bonus Stagesâwhich makes it 12 fights, rather than 10 fights and 2 silly truck wrecking / ball parrying bitsâvery long Arcade mode!
I ran into Rashid in Arcade mode! A DLC character I havenât bought! So thatâs kind of cool.
By the way I was wrong about Super Turbo the other dayâI donât think thereâs a big input problem with uppercuts. Tried it again in SF6 (after recording) & in MAME, and it was OK. But that session kind of made me want to get into ST. I tried my old World Warrior & it just felt too slow. & Hyper Fighting was like, well, I could be playing ST. Even though the difficulty in the usual US version of ST (& the one I extracted from 30th Anniversary to play in MAME) IS busted & on ridiculous difficulty no matter what difficulty setting you set. That kind of makes it, like, epic, in a way.
The arcade games in Battle Hub rotate on a timed schedule; when I went into BH to check ST, the game told me ST was going away soon; you can see the schedule on its info page, it was there for two daysâso of course what it wants to get you to do is buy the monthly Premium Fighting Pass for ~$5, whose 1st Kudos-based unlock is one of the arcade games, which you can then launch directly from the Gallery mode. This would be a silly thing to do of course since theyâve released these games in other, less expensive things like the Capcom Arcade Stadium collections, with more configurable options. But Iâm dumb & am tempted to do it anyway because for some weird reason I want to have the option to launch ST while Iâm hanging out in SF6, even if itâs a worse experience than playing the 30th one I extracted in MAME.
The ONLY things Iâm interested in in the regular & Premium Fighting Pass are the first things: in regular, the RENTAL tickets that let you play an hour of a DLC character you donât own, & in Premium, the arcade games; the rest is pretty much stickers and avatar stuff, etc. : PP
Repeating a Story playthrough for a character keeps earning Kudos, which at first I thought was nice but since thereâs almost nothing I really want with Kudos I guess I donât really care all that much about it; I mean I guess I can keep racking up RENTAL tickets each month. : P
Unlocked two more pieces of 2000s Shinkiro art, & a new one, of Jamie, but itâs somewhat cartoonish, & blurrily and boringly coloredâprobably one Shinkiro knocked out real quick; the other two are book covers that he probably would have been paid a lot more to spend more time on; theyâre the hardcover and softcover cover illustrations to the 2005 Street Fighter Eternal Challenge art book.
Going back to La Mulana because I feel like Iâm so done with Zelda.
2-1 again at pioneer. I was on mono green Karn.
Round 1 lost to Gruul Midrange. Just killed me too fast.
Round 2 and 3 were 2-0 against Rakdos sacrifice. If you can get a Karn down their game plan falls apart, in particular to Karnâs passive.
Hope this helps
barely, doesnât even call him Big Daddy
Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is a good time but after claiming a couple of rival turfs while cosplaying as Gum when I squint I am missing the unique sense of perambulation and momentum that Sega utterly nailed with the original (less-so JSRF in memory)
More like Thrill Rush Cyberfunk with its instant gratification and nostalgia stroking then
Street Fighter 6 (PC/Steam)
^ Made a new 48px program icon ('cause the Ryuâs eye one Iâd made looked too much like an SFII icon, even though it was from an SF6 screenshot ^ _^).
I got confused playing Manon Legrand because sheâs got two quarter-circle command grabsâor so it seemed, but it turns out that one just LOOKS like a command grab; it is blockable and is beaten by actual grabs.
So knowing the distinction between the two of them might help me get my head around her move set a bit more. And I do like the look of her second costume⌠So I might have to pick that up and try her again at some point!
On the other hand, her âmedalâ system, which goes up by one, to five, for each of those two grab moves that she does, powers her up, so like Jamie sheâs another character who has to do a move repeatedly to reach their prime power level. I really hate that type of thingâI donât want a character who starts sub-optimal and has to work to get to at least a decent power level every match; why would I play a character like that when I could play a character who starts at full power??? So maybe I wonât be playing Manon again, come to think of it. : PPP I HATE having to do a certain thing to power up my character.
I mean, if youâre gonna make a power-up mechanic, give it to every characterâlike the super meter! But donât just saddle certain characters with the requirement to power themselves up, in addition to all the other stuff everyone has to do! Ugh. The designer might argue that oh but they can become EXTRA powerful by doing this thing enough times, that balances it out! NO it doesnât, itâs a chore and it sucks! Starting off weak sucks! GAR. HORRIBLE design crutch. Horrible. (Now Iâm worried about Blanka and maybe Juri in this regard, too; I noticed Blanka has some sort of mini-Blanka counter, and if Juriâs like SFV Juri rather than USFIV sheâll have to bank up her projectilesâŚ)
Heck, even Ryu has a one-stage power-up move (for a single fireball). So all three characters Iâve played so far have some of this nonsense! (Is THAT how theyâre trying to make it better? : PPP But I donât think Ken does, for instance.) They should have called this Power-up Fighter! Inventory Fighter! Chore Fighter!
Of course, Iâm not playing online, so I could just ignore these things and play Manon, Jamie, etc as maybe slightly underpowered characters for more challenge. I donât particularly love their move sets, though, so, I donât know. Mostly I just really like Manonâs second costume, I think. : P SoâŚI might still do that. Bwahaha!
Back to rants: why doesnât the description of that move TELL YOU that itâs blockable and can be beaten by real grabs? They didnât think that was important for the player to know about that move? They want to require the player to wade through her whole series of character tutorials to find out this basic property of the move? Gimme a break!
Manonâs brief story has actual character development and two people meeting each other so itâs miles ahead of pretty much every other SF story. : D
In Manonâs case I do find it a bit odd since she can only do it using a couple of grabs, she canât power-up at any time.
I think it makes Jamie interesting because it effectively adds an additional pressure tool. You can drink at any time but your opponent shouldnât let you which means they are incentivised to get into your effective range (or zone you which is Jamieâs major weakness but letâs not talk about that)
It does kinda cripple these characters at high level though since the gameplan is ânever let em doâ. Like Jamie canât even safely drink in a lot of knockdown situations.
Have been passing the time in covid iso by grinding out the last things I hadnât unlocked in Densha de Go! Ryojouhen, my favourite of the ddg games. I had everything in Matsuyama, Enoshima and Kyoto, but had not unlocked everything in Hakodate, which is by far the hardest, most laborious of the zones. The line is much longer and there are numerous moments where you have to flick the right switch via obscure mechanisms etc. The entire line is also on the road, so there are a lot of traffic lights which can screw up your punctuality, also sometimes cars just drive in front of you and kill themselves just like in real life tram driving. When I first got this game, I found this level almost unplayably difficult. At this point I can basically do it in my sleep but it took about 4 years to get there! Not only does it take the longest to unlock anything in Hakodate, it is also just the level Iâd played the least cause itâs the most laborious and the least beautiful. It is definitely meant to be the final zone of the game (itâs also the last in the area select menu). So I really sat down with it and got my grind on.
The final thing you unlock is a night-time level where you drive the tram on its last service for the day, and then take it into the yard and park it at the end. This was the first time in any of these games that Iâd been able to drive into the yard, it felt like such a treat! There was even a unique piece of UI telling you which track to park on. It really felt like a gracious âthank you for playingâ gesture, like youâve finished your shift, have a rest. There was no acknowledgement by the game that this was the last level, the credits didnât roll or anything, but it has a sense of finality to it that I did not expect. It weirdly meant a lot to me!
Anyway Iâm not done with this game; I never will be. It is just one of the things I do to relax. One day Iâll buy the beautiful controller made exclusively for this game. One day Iâll unlock the secret bonus videos you get if you accumulate 20000 points in each area (Iâm close with Matsuyama).
Only spent a little while with it, but MK1âŚitâs good. Still getting used to the Kameo system (it basically takes place of all the environmental stuff from the last two games), but it feels like they pared down a lot of the accrued bloat, in a good way. Even fatalities are shorter and more to the point.
Story mode feels even more insanely expensive and lavishly produced than the last one. Theyâre really outdoing themselves. Lotta stellar voice work, til Nitara shows up and itâs justâŚMegan Fox talking.
Better than Ronda Rouseyâs Sonya! Iâll give her that! Itâs just funny to hear her lines sandwiched between people acting their asses off.
No more stunt casting! Please!!
(Except when they cast Cary-Hiroyuki Togawa as Shang Tsung in MK11 - guy was fantastic, slipped back into that role after 20 years or so and then some)
training weights falling off when you successfully outplay your opponent from a disadvantage. it has itâs appeal
my entire party got wiped by the first boss encounter on the bottom floor in wizardry.
i think this essentially means having to play the entire game again up to this point just to be able to pick up their bodies?
this is probably too much for me. i can respect it, but i donât think i can repeat these grinds however many times is required to luck out
From what I understand, this is the honest way to play the game. However, even with the original game, players could copy the floppy that held their party data when they were at the town and break out of the semi-permadeath restriction.
i played F-Zero 99 until my eyes were started tearing up last night
itâs pretty fun! it doesnât quite control like the SNES games (turning feels a lot more extreme) and the HD-ified sprites donât sit quite right, so the game is lacking the sense of âweightâ that the original had, but all things considered, this is a pretty nice way to play a multiplayer version of F-Zero 1.
itâs possible iâll get tired of this game soon, but itâs scratching some kind of itch, thatâs for sure
yeah, i just canât for myself feel a reason to do it the âdishonestâ way (quotemarks cause i donât think of it as that). i donât really care about the ending to wizardry and have a tendency to skim most of the text boxes describing events and things. it just feels like if iâm not clearing this particular game on the cruel rules it has set up, thereâs really nothing else for me to get from it by savestating or disk copying. i feel differently about wizardry 8 where i will save all the time anywhere because what iâm getting out of it is something different and also iâm not gonna redo that fight that took 20 minutes of slow turns.
