Explored the phazon mines in Metroid Prime, which has the most real-world feeling design so far. It’s really interesting going from ruins to functioning space pirate bases. The pace feels more like a real FPS too, what with battling more humanoid enemies.
The invisible drone boss was stupid but not too much trouble. Unleashing metroids on space pirates was fun. Also now I have the power bomb! Still enjoying reading the space pirate research. The plot is fun in this game.
Enjoying this game but I hope it wraps up soon. Feel like it’s going to start overstaying it’s welcome.
sleeping dogs’s problem with violence is general openworld Ludo-narrative-dissonance compounded by the fact that they didn’t watch enough hk movies to decide if they wanted to make a fun 90’s triad game or a serious post infernal affairs introspective triad game, and kind of split the difference and it feels awkward
every time i remember that this game is never getting a sequel i get super sad. it probably would have been better i guess?
I was hunting a Beckoning White Cat and a Talking Nocturnal Ambulance that were haunting a classroom in Tokyo Twlight Ghosthunters when I accidentally destroyed some kid’s french toast that they had left on their desk when school ended. I killed the ghosts but they had the nerve to still charge me a whopping 624 yen to replace the french toast. It was probably rotten by then anyway. What a bum.
Just finished Radiant Historia. Pretty cool game that almost surprisingly dropped off the radar a bit. The battle system was really cool, although toward the end it started becoming a bit of a chore thanks to the lack of difficulty.
The time travel didn’t make a whole lot of sense in some parts either, saving someone’s life in one timeline somehow causes them to be alive in the other timeline? These kinds of moments, plus the way the game treated character stat development as unaffected by the time travel made it feel like the story and gameplay didn’t really mesh together cohesively. I did like how the ending was basically a bunch of small scenes showing the results of certain sidequests though, that was pretty cool
remembered I bought the necrodancer DLC after it seemed to have bad gsync interactions on the day I got it (I really need to ask the devs what this was written in at the next local indie game night because it is conspciously not unity or game maker) and I guess they’re fixed now. it’s pretty good! I think I like it more than zone 4, which I remember being kind of underwhelmed by after I spent so long playing the game in early access?
I really adore necrodancer, such a great intersection of crawl / spelunky / rhythm tengoku
Tokyo Twilight Ghosthunters DAYBREAK! Special GIGS World Tour. It’s one part visual novel, one part strategy game (plus a board game). I was considering making a thread on it just because I think it’s got a coolUIdesign sense but I’m not very far into it. I think the monster and customer names are randomly generated because I’ve been fighting things like a “Calling for death Naked Soldier” and a “Fire Breathing Bloody Baby” that have been tormenting people like a “Gamer tour driver” and a “Clumsy Poser”.
The battles themselves are presented as floorplans being displayed on an iPad with little icons representing the locations of the characters and targets in the field. It’s cute.
I thought I had played Call of Duty 2 before but I must have mistaken it for 3 or World at War.
It’s real good! It lacks the connective tissue between POVs, intermission powerpoint presentations, and bombast, but the regenerating health and heavy scripting make it feel much more like CoD than the first game.
The levels feel more open than I remember 4’s being. They often give you multiple flanking opportunities like Gears or Dog Days, particularly with the tanks in Stalingrad.
The vehicle sequences are the best in the series. The tank sequence in Libya has the simplest tank controls I can think of - aim independent of movement unless you hold space in which case the tank swivels to align with the cannon. The scripted turret sequence in Tunisia lets you switch to your Thompson when it overheats which is a mechanic that every subsequent game ignores in favor of making you wait it out.
I appreciate that Captain Price’s dad is here. I also appreciate killing fascists with my comrades.
The two new Wolfenstein games are tops for satisfying Nazi infiltration and killing. CoD2 doesn’t really relish in the villainy beyond standard cursing about fascists/krauts/jerries, etc., whereas the new Wolfensteins depict a very serious science fiction extrapolation of Nazi ideology and make the resistance fighters genuine moral heroes.
Y’all are playing these cool, weird, obscure games and I’m hooked on the next big thing in survival games, Conan Exiles. I feel so bad. Survival games finally got me. No one from SB is playing this, I can see that on Steam. But I’ve got 42 hours on it already and have owned it for 4 days. I’m sick. Somebody help me. I’m planning a thread on it and Black Desert Online too but I don’t think I’ll get to any of that because I’m too busy playing.
I haven’t been this engrossed in videogames since… I was a kid? It must also be my personal circumstances at this time but I honestly couldn’t tell you what in there would have turned me from “meh, videogames” to “hey, videogames!”
regarding amplified: zone 4’s designs screw with the player rather than out and out pressure like zone 5, and as a devious self-devouring dev I think the evolution of monster gimmicks going for complexity works better for the reliable non-random natures of enemies in the game than zone 5. blademaster parry-riposte / warlock warp / ooze golem retaliation / gargoyle mimic evolution feels like a stronger base to dance through than zone 5’s enemies that mostly move every beat with liquid / statue / shield / activation range / conduit rules. also, I don’t completely like how the stairs are essentially a random offshoot through a long corridor paired with very little dig-on-move effects, compared to the opposite-corner of 4, as it permits skipping through so much while speedrunning and the design has always been split regarding speedrunning permission (e.g. the efforts done to make deep blues quickkills nontrivial followed by never fixing the same for king conga / coral riff).
I think skulls, devils, metrognomes, and the earth dragon also are great in context, at least, and I do appreciate wide doors + reforming rock as more attempts to impugn singular approaches. Aria is also a curiously different kind of satisfying with Amplified activated, even if it’s even harder, though I haven’t been able to play Bolt at all anymore and that breeds self-disappointment.
seeing the discussion a few days back I feel like somebody besides me should go make a roguelikes general thread for KoP since I will always start biting at my own skin if people still want to talk about / compare things to c***l and people still always do.
Gonna try juggling this, Nocturne and Yakuza 0 when I feel like playing a sit-down game instead of flicking some cards around in Shadowverse. Wish me luck.
I forgot how explicit the tutorial is in The Blazing Blade, as it is now known. The explanations are written as though the player is completely unfamiliar with the concepts of tactical RPGs, and RPGs at all. A very Nintendo approach, especially for the first game in a long-running series to be localized, but also rather distracting.
yeah, I don’t think the game has necessarily made a good case for why this DLC needed to exist – I don’t think 5 is necessarily better design-wise than 4, I’m just encountering it on more generous terms than I did 4.
Man, PN03 is a good vidcon. I think my first go around, I just didn’t get it, but I’m messing around with it now and something clicked. I love this game. It’s mechanically pure in a way later Mikami joints (I’m thinking mostly of Vanquish here) kind of miss. It’s like Gungrave, but good because you actually have to dodge shit and abuse/take advantage of stuff instead of being a dumb tank. It feels good to play, to the point where I’ll forgive having special moves mapped to d-pad motions (it sure would be great if the Gamecube had a d-pad bigger than a penny). Man, it even looks good too some 14 years later because they went all in on minimalist design and color pallet and threw a shit ton of polygons and lighting around. It is a Video Game-ass Video Game.
