I started installin that, but it was installing some Epic Games Launcher or something and I bailed out 
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I highly recommend that new Strider then! There’s military stuff, a prison, a shanty town, subway cars…
This morning I logged more hours with the presently free iOS Steven Universe RPG than I’ve actually spent watching the show. I noticed it was getting surprisingly positive reviews, and decided to bite. It follows the Mario RPG/Barkley Gaiden mold of each attack having a different little mini-mini game action sort of thing. There’s no microtransactions either!!!
Ranko Tsukigime’s Longest Day is the grasshopper manufacture I remember. The rest of Short Peace is whatever. Ranko is weird and cool and great. Lordy. I got the EU Physical copy on Amazon a while back when it was like 13 bucks. And that was exactly the right price to pay for that hour of video game entertainment. I loved it. Is one of the best game experiences I had this year.
I am still playing The Walking Dead and man I’m really into it, which is a surprise considering how fatigued the entire universe has made me on zombie shit and TWD in particular. It’s not really doing anything that surprising, and I’m occasionally frustrated by the game trying to funnel me down one path or another but it’s a fun interactive TV show. I wound up picking up Tales from the Borderlands since everyone is saying it’s the best of Telltale’s output.
Finished the Diablo 3 seasonal journey, only to be presented with a Seasonal Slayer thing and now I have to do that and also usurp Ronnoc’s greater rift score (one goddamn grift level away, best look out).
One shotting bosses because set bonuses and the copious amount of luck needed to the gear for said set bonuses never felt so good.
For no reason, what score do you mean? Solo?
Today I played through Murder it was a pointless experience that you should skip. There are no player choices.
i played too much Diablo 3 and now i have a monk who didn’t exist two days ago farming T7
send help
For some reason, I felt it was the right time to start playing Life is Strange the other day, because I kept seeing it on everyone’s best of 2015 list. Of course, I’ve had an awareness of the game but immediately wrote it off as some cloying post-juno nonsense directed as suburban teenagers who decorated their entire bedrooms after one trip to Urban Outfitters.
Turns out my assessment is entirely correct, but I’m strangely compelled by this unholy combination of misplaced suburban angst and half-baked donnie darko bullshit (one in the same i guess). It’s simply a game where you play as a teenager girl (as imagined by some Frenchman) who can time travel, but just uses her powers to hang out with her lesbian punk friend and try to solve the Mystery of What French people Think American Teens Sound Like (They think they say “hella” all the time).
yeah I could not get into that game in a year that had both her story and until dawn. I liked what it was doing with the surreal elements but the “puzzles” and the dialog really did not gel with me.
I’m enjoying Odallus: The Dark Call a lot more than the last couple of Castlevanias i played.
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Meaning it’s basically just a motion comic or something? Sidescrolling walking simulator?
Actually a comic has interaction with the reader. But basically ya it’s just a narrative. Not even a walking simulator, you can’t choose where to go. You have no agency. Besides one thing you can choose to read.
Fair enough, but I like the parts where not a lot happens. It’s all about the little moments for me - finding dead birds, rummaging around a drug dealer’s RV and looking at what books he’s reading, ignoring text messages from some super-lame dude trying to get with you, by taking you to a Planet of the Apes screening at the local drive-thru (I hope the game doesn’t try to force me to like that dude – he’s pretty pre-Fedora), sneaking around a boy’s locker room reading the graffiti, trying to make pals with a local trucker who thinks you’re a spoiled brat, trying to find eggs to help a punk girl’s beleaguered mom make breakfast (which was harder than it sounds, since it’s made by French folks, so she leaves the eggs out instead of putting them in the fridge).
It sounds literally crazy typing all that out. All the stuff wrong with it is still wrong – and it sounds insufferable because it kind of is. Honestly, I think I found this game at a weird point in my life and I’m being way too forgiving.
Although the designers and the creators of the story are indeed Paris-based, the writer who did the final pass on all of the dialogue, along with all of the actors and the VO director were all American-based and all live on the west coast. I don’t say that to invalidate your impressions of inauthentic teenager dialogue, but I felt like pointing this out because I’ve seen this specific assumption about LiS happen in a lot of different places, including here and in professional reviews of the game. A production on this level (which in terms of budget and staff is not indie scale, but definitely nowhere near triple A) takes a big group of people firing on all cylinders perfectly for thing to work, and one gear in the machine slipping out of place can send things off of the rails. Just like the wrong wardrobe choice in a film can be enough to ruin a scene and all of the scenes around it. I guess the takeaway is that something coming off “wrong” is rarely the result of a single auter/egomaniac passionately assaulting his canvas from atop his crystal high-horse without consulting with anyone else, but is the result of a large group of people working under pressure to make something as good as they can.
If you want to get anecdotal I’ve encountered a lot of young people north of Southern California who say “hella” a whole lot, and not always ironically. I think it’s in our best interest to forget high school is a painful and awkward-ass time where people are sort of lame (but you still like them anyway, who else are you gonna be friends with). I’d argue the game is trying to capture some of that and does a pretty good job. Whether or not a game like this should go there is up for debate!
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The mystery of ‘are kids really like this, or is this just how adults think kids are?’ was the most compelling part of that game.
I never solved it!
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i still say hella a lot
After buckling down and reading through the fourth Jojo, I decided to try that “7th Stand User” fangame and it’s…really, really good? There’s no point in playing it if you don’t love JJBA, because it’s primarily a fangame, but it’s also one of the most lovingly crafted JRPGs I’ve played in years. Personality quizzes, friendship points, controllable encounters, and ridiculous amounts of hidden content. The new game plus content keeps adding significant new content for the first four to five playthroughs, and adds not-as-significant content as far as loop thirty. It’s absurd.
Went to a barcade where everything was 1 credit and played:
Killer Queen - pretty neat! But I only got to play one round 
Ski Ball - eventually, we wondered: could this be played with bowling balls?
Tapper - stole my token the joysticks had really satisfying spring at least
Defender - damn this game is hard. Oddly pretty though. The laser/bullet trails look cool in way that is unmatched by its contemporaries
Galaxian - awww yiss. Probably my favorite arcade game. I love the sound, I love the colors. Rapid fire mode was on so it was extra fun.
Area 51 - better than I remember! Some of those training levels are bullshit though.
Carnevil - bleh. Loooong loading times, lame enemies. The slide on the shotgun controller felt nice though.
Joust - fuck you get the eggzzz
Sunstriders - couldn’t get into this one. Seemed like lots of damaging events you can only avoid if you memorized then
Simpsons Arcade - man the graphics in this look nice. The town feels very alive, nice looking sprites, etc
Tron - really high res display, neat variety of play, holy shit is that joystick the wrong controller. The weight on the spinner feels great
Outrun (standup) - I think the wheel was broken, it only did anything at the end of its travel. And it was too loud to hear the music
T2 - made me want to play Operation Wolf
Crazy Taxi - got a B rank for the first time ever woo
Time Crisis II (Japanese) - 2 credited it with my friend (the 8 health per life certainly helped) . The guns were new, but didn’t have the motorized slide. Stage 2 really ramps up the rate at which enemies will make damaging shots and even the blue henchmen will hurt you in stage 3. Wish there was a stage where you got to drive around in that car you see at the start of stage 2.
It was a good time. The only thing I wish was there was maybe Point Blank. Have many light gun games been made in the last… Decade?
I’m taking this as an affront to my love of the game. If you think it’s bullshit before you learn, just wait until you get good at the game where Chief Racistname gains an even more bullshit attack if you have a no-miss going up to him (I usually plan on killing myself on his stage because fuck dealing with that extra knife).
Messing around with the Steam controller with shootmans made me want to load up Splatoon again and try messing around with the gyro controls in that (yes, I always played it stick-only, which probably explains why I would get cockblocked so often in ranked). I wasn’t feeling it, then I went “fuck it” and turned the sensitivity to max
I have seen the light
Now I get to sit here and wait for MS and Sony to pick this shit up too (well, MS, the DS4 has a gyro but no one uses it) because it’s just, the best.
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