I may need to give it another shot (I wanna say I did play what I did play of it in with permadeath…maybe I lost my MMA granny character and gave up, I can’t recall)
2 Likes
It’s funny because there’s a whole hierarchy of how lethal cops are towards your guys and it’s in your best interest to manipulate that so they only severely injure (hospital) or arrest (jail) your guys, because then at least you get them back. Really fascinating, one of the only games to portray escalation of force in a way that’s compelling to me.
4 Likes
Sonic the Fighters (PS3)
I basically melted down repeatedly trying to do certain maneuvers in this mostly Virtua-Fighter control scheme: Punch, Kick, and Barrier buttons, with combinations doing throws and evades, but Barrier being a full-body affair–no high/low distinction–with limited uses allowed per match or per round. Wikipedia says “With its simplified controls, the game was marketed towards beginners, including women and children,” but I play regular VF regularly and I couldn’t handle the stuff in this!
I kept trying to burn my “Barrier” charges–I don’t block in VF or whatnot: holdin’ a button all the time 'tain’t ergonomic! : P–on activating Hyper Mode for chain comboing everything for five seconds or so but had huge trouble just activating it and then using it; I’d finally manage to get it activated and then get flattened. Aside from the fast pace of the game causing me to panic and rush the bG+P activation input, I was getting this stuff wrong:
- Can’t re-activate Hyper Mode for about 5 seconds after it wears off–Barrier icons have to revert from orange through yellow back to blue
- Hyper Mode activation is an attack, if it misses you’re start the mode off in recovery and will likely get flattened and spend most of the mode time on your back = P
- In default Type A game, Barrier charges don’t reset between rounds, so you only have 5 (default value) for the whole match; pay attention to how many you have left 'cause it’s easy to run out
Later I melted down trying to do a down attack (for Sonic at least it was dK while opponent is down):
- Kept forgetting if the lever direction for it was up or down : PPP
- It’s not a jump up in the air, it’s a little heel drop kick thing he does quickly, sort of hard to spot
- I have completely stopped doing down attacks in VF pretty much out of fear of getting caught out trying them by the AI, and laziness, so I’m just ugh at doing them at all now I guess d-argh
What I had actually wanted though was just hold(?) uK, where Sonic does a leap up in the air, inflates his feet and lands for a big stomp–he can actually do this whenever, at any distance! I think it functions as an on-the-ground hit if the opponent is down; Sonic’s spin dash special move (d,dP, I think) hit OtG as well, I think.
This game is pretty insane, maybe way too insane, I dunno. The fighting area is dinky, and backwards movement is very slow, certain special moves can zip right across the screen, and everyone has fast chain combos–so the opponent is pretty much always in your face. A lot of moves/combos have long recovery times; the CPU is pretty good with blocks (although in earlier matches you can get them to burn through their Barrier charges in the first round, leaving them largely at your mercy for the rest of the match) and evades, and brutal with punishes. Later AI is disgusting with throws. There was some sort of throw state I got them in where they were sort of held but not thrown, not sure what that was or what follow-up input I needed to do. Also kept whiffing throws pressing f plus the G+P; can’t do a direction (at least for Sonic’s throws) except uh I think it was d, which does the nutty weapon steal move!
In the arcade it ran on Sega Model 2 hardware, which Virtua Fighter 2 ran on–but unlike VF2–at least in VF2’s sharp PS3 port; dunno about its actual arcade version–StF has decent-feeling character collision and throw mechanics. StF came out just a month before Virtua Fighter 3 rolled out on the fancy new Sega Model 3 hardware; I wonder StF was partly a way to use up remaining Model 2 inventory.
The PS3/360 version added three playable characters: the two supposedly very overpowered boss characters, who can only be used in casual online/local Vs matches (press Start on Sonic and Bean), and the supposedly underpowered Honey the Cat (press Start on Amy). These are said to be available also in the virtual arcade version in “Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man who Erased His Name,” but not the one in the earlier “Lost Judgment.”
Online appears to be operational still, but I didn’t find an opponent.
8 Likes
update: i messed with some settings in FCEUX
this successfully gets rid of the lag in Arc Hound Contra Force
but the game’s still a slog
but it takes place in neocities so it’s impossible to say whether it’s good or bad
anyhow
guess which character pressing right once on this menu will select:
If you guessed BEANS, then congratulations! You have what it takes to work at one of Konami’s C-Teams! (I, for one, thought my keyboard bindings were busted.)
The game looks decently nice, at least:
I immediately had an allergic reaction to how it messes up Contra’s gamefeel. While walking, you cannot aim diagonally downwards, despite there being many situations where you would want to. Also, jumping works more like a traditional platformer, where releasing jump cuts your jump height short, and letting go of left/right in midair halts your forward momentum — these changes feel a bit more understandable, but just feel icky to me in the context of this game.
One neat thing is the amount of destructible objects in the environment. Besides crates, there are a surprising amount of cracked walls and other greeblings you can destroy (I’m sure this is responsible for at least 50% of the game’s lag normally):
Destroying any of these background objects has a random chance of dropping a power-up. You can scroll the stage back about a screen and a half to respawn these objects, allowing you to farm your characters up as desired.
The power-up system is Gradius-esque (Gradiesque?): collect boxes to move the selection cursor forwards, and press select to cash out on your reward. Each character has the short range starting pistol in the 1st slot, two unique weapons for the next 2nd and 3rd slots, a shot-limit upgrade for the 4th slot, and the screw attack (!) for the 5th slot.
The screw attack sucks because touching anything in mid-air with it kills your jump. Also, your main weapon is forced to be the starter pistol when you have it.
Aside from the shot-limit upgrade, all weapon upgrades are mutually exclusive, so you never have the feeling of gradually getting stronger like in Gradius (for better or worse). Barely any of the weapons feel good, and none of them are the spread gun. The flamethower, homing missiles, and bombs are particularly bad.
Pressing start brings you to the character selection screen, cutting the level music to a different song, and taking an obnoxious amount of time to fade in and out. The UI for this screen is perversely unintuitive:
You would think that switching to a different character would just be a matter of something like pressing A and then Start to confirm your choice, but actually you press left or right to select between multiple different options. You can select which character is player 1’s, which is player 2’s, or between 6 (six!) different CPU AI options.
Choosing an invalid option (e.g. with more than 2 characters in play, or with multiple player 1s), results in this error message:
AI CPUs are weird. They are fully kitted out, invincible like Tails from Sonic 2, but only last for like 5 seconds, but also are infinitely spammable provided you have the patience to sit through the pause fadeout a bajillion times.
Also pausing grants you an extra mid-air jump for some reason (not complaining).
Now, regarding the level design: I’ve only made it to the end of the first stage, but I think I can say it’s Not Good! While there are a few neat gimmicks, there is a very poor sense of flow and movement, and the enemy placement seems a bit suspect, especially with the limited range of the starting weapon.
After a few attempts I made it up to the first boss, died, and decided I was done with the game. Supposedly there are top-down stages in this as well.
Contra Force: It has a lot more problems besides the lag!
20 Likes
ok Subnautica is pretty neat. good sense of mechanical/narrative momentum (the physical momentum is janky but it’s a European indie i’d HOPE it is)
ETA: wait they’re US?? but the fonts are so undercooked…
14 Likes
Extremely glad this post put this game on my radar because it’s superlative, surprising, and (to my shock) emotionally affective. Am I so cynical and experienced in games that only abstract psychedelic-surrealist platformers can make me think about myself and touch my heart anymore? Maybe lol
13 Likes
So I’ve been holding back talking more about this game because I seemed to be the only one playing it and didn’t want to keep going on about it if no one else is interested but it really affected me as well.
I mean, that part where you see the arms held up Bernband style, which is kind of odd, and then the next level (don’t read this if you haven’t yet seen this part) has the arms holding hands, and then the level after that has four sets of arms holding hands, and as you fall each one loses its grip one at a time. I can’t stop thinking about that. And that’s just one of many little details that just blew me away with how creative and clever and strangely moving it all is.
But as much as I’ve come to adore the game, I’ve found it difficult to think of people to recommend it to.
8 Likes
Contra Force is one of those games i rented as a kid and thought was “really hard” but then played again as an adult and realized it’s just a shitty game. i might be wrong but i think some characters can shoot diagonally down?
i believe i’ve made it through the first top-down stage of this game at some point in my life, but it’s just not something i can feel bothered to go through more for more than a few minutes.
i kind of liked its art direction, though
6 Likes
i really liked this game from the demo i played and have tried to advocate it to a lot of other people and it’s frustrating how so many people can’t see past the trippy visuals or think of it as looking NFT-art ish or whatever and don’t believe me when i say there’s a lot else to the game. but maybe i’m primed for it already as a ball-based game aficionado. i’m def on the train of this guy’s work tho - have been since i discovered the Space Hole games a few years back.
4 Likes
I’m pretty sure I tried it with every character, but even then the characters all have enough tiny differences that I would be surprised.
Like, the characters have slightly different jump heights, and I’m pretty sure they have different crouching hitboxes. The weirdest thing for me is how all of the characters kneel instead of laying prone like in other Contra games, except for the character that crouches by default when standing still and instead lays prone when pressing down. The differences feel random instead of well-considered.
idk, the way the game feels incompetent in both its technical and design aspects feels very bizarre, especially compared to any other post-SNES Konami game for the platform.
5 Likes
I played the demo for this on my old PC and had to stop after a bit due to the more complex spaces being a bit much for it (between this and the Space Hole games I feel safe saying that this dev isn’t much for engine optimization) but it definitely seemed neat and got added to my wishlist that day. I’ll get to it someday but I still got the last couple Space Holes to get to and I was not mentally prepared for its cost to be 5x higher than his previous game.
2 Likes
I’ve been playing ctrl alt ego. it’s really great! have we talked about this game? I’m sure somewhere we have. imagine if space silicon valley was like. an actual game. imagine if geist was like… actually good! it’s wild! and hilarious! it really is the most immersive sim, and it does so by taking the genre name profoundly literally. I highly recommend it. play on the hardest difficulty for extra hilarity. it’s really not that bad! until about 3/4 of the way through at least lol.
7 Likes
I think Sonic the Fighters is the best looking sonic game period
11 Likes
yeah the classic sonic art style shines on model 2 hardware, even looking at old sonic 1 assets feel it was always meant to look like that
14 Likes
@dementia Great point about the trees; even Sonic himself is drawn in a semi pre-rendered form in 2D.
The visuals in Sonic the Fighters have definitely aged well–those colors POP! Doesn’t hurt that the PS3 port–like the ports of VF2 and Fighting Vipers–is super-sharp. Its cartoon characters look a lot better in low-poly than the human characters in those games though. : D
11 Likes
i believe that is just ichiban’s default state
7 Likes
bug? contagion - i’m making that face now too
9 Likes
Hes just Lupining
12 Likes
Turns out Final Fantasy 6 is one of the best games ever. Credits rolling now.
17 Likes