Dont know how you make yakuza 7 and think the one thing it needs is more bloat.
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i can’t tell whats wrong
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turns out turning my back on the Kraid fight to poke around the map in Dread was a good idea, really wanted to push at what’s opened up and it turns out plenty! got the Grapple Beam and then wound up in Burenia where I found the Flash Shift, finally some alien dankness down there. my overarching gripes still stand but I’m glad it’s not as railroaded an experience as I’d feared
also, finally got around to figuring out POPStarter on my PS2, "a launcher which lets you play your PS1 games in combination with $ony’s PS1 emulator for PS2 (known as “POPS” or “SLBB-00001”. this’ll do for CRT play until I can afford a modded PS1…someday, maybe.
thinkin’ there’ll be some King’s Field in my near future (1 US here but maybe I’ll start from the top if POPStarter plays nice with the english patch of 1 JP)
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Sonic Origins (PC/Steam)
I was sort of okay-ish with the first 7 zones of Sonic 2 that I played in the previous session, but hoping the last 4 would charm me more. They were worse. = P
And the final two boss fights are a single long insta-death memorization/reflexes session; resorted to pen and paper to get through the two-minute-long 22-step first boss sequence
(wasn’t clear how to hit them without dying at first; eventually through trial and error found you can spin-dash them only when they’re dashing at you, not when they’re at rest–'cause why make sense when you can just kill the player and make them try again : PPP; so the sequence I wrote down of which side they attack from and what their attack is goes (B = ball aka spin dash; D = dash, J = jump):
), but quit vs the second because it was just pretty obscure how to hit him without dying, in between his long targeting sequences, and redoing the 2 minute first boss every time to screw up my first shot at the second boss was no way to live my life.
So far in Sonic CD I’m being pinballed around blackened and brown “Dark Future”
versions of big shapeless stages which is not quite what I would have hoped for. Gotta try to learn how to warp right (they stole the idea from Back to the Future, so apparently you just run for six seconds or so after spinning the right sign in a level : P)
so I can stay in the Present versions of the stages, which hopefully have pretty colors.
At least the CD music is nice.
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Played almost ten hours of Infinite Wealth. GOTY confirmed. The vibes are impeccable! Im in the middle of chapter 3 and its so sick. I spent like two hours getting catfished on the in-game dating app before earning and incredibly uncomfortable live-action cutscene.
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I mean there’s some charm to it (I like the carpets and beads) he does care about his place at least a little, but he lives like he just left his parent’s home
- Whole place is messy, random stuff on the floor everywhere, boxes thrown around on top of each other with no care
- Wires on the floor in the middle of the room
- « please fix the front door window Ichiban it’s been six months »
- the sad fallen over green stool. I know he’s going to wait until someone comes over before straightening it even if it takes weeks Edit : Oh no it was me. I made it fall over. Ignore this point
- The place is small but Ichiban still wastes some space for a garage-like random trash area, with a sad chair in the middle
- You can’t see her in my pics but there’s a living lobster that’s a reference to the first game inside a big bowl. This isn’t good
- Obligatory « you should add plants »
- The moist cardboard boxes two meters from his bed are unforgivable
Posting the pics again for reference
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Its an abandoned strip joint and he’s living there illegally just for context
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The last time I played I liked that it’s sort of like a cover shooter in the way you wait for enemies to pause their attack pattern so you can hit them, but unlike a cover shooter you can dynamically lead the soldiers around to where you want them and decide where the fights are going to happen
The level design also has out of bounds energy to me that I don’t think even Perfect Dark captured. It feels like the developers were given still images of the sets from the movie and had to imagine what was beyond the borders of each picture they had. Having less than full control over the theme and focus of each level probably led to a more creative design process it feels like
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Mizeria (PC/Steam)
Tried out the free sorta Souls-ish low poly towerclimber:
Hm I can’t get that to expand, uh well regular link: polygon fetishism reborn - #232 by username and Steam page:
I did not get far at all because I’m a quitter, okay? ^ _^ But if you’re into really challenging 3D platforming with a cool medieval dungeon adventure vibe, you may do better.
The Steam Library page says it doesn’t support controllers, Steam had me on the default Steam input WASD mouse layout which was a decent start, then I mapped roll to L1 and slide to L2 on my DS4. Not SO keen on the slide-then-jump for long jumping but it works I guess. ; ) I uploaded my layout to Steam.
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my condolences
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The King of Fighters NESTS Comp. (NeoGeo Online Collection v.7) (PS2)
Double checking some options and features.
The “Dreamcast” versions have move lists–but not in 2000’s Practice mode : P!; the “NEOGEO” versions do not have move lists.
The “DC” Practice modes of 2000 and 2001 let you do a “vs CPU” thing of endless 1-round matches if you want, with character switching at KO–2001’s lets you set it so only the defeated character randomizes out. Not sure about the actual Dreamcast 2001, but in the Practice mode of actual Dreamcast 2000, there’s no KOing, so no endless matches thing is possible there.
You can play as Zero in the 2000 “DC” version! = ooo
“DC” '99 and 2000 have the puzzle modes from the Dreamcast versions. Always liked 2000’s, never got into '99’s.
The '99 DC version’s “Single All” mode looks to be going through the full cast, with bosses at the end, in one-round matches. Unlike the “Survival” modes though, you can continue.
No button mapping in the NEOGEO modes.
2 Likes
SSX on Tour (PS2)
This is the second best snowboarding game I’ve played in the last 24 hours. It also features skiing. It starts with Black Sabbath’s Run To the Hills. Seeing footage of a North American mountain while hearing how the white man killed the native people. The plus side is the game never yells at you about how its welcoming you to The Tour. The game is silent with just lots of notebook drawings that remind me of the dicks from SuperBad. I am not looking up to confirm that was part of the design doc based off years. One of the other SSX games has to be better than this.
Cool Boarders 3 (Playstation)
This is the worst skateboarding game I’ve played in the last 24 hours. It also features skiing. The music is awful. The sound effects are infuriating and loud. Dylan declared “imagine this is the 3rd one!”
Ski Paradise with Snowboarding (Super Famicom)
This is somehow the best snowboarding game I’ve played in the last 24 hours. It is bad. But it is very exciting to see Mode 7 graphics on the Super Famicom. You don’t see this many nauseating hills in Outrun! Also Outrun doesn’t turn piss yellow 10 seconds into the first race. Thanks Pack-In-Video this was a great use of 200 yen!
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Finished Blood on the Sand for the first time since…I dunno, probably a second replay in 2010?
So much of it has aged like milk…basically anything that isn’t actually playing the game. The utterly dire depiction of the Middle East, the rampant misogyny and homophobia, etc. etc. In a way it feels so of its time that maybe it loops back around to being campy? I dunno! Probably not for me to say.
All that said! They don’t make 'em like this any more, but I kinda wish they did? The shooting feels pretty damn good, the score-chasing aspect is…kinda unbalanced on all difficulties but the hardest one, but it’s enjoyable! The game is constantly throwing little mini challenges at you, there’s the goofy posters and hidden targets to find. I feel like the alternate universe that got a Blood on the Sand 2 got a really good game there…
There’s a lot of legitimate criticisms, a lot to nitpick (why don’t I ever see the melee counter kills I bought? Where are my Mac Daddy Pack Insults? I know 50’s kid wanted to fight helicopters, but why only helicopters…and why can’t you hit them unless you use Gangsta Fire mode, and why does the game just sorta end with a surprisingly leisurely drive), but the game is still pretty damn fun 15 years on.
I dunno. In conclusion - more games need an insult button that you can just hammer constantly for score bonuses/making your character sound like a real asshole to their CPU buddy helping them climb a ledge.
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Iron Maiden.
But yeah, just play SSX 3 instead.
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did another metroid 2 run in the evening yesterday and beat my PB that i had just set in the afternoon
that last segment was kinda garbage (got grabbed by 3 metroids), but i got a 69:xx so i can’t complain
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A bit more Mario + Rabbids. The game is opening up a little bit with the ability to replay chapters to access previously blocked-off paths with earned abilities, and to do challenges. I don’t think I can play this for more than an hour or so at a time, it starts to feel tedious. A lot of the battles feel very much like there is a correct solution.
Also apparently if enemies have enough HP they respawn when you knock them out of bounds which is absolute horseshit. Don’t give me the ability if you’re afraid I’ll use it to break your game.
I’ll see how much longer I go. I’m getting pretty close to “I get it” territory.
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JRPGs can be so silly… there’s a weapon and armor shop in Nautica in Dragon Quest XI that is ran by a shark. When you talk with them, the game says that they don’t give any indication of understanding your language. Now, my gamer instinct told me that this meant I would be able to eventually speak with them, like after getting a magical sea shell necklace or something in a cutscene. But part of me knew this was just a funny joke and I would never be able to speak with this shark. And a Google search much later on confirmed that true, which is just really silly to me. I like it. It’s also fun to imagine what incredible lobster arm great swords and turtle shell shields I could have acquired were it not for this language barrier….
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Finishing Sonic CD (in Sonic Origins (PC/Steam)) – starting with the third Act of the second Zone or whatever you’re supposed to call them in this one.
OH so to switch Sonic CD soundtracks (JP/US) you have to start a new Anniversary/Classic game to get to the Sonic CD original game-style menu, scroll it to the right to reveal the “SOUND TRACK” item, select that, and then you get to the JP/US OST toggle screen. : P Looks like I had it set to the US soundtrack. Which was pretty good, definitely my favorite part of the game! According to Wikipedia, the JP composers were inspired by house and techno, while Sega of America decided the game needed something “more ‘rich and complex’” (which ended up being a lot more chilled-out).
I sure sucked at the final Metal Sonic sequence. Thought I had to memorize his scripted movement, which I’m terrible at; finally realized I might as well see if I could stay ahead of him, since if he jets into me it only knocks some rings out, whereas Eggy’s beam behind me kills me instantly ; P, probably because it was much easier just to kill the player than to try to figure out how to let them live while also making sure they don’t fall behind the scripted actors.
Oh, hah, it wasn’t the Metal Sonic battle from Generations of which I’d been thinking sort of fondly, it was the Shadow battle – that 3D race mode worked all right I think. Or am I just getting rose-tinted glasses?
Was getting depressed about this game for a bit there, the last stage or so(?) wasn’t maybe so bad though? But a lot of other parts were feeling stuck for a while in holes or lost wandering around shapeless stages, that wasn’t super; and most of the boss fights were still kinda bad. The final stage and boss fight were pretty easy, so it felt like the game just ended pretty abruptly–and it really lacked a sense of pacing overall, I suppose. But it was a lot less terrible to me than Sonic 2, so, could’ve been worse. CD is the odd one out where programmer/director Naka and gameplay designer Hirokazu Yasuhara weren’t involved. Will 3 be a return to the delights of 1, or the horrors of 2? = o
Yasuhara worked (but maybe not still?) in recent years at Unity. Here’s his first public English presentation on game design, in 2017–with host Brandon Sheffield of insertcredit / Necrosoft:
According to 6’35 in that, Sonic 2 was going to be a time travel story originally, before its schedule was cut down. (Hm so Sonic 2 had a severely cut schedule and significant team friction, maybe that helps explain why its art and boss sequences were noticeably inconsistent.) So, maybe it was up to Sonic CD to do the time travel. ; )
Buuut Sonic CD’s Yasuhara-free time warping between four different time zones thing sure didn’t work for me; it just seemed to shift me to uglier versions of the stages so I ended up trying to avoid it entirely. It also meant the stages sort of share the same four tilesets. : P
I made an animated GIF of the ending animation: Supermassive Black Hole A*: The Sonic the Hedgehog CD ending animation (from... Finally found out that’s what that sweet Sonic / Metal Sonic pixel art GIF animation
was based on.
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in case you don’t know you’re supposed to go to the past to find and destroy a machine that looks like this
if you do this, you can then travel to a good future in that act. furthermore, if you do this in acts one and two of a zone, then act three will also take place in a good future. doing it in every zone gets you the good ending
6 Likes