It ain’t OutRun-2-style drifting (oh man I was forgetting at first that the original OutRun didn’t have drifting anyway, haha), because that just isn’t the type of racing the developer wants: this is straight-up driving, gotta steer around them turns! I didn’t get along with the M2-emulated OutRun arcade game in Yakuza 6 that I played a couple years back–it threw me all over the road! ; DD But Reimagined is really nice and smooth. And the colors are fantastic. = ooo
It didn’t work with my DS4 when I ran it directly, and according to the developer you do get better steering control with the analog stick on a supported “Xbox controller”–but once I set it up as a non-Steam game in my Steam library, and activated Steam Input for it by clicking on the little controller icon in the upper left of its generic Steam library page and accepting the default set-up, and then launched the game from the shortcut Steam made for me, the DS4 worked perfectly with it.
(Although hm, my dumb ol’ right shoulder WAS kinda sore after playing and holding Throttle on X or Right Trigger. I noticed before when I played Wolfenstein 3D on PS3 and had to hold Left Trigger for run the whole time that that didn’t bother me, so maybe I should try Throttle on Left Trigger–or OutRun 2006 face-button style, since those buttons take less force to hold down–ooh ooh or L1; Reimagined currently has no control remapping, but I can remap it through Steam input. : ))
(Hey yeah my body seems lots more okay with L1. Hey maybe I CAN play racing games…as long as I can remap Throttle to L1. ^ ^^ (So yeah more reason to rip OutRun 2006 and run it in an emulator. = D))
Update: the whole having the analog stick in the lower-right position (PS) rather than the upper-left position (XB) started cramping up my left hand/wrist after a bit actually, so I ordered an 8bitdo Ultimate. = P
It’s been years since I played it, and it’s just not striking the same chord as Sonic 1. I don’t have a conscious comprehension as to why just yet, save one pain point. I hate the special stages. How is anyone supposed to enjoy them? I thought maybe the improved frame rate might help but they’re just nonsense (now at 60 fps!).
I did complete this in just under 3 hours game time with I think around 1726 deaths or so. I checked the trophies and it says that 60% of players got the one for beating it with no deaths. I call BS.
Playing as Knuckles alone and taking Tails out of the picture makes the special stages a bit more bearable. Yeah Sonic 1 is a favourite, I like the slower zones. Sonic is good just as a chill platform game.
The game doesn’t let you remap the controls I don’t think, but it looks like I COULD remap controls in any Steam game, so if I wanted to play these games a bunch I should get them there. But then hm Steam Yakuza 6 takes 40 GB : P; Steam Yakuza 0 is “only” 25 GB, and that has both of them (but not eh the very cut-down VF5FS 6 has, or uh Puyo Puyo or whatever); so I suppose that might be the one to get there if I was gonna go in on these. ; )
I really don’t like the manual gear shifting in OutRun though (I’m a baby! : D), and it feels way harder to maneuver in tight spaces there than in Turbo OutRun Reimagined or OutRun 2006…so yeah I should probably just stick to those anyway. Or, you know, “get good” or something crazy. : P
When I reinstalled and loaded my saves inside the arcade, it would only let me play darts and use the drinks vending machine at first–couldn’t even open the doors to leave! … Finally I realized the game was still installing; it’s 36 GB but let me launch with only 12 GB or so–so it didn’t have all the features downloaded yet. : PP
finally after a full day of grinding, getting the runaround from three different wikis, and sitting through so so many cutscenes (bruh square-enix i’m on cough medicine because i am sick i will fall asleep if i’m sitting still for too long), i finally became a black mage. the one thing i’ve always wanted to be.
there’s a lot of screens that are either vanilla (or almost-vanilla) in this hack, even though the layout itself is entirely new. the new layout feels pretty uninspired any first-draft to me, with very little in the way of interesting loops or interconnections or any sense of architecture. granted, for something (apparently) made in only a couple days it isn’t too bad, though for me it only serves to show the strengths of the original game’s design in retrospect.
on the other hand you respawn with full health in this one so it’s impossible to say whether it is good or bad.
on the other other hand, this claimed to have the wave+ice combo patch, but didn’t, so it was built on a foundation of lies from the start.
verdict: Metroid Blue (2023) is the best NES Metroid hack of 2003 (2.5 orbs out of 5)
played through the bioshock 2 dlc, minerva’s den. it’s a side story that goes back to system shock roots because it’s about an AI and a giant super computer and what not. again, the story is pulpy fun. there is also lots of cool retro tech aesthetic stuff going on.
it’s shorter and snappier than the full game, so you end up building your character much quicker and it cuts a lot a lot of filler stuff like researching and upgrading weapons (you just find upgraded ones). it still has most of the problems of the main game, but it’s a pretty good time! apart from dead wife syndrome!
i also tried the other dlc, protector trials, which i bounced off pretty quick. it’s just the bit where you defend a little sister as you take adam, but you’re given specific weapons and plasmids which is no fun at all!! i liked planning my defense and stuff, but half the time you’re just given offensive stuff and it’s just a boring horde match. not for me.
too bad they didnt port over the multiplayer to the remaster!! i remember having fun with that for a week before going back to halo
You know I’ve basically made no “progress” in TotK but a steady stream of new little things has kept it interesting. Item durability has wound up being a non-issue. I’m now in some cold area and I needed to cook a bunch of peppers for warmth enhancing items. Is there a way to do it faster other than cooking each identical dish one by one?
Yeah I wish cooking stuff went quicker. Individual items can be quick cooked by dropping them on the ground and then hitting them with a torch or some other fire based attack. But full meals you always have to dump the ingredients into a pot and watch them bounce for a second or two. I ended up carving out time where I was just like okay I’ll spend the next ten minutes or so cooking a bunch of shit so I won’t have to worry about it for a couple hours.
I wish it involved a bit more thought than just waiting for things to cook, but I didn’t mind the experience of “spending 15 minutes preparing for a big expedition”
well I beat Metroid Dread. went from skeptical & dismissive to accepting & genuinely entertained to bored and ultimately (thanks to the many boss fights) frustrated & impatient for it to be over:
sad they took it away in the end, that coulda been interesting…as it stands this pretty much drained any remaining enthusiasm I had for 2D Metroid going forward, at least as long as Mercury Steam/Sakamoto are at the helm
Dread’s development at MercurySteam’s was reportedly (article is in Spanish) quite chaotic and overscoped. About 18 months before release the game’s release, someone from Nintendo reviewed the progress of the game and took a hatchet to it, cutting out half of the planned bosses, cutscenes, etc. in order to meet the project’s production deadline.
While I believe that decision was the correct call to make (the game has enough unique bosses, for one), the scars of it are extremely obvious in hindsight. Nearly all of the Chozo soldier bosses feel like placeholders. Moreover, the design of the upper third of the game world is incoherent (especially Ghavoran). Other things, such as how the areas flow into each other and could fit directly together, make it clear that they wanted the world to be a single coherent map but ran into technical hurdles they couldn’t (or opted not to) surmount.
A more holistically realized version of this game could theoretically exist, but as it stands I appreciate its three-way head on collision between AAA sludge, weird Nintendo-isms, and shamelessly pilfered classic/indie action sensibilities.
(For the record, when it comes to handling the series, I trust Sakamoto much more than Tanabe, but Retro Studios more than MercurySteam (fingers crossed for Prime 4).)
Recommending you try Vitality as a palate cleanser (just make sure your brightness is properly adjusted, per the readme).
