I beat Escape Goat last night. Never beat it back in the day. Good-ass puzzle platformer (complimentary).
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I think I may be a rare bird who enjoys the first more than its sequel. Very fond memories of that game, bounced off the sequel very quickly
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I have to be very careful when I choose to play the game because I often wind up playing two or three times as much as I plan. I started playing Saturday morning, thinking it would just be a half hour but then 3 hours later, I was knee deep in some obscure task.
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i found myself genuinely surprised i didn’t somehow already own a copy of this through a bundle. i’ll probably pick up and try escape goat 2. the first one is brilliantly straightforward in its mood and execution. i’ll be interested to see what makes the sequel less interesting/compelling
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So easy to just see the next floating island or Shrine or tower in the distance and go “why not?” and it takes easily 15 minutes just to reach the destination and God help you if you get killed etc.
I spent a solid 5 minutes gliding and then accidentally fell into a pond and ran out of stamina and respawned miles away back on the sky island I was on 
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2 is very good imo! I was impressed that they proved they didn’t need to coast on retro vibes, like it a lot
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Guy who did Escape Goat also made the music for the Digimon Kart Racing GBA game, is my favorite bit of trivia
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I like how you can hang out and look around the boss room as long as you avoid the dialogue trigger and how you can reach this thing a lot earlier than you’re prepared for like I did and generally how much the whole 5 levels of the game grew on me going from dangerous death mazes to kinda cosy once powerful enough to stomp through monsters without a care (never had a “time to grind” moment, maybe that’s down to tolerance for boredom of being lost and always swinging while wondering)
after you defeat the final boss, no fanfare. you just turn around and walk away. past the petrified king father and leave the place behind. and it really felt like leaving something behind, watching the sun go down and the stars come out, revolving in the sky til you turn the console off
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Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania (PC/Steam)
Been on a weird Sega kick and started thinking about Monkey Ball. Had the GC ones back in the day. Reviews of HD re-releases say they ruined the controls and physics; but I never played the GC ones THAT much, so I wouldn’t mind a change, necessarily. Was thinking I’d just get the PS2 SMB Deluxe, but that one only runs at 30 fps (and no 60 fps patch in PCSX2). ; P
So I got this. Made some tweaks:
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Got the Classic Soundtrack DLC (sigh), it’s way peppier! Okay just take all my money Sega. Also are they going to bring that new one to Steam or did they take all Nintendo’s money (probably, can’t blame them I suppose but I will).
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Turned camera controls off in the Options, as advised here: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/323654-super-monkey-ball-banana-mania/79688550 . Does make the controls slightly snappier, you can tell if you just sort of feather the stick quickly and watch the horizon bounce.
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Switch control to d-pad. Don’t see why the game doesn’t let you roll using the d-pad instead of left analog; in Options it’ll let you bind individual directions to different inputs…but NOT d-pad. WHA. So I just told Steam Input to treat the d-pad as the left analog. Easy. ^ _^ Snappy control and way easier on my dang ol’ wristing with the DS4.
All set to fall off a lot now!
Edit: Dumb trivia: Rare Steam game that installs to a cryptically named version of its title, rather than the full title: in the steamapps/common folder, it’s in “smbbm.”
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Couldn’t there be a “classic physics” mod somebody worked up by now dang
Some of the new tracks are nice but wish they’d have thrown in the original arcade ost too
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There’s
but sounds somewhat problematic, from the comments.
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Oh yeah I forgot, second copy of The Simpsons: Road Rage arrived today and, unlike the $9 first copy, ripped successfully, so my driving game collection is now complete.* : D
Unless… Do I need to get Like a Dragon Gaiden for Daytona 2? I bounced off the DC one and the PS3 one. But people say 2 is different? I don’t know what to do. (Also it’s got Motor Raid but that has guns and maybe some flashing FX so maybe not.)
EDIT:
* Oh wait no there’s still that third copy of that other car game on a long trip from Japan. 3rd time’s the charm?? Fingers crossd.
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Sonic the Hedgehog: Pocket Adventure (NGPC, in Mednafen)
There is a zone named GIGANTIC ANGEL ZONE. Unfortunately it’s sort of Sonic 2’s Metropolis Zone back again with its speary blocks and popping dart spray goons and squishy nuts. But I only got nut-squished–by a different revolving thing–once, and darted maybe once?
I liked the (toboggan-course-style) bonus stage earlier–rare for me in Sonic games–but now they went and added hurty spike balls that I was somehow way better at catching than the actual rings, and it was a lot less fun. ; P
Resorted to save-scumming at the second-to-last boss because I was having a little trouble with his three slightly differently timed overlapping cycles, which mushed his hurt boxes and hit boxes and vulnerable times together–a cardinal sin in most any platforming games but seemingly par for the course in post-Sonic-1 Sonic games! = PPP
Basically this game has a lot of the stuff I hated in Sonic 2 but makes it less bad. That doesn’t make it a game I LIKE, particularly…but it isn’t too bad. Quite short!
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Sonic Advance (GBA, in mGBA)
Dimps two years after Sonic Pocket Adventure!
The Tiny Chao Garden raising sim mode freaked me out, my chaos were gonna starve to death because while I normally like image matching games I just couldn’t do the one here. Maybe for the best.
The first boss fight was pretty good at having distinct hit and hurt zones for the boss. 2nd fight muddled them up a bit, proving yes this is a Sonic game. = P
That Secret Base Zone really is remarkably ugly, holy moly. First stage was quite attractive!
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New hot roguelike indie deckbuilder roguelite Balatro just came out. I kind of like this genre because it tends to be good for Games to listen to music to! The problem is, there are one hundred thousand games of this genre coming out every single day, and every one of them gets more hype than it probably deserves. I guess it’s the “in” thing to try and become the next Slay the Spire.
Usually I have a little bit of fun with one of these for a little while and then drop it forever. I just played Balatro for the first time and it feels like it might actually have staying power! It’s sort of a score-attack poker that lets you gradually fuck with the deck to increase your odds of certain card combos.
I’ve never gotten into poker, and tbh one of the benefits of this game for me is that it’s forcing me to finally memorize poker scoring, lol. Maybe this skill will help me in real life some day. Anyway, I was pretty skeptical of this game because on its face it looked to me like too much of a dry math exercise. That kind of thing just doesn’t appeal to me. I don’t want to study or calculate more than needed!
Well, it is pretty mathy but the game does a good job of easing that by kind of doing a lot of the math for you. And so far it seems like you don’t have to be a statistics master to get through the game (though there are stats oriented screens you can get to that frankly scare the shit out of me). There’s more thematic flavor to the game than I expected – the psychedelic CRT aesthetic seems corny on paper, but in practice it actually works. It’s sort of a heightened, surreal version of a super-sleazy video poker game, makes me feel like I’m in some kind of telepathic alien gambling den or something. Cool music too, though I fully expect to mute the game and play my own music after a few runs.
The deckbuilding mechanics are the real hook here. In my first run I ended up leveling up my flush scoring, attempting to increase the number of diamond suite cards in my deck, and adding modifiers that gave me bonuses for each diamond I played. It meant that if I was lucky I could faff around with discards and shitty turns until I managed to get a huge diamond flush going and score ridiculous points to progress to the next “blind.”
It’s kind of neat. I’m just getting started but so far I recommend it if you like this sort of thing.
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I played that game for 8 hours straight I dunno how it happened danger game beware danger game
It’s good though I finally won a game
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i have yet to get cruelty squad ending 3 but i got cruelty squad ending 2 … trying to finish it bc psycho patrol is “coming soon” on steam
i still basically love this game completely and psycho patrol looks so fucking amazing!! lots of posts on the developer ville kallio’s insta about it:
https://www.instagram.com/p/C0ZG4qaiWTH/
this one has mechs omfg
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Ok it’s Southern Reach meets Stalker meets The Long Drive meets Jalopy, set in the Pacific Northwest. This game is RELENTLESSLY Washington state, down to the ferry terminals
Anyway, you’re driving next to The Zone, a huge walled off area, and you get sucked into the zone, and now you have to get your way out somehow. Using this station wagon you found in a garage and a zillion crafting receipts
using the last of my braincells tonight on the tutorial. it is a very finicky ui for picking things up, shuffling them in your inventory, putting things in slots, processing stuff you find, crafting. The UI is a lot to take in. I assume it’ll be second nature eventually. I lost my focus and threw my crowbar instead of using it to open something, and then quit. I think I’m gonna like it.
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wow it is just like stalker. I’ve thrown my weapon so many times instead of searching in that game
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i loved cruelty squad but got to the archon grid and thought “ah, the developer is telling me video games are a waste of time, and that’s a fair point” - can’t wait for psycho patrol
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What’s the game?
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i did struggle with the archon grid quite a bit until i realized there’s a back entrance to the boss room… i also used a guide for a few things such as finding a couple of the secret levels that had eluded me
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