Pacific Drive
(BTW I found that by reverse image search, which is in the right-click menu in Chrome)
3 Likes
you can just move your mouse over the picture or click on it and see the filename of the screenshot which usually has the title of the game in it
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BABBDI’s cool. beautiful big polygons, softly overcast concrete (was reminded of personal fav Dark Forces II at times) absurd traversal tools like beating the ground with a baseball bat to launch yourself into the air or the pickaxe which I applied to the extreme far end of the world. as intentional as the game is elsewhere I’ll interpret the UVs here as a nice little joke that you’ve reached the limit
and that you can pickaxe your way up the invisible wall, a sweet treat (as effective as the NPCs and mood are it’s stuff like this that’ll stick with me, in a good way)
also played Mizeria after it was mentioned around here but the controls are just not there for the precise and punishing platforming demanded. can’t complain tho cuz it’s free. the dev makes a lot of neat little PSX/demake stuff, could be the foundation for something more playable in the future (went to youtube to see if anyone got to the top of the tower and nope, did see @smbhax’s attempt there tho :p)
13 Likes
babbdi owns
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Unicorn Overlord demo on PS5 is the most I’ve played my PS5 all year. I will probably play more tomorrow.
7 Likes
Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania (PC/Steam)
The speed runner whose apparent digital control of SMB inspired me to give the game a shot is https://www.youtube.com/@SnowballSMB (no relation ^ _ ^).
Original soundtrack DLC, Camera Controls OFF, DS4 d-pad mapped to left analog in Steam Input = DELICIOUS MONKEY BALL GRAVY =dd
Didn’t make me even slightly motion sick; I had somehow had the idea that it would. (I get nauseous trying to read in a car, for instance.)
It’s like the umpteenth recompilation of SMB 1 & 2 and there’s an absurd amount of things to do! Remembering many of the party games aren’t very fun single-player (Monkey Tennis controls highly disappointing!
Monkey Golf putt-putt course pretty fun.
Monkey Boat way too easy vs CPU (maybe later rivers harder?).).
Paid the in-game coin to unlock Dark Banana Mode (just one of at least THREE extra modes to unlock)
and WOW first stage requires making like 6 physics exploit alternating bounces in sequence, yeah I’ll be ready for that in about 200 hours of play, mmmaybe. ; D
Not sure I quite figured out Photo Mode; pauses the action and lets you move the camera around, but you don’t actually save a screenshot, as far as I can tell. I guess they just figure people will use their PC to take the actual shot? Or I failed to find the shutter activation function.
Having fun customizing my monkeys (you can unlock Sonic–
and the bananas you can gather for uh money I guess–become rings–but not customize him–and I don’t think he makes vocalizations, either? : PP) ping-ponging through the beginning of incomprehensible story Story Mode levels.
^ _^ Will I keep with it once I get to the point where they’re brain-meltingly hard??
(Had 1 & 2 on GameCube; 1 didn’t support 480p output on my D-video cable, which I found highly disappointing at the time, didn’t play it much; 2 DID support 480p, but I made some just maybe slightly labored excuses to myself in 2003 like “less arcade-y feeling as you can save every ten stages and can restart a stage an infinite number of times (seemingly),” “I’ve heard it said that the stage design is less inspired than in the first game, and there seems to be something to this assertion,” and “maybe the single-player doesn’t feel quite as true to its arcade action roots as the first game”…and didn’t play it much. ; |)
So I don’t know but at the moment this FEELS more instantly gripping and compulsive than…well pretty much any other Sega game I’ve been trying. = o And way more than TrackMania, which is maybe what it reminds me of most, gameplay-wise.
Made myself a tiny 24px Windows taskbar icon: 
11 Likes
Unicorn of Overlordly Kaliber 2024, is it a fun diversion or truly hot? Gonna cop it and make the thread but I’ve been so busy as a gamer, playing Mario RPG and SaGa Scarlet Grace. Love being millennial… they don’t make them like this anymore! besides that they do
9 Likes
something cool about cruelty squad is there’s a way to go out of bounds and see the undersides of levels
16 Likes
I had a hard time putting it down!
The best part is the fighting and all the parts leading up to the fighting. It’s also incredibly breezy. They really made the game part feel really really good. The ways that each combat unit can interact with other combat units is amazing. I am very excited to build up my roster.
The story and characters seem pretty generic right now. There might be some interesting characterizations, eventually, but so far it looks like they’re there to give you the good fightings.
And the lack of permadeath lowers the stakes overall. But I think that fits the vibe. I would say it’s very very good 90s SRPG strategy wrapped in something more modern and approachable.
5 Likes
This game is a lot. I finally won a run last night after playing it for two days. It gets so ridiculous by the end.
I’ve actually kept the music on the whole time. It’s pleasant and unobtrusive, but also not too catchy. That sounds like weird praise, but it makes sense for how long you end up listening to it
8 Likes
unicorn overlord demo does seem quite legit, it’s hitting its marks in a way that doesn’t feel overdetermined — probably helps that basically no one has tried to make an ogre battle successor despite the dozens and dozens of tactics ogre takeoffs. I never really liked vanillaware that much up until 13 sentinels and this is a really good next step for them (the prose is on the purple side but not nearly as bad as triangle strategy)
9 Likes
also lol that between the ff7 remake sequel coming out, the elden ring dlc announcement, this demo dropping and being great, and and the SMT V ports, pretty much all the exciting gaming news for 2024 has been a) about jRPGs and b) landed in the past week
11 Likes
Ogre Battle is a squad based RTS ahem
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“WayForward wants to know your opinions on the Contra: Operation Galuga demo”
no, I don’t think they’ll want my opinions
10 Likes
Garou Densetsu: First Contact (NGPC, in Mednafen)
When set to English, runs full English, with “Fatal Fury” in title.
It runs slow and has fewer characters and fewer modes and the art isn’t quite as stellar as another NGPC fighting game launch title, King of Fighters R-2, and its triple super system is a bit much and its inputs a bit non-standard, BUT this port of NEOGEO fighting game Real Bout Fatal Fury 2: The Newcomers has a good deal of charm, natural combos that feel good, and just about the right default difficulty level, and I found myself enjoying it way more than I thought I would.
I’d thought this was a fully in-house SNK production, but half the credits are for Yumekobo, a studio SNK and TAKARA (who ported a number of SNK games to home consoles) put together from several small development studios to churn out SNK franchise games for PS1 and Saturn, and later for the Neo Geo Pocket and Neo Geo Pocket Color. Their “SNK Gals’ Fighters” just a year later–such was the short life of the system–would feel like a much more accomplished fighting game, but aside from the slower running speed, First Contact feels like a solid game. The newcomers, Rick Strowd and Li Xiangfei, felt particularly fun to play.
Some of the backgrounds are a bit flat, but some have quite nice little flourishes, and the different times of day was quite surprising considering the fairly small ROM sizes of the cartridges.
Oh man that big guy with the pompadour seen briefly vs Li in the intro is Lao (from fan wiki; GameFAQs spells his name “Leo”), usable only in Vs apparently once you’ve unlocked Alfred (FAQ says get 3 P or 5 S Power KOs, get through 8th stage w/ no continues, beat Alfred in 9th stage).
5 Likes
Okay, this Windowkill game has positive reviews all over the place but I must be missing something. It’s great up until the point where it expects you to click in precise spots with your mouse while continuing to fight hordes of enemies with your joystick. That just doesn’t seem reasonable. If anyone else has played the game, is there a trick to it?
A Steam discussion post said there’s supposed to be a pointer that appears, which you can control with the joystick, but I tried it again specifically watching out for that and didn’t see it.
And even when I do manage to use the mouse and the joystick at the same time and get close to the smiley boss, its window is underneath the main window so I have no idea how to fight it.
This may become my first ever Steam refund if I can’t figure this part out. The reason it’s so annoying is that I really like the game otherwise and I’d like to be able to play it.
6 Likes
Got my second win tonight. Flush build can be so powerful. Still have yet to get past the second hand in the post game, though.
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Damn, they made a sequel to Windosill??? 
6 Likes
This is very close to what Bee said when she mentioned the game to me. (That’s how I became aware of it, but she hasn’t played it and that’s why I needed to look elsewhere for guidance.)
But no, Windosill still stands alone and retains its crown.
Edit: I’m not really going to get a Steam refund for Windowkill because I want to support this type of creativity even if I find its execution frustrating. But I do want to get past that boss.
10 Likes
politely describing the final grind in Relink - getting and leveling up Terminus weapons - as “some shit” but also not minding at all because the song that plays in the last quest in the game is one of the most stupid amazing vocal tracks in an idiot grind game
1 Like