Ah yeah I had a feeling; its steering REALLY doesn’t come across here. That Digital Foundry video mentioned they felt the steering in Sega Racing Classic 2 had been tweaked to work well on pads or something; didn’t feel like Motor Raid got much useful control tweaking.
i recall Motor Raid being unweildy even on the arcade cab, but I was a child then so, uh eh
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Quick games I’ve been playing thoughts/updates:
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Finished Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and… I thought it was rather good, it might actually be my favorite Deus Ex game now which is likely gonna get stuff tossed at me but oh well. Got to sneak around and crawl through vents, things happened and reacted in ways that made sense as opposed to my fever dream playthrough of the original, I even did things quick enough to get the better ending. I struggled mightily against the final boss as I could not figure out the non-violent way to defeat them so I had to resort to gunplay which I had not engaged with up util then; looked up the non-violent approach and the boss can be taken down in under 30 seconds that way if one follows things to their logical end. Now I’m bummed the apparent in development follow-up got Embracer’d.
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Through the first 15 stages of Mirror Drop and it feels like it is starting to teeter on the brink of becoming too fiddly. Great concept (basically adjusting magnets/gravity inside a kaleidoscope to get a metal ball to three specific locations) but I’m already having to go into separate rooms to adjust things to come back over to see which wall out there corresponds to ones in here and… yeah, bit concerned at what the remaining 40% may contain.
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Pushmo World so far is literally just Pushmo again so far, might change later but it is basically a standalone level pack.
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UDLR_Modify is a game jam puzzle game where when you move into a diamond with 1, 2 or 3 dots on it that side of your player character/circle absorbs it and can then only move in that number of tiles when moving in said direction thereafter, and the goal tile only activates when all of them are absorbed. It makes you think very carefully about when to pick them up and in what order/orientation, only 20 stages long but what I’ve seen so far has been pretty clever.
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Give the DLC a try too. One of them is basically a mini Deus Ex world to mess around in, another has you infiltrate a prison, and another mustn’t have been very good because I can’t remember anything about it. But the two I remember were pretty fun!
I enjoyed Mankind Divided but it’s definitely not my favourite in the series. For me it’s Deus Ex, Human Revolution, Mankind Divided, Invisible War, Deus Ex GO, The Fall
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I favorited the season pass for Mankind Divided on the PS store so that I can pick it up when on sale, I’d still rather save it for a later date as I’ve had enough for now and it’s not like any more is coming.
Human Revolution might be better I don’t recall it clearly enough. I respect what the original was going for a bunch but… well I posted all the stuff that bugged out on me when I tried playing through it some years back, there is a degree of messiness I can overlook but it clearly leapt beyond that point and kept running.
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you better keep running because i’m about to kick ur ass for ur opinions!!
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I loved how every time I returned to Prague from an outing, the city had changed a lot and I needed to make use of sneaking paths that I noticed earlier but seemed pointless at the time.
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The “Faster Baby” DLC for Mafia 3 is fun, it has a lot of car chase mechanics. It could be it’s own game. I like the targeting and shooting that you can do as a driver, it almost almost reminds me of rail shooters with auto targeting. The game does the smart thing of making stunt jumps cinematic instead of having to hit a precise speed to clear obstacles. There is an entire weed growing mechanic that the game adds for some reason.
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It’s a real shame Xtreme Beach Volleyball 2 didn’t work, an explosion of undefined polygons taking over the screen (this is less exciting to look at than my description.) Omega Five wasn’t unplayable but had so many graphical glitches it wasn’t worth it. Qix++ crashes at start up.
Project Sylpheed is certainly a better game than Zegapain, such that you can compare them. It really delivers the graphics. A space shooter where the first mission is defeat 8 enemy fighters. The second mission had me defending the capital ship in two giant fleets slamming together. I think I was tasked with defeating 35 warships? These kind of games always stress me out and I quit when I crashed into a warship.
So I messed with my Nintendo DS. The NSMB cart I had bought on a lark maybe six months back does not work. My flash cart needed a cleaning but I am back to playing sudoku while listening to music.
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same, but I’m a sicko for Eidos-Montréal’s consistent output of overdesigned 7/10 games with very particular features you can tell someone on the development team was passionate about and insisted on fully committing to.
for DX4 I reckon it’s the dialogue system and how cynical it is by design. the dialogue choices are all about judging how to manipulate someone to do what you want, rather than roleplaying or personal expression. and yeah, you can get that “social enhancer” augmentation that trades one conversation game for another more explicit pattern matching game (just shy of the colour-coded moods and personality types in Persona 2’s demon negotiation) but I don’t think that diminishes it. imo it’s much more interesting than Cyberpunk 2077’s WYSIWYG dialogue where you just pick what outcome you want to happen and then it happens. especially for a game whose marketing is all about how cutthroat and cyncial the game world is: trust no one, do what you need to survive, in Night City you can be cum, etc. instead it’s DX4 that jumps on the opportunity to design its dialogue system to reflect that kind of world: no personality behind Adam Jensen’s ever-present sunglasses, just reading people and social manipulation; unpicked dialogue options not reflecting any internal ambivalences, only cold social calculation. on the other hand, it was kinda cool they had an office psychiatrist character, and they missed a beat by not going full Sopranos with it.
speaking of Cyberpunk 2077’s marketing, i feel like that game committed worse, unapologised-for sins compared to DX4’s tone-deaf “aug lives matter” gaffe that blew everyone’s goodwill and was probably a big reason no one enthused about the game when it came out. it’s a shame that in the end Cyberpunk 2077 was the game that got endless second chances because I wish more people talked about DX4. it’s the more interesting game!
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There is a point where I came back to Prague just in time for everything to get rattled by a notable explosion nearby and it wasn’t anything you ever had to deal with or even got addressed (not impossible that I missed a side mission prompt here), at most you heard some NPCs talking about “what was that” or “not another one”. It was just actual world building.
Also the T29 homebase you return to has stuff for sneaking or that can easily be used in a combat like experience which obviously had me going “well I know what’s coming up later” and it never did, balanced against the city streets eventually becoming much more fraught. I don’t know if it was meant as a fake-out or to keep one on their toes, but it worked for me.
I do agree that the dialogue system does have a bit more going for it, I did get the aug that helps read people at some point but the fact that even with it was still possible to “fail” to get what you want out of people if not careful. There is even one or two people who should know better that call you on it.
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I’m gonna have to give Motor Raid another try! Not sure if it was because I now have my d-pad mapped as left analog in Steam Input, or because I picked a different driver, but the steering actually felt okay now; plus, I noticed that it’s just the default kick/weapon attack animations that seem side-specific; if there’s actually a target on the other side, they’ll attack that way instead. So while initially confusing, the controls actually AREN’T all janky. Ah! = o
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Taking a quick detour from Mafia 2 after i accidentally crashed my car and died with one more gas station to deliver to with the Dead Space Remake. It’s still got it.
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Arcade Archives Mouser (PS4)
Terrifyingly difficult cat-flavored Donkey Kong clone by UPL. Not sure how to get past stage 3 where a mouse near the top can throw flowerpots down onto your head faster than you can climb one of the upper ladders. Gotta be SOME way to do it I guess! = ooo
From an English-language interview with half of UPL’s (“Universal Play Land”!) Mouser development team, Ryuichi Nishizawa: http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/ryuichi-nishizawa-upl-interview/
“At that time in UPL, no one knew how to develop a game. The company even told us that we just had to change the characters while stealing the entire game design of Donkey Kong. […] we developed Mouser by analyzing the ROM of Donkey Kong to learn how to create a game.”
The music is a sanity-draining rendition of that old public-domain hooter, “Turkey in the Straw”–but it switches to a wedding riff when you get your cat to the top to meet your girlfriend–and is still playing it as the mouse guarding her sprouts bat wings and carries her off! = o
You can kind of milk points jumping things or something on some stages for a while, but after 30 seconds apparently a tiny bomber comes and dive bombs you if you’ve been staying in one place.
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Yakuza 6 (PC/Steam)
Rushing to the arcade games as fast as I could!
Cheap in Steam sale. Lots faster to get from new game to Club SEGA with an SSD than it was on PS4. ^_ ^ 2021 Steam release Yakuza 6 runs noticeably worse on my 4.5 yr old mid-range gaming laptop than 2023 Steam Like a Dragon Gaiden from the same Sega series. There was even a spot or two of slowdown in SF5FS here! ; P And the AA throughout is noticeably weak; one option is slightly better but runs REALLY bad. Was also reminded throughout of all the little UI etc tweaks Gaiden has made that make the whole thing much more tolerable! Had forgot in Yak6 they split the games up between main Club SEGA and tiny satellite Club SEGA two blocks south; noob Kiryu can only run 1.5 blocks before keeling over and being set upon by muggers. : P And there are a lotta things marked on the map with gamepad icons that aren’t video arcades, like whatever SEXY CLUB is (it was closed by cops : P) and a karaoke joint! Harumph!
(Gaiden does have per-game button mapping, too.)
Still can’t get into Puyo Puyo or Fantasy Zone.
I guess VF5FS is technically fully playable and all, it’s just I wish it could have the costume-making and customized AI teams that the 720p PS3 version has, le sigh. And it only goes up to NORMAL difficulty.
Was on the verge of thinking I was getting into Space Harrier finally, then reminded there are no continues. Dang! Guess I should just try harder maybe. Oh and I could play it on the EASY cab instead of NORMAL–hm!
Think I got more in touch with OutRun’s obstinate steering here than I ever have; really have to baby it and do as much long-range traffic avoidance as possible, because up-close steering IS bad–or at least, I’m super-bad at it.
Super Hang-On though, man what a game. Love the music, love the colors, love the weird cornering, love the selectable difficulty stages, love that Sega gave this one arcade game a third, “VERY EASY” cab. ^ _^ Cleared the Beginner course on it! = D
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Bug with screen borders in the Like a Dragon Gaiden arcade games:
Normally the three non-Sega-Model-3 arcade games in Gaiden–Virtua Fighter 2.1, Sonic the Fighters, and Motor Raid–run without top and bottom screen borders.
However, if you play one of the Model 3 arcade games–Sega Racing Classic 2 or Fighting Vipers 2–which do have top and bottom borders, and then play one of the non-Model-3 arcade games in the same session, the non-Model-3 game will have Model-3-style top and bottom borders.
This will persist until you exit Gaiden and restart.
It isn’t clear why the Model 3 games always have top and bottom borders; possibly it was accidental and is part of the bug.
(Ran into this with VF and was scratching my head over it until I found corroborating details on r/likeadragon by Reddit user wizzyone https://www.reddit.com/r/likeadragon/comments/1ad0kvi/like_a_dragon_gaiden_strange_glitch_that_made/ . Reported it in the Gaiden bug thread on Steam: Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name :: Steam Community )
(Not sure if it’s related, but from what I can see of videos and screenshots of the three arcade games in “Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth,” which are all Model 3 games, those games also run with similarly sized top and bottom borders–but with an elaborate bezel frame covering the border area, so their size must be intentional; in Gaiden, the frames are plain black, so the intended size is less clear.)
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for a moment back to reading last years vncup titles, absolutely perfect specimen
i love when sexy wish fulfillment is turned into a nightmare. a weight in my gut. feeling of wrong. i don’t know. i’m sorry that i’m excited about this. it’s not a nice story but that’s obvious from the content warnings. it’s… kinda relatable. and i only say kinda because i haven’t been subjected to abuse in these ways, it’s not meant as a dismissal. i just don’t want to pretend like i know about things i really don’t. but like… using subservience to like, try to shut down your self so you can not suffer that for a bit is like… uh… yeah. i fantasize about ego death all the damn time. the struggles with what you really want vs the impositions of what you should want too, you know, in relation to things like wanting to be a girl
this post is very clumsy, just believe me this is good
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EX-Zodiac is just a fantastic love letter to Star Fox and Space Harrier. It’ll be even better when it is done. My only complaint is you really do not have time to read the text boxes.
Glad folks made a huff about Drainus so I could buy Drainus back then and play it tonight and find it just a great pleasant shooter. A little bit easy (so is EX-Zodiac) but really great enemy design and decision making. Not sure what you’re supposed to do against the stompy guy in stage ?4? That was the only section I lost lives and decided to rest my hands halfway through Loop 2. Which, hey! thanks for letting me rest my hands. Glad we are all adults here. Just glad.
While I am mentioning little small games I’ll say Bot Vice again which I definitely like playing more than any of the Tengo Project games! I should really write a list of good shooters, make that knowledge I’ve collected public. Oh well!
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i love this game so much. it’s like road rash but done in peak sega sensibility. i love drifting the wide, loping corners and turbo’ing at the end of a race to steal the win
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got to the disk change in mgs1 and have been really enjoying how much of the basic stealth type gameplay it basically leaves optional or untapped - like it’s filling out the background for you to blunder into at points but it never feels like the doggedly literal thing of ok here’s a nondescript corridor with 1 guard, with 2 guards, 1 guard and a camera, 2 guards and a camera, 1 guard and 2 cameras etc etc… most of that stuff is consigned to a handful of big open rooms that the game takes wild digressions in between. in general i feel like the time it takes for a vgame to fully unpack its own possibility space is like 10x longer than the time it takes for the person playing the game to go “alright, i get it” and start wondering how many of those possibilities they personally need to experience, so i appreciate it a lot more when something doesn’t feel fixated on some core game loop… on the other hand i remember a distinct “shut up and let me play with my toys” feeling eventually with mgs2 as a teenager so i wonder how much of this is also linked to the comparative dinkiness and specificity of the ps1 era, the feeling of like a pointillism trying to abstract something too large for them to necessarily do straight
dialogue etc - it’s funny how much more personality the rest of the game has and how so many of the cutscenes and codec bits feel more like a motivation of the device - just a background part of the simulation. “well, it’s a spy movie so there should be lots of technology talk and some stuff on politics, and a part where a character gets to seem cool by revealing knowledge about some real world thing, and parts where people stare into the distance and say something profound…” but then the specifics of what fill out these categories seem weirdly thin and gestural. snake, did you know the human body is 70% water? 70% water…?! that’s right - if you don’t drink water you’ll find it harder to do things over time. hrn, gotcha. i’ll try to stay hydrated at all times. i’m glad they got the voiceactor they did.
other stuff i like: the goofy little level-up thing where your health and ammo capacity go up after beating a boss. the extremely stupid run-up-and-down-these-staircases bits in the tower that feel like parodies of abstracted game spaces. the stuff where people will comment on the bgm changing and ask you to check the back of the box is fun in the same way that the stealth gadgets are, as generous gestures at spaces the game doesn’t necessarily want to stop and explore. maybe it’s good for vgames to retain some connection to the narratively unintegrated novelty gimmick, which is after all where the territory that they came from and to whence they will return
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