The point where the demo introduced the poise-execute mechanic was me going “this is literally Nioh. I could be playing Nioh! Humble sold me a twelve American dollar key for Nioh 2 and I can make my own idiot character and also have combat with speed and I could be playing that and instead I’m playing Souls with Good Ass”
I guess I was expecting a faster game. Perhaps a few hundred hours in the Relink abyss has rotted my brain
Good OST though (this is also my review of Nikke, from the same devs: nice butts, bad game, good music)
Equipment grinding or not, I am clearly my own worst enemy when it comes to Shiren. In addition to the usual stupidity–walking into traps immediately after I’ve uncovered them, which happens far too often–I have now managed to very nearly kneecap a very promising run by accidentally creating a monster house inside a store (changing the price of the scrolls to make it the same as many other actually safe scrolls is evil). I somehow manage to escape, thanks to a combination of brilliance and luck (namely, stepping on precisely the right trap at precisely the right moment), only to die the very next floor when I forget that sealed tanks actually do more damage than non-sealed ones. Shiren is good, actually.
I have been entirely unable to shake my pinball obsession, it is super interesting to feel almost entirely unfamiliar with how to play a whole medium of game. One which makes huge fundamental/core concessions to popular appeal (games are based off of large franchises, aesthetically/stylistically/and in design) but whose trends remain transparently really really conservative and insular (multiball, extraball, scoring systems, etc. are all expected, discussed, and used by the community as criteria for judgement) .
Seeing how these things evolved from constant novelty (including flippers themselves as gimmick addition) to becoming a ‘type’ with heavy economic constraints and a fanbase with specific design demands, concepts, and purchasing power is an interesting tension to see play out. Especially in how it tracks with social/political constraints imposed by deep American roots. Also it’s fun, and I can’t tell how much that fun is because I’m addicted to a form of gambling with no promise of profit.
Yeah this must happen to everyone and devs must know it so I don’t really understand why they persist in putting annoying actions there
I usually remap the controls to make it do either nothing or some harmless action that it doesn’t matter if I do accidentally in the middle of a battle. In my Sekiro control scheme left-stick-down picked up gold.
I played some of open roads. it’s overwritten and has some good performances, whatever. I dunno if this is a product of the fraught development history or what but visually the 2d animated characters on top of the detailed 3d interiors on top of the way less detailed comparatively low poly outside spaces really works for me aesthetically. like the characters already feel disconnected from the places they’re in b/c of the tone of some of the writing, but pasting the 2d characters onto these spaces (with the object you’re currently holding when you trigger conversations just floating in the background occasionally) make that distance feel uncanny. the story isn’t doing much for me but I like looking at the grass
Sad story: I was playing Otogi on the xbox 360 rgh, but the green cave stage was devoid of textures, all blacked out. I managed to find my way out of the stage by using the map, and then the subsequent stages were normal again… But unfortunately the game reuses some stages as mirror levels, and the green cavern is among those. This time there seems to be no way out of it, so my time with Otogi seems to have finished already.
i have not yet but this has me rly curious, i will prioritize and report back when i do so.
(altho that may be a lil while cuz mindlessly i was holding off on emulating ps2 games for my hacked ps2 setup but procrastinated unpacking so badly for 8ish months that im moving again in two months and still dont know which box that thing is in )
Over the past weekend, I noticed the Jeff Minter collection came out, so I picked that up and played through a lot of it. It’s just a great glimpse into old PC gaming, but in a context I didn’t have (the UK) that I really enjoyed. And just him talking about being a little weird guy with very patient parents. And all these old issues of his little newsletter. And Tempest 2000.
I also picked up Akka Arhh or however it is spelled and that is a lot different from a lot of his stuff, but I’m still coming to grips with it. It’s fun though.
dang that sucks. though I remember it not being on the official 360 list of backward compatible games? I think it was only for XBone consoles but it’s kinda cool to know it’s playable to some extent
Yeah, basically it can be played through half way.
I am watching the rest in this video (there is also a follow up for the ending): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=STQCEAt_6KE
It’s well made, has no commentary and scratches the itch to know what I was missing.
One comment: I was not remotely able to fight in the air as much as this guy. I might have to replay some earlier levels just to experience that extent of airborne fight.
There was a level in Otogi 2 where you were fighting ontop buildings or something floating in the sky while fighting flying enemies and I accidentally destroyed every piece of environment in the level, leaving me with nothing but air beneath my feet. I then had to spend the entire level spamming aerial attacks that gave me upward and forward movement to make my way to an enemy, fight them somehow without falling to my doom, and then make my way to the next enemy to do the same thing again. I have no idea how long that stage took me to complete.
I never clicked the left stick down on OG Xbox or PS2 where there was some resistance, but did it a lot on switch until I got a 3rd party controller. The obnoxious MGC controller I use on PC is terrible for it too.
Finished Final Fantasy 2 Pixel Remaster. The guide said it couldn’t be done without the Blood Sword, but joke’s on them - I can furiously spam Berserk VI every round and frantically heal everyone and chip in what damage I can to victory instead.
Normally try to take a “The End” screenshot for my blog write-ups but I missed it. Gonna have to use this instead.
you can learn to avoid it the same way one learns a tricky series of inputs in a fighting game but it requires you to be mindful of when it happens and intentionally reinforce habits to avoid it instead of getting annoyed by it.
but also this is clearly just me leveraging my self-critical tendencies as a coping mechanism for things i can’t change so take it w/ a grain of salt!!
bad memories of playing Dark Chronicle/Cloud 2 and switching characters whenever i tried to do a back dodge
i like the L3/R3/stick click buttons a lot for tactile purposes (its very good that every controller manufacturer knows to give them an audible CLICK) but they need to be utilized with care
Played a decade’s old puzzle platformer named Another Perspective and it is just the most Braid thing ever. I believe just about every single screen/puzzle has text on it, the final resolution is just so meta it made me want to scream (and I am usually okay with that sort of stuff), all that stuff was not good. Fortunately the game part itself was fine/brief, you basically have to grab keys and then get to the door but there are often multiple yous on the screen you can switch between, the other you is frozen when using another, eventually the layouts and gravity differs for each you (you see we each have our own perspective on things and…), it is a fine enough thing.
Oh yeah, if you go to try and play the extra “mystery” mode it tells you you should go play the main game first as that is sort of bonus/difficult extra content. You have to beat that to unlock the true ending though, and starting that mode erases your save from the main game so you’d have to start it over from scratch and beat the whole thing again to see said true ending (which is not worth it). Apparently some stores got updated versions where the two modes had separate saves that eliminated this, my version did not. There was a topic on the Steam forum where someone said to just hack the game save by changing the number in it to get around it where the dev responded “that’s a good idea”, so I did that myself. The save file is literally just a single number, which at least made that easy. Still what a baffling design choice.
Thinking of playing Shadow Tower Abyss. I haven’t played any King’s Field games, nor the first Shadow Tower, but Abyss seems more modern to start with. I am thinking that I might get into the older games later.
Is it ok to play Abyss before the first one, or it doesn’t make sense?
