Games You Played Today The Nonbiri Express '09 (Galaxie ((500×2)−1)) 9小時9人9ゲーム LOOK I MADE IT LONGER: The Power of One

i dont mind shooting guys but i like to feel like i have an option to avoid them and i spent a very long time trying everthing possible to ‘avoid most fights’ and its actually not possible ,its just false advertising. its not like i dont have the ability to be sneaky and avoidant, i dont kill dogs in stalker and everyone goes WHAT HOW so i like, have this skillset. it will not let me apply it. that is disappointing

3 Likes

i mean idk i was watching them play it and there were guys doing the metrocop thing where they rappel in front of you which isn’t really something you can avoid. i did like when daphny jumped out a window and accidentally skipped like 10 mins of the game though

5 Likes

You guys are reading me backwards, I’m saying yeah it’s absolutely HL2 in that you are supposed to shoot all the mans. I was just theorizing what Eyaura could possibly have meant with that statement, maybe you can do like HL2 speedrun shit a break physics to skip fights or something, but I certainly didn’t find many ways to do it when I played.

4 Likes

no i knew exactly what you meant im just speaking on it. because i DO LIKE WEIRD SEQUENCE BREAKY STUFF TO AVOID FIGHTS and even then, in thisg ame that said i could avoid most fights, i couldnt. like i get what you’re saying and i wish i knew that before i played the game is all, but the way the game is presented it doesnt mention that ‘you are constantly shooting at dudes’

2 Likes

Yeah this is highly mysterious to me. I can’t figure why she would say something like that because it’s just like… not true, as far as I can tell. She is a very reclusive and inscrutable developer, maybe she meant it in some idiosyncratic way that we can’t really parse…

Anyway G-String is fantastic when you aren’t having your expectations baldly violated so I’d say give it some time and then come back when you are in the mood for shootmanning because imo it doesn’t really get much better when you add it all up. Totally worth playing on its own terms.

4 Likes

yeah thats my plan, coming back to it when i feel like playing a game like that

4 Likes

It should be noted that there are whole different areas with far fewer enemies than what is seemingly the main “unavoidable” route it just requires a goblinlike need to go where it seems you shouldn’t be able to

5 Likes

I had a similar experience to you then had to accept it was in fact just Half-Life.

So just echoing what you’ve already said.

2 Likes

Backbone finally started making the One outside of China, so I got one. I do this with the full and accepted knowledge that I obtained it for a Chinese-made iPhone. My only escape from this hypocrisy is that the phone was second-hand, which absolves nothing!

I’ve had the Sonic games for a bit, but I haven’t had the dexterity to give them more than a minute or two with the touch controls.

It’s been a few years since I played through Sonic 1, and I really liked this version (with a controller that doesn’t lag). Scrap Brain Zone was more devilish than I had remembered! Labyrinth Zone’s theme has that turn-of-the-90s tone about it that just looms large in my childhood memories.

I managed to get all the Chaos Emeralds. I’ve only ever done that one other time (on an actual Genesis). If I were in a position to review the One, this would be my report conveying highest praise!

Also see Kid Chameleon and Quackshot, in terms of this “tone.” I’m not quite sure how else to describe it. I’m sure others have had the words and wisdom to do so.

8 Likes

Surprised at how much fun I’m having with Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle.

Simple field exploration, low stakes strategy battles with just enough complexity to keep them engaging. I like the movement stuff (warp pipes, tackles, leapfrogging) a lot. Zapping dudes out of bounds with some of the weapons’ special effects is always a hoot.

Kinda just what the doctor ordered for me.

5 Likes

I think if they’d made the world exploration part of that a little less shitty and closer to Mario RPG fun stuff they’d have had a bonafide classic

they also always put it on sale for super super cheap by switch standards which I appreciated

1 Like

having tried way too many autochesses and variants at this point, the one i have the most consistent fun with (other than the original, which had a sort of slapdash charm that proved impossible to reproduce) is hearthstone battlegrounds. i do say this with a heavy heart bc hearthstone itself is a terrible money grab game and blizzard is a terrible company but battlegrounds is easily the best mode/variant that team designed, and i think a lot of the interesting design decisions that differentiate it from other autochesses emerged completely by accident!

let me explain! you know how fortnite used to be like uh some kind of pve horde mode? and then they saw how well pubg was doing and tried to copy it, but they had an engine that was meant for building things so they just slapped building into the game and said “great we did a good job”. well, i don’t personally think they did do a good job the building is fiddly as fuck (i will admit to liking fortnite in no-build mode, however).

anyway, hearthstone battlegrounds is like that – they were trying to capitalize on the autochess zeitgeist and slap one together in their existing engine – but the design decisions they were forced into bc of how their engine worked actually IMPROVED the game instead of hindering it.

example 1 – in regular hearthstone, mana is a resource that increases every turn. you start with 1, then next turn 2, and so on. any many you don’t use does not carry over to the next turn. in battlegrounds, money basically just uses the mana mechanics (except you start with 3 money instead of 1)! this has some cool side-effects:

  1. you get to make more decisions! it’s never right not to use your money!
  2. income is simple and predictable. you can reliably sequence and plan multiple turns ahead!
  3. every turn becomes a little optimization puzzle. units uniformly cost 3 money, and give you 1 money back when you sell them. you can only have 7 units on the board at a time, even during battle (another great mechanic born out of a engine limitation). sequencing things – when to play units, when to buy, when to sell, when to reroll, when to freeze the shop – is often non-trivial and important, like, you know, a good card game!

example 2 – being a card game, cards only differ on attack, health, and text written on the card itself. this has a couple effects:

  1. in terms of pure combat, units are way easier to analyze because they’re not collections of esoteric stats interacting on a 2d grid.
  2. synergies feel more “natural”. they fall out of the card text, rather than being an extra mechanic on top of card collection. you’re not keeping 3 elves around because the set bonus is +30 dodge. cards are drafted based on whether their text helps your current board state. this makes drafting rather fluid, and teching in single units to counter other builds feels easier.
  3. there are no “items” to equip to cards, but many cards have ways to permanently increase other cards’ stats or effects, either when you first play it or in battle. this is an additional interesting axis to drafting, where you may draft units just for the permanent effect on your board, and then immediately sell it.

example 3 – regular hearthstone has “heroes” each with distinct “hero powers”. hero powers are abilities you can use once a turn that cost two mana. in battlegrounds, you draft from a subset of a pool of ~100 heroes at the start of the game. each hero has an ability, some are passive, and some of them are activated for a cost of 0-3 gold depending on the hero. these abilities are varied and interesting and can completely change how you play the game, how you should value cards, how you should sequence things. it adds so much variety to the game! it’s great! this, combined with the mechanic where cards from random tribes are banned each game means that the games all feel pretty different!

a subset of the heroes

9 Likes

alternatively, if you want an autochess that’s asynchronous instead of real time so that you don’t have time pressure, i would have previously recommended super auto pets, but i now recommend backpack battles, which has a free demo/beta on steam.

and instead of writing a bunch of text to convince you, just marvel at how incomprehensible these screenshots of me playing it are. it’s a beautiful fucking mess of a game, where the player has the power to make it as complicated as they want to make it!



7 Likes

Join us…

1 Like

I played like much more fortnite than I usually do in a day, one long single player session and then a few multiplayer sessions. I got maybe 3 levels. There’s something fundamental with combat that I seem to keep missing, that or I just find people with aimbots, because I keep dying. I haven’t gotten a solo victory since starting the game. There aren’t any quests to do in order to get a bunch of XP, so leveling just feels like much more of a grind. It’s just not satisfying at all anymore.

1 Like

i play way more apex than fortnite, but i think this advice is generic enough to apply across all BRs:

BRs are all about fighting when you have an advantage, and otherwise backing off and playing cautiously. if you’re literally better than everyone, you don’t have to play this way, which is true for like, uh, streamers, and not many other people.

think about it this way – if everyone in your lobby is equal skill and you always fight on equal footing, every fight to the death is a 50% chance to lose.

only fight when you have a positioning advantage. or when they don’t know you’re there. or you have cover and they don’t. or if you have the optimal weapon for the range and they don’t. or if you know they’ve taken damage and didn’t have time to heal. or if they’re distracted because they’re fighting a third party.

you need to press any advantages you can get – don’t let your opponents out of disadvantageous states for free – but you also need to back off and reset (heal up) when those advantages go away.

if you’re in a disadvantaged state, make it as hard as possible for the enemy to finish you off. run away. hide. heal. draw them into a third party. make them push you through an empty field. the more decisions you force onto your opponent, the more likely it is they’ll make a mistake. being annoying to deal with has a psychological aspect too, and it might cloud their decision-making ability.

9 Likes

it’s more like 33 and a third, what with not being a genetic freak and all…

5 Likes

it’s been a couple of days since i finished gore screaming show now.

i feel at a loss as to where to start with this, but i guess content warning wise this is safe for almost nobody. it’s maybe also a good idea to just not read this post. the first scenario i ran had basically no gore except for one bad ending, but all the other ones have both more in volume and severity. also increasing amounts sexual assault, and for some cases piss and defecation. it is revolting for sure. and even when it’s not, each time there’s a sex scene i wish for it to end quicker because i have a hard time standing them for some reason. i don’t care for the voice in those i guess

still, it’s compelling. each of the main three scenarios explores a specific characters trauma and shame, and like… at least two of them both feel different kinds of relateable to some degree. enough that i really care about these two. i’m not gonna pretend i’m exactly like them, but it’s hard not to empathize with the shame and self-loathing they go through.

yuka’s and gore’s roles in this is trying to take advantage of these traumas to run whichever girl the protagonist is getting close to into ruin, for the sake of trying to isolate them from each other (and preferably for yuka, killing the girl), and the good path is always reaching some kind of reconciliation with the things they struggle with. even then there’s always something bitter lingering over every outcome. particularly something about yuka who has to die for any of these good outcomes to come true.

so like, after finishing all these scenario’s you unlock the possibility of the yamiko path (mom’s cousin who is like 10 years older than the protagonist) and of course a yuka path.
yes, that first one is an incest scenario.

yamiko’s path leads you to tag along in her investigations as a journalist, covering a lot of the background for our main mysteries regarding gore and yuka, as well as revealing she has a direct connection to (and part in causing) yuka’s current state.

it's the first time anyone actively shows sympathy to yuka and opts to try and help her in some way, and i was crying over this scene

things still feel kind of unresolved tho

and this is where we can finally start hanging out with yuka, which is several levels objectionable i'm sure. i feel so tired.

anyway… yuka is a woman probably in or close to her 30’s who went through horrible bullying and trauma while also getting in touch with supernatural forces that stopped her body in the worst moment of her life so she gets to feel horrible all the time while also still looking like a child. she got obsessed with a 5 year old boy who thought her pet clown monster was cool instead of scary and treated her nicely, and many years later into this boy’s teens (surprise he’s our protagonist) is trying to groom him and isolate him from all other women because of said obsession.

the good path on this scenario means hanging out with her but pushing back against her. the point being to care about her but holding her responsible for what she constantly threatens to do. it’s a healing path like the main three, but messier because… well…

yuka, regardless of how it’s due to her own trauma, has done and keeps doing incredibly bad things. it’s exaggerated and unreal but i feel like her path is meant to be like… reckoning with the way you’ve abused others while going through it? she can’t be absolved, and it’s not like anybody can forgive her, and she seems to start understanding that towards the end for various reasons as the fear she’s held for 20 years start to leave her. she gets to become a normal human again but decides she can’t just live peacefully but has to try and resolve the shit she’s done somehow. my heart was hurting by that point

anyway,

16 Likes

hi

it’s been a bit

let’s check back in on the wonderful world of unregulated gamblingphone games what I play

Jenshin Impact:

well the dumb main story quest came and went and no one got turned into goop. except Navia. Navia fucking died.

it’s okay, she got better.

somehow not-France is the second straight year wherein a few of the side chain world quests have way, way better writing (in my idiot opinion) than the main scenario

speaking of Navia

this is Taylor SwiftNavia

she is a fancy lady

she is the first geo character in 2 years, geo being the cursed, unloved element of the game, which of course means I love geo characters

she lives in a world where people, dragons and gods manipulate the elements with magic to fight

Navia has a fucking gun


playing Navia is about running up to enemies, placing them in the kill zone, aiming her shotgunbrella and catching the dopamine from big numbers


I love my blonde shotgun wife

Soul Train:

look I’m just here for the gear farming to activate the gambling pleasure center in my brain

Snowbrake:

I love my blonde shotgun wife

12 Likes

Finished the Alan Wake Remaster and now onto Alan Wake 2. I’m really enjoying it and looking forward to being able to open the remedy thread again someday soon hopefully.

1 Like