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

[SlumWolf]

played some of diablo 4 since it’s on gamepass and my buddy likes it when numbers go up

the way they present some of the story stuff in this is pretty neat; after the player initiates the next beat the camera slow zooms from the top down perspective and frames the conversations as a weird dolls in a dollhouse sort of thing. the character models are high quality enough that they look pretty okay zoomed in but not so high quality that they read as mega expensive motion captured guys. really doesn’t fit the epic story they’re going for the with the expensive cg cutscnenes and whatall but if all the narrative was just that I’d be pretty into it

[vodselbt]

Yeah Diablo 4 impressed me in that way, but not much else. But no other diablo-ish game has pulled off a cinematic look like this in my experience, so I thought it was remarkable at least in that regard.

[Stree_Overlord]

Started playing Dragon Warrior on the NES last night. Decided to go with the Bamboo Spear start, just wandering around the plains between the castle and the town killing slimes in my underwear, the tension is all in whether you push the run a little too far, whether you’ll die from trying to get 3 or 4 more gold before trudging back to the inn to pay 6 gold to spend the night. An immediate comparison to Dragon’s Dogma 2 is how they just immediately ramped up the prices for everything, like the first Inn you run into into DoD2 is like multiple thousands of gold, feels like a weird callback to like SNES games where numbers started way higher than they would have in the equivalent NES games just because IT’S A NEW GENERATION BABY.

Anyway I had a lot of time to think about shit like that while I slowly expanded my circling routes further and further away from the castle and town, as my levels and equipment slowly made me capable of fighting well, just the regular slimes, just a little bit further away so I could make it back safely, and eventually, Ghosts. I didn’t even bother fighting one of those until I had the Copper Sword. Just imagine how dreadful it would have been if I’d had to craft that fucking sword.

I can’t remember when you get the Light spell, whether you can get it in time to use it in the first dungeon or not. I think I’m going to grind a full set of gear from the first town, so we’ll see if I hit it by then.

[scross]

Played Children of the Sun, Devolver’s latest. A sadistic girl with a sniper rifle and a chip on her shoulder versus a psychotic cult wearing goofy yellow clothes. Can’t say I got anything out of it gameplay-wise that I haven’t gotten out of Hitman: Sniper Challenge, the main difference here is being able to use telekinesis to redirect your bullet after each kill, which only serves to force you to come up with increasibly contrived kill orders, a power fantasy that’s already too abstract made even worse with each consecutive gameplay mechanic (sci-fi shields, speeding up the bullet to penetrate armors). The storyline about a generic evil cult is mostly told through entirely silent and blissfully short motion comics, and it is a bit too Mandy in its drone grindhouse vibe, a bit too cute about Suda 51 references (killer7 is the main point of reference, but one level is literally just the No More Heroes motel), plus the ending rips off Midsommar in such a shameless way I had to gasp out loud.

But the creator really, really gets what audio design should be in a game like this. A delicious selection of tried and tested jarring aural textures that comment on your every action (and every step, even). Menacing basslines and cymbals, grungy distortions, walls of glitched out noise. All of it extra loud. The game seeks to completely overwhelm and it’s so good about it (especially whenever trippy demo scene-like visual effects sync with it properly), it makes my heart ache I can’t like it more. Hoping to work on something with this attitude towards sound one day.

A completely unrepresentative screenshot the rest of the game is too timid to follow up on in any form:

[username]

I haven’t played either but I saw Balatro and Slay the Spire mentioned together frequently and I think what is being underplayed is that having to learn a whole new card deck and rules and such to play a game is a turn off for many (as is the fantasy theming), and Balatro was clever enough to find a way around all that by attaching it to just about the most widely known card game/deck out there.

[Tuxedo]

@username

I haven’t played either but I saw Balatro and Slay the Spire mentioned together frequently and I think what is being underplayed is that having to learn a whole new card deck and rules and such to play a game is a turn off for many (as is the fantasy theming), and Balatro was clever enough to find a way around all that by attaching it to just about the most widely known card game/deck out there.

I’ve always wished we had non violent RPGs since the turn based gameplay would fit many themes well, but just the translation of all familiar RPG concepts to non violent ones would probably be too initially confusing for it to work. In a speech based RPG health would be public opinion, power would be confidence, poison would be crippling doubt etc etc and everything would have to be translated and it would be too annoying

[Tulpa]

speech based conflict has worked in ttrpgs before, the duel of wits in burning wheel is somewhat goofy but an extremely fun subsystem where you and your opponent plan your ‘arguments’ 3 actions ahead and then each pair of actions is resolved simultaneously. The actions are different rhetorical moves like making a point, obfuscating, insulting your opponent, rebutting their argument, etc.

[spinnylights]

I have kind of a pet theory that the reason combat is such a common skin for the “strategy game part” of turn-based RPGs, and many other sorts games as well, isn’t necessarily that the mechanical trappings couldn’t effectively express other things, but more just that combat is conceptually exciting because of the sense that something is actively trying to kill you and you have to fight or die. Like, from that perspective, RPG combat is sort of a very mild roller coaster, where you can sort of get the feeling that you’re risking your life in a wild, desperate gambit without really being in any danger IRL. Games often strive to give the player a thrill and that’s just one of the most obvious maximum-strength sorts of approaches I think.

That said, like, I think there are lots of other ways that “various agents taking turns round-by-round” can be fun or entertaining or interesting or whatever too. If you look at it as a more “sim” kind of interaction, where it’s not necessarily about a “vs.” struggle or whatnot but just a certain formalism to express whatever situation whether or not it involves conflict per se, I think there’s a huge range of underexplored (and often very funny) possibilities, especially if the gameplay in those places is more “sim”-like/isn’t too on-rails or predictable.

[siobhan]

Ecstatica??? Is so fucking cool???

[Tulpa]

I haven’t given it the time it needs but what I played was incredible. The ellipsoid rendering is so neat!

[Sykel]

hell yeah, the game with ellipsoid dong

i remember reading a preview of the second game and the project lead was so convinced that ellipsoids were the future instead of polygons

[OneSecondBefore]

Griftlands is a recent indie sci-fi RPG with a card-based battle system that allows you to fight and/or negotiate. You can win battles either by beating up your opponent or convincing them, and most of the time convincing is incentivized. It’s a really great, underrated game.

[Mikey]

One day I might play something other than Tears of the Kingdom again but for now I’m happy enough to just keep scurrying around that map checking off quests.

[Wizball]

I like that Balatro is evidence you can have a CCG style game and don’t necessarily need unique effects on every single card. You can have a standardized deck of basic components, then use five unique jokers to manipulate those components and it ends up being enough to keep it interesting

[isfet]

there is a giant Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth-sized hole in my heart, now that i have completed the game. i have started Unicorn Overlord in earnest, but find it hard to play for more than an hour at a time.

mostly, i’ve spent time playing NES/Famicom stuff. i have a repro copy of Metal Storm and i’m finally playing that game for real, as opposed to the other times where i put it on, said “that’s cool,” and stopped after dying. i really love how each stage is basically an action puzzle, and it keeps upping the difficulty in a firm, but logical way. i am currently on Stage 6, and i don’t know how many i have left, but i bet this is the last one. guess we’ll see!

i was coming really close to finally beating Castlevania one, which i have never done. i was steps away from Death, i had a level 3 cross, i was about to destroy that dude. he was gonna be over in seconds.

and then somehow one of my crosses hit an axe armor shield and the whole game crashed. idk if this is a known thing, or some random occurrence, or an issue with the NT Noir, but damn, that took the wind out of my sails, fo real.

i have also been playing Getsu Fuma Den, and trying to do so without a guide. i just reached the first of the FPS dungeons, and uh…idgi and i’m lost now, after making what felt like steady progress. guess it’s time for a guide! also, for years, i’d been wrong about this game - i always thought it was a pseudo-sequel to TMNT (NES), but this game came out in 1987, so if anything…TMNT is the pseudo-sequel! which is weird, because Fuma Den is such a more complete game, and it doesn’t feel bad to play, and…well, idk. it just has its shit more together than TMNT (which i do, actually love). i went on Moby games to see the credits list to verify my feelings that these games are related (i mean come ON they have to be) but i guess there are no credits for TMNT (NES), which is weird. i guess no one was proud of their work on that one.

[smbhax]

@isfet

i was coming really close to finally beating Castlevania one, which i have never done. i was steps away from Death, i had a level 3 cross, i was about to destroy that dude. he was gonna be over in seconds.

and then somehow one of my crosses hit an axe armor shield and the whole game crashed. idk if this is a known thing

https://tcrf.net/Bugs:Castlevania_(NES)#NMI_Crash

NMI Crash

Due to a simple oversight during the FDS to NES cartridge conversion, revision 0 of the game may crash in areas with lots of sprites, such as stage 15 (particularly the hallway below Death’s chamber, and the battle with Death himself).

Normally when a non-maskable interrupt (NMI) is triggered at the end of a frame, ROM bank 0 is loaded at $8000-$BFFF, which contains some routines that are run during an NMI. However, if an NMI hits while the game is doing lots of sprite calculations, ROM bank 6 may be loaded instead; as a result, the game eventually jumps into the middle of the wrong routine and overwrites a large portion of RAM with garbage.

Revision 1 fixes this problem by swapping in bank 0 before attempting to jump to the offending routine.

The initial release of Castlevania Anniversary Collection mistakenly uses the Revision 0 ROM which has the aforementioned NMI glitch still intact.

(The JP version–Akumajou Dracula, included in Castlevania Anniversary Collection along with the crash-prone NTSC U/C Revision 0 version–“was based on the Revision 1 revision of the NES version” and thus does not have the crash problem.

The Revision 0 NTSC U/C NES cart has the early, round, black Nintendo Seal of Quality on its label, while the Revision 1 NTSC U/C NES cart has the later, oblong, white Nintendo Seal of Quality on its label.)

[winkerwatson]

Also post FFVII Rebirth drifting

Sonic Superstars

I’ve been chipping away at this ever since it came out, mostly with 3 month breaks in between. Today I got to the last boss.

Invisible pits are a cliche of bad Sonic games and I think I found the best example. Restarted at a lamppost pressed walk and walked right off the stage. A perfect arc between platform and enemy. A second after restarting.

There were a few nearly good gimmicks. In one boss, you reach the end of level capsule. But it doesn’t trigger an achievement and there is 10 rings next to it. Oh wait the boss has a second phase.

Instead of a plane, you get in a wee spaceship and play Fantasy Zone to travel to the last level spacestation. It’s fantasy zone, and not Sonic Superstars. Full Marks!

The last level, you get to the end of the first act and then time starts going backwards. So act 2 you’re going backwards through time and right to left. Kinda almost works. But the gimmicks that didn’t make sense in act 1 still don’t make anymore sense now. Nearly.

The last boss at least builds on all the previous bosses. I have low expectations from Sonic bosses. But not low enough it seems. In Superstars they’ve decided to give all the bosses multiple attacks and phases. Great. So with the last boss. You do some slow random number generation slow dodging to hit it twice. It does some instakill move, hit it twice again, a different instakill move. Then a second phase with different multiple instakill moves.

I looked at the achievements. Less than 10% of players got to the last level - they haven’t even given this away for free.

[isfet]

wow! that’s funny - i guess it wouldn’t be an uncommon glitch, if you are spamming your sub weapons (as you should). happy to know it’s not the console’s fault

[Grandpa]

Spiritfarer continues to be alright. It’s absurd, but I worry it says something bad about me that any attachment I have to the characters, or reluctance to let them go when they’re ready to pass on, instantly faded away when I realized 1) they just repeat their lines again and again once you exhaust their story events and 2) you get a single bit of rare currency that you need for upgrades once they do pass on. Sorry grandma snake and deer friend, but I just gotta make these numbers go up, baby!!

[hellojed]

Tried a little bit of Night Runners. It’s fun, but it’s very easy to mess up a race and learn things the hard way (like that you can jump drag races, or that a race will be in oncoming traffic)