summer vacation has started, buddies. that means it’s gamin’ time again.
i played indika a little while ago. i loved it! it’s short, has bresson themes, weird camera angles, great ending, sweet music. i did not care for the flashback sequences and do not wish to share how long it took me to get past the frog/pond section. i get that it’s cool to do a flashback sequence as pixel art in a modern game, so it’s fine- it just didn’t jive with me. i really appreciate the bits where you can sit on a bench and look around the world in different perspectives. i thought the scene where indika dissociates while being raped was done well. good game!
i picked up fallout new vegas, shoutout grandpa, a couple days ago and already have sunk something like 16 hours into it. granted, i gave myself one day to be a lazy piece of shit, then i felt sick so i kinda just vegged out on the couch for the last two days and had Fun. i am playing like a total psycho, maxing my explosives and melee so i was just running around with sticks of dynamite and a tire iron for a while. i’ve been killing the NCR and basically anyone who i don’t vibe with right away- which turns out to be a lot of people. idk, there’s not much to say about this game that hasn’t been said. it’s the only fallout game i’ve really played through all the way and liked, tho i haven’t played the first or second. maybe i’ll do that after this, maybe not, there’s so many games to play!
the other night me and the pard’n’r played a bit of The Firemen 2: pete and danny. I was pete and he was danny. we didn’t know wtf was going on because we don’t understand japanese, but had fun putting out fires for a bit. i think without the dialogue/story, it just kinda feels like filling in every pixel in paint or something. more incentive to learn nihongo, i suppose.
we also started up legend of mana but it was getting late, so we stopped after making sure we could pick it up as co-op next time. it’s very pretty and i like some of the weird characters i’ve seen so far. those little vegetable babies are wild. maybe it’s just because we were zooted but we couldn’t stop laughing during the opening cut scene. “Remember me?? Need me?? I can provide you with everything! I AM LOVE!”
idont get how God Hand right stick dodge rolls haven’t been ripped off more. i mean like, yes i do get it, game devs broadly decided in like 1996 that the game camera is the player’s problem and should be the function of the right stick for 99% of games so heaven forfend using it for a different + more fun essential mechanic. I get it and it sucks cuz trends of convenience are such dull, intractable things
im very down to bring back more weird evasive maneuvers in games lol
explosives and melee and big guns are so seemingly fun but impractical in most Fallouts, i love that NV seemed to prioritize making them viable it even fits your character!!, that you’re not a Vault Dweller by default and instead you’re your own personal flavor of hardass wasteland sicko who’s background defaults to “the kind of person who would do fetch quests in a Fallout game”
I had similar thoughts about the pixel art parts of Indika. They did a good job with them but I’m not sure how much they really added. Then again, what they did is probably better than having those scenes as movies or playable scenes in the game’s engine. And it does contribute to the “What type of game is this?” charm.
My favorite thing in the game is a brief cutscene that I’ve resisted making any mention of when discussing the game with anyone so I don’t spoil it.
I hope Indika doesn’t get forgotten too quickly among all the good games coming out this year, as it’s quite an interesting experience.
My favorite thing in the game is a brief cutscene that I’ve resisted making any mention of when discussing the game with anyone so I don’t spoil it.
which one!
yeah, it’s hard to talk about that game because i do think it benefits from just going in and experiencing it fully. its brevity also makes it extremely replayable and i think i’ll do that again this summer. it’s certainly one of the most interesting modern games i’ve played in the last coupla years
i played it on release so maybe it’s changed since then but every boss had attacks that would have been interesting to dodge if i didn’t have a get-out-of-jail-free card on practically no cooldown. yeah, i would say don’t “spam” it, but it’s a pretty safe way to fix any mistake in positioning you make.
like to their credit it does have specific spacing requirements but that’s really the only thing you have to learn. the game has shmup bullet aesthetics but reduced the pattern recognition space to “where can i safely dodge through?”. like it feels like it steals a lot more depth than it gives just so it can have a trendy mechanic idk.
my understanding, granted that ive only played the most recent version is that its actually changed a buttload since release. Like ammo apparently used to be vanishingly rare probably to force you to use up your random guns more, but it’s an accessible choice now (eg i have a good chance of 1-2 ammo drops or at least refills in the shop per floor)
So at minimum i can say they’ve rethought their core game balance concepts, and i could guess they reworked bullet patterns and such too
DMC3:SE on Switch incorporating Dante’s active Style selection from every game since is a delicious way to experience Aerial Rave Spam and Chugging Metal Guitar Filled With Electrified Bats
I still think the corridor roaming and finding objects that interact with locked doors (to unlock said doors) are a dull trick to force the player to admire the weird architecture -while splendid in parts- as if it’s hard to miss
Also most of the cutscenes remain amusing in 2024 while the tower descent/ascent ones are flat-out brilliant
And then I bought DMC4 for like the…fourth time in my life
That does sound at the very least glitch adjacent, but a solid number of puzzles have both “the obvious way to solve them” and “a less obvious way to use its elements to accomplish something else”.
I would posit that if you enjoy the game it regularly goes on sale for less than $5 so you don’t have to kill yourself to hit that deadline, but if you don’t then yeah cheat/peak/whatever to your heart’s content.
first game I’ve played in three months. so far I enjoyed it more as a casual spectator
feels like an infinite dead end on this very night. will keep sparring with it as long as detritus delivers dialectic (and it does so personally!) in place of the kitschy warm naïve sincere bravado of its source material
would like to read about what’s going on under the hood, all the little tweaks that make it feel trashier to move around, insistently curious
absolutely. just as i’ve made it my mission to make 3d platformers without a jump i have also made it my mission to make 3d action games without i-frame dodge-rolls. that shit is old and lazy and explored to its limit. positioning and expressive movement is so much cooler (shout-outs pn03 – shit sucks but that dodge owns) gimme a duck or a slide or a bayonetta twirl or a directional parry just give me anything besides a bunch of boring i-frames.
despite the above i think the rondo dodge is the sickest shit on earth! you have to face away from an attack to dodge backwards through it! that owns! i used it so much and never once used the (extremely cool) strafing/fencing mechanic.
I think the friendly mayor from Kemco JRPG « Marinian Tavern Story » might be a reference to Italian Far Right Nationalist Dipshit Matteo Salvini. What the fuck
Had the same exact experience a few years ago, after I was all amped up from how amazing severance: blade of darkness was and wanted to see if all the other early 3d hack and slash games were secretly great. They weren’t.
Tried playing more Episode 1 racer, this time going through a bunch of races that were far too easy, I got bored so I decided to track down a cheat engine so I could make the AI go faster. It’s so uneven with the AI bumped up because you are either ahead or you make one mistake and can’t regain ground. I guess it’s no wonder the base game is so easy. A lot of people chalk this up to playing the original game as a child and not really knowing how to race, and running at 20fps on the N64 vs 60 on a PC. As a child I remember this game being a lot harder.
