i’ve been playing Redo!, a brazilian indie search action game with a normal human protagonist making slow deliberate movements & a pretty strong survival horror influence from the overall tone to an emphasis on moment to moment resource management. this gives it a lot more tension than a typical metroid and i’m finding myself scurrying back to a save point every time i find an item since i’m terrified of overextending myself. also the save room music is gorgeous ambient electronic as it should be.
“you’re the possible Last Living Human in a post apocalyptic hell world overrun by biomechanical horrors and someone gives you your first phone call in years, exploration ensues” is the entire plot so far but imo it’s better for it in just letting the atmosphere do the work
which was probably a mistake because once I finished off the other enemies in the hallway the game didn’t advance to the boss room and you can’t backtrack so I was stuck
Legendary Technos Japan director Yoshihisa Kishimoto Yoshihisa Kishimoto - Wikipedia , who invented the modern beat-em-up with Renegade & Double Dragon, created the weird dodge ball game genre with Super Dodge Ball (arcade; not the NES version though which is really what made it sing), and maybe made the best arcade wrestling game ever with WWF WrestleFest–I know nothing about that scene but that’s what people say on the internet–among other exploits, is credited as “Director and Producer YOSHI KISHI” in the DD credits.
Come to think of it he also directed the recent “get the band back together” Double Dragon IV which unlike DD1–but like, say, Kishimoto’s arcade DDII–wasn’t very good, but definitely has a crash midway through it so maybe the hang I got here brings it full circle. = o
Then again this was only the fourth entry in Hamster’s Arcade Archives series and they were still working stuff out like they didn’t even have a “return to title screen” option in the menu, didn’t have a separate Hi-Score mode, and you couldn’t zoom the game screen even close to the full screen height, so for all I know that guy freezing could be an emulation error. I’ve never had this happen before in DD as far as I can recall and I’ve been playing the game–way too sporadically, because I’m awful at it now–since it came out in the arcade when I was a kid.
defying myself by starting up ffxii… im playing a tl’d zodiac version on pcsx2 i know its on switch and i even own it but ummm i like my ps2 deinterlace fuzz even if i could play it in bed im a 480i diehard. plus like i read having 2 jobs kind of makes the game sooo easy yknow idk.
it looks sooo good… def looks basically like the mgs2 to vagrant storys mgs1… and its like immensely charming… that shot of the airship over vaan and penelo… chills
as like, a set of totally unique game engines and menus and generationally specific audiovisual design it’s like the pinnacle of the series even though very little else about it is any good, which is very illustrative of the essence of final fantasy imo
original zodiac version is the worst of them all though, I would play the first release or the most recent one
it was never supposed to have job classes in the first place and was actually made less flexible by the addition of them, the final legacy of a game that was extrapolated out of matsuno’s legacy in the most misunderstood and deflating ways at every step of its development. letting you dual class in the most recent release mostly restored the dynamism that arbitrarily adding classes removed in the first place, but it’s still just like, why.
didn’t help that final fantasy fans would compulsively seek out the most definitive, deluxe versions of whatever at that time and assumed that the zodiac edition must be good
in the original I set up a perfect automatic grind loop in the dungeon with undead enemies… it’s weird how xii condenses all of the tension and inputs into interstitial moments so you’re just taking in the a/v splendor for most of the runtime
I hate X too much and have filed that whole era off as too hermeneutic to ever penetrate but the way people talk about it is occasionally interesting and it’s the only mainline entry I’ve never gone near
all of the criticisms of the HD/AAA production showing through are true. it’s obviously sewn together and the world is small until it is big and empty. I don’t mind opening something called the datalog to read wikian prose explaining proper nouns but most people probably would – to them I ask, would it really be better packaged as nakedly instrumental NPC dialogue (no)
the voice direction is shockingly bad considering the state of contemporaneous anime dubs with some of the same actors
that said it’s gorgeous and the battle system is a delight for the obstinate min-maxer
Surprisingly, a lot do! Most of them look like they require you to be connected via a cable rather than bluetooth, and on some games you have to disable SteamInput because Steam will just make all controllers look like Xbox controllers by default. Looks like there’s also a third party utility that people use to add DualSense effects to games that aren’t natively implementing it. I had no idea there were so many games. I’ll have to test this out too.
Saito/Ryouma/Kiryu we need to remind you again that we Hate Traitors. We’ll just fucking kill a traitor. In fact we found one of our guys was a traitor, so we’re gonna make you kill him. Oh no another guy from our elite police crime mob killed him suddenly then stared at you for a long time. And remind you again we will kill traitors. We’re doing this for the country.
I finally broke down and did an english Wikipedia search which only kind of helped finding out Sakamoto Ryouma (Kiryu)'s fake name is also a different person from actual history and these events Saito Hajime.
I mean it helped to read that it wasn’t exactly Modern Japan but a bunch of barely held together fiefdoms that were constantly fighting and taking over each and plotting to overthrow the Emporer or The Shogun depending on their mood. So I can sort of take all the place names as “oh that’s another little faction.”
I stepped on my first boobytrap in the jungle right before it got pitch dark and had to slowly move forward through nothingness for many ingame hours while scouting parties were all around and helicopters searched for us overhead
So last week when I wasn’t playing through Outer Wilds I played through Frincess&Cnight (yes there are no spaces, no I don’t know why), a single screen puzzle platformer about a princess transformed into a frog and a cat knight. For those who worried about my luck with that former game know that my time with this game went much smoother.
The game is built around both characters, who you switch between at the press of a button, having markedly different abilities that you must take advantage of to guide both of them to the exit. The cat knight can extend their body upwards which functions like a jump, can then do a downward smash attack that can break certain blocks, and also can see in the dark in the rare unlit stage. The frog princess is the more developed of the two as she can shoot her tongue at any not moss covered wall and stick to it, which serves to reorient her own personal gravity along that axis (if she sticks to a platform on its left side and walks off its edge she will fall to the right as opposed to down). She can also swim or put the knight in her mouth and carry him in it before shooting him across the screen in any available direction, which can smash certain blocks. Here is a gif that shows a bunch of these abilities off:
While it isn’t revolutionary it is a rock solid execution of the idea. Single screen puzzle platformers can be a bit limited but there is a bunch of variety in the 55 stages included here. Certain design motifs show up regularly but usually one stage plays a good bit differently from the one that preceded it while still feeling very much like the same game. In some of them both characters will start at the same location and have to directly work in concert, such as the frog sticking to a wall and the cat jumping atop her so she can function as an elevator. Some will have them apart with one helping to clear the way for the other from afar. Some feel almost turn based while others have moving obstacles or require a series of quick moves and switches back and forth under penalty of death (the game does offer a slow mode for those who would want to play it but may not have the fast reflexes certain stages require). It starts a bit on the easy side but while it never gets absurd by its later stages it can push you a good deal, and there was one near the middle I had to look up a hint for as I just could not wrap my head around it at all.
Graphically it is fairly simple but rather clear. There is some story that pops up from time to time that has an alright translation (I believe the dev is Korean) that is sometimes a word balloon or two too long but is actually fairly cute. The princess legit feels like a terrible perso… well frog for large stretches of time and I appreciate that the game doesn’t ever feels like it is concerned with redeeming her. Most princesses would be spoiled rotten with terrible views regarding their lessers, games should reflect that.
Like I said before, this is just a rock solidly executed game with some really clever bits of puzzle design. It’s probably one of the stronger games of this ilk I’ve played in quite a bit. If one likes single screen puzzle platformers it is an easy recommend. TFYI the game’s itch page has a web demo if one wanted to test it out.
lightning experiencing Tough Moral Consequences when i gave this kid the wrong chocobo doll, dooming her to a life of godless sociopathy
it’s wild how all the side quests are about helping random strangers be better friends with each other then this Time Traveling Chocobo Hostess Club girl rocks up with a quest board and a bunch of backstory that lightning has no time for
