F1 Manager '22 - i like to adjust sliders and read emails and then watch my cars go vroom. it’s always a good time.
Immortality - these games are lucky that they’re well written and have good acting, because otherwise idk what would compel a person to move forward in them. that said, it rules.
Agatha Christie:The ABC Murders - technically my fiancée is playing this, but sometimes she leaves the room and asks me to take the controller. this isn’t something i’d have gotten myself, but i’m surprised that it’s fairly-competently made. it really does seem like the team behind it wanted to make a game for fans of Poirot, and they’re mostly successful. also, it works really well with the PS streaming service.
a while back i had a huge post i’d written about Playdate games but i deleted it because too many of them were vaguely mean and to edit the whole post would be more work than just writing a new one, so uh…keep an eye out for that, eventually? i’ve warmed up on the Playdate quite a bit, though, and i feel like maybe i’d recommend one to anyone who thinks it might be their thing even a little bit.
Got some friends together this past weekend, smoked weed, and played Night Trap. That game is a miracle in so many ways, but the game design really lets it down. The little 80’s horror b-movie inside it is super entertaining and refreshingly un-videogamey. Watching footage of home intruders and pressing a button at just the right time to trigger a slapstick trap that takes them OUT in glorious live action, that’s gotta rank as one of the best feeling single button presses in game history.
Unfortunately, the game is incredibly difficult and requires near-perfect performance from you in order to continue through the runtime of the movie. Hitting that standard of performance requires you to completely ignore the fun b-movie happening in the other room and just frenetically flit around empty hallways looking for burglars to slam. The game’s design requires you to avoid the most entertaining part of the game! I guess the rationale was probably that this would increase replayability – work hard to get further in the movie, and then enjoy the new footage while you get a game over, then once you’ve seen that footage get back to that point and ignore it so you can progress, repeat ad nauseum. OK, but that really put a damper on my weed-fueled group playthrough night.
We were playing the big remastered, enhanced anniversary edition for the Switch. They did add a number of fun and impressive little additions and bonus features, but they didn’t add the one thing the game desperately needed – an easy mode.
i always thought the mechanic of Night Trap was neat and that it was a shame it’s basically just become shorthand for a dated 90’s FMV game that caused a brief moral panic. i’ve heard Double Switch (by the same people, which also has a remastered Switch + PC version) is a better version of basically the same thing. also it has a cast which includes Debbie Harry + Corey Haim + R Lee Ermey. though from the playthroughs i’ve watched it’s prob no less difficult.
YES I GOT A WII MOTE (thank you km for delivering it to me while I was in full goblin mode. fuck pants) AND CAN PLAY SUPER PAPER MARIO but oh my god the flip sound is so annoying? and it happens every three seconds?? this didn’t annoy me at ALLLLL the first time I played though, now I’m like deeply wishing for a silent flip option
gimmick still rules, love to flip. edgy fourth wall breaking bad 2007 dialogue is more charming to me now for some reason, and the SONG WHEN YOU BECOME BIG IS GREAT
every time Mario makes a noise I’ll make it with him. I don’t like Luigi saying ‘bro’ though. he’s not the type!!! he wouldn’t say bro!!! luigi is so confident in super paper Mario! it’s not right!
The game has what appears to be wiggle room but is actually really precise game and gamey physics: a block won’t squish you if you aren’t standing on the block beneath it in the exact frame in which it lands. So if you’re just starting to climb the block next to it, your foot having just left the ground the frame BEFORE the block landed, it will clip pretty much entirely through you but you’ll pull off a seemingly miraculous escape! = D
I prefer Night Trap to Double Switch. DS is more mechanically interesting, but it also adds too much complexity and in the end becomes much more tedious to play than NT.
lichens… glowing slugs… one of the most beautiful areas in the game… 4-2 is pretty hard on sl1!! it’s a long trip down to the old hero and he one-shots you with this little health
I didn’t get much out of that fight. if you don’t have a good line on your opponent, reposition? a ton of running around. oh I guess I learned about ignoring helper mobs, maybe that will help against the Byrgenwerth Spider.
I got the fear and summoned a confederate to help with the Shadows of Yharnam. so easy! probably it was levelling up Strength to hit the requirements for the Cannon (what a ridiculous, hilarious weapon). with 30 Str I’m finding I can bully a lot more tough opponents than I could before, backing Iosefka & the Choir hunter into a wall and stun locking them with Ludwig’s sword. still doesn’t feel like a fair fight, but closer than previous Hunter encounters
every level I complete in the battle pass feels like taking a grain of sand out of a mountain. It’s taking so dang long to unlock that 4th page, a friend of mine did it in two days!!! how!!!
finished monkey 2… i actually liked the big whoop stuff at the end, both as an occasion for some of the game’s weirder and more memorable moments (the skeleton song, the steel pipe maze you wander into at different points) and also as a tacit admission things are getting kind of power fantas-y. i guess i always like the mild antipathy towards computer games as a form that was part of the first game too - which caps the big ending on a note of “never pay more than $20 for a computer game” / “turn off your computer and go to sleep” - and read this as a different version of the same thing.
idk maybe i was also feeling generous bc the 4th and 3rd games were the first i played and going back to the first two highlighted both how much the latter were kind of formula exercises by comparison… the second game doesn’t even have an insult swordfighting equivalent, and elaine is much more fun here as an ex than as a weirdly forgiving franchise girlfriend. in this light a little gesture of premature anti-sequelism goes a long way, even if the effort ended up not taking.
finally seeing what the deal is with the Hunter’s Axe and it enabling easy mode. mobs, more like slobs
a bit worried that my levelling strategy “dump points into the requirement stat for the last thing you picked up and see if it’s fun” is not good. it is fun, especially with 23 Vit tho
Trying to find my next game to play. getting desperate. I find that having a game I can retreat into is an important part of how I structure my time. Like a release valve or buffer, being in the middle of a game lets me make sure I’m not doing too much of other things. For now I am just going to observe that fact without judgment, this is what I do, and knowing that much about myself is useful.
Anyway, I wish that the PS3 Yakuza games didn’t have so many voiced cutscenes. Games became arguably worse when voice acted dialog became an expectation for the audience. Shit moves so slooooooooow.
I often also want to replay Metal Gear Solid V because the feeling of movement in that game is so tight, I know it would just feel good on the brain. But I don’t really think I could replay it without becoming bored.
Found a cheap copy of Kingdom Hearts 3. Without expecting anything great from it, I was still disappointed in a way that I didn’t think that I would be. Say what you will about Nomura’s streak of games in the early 2000s, KH3 cutscenes and dialog feel especially narcotized and stupid. Something is very different in the localization or in the writing. It was very surprising. The combat seemed kind of cool in this one but it’s just Kingdom Hearts 2 linearity and inanity again. If KH2 was force fed a bunch of nyquil, wrapped in a Cars 2 blankey, and then demanded by threat of death to tell its torturers a nice story. KH1 and the GBA game remain the only interesting entries in this entire series.
