I live to challenge this notion and I live it to the fullest every day
6 Likes
You can do ridiculous drifts in like any car in racing lagoon that let you just sail past ppl in corners because the driving part is deceptively simple. It’s really not trying to be a serious racing game. What always kills me in that game is like not being able to discern whats next cuz of the muddy draw distance and banging walls on every acute turn
4 Likes
Darktide finally ‘released’, and on the day one patch they made it so you can see actual numbers on the stats, which is quite impressive for Fatshark.
2 Likes
Learned you can play a wolf in Shining Soul 2, and discovered it was part of my “good roms” selection I made of the GBA romset, so I had it lying around. Camelot stay winning. ok it’s not made by Camelot but it feels like it. Look at these wonderful backgrounds they’re cramming onto the gba.
21 Likes
Based on my fondness for Toki Tori, I decided to buy RIVE, a shooter from the same studio. The actual gameplay part is actually quite fantastic: like with Toki Tori, the game really good about making the most out of its limited number of elements (the setting is a space station not unlike Metroid Fusion’s, and there’s like nine distinct enemies, not counting bosses). The story, though…there could be less of it. The two characters are…ok?, but the constant in-story references to specific videogames and videogame tropes in general is just a couple of degrees shy from being insufferable. That said, the moments the references are integrated into the gameplay–for example, a sequence where your guns go from having 360-degree movement to being fixed, briefly turning the game into a horizontally-scrolling schmup–make for fun diversions, so it’s hard to totally dismiss what they were going for.
4 Likes
So I decided to finally give Stuntman another shot today as my PS2 game for '22. I got smart and realized that playing this on an emulator would make a lot more sense than on actual hardware as I could save state to bypass the lengthy loads that occur every time you have to replay a challenge, which is frequent. Said loads killed the game when it was newish.
This worked well right until the game loaded up with half of its textures missing, lagging horribly while running at about a few frames per second. I have emulated a whole one PS2 game before this which ran more or less flawlessly so this seemed unusual, and I looked stuff up and switched some settings so that it at least ran at like 75% speed (and eventually closer to 90%) which is fair enough for me. Played through the first few challenges, seems like a fine thing through this point.
The fourth challenge though… is where everything started to go to hell. You have to chase after a car through a city before theoretically at the end ramming it into a river. The problem is that the car always takes one turn too quickly and crashes into a chainlink fence with no idea how to re-orient itself after this, I believe it is hard programmed to follow a very specific routine with no AI to adjust if things go wrong. I look up what’s going on and apparently PCSX2 causes this car to screw up this particular turn each time, and there is no solution.
This is an issue as I played PS2 games via my old backwards compatible PS3 that went kaput earlier this year thanks to phat PS3 killer FF XIII (that’s a real thing BTW). I downloaded a complete save for the game via GameFAQs but it doesn’t let you replay stages in any order, so that was no good. I suddenly remembered that I believe I have a old PS2 buried in the back of a closet that is full of all sorts of junk.
Naturally said PS2 is just about at the very back/bottom of said closet, and while the room is now buried in various bits of junk I go ahead and hook up the PS2 to my tv via taking the hookup my japanese PS2 was using (I have a japanese PS2 as for a bit I was way into shoot 'em ups and japanese wrestling games). For some reason this didn’t appear to work. The back of this tv is a nightmare of cables I dare not play with too much so I am stuck wondering why.
I then am struck by a notion, go back to the closet and find the cable hook-ups that said PS2 used back in the long ago. To save time I just go to the small older tv I have elsewhere where it is easier to unplug the older Nintendo systems and use those RWY hookups. I do so, hit power and… nothing. It turns on and I hear it running but I guess at some point the port in the back got too dusty or just wore out, it’s basically dead.
I am now vexed and trying to figure out what options are available to me. Perhaps there are different PS2 emulators where that isn’t a problem, or perhaps someone somewhere had the same issue and put up a save game right past this point one could download. Or perhaps…
…I go to the garage and find a cardboard box put there during the summer with PS3 written across it. I take out my old beloved phat PS3, system that lasted me 14 or 15 years that I played so many PS1, 2 and 3 games on, whose laser could not handle FF XIII. The thing is… it wasn’t completely borked, it was actively screwing up and getting worse but it did still work for stretches of time. I switched over the plugs from the newer model PS3 I replaced it with, put in the disc, turned it on… and it wouldn’t read. I turned it off then back so that it could start up with the disc already in there… and by god it read the disc!
The plan was remarkably simple: The laser could give out at any moment so I need to skip every cutscene and power my way past the 4th challenge, at which point I’d have a save game that could in theory be used elsewhere. The pressure was on and by god did I choke over and over again. The game now running at 100% speed threw me a bit but I literally failed the third stage a couple dozen times, me praying each time that the PS3 manages to load the stage back up so I can try again. I finally do so and I suck just as much on this dreaded 4th stage. The good news is that the car actually drives properly, but I am so hopped up on adrenaline that my hand is almost visibly shaking. I fail again and again and again, get close once but in knocking the other car into the river I follow it in for an automatic failure. With each failure I’m leaning over and getting close to screaming directly into the rug until luckily, finally I do it. The game quickly lists what I unlocked, the autosave screen comes up and I then immediately choose to quit, copy the saves onto a thumbdrive, eject the disc and turn the PS3 off. That may have been its last act as a console and it held together long enough to do me a solid, and I appreciate the hell out of it.
…There’s also the part where I struggle to figure out how to actually convert said save file so that it works with the emulator, which took me just about an hour and a half to finally get right. Then when I tested it the fifth stage was running at maybe 60% speed which means I gotta mess with settings again tomorrow (hopefully what I switched to get it running better just didn’t save).
The punchline is that there is a real chance that after the first section the game gets too tricky/fussy for me and I decide I can’t handle it, in which case the person who told me to just play the PS2 Spy Hunter game instead is gonna mock me mercilessly :\
17 Likes
Grasshopper, of all companies.
4 Likes
I finished Yurukill tonight and it was a fun time. Kinda stupid in a lot of ways, but G. Rev still makes a decent shooter and some of it was funny as hell (while other parts were pretty trashy). The game never really justified why it’s half visual novel, half shooter, but that’s OK; a fun little B game. The full game thankfully ran way better than the demo on Switch.
Next up is probably finishing Tactics Ogre? Then either Minstrel Song or, god help me, Undernauts
10 Likes
Another evening playing NFSU2. I did a ton of races and have nearly 15,000 monies, but I’m currently agonizing over what car to get next. Cars unlock after certain races but they have different starting stats, and for whatever reason the developers decided to give the supra a top speed stat of 2.5 and the Audi A3 hatchback a top speed stat of…3. I think this means that, when fully upgraded, the Supra will still go slightly slower than the Audi A3.
Also discovered that certain unique upgrades can only be earned during in-game chapters by doing street races with ambient cars milling around the game map. I’m on chapter 4, so everything from 1-3 is locked out! I didn’t do them because outrunning other cars was tedious and paid 100 bucks each time.
The final section of the city is divided in half, with the other half housing the last of the upgrades you can get, I think this was done because there’s four main areas of the city and they needed five, so they just cut the last one in half.
I think I have to do an insane amount of races to unlock the final chapter, something like 30+. Ugh. eugh
4 Likes
there’s so much dumb goofy shit in SS2
you gain elemental damage resistances by taking that kind of damage
there’s a campfire in town that you can stand on and take damage but will never kill you
yes you can stand on that fire and walk away while your character yelps in pain and your resistance goes up
14 Likes
Rive was a pleasant surprise when I played it. I had a good time with it, I absolutely hated every bit of dialogue.
2 Likes
Played Star Fox EX on the mister for just a tiny bit. It is really impressive.
Thought about putting one of those MSU-1 hacks on the mister but looking at the list of games and the youtube samples it is as sad and pointless as ever. Yeah now I can play LttP with a sick metal arrangement. Wow you cobbled 30 different OCRemixes to stich together Secret of Mana aS InTeNDeD.
5 Likes
So gave up on Stuntman after all of that, as the game gets “busier” I just can’t get it to run any higher than 80% speed and not even consistently so at that.
Ripped an iso from my Spy Hunter PS2 disc, load it up and it ran well… actually too well. Music sounded really fast in the opening cinema, all was jerky, turns out the game was actually running at 200% speed after all the options I tweaked to try and get Stuntman running well. Oops, guess that specific game just doesn’t emulate all that well on PCSX2 
Anyways Spy Hunter PS2 seems fine so far, nothing remarkable but driving and shooting stuff is fun enough.
3 Likes
I would probably be really into Black Suns but only if I didn’t have to give $60-$70 to Disney. It I could just play it on steam for free…
1 Like
how does the Create A Stunt mode work while emulated? I assume since there’s a lot less going on it might run smoother. You’re only setting up cars and things to smash into.
1 Like
I deleted the iso to free up space so can’t check, sorry.
1 Like
just finished BOSSGAME, and it’s easily the best designed action game i’ve seen on mobile. i think it would actually be worse on other platforms.
i guess i’d describe it as mechanically richer undertale style battles, but only the bosses. almost a rhythm game? failure feels like practice rather than bad luck. absolutely astounding amount of bespoke attacks and animations in this game too, constant novelty. it’s really really good!!
the story and writing are also extremely cute and cool and gay, i was worried it would be too “wholesome game” but it features actual writing, conflict, and character moments. it’s pretty god damned good.
comes with my highest recommendation. it took me about three hours to finish, so its a shorty. killed a whole plane ride for me. play this dang game!!
12 Likes
oh this is great ive been looking for a new mobile game to play that isnt ADS ADS ADS DO YOU WANT TO SEE MORE ANIME ASSES SNIPING ADS ADS
6 Likes
Stuntman is such a good game! I’m not surprised it has issues being emulated. I beat it back in the day when it came out on PS2. Apparently that’s one of my big gaming accomplishments I never knew was an accomplishment.
2 Likes
Continuing Dragonflight. On the subject of Blizzard’s court-ordered step away from heteronormativity, I posted this—
—and some of the very next questlines were in-your-face gay romance stories. One guy wants you to craft a gift for his husband using high-quality materials; another guy wants you to help prepare a proposal for his partner.
It wouldn’t be a problem if they were written better. There’s a particular voice they they use, like this, it’s fond of commas but it uses them poorly. It’s not as egregious as the Baradin Wardens quests in Cataclysm, but it feels like that same quest writer gained ten years of experience but still prefers impressionist punctuation. That said, some of the most affecting quests have used this haphazard punctuation, so I can’t complain too much.
I was more impressed with their depiction of a centaur leader with a hearing disability—she’s got an interpreter and what is effectively a service animal. You talk directly with her even though the interpreter is the one providing speech, and the two of them sign throughout the conversation, although I doubt the animation has any more meaning than does their mouth-flapping facial animation used during talking head narration.
I took a break from progressing through quests to fully upgrade my dragon-riding talents and get gold ranks in half the available races. I like the landscape: it’s just four zones again, as it was in Shadowlands, but they’re part of the same landmass, so they have to fit together better aesthetically. The focus on dragon-riding necessitates a lot more verticality, including plenty of towers and other landmarks to put collectibles over, so at the risk of making the most predictable possible comparison… It reminds me of Breath of the Wild. Apparently I’m about to unlock rock climbing as an activity, so we’ll see just how blatant that inspiration really is soon.
9 Likes