Games You Played Today V: The Phantom Play’n

King of Posters
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The 2x pixel-perfect scaling setting didn’t end up working out for me in the Arcade Game Series games (Pac-Man, Dig Dug, Ms. Pac-Man) on Steam; that runs them at just 576 pixels tall or something and eh it was too tiny and eyestrain started creeping in. So, back to blurry full-screen size, blargh. Well, not for Dig Dug and Pac-Man–I’m playing the Arcade Archives PS4 versions of those instead, which let you turn off bilinear filtering.

Now I’ll just set all my silly hopes and dreams on Namco deciding to go all scorched earth on those AtGames copyright snipers and let Hamster release an Arcade Archives Pac-Mom. ; D

Huh, they kinda did go pretty full bore on AtGames already in the 2019 lawsuit: according to the Wiki, during the case, Namco released some surprisingly snarly statements:

“Namco ensured that ‘AtGames’ investment will be useless,’ and would make sure that ‘there is zero income stream delivered pursuant [to the] agreement.’”

Ka-boom! So yeah then they started replacing Ms. Pac-Man with Pac-Mom in all new releases of Pac games. I’d been puzzled as to why Arcade Game Series: Ms. Pac-Man remained in online stores; I can only figure now that since the Arcade Game Series release pre-dates AtGames’ acquisition of the Ms. Pac-Man rights from the GCC founders, AtGames has no claim on Arcade Game Series sales–otherwise Namco would have nuked it. That would follow the lines of the 200x lawsuit vs GCC, where it was decided that GCC would be owed royalties on “any new release of Ms. Pac-Man.”

If that’s the case then technically (I mean, I have no idea but whatever) they could fire off an Arcade Archives Pac-Mom. Do it, Namco/Hamster! Hit 'em hard! ; D

(Mind you, Namco SHOULD have bought GCC out themselves decades ago for a piddly few mill or whatever; but no they were stubborn and stingy and let AtGames pick off the rights for the reported $10M in 2019.)

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1342

there are an increasing number of indie games where it feels like “this person wanted to work on a tv show, but they don’t have those opportunities/connections, so they’re stuck making games instead”

the story elements of Neon White felt like someone just desperately wanting to work on a corny anime but not having the ability to do that so making the game like that instead. Night in the Woods def felt like it really wanted to be a Cartoon Network show but kind of awkwardly fit into being a game instead. also things like We Are OFK obviously evoke that in feeling like a CW show.

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1343

Huh, my bad then

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1344

I credit much of this to the new existence of a visual novel audience in the west and the people who played Ace Attorney fifteen years ago. I think there was a specific taboo against games using narrative for its own sake – not as interactive narrative, not to support a game system, but the specific interaction of paragraph-by-paragraph reading – that’s been broken.

Something like Night in the Woods seems to be pulling mostly from western adventure games. But that makes sense to me, too, in how we’ve seen the genre revive through Telltale: puzzles aren’t the necessary gameplay component but agency in movement and who to talk to and when, and some key choice moments, help it fit within an older adventure presentation style.

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it’s weird that they aren’t more comfortable as VNs and adventure games, though, especially given We Know the Devil and Heaven Will Be Mine are

Neon White’s VN layer is more of a sneer at the format than working in it, like the Arcane Kids fan games

I was really impressed by Perfect Tides this year as a comic artist crossing over into a LucasArts-style adventure game. It helps to bring other disciplines in, always

I guess the LucasArts games were frustrated cartoons in their time, or at least most Double Fine games feel that way to me

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IM DONE

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YES

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Okay, Neon White has more and more talking as you go along, and it keeps getting worse. I wish there were a way to turn off all the character interactions as opposed to having to fast-forward or skip them each time. All I could do is turn off the voices.

Still a fun game, though.

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I think this is true. coming from a game studies background it seems to me more and more false that the ludologist vs narratologist thing is, as Gonzalo Frasca argued once, just a posturing thing between compsci and humanities departments which has been put to rest. there are books being published that always say “games and story” but plenty of individual scholars paying attention only to narrative. in a reactionary sort of way, i’m sure, i find myself being more and more snide about reading in games while people writing criticism or scholarship about games on twitter seem snide about conventional mechanics and systems. if the academic argument is done or never existed in the first place, an aesthetic one seems recently envigored, and the whole pretentious thing that it doesn’t matter seems evidently false on all levels: normal players, store fronts, academics.

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I noticed in VN circles the verb is read rather than play, which feels honest!

This is coming at it from the opposite direction but I’d prefer e.g. Night in the Woods cut its platforming altogether, like, can you imagine if Cardboard Computer had kept the platforming from KRZ’s kickstarter pitch in?

In a capital-g game I want narrative to stop fighting the form: I am not an actor in its play, it is accompaniment. Incidentally, I adore dynamic music systems.

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1351

I always come back to the fictional functions and functional fictions approach and see everything as some extension, however abstract, of a fiction and function (mechanics, actions) always operating simultaneously. They represent one another and taking a wholly exclusive approach is fine when you need that lens but not when you’re trying to dishonestly shut down discourse on discussing one aspect of a game over another. It happens in academia all too frequently.

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1353

The Fortnite Chapter 3 finale event was a big nothing burger but Chapter 4 is a huge changeup. Entirely new weapons, big changes to mobility and traversal, and a new map with radically more verticality.

It’s genuinely been fun being bad at the game again with everyone else and having to get used to weapons with dramatically different fire rates and times to kill.

The big new showpiece weapon this chapter is a big hammer (you can see Geralt of Rivia (no really) wielding it in the chapter reveal trailer), which lets you either, you know, slam it on people (for a surprisingly small amount of damage - it’s at least two direct hits for a kill on someone with full health & shields, more for glancing blows), or use it to fling yourself across the map. It has four charges for flinging, and then recharges, but you can carry multiple - two hammers and a couple of guns is a decent load out for high mobility. But if you REALLY want to, and get lucky, you can just rock five hammers and bounce everywhere raining down havoc. It’s a super fun weapon and really adds some interesting traversal options, especially for both attacking and escaping.

The map is also much more vertical - there are much larger mountains this time around, which you can land on to prioritise hitting the ground - they don’t tend to have much in the way of loot but they still add a lot of interesting terrain to potentially fight on. The points of interest also seem to have much more in the way of height, with one area having a river running through it two stories below ground level, and buildings either side giving you about five stories of verticality there alone, which makes for much more frantic encounters in the area, and multiple options for approach/escape.

This chapter brings with it Unreal Engine 5.1, which, among other things, adds a big coat of Lumen and Nanite (presumably on supported systems?), which basically means it’s very shiny, but in a tasteful way. Global illumination has come to Fortnite and they’re really showing off with the art direction this chapter, and it’s blue skies in gaming all the way.

Finally, the other big new mechanic this chapter is augments. Periodically in a given game you will be prompted to choose from two random augments (or re-roll your options), up to a total of four in a match, which will alter the gameplay for you in some way. These can range from “more likely to find healing items” or “you recharge health while hiding in piles of leaves” to the one I just unlocked which is “you constantly regenerate balloons which let you float”. This one I unlocked last night and so spent half a match just sniping motherfuckers while suspended from balloons in the sky, only coming down when I ran out of ammo, which was incredibly fun in a really silly way.

Basically I am having a lot of fun with this big silly game and it feels like the developers are too. This chapter is extremely galaxy brain and I love it.

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I love this but I find myself forgetting which augments I have in a given round if they’re not super obvious. I wish there was a way to see which ones I had at a glance

but that’s such a small criticism. I’m having a great time with it too!! it rules

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they’re, weirdly, in a secondary tab of your backpack? but yeah it would be nice to have a HUD element

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looks like a great platform for super giuliani rpg tbh

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Playing NFSU2 has given me insight as to why this late in the game it sucks, and that’s because it feels like I do the same races over and over again and make zero progress. Upgrades are gated by areas, so the final tier unlocks when I unlock the final area. Except: I don’t know how to unlock it or when that happens, so I just do races over and over again clearing the map gradually. If there was a like “do these races to unlock the next area” thing on the map I would feel like I could target those and then

There’s something the game doesn’t really tell you is that starting stats are kind of meaningless, it seems like the game scales difficulty based on your car to a certain degree. So that civic I took as a starter car could, in theory, work in the late game. The game also lets you create a tuning setup, but specifically you can only make a tuning set up for a single mode per car. So in this way, you have 4 cars and each one has a specialty such as Drag racing, or Drift, etc. This is vital later in the game when the competition gets harder but you can’t make your car faster, so you have to make each one specialize in a certain area.

Visual ratings only really matter on your fastest car, because the periodic magazine/dvd covers you get on are “won” by going to a location and then racing to where the “photo shoot” is supposed to take place. I wish there were more interactive photo shoots where you can pose your car, because those are fun, it’s disappointing to get to one and find that the cover is pre-made and they stick your car on it. But because visual ratings no longer matter on your “less pretty” cars you’re free to take off all the terrible stickers and body kits to have something look almost tasteful.

Up to a point it feels like the game rewards driving skill and consistency, but later in the game it feels like the AI or Rubber Banding reaches an untenable point and the only way to really win is to be perfect. This can be difficult especially in drag races that take place going into opposing traffic, because you need a favorable traffic pattern in the first section of a race and then the later half of the drag you don’t accidentally run into anything. Later levels become a sort of dangerous obstacle course and because the AI has perfect pathing knowledge and can react perfectly, you’re at a disadvantage. Wins don’t feel like wins, it just feels like you got lucky for once.

I think the constant night in the game is what makes the game feel so repetitive. There isn’t a sense of time progression. There isn’t a sense of career progression. Dots on the map show up, I do the races, I unlock…new exhaust tips that add 0.03 to my car’s visual rating. I think this is a common complaint about this stage of the game, it’s unclear how to progress.

Will I finish this game? Probably. It’s so damn brainless

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1359

Played in my first ever Smash Ultimate netplay tournament last night. Somehow finished in 25th place of 65 players even though I lost every game by a lot

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1360

Finished up Spy Hunter PS2 and it ultimately was a fine enough example of a kind of game that I don’t think exists any more? Like it oddly is probably better nowadays than back then as then it really wouldn’t stick out in any way while now… well I don’t know that we’ll see another single player spy car shooter that isn’t an indie release ever again?

Basically after the first training level you get a CGI cutscene with a bunch of rich old white men cackling about their evil plans for world conquest but are scared about this one guy/car as it may be the same one who foiled their plans back in '83. You drive through stages with one primary goal you must achieve (blow up a helicopter, stop a missile launch) and multiple other secondary ones that are optional, such as destroying weapons trucks or not killing too many innocents. I say optional but you need a certain number of objectives achieved to unlock future stages and the objective/unlock curve is harsh, you can’t get through the first half of the game by missing only one objective in each stage (and TBF only one is all that tricky to get in these stages) but after that you’ll have to go back and get more to proceed further. The game has 14 stages and to unlock that last one you can miss a total of four goals/objectives in the prior 13 stages. Add in that you have to get all said objectives in a single run (if you get 3 of 4 your first time through you can’t just go and try to get the one you missed, you need to do all 4 in a single run for it to count) and it is probably the most annoying bit of the game.

That said while the game can be a bit simple it isn’t unenjoyable to play through. Driving around and shooting things works, unlocking the lock-on missiles helps a lot and every stage has alternate/hidden side routes and such you have to find if you want to get every objective done. I’d say most of the stages are about 5 minutes or so long aside from the last one so having one run through to learn it then a second to try and get everything done isn’t too harsh.

Also rather than ever really go back to the actual story they spend the rest of their CGI budget at scenes at the end of most stages showing your vehicle making various exits via increasingly unusual escape transports, may favorite being leaping onto a moving train and driving along it until it comes to an elevated hangar that then descends into the body of said train once you park in it. That’s my flavor of goofy.

I feel I’m not giving the game enough credit as it does try to mix things up with its objectives to keep things interesting. One stage for example has you start in a junker car with no real abilities inside of an enemy warehouse wired to explode in 45 seconds with you just having to gun it and weave around containers/smash through boxes to try and get out in time before getting to your actual supercar and playing the rest of the stage normally. This results in a couple of escort missions (fortunately that aren’t too harsh) but I appreciate the effort.

So yeah, fun enough b-level game, both utterly skippable yet sad to see missing nowadays.

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the new destiny dungeon is like a resident evil circuit puzzle blown up to 100x scale and wrapped around the titanfall 2 level with the dish. i’ve been cold on the past year or so but this one piece is fantastic, partly because it’s allowed to explain nothing.

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