god i love this level, you’re making me more curious about the game now
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just installed an SSD into my PS5. was kinda nervous about opening the big boy up but it wasn’t too bad. i got one that meets sony’s requirements for PS5 shit, should help avoid the “what to delete” dance from happening quite as often.
gee whiz, games are big these days
edit: oh that reminds me, the PS5 by default saves a damn 15 second video for every single trophy you get… this is absurd and really starts clogging up the drive. had to turn that setting off, i mean jeez
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Ok well, it appears you start to play real players in Snap once you complete the first set of cards, and you start playing people who actually have some grasp of how the game works at around level 30. Too bad I’m stuck playing the same set 1 decks because cards unlock completely random and I basically can’t build any good decks until I hit a 6 cost finisher! Cool and fun game design.
Most digital card games are for people who like Hearthstone but fell off at some point, but Snap is funny because it’s so clearly for people who hate Hearthstone and other digital card games. Everything stems from some complaint about lack of variety (random landmarks every game!), lack of interactions (it’s the weird wacky interaction game!), being too hard to make decks (decks are 12 cards!), pay to win (cards are unlocked completely at random and players are siloed vaguely by power level!)
It feels more like a deckbuilding game in play because it’s so low on interaction between players. I’d probably stick with it if you unlocked cards more often because it does take a really long time to stop having really novel board states with any given deck. It’s kind of weird how fucking balls it is to start out as a new player since the game is based so much on interactions between cards and, with the starting cards and random unlocks, you sure can spend a lot of time with no synergy between cards, or really fucking boring synergy between cards (wow if I play this card, this other card gets +2 how fun style shit)
It also really just has terrible voice lines from all the cards, and they never talk to each other, and the skins they are trying to sell you are like, universally awful lol. Apparently people are fucking fiends for the monthly season passes, which I guess probably tides you over the really boring stretches between unlocking shit by giving you tons of shit to unlock but like, I’m not paying $10 for monthly seasons grow up
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beat the gargoyles with solaire’s help and some fireballs… the capra demon wasnt terrible either bc you can block a decent number of his attacks with the heater shield. now for the gape dragon… solaire’s not very strong against this guy!!
my pyro flame is already like +8 and im using both a + 5 rapier and +5 reinforced club… the rapier’s nice bc i can wear armor, carry a heater shield, and lightroll… i still havent put any points in anything but dex (so i could use the rapier and bows the latter of which are obvs very useful in general esp for drawing aggro) im not really bothering til there’s some stat allocation i know i want
im surprised by how not hard of a time im having in general if im doing nothing to hold myself back i guess having played a lot of these in general helps too
playstation 3 worlds most powerful game console…
7 Likes
I think it’s pretty telling that the people I have heard being most positive about Snap are people who have never played CCGs before, and they especially like that it is not pay to win because “you will eventually unlock everything just from playing”
I tried watching videos of it and it doesn’t look like the kind of card game I’d enjoy 
1 Like
Megami Tensei: Neuroheroine 2
Found you can get a battle down to one relatively harmless opponent, then pump MAGIC and STAMINA to ridiculous levels by click-festing SKIP, healing with Pixie as necessary.
Not enjoying the more mazelike quality of the larger second dungeon, I think especially because of the way the game limits your view of the automap to your immediate vicinity. Automap was invented to save the player the time of having to make their own map; crippling the automap–in this game you have to go all the way back to the start of the dungeon and stand on the “M” tile there to see the full automap–is disrespecting the player’s time, and telling them to leave your game and go to a game with a decent automap.
Chain encounters feel like they’re getting worse. ; P
4 Likes
My friend is positive about Snap and he plays a lot of MTG (pre COVID he was going to weekly drafts) It’s kind of just a different thing. Most of the skill is in betting/retreating correctly and successfully identifying what kind of deck your opponent is playing and predicting what they’re likely to do.
There are a lot more interactive cards in the second and third pools of cards. I mostly play a control deck that tries to counter the currently popular archetypes.
It’s definitely grindy but it gets more interesting when you stop playing as many bots and people have cogent strategies.
I don’t think it supplants or replaces a real CCG. Just a fun distraction.
1 Like
Yeah like, it’s honestly a brilliant game and it’s so easy with the retreat mechanic to just have a laugh when the game screws you or your opponent over with the right combination of landmarks.
Interestingly, having retreat be so easy and have such little shame attached to it seems to have the opposite effect that I’d expect. Lots of people will stick around to the end of a game they have zero chance of winning and I can only imagine it’s in the hope of me retreating.
Really frustrating game to get roped in, though, lol
2 Likes
Yeah, better opponents will snap more aggressively or will retreat when an opponent snaps and they have a weak hand.
There are basically only two times it’s strategically sound to retreat:
- it’s the last turn which means losing will cost you double the cubes retreating will
- your opponent just snapped, which means the next turn you’ll ante up double the cubes
If your opponent never snaps, you should always play until the last turn, because it costs you nothing to get more information about what you would have drawn, what your opponent played, etc. The only argument against this would be to “save time”, but I think it makes you a better player to hold out and see how even dire-looking games can flip fortunes.
There’s an interesting tension to snapping: if you snap too early (e.g. for a really strong opening hand) you can still get screwed by the location reveals (or surprised by what your opponent’s deck can do). If you snap when your board is too strong or you’ve shown too much of your plan, good opponents will immediately retreat (be very careful of opponents that stay in this situation; it could mean they have an equally crazy hand). In obviously strong positions, it’s better not to snap, because at least then the opponent might play out the final turn and you’ll get 2 cubes instead of 1 when you win.
The ideal time to snap is somewhere in the middle – you want to snap when it’s clear you have a strong series of plays, but there’s enough information hidden from your opponent that they don’t know that yet.
The betting also affects deck building – decks that rely on strong cards that hit turn 3, 4, or 5 may have a high win-rate, but they have a relatively low “cube rate”. The problem is that it’s very obvious to your opponent when you have a strong position with one of those decks, so you rarely see the last turn play out (or when you DO see the last turn play out, it’s because your opponent has the counter in their hand that they waited to play turn 6).
Likewise if it’s obvious from your archetype what you’re going to play turn 6, you will also get a lot of retreats from opponents that do the math and figure out they can’t win.
Off-meta decks tend to have better cube rates for me because it’s much harder for your opponent to predict what you’re going to play, which means getting to the last turn much more often. Surprise is a very powerful tool in this game.
3 Likes
Marvel Snap is perfectly done super hero themed math betting you can do on the toilet
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i really do think designing these games with fast travel built in made them a little less good… pls let me make my own resident evil mansion paths and courses thru the areas. i could draw a diagram of the first few areas in dark souls or like the disc 1 buildings of mgs from memory i feel like… ig thats another thing i dont love about mgs3 and 4 i liked that 1 and 2 had these sort of central locations
why do i suspect stranger of paradise is good hmm
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based on the few hours i played i would say that stranger of paradise, while it does own a lot, is not good or particularly fun and doesn’t scratch any of the itches that the above games do. also it only has fast travel between levels/missions.
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i don’t know about this last line but strongly agree otherwise
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Citizen Sleeper would be a lot better if it committed to either being the visual novel it clearly wants to be or a management simulator with a UI that isn’t aesthetically displeasing. Nice portrait art though.
Verdict Day is a dramatic improvement on V-anilla in every way such as punchier missions that don’t take 20 minutes to complete and double downing on how heavy all the suits feels in a way 4 and 4A didn’t even try to do (IDK if i’d call it my fav over 4A since they’re two sides of a deviation/culmination coin but this was definitely a better note to end on). My favourite part was after each CORE gameplay mission you get a results card listing how much money you get for destabilising a third world nation of all their resources then you’re treated to a nice little biography of the pilots you fought, all of their interests, their background, their history of service before a final line at the end saying they were killed in combat. Lovely little detail that I appreciate as someone who thinks From Soft Storytelling is always the least interesting part of their games.
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Played Sonic 2006 for the first time and got a game over on the first level
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did you happen to save before the first level? because, uh,
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I did not
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Hunkerin’ down with the PS2 for a while, veering off course (ICO or Steambot Chronicles) post-Disaster Report to give Poinie’s Poin a shot and WHOA what a pleasant surprise! Pretty sure I heard about this from @HOBO’s post in one of the the SB Votes SB’s Top Games threads so thanks @HOBO! Knew I was in for a treat right from the title screen with its extending duck head selector thing and the insanely catchy theme song (killer tunes all around)
A game asking how old you are is whatever but…
…it hits different when it’s such a children’s- -
EXCUSE ME!? For some reason I was under the impression this was like based on a Japanese kid’s TV program but no it’s its own thing and comes with full English translation and VO!? The duck who gets stuck to your tail is 100% doing a Cartman impression. He’s there to help you use poins, which are like floating jellies that come in red (angry) blue (sad) and yellow (happy). You can pick them up and throw them or hold them to glide or jump on them but mostly throw them at characters to manipulate their moods to your own ends like this thing I made happy with a yellow poin, it celebrated so hard it knocked over this giant flower pot where this lil critter’s hanging out underneath and does nothing, it’s just there like “WTF WHY!?”, nice!
My shitty phone pics of the CRT do a disservice to the game’s Trolli™ infused polys
This is the PetitGang
I got a bunch of creatures so hopped up on happiness they pushed their car of a cliff (thrice) to defeat them but we become friends eventually, sick squash and stretch
THIS GAME is my ice cream!
And my sticky boogers!!
27 Likes
Star Wars: Jedi Order (PS5) - playing this on Jedi Grand Master difficulty. this version has a toggle for 30 or 60 fps, but looks pretty good either way. However, there is a frame of texture/shader pop-in on nearly every scene change that is kind of distracting. First few levels are enjoyable enough, but there’s very little original going on here — everything you encounter is some amalgamation of Uncharted + Dark Souls, basically. Still, it plays pretty well and deflecting blaster shots back at stormtroopers hasn’t gotten old yet
Hotshot Racing (PS4) - the exception that proves the rule re: “they don’t make games like this anymore”. Unimpeachable arcade racing. Worthy successor to Hard Drivin’, Virtua Racing, and Daytona USA.
Enter the Gungeon (PS4) - never played this before. very enjoyable, especially on local co-op
Mahjong (PS4) - barebones version of Activision’s Shanghai. music is chill at least. No option to zoom in, very few features, all puzzles except the classic shape are locked on a fresh save file for some reason. Only here to fill the Shanghai niche for Sony, but it’s at least better than the shit on Microsoft’s App Store
Steep (PS4) - engine seems good, graphics are pretty, but the metastructure seems catastrophically bad 
Gravity Rush Remastered (PS4) - pretty enjoyable so far, but the movement feels less impressive than it could after being exposed to Miles Morales
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Yeah, I got this on my PC a while ago and it just has that great Sumo drifting feel to everything.
2 Likes