I omitted the part about the UI because I like the UI but I am feeling this part in the late game. I really liked the management stuff in the early game because it was genuinely putting pressures on me to choose the stuff I was most inclined to do with my limited time and resources. Near midgame it became clear that if I balanced everything just so that I could continue playing indefinitely as long as nothing bad happened - it gave me the sense that something bad was going to happen though, so there was tension.
Now it’s just busywork and I have functionally unlimited resources, and could absorb anything bad they threw at me barring total disaster. And even then, I have seven of the game’s most important resource, so I could come back from anything other than being shot directly in the face.
Honestly it undercuts the themes of the game quite a bit to be basically middle class with no debt, and having done it by pulling directly on my bootstraps. That’s my biggest criticism of the game, but it’s a pretty big one.
I think this would be better as a game designed for multiple runs to get multiple endings, with some mechanic to speed up the first 25% of the game after your first attempt. Managing the resources is an interesting thing to do, and each path takes fairly significant resources to complete, so having a straight-up “you’re done now” kind of ending, then restarting with different goals in mind would be much cleaner.
I’d be kinder to the UI if my TV’s overscan didn’t obscure two of the game’s most important controls, never mind scrolling back and forth between identical markers which I have a hard time reading even a charitable artistic statement into. Funniest thing is I agreed with your last paragraph and saw all the guides encourage you to go through the whole game again anyway? I already have REAL capitalism eating up my free time!
Yeah I don’t mind that the food places all have the same icon but like, important characters sharing icons with like, a random space that lets you sell widgets and scrap? what the hell?
Game is a solid 8/10 but it really lets the premise down eventually and scrolling back and forth on the wheel is pretty meaningless after a while.
I gotta finish it then do a big writeup. It still made me cry twice so
And I still have some photos of the box on twitter, it’s so fucking sick, that cover is die cut – can’t think of another PS2 game off the top of my head that does that – and the manual is actually a fake newspaper? All about poin? And the dangers of?
I have posted this all before YES but I don’t care I get so excited whenever anyone else touches poin, it’s so nice to no longer be alone!!
Otostaz was another $10 Asian special that’s worth messing around with, that’s another game I pretended to like way more than I actually did. One of my favorite hobbies!!
In Citizen Sleeper I misread a choice and accidentally triggered an ending and credit sequence that was really good, actually, but then it let me resume the game and I was like “maybe I won’t bother, let’s just end it like that.” Maybe its DLC is cool, I was intending to go back to it once its all released, but I was satisfied with what I got and feel like whatever happens after that might undercut things, would probably benefit from more Hard Moral Choices (aka not letting you do quite so much during one playthrough) yeah
I started Star Ocean the Divine Force. I like the VA, but I feel like I’m violating an old rule. Only play games you enjoy for more than just their visual appeal or music/sound. You can look at/listen to them for free.
It is incredibly breezy for a JRPG, the characters just deliver their dialogue, highlight a goal and move there. The combat and traversal are a little undercooked but it’s ok as an adventure.
Chose to play as the princess of a planet that has not made first contact with space-faring people yet. She meets a literal extra-terrestrial alien, but they don’t seem too bothered by it after intros are out of the way. The implications of first contact haven’t factored into the broader plot yet, and I’m not confident they will matter that much ultimately.
Our main goal is trying to find our friends and build the party and there’s some kinda empire hanging around in the background. Both a home planet empire and a space empire, so like twice as much empire.
Mostly just like it as a voice acting delivery system so far.
Checked my protagonist choice, and it turns out I’m blocked out from getting the party member I was looking forward to on this route. My motivation to continue playing has almost completely drained.
This bothered me too! I intended to do more but accidentally triggered and ending and watched the credits but then it kept my save file just before the decision was made but locked everything ELSE so I could either do my actions again and rewatch that ending or… stop playing? Very odd.
i killed the gaping dragon… i wasnt bothering with human form bc solaire seemed so ineffectual against it just getting run over like a dumbass it’s actually a very easy fight if you just hang out by its hind legs.
edit:
now im down in blighttown after taking a detour in the basement garden or whatever to kill the butterfly and havel. i know ive said this but like… its so cool how this game is structured around what is basically a single castle and its grounds it’s already kind of an “open world” in the same sense dead rising is… that world just happens to be a single location instead of a fascimile of a city or whatever.
after killing the butterfly (very easy cant dodge fireballs) i had enough for the bellowing dragon ring so im really fucking killing stuff with fireballs i also lvld up twice for an attunement slots so i have a lot to throw. havels ring lets me carry my big spike bat and a sturdy shield and a bow and light armor all at once and still do lightrolls tho i guess they dont actually feel Necessary.
ive been favoring the spiked bat bc it seems a little more evil and has bleed so its at +7 or 8 now i cant remember. poor bb wears a sack on her head when shes hollow.
as much as the depths to blighttown Makes Sense this is in essence one of the most infamously arduous sewer levels of all time and im not entirely enamored with it or its placement so early on ig…
Forspoken Demo (PS5) - weird game. There is something very “off” about this. Performance mode is a must, feels laggy on the other modes. The combat is really fun at least, but the demo is very unclear about what is going on. Not much plot going on here. The world map is pretty boring so far. I enjoy it but would not spend 70 USD on this
edit: the talking cuff thing’s voice comes out of the speakers and the controller at the same time… it sounds weird and bad lol
it’s like a new console tech demo that’s shipping 27 months late. fun to look at but not good
also, it has the same problem as jedi fallen order, that the protagonist looks if anything too closely modelled on like, a wealthy gen z child actor, which is both surreal and unpleasant
So I finished up Infini and am pretty sure I 100% completed it (had to look up some help for how to get a few of the collectible baubles that unlock story bits and extra stages) so it’s probably time to talk about it.
…It’s weird and I desperately wish that my screenshot program worked with it as the store page leaves a bit to be desired compared to what the actual game offers.
The game itself is a puzzle game where you goal is to lead Hope to the stage’s exit portal. The main gimmick these stages are built around is screen wrapping, where if you go off the bottom of the screen you will appear at the same point at the top, same for the left and right sides of the screen. Like most initial puzzle concepts this seems fairly straightforward at first with only a few ways to spice it up, but Infini has a few twists up its sleeve that transform it into something markedly more devious. Like many games it generally gives you one new one for each set of stages, but the biggest one in its playbook is the ability to affect how zoomed in your view is. Initially you can only pull the view out further but eventually you can pull it both in or out and that’s where the game shines while also bearing its teeth.
The reason this is so is rather simple: you can only screen wrap if you have matching points on either side of the screen clear and available to you. If you are on the middle of a maze with walls all around you you can’t do this… but if you pull the view so close that only the wall above you is still on screen you can go off the bottom of the screen and appear on the other side of said wall. Now add in that depending on your location on the screen/in the stage the pull in or out of the zoom changes in small but significant ways and the possibilities now become much more complicated. It becomes as much about seeing the possibilities of the space you are given as anything else, and when you are given further complications like being able to rotate the screen in any of the three other directions (which affects how much of the screen can be visible when you pan out, the view is wider than it is tall) it can become very difficult. I had to work very hard on this once it got to the last couple sections.
The game itself is only part of the package though, the presentation is what most readily sticks out. Many games are surreal but often they are not particularly considered in regards to it, often odd for the sake of oddness. While this is odd it is aesthetically consistent throughout, created at the hands of someone who had a vision and ideas as to how to achieve it. The music is also… let’s say atypical, but fitting given what the rest is working towards. The narrative is a lot, honestly a bit more than I could completely follow with you playing as Hope and other ideas such as Poetry, Infinity, War, Time and others appearing as characters. I got most of the big picture stuff on the main literal level, but thematically less so.
It is good to play a game with a legitimately unique spin on things, I’m not saying this is definitely the very first puzzle game to play like this but I can’t name another. It’s also good to play a game with a fairly unique set of central mechanics where it feels fully explored, and Infini does so here with a few late-game shifts that get really into how much one can do with what is here. I feel bad as that all the above makes this is a niche game even in a community like SB which is open to a more eclectic set of options, yet this is also a place that’d be more likely to appreciate what is being done presentation-wise. There is a demo but while that gives a good peak at the presentation it only really scratches the surface mechanically, and it is not a game that lends itself to LP viewing at all. Something can both be solid and leave one wondering how much of an audience there is for it, and I worry this may be one of those.
If your computer is fast enough you could probably use OBS or some other video capture program to record the gameplay, then take screen grabs from the video.
Against the Storm is unbelievably good. Single player RTS with all the combat removed… it’s just economy macro. JUST the economy macro. My god.
When I was a kid I played RTSes this way because this is the kind of game I wished they were. Finally, I have my desire!!! I have played a truly disgusting amount of this game over the last week and I am not bored yet. The progression is pretty dang impressive… you slowly unlock meaningfully complex new upgrades and features over time, and every set of 3-6 cities you play is part of a cycle that builds on itself and resets. You place your cities on an overworld map, and each one clears some fog of war that allows you to see other regions and other secrets, but the map eventually resets and you have to go again. Brilliant.
There’s a lot of randomization in this game which is why I think it’s listed as a roguelike on steam??? I wouldn’t call it a roguelike but I can understand why they do (marketing). It’s just like, single player RTS matches with the AI opponent and all combat removed. Instead you are managing meters and numbers and little buildings that make planks and cabbages all day. Turns out this is all I wanted from videogames when I was 10 and failing to succeed at Age of Empires!!
oh no this sounds great. this is why i always have like , way too much wheat in minecraft. i did this in core keeper too until food was trivially available. i think i also broke citizen sleeper early because i was too focused on the resources lol
1 - immortality (sam barlow unbeaten)
2 - god of war ragnarok (sorry to everyone who was unimpressed by this, I actually adore the fullness of the scope and the ensemble)
3 - elden ring
4 - norco (strongest adventure game in a year of strong adventure games)
5 - splitgate (I can’t tell if 2022 was officially full release or EOL, but I played it in 2022 so there)
6 - teardown (this finally got a full release, I think it was on my 2021 list though; if illegal please substitute for BG3 which I thought finally got good last year)
7 - hyper demon (as with adventure games, this was a very good year for abstract FPSes)
8 - neon white (there’s been a weird backlash against the heightened tone of this and I think it’s dumb)
9 - pentiment
10 (tie) - drainus / rollerdrome, both very good and focused homages
