Making the map your colour continues to be one of the simple pleasures of gaming. I was really ??? when I noticed getting a splattering of duchies in the HRE but I guess their former ruler abdicated and one of my vassals inherited the territories through some kind of marriage lines. I’m just thankful the kaiser has not decided to declare war on me over it.
8 Likes
this arrived yesterday
initial impressions of the first two games of Season 1 are:
the surfing game, Whitewater Wipeout, uses the crank to turn and is kind of fun but borders on unplayable. like i would have to be really dedicated to wanting to learn the skill of turning the crank (but also hitting the dpad sometimes? it’s not clear what that does, but they sometimes tell you to do that), and that will probably just happen over time since i bought this thing and have to wait for the rest of the season to unlock. reserving judgment until i’m better at it.
Casual Birder is very charming. a guy i used to book a lot, Maxo, did the music and sound effects and they are appropriately very charming and breezy and nice. the game itself feels like it’s crafted for someone slightly more twee than i - someone who has fond memories of Pokémon, perhaps. there’s a little more talking to people in it than i’d care for, but the central conceit seems to be you need to photograph’em all (the birds). you do this by using A to bring up your camera, then you point it to where you want with the dpad, and then turn the crank to change focus. it’s nice and pleasant and so far kind of simple, but not in a bad way.
my allergies have been really bad and i feel like crap today so i’m probably not in the best, most focused game playing mood, or like, a good mood in general, so take my criticisms with at least one grain of salt.
i think these two are kind of weird choices to start off the season. like if they were there alongside something else i think it could work, but as of right now it feels very much like an early console release kind of thing. tech demos with fun ideas that project the potential of things to come.
system feels nice to hold and play on, and so far the screen visibility feels pretty nice, even without a back or front light or what have you.
24 Likes
There’s definitely a type of games writing I think of as Narrative Mayo where it’s basically just this vaguely humanistic, lubricating gunk meant to soften the edges of the alarmingly alien game object by applying pre-churned emotional content wherever there’s a void or unknown affect
And for the same reason - I feel like the real tell of whether an rpg maker game is worth actually playing is whether or not the player character is silent? Like ok, some exceptions like jack king spooner games or the barkley demo etc but otherwise… yume nikki, ghosts of aliens, miracles magpie, song of homunculus, ib(?), hylics… silent player character is often the sign the devs were willing to explore the weird rhythms of rpgm for what they are rather than trying to wrangle it into a preestablished shape, even if it meant having the main char always tend towards being an inscrutable probe of tileset valleys
28 Likes
if this were the private part of the forum i’d go on a bit more about this but yes, i agree
7 Likes
The writing in my game is probably terrible, that said I implemented the dialog system myself therefore I get editorial carte blanche
11 Likes
played through digimon cyber sleuth. i got every damn monster you can get without having to go through hacker’s memory as well. it’s not good. it’s not good in any way at all but i wanted all the monsters.
it’s absolutely flat and terrible in its characters, in the story, in dungeon designs, in quest designs and even in the damn combat which makes me want to apologize to pokemon for talking shit.
16 Likes
Is there a good Digimon gaming experience out there somewhere?
Yes, the original Digimon Trading Card Game (it got remade in the 2010s and it’s worse)
there isn’t a single good Digimon video game that I’ve played
3 Likes
I like the official rules song
4 Likes
I mean if you’re doing something in your spare time there’s a lot to be said for just doing whatever you want
2 Likes
Played the first 2-3 hours of Bugsnax today. So far—enjoyable, definitely knows what it is. I like the bugs that all just run around yelling their own names. I like how petty and weird all the NPC characters are. Definitely charming enough that I don’t really care to ask whether it’s particularly mechanically interesting
digimon world next order isn’t exactly good, but it is kind of interesting
after the recent kunio/dd talk, i loaded up the collection and played the first two matches of go go! nekketsu hockey club slip-and-slide madness. these two were incredibly easy, but i had fun. i assume the difficulty will gradually increase in the usual sports game manner until i’m playing against unstoppable hockey gods. i made a save state, so i’ll find out eventually.
2 Likes
time for the one time a year when I get into playing abandonware and today it’s Al Uncer Jr Racing, which I played on the Mac as a child, but is frustratingly hard to get working being a Windows 93/95 game
2 Likes
i called this without having played it like 2 decades ago
when we lived in san jose for a short time we went to kumon a bunch and one of the things we could purchase with the kumon dollars we earned was a starter set of the digimon tcg and i always wanted it but never managed to have enough to buy it 
1 Like
I have played a lot of No Man’s Sky over the last week because I FINALLY was able to catch one of their time-limited “expeditions” before it expired. It’s delightful! Why don’t these run constantly!! I understand there is probably some good reason for this but if the reason is “fomo content design” then I scorn it. This feature should be turned on all the time. Forcing you to start a new save and cycling the actual missions and objectives and themes seems great, whatever, but it’s wild that it took me over a year to get my act together and actually play one of them.
5 Likes
This topic was automatically closed after reaching the maximum limit of 2000 replies. Continue discussion at Games You Played Today ver.1.22474487139… (Part 4).