I have a craving to dig into a Big Expensive Game this long weekend but I’m pretty sure I’d be disappointed if I went with one I’ve passed over already for good reason, like say Halo Infinite. It’s an unfortunate coincidence that the two big games I was planning to play this year, Horizon Forbidden West and Elden Ring, are going to come out one week apart from each other in February, while I might feel starved the rest of the year.
I’m thinking the smart plan here is for me to play Elden Ring when it comes out to participate in the community enthusiasm, and then to play Horizon Forbidden West after I’ve recovered later in the year (since nobody I know cares about it, that’s going to be a solitary experience that will feel the same even played on a delay).
For this weekend I’m thinking I’ll do the exact opposite and spend an evening on an RPGMaker game that’s been on my list, Flesh, Blood and Concrete
had a very similar thought process the other day but with Elden Ring and Triangle Strategy. I guess they should move those release calendars up a little bit
also speaking of the long weekend a fun thing I have noticed about working remotely for a US company is that even though they provide sliiightly different holiday schedules worldwide, in practice you can just take every country’s holidays off and no one notices
Actraiser Renaissance looks gorgeous, we could get more commercial games that look like Getting Over It
The added RTS segments are not great but they work. No particular part of the original game was that great in the first place, they just coalesced into a breezy fun package. That’s where Renaissance falters though. By padding the length without making significant changes, the game feels a lot more like a slog, and its very rigid, repetitive structure is all the more apparent and feels all the more artificial. Anytime a villager talks I’m like « oh that’s the pre-monster sealing talk » or « that’s probably going to be the special character introduction » or « resource related quest »
The whole thing feels like filler
Also this game has the most polite monsters because they always wait until you’re ready to invade
I finally played a game of The Silver Bayonet. So many great moments… My tactician facing down wolves with pistols akimbo. My dhamphir shooting down a group of wolves with his volley gun. A lot of wolves!
played kylie minogue - breathe(1998).mp3, it starts pretty quietly but the third scene (which you can access at any point) is one of the more mysteriously compelling vgame experiences i’ve had in a while. some other good short things on the same acct of which my favourite was probably convent garden study which simulates texture in a fun way
played some Tetris Effect in VR mode and wow, Tetris plays pretty bad on the Oculus Quest 2 analog sticks, given they bound “up” to dropping pieces and it doesn’t seem to support remapping in VR mode
There is so much god damn writing in Disco Elysium. This is Planescape Torment levels of writing. I don’t believe these people can ever make another videogame, they wrote everything interesting they could possibly have to say already
Jess played had a PC RPG kick after Disco Elysium and went through Fallout and Planescape Torment and it was immediately clear that Planescape is rendered completely irrelevant now.
it’s just so D&D and selfserious – I always thought its reputation preceded it largely because it’s a really obtuse genre work to begin with and as often as not it’s taken to be this standard bearer for game writing that has gotten way, way broader since.
it’s great but I still think its sequel is at least as interesting and it’s telling of its particular place in the canon that no one cares.
disco elysium on the other hand is probably competitive with and as richly informed by the best post-soviet literature I’ve read
yeah the Hive makes a pretty incredible first impression in terms of how it’s scoped, there wasn’t really anything like it for a long time. one of my favourite things about P:T that I only noticed on repeated playthroughs is that the pacing and the later plot beats all work in exact proportion to how much time you spend getting lost and immersing yourself in the Hive in the very early game; a walkthrough spoils it.
you could say the same thing of Original Sin’s starting town though and it has way more fun combat!
playing the Resident Evil PC HD remaster has continued to really stress me out so much that i’m taking a break from playing it for two puzzle games -
Mirror Drop is a colorful 3d puzzle game Bennett Foddy has glowingly praised multiple times, and it’s… fine. it’s got a cool demo-scene style visuals and is a nice thing to vibe to while you’re doing puzzles, but i haven’t found it to be some mind-bending masterpiece or whatever. still some good ideas and fun though and it’s pretty cheap on Steam, so worth picking up if you like those sorts of games esp when it goes on sale. i think i would probably have this reaction less if i hadn’t been given such high expectations from Bennett’s endorsement.
Bonfire Peaks is a very obvious Stephen’s Sausage Roll clone from the last year. but it’s a clone in a very positive sense - it’s clearly had a lot of work put into it and seems like a pretty lengthy and substantial game. music and visuals are pretty nice too. i’d say it feels more beginner friendly than Stephen’s Sausage Roll though not sure if it’s going to take you to anywhere that game hasn’t. but the design is still really well considered and almost up to the quality of SSR if not quite. so yeah definitely recommended esp whenever it goes on sale.
it helps that mirror drop looks absolutely fantastic on a high end GPU – it’s a really neat game regardless but when the hook is that you’re seeing infinity in every level it comes on a lot stronger.
i mean my computer is pretty good (i have an RTX card) so yeah it looks pretty good. i dunno, yeah the visuals are cool i guess. it’s still just a pretty straightforward (albeit pretty good) puzzle game at the end of the day so i guess i’m not fully seeing what other people are seeing. but i def agree that it’s still a worthwhile experience.
also it’s kind of bullshit that P:T virtually forces you to play a mage when the only really good mage daggers you can equip require you to be lawful good or chaotic evil even though you have to do a bunch of solo melee out of nowhere at the end of the game and you’ll just sort of pointlessly suck otherwise
