God that last case in Apollo Justice is so fucking good. I don’t know how (or I guess if, given several games have come out since then) they’ll top that one.
And I doubt they’ll ever top this dude, the most incredibly animated character yet.
19 Likes
sorry pal it’s all downhill from here.
5 Likes
I was afraid of that 
We must be looking for something different out of this series’s aesthetics because I find witnesses who play it relatively straight way funnier
1 Like
What can I say, I’m just a sucker for those juicy freakout animations.
Though I think Spark Brushel’s whole thing just speaks to me. A lot of characters in this series, but this dude is just such a perfect synthesis of personality and design. Lovably grotesque. Can’t get enough of him.
1 Like
Dual Destinies was like, frustratingly bad. Like pretending to run out of ideas so just needlessly escalating the scale and grandiosity but giving little care to character motives or weaving together the circumstantial plot contrivances into something believable
And having three protagonists was just fanservice. I hated playing as Athena, I had trouble connecting her betazoid powers to actual evidence. Like, in JFA phoenix has the magatama bullshit, but that just felt like an anime abstraction of a lawyer trying to break someone’s barriers down for a testimony. Athena however just has you play simon says and if you press the right button you get a new piece of testimony
Also there’s like a 6 year gap between me playing the original trilogy and Dual Destinies so I might just be biased on my Phoenix Wright nostalgia but idk the quality of writing in the fifth game just felt worse based on my memory
3 Likes
Still playing Mario Kaizo hacks, among other things. I’ve finally gotten to the point where I feel comfortable enough with the controls that I’m not constantly thinking about them, which helps me get into flows better.
I made a little video with commentary showing off the first few sections of Mario and Luigi Go to White Castle. You will see a lot of deaths because I’m still not super good at this game, and it’s definitely harder while you’re talking. I apologize for the cough throughout the video 
Hopefully this shows off the level of polish and creativity that goes into these hacks that not that many people play!
I’m definitely getting better though. Each of these sections took me a minimum of like 30 minutes to get through the first time.
12 Likes
You aren’t wrong. Six is even worse as they get to the point “the only solution is to make everyone an idiot.” They rely even more on Athena’s You say you are happy, but my magic power says you are actually SAD!"
I felt miserable playing through 5, and finally came to my senses and stopped on case 3 of Six in the country with no lawyers where I had to be a lawyer to something something.
Folks seem to be enjoying those Great Attorney games though!
2 Likes
It, uh, depends on your notion of reality. Sherlock himself in particular deliberately delves in steampunk territory. That being said the GAA games are awesome, although the first game is a bit frustrating because it sets up many mysteries that are only solved in the sequel.
1 Like
played space quest: 2099. it’s free.
the steam page describes it as a solo dev’s procrastination from doing math in high school and i believe it. it’s specifically an homage to the elite force videogames, except with goofy fmv shots. seems like a silly hobby project.
it’s not good for a bunch of reasons. the only way to play solo is to start a co-op server and play on it, and if you die it boots you back to the main menu. the combat and movement is the absolute most basic idea of an FPS, so pretty boring. funnily, you can’t headshot enemies, as there is no head hitbox.
i didn’t get very far due to the co-op thing mentioned above, but i always love watching green screen of guys in videogames. the AVGN episode where he plays sonic 06 and is constantly doing greenscreen bits lives in my brain snakes. so it charmed me
3 Likes
I am surprisingly far into The Last of Us Part 2 and yet don’t feel like I am closing in on the ending. I’ve managed to sort out my issues with encounters to the point that they aren’t nearly as much of a hassle any longer but as clever as the… thing near the middle (I hope it’s at least near the middle) is I’m not sure the game has enough “momentum” to carry it through an essentially doubled length.
3 Likes
Yeah it shares the same major failing of Uncharted 4 in that it’s about twice as long as it should be, and most of that extra length is just padded out with locked doors that you have to find the long way around etc
2 Likes
It to me feels just like this really weirdly unsophisticated writing move to have the second half of TLOU2 to basically be a lock-step parallel story with the first half. Like I thought it really deflated the tension to basically have a 12-15 hour flashback in the way of seeing what develops. That game was paced weird and way, way too long.
3 Likes
At least in the back half you get to play as the better protagonist 
But yeah, that game is too damn long for its own good. Even when it feels like it hits what feels like the right stopping point, it keeps going. There’s a story they wanna tell, and they drag ya kicking and screaming through it.
I will say, the last section of game scared the shit out of me in a way I never expected, with the Stalker infected that sneak up on Ellie in broad daylight.
At the risk of overdoing it, I fired up Miles Edgeworth Investigations and…damn I dunno if I’m feeling this sorta adventure game-y thing it’s doing. Especially when a lot of the investigating just pulls you into the same old Ace Attorney “poke around at this image and find clues” stuff as before. Feels less like meaningful change and more like unnecessary layers of abstraction to differentiate it.
Also, even though the first case in every game is a “gimme” with pretty obvious clues (save Apollo Justice, which seems to trust the player to work for it, even if it holds your hand through it), this one…I dunno! It’s too obvious. It’s just, not good. Maybe it’s good by the end of the case, but as a first impression, it ain’t great.
I guess I do kinda like the little full body pixel characters, though. It was fun seeing Payne off to the side.
4 Likes
at some point, I bought and played 4 Goddesses Online, which is a Neptunia game, on the basis that it is a Tamsoft action game
it is a Tamsoft action game, all of their shit is the same, except this has vague MMO trappings so it’s also an action RPG with light loot collection but it also came out during the time when everyone was fucking the Monhun design document so there’s a list of quests and nonsense and you have to get boss drops to do shit
it’s okay, I’ll play that garbage all day long
2 Likes
TLOU2 repeats one of Nier’s big missteps but even worse.
2 Likes
My Anbernic 351V arrived earlier this week so I am playing Faxanadu, arguably either one of the best or worst games for the NES depending on who you ask. I recently replayed Hollow Knight and found it to be, honestly, just not as great as I remembered—Dark Souls really cast a spell on all of video games between about the years of 2012 and 2018. Weirdly, Faxandu probably has a lot more in common with the Souls games than any of the triple-I platformers directly inspired by it
17 Likes
oh damn this is good
8 Likes
I’ve always found replays of metroidvanias have to be speedruns or another type of challenge run to be satisfying. The rewarding aspect is discovery the first time and solving the puzzle of routing the next times.
Hollow Knight doesn’t have complex enough movement options for a brisk I-know-where-I’m-going playstyle to add anything to the experience, so that might account for some of your disappointment. Similarly, I’m the resident fan of Environmental Station Alpha around here, but even I have to admit the early part of the game where you don’t have dash or grappling hook yet has been really tedious when I’ve revisited the game.
(I find interesting to note that NES Metroid grasped this property of the genre as it was inventing it. It was the only one of Nintendo’s early games that gave you a different ending based on time.)
8 Likes
I liked Hollow Knight cos I like 2D sprites and bugs and there aren’t enough bug games. I enjoyed it enough but when it blew up and became everyone’s favourite game I was kinda bemused.
2 Likes