Games You Played Today ver.1.22474487139...

King of Posters
1208

I played Satisfactory and lemme tell ya: I would rather play Factorio by far.

I like the idea of Factorio, but 3D. I really do. But in practice it’s way more navigation than I care to do. Just a lot of walking around, jumping, holding shift to run, trying to remember where the hell my copper mine is, etc. It feels like this extra layer on top of the Factory part distracts me from the goals of automation.

Even with that I think I’d be into it except the menus in this game are godawful. There should be a hotkey for attaching a power line to stuff rather than having to go

Q → Click Power Tab → Click Power Line

There should be a quick bar that lets you switch what’s in your hand instead of

Tab → Find item you want to use → Drag it over to your hand → Tab to close

Like, if I’m in the middle of trying to kill an innocent animal (that just happens to be a mastiff-sized armadillo that’s running straight for me) I don’t really want to do that to switch over to my stun gun, y’know?

Everything is a specific hotkey to open a menu then multiple clicks to make that thing happen. I hate it.

Even beyond that, the progression is so fucking slow. Like, the early stages of Factorio take a while but you at least start with, uh, conveyor belts?? I had to go through 5 main base upgrades before getting conveyor belts. And yes, that’s the tutorial but it doesn’t really teach you how to use the conveyor belts or really automate anything anyway? It’s mostly just a tutorial on how to manually craft materials and use them to progress though the game. It’s building really bad habits!! You should be automating everything all the time!!!

It’s pretty, and the music is really nice. I suspect that it’s a perfectly fine game if you want to have a fairly chill time. But it turns out that if I’m playing a game about strip-mining a planet and murdering all its wildlife, I want it to be ugly, mean, and efficient.

7 Likes
1209

I’ll definitely post more about it! I have decided to start playing it after it’s come out on the Switch, it feels suited for it.
The style and some feelings make me think immediately of a niche adventure game from the '90s, Dreamweb (which, nowadays, can be played on Scummvm and is still interesting).

1 Like
1210

It’s also missing all the higher level automation stuff from factorio, no such thing as recording templates and having an army of drones lay down entire factory districts for you, still gonna have to do it all by hand. Also the train comes in super late, while in factorio it’s one of the best parts. The auto driving tucks are fun but not nearly on the same level as factorio trains.

1 Like
1211

glad I’m stopping now honestly

1212

Okay yeah learning that the world is handcrafted and NOT procedurally generated makes this make a lot more sense:

Seems like this is more of an adventure game with a super elaborate crafting system, rather than the systems-oriented simulationism of Factorio. More of a “Not for me” design vs. a “Bad” design.

I still take issue with the dang menus though

1213

You’d think so but then all their advertising features megafactories so I do think they tried to transcribe Factorio in 3D but didn’t really think it through. Also as an adventure game with super elaborate crafting it isn’t very good either.

2 Likes
1214

image

i got press ganged into joining the militia after teaching everyone how to use the ballista and now im in a special discord and we got KUDOS BY A GM IN AN OFFICIAL ROLEPLAY

mind over splatter log

i have never got attention like this in gemstone fuck! fuck!!

scroll down to knuckleheads commendation. WE HAVE A CIVILIAN PROTECTION GROUP CALLED THE KNUCKLEHEADS BECAUSE OF AZUMANGA DIAOH IM TOMO AND VERONICA IS OSAKA

10 Likes
1215

It has great atmosphere and very beautiful light effects. The problem is that it can get very tedious because of its game loop, based on day-night alternance (during night you need to get back to your shelter, barricade yourself, turn on the generator in order to switch on the lights, be prepared to face some shadows and monsters); in order to progress (as well as survive) you need to craft many things with the sparce resources. Combat is slow and somehow imprecise by design, which could actually work for some people, but the heavy combination of requiring crafting, need to go scavenging and such, turned me off. Eventually, after blasting myself while trying to throw my only molotov to an area full of works in order to free the passage… and after noticing i didnt have enough material to build another one, I decided to quit the game. I had played through 3 hours by that time. I would have preferred mechanics closer to those of a light adventure game or rpg, but other people might stand the survival-crafting combination.

1 Like
1216

sister dragged me back into fortnite cause they turned off building for this season, so now it’s open season on all suckheads. had so many 1st place victories turned into 2nd place ones cause people throw up a bunch of walls when the fight starts to go poorly for them.

in the last season when you first start the game you wake up on a beach and dwayne the rock johnson explains to you that you have to bring down the “imagined order”

8 Likes
1217

Spyro Remastered is 33 GB of comfort food and I think that’s too much space on my hard drive. Sonic Adventure only takes like, 3 gigs or something. Looks fantastic though.

It does remind me that games used to be weirder, even when they were trying to be milquetoast and accessible. An early level blocks off access to a significant portion of it behind a really weird jump where you have to go to a high spot, then fly around a corner and barely land on the top of a wall.

I would sit any child in front of this honestly, it would poison their brain probably.

Book of Demons is an extremely clever take on Diablo, but it’s too neat for me. It basically simplifies the dungeon down to a branching path, combat is sorta-kinda automated but with little hand-eye coordination checks for good measure, and equipment + spells + passive effects are all merged into a single (again, extremely clever) card-based system. It has random loot but not randomized loot, so there’s only so many cards one can receive. It lets you decide how long your session will be beforehand so you always get a clear beginning and ending point even if you only have like 10 minutes. I respect it a lot!

But it has no charm. If I’d never played Diablo I might be into this but I have played Diablo, unfortunately for them.

Notably, it’s supposed to be a part of a collection called “Return 2 Games”, which is 7 games all “inspired” by older PC games, but remade in this interesting streamlined style + papercraft. So far this is the only one. It came out in 2017.

Like, they were so confident in this that you have to launch into the “Return 2 Games” menu first where it shows you 7 lecterns, only 2 of which have books on them. One of them is Book of Demons. One of them is Book of Aliens, an “upcoming” game that’s basically this but Xcom. You can wishlist it.

Absolutely incredible ambition, I love it but it’s extremely overreaching.

11 Likes
1218

How can I play this on my switch without anyone on my friends list knowing that I tried it?

6 Likes
1219

They should make a version of Fortnight with online UI presentation that makes it look like a Souls game or something like they made those “serious adult novel” looking covers for the Harry Potter books.

4 Likes
1220

Don’t worry the shooting isn’t good either

2 Likes
1221

XMorph Defense is another pretty good game that made me feel nothing. It’s a hybrid between tower defense and twin stick shooter and it does both of those pretty well and blends them together pretty well too? And it really nails the like, mid-aughts over-the-top “we have good looking 3D now what do we do with it???” aesthetic of the Xbox 360 period, but with more Modern Shit and Explosions and Physics

And it’s not even boring!! It required thought and understanding of the mechanics. But I just felt nothing.

I’m going to try it on a much higher difficulty and see if that helps. I think it would also be really fun in co-op, maybe?

3 Likes
1222

the saturn port of elevator action returns doesn’t seem to add any features, besides a violence option, with the settings normal and hard. hard makes it so that splatters/pools of blood don’t disappear

i wanted to screenshot the image gallery in the saturn port of gunbird, but selecting it in yabasanshiro makes the emulator just quit to the saturn’s cd player.

5 Likes
1223

I will once again recommend Synthetik for a game with that aesthetic which is actually really fun. Also Assault Android Cactus but you probably already played that one

1 Like
1224

how could someone on this forum not have played :cactus: with assholes like me around

4 Likes
1225

AAC murders my thumbs

1226

Just wanted to dump a bunch of text about the Taito Egret II Mini to be the resident lurker+Taito weirdo who bought the big dumb collectors set though honestly I think the main draw for folks in an environment where MAME runs all of the included games would be the controllers. I haven’t owned an arcade stick in forever and this one feel nice, though my main complaint is really that the plastic base is too small for my arms to rest comfortably on it. I still have used d-pads way more throughout my video game consuming life and never can really get to a point where I feel like I’m moving around with just as much ease on a stick versus the pad.

The pad is nice and though I’ve read it described as “mushy” compared to the Astro City Mini’s (really nice) pad I feel that it’s comfy enough for me.

The trackball/spinner feels nice and like a substantial, weighted piece of kit. The spinner has some resistance added to it that you don’t get in, say, the home version Arkanoid paddle controllers that may put some off. There are Japanese Twitter people who have modded the knob with, like, rolls of tape or opened up the controller and taped down pieces of the assembly to lower sensitivity to get it to their liking. So I get the impression that as someone who never played many games with that input method it may take some tweaking to get it how you want. The in-game menus have dip switch and sensitivity settings but I imagine you can also get to a passable state in MAME (which seems to recognize the spinner as a mousewheel).

I was mainly interested in this “paddle and trackball” 10 game set (which annoyingly don’t load unless you have both the controller and SD card plugged in and you have to eject the SD card to get to the other games) to experience Syvalion and Cameltry with their original arcade-cabinet controls. Cameltry didn’t disappoint (I read someone comment that using the spinner makes you feel “closer to the maze” as if the spinner was more of a direct extension of your body than a plain ol’ pad and that makes sense to me) but as for Syvalion I feel like trying to get your dragon moving at the same pace as you would on a regular controller seems more physically tiring than the novelty would be worth to someone willing to buy this.

The main unit itself feels mostly solid and sturdy. The big selling point of a tate mode-able swiveling screen works very nicely and the in-game view immediately adjusts. Both the mini stick on the console and the arcade stick have a toggle switch to go from 8-way to 4-way controls. Nothing really feels flimsy except I’m worried the screen swivel feels like it might snap one day. The emulation is mostly ok except there might be input lag that’s not perceptible to me and Darius Gaiden has some audio dropout issues when using bombs….and I feel like Cameltry’s music is missing a drum channel or two. I feel like it was a good purchase but not amazing esp. considering the price…like $200 for the main unit, $100 for the arcade stick so it might be a pass if you already have a nice controller or two and a MAME setup…though it works as a good desk buddy for downtime at work maybe or as a lil’ portable with a phone battery bank strapped to it (brings up another issue that you’ll want a USB-C power supply rated at 5v/2.4A or you’ll have input lag issues)

16 Likes
1227

ive literally become the main character of gemstone, at least for tonight

i was walking around and then yellow town-wide messaging of golden motes popped up, so i announced that the KNUCKLEHEADS were on patrol

me and veronica were wandering around aimlessly and then i remebered that during the town meeting we mentioned kobold village being a decent place to put portals

and i had a clever idea about gross pirate enemies coming through the toilet

You sashay gracefully through a heavy steel slab.
[Kobold Village, Squirrel Hutch - 6276 - 6276] (u373017)
While the hutch is massive for an animal cage, it’s still pretty cramped to be strolling around in. Here and there, the metal framework sags inward and patches fill most of the holes. Picking a path through the warren of detritus is a job calling for the skill of a Ranger Lord, the fortitude of a besotted Dwarf, and the sensibilities of a guttersnipe. You also see a heavy steel slab.
Obvious exits: southeast, west
Sevanya followed.

You lean softly against Sevanya.
Your disk arrives, following you dutifully.

You say, “What would a gross krovlin come through.”

You say, “Thats super clever and on the nose.”

You say, “THE TOILET.”

You nod once.

Sevanya giggles.

s
You sashay off gracefully, heading south.
[Kobold Village, King’s Loo - 6274 - 6274] (u373014)
Clearly His Majesty spends a great deal of time here when he isn’t hiding from adventurers. The decor is certainly the best that generations of kobold artists have produced, the centerpiece consisting of a dented helm balanced on a stick so that it rattles a bit if you tap it. There are other equally fine treasures here, no doubt taken as spoils from the king’s many victories and each almost as marvelous as the last. You also see a kobold and a giant’s boot.
Obvious exits: out
Sevanya followed.
Suddenly, a golden mote of light descends upon the briar patch in the Lower Dragonsclaw and rips open behind Pookia and Sevanya. Krolvins burst out, grab both of them and drag them through the portal as it snaps shut!
Your disk arrives, following you dutifully.
You feel yourself being pulled away…
[Czag Mordg, Captain Quarters - - ] (u152944)
An ebony desk has been smashed in two, many splintered pieces littering the center of the cabin. Three broken windows allow the storm’s winds to rush through the small area, scattering a number of old maps and parchments along the floor. You also see a wooden hatch and a stained driftwood chest with some stuff on it.
Also here: Sevanya
Obvious exits: none

sory about formatting it’ll look better in a couple days when it goes up on the OFFICIAL WIKI

we were the first players to ever talk to this scary pirate leader and the town i lived in genocided an isalnd of his famiuly and friends nad want to genocide some more and me and veronica are literally the only ones (it feels like) who are like “HMMM MAYBE THE BACK AND FORTH KILLING FOR A LONG TIME IS A BAD IDEA” and now im taking this stupid bold stance against racism in a mideval fantasy setting where i live in a frontier towna nd im not gonna start fucking DSA meetings or something but im really excited for all the racist elves to be shitty to me!!! or for something really bad to happen to everyone and for it to get blamed on me!!!

anyroad there are 26 hostages and if we dont tell the pirate captain where the GENOCIDE JUICE is (no one fucking knows hwere it is or they are lying to me about not knowing where it is) they’re gonna start sending back the people they kidnapped cut up in bags

im freaking out

also i flirted with him. why
why

curt flirt ty
Your lashes lowered in a pretense of modesty, you give Tyrrax a flirtatious smile before sinking into a graceful curtsy.
flai
You flail your arms about.

16 Likes