heres the log! shout out to chrono trigger for making me able to say a dude in game looks at porn and feet pictures in character
4 Likes
Tokyo Jungle in co-op as herbivores is some seriously stressful shit!
āOk, I think we should be able to find you a mate since we still have 2 siblings we can sacrifice as bait.ā
9 Likes
So I finished up the story mode and expansion for Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate (I think Rudie said to watch the stories from the prior two games and while that took four or so hours it was useful) and it is the most effort anyone has spent on a fighting game story ever. Definitely silly at points but I appreciate how maximalist it all is.
Anyways I noticed that the game had a ton of trophies for doing both of the fatalities for each character and decided what the heck and went through all of them. I remember reading an interview with on of the MK people after MK II released where they were asked if there were any fatality ideas that they thought went too far, and they admitted that yeah there were some they came up with that they felt were simply too much. The one they mentioned was having Baraka slash an opponent across their gut and having their intestines spill out.
Clearly those lines no longer exist as not only are their several in this game with intestines all over the place but literally the least explicitly violent fatality in this game would be the most overly the top violent fatality in any of the first three games if it was in any of them. Iām not sure it is a big deal as they are all so outside the realm of possibilities as to be impossible to even consider emulating but in terms of what is considered acceptably violent then vs now it is rather dramatic.
10 Likes
I heard a bunch of artists for the newer MK games wound up needing treatment for PTSD from having to look at footage and images of war wounded and accident victims all day, which isā¦ man what an industry
10 Likes
I meanā¦ how do I approach this. What Iāve learned from the 5-10-15-etc topic is that Iām a few years older than most of you here which means that itās possible most of you missed āpeakā MK while I did not.
As an arcade/mall teen who spent his allowance/moneys picking up your EGMs and Gamepros each month, skimming through them while eating at the food court before spending the rest of my time in said arcade I was the exact young teen audience it was aimed at when it was at its biggest cultural force. MK1 was the first PC game I ever bought as the SNES version lacked blood (hilariously Iāve never had a good gaming PC and could only run it with literally the entire background turned off). I remember the sheer force of MK II upon release, fed by virtually everyone at once learning about arcade revisions at once by random new secrets and such popping up months after the fact unannounced (when a new fatality popped up peopleās minds were blown). I remember standing with literally dozens of observers around a single MK3 cabinet the weekend it came out, it being so packed that you literally couldnāt play the games nearest to it as you couldnāt get to them. So many quarters were lined up on the edge of the monitor/control panel (that was how the order of who got next was handled) that Iām amazed in retrospect no fights broke out.
I then played MK4 maybe once or twice and hadnāt played another until now >_>
That long digression is basically my way of saying that while it is many years in the past I understand how a lot of people feel about MK and what they want out of it. Old me looks at all this and goes āthis is all very excessiveā but Iām absolutely certain young me would think this is all absolutely badass and would have had my money saved up to buy the home version the day it came out while still playing it in the arcade even when there was no one to play against.
Making artists look at actual mangled corpses is remarkably stupid and if not their own choice bordering on inexcusable. Iām also fairly certain no one playing would care as its not like it being anatomically correct was ever something asked for (I say while pointing at 80+% of female fighting game characters ever), itās not like most people know exactly what intestines look like anyways. The escalating violence though, especially by the time you get to the 11th entry and 30 years inā¦ I kinda get it? Itās not really for me anymore and again I donāt know that you need a certain level of realistic details modeled for when you kick someone in the testicles so hard that their spinal column pops out the top of their skull, but a lot of teenagers are eternally gonna think stuff like this is cool.
I think thereās a point in there.
17 Likes
Ultra specific post here but I just watched the Succession season 2 finale and the similarities with Paradise Killer areā¦ very funny to me.
Here you are in paradise trying to pick for blood sacrifice one or a few wealthy fuckers who either were born rich, failed upwards or were ruthless enough to raise to the top, generally disregarding the truth as you see fit, all to save the face of a falling empire while ignoring the commoners suffering from it
Ā« Witness to the end sunday with some doom jazz sprinkles Ā»
4 Likes
I love this detail! Back when the home ports were first announced, one of the magazines ran shots from each side by side. Since they used a mid-fatality one for the Genesis one with the darkened background, a friend of a friend named Giuseppe claimed that the Genesis version couldnāt handle the background and would just have the fighters on a black screen. The whole lead up to Mortal Monday I was joking with my friend about other wild claims Iād make up and attribute to Giuseppe (whom I never actually met since my friendās parents were divorced and this guy lived in the momās distant weekday turf).
I guess in your case Giuseppe was right!
12 Likes
I think this is where that information came from and yeah itās pretty gnarly.
Eventually, the developer found out about coworkers who had similar problems with the content as they did who also left. One coworker, for example, told them that the toll of working on Mortal Kombat 11 was eliciting horrible images in real life. āWhen he looks at his dog, he just sees the guts inside of it, and he couldnāt look at his dog without imagining all of the viscera.ā
2 Likes
they should have just translated the old style blood splatters and people exploding into multiple ribcages and skulls into hd 3d.
or stuck with the weird blood effects from the gamecube mortal kombats with blood drops sliding down the fighters like fat red slugs
9 Likes
Now that the ukraine itch bundle is over Iām moving back from the Random Games thread to the main thread to talk about games Iāve played from that bundle. Itās a big post so iāve hidden the whole thing. I saved the best one for last though.
buncha games
The Wratchās Den
What a cute game!! A roguelike version of Dungeon Keeper, basically, with lots of little touches that keep it interesting. Much closer to a pure ārogueā game as well, given its actually-turn-based approach to everything, although I would say that it doesnāt have much in the way of interesting interactions between objects.
I beat it on Easy and called it good though - I didnāt feel like I wanted to beat it on higher difficulties since I wasnāt that interested in the mechanics. Still, I highly recommend it to anyone who likes Dungeon Keep and its ilk - itās a fascinating single-session take on the premise.
Route Me Mail and Delivery Co
This is an Australian game. I guessed this because the title is a joke about getting ārootedā i.e. fucked which only makes sense in Australia. I learned this from a podcast about history hosted by an australian. This made me feel smart.
The game is like āWhat if paperboy was a parody of gig workā but itās not very funny? Itās mostly about running around frantically trying to deliver mail, there arenāt really that manyā¦jokes in it. Itās actually just really depressing.
I love love love the graphical style though, itās weird as hell. All the houses are a bunch of flat objects stacked on top of each other, you can climb on top of them as well, itās weird. I think this was made in Smile Game Builder which also rules.
So yeah, land of contrasts etc. etc. I appreciated the effort but it made me sad to play it.
Itās Six Random Characters and a Single Floor Dungeon, Thatās the Whole Game
This is cute. Itās a first-person dungeon crawler but, as the title says, thereās only a single floor. You also start with six random (not randomized) characters that have titles like āGoblin Jugglerā or āMyconid Emomancer.ā They all have skills, special traits, stats, etc. that make them unique and interesting. Itās all vaguely game-boy styled as well. Itās cool!
I finished it in one go though and didnāt really feel the need to come back to it. I was mostly amazed at how much effort went into this game I could finish in 15 minutes, and this also spawned a discussion with @AutomaticTiger about how cool it is that RPG Maker offloads all the work ofā¦making an RPG engine so that you can just Make Stuff Like This.
Vulture
This game is not meant to be played in 4K and I am not changing my resolution to play this game, sorry. Seems fine?
Pawndemonium
Itās a chess-themed defense game where endless pawns just rain down on you and you have to make your own chess pieces to defend your end of the board. I sucked shit at it and found it deeply boring, so I turned it off, but I could see how this would be appealing. Neat concept, not my thing.
Sky Rogue
https://img.itch.zone/aW1hZ2UvNjQ3Lzc3Njk2NS5naWY=/original/Z1x8AX.gif
Looks cool, sounds cool, boring as hell. The roguelite structure letting down another game that could have used some real mission design IMO.
I really, really wanted to like this game but it just felt like mush to me, kinda. It was basically just āleave your floating air base, kill the target, come backā and there wasnāt much complicating that. Every time I died was from boredom - I kept crashing into things because I wasnāt paying attention.
Sorry Sky Rogue.
Safari Zone
I canāt say anything about this game without being tremendously mean but Iāll just say āif your pokemon clone is somehow more banal and uninteresting than pokemon red/blue you have to reconsider your prioritiesā.
Golf Peaks
This game proves that I canāt stand good things and only like garbage. This game is good, and I hate it.
Itās a cute golf-themed puzzle game where you essentially choose the order of your moves (which are given to you at the beginning of the stage) and the direction you use them in to get into the hole. Itās got nice music, easy controls, appropriate theming, and cute graphics. I hate it so much.
I think my main issue with it is that itās extremely competent but has no edges left. Also, any puzzle where thereās only one solution but itās also kind of trivial to brute force it is going to leave me feeling cold. The opposite of Baba Is You where brute force is rarely an option. I felt like every puzzle was simply a test of patience, and I never learned anything interesting.
Itās a fine game! Iād recommend it as a mobile game! I despised it.
Omeganaut
Itās essentially a prototype of a starfox clone, and the music was recently removed for Some Reason so itās mostly silent. A reminder that Starfox on the SNES is mostly atmosphere and isnāt actually that good.
I hope this gets better because it looks cool, but itās not very fun to play in this state.
T.A.R.S.
NO
Lizard Lady vs the Cats
This game proves that I canāt stand good things and only like garbage. This game is garbage, and I love it.
Iām pretty sure this is what people are talking about when they talk about Bullet Witch. Walk around extremely bad levels while clones of the same enemy shoot at you. Some of them are stronger, indicated by their color. Some of them will roller blade at you and hit you with a sword.
The mouse movement is so sensitive that I had to basically aim by walking around and firing when my cursor was over an enemy. Conversely, controller camera control is so slow that turning 360 degrees probably takes about 4-5 seconds. The dodge roll is way too long, the walking is way too slow, the jump is the definition of Floaty
The sounds effects are weird and barely audible. The music is probably stock music named āRock and roll (urgent 2)ā.
The graphics are stylish but literally nauseating. The animations are laughable - jumping makes your character turn into a frankensteinish zombie with her arms held forward.
In other words, it absolutely rules in every conceivable way. I put this down to a few factors:
- The opening cutscene has Lizard Lady reading a newspaper that says āCats murder 1,000,000 puppies for no reasonā. She then turns to the camera and says
This is a very strong start
-
Every time you die you get a new outfit, including a thong, a one-piece/leotard, a miniskirt, and more. The model has toes that look like claws and wears like, 12 inch heels. Itās ridiculous.
-
Thereās a bonus level thatās pure Geometry In Space video game bullshit but
-
Itās about 30 minutes long
-
This is the ending screen:
Could not recommend this more highly, as long as youāre okay with being blinded.
Been having a great time playing lots of meh games and a couple of real gems. Also I keep opening Throw Cubes into Brick Towers To Collapse Them and taking screenshots because I think itās beautiful so have some of those:
15 Likes
Reminds me: Abriss puts a pretty good effort at being a reverse-Incredible Machine game, and, extremely important for me, puts as much work into trying to find an set of textures and colors to justify the whole endeavor. Itās about cleaning up after Universal Paperclips; all energy is trapped inside pointless clockwork machines and heat only escapes as it crashes down.
Thereās a substantial demo available:
12 Likes
oh I adore these, thanks for the rec
I will!
I watched Cania play this and they opened this Treasure Chest with a Jar of Dirt in it in Treasure Cove.
4 Likes
this was one of my favorite games of last year and Itās worth beating on expert because itās a very thoughtfully designed TRPG when it forces you to consider your shared move pool on every turn
also worth noting it was developed in a month and itās surprisingly well-balanced considering the timespan
4 Likes
Good enough for me, Iāll come back to it
My dirty little secret is that I skip virtually every bundle game with the word ārogueā anywhere on the store page (same with ārandomizationā) so Iām glad that you went and played some of the more interesting looking ones in there. I also just went and added Lizard Lady vs. the Cats to my personal āplay sometimeā list.
Iām not lying about the skipping BTW, Haque has been in all three of these bundles and each time Iāve browsed through one of them and came up to it I spend some time trying to convince myself to give it a shot based on the aesthetic before going ānahā and moving on.
EDIT: Wanted to add that The Wratchās Den is made by the Punkcake duo who as noted make a game every month or so and they are often interesting as heck. I played their other Bundle game Antecrypt a bit and thought that was swell and want to get to Metavaxx at some point as the concept of a minesweeper shooter is my kind of absurd.
2 Likes
Iām playing a roguelite for the first time (I think, unless I forgot something).
Iāve been playing BPM and Iām enjoying it.
BTW since Iām done with Mortal Kombat for now I had to decide what game to play next and went with the most sensible transition possibleā¦ Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright. I had the same realization that Iāve had whenever I start a Layton game, and that is that the protagonist may be one of my personal top 10 favorite video game characters. Screw the various power fantasies, I just want to chill with him and spend a pleasant evening solving puzzles.
5 Likes
I was gonna play Metroid Dread last night but my thumb is fucked up and painful.
5 Likes
started demonās on the olā ps3. but the most interesting thing thatās brought about is that it nudged me to watch the intro cutscene of the remake and lmfao dude holy shit
14 Likes