it feels like an alternative to pirating or steam refunding stuff I don’t think I’ll like and therefore which isn’t a good use of my time in the first place, not to actually buying stuff I care about
streaming service escalation
1 Like
I’m really enjoying “Legal Dungeon”. It’s a combo of like an OS Adventure game & a VN. You’re a police officer given cases and decide whether to forward them to the prosecutor with a recommendation of indictment or non-indictment. Most of the ‘cases’ you’re given have multiple possible outcome, and since you’re given all the evidence up-front, it means working through them is less about ‘discovering the truth’, than finding ways to manipulate the ambiguity of legal doctrine to get a desired outcome.
At the start, the game shows you a timeline flow-chart with one line going from start to end, and several branches that lead to dead ends. The blocks of the timeline represents cases and cutscenes, which are almost all presented as dialogues between you/other police officers. Everybody has a name/rank but nobody has a face, it’s all text, and although your character (“Jane Blue”) is shown to speak, their words are omitted so you only see replies.
Your case outcomes determine what path you’re on. But since there’s clearly one main path from start to finish, there’s generally two types: quick dead ends, and differing outcomes that lead back to the main path but have consequences between/in cases. These can also sort of stack, one series of choices can lead to a dead end where another, almost-identical, can allow you to continue.
If you’ve retried to complete a case with a different outcome, you can switch the result at any time and switch timelines, so it’s more exploratory than stressful or anything like that.
This is all really neat, exploring the possibilities of the game and it’s structure is interesting and well done. The game is appreciably anti-police, which feels sadly rare. So all these alternate timelines seem designed to, at least partially, hammer in the futility of trying to change things within a system designed to perpetuate harmfulness, and show just how it absorbs or reconstitutes people who would try to ‘change things from the inside’.
All that said…the translation is kind of iffy. Which is a problem most notably in the second part of cases, the first half of a case is sort of ‘building the case’ based on stuff from the document- you can’t fail it. The second part is a little closer to something like Phoenix Wright or LA Noire, cross-interrogating to prove guilt/nonguilt, and you can fail that.
Especially later on when you’re asked to combine statements to make arguments. I gave up and looked at a walkthrough a couple times after a long time trying everything I could think of, and it always fell into the sort of classic 'this is what I was thinking, but the specificity of the phrasing was beyond me". Sometimes it accepts multiple answers, but this can still be an issue (or at least, was for me).
Still, I really appreciated it. I looked at the credits and it was run through a translation company and then one person edited it, and considering the quantity of contextual text in the game, I don’t doubt the workload was significant.
Evidently it’s part two of the dev’s “Guilt Trilogy” which I’ll probably play the rest of after finishing this. He’s the only person credited besides the musician, I couldn’t find more by the musician but I didn’t try that hard, the music is pleasant, it’s mostly sort of ambient/atmospheric, and not super notable. Don’t ask me though…I don’t know music.
I like having it on Switch but sometimes the controls are a little inconvenient, it supports the touch screen but the buttons are a little small for it to work ideally. Still, there are nice shortcuts (like “b” exiting windows, the right stick flipping pages based on where your cursor is, etc.) that stop it from being a total hassle. Also I think the cursor is more sensitive than first-party games & made me realize I have drift, which is uh, good to know I guess.
Anyways, neat game, I’m surprised there isn’t more discourse around it… especially since it came out in 2019 and rereleased on Switch in 2021 ppl should really check it out I recommend it.
17 Likes
tried to play skyrim, my depression game, but i couldnt. too depressed for depression
12 Likes
Got back to Horizon Zero Dawn and I’m trying to speed to the end and finish it off because my gf is excited for the sequel. I am not so excited, myself. It’s like this: Imagine you spent 3 hours eating an enormous 3-course dinner at Applebees, and then the next evening all your friends are texting you to join them at Applebees again to try the new seasonal menu. This is how I feel right now.
I mean, there’s stuff I like about that game. Its worldbuilding is cool. The combat is OK. I like the big robos. If they could improve the dialogue writing by about 300%, remove 75% of the busy-work sidequests, and completely take out all crafting systems and loot crates, then we’d be cooking with gas.
15 Likes
The Major Key remixes of castlevania music in that game rules
3 Likes
Wordle 198 6/6
This game has become a nice little daily ritual
5 Likes
Wordle 198 3/6
3 Likes
Wordle 198 4/6
Pretty impressed with myself for guessing all the letters but getting them in the wrong order
2 Likes
Wordle 198 4/6
Does everyone receive the same word?
1 Like
I finally figured out what the fuck those cubes on Twitter meant, and now I see this, haha.
Anyway.
Wordle 198 3/6
Decided to declare myself mostly done with Animal Crossing. It’s not a bad game, but the daily routine of digging up fossils and praying I get new DIY recipes is driving me insane. Frees up a good hour of my day, too! (Unrelated but kinda, I also logged off Twitter for the foreseeable future, which is likewise freeing up some time).
Started Witcher 3 on Switch, which I figure will eat up that newly freed time and then some.
4 Likes
yeah i believe so, seems pointless otherwise tbh
My kid wanted Luigi’s Mansion 3 as a birthday present, and we’ve been playing through it 45 minutes at a time for the past few weeks.
The environments look incredible for a Switch game. I’m very impressed the game runs reasonably well. That being said, I find the vacuum and suction cup mechanics to be tedious. And I think their application in combat is pretty miserable—especially in situations that involve aiming the vacuum to launch a projectile.
I also think that we’re both on a different wavelength than the developers. We’re usually pretty perplexed by every boss and most major encounters, and figuring out the necessary order of actions and then executing them repeatedly is, for me at least, incredibly unsatisfying. I’d even call it a pain in the ass. My kid still manages to have fun, though.
6 Likes
NFS Heat continues to be surprisingly entertaining, and occasionally extremely silly
15 Likes
I’m almost positive that this is the case
yeah this was my experience of the game when playing with my gf (who is fairly new to games). she had a great time while i yelled and ranted about how unintuitive the boss designs were.
and worst of all, they consistently let you do the thing you think you are supposed to do within an inch of success, so you keep trying that method and failing, rather than what they intended.
i really enjoyed playing it with her but if i had been by myself i’d have quit like halfway through lol
1 Like
Right?!
1 Like
Every once in a while I just sit and think again about how long Witcher 3 is and I still really can’t believe it
5 Likes
yep, it’s the same one for everyone each day, and it changes over at midnight local time
source: I dug into the code a bunch the other day because I was curious
edit: I was wrong about it being UTC lol but each game ID is “days since June 19, 2021”
edit 2: more #wordlefacts, there are currently 2,315 daily answer words, and a further 10,657 dictionary words (accepted as valid guesses) in the current version (db1931a8 - you can see this at the bottom of the settings page), the current day’s answer is the word at the game ID in the list of answer words, and it’ll loop back to the first word starting on the 21st of October 2027 unless expanded upon
5 Likes