I have gone mad with power
https://twitter.com/dreamboatdyke/status/1511846863564988417?s=20&t=sq3gtE_EX10XUeII0Tm6tg
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When I quit at Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright (bizarre name BTW, theyâve been aligned since theyâve met) last night the story had gone in quite an unexpectedly absurd direction, and while it has gone and started the inevitable undoing of what had occurred I still feel it is worth noting how kooky it got at some point.
Both Layton and Maya Fey are âdeadâ, the former merely turned to gold (and briefly lost an arm) while the latter unfortunately burnt to death after being accidentally dropped into a fire pit. There was an uncomfortable bit where we brought someone to the stand to see if their actual gender was the same they were presenting as (it was not, fortunately it was done to hide their identity rather than how they personally identify). The trial I just did had an absolutely massive plot hole where there was powder on the floor so that we can tell by the lack of footprints that no one walked there, except they lost track of that and had someone admit to going to part of the room that was âunreachableâ. The person who committed the âmurderâ here is supposed to be considered not too bad because they only did so as the result of a misunderstanding, strangled a person who already killed themselves with poison, and âonlyâ tried to frame someone for the crime that if convicted would result in immediate death by fire.
Itâs not awful but I sorta of get the impression it was either rushed or a secondary team was put in charge of it.
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Itâs too bad that this article isnât up anymore. The archived version has formatting issues and of course youâre only going to find it if youâre looking for it.
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Iâve decided to play every Annapurna game, providing I donât have to pay for it, or jump through any hoops to download it.
This one is real good. Like, itâs not a good game, itâs not good art, but as an Annapurna experience I didnât pay for? 5 stars. Its copy declares it an âinteractive poemâ but I guess it could be a visual novel too, why not, it doesnât have any fucking words, itâs just 90 minutes of fuckinâ nothinâ magical realism, so just call it whatever you want, why not â why not!!
As a wise man once said: video games can be about anything. And, I think, they can do anything, too.
A Memoir Blue is a game about a young swimmer who wins a bronze medal at what I presume is the Olympics. I think this gives her depressions, because she wanted to win gold (the best medal), but it ends up being a good thing, as it prompts her to reflect on her life, her relationship with her mother, and Finding Nemo. And you will not believe the life this gal has lead: it is filled with hardships such as riding a train, boarding a boat, riding a carousel, and winning a big swim meet only for her mom to leave the medal ceremony early cuz she has to go to work. Really puts all the whining I do into perspective, really grateful for all my blessings after being exposed to all these troubles.
This is what my bedroom would look like if I had enough money to finally pull the trigger on my plan to buy myself weekly trophies for all my accomplishments in the world of game development, game art, game writing, game music, and, also, kissing. Success is the #1 trouble anyone can have, but Iâll admit: I think I could handle a little more trouble than Iâve currently got.
You advance through the game by mindlessly tugging and twisting various objects, which then trigger all sorts of magical realism, and I am using that term as a laugh okay, itâs all real hokey shit. Like you drag those ice cubes to the bottom of that glass and they become fish. If you were here, with me, right now, Iâd be doing a Doug Henning impersonation, Iâd be going âMAGIC!â, and youâd be going âwho the fuck is Doug Henning.â
There are no real puzzles. Sometimes you get achievements for clicking on objects and triggering the most mundane event possible, like an umbrella falling off a box and into another box. There is some very slight challenge to the game though, as many of the interactions either make little sense or feel kinda bad, like a poor conversion of a game designed around a touchscreen, which is funny as this is currently only available on console and PC. I am going to pretend it was coming to Apple Arcade but for the first time in history Apple said âNo thanks, this is too toothless even for us.â I think thatâs the meanest thing Iâve ever said about a video game. I hope no one who worked on this game reads this. Hey, game workers: donât worry, you all did a great job, itâs just your boss is kinda bad at art. Maybe theyâll improve though! Letâs hope!
Thatâs a pretty good logo. I wouldnât be ashamed to work under that logo. Dunno about that slogan though. I will not share any baseless, unfair suspicions I have about how studios like this get funding. Iâm sure theyâre all run by very nice folks and Iâm doubly sure there are worse things they could be doing with their parentsâ riches.
BOTTOM LINE: At least itâs better than Florence.
Donut County was better than I expected, which is actually disappointing. I was hoping itâd make me feel something (disgust, rage, amusement, things of that nature) but itâs just so fucking slight, you spend 85% of the game mindlessly moving around a cursor and then at the end it starts throwing bad puzzles at you and maybe, if your Donut County experience is at all like mine, the people watching you stream will start shouting solutions, leaving you very confused because you hadnât even noticed the game had actually become, like, a game. I personally wouldnât tack a bunch of Digipen Senior Project* puzzles onto the end of my incredibly simple game, that seems like a real waste to me, Iâd just make it absolutely effortless from beginning to end. At least it is only 90 minutes long but imagine if those 90 minutes had some sense of chaos or slapstick or kinetics or character. Itâs like some reverse Katamari shit but thereâs no thrill to consuming all these objects, itâs all so tidy, itâs very apt that youâre controlling a hole through the entire game â cuz itâs totally devoid substance!! Get it?! Just empty, like a hole!! Also why do so many games feel like that episode of Home Movies where Brendan rips off Memento, why not just show me a linear sequence of events, thatâs a very effective way of making me feel invested in the characters and their world, why everyone gotta be so fucking cute and clever all the time, especially when theyâre making dumb games for children and adults who have no hangups about consuming dumb entertainment for dumb children â fuck!!
I didnât take any screenshots of this game, pretend thereâs one right here of the raccoon sitting on a toilet and saying âwhat me worry lolâ or some shit like that.
BOTTOM LINE: The best Annapurna original Iâve played yet.
*I donât know anything about school, are senior projects an actual thing? If not please pretend I said something they actually do in school. Finals? Finals are a thing, right? AâŚdigital thesis? Would that workâŚ? Never mind, donât tell me, donât correct me, I donât want to know shit.
Galâs Dungeon for the Famicom Disk System wasnât published by Annapurna but its rock paper scissor battles are as captivating as any mechanic youâll see in a Megan Ellison production and the G I R L D E T E C T O R made me laugh a lot. I quit after 5 minutes. I award it one star for every one of those minutes. Someday Iâll return to it and, hopefully, get banned from Twitch for streaming it. Oh hell yeah. Oh hell yeah.
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bachelor Iâm gonna need an exegesis of the Annapurna tale of confusion and panic in the ever-shifting cityways of
These âdigital games playersâ âhack inâ every night to compete in âe tournamentsâ of âcops and robbersâ, digitally re-enacting the violence they see every night outside their barred windows in the cyberspace. The world may be reconstituted for every game, but will the players ever escape their cycle of violence? Will they ever find the âdigital hugâ?
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Publishing an extremely garish indie version of Rainbow Six: Siege is probably the funniest thing you could do with the kind of image that Annapurna has curated.
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Jurassic Park for Genesis is really hard. Whatâs the fail point here the game, playing it on a Mega SG, the HDTV, the transmitting 8bitdo controller? The 6 dollar bluetooth transciever, the shitty bluetooth headphones I have paired with it?
Anyways I keep hearing dropped sounds in Genesis games and do not have this problem when playing switch.
Oh the game? Clearly built around preventing one weekend beating periods. After beating my head against Stage 4 Grant for a few days I gsve up and blasted through as the Raptor in less than 30 minutes. Until the final room. The game becomes an adventure game and use everything on everything. I had to look up the solution and my brain instantly filled with half-memories of knowing the solution while gleefully watching a friend yell this is impossible. The solution is dumb as hell by the way.
Well I got this Mega SG I should find something to play on it.
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Play The Lost World
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(itâs actually gorgeous, they went with a Judge Dredd (with an actual perspective! on playing cops and robber games) x Sega Saturn look; things explode like F.E.A.R. except itâs big square pixels flying everywhere)
(Siege was announced one week before their announce and they were trying to decide if it would help them or hurt themâŚthen it took another 5 years to ship because finding a network engineer is hard.)
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itâs amazing to me that anyone still persists in trying to make competitive indie games beyond the level of like, Nidhogg, when the tooling and expertise so clearly does not exist at that budget level, but good for them (?)
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they did alright, I should see what theyâre up to now
a few years ago I saw the guy driving down the road and had the opportunity to shout, âFINISH YOUR GAMEâ
As Iâve noted previously I have a poor grasp on who exactly Annapurna is and that they are not in fact Aminita, so I wikiâd them to see what games theyâve made (which appears to be zero as they are a publisher) and A) shoot Iâve got at least a couple of their games on my steam wishlist, and B) it seems at least a few games that were rather loved by SB folks we handled by them (looking at Outer Wilds and Kentucky Route Zero).
I remain as confused as ever. Gorogoa still looks neat.
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gorogoa is The Shit, you can trust me
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as long as A24 does not make games, they are the A24 of games
except with more money
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I finished Ape Out today.
High Rise is my favorite part, but the whole game is wonderful.
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Annapurna is the first old-style game patronage system for games
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yeah, it was working out real well for them in movies too up until they released Sister Brothers and Vice in the same 3 month span
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every time I run Sun Java I think of Edith Finch
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thinking of it that wayâŚcan you imagine any game more appealing to Larry Ellisonâs kids than Edith Finch? âour family is weird and maybe has murderers in it but itâs more interesting and real than you thought. as you can see from our weird big house, which is very weirdâ
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