wow i’m surprised they were aware a stereotypical image of a ninja could be perceived as culturally insensitive way back then
::looks at image::
oh… i see…
5 Likes
i’m still playing OMORI. taking a break for zelda time 
but i just wanted to comment on the motivations and design of a certain fight that i had a blast getting my ass handed to me to.
AESTHETICALLY PLEASING BOSS / / MAJOR OMORI SPOILERS AHEAD
this is SWEETHEART. she is a character who is built up a ton before you actually get to interact with her at all. she does the evil anime woman laugh. everyone in the world loves her. this love has gone to her head. she loves herself so much that there’s no room in the world for anyone else. there is a scene when you’re in her ( very pink and large ) castle where you finally make it into her room.
she is not there but there is a giant statue of her ex-boyfriend who you’ve already met in the beginning hours of the game. you wake him up and he is so sad about his breakup that he decides to beat everyone’s ass. it didn’t take me that many tries to beat him, however. . .SWEETHEART is another story.
maybe it’s my weeb upbringing but i love her design and motivations so much. a character who loves themselves to the point of ruin. it’s a decent commentary on ’ toxic positivity ’ and the kind of thing that prob happened in lolita circles a lot or just even on message boards where the designated ’ kawaii ’ person turns out to be a sack of shit lmao.
i also think that it’s a nice look at what someone’s shadow side would be like. i have theories about who this character pertains to, but i won’t speak on that right now. i’ve got quite a few hours before my first run is over so we’ll just have to see what the story has in store. i just find characters like this fascinating. she loves herself so much that she winds up trying to marry herself.
at any rate, besides the a+ aesthetics of having a morning star shaped like a heart, the damage she gives and the buffs that increase her speed and power just hit you like a truck. i mean, i was having so much fun actually HAVING to heal and strategize who does what when instead of my usual bulldozing, that i CHEERED when the party died.
it was just a blast.
the sort of rush that i look for in a good turn-based boss fight!
whoo-hoo!
i think the only reason i can’t beat them is because i need to level a bit more.
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their music also rules so much
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Pinball FX (PS4)
Finally figured out (had to resort to Google) that the Circle button toggles off the “animated toys”! Kept expecting that option to be on the Settings - Video menu. Shee-oosh. Well, at least it’s there; some of those Williams tables were really ruined with freakish animated nonsense across the screen during gameplay–Indy and either Twilight Zone or Addams Family being maybe the worst.
Actually, I kind of like the “enhancements” with “toys” on in Monster Bash: the cabinet interior side art that comes with that setting is really nice, as are the colored flippers…and sheesh I even kinda like the animation they did of Igor, Frank, and the other characters at the top of the table–it’s subtle and doesn’t distract!
Wish they’d been that respectful of the original tables with the rest of them; I have to turn it off in Creature, for instance, 'cause otherwise you have to sit through the creature rearing out of the water every single time you lose a ball! What the heck. And it’s too bad you can’t save it per table (I’d also like to be able to customize the LCD color per table, instead of just for all of them at once–another nice option, though; green looks good on MB!).
The only table I really seem to care about is Williams’ Monster Bash (MAYBE Creature? don’t like the layout nearly as much, though; and World Cup Soccer seems okay, I do like shooting goals–not so much the constant spinning ball sound and multiball flashers), and the lighting in the PFX rendition of MB is blown-out and kinda gross (but Creature’s lighting is still nice!)! It looks like Pinball FX VS Pinball FX3 Graphics Comparison - Monster Bash - YouTube originally it was very close to the PFX3 lighting (which is lovely and smooth!)
, but maybe a little more subdued. So possibly to try to correct that, it looks like maybe with the May 5, 2022 game update to version 0.11.47645 ( Master List of Issues: Pinball FX | Digital Pinball Fans ) they changed the lighting to its current blown-out look. Dang.
I wish they could get it back to more like the lovely PFX3 look.
Still, the flipper physics improvements in PFX are amazing–the flippers actually have some give now! So you can do all kinds of light touch catches and things–I mean, in theory, if you’re better than me–but they still happen to me sometimes by luck ^ _^–and the multiball interactions are really good, letting you get away with juggling multiple balls realistically on a single flipper and so forth.
The steeper playfield and wider outlines in Pro mode really seal it, those are the adjustments that should have been in Tournament mode in PFX3. Hm the flippers should still be wider apart.
OH. You can skip the useless MATCH FOR EXTRA CREDIT sequence at the end of each game if you set Settings - Gameplay - Williams Pinball Attract Mode to ON. Well that makes no darned sense (why don’t they have a toggle for the Match sequence dip switch setting??), but whew at least it lets you skip it!! Huge thanks to pinballwiz45b for the tip.
The UI in this reboot of PFX is terribly clunky and confusing. And I already found two bugs with it: if you mash X from the Match sequence you’re stuck at the lounge/cabinet screen, and if you turn off Williams Pinball Attract Mode during the match sequence, you’re stuck there. : P
2 Likes
I dunno, I feel like evil self-obsessed rich girl with over-the-top hair is kind of a played out trope at this point, such that I was kind of expecting a bit more from this boss than just the usual beats. I will say that her army of peon moles serve as a decent foil for her antics throughout the chapter. I also think the chapter itself typifies the whole game’s poor pacing, in the sense that every room is 3x bigger than it could be and every cutscene is 2x longer than it necessarily needed to be (contrast with the snappy pacing of Deltarune, for instance).
1 Like
Counterpoint: She looks cool.
1 Like
tropes are fine as a story telling tool afaic. as long as there’s some kind of subversion or something to say happening along the way. i think it’s less ab their abundance and more ab loneliness or vulnerability despite seemingly having everything anyone could want.
lack of self-consciousness is the point, and i find it cool to show a character in the game who isn’t necessarily caught up in adjusting anyone else’s emotional needs. i didn’t want to discuss it because i don’t know if it’s true, but i feel like this boss is very much a foil to a particular character who always lends a listening ear and does cool things like heal you and help you save.
from this perspective, my ideas ab certain characters in this world actually being shadows of the characters in the party may hold weight.
honestly, i think this is a fair but only if my above theory is untrue. i remember thinking ’ hmm, how close am i to the end now? '. i feel it’s justified considering how the game takes so much time to finally reveal what the character looks like to everyone. i remember expecting a monstrous looking sprout mole, for one. also, because i can’t get past it, i have no idea why this particular segment is so long compared to others.
it just makes me think that it’s somehow pretty important and that everything happening in this world is a lot more than just showing ’ world cute ’ like i initially thought. i think this game has a depth and attention to detail and that’s why it took so long to make.
it made me feel like it was all worth it once i got to this fight. how do you feel about villains as a way to dissect motivations and relate to your own shadow ( not just the characters in the story ) ? i find this one particularly funny and a bit relatable so maybe that’s why i’m partial.
my self-esteem has always been pretty low, but seeing a character like this who has he opposite problem but. . .is still ultimately unhappy, deep down resonates really hard with me for some reason.
this is important too, haha
Bonk’s Revenge (GB)
Light & breezy, just a fun platformer.
Nifty transformations,
kinda janky music, much easier to control the Dive Bonks than in the console version (this isn’t a port through, it’s a new game with new stages,
a headbutt Smash-Bros-like fighting bonus game vs RoboBonk (“Mechabonk” : P),
and a couple bosses that parody Hollywood action movies).
And cool color palettes and a custom border in Super Game Boy!
I kinda hated console Bonk’s Revenge. I enjoyed GB Bonk’s Revenge!
8 Likes
started life is strange before the storm
the very first cutscene is playing chicken with a train marked 1337
gonna be thinking about getting run over by teh leet train for the rest of my days. go fuck your selfie
16 Likes
I got through the rest of Final Fantasy 6 solo, alternating between Celes and Shadow.
I think FF6 fails at motivating the player to play it well, and when the enemies start to give a little bit of pushback 20 hours in, it’s just annoying. But this time I just had to play well from the start, and the second half of the game really shined.
The thing that game lets you get away with! You have haste, protect, shell, regen, all lasting for the entire battle. You can have both Reflect (immunity to standard magic) and Vanish (immunity to standard physical attacks) on. Then use Drain to fully restore HP while hurting enemies, and Osmose to do the same with MP (do not cast it on the undead though) Then there’s Reraise to get you back to life if you die?
Of course as the game goes on it feels more and more like a yugioh card battle as it throws more cheap tricks at you (« that instant death attack is a special one that ignores your instant death immunity » (this is real I’m not making it up)) and you have to find other ways to bypass them
Few tricks:
- float ring makes you levitate, add vanish and the earth dragon boss literally cannot hurt you
- you can kill some magic enemies by removing all of their MPs. The Disc 1 megaboss Atma/Ultima weapon gets more dangerous at low HPs but you can just reduce all its MP to 0 with Rasp instead and watch it croak.
This also works on the cultist tower boss, who also conveniently can’t cast Ultima on death with no 0 MP - FF6 got some really weird defense formula, damage is like « (256-def) * (bunch of numbers) » Getting defense from 0 to 128 is as effective as getting it from 254 to 255. It makes it very easy to finetune a character’s def/mdef in the world of ruin; sacrificing def to raise mdef from say 170 to 220 will reduce magic damage taken by 2/3
- break, the petrification spell, rules, countless statues follow my path
Maybe I was a little harsh on FF6. It goes hard during the fake ending and world switch. The baroque tower of gods final boss is so much… There basically hasn’t been anything better before or since. Uematsu doesn’t have it in him to make one good normal battle theme in his life (have to listen to them for 20 hours/game) but he gave everything for that opera medley which you’re not even likely to get to hear in full
Peak videogame trading quest is going to the depths of a grueling volcano with 2 different parties to recruit a thief, then visiting a forgotten remote village with the thief to unlock the door to the world’s best blacksmith, have him make you choose between getting the most powerful magic stone in the game or forging it into an uber sword, picking the sword, betting that sword in the coliseum to get an even better sword. Then throwing that sword like a javelin at the final boss instead of equipping it
22 Likes
i don’t think there were any ranged attacks for party members, but there were cool combos you could do to rush certain enemies and keep them stunlocked.
2 Likes
i’m a bit sad that folks seem kinda unimpressed by the demo cos i was so surprised at how legit it was, especially (no offense) given past necrosoft games. just seems like, out of reach of a studio like that.
also i thought the lack of terrain elements (like height variation) seemed entirely appropriate for what i played, and i appreciated that it was “just” a jrpg with some spatial elements to contextualise different synergies and relationships between party members and enemies.
also dude that overworld map is so cool!
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saints row 2023 -
the words i am looking for are “ass-backwards,” “hulu-original,” “scared.” it has the sex nerd problem borderlands 3 has but inverted. it is trying so hard to not sexualize things that it has pervert vibes peeking out of the seams. i can’t help but think that i know what they are thinking.
as a game it’s definitely a post-myspace saints row game, which, if u let the xbox store reviews tell it: is not really saints row. saints row 3 wasn’t really saints row, saints row 4 was definitely not saints row, saints row: gat out of hell was not saints row, agents of mayhem wasn’t even called saints row, and now saints row is not saints row.
saints row is what ppl who have never one hundred percented GTA IV think the GTA series is, but queer. the most prominent saints row youtuber is named “flippy”, and he gives total abuser vibes, maybe he’s chill but the anger he left me with his video on saints row 2023 gave such an ugly aura. but he said something interesting, something that i actually said years ago when saints row 2023 was first revealed: “it’s not hood”. another thought when the trailer dropped was that it was giving 0 MadTV vibes so it would also flop bc of that but
flippy would never have the intellectual fortitude to expound upon this further but saints row 1 and saints row 2 are both hood games very much of their time; the 00s was a second peak of hood film and crunk music. you couldn’t be more counter-cultural in the bush years than:
See, me, I ain’t nothing nice, and Crime Mob, it ain’t no stopping
It be like Saddam Hussein, Hitler, and Osama bin Laden
an open world crime game in a contemporary hood style understandably hasn’t been done yet. what the fuck would anyone who works at “deep silver volition” know about that? maybe GTA 6 could be this, but i’m given pause by the lack of all-out satire direction rockstar seems to be taking going forward. i don’t think i want to play a serious gun crime game with such realism. the balance has to be delicate. maybe GTA 6 needs another 10 years of development time. have u seen the gore graphics in dead island 2? have u read that one xbox store review that assumes the “zombies in L.A.” theme is social commentary on the rate of homelessness in california? everything and everyone is stupid
sleeping dogs: definitive edition -
so good… i already beat this in high school but it was two dollars or something on xbox. the ethos of united front games’ short gameography i can’t put properly into words: modnation racers was and still is my favorite kart racer. littlebigplanet karting felt too sad to play as a LBP day-1. all of their other work was on who-cares kind of stuff like the tomb raider 2013 and halo remasters, or disney infinity 3.0. they made like 2 real video games w/ their chest.
what they were working on b4 squaresoft-enix killed them was triad wars. triad wars was going to be a sleeping dogs mmo in the style of KMMO classics like freejack, audition, getamped, the list goes on. i played the beta. sleeping dogs would get compared to shenmue for some reason and thus triad wars would be based on an aspect of shenmue’s successor game, yakuza: the parts where u climb a tower and fight a bunch of guys and then fight on a rooftop against a big guy. which is also like HOT-B’s 火激, the greatest megadrive game of all time.
in a silent way, HOT-B was the united front games of japanese 1990s, it’s such a sadness the circle was never completed.
infinite guitars -
this has the swag the artful escape wanted. queens of the stone age should be doing the soundtrack though
21 Likes
hmmm… i’ve never played it but it always looked aggressively mid
guess it is time to give it a try
4 Likes
idk how to use this but the user creations are an essential part of it ModNation Racers PS3 Serverside Data Archive : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
people were making boletarian palace tracks and jersey shore themed karts and etc
7 Likes
sleeping dogs goes on sale for a pittance pretty regularly, and i always consider getting it. i remember choking it down back when it was free on games with gold on the 360, and now we’re no longer in the era of a million open world crime games, it mgiht be a bit more palatable. especially now i’ve gotten more interested in hong kong movies and such.
maybe when i get through my current backlog of long games
3 Likes
God I loved Saint’s Row 3. That’s a game I wish I could play again for the first time after getting it Eternal Sunshined out of my head
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took some PS2 games home with me from my mom’s basement this past weekend. part of this is because i haven’t played PS2 games in a long time and it’s been long enough for me to feel like i can revisit them and get something out of it, and part of it is because there are some games that are no longer playable any other way, excepting emulation (and i can’t figure out PS2 emulation for the life of me, tbh).
the games i grabbed were:
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Silent Hill 2 - my wife wanted to see this one, and while i know there’s a PC version with some decent fan mods, i thought playing on original hardware on a CRT would be best. and honestly, the game looks so much better in motion than i was expecting. i never beat this game, and didn’t get very far, either, according to my memory card, so this is really like my first time. we played for an hour before i got tired/spooked and told her to play Judgment; we’ll pick back up inside the Wood Side apartment complex tonight, where, if memory serves, we’ll meet that guy soon.
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Shadow Hearts - did not play last night, did not ever beat. i recall getting kind of frustrated with it, but i picked it up because it seemed like a game to put in the “maybe my wife will like this” pile.
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Dragon Quarter - also did not play last night, and also never beat it. i never quite understood the game cycle/flow of this one and i’m determined to get it this time, since it seems beloved. i feel like maybe i’ve played enough games now to get it.
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Contra: Shattered Soldier - this was my favorite Contra game post Hard Corps, which i guess would be obvious since the PSX games were…questionable, at best. i eventually got fed up with trying to get the secret ending because i could never get 100% on the very last level, but i’d get really close. my impressions this time are that the game is maybe kind of ugly. i need to see more of its levels again, but it kind of has that brown and grey thing going on and the 3D models aren’t super gorgeous to look at in 2023. it feels good, though, and the music is also a lot of fun - a sensory overload, all things told. looking forward to getting good at this game again.
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Neo Contra - did not play, but i figure once i reconquer SS, i will move on to Neo Contra, which my memory regards as the best 2-player Contra game since the original.
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Gradius V - realizing now how Konami centric my PS2 game grab was, but hey, i like what i like. Gradius V is really hard, but really cool, and i have no reservations about it or reconsidered thoughts. i’m as impressed with it now as i was, then.
all this PS2 playing made me realize i wanted to get better cables, so i ordered some HD-Retrovision component cables and some RCA-extension cables to hook it up to the speakers i use with my CRT. i told all this to my wife because of how self-satisfied i am with myself with these purchases and she just kind of scoffed. she is correct.
anyway, i need a real OEM PS2 controller because the one i have is at least functional, but the d-pad really sucks and also it’s ugly in that “little brother uses the bad controller” way. i just feel like i keep getting burned on them and idk where to look/don’t feel like taking psychic damage by dealing with eBay.
23 Likes
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