Games You Played Today VI (III in the west)

[notbov]

NoA seems to like using non-union talent

this is code for “anime dub actors” a lot of the time (game VO pays better than dubbing)

this makes sense in something like Fire Emblem Heroes, a years-long running phone game that has a character spigot, but less so in something that’s a one and done shipped product kind of thing

it’s also not that the pool of dub actors are bad; Gearbox (and I am not handing it to Randy Pitchford) exclusively casts from the large pool of Texan anime talent and hey, it turns out they’re just fine when not doing glorified ADR

probably a cross section of mediocre direction, locked in timing on scenes and Nintendo being cheap (the VA for birdman in BotW notably has gone on the record that he got paid less for that than Freedom Planet, where he got backend)

as an English speaking, anime watching idiot, the play is to turn on a FIGS voice over track if offered because English VO by and large has two gears (anime or British) and Japanese VO is looking at a character and going “I know what they’re going to sound like”

note: I spent a week building a character in Genshin because they were voiced by Yui Horie and my opinions cannot be trusted

[Tuxedo]

When I first heard about Adios, the Steam description was something like « a pig farmer is tired of doing evil » and I thought « oh wow are we really ready for high profile, aggressively divise, anti-animal exploitation, maybe ecoterrorist-leaning indie games now » and then it was actually just some Breaking Bad mafia shit and it just seemed so weak in comparison. Haven’t looked back since

[bib]

the kefka laugh drop in dancing mad might as well set the snes on fire

[isfet]

in spite of having a good time hating on it, i downloaded Hi-Fi Rush on the insistence of a friend who kept telling me it was good, actually.

and yeah, idk, he was right. i changed the VA to Japanese which essentially took away the element of the game i was having the hardest time dealing with, but the animation looks great and the main gameplay loop is enjoyable enough. i’ve only finished stage 1 and so i can’t say whether or not the combat gets more interesting, but it seems to feel like it might. overall, is it a game worth playing for “free” if you have Game Pass? yeah, sure.

[drastic_bb]

im very serious about this: who wants to play lost planet 2 on ps3 with me this year. we are going to make it happen… we have too

[bib]

yes

[doolittle]

yes

[shelter]

me duh

[drastic_bb]

i did not even know until The Boss that you could pin the camera to positions in the normal camera mode omg… like thats actually pretty fucking useful lmao.

ummm stray thoughts… that finale is like such a hallucinatoraly beautiful scene. also it turns out you can kind of option select her cqc moves by mashing buttons regardless of if you succesfully timed the counter or not which makes the fight incredibly easy. yeah… i didnt know there was a cqc escape at first lol. someone doesnt remember the basics of cqc huh!

i love the like… homoeroticism and intimacy of interacting with guards which is something theyve only ever escalated with each game… let me hold u bb… let me hold a knife to your throat and we can listen to surf rock together. of course only after ive made you dance for me… this is the real innovation of “cqc”

Chris "Three PVMs" Person

80% of mgs plotting is this and face/off… he did say john woo was his fav director and thats like the least surprising thing of all time

HIDEO_KOJIMA

also i love the weirdly detailed cabin snake and eva shack up in at the end… it could be a whole death stranding menu room. no one’s ever said this but me but mgs3 could have actually used More menus??? she looks so fucking cool in her bomber jacket on her triumph bike

HIDEO_KOJIMA

anyways i wanna finish dark souls and also finish the twin snakes… i also started a vagrant story file and im actually gonna beat it this time lmao.

the link between kojima and matsuno games… for me it has to do with a love of small plastic objects specifically legos and miniatures and designing mgs1+2 and vagrant story + fft as these like polygonal toyboxes… idk to what extent ffxii is a Matsuno Game (like… obviously a little) but that and mgs3 sort of drop that approach for a more like… immersive experience or whatever that i dont necessarily prefer (esp. bc of how saturated Gameing is with that kind of production now tho both games are these like lush audiovisual tapestries in considered ways even most triple a games fall short of—games where even the ui and its attendant key chimes feel deeply considered)

[OneSecondBefore]

I simply can not picture Kojima listening to Prefab Sprout. But good for him, I love that record.

[daphaknee]

vagina disgracè is out. its time for varghine innocente

im playing kotor 2 with the restored cut content mod because i found out if you dont put hk47 in your party you DONT have to do the horrible factory where three fucking hk units are prefacing everything they fucking say with some kind of snarky tone. i hate them. i hate the hk units. look at this stupid fucker coming out of a door like hes emet in amarot. you’ll never be emet in amarot. shut up

i heard HKs were even WORSE in kotor1 but i played kotor 2 first so when i tried to go BACK and play 1 i was like ew. horrible. this is awful, i cant play this. who are these people, what is this shit? maybe ill try some other day but i just remember the morals being DO YOU WANT TO KISS THE BABY/ DO YOU WANT TO KILL THE BABY and nothing in between

speaking of in between this fucking mod adds SO MANY EXTRA DIALOGUE OPTIONS. theres been times where i have to SCROLL through them! seven replies to atton about pazaak? THREE WAYS OF VARYING RUDENESS TO TELL KREIA TO FUCK OFF?? AMAZING

its also nuts playing this on PC after only having played it on xbox original/xbox gamepass. there are so many textures. when you walk in low gravity in full speed you move SO FAST. attons stupid IM TYPING IN MID AIR, THE KEYBOARD IS IN THE OTHER ROOM BUT I AM INTERFACING WITH IT FROM HERE, MY SEAT, NO WHERE NEAR THE KEYBOARD is so smooth! i cant believe i didnt take a picture of this but like, if you play the game the image gets burned into your head. you know what im talking about already.

maybe ill just do a little bit of atton appreciation, who im going to fuck in this playthrough (i usually turn him down becuase ew atton but like. kreia hates him and i want to piss kreia off. the fact that spite fucking a man to get back at an old lady doesnt give me darkside points is hilarious)

pretty sure he only said that last one cuz he was safe behind that forcefield!!! its dumb that you having no clothes has to be the highlight of TWO conversations in the beginning of the game but at least im in like, an old timey swimsuit and not bra and underwear or something

OH ANOTHER THING I DONT GET IS APPARENTLY PEOPLE MAKE MODS TO SKIP PERAGUS? PEOPEL HATE IT? the tutorial is the prologue! peragus is the FIRST LEVEL. FIRST LEVELS IN GAMES USUALLY TEACH YOU HOW TO PLAY THAT DOESNT MAKE IT A TUTORIAL!!! you get all the bonding with t3, tons of atton lines, the medical murder mystery, THE LINES THAT VERONICA POSTED UPTHREAD, mk 2 droid sound effects, and just tons of what you do in the rest of the game. i love peragus. i played six hours yesterday and it was all peragus. peopel make mods that skip peragus and just give you some equipment and experience like you did it but WHY WOULD YOU WANT KOTOR 2 TO BE SHORTER? WHY WOULDNT YOU WANT THIS TO BE THE LONGEST GAME WHERE YOU CAN PISS KREIA OFF FOREVER??

every goddamn time i talk to her. WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME WOMAN

[spacetown]

to clear things up: i am not saying not to play hifi rush, i am mad at specifically the situation in which a studio gets precisely the right amount of buy in to have a significant portion of the game revolve around rhythm but not enough to have the music that generates the rhythm be something that i am interested in

you can play it if you want i am just very specific when it comes to what music i like in games!

[aggie]

Finished The Kaito Files DLC for Lost Judgment earlier today. A great conclusion to what is currently the best effort from Ryu ga Gotoku Studios. I just wish they would extend their development cycle and make a truly great, well-considered and more designed game because as much as I love these things, they all fall short of true greatness and will continue to do so unless something changes. Nevertheless I will pre-order the upcoming Ishin localization/update and am very excited for the other upcoming RGG games! Sometimes “good” is good enough, yanno?

[Tegiminis]

I got Watchdogs Legion cuz they put it on steam for 1/5th the retail price and i can’t resist a Clint Hocking joint for 12 bucks

Turns out it’s very good? What the fuck!

I started it in the hardcore mode that has permadeath on and much more reactive enemies. You have to be seriously careful because if the cops pull real guns on you, you can lose the character forever. So there’s a distinct “escalation of force” that you have to pay attention to. If you don’t pull your gun they’ll just beat you unconscious, and if the drones knock you out you just get arrested, which is better than dying for sure.

The whole profiling aspect, violating everyone’s privacy so you can recruit them to your hacker cell, really evokes the “master’s tools cannot dismantle the master’s house” shit in me. The way you start seeing the procgen character you recruit as just human versions of the drones you control with your phone. It’s layering a lot of very smart stuff into normally a very stupid design paradigm (open world Ubisoft game)

Genuinely surprised they were allowed to make a game like this, but I’m glad they did. It’s so well-researched in the patterns of procgen and relationship simulation. Honestly just top tier stuff.

Also been playing Hitman Freelancer. IT’S REALLY FUCKING HARD because they remove like 90% of the items in the level and put you in horrible starting spots and randomly pick NPCs, some of which are very annoying to kill, but in the end it’s challenging me in a cool way and I love having to just live with my mistakes and struggle through instead of just reloading a save. Probably the best way they’ve incentivized that in the game’s history, after Elusive Targets and Master Difficulty didn’t prove to be stressful enough to make players truly engage with the sandbox. Not every hit has to be SASO!

I love when games have hard modes that reveal the intricacies and stressor points in the design instead of just making enemy have more health and do more damage.

[tacotaskforce]

@Tegiminis

I started it in the hardcore mode that has permadeath on and much more reactive enemies. You have to be seriously careful because if the cops pull real guns on you, you can lose the character forever. So there’s a distinct “escalation of force” that you have to pay attention to. If you don’t pull your gun they’ll just beat you unconscious, and if the drones knock you out you just get arrested, which is better than dying for sure.

I had been wondering about Legion, and how much of this aspect had made it into the final game. I was originally turned off after they initially revealed that the antagonistic force was a foreign PMC that came into the city and took authority from the local police, and then they made a spotlight trailer to make sure you know that you can also recruit members of the PMC. Still on the fence seeing that the most expensive version of the game includes “4 months of VIP status”.

[Tegiminis]

Yeah there’s some ubisoft sleaze griming over it for sure, which I’m not too fond of.

I do like the recruiting PMC guys though. I mean, you’re functionally a “terror” cell. You gotta have inside guys. So you find leverage on them, work them over, and pull them into the conspiracy. It’s also how they introduce you to “deep profiling”, which is where they create NPC schedules and procgen nemeses and shit, which is both really mechanically interesting and also part of the “master’s tools” stuff i mentioned in the previous post.

In a better world this would be a straight game - no “VIP status” (lol ubisoft selling a sub to a singleplayer game! what da fuck!) or zombie DLC or whatever - about just this. But AAA is as AAA does.

The core mechanics of it are good enough for me to offset that malaise though.

[Rudie]

I swear every other year I start up Conker’s Bad Fur Day and remind myself how bad it is. It’s idea of a joke is calling a woman a bad name. It is so filled to the brim with, isn’t it Fucked Up that these cute characters are being Rude and Crude? Anyways movie reference.

Wave Race 64 and Pilotwings 64 remain great though.

There are like 9 good N64 games but they are good which is more than the 32X. Maybe I’ll be crazy and try to play Dobutsu no Mori.

[cigarette]

the credits should roll immediately after but alas

[Mikey]

@notbov

no one’s saying Turok

why is no one saying Turok

why are you all cowards

They should be saying Turok 2