Masked Of The Lunar Eclipse feels very Fatal Frame so far but I’m not seeing a lot of sudaisms yet?
Wait
Never mind
7 Likes
Funaki Masakatsu Hybrid Wrestler: Tougi Denshou SFC
High-impact arcade wrestling action from Technos Japan–with a Create-a-Wrestler career mode!
Just two problems so far:
- While you can learn moves in the ring, you can only map so many to your character’s available action slots (which are still defined in Japanese even after I’ve applied the English fan translation)
, so in any one match you’re basically using just a handful of moves.
The action still feels good so I wouldn’t mind that much, except that
- You get AWAY with using a mere handful of moves. In about an hour and a half I’ve smashed through a dozen matches and what looks like about half of the career mode: I’ve defeated the ten or so defined wrestlers–Funaki himself, founder of Pancrase, with the rest being renamed versions of real wrestlers, apparently–won the circuit title, pumped my stats, aged from 18 to 30, married a French princess (picked from about 6 screens of marriage offers, triggering an instant wedding, then happy news of a son a year or so later–now I just have to keep an eye on the “Lineage” menu item to see when he develops into a new wrestler, it looks like),
and am currently crushing through the triple belt challenge without encountering any sign of increased resistance.
So unless something major unlocks–like a higher difficulty circuit, basically–I’ll have finished career mode in maybe three hours or so at this rate. Then I suppose I could try going through again with wrestlers using the other half-dozen wrestling styles available, but there won’t be much reason to bother when the opposition puts up such weak resistance.
Probably ripping good fun two-player, but single-player so far is looking like a bust.
The game switches to a slightly lower resolution when wrestling, which requires toggling Mesen to windowed and back to full screen so it can rescale itself and not run at sub-screen size. I’ll just have to get in the habit of toggling the emulator screen to rescale it whenever a match starts. : P
7 Likes
pinball pulse: the ancients beckon is a dsiware game, so no screenshots because i haven’t figured out that magic yet. but, it’s amazing. i’ve never seen this level of production values on a dsiware game before, it really looks like it’s a recreation of a real pinball table, but as far as i can tell, it’s completely original.
and it’s fully featured too, like a 90s table with special modes and levitation magnets and all kinds of other stuff.
and it plays well too!
9 Likes
I played the Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty Demo. The most interesting contribution to general Souls stuff is having parry and dodge attached to the same button and serving as differing degrees of success when it comes to defensive movement. The animation for parries looks a little jank depending on the angle of attack as overhead attacks or huge sweeps are gracefully deflected by your character spinning in the same way regardless of the direction of the attack. It kinda has the Nioh bloat problem and the stat screen is simply too much stat for one stomach.
I don’t find the game’s take on Three Kingdoms China particularly distinct. It looks like a washed out Nioh and somehow its character creator doesn’t turn out anything as strong as Nioh 2’s. It feels like a B-team effort but not altogether bad, just a fussy grindy Sekiro with less soul.
Stunlocked the first boss but then on the second phase it whipped out its nonsense and I’m out. Multi-phase bosses are something I don’t really like about modern Souls-like design and having one at the start of your game feels like you’re trying a bit too hard to secure the git gud absolutists. These games can just have worlds that are a joy to explore, I don’t need to feel like I’m beating my head against a boss 24/7.
Resident Evil 4 Remake Demo felt significantly slower than how I remember RE4 controlling but this might just be me. Mikami titles always felt like they had a very responsive pace to player action and this feels chunky and tank-like in a way I feel like even the RE2 remake wasn’t. I’m not sure if the design choice is to get the player hamstrung in these more open environments and to maintain a degree of ‘real person fighting-ness’ to combat but it felt off.
12 Likes
Beat the Underground boss in Gradius III by memorizing/avoiding its every attack phase because Shooting The Core is too bullet hell to deal with and I am sick of shooting sand for 5 minutes between attempts
The Moai stage has my gratitude for being easier and is at least 10 minutes shorter than the previous stage, although I tend to respect the space madness of this stage in Gradius IV more for giving as much head and donuts as possible per screen inch
RE8: Village was jolly fun to return to after nearly 2 years and a swiftly-forgotten DLC update although I do wonder if the 3rd person view borks the AI scripting at points as I was able to cheese the opening village siege by shooting a wereman in the face while his werefriend ineptly struggled with a door handle
Also remains comical that the game only gets easier after the initial 15 minutes but I still like peeling the onion like all REs
6 Likes
hey, was anyone aware that there’s a fuckin mindware game on dsiware? it’s called trailblaze puzzle incinerator, and it’s like a combination of snake, space mouse 2, and quarth
5 Likes
Took advantage of triple XP in Vermintide 2 to level the rest of the charcters I hadn’t yet gotten to 30 (Wizard, Elf, Dorf) to 30 and unlock their complete talent trees.
1 Like
got my PSVR2 in the mail yesterday and set it up as soon as i got back from work
Drem already covered a lot of what i wanted to say about it, but mostly, if you ever had or used a PSVR and thought “what if this was better in every way?” then you would have the PSVR2.
i’m happy that it has a “sitting mode” implementation because in my current apartment there is no way i can freely move and walk around the room. i mean, i can, but not very much.
games i’ve played so far (briefly):
Gran Turismo 7 - the centerpiece of the whole launch experience, to be honest. GT7 runs and plays well on the PS5 and it continues to do so in VR. it solves a lot of issues i’d had with playing the game (checking side mirrors with the right stick is a pain in the butt, for example) and the fact that VR mode is just enabled when you put the headset on is seamless and lovely. this might be the reason i got the PSVR2
The Light Brigade - roguelike/lite FPS is not at the top of my list as a genre i’d prioritize, but in VR, sure yeah, i’ll give that a go. didn’t get a lot of time with this one because i couldn’t really find a comfortable way to sit and play it. there’s a lot of tactile stuff like loading your rifle and cocking the gun etc., but it doesn’t necessarily feel “natural”
Fantavision 202X - Sony should just make every PS2 game a VR game. i mean this seriously. i’d never played Fantavision before, but i know it’s been reevaluated in recent years as something at least worth looking at, and i’d agree. it’s a simple puzzle game that looks beautiful and has the quality of a Sony game from its era. if that pushes your buttons, then i’d say it’s a good game.
Rez Infinite - i know that the earliest versions of Rez are sometimes the preferred versions, but i do feel like Rez works in such a way that it continually utilizes new technologies that make you reevaluate what a game can be. using eye-tracking as the way to aim your cursor in Rez is incredible - it works exactly as described and makes the game more immersive than it’s ever been.
Tetris Effect: Connected - same thing as it’s always been, but now with better visual quality.
Thumper - i will buy Thumper on every platform it comes out on from now until eternity. that said, same deal as Tetris Effect.
Kayak VR: Mirage - i really enjoy kayaking and this game does a good job of pulling out similar feelings in me. i will say, though, that i’m not sure what the ideal sitting situation would be for this game. a lounge chair without arms, perhaps?
17 Likes
Vampyr (PS4) - finished up the platinum trophy today. final thoughts
game is excellent overall. it has some pretty severe flaws! but the concept, atmosphere, aesthetic consistency, period-piece attention to detail, incredible soundtrack, impressive voice acting, and abundance of player-reactive elements make this close to essential for RPG fans.
the combat is the worst thing about the game, and even then, most of the time it’s perfectly serviceable. vampyr uses combat as an important part of leveraging difficulty (they want it to be hard enough that you’re tempted to embrace folks for their XP), but there are quite a few frustrating set-pieces. geoffrey mccullum’s boss fight on my pacifist run had me cursing at my screen worse than most souls games.
the lock-on system, in particular, is heroically bad - i recommend foregoing its use whenever possible, as it will flip out on walls and fail to switch targets with exhausting frequency. you can brute force things with serums and firearms and a few of the more potent skills, but this game would have benefited from a more thoughtful combat implementation, imo
oh, yeah - strongly suggest restarting the game every few hours. if you play for too long, the game will freeze eventually, forcing you to reload from the last autosave
probably my favorite RPG i’ve played in quite some time, in the end. pretty highly recommend this one
6 Likes
I liked this a lot more than I expected. I first played my PSVR2 at my parent’s place so I had just enough space to do roomscale. I walking all over that place. I haven’t been able to play it since then, but I know that it’s aiming felt off though. It never felt like my guns aimed where it was lined up at and I’m not sure why, since other shooting games were fine. I wonder if there’s a bit of eye-tracking games do to help with aiming that Light Brigade didn’t do. It made shooting everything much more challenging, and I kept wasting tons of ammo. But I do like how small in scope every area is, to keep it moving along for a VR style experience. It needs a mid-run save option though because the run was really long for a VR game, because the physical movement you’re doing wears you out eventually if you’re doing roomscale.
Get an inflatable boat in your living room and strap your controllers to a broom, obviously. I did see in the options there was a setting for attaching your controllers to a stick, so that’s cute.
Does Fantavision really look that good in PSVR2? it’s like $30 right? It seemed a little high for a curio so I didn’t shell out for it, but I was curious when BustedAstromech said the HDR makes it shine.
I’ve been in the process of moving for the past month so I haven’t been able to do any VR stuff outside the first weekend I got the thing.
5 Likes
i mean your mileage may vary, but when everything was exploding, there were just gorgeous colors everywhere and i instinctively started giggling and said “this rules”
i had forgotten this game was announced, so when i saw it, i just thought it was kind of funny that they brought Fantavision back. if i were a character in a J-drama, i’d have wistfully said “懐かし…” to myself or my wife while looking at the cover
also, i knew i was getting paid today, so i was willing to shell out to try it.
so whether or not it’s worth $30 is variable, i think. it’s also such a simple game that i feel like it makes a good VR demo for people who come by my place
6 Likes
canoe w/oar option?? rowing machine?? these people could print money (or print it from my wallet anyways) if they could figure out a method for steering while using rowers. maybe just follow the head facing direction??
just when i thought i was immune to “the VR lust”
3 Likes
Velocibox (PS4) - abhorrent. Terrible movement, nauseating camera, unforgivably sluggish response. You will fail the finicky bits over and over long after you’ve grokked the idea they wanted to impart.
Punishing and frustrating. Not hard in an interesting way, more like they just neglected to include any warmup levels and just accelerate you to warp speed straight away. Super Hexagon is orders of magnitude better.
2 Likes
This has me strongly reconsidering my stance on getting a PS5. I figured “eh, no killer apps”.
I was wrong, holy God damn
5 Likes
Is there a particularly good reason why it can’t run PSVR1 games other than Effort?
1 Like
Double Dragon Advance GBA
Well, this game is sweet. They got rid of most of the platforming and slowdown, added lots more enemies and moves and weapons–maybe it IS the best Double Dragon ever, even though it was technically made by Million, the company that formed to buy the IPs of original creators Technos Japan after Technos’ bankruptcy.
It IS yet another remake of the original arcade Double Dragon, but this time with some brand new and/or significantly redone stages; the Matrix agents maybe don’t quite fit in with the rest of the cast, but The Matrix Reloaded had come out about six months earlier and I guess someone on the dev team really wanted to make a playable version of Morpheus’ fight on top of the speeding semi truck. ; )
I’d forgotten about Survival mode; it’s like the Tower mode that would come along in DDIV, except with actual good mechanics, not that imitation NES stuff.
The game’s planner, Muneki Ebinuma, also Muneki Ebinuma video game credits and biography - MobyGames worked as planner for Technos’ Super Double Dragon (SNES) and Double Dragon (the NeoGeo fighting game).
mGBA was chugging a bit by the end, you can see it in the jerky scrolling of the credits. I’d switched from Visual Boy Advance-M at the last minute 'cause it seemed like VBA-M was chugging just a tad from the start. Tried the no$GBA emulator I mentioned but yeah it doesn’t want to run straight ROMs and anyway seems more focused on DS emulation. So back to VBA-M for next time; I got myself building my own executable with MSys2 from the latest GitHub - visualboyadvance-m/visualboyadvance-m: The continuing development of the legendary VBA gameboy advance emulator. code now, maybe that’ll help. : )
Oh! The game I was trying to think of with art by Fist of the North Star artist Tetsuo Hara–whose style some of the later illustrations here were obviously trying to imitate–is Saturday Night Slam Masters! ^ _^
7 Likes
When this hit I was frequenting a loosely Double Dragon themed message board with like five regulars. This brings back memories.
3 Likes
Nice. : ) I only remember it clearly up through the last fight on the truck–not sure I made it past that; I had way too many games and I just wasn’t playing much at the time. Sold it along with all my GBA stuff when I moved 4.5 years ago. Pricey to pick up now! ; ) Real good though. Real real good. Like, it just does stuff that almost certainly would have been just awful in almost any other beat 'em up. Somehow it pulls all this stuff off like it’s no big deal.
Oh huh, another game planner Ebinuma had worked on at Technos was Hybrid Wrestler.
And he wrote an article about the game after completing it. There’s an English version Double Dragon Dojo: Muneki Ebinuma's Commentary on Double Dragon Advance translated from the original Japanese ダブルドラゴン アドバンス
He says they had to work with the smallest size GBA cart, just 32 MB (he’d wanted the big one, 256 MB). But he says
“We were constantly revising the game till we became satisfied with the quality despite the small size and limited time we were given.”
Also:
‘I wanted to stick as close as possible to the original premise of “Double Dragon,” which is set in a world of unrefined violence, so I rejected suggestions that strayed too far from the original concept. My superiors, Mr. Taki and Mr. Mitsuhiro Yoshida (who was in charge of “River City Ransom”) understood where I was going and defended my position.’
Interesting note about the unusual jump-kick pose:
‘I always hated the “jump kick” pose from the arcade “Double Dragon.” I gave the sprite designer a photograph of Bruce Lee delivering a jump kick to Abdul-Jabbar from my favorite movie, “The Game of Death,” for reference to what I wanted the jump kick to look like. I laughed out loud when I saw the final jump-kick animation. I was very glad it turned out like that.’
Oh I got it mixed up the video, the mounted punch thing was from the NES, not Combatribes–that was the stomp:
‘The “sit-on punch” was taken from the arcade game “Renegade” and the NES version of “Double Dragon.” The “running punch” was also from “Renegade.” The “stomping” technique was a move we took from the arcade game “The Combatribes.” We wanted to include something from every Technos beat-’em-up made in order to honor the tradition of the old ways.’
‘Now that I think about it, we added quite a bit of bold, new features and I’m pleased with how it turned out.’
Fist of the North Star reference:
‘We planned to use an original animation for the “tae kwon do kick” when performed against Burnov, mimicking the battle between Kenshiro and Heart in the manga and anime series “Fist of the North Star,” in which Billy’s kicks or Jimmy’s punches would be ineffective. Jimmy’s rapid punch attack was not added in the final game for the same reasons as one would expect.’
Matrix reference:
‘One of the new enemy characters is Steve, who was originally modeled after actor Jean-Claude Van Damme in “Super Double Dragon,” where he specializes in kicking techniques, although it seems our designer has been watching “The Matrix” too many times because Steve’s design is very similar to the Agent characters. Personally, the Van-Damme movie “Double Impact” was a favorite of mine.’
Bruce Lee reference (more in the Chinatown part of the article):
‘The end of the stage features artwork of Bruce Lee doing his famous fighting stance from “Game of Death” on the back of a truck. The entire town was drawn to have a classic 1970s or 80s kung fu movie feel.’
6 Likes
I just finished this game. It’s less than an hour long. (Or should be, but the 2D parts are poorly programmed. Near the end I just switched off the spikes rather than continue to fight with the controls.)
The game is stranger than I expected, sometimes going for absurd or morbid humor while relating the story. I thought it might be similar to The Pedestrian but it’s more of a walking simulator than a puzzle game, despite the 2D platformer sections.
13 Likes
Tetris GB in Super Game Boy 2 SFC (and some Super Game Boy (1) SNES), border removal via Mesen
It just isn’t Tetris for me without that A-Type music, which is a huge part of why I wasn’t happy until I got this version I guess. Of course, there’s a copyright claim on it that makes any video posted of it share the ad revenue with the copyright holder. Oh well, I guess I can’t blame them (much : P), it’s a worthwhile tune! … The capitalist running dogs! ^P ^
The name of Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov–or, that’s how his Russian name is rendered in Roman characters these days–is spelled “Alexey Pazhitnov” on the game’s start-up screen.
16 Likes