I really wanted to play Adaca but my computer was struggling mightily to handle the game. I suppose after all these years my laptop just can’t keep up anymore, even with indie stuff.
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alright, i played a couple games while i was layed out for the first chunk of the year, particularly after we decided to get a steam deck
Super Mario Bros. you guys hear about this? hear about this one? yeah me neither. anyway i’ve never actually played very far into SMB1, and i really wanted to complete it nowarp so that i could see everything it had on offer design-wise. honestly extremely blown away by the visual presentation, particularly the level (7-3 maybe?) where they replaced the sky color in the palette with black, and replaced the universal black that the background tiles pull from with a dark gray. really great
honestly the progressive militarization of the world as you get further in was interesting in general, i’d just never experienced it! any other time i’ve played SMB1 i’ve only seen the first two worlds really because i never really got used to the low-friction floors. and frankly, this time, i was still struggling, but i decided to push through til it clicked cause i enjoy the other marios and i really wanted to have this one under my belt, just to have done it.
good game, good platformer, though of course its jumping is not as good as the la mulana remake, the greatest platformer ever made
Legend of Zelda you guys ever he- yeah so i’ve never really played much of any zelda, frankly. always ignored the series. i don’t want to swing my sword in real-time, that’s disgusting, i’d do that in real life if i wanted to!
anyway honestly i was pretty lukewarm on first quest. its various attempts to make me feel like i was exploring and adventuring mostly just made me feel like i was working a job. i really didnt like its sensibilities, felt too much like pixel-hunting at a few points.
now second quest, that’s a fucking video game. i cannot believe it is made by the same people, on the same cartridge, because second quest is a game made by people who CLEARLY hate zelda and hate you. i fucking loved it. its cruelty finally made zelda’s exploration click with me, skipping me straight over the adventurous spirit first quest wanted me to have and instead instilling within me a manic drive to burn, blow up, and toot toot every damn tile. i loved how silly and mean some of the dungeon designs were. though actually, gotta say, i think that second quest ganon’s dungeon was WAY easier than first quest’s, they dropped the ball there. meaner please!
good stuff
Kirby’s Dreamland yknow i love this little puffball’s series, but i’ve never touched dreamland 1 or 2! like seemingly most folks here who were recently playing it, i had likewise assumed that kirby-no-copy would be kinda whatever, but i was really impressed! it doesn’t overstay its welcome in the slightest, each world is a nice little treat, and i was really impressed with extra game! all the enemy variants were interesting in their slightly different behavior patterns, the bosses new tricks were fun (particularly kracko was wild to see), and its actually impressive to see how many of even the reskinned harder variants have made it into later games.
speaking of later games, actually, i was really impressed how much they immediately had decided what kirby level design was like. i mean, obviously theyve been re-using bosses and stage flavors and such from this game, but like, the core level design conceits of the one-way doors, hidden paths, where they think to put hidden treats, has all been pretty consistent with the later games. the only thing that really changed was the advent of ability-related puzzles like ropes or fuses or stumps and the bomb-blocks.
and some quickfire thoughts on games i’m not done tinkering around with -
Digimon Survive i haven’t really picked back up since my first few hours, though i do want to. the characters are cute, the way the shaders look on the sprites is actually really good imo, i will play literally anything that says digimon on the tin. though … man, from what ive vaguely heard this game seems monstrously long …
Donkey Kong (GB) okay i’ve never gotten that far in this, but i just realized picking it up briefly the other day that you have all the acrobatic movement options right from the start, so those initial donkey kong arcade levels can be absolutely demolished by a backflipping-handstanding italian. that owns
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Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon is a long title that I will shorten to ‘BOCkLeD’.
The game plays like Brothers a Tale of Two Sons with El Shaddai’s Art Direction. Instead of two brothers on a Grimm’s fairy tale adventure you’re on a Grimm’s fairy tale adventure as a teen witch and a demonically possessed cat doll.
The game plays like Brothers a Tale of Two Sons with El Shaddai’s Art Direction. Instead of two brothers on a Grimm’s fairy tale adventure you’re on a Grimm’s fairy tale adventure as a teen witch and a demonically possessed cat doll.
The visuals have lots of nice, hazy, organic abstractions that evoke a child perspective in deep woods. The storybook presentation is very comfy and I thought I’d be kinda sick of this style of storytelling in similar scale games but the sound design and narration are very lavish so I feel tucked in. The illustrations and forms also remind me a lot of stained glass for some reason.
BOCkLeD has some cool takes on some Bayonetta ideas without really ever being completely in the same genre. You dance as a way to do magic but the control is explicitly more musical with a metronome you have to tap out to activate things. The metronome fits the time signature of the music in the level although it doesn’t really go beyond 3/4 and 4/4. The fact that you the player have to stop and tap out the rhythm and the magic isn’t ‘automatic’ like it is in the main series sells the idea of this being Bayonetta in training.
It’s all just a very odd spinoff given the vamp sexiness of the main series compared to the very child’s storybook presentation. Cereza just does ballet dancing in this to make it a bit less extravagant burlesque but I’m wondering if they’ll ever bring up this core part of the series identity at all. It’d be kinda weird.
The story is pretty basic but I can’t resist the allure of a Scottish brogue saying ‘bisextile night’.
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i don’t think enough has been said generally about kirb physics and that they’re really good
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way to launder that one in four paragraphs deep
as someone with no tattoos, but if I had them, one of them might be a la mulana tattoo, and it might be on my face,
we beefin
(said with love but also stinkeye)
(EDIT: my stance here might not be clear, faux-MSX la mulana (and I guess the remake too) is irrefutably contender for greatest game of all time, but its jump better than smb1?? no way jose)
(EDIT2: is the jump different between MSX and remake?? never played it, didn’t love the SNESification, now I’m doubting myself)
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Playing Chrono Cross but, while I like the aesthetics (it reminds me of Moon) I am not likong the game as much. I find the combat system pretty boring and unengaging, mostly. What’s SelectButton’s opinion of it?
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don’t worry, i fully recognize that this is one of my most hogwild opinions haha
i don’t know if they’re different, though i think they might be? i’d have to go play the original faux-MSX version more to feel it out. in the remake at least, it’s extremely committal and floaty and lets you just barely suggest mid-air correction only after you’ve crested the peak of the jump, and i mean barely. it feels bad in the absolute best way possible and i love it dearly. felt especially good when paired with learning when the best timing was to swing the axe mid-jump
anyway i’m sorry but i must die on this hill, i accept your invitation to beef with camaraderie and grace
(EDIT: yeah the jump seems the same probably, im sorry i just really love its physics)
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I LOVE IT something about changing the colors on the grid strategically is so amazing. And the way everyones elemnet & grid is different so you have to pick what to put on it carefully rules…the way you can make spells more powerful by slotting them deeper into the grid is awesome!!
also everything else about that game si amazing. the aesthetic, the story, the music, its such a good sequel to chrono trigger. The melancholy one for when youve grown up a little bit since playing the snes one.
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Thanks! I will stick to it more!
it definitely starts to pick up more after you go to viper manor
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playing the stanley parable for the first time. writing this from an elevator.
always love to play a game with good writing. like, clever! not life changing but really entertaining.
i am surprised at how much Stuff there is in it too. what a lovely surprise, i was afraid it would be too self serious or whatever.
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pittsburg section is still the interminable slog I remembered it to be, the main reason I never replayed it before now
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99 Fails Lite is kinda depressing. The dev was originally making what appeared to be a 3D version of this but has apparently rescoped to a 2D version? [citation needed]. And that 2D version has a free demo/trial out called 99 Fails Lite so this whole project timeline so far has been:
3D game – Neebota’s Revenge: 99 Fails (originally titled 99 fails, title switch was presumably SEO)
2D game – 99 Fails
2D demo/trial – 99 Fails Lite
Anyway, the game basically asks you to traverse pillars by teleporting on to them by holding a single button to travel the right distance. You then have to time the holds consistently for many pillars to complete a level and if you fail once you start over.
To be fair to them, they must’ve realised this kind of design was perfectly possible in 2D and have since abandoned the more ambitious 3D varieties. The problem is it’s kinda hideous. What looks like former concept art has just kinda been dumped in for the sprites and nothing is animated very smoothly. The game also has an announcer on by default that loudly berates you when you fail which feels like the worst kinda game design antagonism toward the player. Like yes, I haven’t gotten better at this very specific task 2 minutes in, I suck, I guess. Makes me feel like the devs think they’re honoring Hidetaka Miyazaki’s will or some shit.
The game also doesn’t really offer you much other than to just keep trying from the start while randomised distractions assault you. There’s a mobile-looking UI that gives you little difficulty workarounds like an arrow showing where your teleports will go but you have to grind currency for them. I was into the surreal pitch of the original project but now I’m pretty turned off.
I played another free Steam game called Pineapple on Pizza. It’s the kinda game I’d probably make since it’s just a 10 minute session and the idea is basically an elaborate joke. I can’t really say much about it because it’d ruin it but worth a look if you like short game ideas. The world is neat to walk around and it was fun guessing at what would trigger an achievement. You get a lot of ‘aha’ since the possibility space is so small but the goals are vague enough that it feels like novel discovery when something happens.
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I think I’ve said this before but I really like Stanley Parable because its whole purpose seems to be exhausting every possible variety of 4th wall breaking you could ever do in a videogame. So now nobody else has to. Stanley Parable did it already, you’re not being clever. Please just make an actual game now.
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i was trying to think about what good this game is in 2023, and i think it is something like this. it feels very much like a dead end narratively and design wise (which is not an insult). although i do feel the sort of thing its doing was kinda refined in like, imscared and undertale and other Haunted Games ie games haunted by their gameness and sorta poking at that idea.
this is a half formed thought
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i’ll do a proper writeup of my latest batch of jpegs soon but anyway this game is really pretty good actually but it has absolutely egregiously lazy localisation. it’s astonishingly dreadful.
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I’ve only played the Japanese versions of the games and it’s such a comfy time, and it does the Good Kid’s Cartoon thing of ripping off cultural properties only adults would know like fucking X-Files and it’s hilarious
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Finally got my VR setup finalized and played the first couple of hours of Half-Life Alyx yesterday. So far it’s a mix of precisely what I expected and some unexpected qualities.
On the “as expected” front, it’s a rather close revisit of the setting of HL2, in the same sequence. It almost feels like a remake, with higher production values and not-awful-but-decidedly-inferior taste level (the same could be said of all remakes/remasters…)
Less expected is the strong sense of disembodiment I get from it. To avoid motion sickness, I left it on the default movement setting of “teleport around”. The result is reminiscent of Myst/Riven, of all things. And you don’t have arms, you just have hands waving around in midair. It’s very satisfying to pull some ammo as if with a string, catch it and drop it into my unseen backpack, but it’s also a wholly unreal-feeling act.
I guess I should’ve expected the latter quality too because it echoes a common SB comment about HL2. But I had been assuming that was some kind of “teething problem” with HL2’s brand-new engine instead of a fundamental Valve design philosophy issue. I have to reconsider that, in light of another HL with an uncanny gap between some physics that are lovingly simulated to the last detail and others that are entirely absent.
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I used to write reviews for a newspaper back in 2013-2015 kinda time. At the time I was the one of two editorial staff who had a WiiU. The other guy was a bit closer to the lead reviews editor and as a result I would get many of the worse WiiU games, for free at least (I wasn’t paid for the job).
Game and Wario, Wii Party U, Devil’s Third, Art Academy: Atelier, just some really rough stuff.
I sold my WiiU last year after feeling like there was no love for it anymore and the recent eshop closure made me reflect on a lot. Splatoon 1, Mighty Switch Force, Bayonetta 2 and a handful of other things did actually lead to some nice memories, albeit mainly from playing with friends.
I saw Affordable Space Adventures listed as a fairly novel WiiU game that people should get before the eshop closes and thought it would be cool to check out. It turns out that I forgot that I not only played it but got a review code a while back (but didn’t end up reviewing it).
The whole eshop closure gave me a weird melancholy but I don’t regret selling the WiiU apart from a mild desire to have an archive. Just a miserable brick with a buncha brick cables.
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