yeah, this calls to mind the original inspiration for Doom being an adaptation of Alien/Aliens. Tom Hall was also the one in charge of the story for the game before it was scrapped, so it makes sense his levels carry that mood the strongest. i think you can also feel that in plenty of his Wolf3D levels, which have similar juxtaposing areas of like things that look like administrative offices with torture dungeons very close to each other. i think in a way that’s a real good encapsulation of evil - the joining of cartoonish horrors with the mundane. i do think there’s something interesting there that you don’t get with the straight “this is just abstract level design” direction that things went for most of the rest of 90’s FPS games.
8 Likes
dragon quest heroes 2 has a 30+ minute long escort mission
eat shit, dragon quest heroes 2
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yeah i just read about this in crpg addict’s entries on M&M and fuckin good look there jon van canegham sheesh
scorpia seems cool!
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Scorpia was the best because she was a total hater who only liked what she liked and I respect that. Games journalism went downhill after she was ousted from cgw and honestly it never recovered
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hope im not showing my ass too much by wondering “is she trans”
1 Like
I spent a few nights researching whatever happened to scorpia a few months ago and she is not but I get what you mean because I also thought this
2 Likes
I haven’t seen any other impressions but I’ve just finished playing through Goodbye Volcano High, a lovely lil visual novel. I feel like it’s the first indie game I’ve bought at launch since Night in the Woods, which also has anthros, queer stuff and your-gang’s-in-a-band, so I guess that’s my type.
You follow Fang going about their final school year, with teen drama or whatever. You interact with your chums and cohorts and all that however you please. The voice acting is decent enough, though the video games limitations make the conversations sound not-quite organic. Good enough!
The music mini-game is enjoyable, though I wish there was slightly more to it. I kept confusing it with Gitaroo Man for some reason, lol.
Finally there’s a DnD side plot thing running alongside the main adventure. Which is also sweet and enjoyable but I would’ve liked this expanding as well! Especially for the dialogue during these sections.
Thumbs up from me 
It made me emotional at times, as I am a sap. I might go through again for alternative options, as it didn’t feel like a slog unlike some other games with branching moments or paths.
14 Likes
we dont talk enough about Mystic Ark. specifically we dont talk enough about how one of the first things you do is get press-ganged into joining a crew of pirate cats
my conspiracy theory for this game is it was inspired by Myst and the title is an oblique reference. i mean you get transported to an eerie seemingly abandoned island and solve puzzles to enter other worlds. there is a sequel thats just straight up an adventure game. I think im onto something
this game does things ive wanted to get out of RPG Maker tinkering for years, it feels very made for me. Im conceptually after a game thats “nothing Dragon Quest couldn’t do but everything it wouldn’t do”. This seems so far like it fits the bill!
Also, Produce! is a fucking excellent developer name
22 Likes
Finished up Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time and I was bored so I rounded up all the various collectible stuff I hadn’t yet grabbed (I also got all the weapons except the Ryno V to level 5, but they were almost all there by the end anyways as I use doing that to get me to keep switching up which weapons I use).
I mention that as the final three gold bolts were in the Clank section and require doing three extra hard “record multiple Clanks walking around hitting switches so that you can open the exit door” puzzles and I was impressed/mildly annoyed by how tricky/strict they ended up being. You only have one minute of recording time and in these puzzles the challenge was as much getting everything done in that time as actually figuring out what to do with the four Crank recordings. The first two I think I had maybe 3 seconds left when I hit the door, since you are always needing one Crank to stand on a switch that opens a door or path for another one that means you always have one or two of them that are stuck standing in one spot until all the Clanks who need to use it have gone by before running them elsewhere to activate something else for another one. By the end you have rerecorded their routines one or two dozen times hoping you have just enough seconds to spare, I’m not sure I’d appreciate a full game of those but I kinda respect them for going all in on these out of the way bonus ones.
5 Likes
been cyberpunkin
me, getting increasingly frustrated at the lack of quality shoe drops
one of my favorite things about the game is that the majority of people walking around dress flamboyantly. Looking like a super merc is ridiculous, and people will tell you you’re lame. a lot of the actual clothes, especially head and footwear, look different than I expected from the thumbnails. like a totally different base color. Doing thorough checks and struggling with the wardrobe inventory system was not my facorite minigame, but I enjoyed the character progression.
this is me dressed as keanu for a date at a drive-in theatre with an ex. Keanu’s ex, not mine. (I got a new apratment but i can’t show it to my girlfriend or even tell her. i love her, but stop texting if you can’t spend the night, lady) couldn’t figure out how to get his pants out of my closet. there’s still lingering hat/helmet bugs where you gotta wear an assigned outfit for a mission and your undergear starts seeping through. if not for this issue i’d just go as the cuban hitwoman full time.
13 Likes
After having such a good time with Ico went on to the Shadow of The Colossus Remake which I am trying to beat as fast as possible. In the Spirit Of The Gamer, I run.
It’s impossibly pretty in parts (duh) and feels completely unnecessary (duh) and they didn’t even bother to modernize the controls so using the bow is still very strange.
After however many times I’ve played this game and I think I made this exact post the last time I played, I still have no clue what I was supposed to do with the 4th Colossus. I just glitched jumped on its back and destroyed its impossible beauty with my magic sword.
9 Likes
you gotta get it to peer into one of the tunnels in the arena and sneak up on it. it can be very annoying to do that so youre lucky you didnt have to engage with it. Shadow of the Colossus is a lovely game that will always be very special to me but the last time i played it, the number of colossi you have to get into some fiddly specific position and bait an action out of really grated on me (fuck that guy you gotta flip over using intermittent steam vents, jesus christ that one sucks)
9 Likes
when i played the remaster for a bit, that colossus (the one you have to “trick” with the tunnels) just 100% would not cooperate. for over an hour. the actual thing i ended up doing after looking it up in exasperation was just inexplicable and did not indicate to me in any way why what i had been trying the previous hour was ineffective.
i really dislike that colossus, lol
7 Likes
Front mission 2 remake:
This comes from a different studio than FM1 remake but still very budget. Just selecting a tile in battle feels awful. The difference of quality between this and Tactics Ogre reborn is mind blowing. I’d most definitely play the PSX translated version over this if I still had a computer
Anyway this is the first time I get to see FM2. Interesting to see the Front mission formula solidifying in this game after a widely unbalanced FM1. This game really encourages moving in a pack and surrounding enemies. If you go alone and get surrounded, you might not even have enough AP to attack on your turn.
I’m very curious about how money will be handled. Repair and maintenance costs are fucking absurd so far, and cost me 80% of my award money (I didn’t even lose a wanzer on that mission, I think only two body parts were broken) :
There’s a sort of proto Front Mission 3 internet but it’s very slight in comparison. It’s mostly a Lore Menu + a place to input secret passwords (for cool rewards?)
I’m pretty happy to see this take place in Bangladesh with seemingly accurate architecture and geography. And the portraits rule
I’m very distracted by the guy who was clearly designed after Ernest Brogline from the ancient TV show Airwolf (called SUPERCOPTER in France)
26 Likes
I love winning the 4 man team modes solo
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The new mdickie game is very bizarre. It takes place in a school that feels more like the prison from Hard Time and it is still very wrestling focused. You can play in any era from 1950 to 2023 and there will still be Civilization 2 and CM punk posters on the wall
You can be an elementary school student and still have to fill out your moveset with lariats and shit to survive. You start getting bullied immediately. In all the classes they just ask you trivia, like it’s really funny in the history class because there’s the box art from Civ 2 on all the walls and he only asks you questions about biblical times.
Your parents house is three rooms, a bedroom with a bed that clips into the bathroom, a bathroom, and a big open room with a computer. There’s no food you can only buy food at the commissary and I guess in the city but then you have to survive the enormous brawls that break out on the subway. The computer can also spit out answers to bible trivia to help you if you get called on at school. Sometimes it tells you things like “more people will move to the city when it gets bigger” or it just explodes. It’s very mysterious. The map is confusing as well, like it’s laid out a certain way but you can go through some doors that take you all the way across the map in a way that feels non euclidian. I stole an SUV and drove down the street in the direction of the main junction and ended up on a basketball court packed with at least 20 NPCs, mowing people down moving in any direction
In the first class I was in the teacher picked up a backpack and asked someone a question and then immediately pitched it as hard as he could into the student to fuck him up. my dad was dressed like stone cold steve austin and couldnt stop backpedaling and bouncing off the walls of our house. Every class is like 30 seconds long unless the teacher gets stuck in a loop or randomly becomes violent like Class of 1999. more than many of his recent projects I feel like we are seeing some of the old mdickie come out once again, like it’s extremely funny how coherent wrestling empire is and this game is back to the old days of a guy running up to you and saying you that you should have picked another name as a baby because hes going to fuck you up now
32 Likes
played Aria Of Sorrow on the plane, its fun to wander around and find weird enemies and weapons.
also sega rally for the gba, which looks like ass, but in trying to play it: it is sega rally, it plays like ass, but is challenging if you are trying to get first. it even has the “game over yeahhhhhh” voice sample
9 Likes
i’ve speedrun that game. i think i still have the WR for the main category…? it is ass, but it is also significantly better in first-person. like, seriously. it’s a game-changer.
8 Likes
hmmmmmm, ill have to try it. what car settings are optimal?
3 Likes