blade strangers was so bad, but like, in a distinctly non-memorable entirely non-funny way. not even kusoge material
6 Likes
I started the Etiran Odyssey 1 remake and naked my team Buttcon because this past weekend was on my mind.
11 Likes
OOOOOO PLEASE GIVE UPDATES!!! POST IN THE ETRIAN ODYSSEY THREAD!!! IF YOUāRE TOO BUSY MESSAGE ME ABOUT IT A LITTLE BIT AT LEAST
3 Likes
i played cyberpunk for approximately 10 minutes before having to turn the game off and figure out why i felt like someone stabbed me in the back of the head with a needle, so thatās really an auspicious start. this fucking bullshit is gay bashing me before i can even shoot anyone in it. in every single menu there is this weird noise mixed into the constant hum, it like sounds like someone using a chainsaw off in the distance because of how it oscillates, that digs into your fucking brain and gives you a headache, it was actually making me physically uncomfortable once i figured out where it was coming from and focused on it. and APPARENTLY I AM NOT THE ONLY PERSON WITH THIS ISSUE
i had to install a mod to fucking get rid of it. this is great, iām so excited to play more of this already, like I wanna know where they found the hell sound. Are people being subliminally programmed to kill playing this game and spending hours in these fucking menus? I guess only time will tell. looking forwards to the game trying to give me a seizure next.
at least the game started with my sickly, shitty looking character setting her broken nose in an equally shitty bar with great music, thatās a plus at least, and the fucking drink menu wasnāt some bullshit like ā4 shots of grain alcohol and some schnappsā like battletech
every tv in the bar was playing a wav file of a woman orgasming and giant MILFGUARD ads so you know letās not get our hopes up too high though, Iām passing time until Sam Lake can save me, this is like putting on the USA Network and settling into the recliner to watch reactionary cinema masterpiece Shooter starring Mark Wahlberg and wondering what lies theyāre trying to sell us today but with a tabletop game I really really loved when I was 15 years old. Where the fuck are the fucking furries!! Mike Pondsmith put that shit in here in 1988!!!
22 Likes
I was so angry when I found out the sourcebook has a canonical catgirl pmc, and the president of the company is in the game, but the catgirls arenāt.
15 Likes
It took one day longer than ideal but I managed to finished my Halloween game Resident Evil 7, making it the second RE game I have beaten. FWIW this continues my fear from he first RE that I exist in a different universe than everyone else who plays these games as I finished with like fifty extra shotgun bullets, thirty some handgun ones, various flamethrower and grenade rounds, like ten things of gunpowder and countless chemical things I never used. Many people when I asked before I played said that yes, you can screw yourself on ammo if your aim is poor when the answer seemed to actually be āyou have a ton, unless you actively try to screw yourself over youāll be fineā. That saidā¦ probably helped the tension a good bit and only really screwed things up for me in that first molded area, so at worst it was probably a push.
I will say that there was one battle in the game I was dreading as via just existing in the gaming sphere I somehow picked up that there was a battle against two fat molded things that was supposed to be a pain that one should save their big guns for andā¦ well one of them got hung up on level geometry at some point so I picked it off from far away at my leisure.
Anyways the game is clearly very good and I enjoyed much of it, although I maintain that it loses a good bit of something in its last act.
I guess one final question: since I got the Gold version is any of the former DLC/bonus content worth bothering with?
11 Likes
All the narrative based ones are at least somewhat interesting. End of Zoe is absolutely hilarious for reasons itās best not to spoil, just try it out. Thereās also like a horde mode and a score attack mode which I donāt care much for, but I always prefer narrative stuff to pure arcade action.
5 Likes
My friend was going through his XBox 360 collection and among them was THIS and Iām watching gameplay of it and like
???
10 Likes
Thatās from Planet Moon, a bunch of ex-Shiny people so their games have an emphasis on wackiness. I quite liked their game before this one, Giants: Citizen Kabuto but I havenāt played it in forever.
14 Likes
From the era where Lucasarts was trying to go back to being a publisher of normal games, giving us such modern classics as Mercenaries Playground of destruction and RTX Red Rock.
11 Likes
the mod didnāt get rid of it. this game is tortureware, dont play this fucking bullshit. this is actually the best possible endingā¦i cant prove its a transphobic hate crime but i will be saying that anyway. the driving and shooting felt like shit also
you know what game has an option for people who are sensitive to high frequency noises? thats right, alan wake 2!!!
11 Likes
I had to exit out of black mesa and get a mod to fix the air raid siren making a horrible popping noise every time it looped. Is every game on the planet designed to give you a headache nowā¦this is what happens whenever I play anything past the ps2. Itās just a hassle
7 Likes
finally someone applied the principles of the irreversible dvd menu to a videogame
5 Likes
also the last post i want to make about cyberpunk 2077 because it sucks iām putting it in a thing because its 1/2 about sex
STROKIN
if youāre going to go full on conservative polish guy mode and decide that body types are super uniform in the future and trans people donāt visibly exist and that your voice and body type have to āmatch upā so you can have sex with other people you could at the very fucking least think about the implications of these things, the fact that maybe everyone being able to get the same cheap genital surgeries makes everything uniform and oppressive re: gender, like the fact that theres only two penis options could mean something instead of being an obvious reflection of the limited imaginations of the developers, but whatever, iām a moron for thinking these guys have ever heard of doctors sculpting every woman they seeās pussys to look the same because theyre nazis. there isnt even a weird cyber dick or anything in the entire game. my insane ex girlfriend used to write paragraphs and paragraphs about the mechanics of the synthetic lube her characters cyber pussy had and the different flavorings u could set it up to excrete like jesus christ try being interesting perverts for once in your life cdpr. people turn sawzalls into fucking machines irl that can literally kill you by rearranging your guts if you hold the trigger down slightly too hard and nobody is packing anything more industrial in the future? bull fuckin shit dude i donāt believe that for a second. nobody has two dicks or pussies? you can replace your ENTIRE BODY and they canāt make another hole in you or bolt some shit on? instead the peak of perversion in the future is pegging, a racist anime girl ad for cola and super loud orgasm noises blasting out of a TV.
i mean christ itās more than even just the sex being bizarrely puritan for 2077, you canāt even become a tank, you like see some heavily modified npc who mostly exist for you to mow down but you canāt even replace your legs with chrome. you canāt be a metal freak at all, it makes zero sense, you would only NOT let the player do this if you never want to reckon with the game as written (the player characters are inherently on the edge of psychosis because of their line of work and the cost of modifying yourself to participate in it, on top of how society blames a lot of problems on over-augmentation when itās really the same old issues of snapping because you lost your job, someone you know got murdered, the cops beat you up etc) so there goes a lot of the social commentary inherent to the setting. in the tabletop game you literally have to go to therapy after big surgeries because your grasp on human life begins to slip as you find yourself unable to ignore the fact that you can effortlessly rip meatbags apart with your gorilla arms. this rocks of course so theyād never put it in a videogame. itās a setting where you really do start responding to people mouthing off to you with lethal force just because you can not because you have to, because you have a military grade targeting system in your head that tells your odds of taking all the people around you and makes their name turn red like a call of duty game if they say anything a computer detects as being remotely hostile, and the videogame adaptation is totally uninterested in even talking about how fucking insane that is. it is bad enough we live in a present that is totally capable of warping your perceptions, let alone a future where synthetic machinery in your skull can be programmed to unconsciously shape and take control of them
and on a more juvenile note lol that the guys who couldnāt resist putting a pulp fiction reference in witcher 3 didnāt even put in a sex worker with three tits in their cyberpunk future game
21 Likes
random festival judging games incoming. iāll start with a couple some people have at least heard of:
Viewfinder
itās a One Clever Mechanic (1CM) game in 2023! imagine that. see my previous forum thoughts on this genre here if youāre curious. but yeah, other people here have talked about this game already partially because the game got some notice as a demo, but this game really perfectly embodies the sort of prestige puzzle game tropes often published by Annapurna (tho this is, notably, not). the puzzles rely on one gimmick of placing photographs over a landscape and having that landscape change - honestly which is a cool technical gimmick. especially when you start using pictures or photos that are not just of a landscape but are a bit more abstract.
this also went viral a bit for a clip of Vinny Vinesauce muting the voice acting right from the start. that was a good move. the story is not interesting or good, and i also quickly muted the voice acting. the game does the āyou can pet the catā thing to an annoying degree. this is the gamedev twitter pilled version of a One Clever Mechanic game instead of a puzzle mans version. it tries to be a sciency puzzle mans game but in a very ādonāt be mean to me, iām sensitiveā Gen Z/Millennial sort of way vs. a āyouāre simply too unintelligent and iām optimizing you out of my realityā Gen X tech guy way.
on a positive side, the setting is pretty nicely realized. itās very approachable and pleasant looking and without the slightly generic cardboard style of The Witness or whatever. i also think the puzzles were decent to good. the various technical gimmicks really help carry them.
all in all, iām more positive than negative about this game. but itās not going to sway you if you donāt already like these sorts of puzzle games.
Lunistice
i grew up with N64 platformers and obviously have a lot of fondness for them, but this current wave of retro indie 3D platformers has been weird to me. i guess itās just not a genre i feel a great need to revisit outside of childhood especially now since the novelty of making this kind of game has worn off. so when i do see this kind of game, i really hope for it to add something significant or new, or at least be so tightly designed that i feel like this cannot be ignored.
iām not sure that this game is really it. in general this seems be some sort of compromise in between a N64-style collectathon that emphasizes exploration and a more Sega-inspired speed game with more linear levels. iām not really sure i understand the compromise, because itās hard for me to know whether to focus on collecting everything or just trying to beat the level as fast as possible is the better strategy, and which the game really expects you to do.
this is compounded a lot by the controls feeling kind of loose and oversensitive - itās very easy to fall off surfaces accidentally and iām not sure holding the āslow yourself downā button they try and give you for tighter jumps really alleviates that. the camera also misses shifting at important points of the level that leads to deaths and randomly smashing into enemies you canāt see. again, would make more sense if this were a more tightly choreographed experience. but it just generally lacks the tightness you want from a game like this - even 3D Sonic feels super tightly choreographed in comparison.
i guess in general neither collecting everything nor getting to the end of the level fast seems like that compelling of a challenge for me to want to pursue either - especially with the controls being kind of slippery. it just makes everything feel a little muddled and confused, i guess, and less really conscious of what makes some of those other games work. thereās a reason why games like Crash Bandicoot or Sonic go in one direction, and games like Banjo Kazooie go in another. you need to commit to doing a specific thing a little harder when designing a game like this.
but anyway i do really like the sort of pleasant pastel color palette and the general visual vibe. it hits something for me that soothes me. and the level design seems to get more interesting as it goes on. it seems like the developer does at least care about making a decent one of these games and this isnāt just a āvibes onlyā experience. so maybe thereās still something here for me. i just feel like it could be a lot better.
Tenebris Pictura
this is the weird game i played at SBCon that everyone was saying looked like Eternal Darkness or whatever. this is one of those games that feels like one personās passion project and i just do not know what to make of it. it feels like a modern indie version of the super jank old PC games Rossās Game Dungeon often plays that have some really interesting ideas but also are kind of hard to parse at some fundamental level, like thereās context missing. your character also has a really hilarious jump animation - one of those things where itās hard to know how seriously you should take the game.
anyway, in this game youāre like a psychic who can use your ghost powers to manipulate the environment around you. there is like this pink puzzle goo sometimes you have to get around with your ghost powers. but then there are weirder things like paintings you can jump into or these spotlight things you move around that reveal a different version of the environment youāre in to proceed. and then thereās combat that only your ghost self can engage in (which are kind of slightly bullet hell and slightly clunky - but theyāre passable). and there are these really cool painterly visual effects that happen throughout the game also.
the plot seems kind of generic and whatever, but in a way that feels slightly weird and as such doesnāt bother me. for every element that feels slapdash or generic or default asset store thereās another that feels really clever and well done in way you donāt realize right away. the stages are really weirdly varied too.
and especially compared to the game immediately below this one, the weirdness is actually still reasonably approachable and feels like it can be completed by a normal person
overall i canāt exactly say itās a fully polished or even fully comprehensible game, but it is something that is nonetheless compelling and doing a combination of things iāve never really seen before. it also currently only has five reviews on Steam, so maybe at least worth keeping on your radar. it is difficult though because iām not sure iād recommend it at 20 dollars unless youāre feeling adventurous, because the jank factor just makes it difficult to call it an essential experience or whatever. so i doubt most people are ever going to play this. which is a huge shame.
Dead Ink
Exhibit A why Soulsborne games have become a poison on the indie space.
i DESPERATELY wanted to like this game because the whole idea of this huge brutalist tower youāre gradually moving down appeals to me a lot. the massive weird vertigo-inducing top down visuals is really cool. it feels very dreamlike. the whole idea that youāre made of ink and depositing/regenerating yourself is a very neat way to approach moving further down this tower. so many things about this game feel right on the money. in so many ways this is the sort of game iād want to make. but thenā¦
i canāt get anywhere!! the first enemy with a shield i died to about 20 different times (you have to beat him to progress) and i genuinely donāt know what to do to beat him. after i somewhat randomly managed to kill the shield guy and what was after was more frustration, more combat where it feels like you move too fucking slow and all the enemies you fight just instantly kill you. i would like to hope that there is something iām missing - maybe there is! but i just think the combat is too annoying for me to want to keep playing, which feels like massive wasted potential to me.
tl;dr a super interesting game ruined by a half-assed hyper difficult version of Soulsborne style combat. maybe worth looking up a playthough if you can find it. this also doesnāt have very many reviews on Steam at all. a real fucking shame if you ask me.
IguaRPG
another game by Hubol, who has been around making games since he was a teen and whose game ā2ā from almost a decade ago i swear i posted about elsewhere on here this summer, but i mysteriously cannot seem to find the post anymore. possibly it got deleted or lost somewhere.
this is very reminiscent of a lot of web games in the 00ās people made in flash and game maker. it was definitely a more innocent time, and i think this game captures that. it feels like something a kid could make, but in a good way. which i guess is extra resonant because Hubol has been making games since he was a kid and it was inspired by a game he saw as a kid in 2006. with the enemy design in particular in places i was reminded of Kero Blaster. just kind of a fun whimsical little adventure in a very barebones but approachable setting. i like the character creator too.
itās slightly hard for me i guess to recommend this over 2, because that game does a lot of similar things and also has a really crazy visual style going for it. but i guess the difference is instead of trying to be a more pure Metroidvania or āsearch actionā game like 2 does, this is trying to go for more like a sort of game like The Iconoclasts where itās open world but thereās a larger emphasis on going into buildings and interacting with characters. though this is kind of a very naive/stripped down version of that.
but there is something to the simple spirit of creativity that a game like this brings up which is still cool to see in a time where Aesthetics and Marketing and Professionalism have really taken over so much of the game dev space. maybe in another decade people will start to feel more profound nostalgia for these sorts of games, but as it is this definitely feels like the sort of experience that rarely gets made or highlighted anymore which is sad.
Isles of Sea and Sky
this hasnāt come out yet, but when it does early next year i definitely recommend it to people here. it looks like a simple top-down 2D Zelda and has kind of a Linkās Awakening sort of feeling to it, but itās actually kind of an open-world puzzle game. my closest comparison to it is Salad Fields which still has individual delineated puzzles to it and is a bit more weird and all over the place vs. this feeling tighter. the presentation is a tiny bit Family Friendly Wholesome, but in reality itās just a really unpretentiously well designed and the environments contain this feeling like youāre unlocking their larger mysteries when you solve stuff. i like the choice of music, and how they donāt do with chiptune but something that also helps convey that sense of mystery and wonderā¦ not to be corny about it.
===========
anyway, videogames - once again, they exist. i also played COCOON but that one has been discussed on here already - maybe i will save larger thoughts until i finish that game.
23 Likes
Thereās a mission where civilians are running around everywhere and cops are shooting them and you have to shoot the cops and if you hit any civilians itās instant game over
15 Likes
i think its impossible for me to enjoy media about identity from people who cant conceive of sex outside PIV. like who these guys believe anal is the most transgressive sex act you can do but only if you dont tell your partner its coming
10 Likes
it is really boring and one of the many reasons why i thought my ex gfās source filmmaker porn business sucked complete shit because she was just churning out the most joyless sex between mass effect character models day after day instead of literally doing anything more interesting with being able to fuck with whatever she wanted in a 3d space
6 Likes