kago shintaro was having people switch out their genitals like dresser drawers 15 years ago we can do better
15 Likes
the answer is both
being an idiot and going for par times while hoovering up everything is never not wrong and will expose how well thought out the level design in maintaining flow if they suddenly ask the player to go on a side sojourn to sate their greed
also something something Sonicās default state is not fast, itās a thing you earn by level mastery, etc.
anyway if you really want to dislike the game, you can turn on 15 fps mode and then start yelling āno it wasnāt this badā
5 Likes
The world is now ready for the legendary VIP maneuver
2 Likes
This is the inverse of piv? 
4 Likes
MWIII campaign was pretty great actually. One of the better campaigns cod has ever had I think. Much better than IIās. I do like how low key and smaller scale 2019s campaign was though. They did just bring back characters whose return was only explained in seasonal stuff though, so if you only played the campaigns you probably be a little confused about that
4 Likes
FWIW this game is the former Akurra which was mentioned on SB a few times in the past as looking rather swell (I believe they changed the name as after reflecting on it they felt like it was a bit cultural appropriation-esque, or something along those lines). Glad it still seems to be shaping up well as Iāve been looking forward to it.
3 Likes
continuing my jrpg mission which iāve been very slow on because iāve started a second mission: to play western games with level design (iāll get to that in just a sec).
i donāt actually have much to add to my mission rn cos i spent ages on vagrant story and then got sidelined but i need to write my thoughts down before i forget them:
parasite eve 2 (emulated ps1) - it's resi but with parasite even paint.
obvs thatās reductive but iām here to play pegs not resi clones. as soon as i saw that this entry didnāt have the combat from the original i lost interest. thatās not to say i stopped playing immediately, i think i put like 2 or 3 hours in or something like that, and yeah it seems fine, but dude i want parasite eve 2 not biohazard: parasite.
anyway iāll probably try out some of the later ones like 3rd birthday (aka: thirps birthday) cos it has a stupid name and also itās a got darned tps on the psp so whatās not to love.
vagrant story (emulated on my 3ds) - i wish i liked it more.
itās a real cool game to be a superfan of for sure, but dude this game is not friendly and has way too many systems.
letās start with the presentation: itās incredible. the game looks amazing and continues to look amazing all the way through (or at least as far through as i played). especially noticeable are all the fun camera angles during cutscenes, and of course the dramatic rim-lighting on all the characters. itās a small thing but it makes a huge difference. vagrant story basically looks like a ps1.5 game, which i mean, based on its release date, it kinda sorta is (it was released not even a month before the ps2!).
the plot is also similar to ffxii; granular and serious in a way thatās a bit hard to follow, but quite compelling. and i appreciated that the two main characters, ashley and sydney (cool gender-ambiguous names), are dressed soā¦ slutty? ashleyās cheeks are always out and sydney is only ever wearing a cape (cape? itās hung off his waist?) and gauntlets. idk, itās maybe a stupid thing to focus on, but it stood out to me and made me smile.
as for actually playing the thing: i wanted to like this so bad, but ultimately the game is much too strict and pedantic about how it wants you to play, or at least thatās how it felt to me.
i really like the premise of the combat; i like timing attacks, it feels way cooler than button mashing or just sitting back and doing nothing, but i think the window for correct timing could be extended by like, 100%, and still remain very fair. i didnāt have a particularly hard time getting 10+ hit combos going but i could still feel the strictness of the system the whole time.
i really like that each weapon has different attacks with different timings, and that more useful attacks have harder-to-read timings, thatās all pretty standard Good Game Design stuff, but it really wasnāt communicated very well, and it took me many hours before i realised that the different attacks were divided up into the different tiers of timing difficulty, based on how useful they had been deemed.
blocking attacks from enemies is also a point of friction; mostly itās fine and enemy attacks are pretty easy to read but like, why not give the enemies combos like the player has? so you have to learn a little pattern for each enemy? idk seems like a wasted opportunity.
then thereās magic. how the fuck are you supposed to block any of this shit? it feels like a joke. half the spells have like 10-20 second animations where the (still extremely narrow) block window is thrown in after like 3 false cues (which wouldnāt be quite so bad if it werenāt for the fact that you can only attempt to block once during an attack, regardless of how long the attack is). like what is the point? some spells will just straight up kill you immediately, and you canāt grind to get better health or whatever so you just have to roll the dice sometimes. it feels not great.
none of the above is helped by the fact that the game is extremely pedantic about using the correct buffs and debuffs. if youāre fighting a fire boss and you havenāt picked up, read, and prepared the fire defense spell, then you are just going to get one-shot by this cunt. and youāre required to fight the same bosses but with different elements throughout the game, so if you miss the grimoire that contains the spell you need then idk get fucked i guess.
i just donāt see what this adds. it feels arcane in a way that fell out of fashion a decade before this game was made.
anyway here are some complaints about the weirdly vestigial systems + design decisions that i could not understand:
- the combat is actually kinda spammy. because thereās no like, meter that ticks down to indicate when you can attack again, you just end up standing next to enemies and pressing the attack button until either you manage to bring up the combat isohedron, or they start an attack first. this means that i regularly had an enemy try to attack me while iām trying to attack them, and then the enemyās attack will start and iāll have accidentally pressed the attack button during the defense phase, which causes you to miss your opportunity to defend, because thereās no fucking buffer period to indicate āhey dick head stop pressing buttons, the enemy is about to attack you.ā like what is going on here? just put some ui on the god damn screen so i can see when iām allowed to attack again. also why is the buffer between attacks likeā¦ one second? whatās the point of the buffer at that stage? just a total mess.
- risk? when do you ever not have full risk? (risk goes up when you perform any action, and ticks down over time. the higher your risk the more likely everyone is to land critical hits, including enemies) if youāve mastered (or even got a passable grip on) the combo timing, then youāre just going to be at full risk all the time. idk maybe, like so many other systems, there was some nuance that was not communicated clearly, but i didnāt see a reason to worry about this system.
- block pushing puzzles. no offense but fuck off iām so disinterested. thereās not even anything āwrongā with them per se, but they completely obliterate the momentum of a dungeon in ways that only ever felt bad. not to mention they really undermine the tone.
- crafting??? fuck off i am not building weapons out of other weapons who could be fucking bothered.
anyway itās an intensely fascinating game but itās so thoroughly riddled with bizarre design decisions that i feel no desire to return to it. iām really glad i played it though. it feels like one of those games that heads like to yell about but not actually play.
majin tensei: spiral nemesis (emulated snes) - lmao it's a tactics game idk it's fine lol.
i didnāt play it with any great seriousness, i mostly just wanted a palette cleanser after vague rant and i had a good time looking at the sick digitised photos used as battle backgrounds but otherwise sorry iām not the right person to review this. the only tactics games iāve cared about have been tactics ogre and its ilk cos they have like cool elevation and each lev looks like a little diorama, so these flat, super zoomed out cities and buildings donāt really do anything for me.
i technically also started faifan nine but i havenāt actually done anything more than fuck around in the starting town and try to get the emulator to work properly lole (fake edit: since beginning to write this i have since played for about 2 hours and got through the opening sequence and yeah itās cool! i love art style so much itās very charming). seems chill. great town! iāll get to it eventually, but at the moment iāve been waylaid by my other mission:
so because i teach level design at uni i kinda felt like i should engage with some contemporary āgood level designā games so that iām more familiar with the general scene. i also decided to look specifically at āwesternā (non-japanese) games because itās a blind spot of mine. some of these games were chosen because iāve heard they had good level design, and some were chosen simply because iāve heard of them but never actually seen them played. it should be fairly obvious which is which.
approximately in the order i played them:
dishonored (ps4) - what a nice surprise.
i had multiple unrelated people tell me that this was their favourite game ever, which set me up to not like it (
), but i had a good time basically the whole way through and remember a lot of each individual level, which is a good sign imo.
i deliberately never used the see-through-walls ability cos it was immediately apparent that it would make the game painfully boring. and i tried my best to kill as few people as possible, unless i thought someone was particularly horrible.
i think the game looks really nice too; i liked the horrible french character models, the painterly textures, and that cute trick they do to make the windows opaque without feeling like youāre in a basement.
my favourite moment was in the masquerade level, youāre given a letter to deliver to someone youāve never met, and you donāt know the contents of the letter. when you find the person and deliver it, it turns out that the letter is a challenge to a duel, and you are the surrogate dueler, so you have to fight this guy on the front lawn of the party. itās so cool and unexpected and they never do anything like that in the rest of the game! it felt the most like what i imagine imsims are aiming for. once again i am reminded that i should probably just play all those hitmans i have access to.
anyway yeah really cool game. not my favourite but iām glad i played it. iāve got dishonored 2 as well, and i played that for a few hours (extremely good starting town holy moly) and iāll come back and play the rest of it sometime.
call of duty 4: modern warfare (ps3) - it's pretty chill, and i do remember a lot of the levels.
some of the designs felt a littleā¦ messy i guess? and some of them felt kinda obligatory, as though someone was going through a checklist of different level types that must be included. like, the stealth levels arenāt really very interesting, especially when youāre basically just dead if u fuck them up so it kills the momentum pretty hard. but it had good gunplay and did a pretty solid job of guiding you through different shooting galleries (a staple that it leans really hard on), but ultimately itās not really something i see myself pulling from too much. it feels more like a game with good scenario and encounter design, more than good ālevelā design. not a bad thing, just a different design focus.
doom (2016) (ps4) - yeah dude i mean it's doom 2016.
i donāt really remember a great deal about it honestly, at least in terms of its levels. i remember i had a really hard time seeing the explosive red barrels which were everywhere, and as a result i had an unnecessarily hard time with some of the fights.
the action was good and all, but i think the game is a bit visually samey. too much red. i need a break dude. pop like a greenhouse in there or something, mars swamp, anything.
it didnāt like, blow my mind or anything. itās just a good shooter with nice kinaesthesis and balanced encounter design. iām not compelled to play eternal.
haze (ps3)
wow this is the first time iāve ever heard someone say faggot in a videogame.
the order: 1886 (ps4) - sure is a thirps i guess.
idk it didnāt really inspire me much and iām even less interested in coming back to it after seeing that bgolus tweet lmao.
prey (ps4) - ehhhhh idk man.
after talking to a few prey enjoyers iāve decided that the reason i didnāt like it is because i was playing it as tho it were a shooter with stealth elements, not a stealther with shoot elements. still, i feel like the mimics were very poorly done. they have such great potential but the game felt too gun-oriented for them to land properly, and eventually they stop feeling like this ever-present threat and more like random encounters with level 1 enemies. itās a shame. i liked the environment quite a bit, and of course the glue gun was pretty cool and itās an admirable thing to include (and to give you a billion ammo for), but ultimately this just kinda felt like worse dishonored.
wolfenstein: the new order (ps4) - i like this game a *lot*.
itās pretty rough and definitely could use a touch-up in places, but god damn its got some really nice gunplay, lots of excellent levels, and the best writing out of any of the games listed here.
itās wild to me that machinegames (the devs on this entry) took B.J. got darn Blazkowicz, the most football helmet lookin dude on earth, and gave him time to be tender and warm and human. itās so good. i appreciated the down-time between missions way more than i expected ā the hub zone in berlin is really chill, i like it a lot ā and the story gets good mileage out of what is actually very few characters. i was a little disappointed to discover that if you make what is clearly the wrong decision right at the start of the campaign (saving fergus instead of wyatt) you get a significantly worse npc in the hideout (fem tesla instead of hendrix??? i do not understand the dichotomy here), and i still donāt exactly understand what the point of the timeline split is supposed to be. but aside from that the writing is really admirable and a huge part of why i love this game.
my main criticism is that i think the level design suffers from having multiple difficulties instead of one well-designed difficulty. it wouldnāt be such an issue if the difficulty options were just āeasy, normal, and hardā instead of whatever the fuck is going on w id games, but as it stands i feel like the difficulty of encounters fluctuates wildly enough that itās probably worth playing on normal or lower (the only thing difficulty changes is damage numbers so likeā¦ who cares) to smooth over the rough patches.
the thing that really makes this game land for me (apart from the surprisingly good writing) is its lean system, which iāve never seen the like of before: when holding the left bumper you get locked into place and can use the left stick to lean left and right as expected, but also up and down! so you can peak over, under, and around obstacles that would otherwise be slightly awkward to navigate. idk why more games donāt do this (lookin at you, dishonored), it seems to me like a really easy way to make a cover shooter more interesting and flexible, and reduces the burden on environment designers to accommodate a more rigid player controller (you can have much more naturalistic environments without compromising playability). it also slows the pace of the fights a bit, which i like, and it feels more suited to a console shooter (which is kinda strange cos thereās no aim-assist to speak of, idk why).
anyway yeah this game owns. itās by far my favourite game iāve played this year and such a lovely surprise. if u have gamepass give it a go (i recommend using a controller), itās awesome.
wolfenstein: the new colossus (ps4) - i hate this game a *lot*.
joss whedon fuckn game.
ok so the first level is extremely strong: youāre in a wheelchair (which controls, more or less, like a wheelchair; you move in bursts of speed rather than a constant pace, and you move slower and faster depending on whether youāre on a slope, itās great!), and youāre trundling around this submarine turning nazis into paste while having to contend with the fact that youāre in a wheelchair, and it feels like a really coherent (and fun!) message about empowering you even though youāre physically disabled. itās really excellent!
after that, everything goes to shit. the writing is so painfully marvel-y. everyone is a shtick or a stereotype, and all the wonderful work that went into humanising Blazkowicz and making his relationships feel grown-up and nuanced is frittered away in favour of being a stupid husband whoās sad about being disabled because he canāt fuck his wife or whatever, so he has to avoid her and not talk about his feelings. dude what the fuck did u even play the previous game??? the B.J. in wolfenste1n would never be such a loser.
the tone fluctuates so rapidly that everything is undermined; neither serious nor funny sections get sufficient space to breathe so theyāre constantly overlapping in ways that mean neither of them land. itās astonishingly bad.
the game is also way worse to actually play! there are some surface-level improvements like automatically picking up ammo, and being able to select a weapon for each hand, but those aside everything else is significantly worse:
the levels are much more open and stealth-oriented. if you are seen by anyone then the alarm will be raised an a million guys will descend on your position from every direction. when this happens youāre basically just fucked. maybe this is not the case (or less the case) with mouse+keyboard, but with a controller (still no aim-assist) there is no way you can deal with that many enemies in that kind of space. in the previous game this was not a problem because the levels had a much clearer sense of direction (you werenāt constantly getting flanked) and because the stealth aspect was basically just a way of making the fight a little easier if you wanted, but if you didnāt engage with it then the level still worked just fine.
you also canāt actually avoid these problematic fights because sometimes thatās just the level and there is no stealth aspect. very early on there is a fight in a donut-shaped room and it fucking sucks because there is no way to orient yourself so that the enemy isnāt constantly sneaking up behind you!
most heinous of all: the lean system is worse. your lean range is greatly reduced when both standing and crouching (in the previous game you could use the lean to stand up from a crouch, or crouch down from a stand, thus allowing you to easily return to your desired stance while still taking advantage of the environment) and you almost never get to use it because you never have time to actually hunker down and shoot guys cos there is always some dick head right behind you!
iām so mad at this game.
wolfensetin: the old blood (pc gamepass) - it's the new order but like worse.
itās all the same stuff just with new characters who arenāt written well (or at all, really), worse levels with too many enemies, and a shotgun that feels about as impactful as saying the word ābangā in a nice, soft, indoor voice.
my one compliment is that it has really great environment design; every space looks really cool and has such rich atmosphere. itās a really nice game to wander around and look at.
i played all the way through and it was a dumb little halloween game just for me, but i donāt think anyone else needs to play it. turns out writing is important! who knew.
iām tired.
20 Likes
been playing yakuza like a dragon and itās pretty much exactly what i needed since iām kind of stressed about moving to a bigger city
itās just nice to have something where all the little problems that people have around you are solved by the main character just being a dummy with a heart of gold and willing to just get into stuff and while the big problems are like, huge complicated mysteries that play out like a soap opera, itās weirdly reassuring me about moving
18 Likes
Fire Emblem Engage
The low self esteem guy using a razor blade as a hair clip. Wtf + lmao
Star Ocean Divine Force
This is a lot better than expected. It taps into this 2000s desire for a perfect ARPG. The same stilted character animations and unremarkable plot and art and mediocre Sakuraba music with a glam rock doll protagonist and a big world you can explore at mach speed with seamless combat transitions.
Movement is really really fast, plus you can just catapult yourself at any time for even higher speed. You can catapult on rooftops in town to collect purple crystals to upgrade your rig and no one minds.
The battle gimmick here is that you can catapult yourself at enemies in battle and if you air dash right before colliding the enemy, the enemy gets blindsided and you get massive bonuses? I missed this Tri-Ace nonsense.
I had stopped playing Star Ocean with 3 and wonder if any of the games after 3 have acknowledged The One plot twist : the Star Ocean universe is inside a simulation from which the SO3 characters eventually get out of to murder the main dev
Iām also surprised these games still have the same premise : youāre a Star trek pilot who crash lands on an underdeveloped planet and gets to live an isekai medieval adventure for a while, until the sci-fi elements catch up to you in the midgame. They used one easy way to add sword and magic to Star Trek, and have refused to deviate since
Hollow Knight
Revisiting this after playing many many other Metroidvanias, this is still way above anything released since. The first 15 or so hours are unmatched, though it does leave a slightly middling impression by the end because the compelling exploration is replaced by an overlong victory lap around the map and 30 different bosses to fight.
I really like the entomology theme + deep nest horror area + how areas arenāt mapped until a map is found and a savepoint is reached + the tiny knockback on hit.
15 Likes
Nuked my Armored Core 6 save and started over for giggles.
4 Likes
Spent about five hours or so playing Robocop Rogue City. Itāsā¦fine, I think. I like it. Itās not exactly good, but it isnāt bad, either. Thereās like one voice for all the punk villains, and you hear it constantly. There are cats everywhere, and to spite that one Twitter account, you canāt pet them.
Peter Weller sounds fine, but you can tell he must have been bemused by the script now and then when his cadence and inflection gets goofy. I wish I had made a video of the absolutely wild way he says āPicklesā at one point.
Currently going around a steel mill, where I have created my own collectible/achievement, which is finding the speakers posted around that are blaring an absolutely awful rock song at full volume and shooting them off the wall. Noise violation, I guess.
You can explore every nook and cranny for stolen purses and wallets and drugs and fake money, which I assume Robocop Hoovers up like BJ does with food in the new Wolfenstein games. You can miss a lot of shit (as objectives and upgrades and stuff goes) if you donāt poke and prod, so itās just kinda funny to imagine Robocop walking through halls of gore looking for a Post It note on the side of a toilet that has a safe combination on it.
Itās like an extremely dumb spiritual successor to The Darknessā¦ I think I love it.
13 Likes
im firmly in a Dragon Quest mood thanks meetup. Ive been playing the original DW3 NES release and i think im dangerously close to becoming the sort of insufferable that thinks the original versions of the games are superior, oh nooo!! i do wish the encounter rate was a tad more reasonable, and the exp/gold rates a little less stingy, but ive come to appreciate the other small ways the NES games are balanced toward friction & privation (more expensive items, limited inventory without a bag, less non-magic options to damage all enemies, ive even grown to kinda like the fuckin āyou missed because that group of enemies is already deadā thing, stupid as it is)
i genuinely think if you use a cheat to 2x the gold/exp in Dragon Warrior 1, and change nothing else, itās the best way to play the game nowadays. 3 is even better balanced i think iād go more like 1.5x those factors. Also i miss āWit and courage has served thee wellā as the level up congratulations message, i feel that should have made a comeback in the modern translations. As much as theyāre silly i do think those ye olde English translations of 1 & 2 are fantastic, especially for their time; i really like that the mobile remakes brought back the thees and thous and in 3 canonically made that part of Alefgardās dialect. spoiler for this game older than i am lol
still playing by mapping along, since DQ3 famously takes place on Earth iām going to try to match the real world locations and label them on my maps
14 Likes
imo:
DQ3 GBC
DQ4 iOS
DQ5 DS
DQ7 PS1
DQ11 Switch
not that into the others
6 Likes
Iāve played three different video games this week. I havenāt done a thing like that in years! the meetup must have changed me. Iām a serious gamer now. Iām playing Fashion Dreamer.
in fashion dreamer you arenāt a man or a woman, but a type a or type b. ofc Iām type a, which iirc is characterized by extraversion, aggression, professional ambition, and elevated risk of heart disease.
they have eight different type a body types that are all shades of skinny. if youāre a type a you canāt equip type b clothes, and vice versa. do you remember the 90s? do you remember when barneyās famously bought all of dries van notenās first menās collection and sold it as womenās? fashion dreamer sure as shit doesnāt! it is kinda cute though, a bit like if you took all the clothing stuff from animal crossing and really ran with it.
please donāt judge me 
25 Likes
every few minutes in boku no natsuyasumi 2 i see something new that makes me go wow this is the best game ever made
20 Likes
So does this game have an actual storyline, or is it styled more after modern mobile fashion games that are just about the runway? I pick up Style Savvy 4 again during meetups now, and was reminded again about how many different storylines it has going on. None of them of strong as the āTheyāre going to shut down the runway unless we run the best runway show everā plotline in SS3, but thereās just so many from the main questlines tied to the talent working for the agency, to smaller storylines like the woman trying to fit in with the other OL at her new job.
7 Likes
respectable. Pretty much canonical as the remakes go imo. The DQ3 SFC version is basically identical to the GBC version and is gorgeousā¦ but the GBC version is too! its one of the best looking GBC games
Though i also fucked around with the DQV PS2 version a little and it seems awesome, its just the DS version but prettier and with full orchestration
well, and no Deborah, which is obviously a deal breaker for people who want the ballbuster tsundere wife (and yknow fair enough)
5 Likes
I married the girl whoās dad owned the inn because she was nice to me and she likes cats.
5 Likes
I think the only trade offs between DQ3 SFC and GBC are the bigger screen vs slightly faster EXP rates on GBC for the portable experience.
2 Likes
main issue with dq3 gbc is the game was designed for famicom/nes screenspace and reducing the viewport to fit it into the gbc screen makes dungeons unnecessarily annoying
4 Likes