I played through A Normal Lost Phone and have been thinking about it all night and all day. It really let me know what being a closeted trans teen in a close-minded family in a small town felt like. Where you have no one to turn to and feel the gradual secret betrayal of everyone you’ve ever known. I’m sure no one here could relate to that. If I betrayed you some way like that years ago, I’m sorry.
I usually roll my eyes but the absence of information is masterfully done here. You always have just enough to infer what is going on, while introducing a new question. Then the answer recontextualizies what you already knew.
Like the best art it felt like an empathy machine. It made me heartbroken to think I may betray Neo Rude in such a way. I only played it because it was in one of those giant bundles. It will probably be one of my favorites of the year.
That’s what this White Straight Cis Man thinks anyway!
i love this game so much…it opens with our complete asshole protagonist SAUL MYERS (face provided b arnold vosloo, lance henriksen’s homo killer right hand man in Hard Target) on a plane to realia, central america while lamenting that his daughter doesn’t write for MINDLESS WOMEN’S MAGAZINES and instead has to cover dirty guerrilla wars across the globe… im off the bus in town for five seconds before i stumble into this shady looking guy under a bridge who is helpfully labeled “CIA agent’s man.” when you talk to him for some reason half the dialogue is unvoiced which is completely normal.
great, im in a foreign country and these guys found me like instantly, my life is fucking ruined, might as well go meet AGENT JOHNSON and see what he has to say. but first the locals offer me some helpful info, like dont trust literally anyone in a position of authority. shout out this guy who spent the entire conversation furiously invading my personal space with his fucking briefcase
hes a rare kind of asshole…these guys arent kidding. After this my ex wife immediately called me to yell at me for not finding our daughter faster so I went to the bar and got super fucked up on tequila with the old guerrilla guy while he quizzed me on the russian rrvolution. Then I visited agent johnson and his shitty american flag tie and told him that joining the cia would ruin my social life with my communist and drug dealer friends. Real smooth Saul. He seemed to accept this. His downstairs neighbor jose the guerrilla has the exact same recording setup as him. I left town on foot and was immediately killed by two cobras and a jaguar like a fucking Morrowind random encounter. Boiling Point is a real RPG. Maybe it’s not as educational about latin american politics as Hidden Agenda but that’s just how the world of mushroom haired russian game developers is
Its still a japanese locale but the next best attempt I can think of are Kenka Banchou on PSP and the Akiba Strip Games. I’ve only played a few hours of Kenka Banchou and its billed as a street brawler version of Way of The Samurai games. (Now that I think of it those are also kinda Yaklike but more flexible stories and less soap operatic) You’re a borderline delinquent on the out of town school trip to kyoto and you have a week to leave your mark as the baddest dude. Having never played Akiba Strip but read enough about them you’re basically a nerd that got turned into a vampire and you then go around yanking cloths off other vampires during daylight to take them out. I think your cursed to stay on the Akihabara strip due to some masquerade like rules so you get familiar with that place.
Oh, yeah. That new Fate Samurai game is also very yaklike where you running around a quaint Edo Period town getting into sword fights and then moonlighting as an anime sword wizard.
If anything I think that’s indicative of Yak games already being JRPGs but fooling you into forgetting that it is with its street level plot/setting and action combat that keeps you in the space of the overworld.
More Sukeban Deka II anything would be nice. an accessible stream/download of the series would be nice. of all the recurring SB anime club shows that’s the one i miss the most
like there are multiple people i could pitch that show to who would fucking love it but unfortunately people are less willing to fire up a torrent tracker than they are to pay for a streaming service for some fucking reason god netflix made my generation so soft
One of my observations while watching Sukeban Deka recently was that the writing and tone and plots felt basically like Yakuza but with Schoolgirls. So now while playing Yakuza I like to think “this is basically just Sukeban Deka but with gruff dudes instead of schoolgirls”
whenever someone here says “yaklike,” I think they mean a game in the style of Jeff Minter and then I get disappointed when I realise it is about yakuza
Had a realization that the puzzle would actually be remarkably straightforward if I was overlooking a different small door opening when everything else happened, checked and that was indeed the case. Consider this a reminder that even easier puzzles can become walls if you just overlook part of what is going on.
Anyways the next area was a lot of snake stuff which isn’t particularly new (solid puzzles still) so no real update beyond making progress again, yay and such.
Started MGS3:Subsistence, the game i was most excited for in the series, and I am bouncing off HARD. Wow, do I find sneaking around so much more miserable in this one. I’m willing to attribute some of this to the fact that I’ve been marathoning these games and i’m just getting fatigued but yeah, woof, I’m like actively hating it. Feels bad.
