It’s pretty early on. They kind of expecf you to die a lot early on.
2 Likes
DROD: TCB day 8
The river ended up being two different areas stitched together, at least that’s what I tell myself as it took me 1 hour and 52 minutes to clear it which feels like a lot. The first half is you on a raft dealing with swimming enemies that can’t go onto land, which doesn’t matter much as in this first part there really isn’t any. When next to an enemy or a bit of environment that sticks out you can’t move diagonally as I guess the raft would theoretically clip the corner of them, which sort of artificially limits your movement against enemies which don’t have said limitation. That said this part is fairly straightforward if occasionally sloggy as these swimming enemies can spawn from hills every 10 turns which is very rapid by the series standards where 30 is the default cycle.
The second part is mostly concerned with large parts of the rooms being platforms held up over water by those tiles that collapse after you step on them at the perimeter, so when they all disappear said platform collapses into the water drowning everything standing on it. There was some nice interplay with those swimming enemies only being able to reach you when at the edge of said platforms but getting new/increased access to you after a platform collapses, but not really a lot that inspires me to write up here.
Anyways after nearly two hours I got to the next area and saw what appeared to be either mud or tar, so that’s terrifying.
5 Likes
more psx no i am still not proof reading i don’t care if these are unreadable
WIPEOUT 2097
sick soundtrack. sick aesthetic. you have to enjoy playing the same track for an hour or two straight until you get the perfect combination of luck and execution. luckily I love that. verdict: KEEP
SLED STORM
the opening fmv is just gameplay footage with the matrix remix of rob zombie’s dragula playing over it. verdict: KEEP
(it’s actually a really fun game, it’s like waverace 64 on snow)
WIPEOUT 3
mechanically this is the best wipeout (it adds analog control for one) but for some reason they made the whole game take place in one city and it looks so grey and bland. you can really tell the 90s were about to end. music is good tho. it’s also much more accessible than the last two, which is good in some ways, but I liked how unforgiving the first two were. i have the special edition that includes tracks from the first game which is a nice because I don’t own a copy of that. so still a good game, but not as good as 2097 IMO. verdict: KEEP
GRAN TURISMO
TOO MANY GOD DAMN MENUS, JUST LET ME RACE ALL THE CARS ON ALL THE TRACKS verdict: SELL
I remember when this game came out and people were like THE REPLAYS LOOK SO REAL like I would ever want to waste time watching a replay and also its fun to laugh at now because it looks about as real as my fake tits
SPYRO
this game is fantastic, it’s all about trying to figure out how to navigate 3D spaces to get to different areas which I LOVE and the controls and level design are so good. it kinda feels like quake as a 3d platformer as both are fairly stripped down experiences that focus on the 3d spaces. also it has sexy buff dragons. verdict: KEEP
GRIND SESSION
one of many tony hawk knock offs, this is one of the better ones but still nowhere near as good as tony. solid enough though, and the soundtrack is good and has a better mix of rock and rap than tony hawk. normally I would have sold this because it’s pretty good but nothing amazing, but one of the levels is a recreation of the SF mission bart station, complete with a train you can get hit by (and with the sounds the trains make!) so I like playing it for nostalgia reasons because that station led to lots of good times for me in SF. verdict: KEEP
SPYRO 2
a much more traditional 3d platformer, with more talking and NPCs and minigames and quests and stuff. I don’t like it as much as the first, but it’s still a very good 3d platformer with fun ideas and great controls. much less focus on navigating 3d environments but they are still well designed. verdict: KEEP
LITTLE BIG ADVENTURE
surprisingly great port! plays really well, and the different moods are mapped to the shoulder buttons which is perfect. there is even a quicksave and quickload that doesn’t use the memory card so it actually IS really quick. the game would suck otherwise. i still love this game despite it aging badly in a few ways, so verdict: KEEP
19 Likes
The oridge Wipeout 3 is much harder than special edition, the AI is meaner and the tunnels are really dark like 2097. It’s worth getting for cheap. I’ve still got both versions
6 Likes
GUBBINS:
It was released this week. I had heard about this in a few places and not sure it was mentioned here. It’s like wordle, scrabble, and boggle with unlocks and yellow-submarine like artwork.
Mobile game, one free puzzle a day - $6 for full game that has infinite play. Great tutorial IMO, which is that of an intermediate word-game brainer. Wide dictionary that contains proper nouns and (encouraged)vulgarities. Unlocks of fun artwork and additional gameplay bonus tiles. Send postcard with the words you used to friend (I found it buggy to drag the words around but could be my phone).
I would say this real good but maybe avoid if you don’t want a new addiction. I was in a prime situation for a new drug.
7 Likes
The Roottrees are dead! An unfortunate incident took the lives of the beloved teen idol sisters, but also their father, president of the famous Roottree Company. The company’s financial structure is a bit peculiar and a lot of money’s riding on this, so it falls to the player to establish a complete family tree encompassing five generations of the Roottree dynasty.
It essentially works like Obra Dinn with a computer instead of a ship. You’re given the empty tree and for each family member you’re gonna have to find their name, occupation and portrait, using a search engine, library and newspaper archives and the odd old document your sponsor can fish out. Just like Obra Dinn it quickly becomes a matter of deduction, knowing Aunt X was the first to remarry or all of Y’s children have blonde hair save for the middle sister or Z only has one movie credited to their real name, and the game only confirms your deductions in batches of 3.
It’s really good and it’s free, I heartily recommend it for fans of investigation games.
23 Likes
I picked up Dredge. Its spooky fishing. Its got a good loop of racing against the clock to gather or fish out on the water and make it to a port before the fog rolls in. Something lurks in the fog… Dredge has a paranoia mechanic effected by sleep and seeing the unnatural. The boat can be upgraded, repaird or changed in various ways to do or hold more. Catches and other items put in the hold must be arranged like inventory in Deus ex or Resident evil. Fishing and dredging wrecks works like a lock picking or hacking mini game. Damage to the ship is represented by losing random inventory spaces with objects in those spaces taking damage or being destroyed. Character writing is not deep but so far the cast is pretty fun. The art is very good and communicated the mood but im not being amazed. I honestly cant recall the music. Runs rock solid on my low spec pc.
I installed it and ran for 4 hours straight. There is always something new to do or place to explore. Its very much a do your thing your way at your pace sort of game which I really appreciate.
12 Likes
I finished black mesa last night. it’s like idk a 3/5 i guess, pretty mid because xen is so fucking bad. the mod version was actually better because it had the decency to end at lambda core. i don’t know if it’s admirable or contemptible that they basically recreated people’s negative memories of xen more than they did improve it. The visual language of the game goes to shit for no reason, like I always like to poke fun in valve games at people making fucked up doorframes or not using the cheap door models that dont have handles for inaccessible stuff but it’s ridiculous in black mesa xen. there’s multiple times you have to break like alien webs or netting and it looks completely identical to shit you’re not allowed to break. I kept accidentally wandering into tunnels and finding that i was suddenly somewhere the developers did not intend me to see. Really though the worst thing is that the game starts to run like shit in xen, you can see in a few areas where they have to really abuse the fuck out of areaportals to keep the game from shitting itself and this actually is a huge issue in the vortigaunt village because the game crashes basically every time the big fight happens there. I had to get a dll file off the steam workshop to fix it (???) and run my game in VAC insecure mode so i wouldnt get banned to get past it. Literally what the fuck?
Oh yeah and I did all the “carry annoying tiny items across the entire game” achievements with console commands afterwards cuz fuck you hahhaha
12 Likes
I tried a few more Returnal runs and came across a house at one point, but it was locked.
But the game is just too unforgiving. Maybe I’ll play it again if they add an easy mode or something. You can be as careful as you want but something is just going to instantly kill you and send you back to the beginning.
Reminds me of Hades, a game I didn’t care for. I like the theme and atmosphere of this game a lot better than that of Hades, but it has the same frustrating loop structure.
Edit: I decided to give the game one more chance, and ended up in a “lockdown” room where all the enemies had these special blue health bars that meant I couldn’t deal any damage to them. There’s probably a trick to that but I don’t think I care anymore. I want to like this game but unfortunately it’s not for me.
6 Likes
What did you think of the reworked Nihilanth fight?
1 Like
It was fine I guess. I killed him in like, literally two minutes. I put satchels down in the big glowing fuck me here circles on the ground beforehand and was rewarded for it later. I guess not getting randomly teleported to other places is…better? I also remembered there being fucked up gravity which there wasn’t at all in the black mesa version of the fight.
1 Like
DuckTales 2 (NES)
Dumped from the Steam version of The Disney Afternoon Collection using the game-extraction-toolbox and run in the emulator Mesen, on Easy difficulty with an infinite lives cheat–which in this game can actually get you stuck.
I didn’t finish the game and I’m not going to.
Capcom’s first DuckTales for NES, produced by some of their current or future superstars, was a joyful romp through colorful stages with gorgeous sprites and amazing music. Four years later, some unknown bunch at Capcom apparently turned out this thing, with a ton of obnoxious extra mechanics (inventory, shop, hooks to hang from, switches to drag, rafts to shove–the “fun” never ceases lemme tell ya), horrific sounds, dull colors, lots of clicking through bad dialogue that’s supposed to explain the terrible extra mechanics to you, loads of punishing platform sequences–with slowdown!–and not nearly enough checkpoints, so if you get bopped mid-jump by one of the cruelly timed super-respawny boring enemies into one of the many, many death pits, you’ll probably have to replay half the stage to get back there so you can fall in the death pit again. You need certain items from some stages to progress through others, but you might not know that until you get there and are stuck. NEAT.
Came out in '93! PS1 was out in Japan in '94!
As in the first game, Nintendo’s name has been scrubbed from the boot screen of this Disney Afternoon Collection version of the NES ROM.
5 Likes
my uv reactive tramp stamp
7 Likes
Yakuza PS2 continues. Just did Ch. 7… it could be the best chapter in the game, lots of missable substories with Haruka, very good ones too. Much better than the offerings in later games. Kiryu gambled with Haruka a bunch and saved a boxer from damnation. Roulette is so fucking fun…
7 Likes
With Football Manager 2024 releasing, one of the most exciting additions that’s been made to the game is the addition of the JLeague, Japan’s professional soccer league structure. This has never appeared officially in the game before because Konami has controlled the license, mostly leveraged through their Winning Eleven series, although I assume there were also pachinko machines involved at some point. For whatever reason, the exclusivity is no longer a thing, and it’s great to add another major league outside of Europe, something that FM really struggles with[1].
While I was thinking that I should just jump into the JLeague for my first save, I ultimately decided that I was going to start the game unemployed, with no prior experience in football and no coaching badges. Starting from scratch, as it were. I added a ton of leagues, to the point where the game told me I would be starting with a player database larger than recommended. Look, if you want a game to move quickly, you should be playing something other than Football Manager. Lean into it. By adding a bunch of the lowest possible playable leagues, I’d least be relatively sure of finding clubs that were desperate enough that they’d sign even a manager as shittastic as I am. I applied to a bunch that I thought were “reasonable”, mostly in the Brazilian regional leagues, in the South African second division, and the Japanese third division, as well as a couple others. The Brazilian clubs all rejected me instantly, and I never found out about the South African or the other clubs, because I got offered interviews at two Japanese third division clubs, both of which wound up offering me the job, and I wound up going with:
FC Gifu
Gifu is a south-central city in Japan and probably was most important during the Sengoku period, where Nobunaga, amongst others, held the city as part of an effort to unify Japan. “Control Gifu, and you control Japan” was apparently something somebody said at some point[citation needed]. Nowadays, I’m sure it’s just a perfectly fine large-ish (population 400,000) Japanese city, most notably, for our purposes, one with a soccer club that’s currently in the Meiji Yasuda J3 League. FC Gifu aren’t exactly a storied club, having spent the first five years of their existence in non-league, getting promoted to J2 (the J3 didn’t exist yet) in 2007, then staying there until 2019, when they got relegated, and they’ve been in the J3 since.
Maybe not for long though, as the club’s owners expect them to get promoted this year, despite the fact that they haven’t managed any promotion at all since 2007 (in fact never finishing higher than sixth), and especially despite the fact that they’ve hired me, technically the worst possible manager they could have hired. I’ve hung a poster of Emperor Meiji above my desk as inspiration:
We play in the Nagaragawa Stadium, which on one hand is pretty large for this level, on the other hand, it kind of sucks:
I hate it when football teams play in these multi-purpose stadiums, the running track puts the fans too far away from the pitch, and they’re invariably designed as these gently-sloped bowls, which makes the stadia too open, whatever crowd noise you were going to get is going to go straight up into the sky. You want something where the fans are practically on top of the players and becomes a cauldron of noise and flags when things get tense, like the Old San Mames[2]:
Looking at the roster, one obvious problem jumps out: our goalie, and we only have one on the senior team, stinks. Like, even for this level of play, he’s awful. We have a youth player who is about as bad and could maybe be better someday…if we want to get promoted, it’s not going to be enough. I immediately offer all the goalies I can find who don’t currently have contracts the opportunity to train with the team, in the hope that me and my hopefully more-skilled-than-me coaching staff can spot somebody better than who we already have, because we’re not going up with the way things are.
NEXT TIME: A bit more about the squad, what tactic we’ll start off with, and hopefully SI doesn’t patch the apparently insanely-broken new set piece system.
[1] - The most glaring issue here is Africa, where there is a single league, South Africa. Really? We get Latvia and no Egypt? No Algeria? Lame, SI, lame.
[2] - Built in 1913, this is where Athletic Bilbao played for most of their existence, only moving into the New San Mames a century later. Athletic are notable for only selecting players who can claim Basque heritage and also for never having been relegated from the Spanish first division, although they’ve cut it very close recently.
22 Likes
I think I’ll actually finish Bloodborne this time, since Elden Ring and DS2 multiplayer aren’t as active as they were the last time I tried - the threaded cane made me want to revisit DS2’s puzzling stone sword and I had a lot of fun with it in bell keeper PVP during last year’s (?) Return to Drangleic week.
I’m going with my friend’s advice to try an arcane build, and I know those don’t really come online until like late midgame, so right now I’m mastering the threaded cane while pumping vitality and endurance. I got the flamethrower from the guy beside the first lantern, which I think is technically an arcane weapon, but the torch has been really handy so far as a quick, direct melee attack and it doesn’t require ammunition, so the flamethrower only really comes out for boss encounters.
Some of the animations in this game have a janky clash-of-the-titans quality (the naked pale pthumerians [i’m assuming] with the clubs, the Watchdog prototype for DS3’s pontiff beasts) that reminds me of the sanctuary guardian in DS1’s dlc area and very few other enemies in the series. Maybe the animations themselves are low-fps? They’re stiffly hand-animated in a way that’s a little charming and also makes the artifice difficult to ignore. DS2’s frequent animation jank had a smoother quality.
So far, chaining attacks together well and cutting through crowds of lesser enemies is more satisfying than in most entries in the series. The parts with friction, I’ve found a bit more annoying than usual; I summoned constantly and hid behind a shield for most of my first time through Elden Ring but in this one you really have to fake it until you make it.
I’m stoked to fight more fucked-up rubbery glowing things as the game progresses. I hope shit gets really cosmic.
18 Likes
I did arcane my first playthrough and felt like it was a mistake the whole game.
5 Likes
DROD: TCB day 9
Well… it was indeed a mud/tar section up next. More or less two hours of grinding/wars of attrition and I’m still not through as there’s one room I’ve yet to figure out.
I should probably mention why these elements always result in such a drag. The difference between mud and tar is that you can only cut into chunks of one of them at any flat point (picture a 3 by 3 blob, you can only cut them in the middle tile on each side) while the other you can only cut into at a curve (if you have a 5 by 5 blob you can only start cutting at any corner end and sort of follow it along the perimeter as each nick creates a new curved bit). If you cut it so that any bit of it is sticking out on its own it becomes a small living bit of mud/tar that will try and attack you.
This part is fine. What makes them annoying is that more often than not they appear as tar/mud mothers, where every 30 turns they expand out one tile from every available perimeter spot. This means that when they do so into any single sticking out tile they spawn a bit of living mud/tar, and this may happen at several different points in the room. It also means that if the room is mostly mud/tar that you have to cut through it is constantly growing back and spawning things to deal with, trying to make a bit more progress each cycle until you get to the two eye tiles of the mother so you can stab them and stop the madness.
The room I am stuck on contains both types with only one of them growing, a tile you can step and that switches each type to the other, several collapsing tiles you must hack to and step on so that you can then enter a center chamber to grab several clone potions so that you can position each one at the perimeter of the room behind several enemy eyes you otherwise cannot reach. Oh yeah, several eyes have their lines of sight crisscross all over the room as a sort of security camera; if they see you they move to a spot where they can never be reached so you have to move very carefully through all the mud/tar to avoid this as well.
And if you do all that you can end up just having to get to the mother eyes to stab them out, except you have to switch them to a certain type via the tile at the start of the room and that is where I realized no matter how optimally I try to cut through everything I cannot ever reach said eyes with how the room is currently set-up. Lots of time put into the room, all the work having to be tossed out and I only have a vague idea as to what must be done to avoid this situation next time and I’m not gonna lie: it’ll make traversing this room even more… specific.
Mud & tar is awful is what I’m saying, some of these rooms gotta be at least a thousand moves long.
6 Likes
I have finished Geneforge 5 and the Geneforge series. Cad a series. It feels very unusual to have a complete series of really consistent games in the CRPG sphere. Its a treasure trove.
The downside is that that I have no more new Geneforge games to play 
My overall ranking is: 1>4>5>3>2
Sort of debating whether to just loop back around with the remake of Geneforge 1 or look into Avadon. Has anyone here played Avadon?
13 Likes