re: OFK
12 Likes
Finished Yak attack the first. Might boot up my file before the end game to see if I cant trigger the last coliseum battle from appearing, I couldnt do Amon so I figure I oughta do Komaki.
They really just remix this game repeatedly. They add new ingredients but it is abundantly clear Like A Dragon is a perpetual soup.
8 Likes
WHO ARE THESE FUCKING MONEY CREATURES
10 Likes
Common People intensifies.
9 Likes
Imagining this taking place in a Tokyo 1K AirBnB in the worst Japanese Iāve ever heard.
7 Likes
Skimming an NME article about this game and its āauthorā and realizing the only place youād hear anyone speak like these characters is in a fucking puff piece, a whole commercial creative endeavor devoted to getting you photo shoots in magazines you read when you were 12 but no one cares about now, just the saddest most vapid sexless shit
9 Likes
I beat ace combat 7 againā¦what a great game. I still think it sucks they drop the penal battalion angle so fast but i do really like the part after the communications satellite gets blown up and every reactionary piece of shit on the continent immediately forms a death squad to play at civil war. in the absence of like real orders youre forced to escort this fucking defecting general because only a TRUE OLD CONSERVATIVE like him can set things right and the game gives you a reward for suffering through this morally devoid mission by letting you stand by while one of the penal battalion guys goes rogue and murks his nazi ass with a missile. I love that the all encompassing evil nature of endless autonomous drone war is ultimately defeated by a child who proceeds to own every adult in the room for being wrapped up in disgusting nostalgia for more nationalistic timesā¦ I guess they were on that terminator 2 shit
23 Likes
The game had taken 17 hours. Collectables remained like gravestones untended. Unvisited. But Alan Wake 2 had been absorbing. Comforting to sit with. Like being wrapped in a blanket on a dark night. Captain Love sat at the keyboard doing his best to sum up the experience. Illness and depression had kept them in the dark place, but the game was a guiding light. It was special, but memories of each moment were fading rapidly. He had to get it down in words. Words to record. Words to make it real. He began to type.
āEveryone seems to be drawn into Remedyās stuff through various games in various eras. I didnāt like the first Alan Wake back when I played it in 2012 apart from a few experiments within it. Iāve since been subject to the same Remedy adoration shared here after being absorbed by Control. I love how proportionally little combat there is in AW2, just exploring and plotting my boards. Board auto-completes are so satisfying. Tidy up. I kinda wish Wakeās writing board had you figuring out plotting rather than just adding element to scene (which feels more filmic than a novel but w/e). I think they probably tried figuring things out in more detail but the scene changing works better for a visual medium where reality shifts happen. Probably the best compromise of player playing and writing process simulated.
The integration of āMaxā āPayneāā¢ļø and other IP is fun but feels purposeful beyond nods. Lake clearly wants the meta layer of a game thatās about meta circumstancesā burden on the creator to reflect the same kinds of authorial history looping in on itself. The Max Payne stuff really hit me harder than I thought it would. I never really played them but watched a friend play them a lot at sleepovers, back when they released. The monologues are the right angle to get intertextual though I couldnāt shake the feeling that a Max Payne shooting section was coming. I assumed inevitable callbacks to the FBC would be slight nods and was surprised at how much they integrated it. Kinda glad they didnāt go as far as including a direct Jesse cameo.
The levels of fiction are fun since keeping track of where the narrator/event causality begins and ends is a clear clue that that is for fun than a literal plot element. It gets a bit Stanley Parable at times but to extremes as the story is about Alan Wake who self-narrates writing about himself writing a way through a story using a character he previously wrote who is investigating the cult of a [possible self-insert] writer which
It being about art [sometimes specifically ābadā art?] and the people it affects is a rich seam. Despite this and Control having a lot of mystery and dangling horror threads, the themes remain clear and human. The meta stuff can easily get lost up an orifice, but a human anchor helps link it back. Iām also impressed by how small details generally knit up even if every mystery isnāt full resolved, and why should they be?
The musical segment had that campy charm and worked as a sort of remake level of the first game. Itās probably the highlight for a lot of people but Yƶtƶn Yƶ was my favourite āmedia extensionā. Hereās an art film, go watch it. For me it recontextualises the original game as part of the [Zaneās?] plan. I just like any time Lake is on screen. Casey is too cute.
Rewriting the ending was neat although it feels like the clicker is very easy to use if the art you make is short. I guess the details canāt be as detailed in a song vs a whole novel. Like make a haiku if you believe in it enough.
Wake left the dark place
Sagaās daughter was alive
Scratch died forever
Mr. Door kinda hints at this when he chastises Wake for self-imposing his own fussy writerās rules on himself. The line āitās not a loop itās a spiralā works as self-parody but also to help understand the way out. You can retrace your steps with a spiral but if you assume itās a loop youāll never escape. Art. Mental health. Timeline. Regrets.
Change Reality
Really wish there was a way to change the light level in the end game. I get why they do the endgame the way they do but why drop the overworld in to total darkness at the end when most players havenāt got all the shit. Not having some kind of fast travel also really hurts since you slowly sprint around the world and shoeboxes are unevenly spread out. These paths aināt easy to see!"
14 Likes
I went back to my other save on SMT4 and steamrolled through the law route in a few hours. The law ending feels kinda gross but at least the game is done now. Lucifer was a pushover.
Anyway based on my poll in the other thread it looks like Iāll be playing Undernauts: Labyrinth of Yomi next. Letās get Blobbinā
6 Likes
more psx
JUMPING FLASH 2
2 shaggy 2 dope. even better than the first. basically the same game with different levels and some very minor (but appreciated) improvements. also a very camp villain who I love. the levels are more imaginative and fun for the most part. but yeah, more of the same, and Iām fine with that thnx!! verdict: KEEP
BUBSY 3D
of course Iām keeping bubsy 3d verdict keep
RIDGE RACER TYPE 4
finally, I like one of the car racing games in my collection!! this rocks. the story mode is very cheesy but fun. beautiful looking game. feels amazing to control. great racer
SENTIENT
an incredibly ambitious and bizarre game only aliens can beat. verdict: KEEP
DIE HARD TRILOGY
I loved this back in the day but it kinda sucks. the first game I spent more time looking at the map than the actual game because it plays better that way. second game is a decent virtual cop clone but IIRC this doesnāt use any light guns. third game was my fav back in the day, an arcade driving game where you runabout open environments looking for bombs before they nuke the city, but its kinda a pain in the ass. the timer is very tight and sometimes youāre just unlikely with dudes getting in your way, or take a turn slightly too sharp and that fucks you over. verdict: SELL
ABES ODDYSSEEYSYY
another I loved back in the day. was still having fun with it but the saving in this version sucks. its checkpoint based, and it doesnāt refresh if you go back to the checkpoints. so at one point I went back to an area and saved like six dudes, but since it was after I hate the checkpoint already none of that saved when I died. i donāt have time for that shit!! you can quick save in the PC version, but I prefer the grimier look of the ps1 version. i guess I could just keep it for show and play on an emulator with save states. the ps2 Iām using is starting to fail so iāl be doing that eventually anyway. i dunno. verdict: UNDECIDED
Iām going through demo discs now as a break. this one has a trailer for mort the chicken and it has some kind of rap that is just chicken noises.
15 Likes
i think you can use a light gun with the die hard 2 part of die hard trilogy but wikipedia says guncons donāt work (??)
the best part of that game is that the terrorists do a dance when they have a hostage
3 Likes
Iām almost positive I played with a light gun at a friendās house
2 Likes
ive never played ace combat, but i think i would love it
6 Likes
I finished up with exams last week and have been playing a few things:
Disgaea 1 is pretty alright, still. I put upwards of a hundred hours into the DS port of this when I was a teenager but I never actually finished it, which kind of makes me feel like Iām checking a box with this. Iām only clearing stages once and with only story characters, which makes the game a lot more like a traditional JRPG in time investment and scope but also makes it very difficult. Iām getting destroyed every level now that Iām at the last two chapters. I still think itās at close to the limit of still being possible but Iāve really started to drag my feet on finishing it off. In a lot of ways this is the antithesis of what the game is all about but I also think itās the only way to really engage with its systems outside of a grind forever framework.
Against the storm isnāt very good for me. Itās a twee city builder roguelite with far too much progression. I feel like if I donāt step away and force myself to uninstall it, Iāll have two or three hundred hours in it by years end. Thereās a real evil hidden in games that require a lot of focus but arenāt real time, like with the to the total wars or civilisations. Every time Iāve played it, 5 hours have passed like nothing. Itās getting to be a bit untenable.
Lethal Company is a hoot but I really feel like thereās hundreds of these laying hidden underneath the steam sediment which never got their day in the sun. Iād actually played 3 or 4 other backroom inspired coop games before this one, and they were all fairly fun but it felt a lot like the early days of roguelites, where the novelty hadnāt all been mined yet. Nowadays roguelites have player retention down to a science (as seen above) which really diminishes my enthusiasm for them. I canāt help but feel like Iām being had.
Iāve only done the first three planets so far and itās been fun figuring things out. I like that the better equipped you are, the less scrap you have room to take out. With 4 people it feels a little bit too slow ferrying scrap back and forth from the ship for the dungeon exploration to really hit, especially since it looks like thereās no upgrades to make loot hauling any more efficient. That might change on the richer planets but as it stand the quota feels insurmountable after the 3rd deadline. Iāll probably try to get a few more friends to buy it this week to try out more than 4 people lobbies.
Head empty Against the storm and Lethal company have been really easy but Iād like to play something a little more substantive soon, probably symphony of the night or planescape torment.
8 Likes
For whatever reason Iāve never finished this game but Iāve played through Exoddus two or three times. Keep meaning to try that āSoulstormā remake to see if itās any good.
1 Like
i think the guncon didnāt come along until a few years into the ps1ās life and it was kind of a wild west before namco standardised it. so what iām saying is that youād probably have to get some crappy third party gun from the early days of the ps1.
when i was at uni, someone who worked on die hard trilogy (who was one of the teaching staff) told me that they basically had to develop the game without knowing all of the ps1ās final specs, so early it was.
iāve said this before elsewhere, but itās weird that nobodyās tried to ape this game, aesthetically or narratively. itās a strong candidate for best racing game ever, and loved by pretty much everyone who plays it.
10 Likes
Replaying Virtueās Last Reward is helping to clarify why I like 999 more. I think the puzzle focus of VLR is what makes it harder to get back into. The puzzles are more difficult and the entire form of the game is wrapped around them. 999 takes place on a sinking cruise ship, with rooms and puzzles that seem incidental and contextualized within the location. VLR takes place in a formless factory and the rooms and locations wrap around the puzzles to accommodate them
I like both games though. Even if I prefer 999 I like the variety in the series rather than just trying to make 999 exactly again
I feel like Iāve played other series that do this though, where the original carefully grounds itself in a particular setting and the sequel grows more abstract as it explores its mechanics more fully
6 Likes
the early ps1 light gun option was the justifier, which was p much the same as the snes and mega drive models from a couple of years earlier
really weird choice that when they put a demo out for die hard trilogy, they chose the first level from 2
4 Likes
i really donāt think you can recreate the special sauce of r4 or ac3 it was a magic y2k moment for namco
6 Likes