the guitar/bass stuff has always been paper thin (tbh guitar freaks arcade was too!) but combined glorified karaoke and taiko no tatsujin rock band can bridge gaps between disparate interests. it’s way better suited to a friend group or family with regular roles than passing around to people, though
the hardware is all used and rare now but i love how audacious it was to sell MIDI adapters and make a whole MIDI actual guitar in 2010. it bombed but now i can play synthesizers with a weird squier stratocaster with sensors under its fretboard
must also disclose i did all of the exports dutifully (except green day which i never had) so i’m sitting on 15 years of accumulated song DLC and a bunch of peripherals from the clearance bin. the rock band defender etc etc
they are still putting out new new DLC from bands i suspect have a soft spot for it among them. (e.g. fucking wednesday had a song this week!)
my roommate wanted an rpg to play so i loaned her smt nocturne + my switch lite. kind of got me in the mood to play nocturne myself again but then i kind of thought i might rather play digital devil saga 2, which ive never played (beat the 1st game earlier this year)
these games dont quite have the same austere tone and beauty and i dont like the avatar tuner system quite as much as smt3’s fusion system but we all love passing turns and targeting weaknesses to gain half-turns while defending our own weaknesses. plus you get a hard mode selectable at the start tho ig it doesnt seem quite as intense as nocturne hard mode either
it might be gamer season… someone online recently patched dual analog controls into every armored core from the first on ps1 to silent line (the last game not to have them i think) so ive been playing armored core 3 undubbed with dual analog controls
i really like it… the first 3 series (the psx and ps2 games) feel more simulationist in some ways and a bit like dungeon crawlers too, im not complaining about the post-last raven direction the series took at all, but acvi does feel a little more like a character action game to me than something simulation-minded.
imo the games from 3 to last raven have some of the best ambiance of any fromsoft games bc u get what feels like kota hoshino at his best, totally in the same vibe as the evergrace soundtracks
Is it worth playing the undubs? I have them just cause I usually get any undub anyone bothers to make but I assumed any fromsoft ps2 game probably has decent sh2 type voice acting
not entirely worth it tbh there’s not a lot of voice acting to start and what is there sounds pretty equivalent to the japanese voice track in like tone and texture
it’s smash tv except on the ps1 and also bruce willis is here. fast paced and fun, verdict KEEP
SENTINAL RETURNS
I really love this game, though there is no way in hell I’m playing through all 650 levels lol. the original game had like 9999 levels or some stupid number like that. anyway it’s a horror stealth puzzle strategy game with music from john carpenter. you do the same thing basically every level, but it has a feeling of performing a ritual to me that I find very satisfying, like yar’s revenge. verdict KEEP
DIVER’S DREAM
we have treasures of the deep at home. it’s a pretty basic (and linear) ocean exploration game but there is one standout moment where one of the levels takes place in a rusted wreck with silent hill industrial music playing and you get chased by giant mutant mollusks and for that reason alone this is a KEEP
VIB RIBBON
very simple but charming rhythm game that works well with input lag of modern TVs since its pretty forgiving with timing (I’m a bit worried about when I get to um jammer lammy). plus has a great soundtrack! i don’t have many music CDs that work well with the generative stuff though. verdict: KEEP
Galaga (Famicom) - extracted from Namco Museum Archives Volume 2 (PC/Steam)
Galaga was everywhere in the arcades when I was a kid but it always felt too slow to me and I kinda hated it.
In this version though the shorter aspect ratio makes the enemies that much larger on screen and puts them at much closer range, and they’ve significantly sped up your ship’s movement rate–so it actually feels nice and zippy!
The animation, colors, and sound (so many Pac-sounds) are downright luscious. I am sort of flabbergasted by how lovely this game is.
And once enemy ships have flown in in set patterns and filled out their formation at the top of the screen, their dives are semi-random, so from that point it isn’t just a memorizer.
i seem to be approaching an endgame boss gauntlet? it’s hard to tell in these things. i’ve barely touched the dlc though
the return to yahar’gul after byrgenwerth is such an escalation of difficulty, weirdness, and gross imagery, and i savored every moment of it. i never expected a payoff on the shaking wagons, but got one. the decisive shift from werewolf hunting to fighting barely-describable gross lovecraftian shit is delicious, i loved emerging from the chapel and finding, instead of a huge pig patroling the stairs (scary enough if transplanted to the real world and also threatening as an in-game monster) a roiling mass of fused corpses dragging itself along on elongated limbs, and encountering post-werewolves that are either rotting away or 80% transformed into something wet and fleshy creates a frisson of horror that’s on par with the best of the medium.
plus there are two alternate versions of the neighborhood that occupy the same space but are accessible via different paths, which i know has been technically possible since the 90s, but you rarely see it done. i love it
i also found the +7% arcane damage resistence run there and stacked it with the +5% one, which gave me just enough defence to tank chalice rom’s attacks and achieve a messy victory at the cost of 24 blood vials. my reward was another dungeon chalice with more adverbs stacked onto the name (lower pthumeru root chalice, i think?). great
another thing about chalice dungeons, they give you a lot of practice with the combat system and with quickly sizing up spaces, which can foster a state of flow when playing through the main game, even in places you’ve never been before. it’s kind of a shame to speed up your rate through the game, but it also contributes to the dreamy atmosphere, advancing through the game by reflex while the rest of your mind is boggling at the imagery on display and, for example, the implication of yarnhamites suddenly having a juicy blood explosion effect when they die. “i guess the gods of bloodborne’s hunt have a scheme similiar to the gods of lordran, to force humanity into a state of relentless fighting and concentrate all of their experience points into a few individuals which they can then burn as fuel or whatever. except in this case it’s 100% fleshy and organic” i think to myself as i automatically take down another roiling corpse-mass
however, every time i die (and every time i’m hit by certain enemies), i tend to roll my eyes or sarcastically say “okay!” instead of realizing i had made a mistake and thinking “fair play, that was on me” like i usually did in dark souls or elden ring. i feel like you generally have to commit to actions much farther in advance than in elden ring, whereas enemy attacks often come out with little to no warning. spamming the augur of ebrietas for predictive parries or the tiny tontirus for big damage numbers is often the most effective strategy but it feels like i’m barely engaging with the combat system, just cashing in tokens to bypass enemies. i am resolving many boss encounters by spamming r1 and then spamming heal (past a certain point every enemy attack seems to do 1.5 - 2 blood vials worth of damage) when my attempts to quickstep around the enemy inevitably backfire. maybe something i haven’t tried yet like leaning on pistol parries or using strength weapons blows the whole thing open, idk
so far it seems like it’s hands down the best adaptation of lovecraft material in any game, with the best art and world design in the soulslike genre, with the best experience of cutting through crowds dyntasty warriors style, but with an annoying and inconsistent approach to difficulty. maybe it clicks after a few more playthroughs but i’m old now and experiencing time dilation as the grave approaches, and it’s quite a stretch to call mastering a videogame a rewarding activity, unless it offers a smooth and inviting path to it, like, say, armored core 6. regardless i’m definitely enjoying myself and looking forward to more weird, gross, mind-bending imagery
There’s like three or four healing items that I’ve gone out of my way to make a couple of, but most of that ingredient gathering stuff you can totally ignore (unless I’m playing the game very wrong). I don’t think I’ve ever fed my horse any of those berries.
The new york times wrote some article about this new strategy game that came out that’s about the czechoslovak legion trying to get out of russia after world war 1, and it’s so nakedly anti-communist propaganda it’s hilarious, as if the NYT endorsement wasn’t enough to cement that. Here is the head of the studio talking about how the legionnaires looked sharp in their uniforms and uh kept the train running on time
lmfao at literally all of this
“Foregrounding historical accuracy was a priority”
Ok so what’s the actual fucking game like huh? Well great news, it’s like every other shitty european tactics strategy game that came out this year - you control guys in real time and the game picks a random member of your squad to do shit instead of the closest person/best person for the job. Besides that, the extremely biased narrator is named “Historian” to give the whole thing an air of legitimacy (I like the part where he claims the red army formed to “consolidate power” and the white army merely existed in opposition to them with no goals of their own) when this is the first thing that happens in the tutorial. You come across a burning mill. I will present this without comment.
So after sleeping on this, I no longer recall if my issue was tying parrying to a consumable, or healing items. I do recall an early parry-heavy boss where I basically ran low if not out of at least one of them where I basically refused to use one or both of them until I got a ways into the second phase without screwing up, hated how it took a clearly hard boss and forced me to play it on a basically even harder mode.
Oddly I don’t think I had anywhere near that level of troubles with any other boss, probably because none of them really required much in the way of parrying.
I also recall dying so frequently to the Pursuer in Dark Souls 2 that all the enemies between the bonfire and boss room stopped appearing. Parry check bosses suck.
i think you are recalling Father Gascoigne, who is the first mandatory boss that gates the opening Central Yharnam areas. he’s very fucking hard and i’d consider his first phase to be something of a parry check, yeah. or at minimum a check on your aptitude at breaking lock on strategically and taking advantage of/not being stymied by your environment, a Souls Soft Skill they always seem a bit challenged to communicate (eg Ornstein & Smough to me is a big climactic check on your ability to fight without being locked on the whole time). His arena is a graveyard very dense with obstacles and it’s easy to get backed into a corner if you aren’t stopping to check your six frequently
his second phase is. kind of a “are you ready to Fuck Off” check is my snippy feeling about it but more fairly he becomes a glass cannon, his bestial weaknesses to fire and serration become highly pronounced (and there’s a unique item that can be used to stun him a few times) so it’s a bit more of a “learn thine enemy” check. Idk i always beat Gascoigne by the skin of my teeth, he’s the #1 example of “cant tell if this is Fun Hard or actually kinda bullshit” in the series for me
as for Pursuer… i would consider him more of a “have you figured out how Agility works yet” check but thats its own can of worms lol
ol gassy is a fun test on arcane build because it reveals how you never have to parry him to win. oil and fire baby, you can end phase 2 quick if you’re prepared. seconding the “unlock and run away” advice. also forcing him to fight you uphill makes his lunges come up shorter, you can use the back half of the stage against him
oh yeah im pretty sure every single time ive beaten Daddy Gasman it was ultimately by smashing a bottle of oil over his head, stunning him with the music box, & melting his ass w/ Molotov cocktails
Good news: the gel wasn’t really all that hard in this area. It wasn’t a pushover and some figuring out and optimization had to be done, but all things considered it was rather smooth sailing.
Bad news: the one non-gel puzzle in the area was instantly annoying and even having spent a good bit of time on it I haven’t really figured much out. This isn’t a cheap trick or potentially hidden info puzzle, its design seems fair in that regard. It’s just annoying in a way that plays against my strengths and has the potential to be very specific.
Basically there is a 7x7 grid of falling tiles in the middle of the room, and you must step on all of them and make them fall to open up the door to get to the enemies along the perimeter of the room. The thing is they are each on six tile long paths that lead to one-way arrows that if they cross they can no longer be reached and the room becomes unsolvable. They are three or four of these on all four sides of the 7x7 grid, and they take a step forward whenever you are in front of them (more or less). There are also some mini-paths linking adjacent paths, which also serves to offset opposite enemies (no horizontal or vertical row has two of these paths on them).
Now I think the trick will be making use of the linking paths to slow each enemy down by one or two steps so that they are reachable for the end loop around once all the tiles fall. The issue is that for each step you more or less have to account for the movement of four enemies at once which is more than I can comfortably process. I sort of process puzzles more by doing stuff than
by stopping and thinking and that doesn’t seem to be playing well hear. My fear is that there is possibly an exact 49-step sequence of moves I must make to get past this and I can’t even tell which of the first two possible moves is correct, heck I can’t even tell if there is a correct choice there.
My early thought was “just look up the answer, don’t bother with this” but I haven’t invested fully into it yet so it doesn’t feel fair, plus I’m prideful. I don’t think I’ve made it through ten moves yet without clearly already being on a failing path, there clearly is a principle in play but with four “axes” in play too much is moving at once for me to grasp it. My plan for tomorrow may be to just ignore half the enemies and try to solve for just the left and right side, if I can manage that I should at least be able to divine what rules it wasn’t me to operate on. Is definitely looking like a pain in the ass though.
it was the way to heal it other than waiting for it to die and resummoning it with an estus flask, it only came into play if you fought open world bosses on horseback, which is as far as i know never a good idea
my experience with Bloodborne was that it was way too easy. I beat so many bosses on the first try and basically came away feeling empty. Didnt even finish the DLC cos I got bored tho the true final boss woulda probaly had been cool.
