My biggest complaint about the Steam Deck is that the analogue stick (particularly the left one for some reason?) feels slightly too high for my thumb. It’s the only console where I will prefer the d-pad whenever possible and it means I tend to lean towards d-pad-centric games. For the record, Toybox Turbos works fantastically with the d-pad.
Other than that it’s my favorite portable gaming console of all time, and that’s saying a lot for how much I loved both the DS and the PSP (and the Switch, sort of). I’ve finished like 6 games this year because of that thing, which is a lot because I rarely finish games.
Pro tip: locking the framerate to 30 FPS whenever a game will let you will (predictably) make the battery last waaaaay longer. I was getting like, 3-3.5 hours out of MGSV. Which is about as long as I played it lol. I imagine posting this on Reddit just so I can get gamers to yell at me for settling for bad graphics and getting downvoted to hell
think it’s interesting that The Stanley Parable & 30 Flights of Loving are implemented in 3D engines: I reckon their core experience would survive as text adventures or 2d point-n-click. the narrative is the point of the experience, not the form. Superliminal’s experience is firmly centred on the mechanics, which are tightly entwined in the form (of 3d perspective transformations).
I did like the vague act structure of its level progression, and that one level was set in an art gallery space (art is games). could have done more with dumb jokes, loved the first clone puzzle
stanley parable does need to be in 3D because it relies on the saminess and surreality of office environments for the subversions later, and part of that is the absurd scale. it’s also in conversation with 3D level design and how it takes “real” environments and fits them to arbitrary gameplay needs.
yeah to me Stanley Parable serves as kind of a commentary on the boring “liminal space” template type environments in the Source engine. there were a lot of maps in Garry’s mod in particular that seemed to be just generic “usable space”. i don’t really know that it would exist without that context
People weren’t trying to make boring liminal spaces in gmod lol they were using the source engine to carve out familiar spaces to roleplay in or build shit. Its a sandbox game so it has a lot of “empty” maps…if that’s what the stanley parable guy is critiquing maybe he should check out this little game called “counter-strike.” gotta take literal kids to task for making shitty levels I guess
i just saw this - hell yeah, Iggy’s Reckin’ Balls. i discovered it from an EGM2 magazine i found at a swap that had maps of different games - it and Tomba! had the coolest looking maps lol. i ended up renting it several times before finally tracking down a copy. maybe this is where my love of ball-based gaming truly solidified (it started with Marble Madness tho). i really wish it would get a PC port with improved framerate like Shadowman and the Turok games did. i doubt it will tho - it’s one of those games i seem to love but one that often People Who Get Paid Attention To on the internet seem to say “hasn’t aged well” whatever that means. in the same way i will defend Jet Force Gemini from The Haters (even tho i know that game is insufferable to actually beat).
The original Stanley parable was pretty straightforwardly a game about taking the piss out of the idea of freedom of choice in narrative games. Especially stuff like bioshock which was a linear shooter that was going “haha, you thought you had freedom of choice” but you didn’t.
The narrator is specifically going “please, just do what I say so we can have a good story and don’t poke at the edges” a bunch if you disobey him.
One of the endings, the one that seemed like a real ending, was the one about how this was an unsolvable paradox.
I couldn’t get anything as clear out of the first expanded version, but it’s been a while since I messed with it.
While Stanley Parable is broadly parodying binary ‘choice’ in narrative games, I think the meta framing expands a bit beyond that to the non-narrative appeal of decision trees in games themselves. Addressing a player(as opposed to character)'s detached curiosity. “Did they think of this?”, “what if…?”.
Not just “How much did they write for each choice”, but also, “I can jump but what happens if I jump on this?”, “Will anything happen if I shoot this?”, etc.
I read the office spaces as a part of that meta framing. Playing with the detachment involved in experiencing ostensibly human-centric and collaborative environments as pseudo-scientific, individualistic, ‘possibility spaces’. Playing with questions of gameplay as ‘work’, labor done mindlessly or absurdly. Maybe even certain level of flirtation with fascism.
A more subtle corollary to something like Spec Ops, or the pessimistic counter to Frog Fractions optimism.
Maybe against my better judgment I have been hammering away at Trials of Mana. It pisses me off routinely, but…I think I might like it. More than I did Secret of Mana for sure.
I gotta be playing this thing wrong though. Four, five hours in, four different elementals, zero magic spells available to me. Maybe it’s because I’m using Hawkeye/Riesz/Kevin? I dunno!
gore screaming show is a horror visual novel i got really hyped up about as a teenager because the opening had a really cool song and it just seemed like a great promise in title and concept. not linking the op in question cause they do flash some of the porn cg’s. the original release is an eroge after all. steam version is without, altho as usual for these things there’s an external patch by the publisher to include everything.
i’m enjoying it so far altho not much is happening yet. worst part is persona levels of gross treatment of “ugly” girls, cause the most disgusting stuff in art is always the stuff you’d get away with putting on daytime tv. and no shown gore yet! i even picked the option to show all gore dammit! at least we get to explicitly know a “creature” is eating people. it’s a comfort
the script is pretty good and the interface is pretty fancy so it does feel nice to read. i’m just impatient cause i know what i’m promised dammit. just look at yamiko above hyping me up for the possibilities!
ah, I think they set it in an office because it’s easy/cheap to model & let them spend more dev time on the writing. like how Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, and The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist has no dynamic models and relies on lighting and sound to imply “lol yes there’s a real video game tiger in this box”
I mean yeah, that’s kinda what I was getting at with the narrative. It’s poking at that idea, because poking at that idea is taking the piss out of something like Bioshock or Spec Ops.
It’s Deliberately being playful with the framing and letting you poke at it in ways beyond A Finely Crafted Linear Story that Makes you Question Video Games. It has to be playful, otherwise it would just be another game about the same subject. It wants to invite you into the experience rather than lecture you.
I hate having to look up anything on YT related to Warframe. If there’s a decent streamer or videomaker or what the fuck ever out there for this game I have yet to find them.
Also if I have to hear one more “X Frame would be better by further incentivizing that Warframe to stand in one place and mash the 4 key to do the stuff that warframe does so it’s exactly like [obnoxiously long list of warframes]” swear I’m gonna find 'em and strangle them.
WARFRAME.
shakes fist
New tileset fuckin’ rules though. Feels like they really nailed down the scale needed for our movement skills and art is gorgeous. Absolutely rivials the Zariman tileset, maybe even exceeds it.
Listen, it’s no OP 2.2 calling me literally mentally ill for spending like 300 hours dealing with its horseshit, but I have to admit I’m a sucker for when a game scolds me for playing like ulillillia because i absolutely deserve it for spending 20 hours in watson doing all the side content before even making a single step of progress on the main story
I finally finished the campaign mode in Adaca (unless the “episode 3” is really in development and not just a Half Life 2 joke). I used a cheat code to get through the final firefight because it looked like it was going to be a pain in the ass with a bunch of enemy waves.
This game might have Too Many Guns, which I can hardly believe I’m saying. But a lot of them are functionally identical
Also one boss I just ran past to the exit door lol.
Overall I’d say I liked this, I appreciate the dev’s love for its inspiration.
