Azure Striker Gunvolt kicks ass. for a megaman inspired game it’s fucking weird in terms of the rhythm: tag enemies with the gun, then use an area attack to actually damage them. but once i did some remapping so that i could use the triggers to dash and zap it clicked.
Perfect for the steam deck.
I just bought the two 8 bit inspired games, the weird side game, and the sequel just on the strength of the first half of the first game. Also inticreates rocks so i trust them now.
There’s an Outer Wilds thread, go post as many spoilers as you want!
Last week in gaming:
Forza 8:
Continuing to do Rivals-per-track-money farming scheme, which isn’t the fastest option i believe, but faster than doing races. If you turn in five-ish laps, you tend to get 5-10k basically for free, because you learn each track better, get accustomed to the car you’ve chosen, and you can do that for each class on each track (it’s wild to do a direct back-to-back run on the same circuit with an E-, C-, A- and S-Class car).
Watching the Huge-ass Chaparral 2E wing move up/down is similar to driving a Porsche 917 for the first time, you just cannot believe the performance it offers.
Super Mario Wonder:
really feels like the dev team took a few shrooms during design phase.
Super Mario RPG:
gifted that to my brother & his family, thanks to @daphaknee’s epic thread, knew that I had to jump on top of a random toad, leaping up a ledge and found the missing invisible treasure chest, alas was hero of the day, thank youuuu 
Redout II:
Tough, but oh-so-pretty.
Thunderforce 4, emulated on a raspi four:
Fo(u)r The Players
Yakuza, Dragon, Ishin something something OSAKA edition:
You meet the nicest people after hitting the bad guys with a Honda Cub 
Yakuza Ishin something something OSAKA, only in EDO period:
Makes Samurai Warriors feel like you’re in the flow, all the time. However, no Karaoke in SW tho!
Starfield:
… still cannot believe the ridiculous first few hours recap from a friend of mine (who’s currently playing it) when showcasing some random location where some space pirates were loitering around.
Some pokkeman Karmesin or so:
Unbelievable bad performance for an A-tier franchise installment, jesus christ…
Sonic Superstars:
Feels good to play, random boss i encountered took indeed way too long, so everyone is in fact correct about that.
Zettai Zetsumei 4 (on PC):
After all those other games, felt like it runs on 20fps. Said Hi to Miss Higa, pondered if a bad guy run would be worth it 
Automation: the Car Company Tycoon:
Who’d have thought it would be so much fun to build a midship, rearwheel driven inline 6 NA 1.6L 9500rpm redline sports coupe, export it for test driving in beamNG and accidentally design a somewhat cool car?
Automobilista 2, Nürburgring Nordschleife DLC:
Gifted that to my nephew, like any good godfather would do. Porsche 911 GT1 has surprisingly good grip around 90% of the track, until the rear end stepped out and i binned it on lap 2.
Hi Fi Rush:
Absolutely have to get this game, sampled the french dub, which sounds at least as good as japanese, english and german dub (didn’t try more than that).
Finished Pokemon Violet’s Area Zero DLC and my prediction was mostly correct
This second DLC is better because it provides interesting NPC Pokemon Battles but the plot goes exactly as you think it will.
To complete the dex, I’d have to grind out little DLC-exclusive currency missions for about 15 hours to unlock new Pokemon species spawns. This goes a lot quicker if you do co-op but I don’t fancy jumping in with a bunch of randos online and no-one I know is playing the DLC. Think I’ll ride off into the sunset on this one until I have a podcast backlog next year.
Hi Ho Violet, AWAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYY!
I had no idea that so many people here were Aerobiz fans! Cool ^^ I only heard about it from wandering around on a Koei fan wiki so I wasn’t really sure how popular it was.
Yeah that was neat, it was like the dreamy space cowboy version! Thinking about the “Europe” theme I can totally understand why you would take it in that direction, but I don’t think it would have occurred to me right out, so also props for doing an inventive cover of a game tune ^^ A lot of game music covers I hear are just in like, what I think of as kind of generic or “off-the-shelf” music styles—I wish more of them would go further out on a limb like this and show a new side of the music in a fresh way! 
That podcast does sound charming, also, like I guess I’ve said elsewhere I’m a big fan of playing games at random ^^
If I keep playing it I feel like I’m really going to be hankering to play it against other people, now I feel like I kind of know the CPU’s tricks 
It’s still kind of a fun knitting-esque activity to just figure out how to put everything together in a given game, and you can set yourself the challenge of trying to beat the game in as few turns as possible, but playing against human opponents would add a whole other layer of strategic complexity—I could imagine it being a bit like Risk.
Yeah, I always think that’s a cool aspect of “simulation”-type games, how they tend to be fun whether you take them really seriously or not. I feel like I tend to start out just messing around, but then I get drawn into picking apart all the mechanics, and then once I’ve done that I go back to messing around but in ways that take the mechanics more into account. To some extent I think you can play any game that way, but I love games that are designed to appeal to that style of play.
I wonder if any recliner could be as comfy as those clouds It reminds me of the cover art/title screen of Thinking Rabbit’s Doukeshi Satsujin Jiken (The Clown Murder Case) although the clouds there are a bit more akin to a bubblebath:
(This game is kind of on my “to do” list so I can’t speak to it too much, but it’s worth watching the dreamlike intro to the Saturn/PSX/Windows remake, I think, while we’re here:
)
…yes.
Sonic Generations (PC/Steam)
Hey, this actually feels kinda fun. Then what about that other one people seem to like
Sonic Mania (PC/Steam)
Yeah, feels pretty all right. Was I wrong about Sonic all this time? Okay I’d better go check…
Sonic the Hedgehog
Sonic the Hedgehog 2
in Sega Genesis Classics (PS4)
No, still not grabbing me.
Oh yeah I also have
Sonic the Hedgehog Pocket Adventure (NGPC)
Huh, feels pretty sharp!
I returned to Chants of Sennaar and it became fun again after I got through that last stealth room. I think I’m near the end now. I like the way some of the earlier areas use such a limited palette that when they add more colors later they really stand out. The game has enough charm to make me want to see it through to the end, though it drags a little at times.
I just wanted to mention it again because my earlier comment probably made it sound like I didn’t like the game but I do like it. The central language deciphering gimmick is fun.
Oh! Sonic Origins (PC/Steam) isn’t emulated versions of original games, it’s remakes of them in a custom engine, by several key developers of Sonic Mania. I haven’t gotten along with the emulated Sonics I’ve tried in GC, PS2, and PS4 collections–but running in Christian Whitehead’s engine, yeah, I like the feel, responsive and sharp. : ) Apparently hardcore Sonic fans didn’t like the change, but I didn’t play Sonic as a kid, so I don’t have that particular perspective; to me it feels like they’ve finally been done up right!
When this game first came out PhysX was this new hotness, and nVidia hadn’t bought them yet so in order to get advanced physics stuff to happen in games, you needed a special PhysX PPU, or Physics Processing Unit. So to play FEAR at the time of release on max settings was a big time deal.
Anyway it’s 2023 now. My physical copy I bought from a thrift store won’t run for some reason, so I got the steam version thanks to a generous community member, but even that won’t run unless you enable comparability mode. Which means no screenshots for now.
Graphically it’s still kind of impressive, the surfaces all have convincing shaders on them, this was before the time of Crysis bringing computers to their knees so a lot of the rooms are filled with one light placed so that the shadows being cast would have maximum effect. I can’t help but feel how stark things look, all the spaces are very “Liminal” in a good way. Before it was just to get around system limitations but the eerie feeling is pretty convincing. The first level is a maze like industrial setting with lots of pipes and catwalks that make zero sense…but in a good way.
Gameplay wise, the slomo mechanic really works as a proto Super Hot, using the limited amount to spot and shoot multiple enemies. the jump kick move is pretty good, and if you’re agile enough you can link a jump-kick kill with a gun kill right after. I find the enemies to be challenging, partially because the gun accuracy is intentionally opaque. This seems to be before the time of Aim Down Sights, so it’s hipfire for everything. Its hard to be precise and I find that ambiguity to add a lot of tension. Enemies feel threatening in a good way.
One thing this game gets right that others don’t is: gun combat VFX. there’s sparks everywhere, chunks of the wall get taken out, there’s a lingering cloud of smoke that doesn’t clear immediately. It’s somewhat realistic. Nearly everything is a physics object, including the telephone cables in offices, which sway and twitch because that’s what physics objects are wont to do. I once launched a grenade into a room full of things just to see what would happen.
paging @Dracko to rave about F.E.A.R
might be worth trying the 4 GB Address Aware patch
At least on my computer, it makes the game run without compat mode, everything working just fine
oh, for real? it’s time? it’s finally time?! its-
instead of living up to his name gore terrorizes our main characters by re-enacting their most traumatic memory using hand puppets, and this is like, actually upsetting to read. gore here eats people, but they are a lot tastier when certain emotions are at a peak. i don’t think it’s unlikely that this story started out as “what if we did it, but different”. an anime trash horror version with “tasteless” handling of sensitive subjects. i’m here for it
I have played a lot of Metro Quester over the past few days and this game is for absolute sickos. It’s great.
Rereading The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction over the weekend’s given me a new appreciation of Suika Game.
Finished up Snake Pass tonight and while the game acts like it doesn’t have a final boss that is a lie; the final boss is sadly the game’s camera. For most of the game I’d describe the camera as one that is 90% of the way there but it struggles mightily during parts of that last stage to the degree I wonder if they fully tested out said area. The final real obstacle in said stage had said camera swinging back and forth wildly trying to decide how it wanted to frame the shot.
Anyways the game itself was still pretty good, just sad for it to fumble things a bit near the end.
Spark in the Dark demo (PC/Steam)
Found my PS4 DualShock 4 works in this demo using Steam Input layouts. : ) Started off using user Heliax’s “GameCube” layout, realized it didn’t have a crossbow “Reload” key on the DS4, mapped that to dpad-left. Afterwards I uploaded the modified layout to Steam w/ credit to Heliax.
Jumped by an awful thing from the hole in the wall in room 2! Only time that’s ever happened–once a regular spider came out, that’s been it. Whatever that other thing was, it was taking axe hits like nothin’! = ooo
Got maybe the furthest I’ve ever got on that last run, until um a different hole problem suddenly arose. Wonder if that’ll be there next time…
A couple spiders came at me through rooms I’d previously cleared out. Had they wandered in from unexplored side chambers, or does the game spawn new monsters in previously cleared areas? = oo
The demo’s font is kinda blurry, at least at my 1080p. And its AA setting has reset to OFF every time I run it.
A girl’s grief swallows the world and you’re a blood opera machine thrown into a ghost story. One for the ages, shame about the sequels.
Extraction Point fucks hard, though.
