mi amigo douglas holiday :')
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the enemy ai in F.E.A.R. is my favorite in any fps
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Some great stuff came out of FEAR
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iād like to change this to āit but hornyā. i mean that was obvious, but especially now that girlfriend is possessed by sex ghosts or something. she insists our protagonist takes off his clown repelling pendant, probably a great idea despite the warning signals going off in his head
amount of gore so far: one case of exposed brains due to murder related accident. we can do better
also, iām avoiding talking about more sensitive stuff, including things i suspect are gonna come up later. like, just assume that if you feel horrible on a moral level, like youāve done something bad, by some pg-15 or lower anime game, this is gonna be absolutely dreadful
4 Likes
two weeks of vacation from work ends tomorrow. played a good amount of games during the break
armored core 4
game is amazing, longpost is here
final fantasy vii
lovely little toybox of a game, every screen a diorama. materia provides just enough tinkering to the battle system to make it engaging without being exhausting. made cloud a tank, barret a dps supermage, and nanaki a buffer/healer. many of ffviiās setpieces are weird pieces of infrastructure in remote areas, so how could i not love it?
initial d extreme stage
i grew up playing initial d arcade stage version 3, the champion of my local arcade with a 100+ unbroken winstreak. extreme stage is a port of version 4, which was a big hardware leap (think like ps2->ps3 levels of quality). iāve been curious about it since i that time in my adolescence and finally got the game as a gift for myself for my birthday in the twilight weeks of 2023.
with the hardware leap, not only are the graphics overhauled but the physics are as well. initial d has never been a realistic racing game but the physics in v4, and extreme stage by extension, are about as far off what feels natural as possible. iāll assume you know the theory of out-in-out cornering ā extreme stage works on an in-in-out principle. it makes no sense, and the only way to play the game successfully is to empty your brain of everything you know about driving and submit yourself to the whims of this game.
the story mode features multiple people to race on multiple mountains. each person can be raced twice, once in dry weather and once in the rain. i beat every person twice, and there isnāt much to do outside of that (time trial mode and then a dead multiplayer mode) so i suppose iāve done all there is to do in the game.
i will say the one cool thing about initial d compared to regular racing games is that the courses (happogahara, for example) have so many frequent turns, all varying slightly in their angle, that it starts to feel like a rhythm game in the same way that sekiro sometimes does. racing games are good at inducing flow state but races in initial d put me in a very different place than, say, a gran turismo endurance race. itās neat.
wangan midnight (ps3)
although this is a licensed game, it is the final console racing game by genki (of genki racing project, the ātokyo xtreme racerā studio), released a year after the 360-exclusive shutokou battle x. itās really neat to see the final iteration of their craft ā theyāve always prided themselves on accurately recreating the tokyo highway system for their games, and my wife and i actually did a bit of sightseeing in free run one of my first times booting up the game. we passed through odaiba, trying to find a pedestrian bridge we crossed over the highway on, and realized that the only reason it wasnāt in the game was because it hadnāt been built yet when the game came out.
anyway, this is a better game all-around compared to initial d extreme stage. there is more to do, the physics feel more logical (not that theyāre amazing, but theyāre workable), and i donāt have to see shuichi shigenoās art or listen to eurobeat to enjoy the racing.
along with dodging cars and navigating corners, the main focus while racing is not overheating your engine. i spent a lot of the game doing this unpleasant dance of pushing until my engine was about to blow, coasting until the engine cooled, and the pushing some more. i realized after reading some old gamefaqs posts that i was doing it wrong, and what i actually needed to do was find a very particular point in the analog throw of the right trigger where the speed was increasing slightly but the engine heat was staying steady. thereās a very tiny window with which to do this, felt like it was probably a 3% range of the analog throw and it actually shifts slightly over time as the engine speed increases. long story short, find a sweet spot on the trigger and stick to it. kind of torturous on the hands, but ārealisticā so i appreciate it.
one thing i wish was still alive was a multiplayer mode where it seems that you can just cruise the highway system with other people and challenge each other to one-off races at your leisure. the servers are still up, somehow, but of course nobody plays.
iāve beaten the main stories with akio asakura and tatsuya shima (devil z and blackbird, respectively) and iām tying up all the little side stories now.
3d picross
getting close to the end of this one after playing it in little bursts for two years. at first i thought it was harder than regular 2d picross, but now i think it might actually be easier as you have a whole other axis of information to work with.
the gameās mascot is strange, though: a treacherous cubist duck thing that eyes you snarkily and dances around. also, all the music in the game feels patronizing.
iād definitely play the 3ds sequel someday.
persona 3
played a couple hours but i think my wife and i are dropping it and not committing to a playthrough. looks neat, sounds neat, but itās just too shounen-y.
iāve beaten it before, about a decade ago, but at that time i was playing the portable version; it was a nice treat to be able to actually run around the school, mall, etc. in the ps2 version. it doesnāt add much thatās tangible, but the persona games are all about really living in a space over the course of a school year so being able to actually move around a 3d environment (with plenty of nice little details, lovely lighting and posters on the walls and all that) adds a lot to that feeling.
final fantasy viii
played for about an hour, spent most of that time on the balamb garden class computer. donāt love the change in art direction in this compared to vii. walked out onto the world map and laughed out loud because of how silly the scale looked. i never beat this as a kid; only made it to, maybe, disc 2 back in the year 2001/2002 so i plan on seeing it through this time. interested to see if wife and i warm up to it more.
beatmania iidx
yep, still playing. my goal this year was to beat the 10th dan course (course of four songs that you must clear to earn the third-highest rank in the game, iām currently at the fourth-highest rank ā the final song you play in 10th dan is this evil chart) and i was unable to accomplish that, but iām still happy with the progress iāve made ā iām starting to get AAAs on a lot of 10s, AAing a lot of 11s, and clearing/hard clearing some more 12s. also been doing online multiplayer when i get the chance and iāve been doing pretty well, got a full sweep in the last two matches i played with randos.
there are always better players, and thereās such a long way to go between where i am and where i want to be with the game, but i really love playing it. i try to approach it less like iām playing a video game and more like iām studying a martial art. itās always humbling, always tests my mind and body, and thereās always something new to improve on. what an amazing video game.
21 Likes
i did a deep dive into GOAP and other planner-type AI when I played through FEAR at the start of this year and during my work on the FEAR-like (see my posts in the previous GUPT thread). itās funny because, functionally, the enemy AI in FEAR is not particularly good, especially by the standards of modern FPS. they tend to bunch up in easy-to-kill clusters, pathing is bad and gets stuck frequently, and (my personal favorite) all NPCs use it, even the rats, so you can end up with really long action queues that cause the memory to take a shit.
what it does do, though, and the real triumph for maintaining the mystique i think, is it presents the AI in a way that feels smart. for example, if an AI decides to āflankā (which, functionally, it probably wonāt do all that well!), instead of yelling out āflanking!ā like in any modern game, it sends a cue to another soldier to yell āflank him!ā instead. this is a lesson that only a few other shooters have really internalized since, one of them being Halo Infinite and its call-response voice line work.
GOAP is definitely a milestone in terms of getting people to apply AI-agent advances from other fields/genres to FPS games though, so while it may be overengineered for a game where enemies mostly just run straight at you and get mowed down, it deserves credit for getting people to actually develop better FPS AI. games like Destiny 2 owe a debt to FEAR in that respect, even if i think that FEARās AI is overhyped in practice.
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fearās ai is still better at creating an illusion than modern AI in a lot of cases, same with stalker, itās so interesting to contrast the way those NPCs actually move around with like the fucking gang hideouts in cyberpunk where everyone mills around like a drone and runs at me in a straight line. even call of duty is like bro I heard you like human wave attacks still. fps ai doesnāt really have to do the same things as those old games anymore which is why severed steel was cool, because they act like old fps enemies and do FEAR shit again like the good ol days of goons being fun to fight
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It seems to me that part of Monolithās strength has been that, outside of āAIā, in using and developing their own engine they heavily task visible in-game entities with executing scripted elements (like the barks) rather than the more common dependence on hidden timers, invisible geometry triggers, etc.
That those systems fail or overexpose themselves primarily through NPCs I think adds a sense of āfairnessā to their & their games operation that leads to the goodwill rather than shifting blame to the game itself for being unfair.
I definitely noticed weird little setpieces accidentally expose themselves due to odd NPC behavior when playing Condemned and it made me appreciate them as these fragile mechanisms rather than roll my eyes at enforced cutscenes.
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Rapid fire:
Geometric Sniper is like a very sophisticated Flash game wherein you play Whereās Waldo and snipe little people with geometric shapes for heads. Feels extremely Newgrounds. Played a few levels and said āI get it.ā The main mode has a story I canāt believe any human on earth can give a shit about, and this is coming from Mr Easily Invested in the Plot.
Ghostrunner runs pretty well on my new little mini PC with some settings turned down (fuck if I can tell the difference anyway). However I canāt execute what it wants me to do with KBM. I canāt slide-jump-wallrun-slowtime-airdash on the keyboard that Iām currently using, they layout isnāt really ideal for spreading my fingers out. Gonna need to dig out a game pad for this one.
No such problem with Amid Evil though! I guess Boomer Shooters are just second nature even if Iām not terribly good at them. So far it seems more like Uh Mid Evil, but I was lukewarm on Dusk at first too and wound up really enjoying it so Iāll give it some more time.
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Sonic and the Fallen Star (PC)
Sonic fan game by StarDrop. Love the chunky 2D graphics; I looked at video of pretty much all of the most talked-about Sonic fan games, and Fallen Star was the one that jumped out at my eyeballs. (Lots of people love the Doom-engine-derived Sonic Robo Blast 2, it makes me nauseous just to look at = ii.)
But the momentum movement is a tad sluggish and the first level felt full of awkward breaks as I try to run through.
StarDrop are working on another one, Sonic and the Moon Facility. Was thinking Iād give it a try when itās outāsupposed to be in a year or soābut the trailer shows wall-climb strips and eh man maybe Iāll just stick to the few Sonic retail games I seem to be able to handle.
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The Series X version of GTA V can do 4K and 60 fps but not at the same time lol. Would have been nice to have both but whatever it looks really good at 4K with ray traced shadows and reflections but the game shows its age with the lighting. Skin textures kind of have that 360 era oatmeal effect going on if you look at them too close which makes sense as this was a PS360 era game.
I wish the driving was a bit more loose. It doesnāt have to be super realistic like GTA IV, though I wouldnāt complain if it were, I just wish they made me work a bit more to learn how to drive well. They made it too easy and thatās my main worry about GTA VI, that the driving will still be too easy. GTA is supposed to be all about the vibe of a particular time or place so I was super disappointed in 2013 when I found out they had sucked most of the personality out of their vehicle handling.
Someone at Rockstar, in an interview, once said something to the effect of āAnyone can make a car going down the road but not everyone can make a car going down the road in style.ā I want them to put the style back.
All that aside driving along the highways between places is still great. The mountains and countryside are great. The city and small towns are great. I want more of all of that. Walking around and driving around are my two favorite things to do here because the setting is strong enough and detailed enough that it just never gets old.
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i think cyberpunk captures the vibes of the 2020s so far really well, like we all hate women and impose oppressive body standards and everyone is insanely violent, so curious to see how gta 6 rates on capturing the vibes of the time. also i want the online to be good so i can drive around a city listening to music with my friend
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Iām hoping they realize satire is dead in the 21st century (or figure out a way to do satire that works again) and just do a straight up Bonnie and Clyde romance crime story. Replaying V again I actually appreciate the story more than I thought I would. Like itās cool that they tried to capture a few different perspectives on what being a career criminal is like in the modern age with Franklin being up and coming, Michael trying to get out be a family man, and Trevor being an unstable psycho trying to make the business side of it work for him.
They all have their own things going on with them and their own friend groups and itās interesting to see how their stories all weave together but you kind of have to replay it a few times over the years to really get that bigger picture appreciation of it. There are times where none of these characters seem very sympathetic or relatable but then there are other times as you go on where they do get a lot more relatable, like seeing how Trevor comes to forgive Michael eventually or seeing how Trevor is actually a more loyal friend to Michael than Michael is to him. The first time I played this I didnāt really like Trevor but now I kind of like him more than Michael.
I think if they just have the two characters in VI then it will make for a more focused story since the dynamic between two people can be portrayed with a lot more depth than the dynamic between three people. Actually in V there was really just the dynamic between Michael and Trevor, and then Franklin is just kind of there as the new guy in their relationship. Much as I like Franklin and his story I canāt help but feel V might have been a better story if it had just been about Michael and Trevorās relationship.
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trevor is the guy who seems like he belongs in a gta game the most but he can suck my dick and die for curb stomping johnny klebitz in an aggravatingly long cutscene
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I managed to finish Undernauts: Labyrinth of Yomi just in time for new yearās. Great game, I loved the mix of old school Wizardry classes with modern day Japanese office workers, sukeban, pop idols etc. I kinda wish it did a bit more with the 70s Japan setting rather than going deeper into the fantasy stuff. I also liked that it went with an extremely low encounter rate, but also with visible enemy markers in fixed locations, so you can focus on exploring the dungeons without enemies every few steps (except for the times where they literally put the enemy markers on every tile for a stretch).
It does do a few of the things I am not particularly fond of in RPGs, like the loot system where you are constantly going over the item limit and have to sift through and discard a tonne of junk, and of course the final dungeon is a tediously long slog through floating platforms in a purple void. Surprisingly thereās almost no way to revive fallen party members inside battle which adds a lot of tension to the fights, but thereās also a lot of enemies with instakill moves that trigger way too often which means I often had to warp straight back to camp after having made it back to where I had left off previously.
Overall though, very good game to play if you have a hankering for some old school crawling through dank dungeons. There seems to be quite a bit of post game content but I think Iāll leave that until Iāve worked through some of my other backlog.
After the above game, I figured I needed something a bit less challenging and lengthy, so I have started Xuan Yuan Sword: Mists in the Mountains.
I suspect this has been heavily re-balanced from the original release as so far it is almost completely free of any challenge. The first battle is against a single soldier who I killed in one shot and went up 2 levels. Almost every enemy since then has been a 1 or 2 hit kill, which kind of makes the pokemon / SMT style monster catching and fusing systems a bit tricky since I keep killing everything by accident. Then I got to the troll boss who somehow managed to wipe me out three times in a row.
Iām enjoying it a lot so far though, itās a very breezy game. The story is kinda bonkers so far, youāre a Frankish knight trying to gain passage from Venice to Arabia, but those dastardly templars are arresting and executing anyone who they consider a heretic. After saving some prisoners, one of them calls on Lord Satan to give you assistance, which comes in the form of a cute anime off-brand sailor moon demon called Nicole who keeps doing naughty things like murdering people and then sulking when she gets yelled at for it.
The translation seems fine so far. Iām not sure if theyāve updated it since the initial release earlier in the year, but itās definitely not ācompletely incomprehensibleā like most of the reviews claimed. There is some weird jank though, like dialogue boxes that disappear as soon as the text finishes appearing, and the autosave tripped me up on one occasion making me think an event flag was broken.
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my headcanon for Trevor is that he realizes hes in a videogame but cant describe what that means
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Sonic Generations (PC/Steam)
Playing through the 2D-gameplay
and 2D/3D-gameplay
stages of Green Hill Zone or whatever the first area is called in this game was a hoot; the developers of this 2011 game seem to have understood how to do scale and flow and graphic design for fast-moving platforming in a way that developers of later 3D graphics Sonic games have struggled to duplicate ever since.
Then youāre dumped in a white limbo hub world that tries to make everything as confusing as possible,
with a half-dozen entities and menus telling you in bits and pieces that there are two Sonics (basically just the slightly different look they for some reason have in the two different types of stages: shorter, lighter blue, and rounder in the 2D-gameplay stages, and taller, darker blue, and more angular in the 2D/3D-gameplay stages),
that you have to toggle between them as part of the very clunky process of selecting a stage to play
and buying
and equipping skill enhancements for them (which you have to do separately for the two Sonics, and have to confirm first with one button and then with another, or the purchase is quietly dropped like it never happened; then you have to go equip them separately; then you have to think about grinding the stages again to a) improve your time, perhaps realizing later that there isnāt much point to this until you have the most optimal upgrades, whatever those may be, b) find more red star thingies
for whatever reason, or c) earn more points to buy more abilities?), and that you have to wander around this limbo world filled with 2D platforming dead-ends to find the next stage to play, and for some reason thereās a pinball ācasinoā stage where you play one of the most tortuously floaty and repetitive digital āpinballā tables ever
until you get sick of it and just let the ball drain so you can leave and try to find your way back to the fun part of the game, ie the actual running around fast stages.
The online leaderboards for stage clear times seem to be brokenāthey show user names but all the times are 0.
Even through Steam the game doesnāt natively read my PS4 DualShock 4; got it working by using a user-submitted Steam Input layout called āPs4.ā ; )
Even with that though, there seems to be a danger of the game no longer reading the DS4 if I task-switch sometimes, or maybe even just donāt press an input for a minute or two, even though the inputs still show up fine in Steamās controller input test. Running DS4Windows (and maybe plugging the controller in and back out?) got it reading again in the game without having to restart the game, thoughāso probably in future Iāll just run DS4Windows before starting the game, if I can remember like a smart person would. ^ _^
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Iāve always been perplexed at why generations isnāt as highly regarded as mania, which are imo by far the only two really good sonic games to come out in 30 years, and I think itās just because sonic fans have no taste at all
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