Order of Ecclesia’s Crab Boss is every bit as tricky as I remember, and will inevitably lead to replaying and actively learning the tutorial to Metal Slug Tactics to understand its fussy UI properly
Now playing Cult of the Lamb in earnest, and I’ve come to conclude that it’s ultimately too shallow to be great. I appear to be one fifth of the way through the main game, and the village management has already gotten to the stage where simple busywork is enough to keep the village running stably, with little incentive to progress except to cut down on said busywork. Sim City (SNES version) my main point of comparison, remains more interesting thanks to the peaks and valleys of its pacing: in my experience, you really have to work quite hard to get from City to Capital, and it’s very rewarding to have to fiddle with the systems to get there. The action segments, meanwhile, are…fine; I wish there were less going on on the screen at any given moment, in the non-boss segments, particularly since the baddies don’t look distinctive enough to grok their individual activities and patterns.
the cult management stuff is supposed to be a bucolic counter to the “real world”. followers really are better off in the cult, you’re making sure of it
although judging from what I sometimes see, the real reason for followers is to process wood into planks/coins into gold bars to build ever more ornate and elaborate displays of how great you are at killing the bosses
it’s not a deep game, there’s little advantage to playing well and many many features perks upgrades to make playing in the regular fashion successful and fun. kids game imo
Mario & Luigi: Brothership seems underbaked so far. It’s a little sluggish getting in and out of battles, the writing’s not particularly sharp, and, despite the expressive art style and some nice animations, it looks cheap. Like 3D Pokémon game cheap.
Controls are weird too: you hit A to select the jump attack with Mario and then A again to jump, which makes sense because A is the Mario button, but with Luigi you hit A to select the jump attack and then B to jump.
Maybe they can add a toggle for that to the Settings submenu which only has one setting at the moment (rumble on or off).
Said before that the writing in Miles Morales is kinda predictable and hokey, but I forgot about the podcast snippets that play when you zip around the city who ends every one with “OKAY BYYYYEEEE!!!”
Game is still OK. Like going back to Spider-Man on PC last year, I guess this kinda doesn’t hold up on replay, but it’s fine. It’s fine.
the worst part about veilguard, by far, is the writing of anything other than your companions or former companions. like, the writers definitely got the memo that dragon age = everything comes second narratively to the cast, but it’s hard to imagine how the rest of it turned out so paper thin.
Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is so slept on. I am monkey and I climb trees using Assassin’s Creed Unreal Engine movement tech. I pull twigs off branch to activate new neurons. I smell for smells and stand up tall to intimidate snakes. I have monkey sex at my monkey base and get—you guessed it—pregnant with monkey. I don’t know how it got funded for this much fucking money. It has a premise and tone like a high minded eco-tainment DOS game, executed like it’s triple A. Just the ultimate chillout game for eating fruit from tree and egg from high nest and discovering that rock can be used to hit another rock.
DOOM/DOOM II (PS5) - this is the new port from this? year, idk, pretty recent.
the controls are vastly better than in the older PS4 version, everything feels a lot better. the new remixed soundtrack thing is also pretty nice, and i appreciate the options here
lots of stuff to play, but did they ever fix the mod stuff where any random user can upload stuff that isn’t theirs, i’m sure someone here already knows - i haven’t messed with any of the user WAD stuff yet
anyway, i can’t get over how good episode 1 of doom is, what a great sequence of levels. this playthrough was the first time i got to the military base, had never been able to figure out e1m3 well enough before. some of these secrets are devious. what the hell is the actual trigger for having that raised edge come down that unlocks a cascade of multiple secrets stacked on top of each other. best i could figure is just to run out of the door back into the main “U” area with the toxic waste pool, that seemed to usually get the secret elevator to lower, but i never entirely grokked it.
god. i love doom. i’m gonna try and re-play as much of 1 and 2 as i can and then look at what else is available on here
Eldrum: Red Tide is everything I liked about the first game, and more. The writer is good at having the portagonist’s personal stakes be framed by a backdrop of larger conflict. Perhaps a bit bad at painting themselves into a corner and needing surprisingly cooperative bad guys turn coat on each other.
The battle system is fleshed out a little more, enough to give some depth. Although the one Recurring Damage status effect, Bleed, is crazy overpowered.
Lots of really interesting choices and tantalizing missed opportunities that make me want to replay. There’s really no way, it seems, to be able to min-max your way to be able to choose all paths in one run, which I respect.
I also like that this game is very fond of having occasional random side characters and baddies be like, monstrously strong. The world is full of badasses.
Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged (PS5) - pretty slick. the punishment level for making mistakes is still quite strong - this is not a casual children’s game in the way you might expect for a toy franchise. the physics are incredibly robust and drift mechanics are exquisite. there is some Outrun 2 and Trackmania DNA here - honestly more of those than Mario Kart (though there’s a dash of MK8 here, as well). overall, it reads to me as significantly better than the first game, despite being quite similar overall. i don’t have a strong feel on this because my memory of the first game is pretty vague now, but this one immediately captivated me in a way the first one failed to do, somehow. could have been my mood at the time, but idk, something about this one just feels more mechanically tight
the campaign mode includes some fine (if mundane) diversions - there are boss fights where you need to hit targets within time limits to reduce the boss’ HP, trials where you need to hit a certain time, and elimination matches where you need to stay out of the last few positions at each elimination point until you’re the last one left
the monetization is pretty unfortunate as before. you’ll need to find a way to compartmentalize to a degree to find full enjoyment here
nonetheless, the most important takeaway is this: the game ultimately achieves an “arcade” - or even vaguely “kart” at times - racing sensibility despite approaching things from a vastly more sim-centric perspective than nearly any contemporary (which itself is playing against type for a hot wheels licensed game) - interesting frictions and contradictions.
recommended if you care about drifting mechanics and can ignore demoralizing monetization
i am reticent to admit this (monkey’s paw, ready to curl) but me and my younger brother both picked up on just a fine zest of F-Zero X… the wide tracks, anti-gravity bits, high speeds, wildly big air, offensive side-boosts, and common no-guardrail areas…