Playing a lot of BeamNG. they snuck in some new car variants like a drift version of it’s crown victora, more tuner variants of it’s cars that are nice - and an old-timey car from like the 40’s. There’s even a variant of that which looks like the ZZ Top “Eliminator”. There’s also a rally mode that in early days which has pacenotes and better rally layouts.
3 Likes
Praise for Empire of the Ants. This ended up being one of my favourite things this year despite all its jank and flaws (random sfx dropping out, confusing mission classification, bad jump mechanics +precision platforming). It’s what the professionals would call a ‘seven’.
Cutscene direction often resembles nature documentary realism. In a few comical cases you have dramatic ‘conversations’ between two static ants complete with shot reverse shot dramatic closeup.
The plot is frequently stunted because of the lack of dramatic potential in characters. The whole thing is allegedly based on the Weber novel of the same name but I’m almost certain this was stated as a way of getting tax breaks for development. Also, the budget clearly took a massive hit since many key developments happen offscreen.
At one point it’s implied that your colony is infiltrated by either another species or possibly human-controlled ants (this goes nowhere). There’s an ant called ‘??? Ant’ that shows up out of nowhere and tells your queen to do the worst possible decisions. After the next load screen, it turns out your entire colony suffered a civil war masterminded by dwarf ants (who you never see ever), ousting of various ‘princes’ and ‘princesses’ your character personally developed close relationships with, and that you must now scour the known world for a base to rebuild a resistance and retaliate. You learn this through optional flashbacks as you platform your way through a drainage pipe.
I think the writer went overboard and the team had to humour them with low-effort implementation. The work clearly went into the visuals, systems, and sound. In the same drainage pipe mission, you see ‘the end of the world’ which is just a busy roadside but from the scale of an ant. The sound and scale of a car driving by is overwhelming in a really cool way as you peer up at them from a ditch.
I found out the Dor beetle thing, and it just turns out that you do get loads of different units later on that ants can’t domesticate, but Dor beetles happen to be the first and only egregious example for a long time. The designers just didn’t really signpost this very well. It’s very silly (but helps variety a lot) since you get access to things like snails, rose chafers, rhinoceros beetles, and Asian fucking hornets. One mission even gives you a Mantis(!!!) which is probably the highlight of the game. You can crawl up it and ride it around on it as it screams like Godzilla. It even does the Mantis dance when in combat.
I think the game is at its best when celebrating you being in the world of insects but not getting too bogged down in simulation or narrative. It looks great and I like being an ant. The strategy element of the game does get marginally better at providing some depth, but you can beat almost every mission with the same loadout, units, and expansion strategy. The trickiest thing is just enemy pathfinding is very good at avoiding units, so you have to manually scout a lot. Once you unlock a burrow ability that teleports you to any base then you can cover ground so effectively very little poses a real threat. The hardest mission is an attrition fight that requires you defending a circle of nests and demands you lose none of them but it’s not that demanding.
Ultimately it comes down to: I like how it looks and I get to watch bugs do bug stuff. My dream game would be this, but junk the RTS and let me play as more species instead. Tempted to do an achievement run in it given how few people have played it.
16 Likes
I just played the demo for Frogun Encore on my Playstation 5 because what else am I gonna use it for and…huh? A Super Mario 3D Land like. With a poor grappling hook as frog mechanic? I quit in the second level when me a girl with a frog side-kick, missed a jump into hip deep water and promptly died. There are also because this is a 3DLand like it is filled with platforms sitting in a bottomless void. I guess hip deep water and bottomless voids are the same thing especially when your best friend is a frog you use to lasso across long distances, you know over the voids and the deadly waters.
Yeah there was a double jump.
8 Likes
I’ve hit the point in AFK Journey where progress is slowing and the temptation to spend money is settling in. I probably will step away. I’m impressed that the game deigned to give me nearly the full roster of 30 characters for free, in only a day or so of playing. I could probably grind out getting the last few but I’m not sure if I care. Also it’s jarring when a character I’ve been using in combat for ages shows up in The Plot and is initially hostile counter to what’s been going on mechanically. Of course the initial source of friction gets hand-waved in like 6 lines of dialogue.
Anyway, I reiterate, an extremely lovely looking game. I would probably watch a lavishly animated Netflix series based on this. It engages the fanfiction portion of my brain
2 Likes
Is it Donkey Kong Jr.?
1 Like
I picked this up when it went cheap a few weeks ago and I’m looking forward to trying it. It sounds kind of like a modern SimAnt and I love SimAnt.
3 Likes
After Nine Sols I went back to Spelunker Party again, and this is just such a breezy experience. There’s no feedback loop pushing you to keep going. Finishing a level feels satisfying. It feels good to stop and know that you aren’t going to be lost when you come back later.
3 Likes
On one hand, I’m really enjoying Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 and its presentation. On the other, I’m not sure how Big Bang battles against the CPU using the same game are supposed to be winnable. If there’s only one correct and immediately obvious way to place the pieces–which feels like the case in Tetris–and the CPU can place them faster and more precisely, then what’s the point? And “just do it faster than the CPU” isn’t exactly a recipe for fun.
3 Likes
this is exactly what made me give up on it. as far as i can tell, all you can do is keep re-trying until you’re lucky enough to get enough consecutive working setups to win
2 Likes
100%'d River City Girls 2 with some friends. Very fun, very charming game, we had a great time!
The presentation, the look, the animations, and especially the music are all excellent and full of life. Having a lot of cartoony slapstick action flying across the screen at all times really is a step forward for the kunio-kuntype. I played a breakdancer named Provie that really encouraged not breaking the flow, something I love in an action game:
I think Kyoko overall has the best animations and moveset:
She has of course the dab strike, and another like that that is Kyoko cursing and a censor bleep forming an attack. Add to that her cartwheeling and her volleyball moveset, she is extremely girly and bubbly in a way that feels on-theme for the game.
I have a few gripes! I’m going to collect them here:
River City Girls 2 Gripes
There’s a few things about the kunio-kun engine that I’m sort of stunned they haven’t fixed yet. What plane you are on is still annoyingly difficult to determine, and they build entire rooms and boss battles around the idea that you’re going to be landing on platforms or areas that are like 5 pixels “tall”. Ugh.
I also really would have appreciated a better blocking/parrying/reversal system, so it wasn’t always either you beating on a helpless guy or you being helplessly beat on. They still have work to do in taking lessons from fighting games and applying them here.
Big fan of the revive mechanic just being your guys stomping their soul back into their body:
There’s a jillion cameos by youtubers and such, which I imagine may annoy many, but I found it nice seeing the Grumps getting to play the Double Dragon brothers, ProZD appear as a few shopkeepers, Jaiden from JaidenAnimations play a witch, and Mega Ran get a little area where he just does a show in the background as you fight. There’s a handful of times where someone like Ross appears and just isn’t particularly great as a VA, and you wish they hired an actual VA, but those bits aren’t common and this is really a nice platform for well-known animators to contribute to a series most of them love.
So yeah, simply being able to deploy ridiculous and flamboyant wrestling moves on a wide variety of themed thugs makes this a vibrant and breezy multiplayer game. Looking forward to the next one for sure.
13 Likes
Mouthwashing is pretty good but felt kinda shit after playing. It’s not very long so go play it and don’t read this if you wanna stay unspoiled. I got through it in two sessions, the latter being much longer. It cribs a lot from Thirty Flights but I think it could do with editing out a few more of the psychedelic sections. They’re uneven in quality and come so thick in the backhalf they make each other feel less special for their frequency imo.
I like:
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The emergency foam. Creepy visual and ties together technology of the world, character drama, and stakes.
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Cutting to black to let the SFX catalyse your imagination about what is happening
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As soon as they gave me the UV light I figured they’d use it for a horror reveal. The thing it ends up being used for was deeply unsettling in a way I didn’t predict and I liked it a lot.
- The mouthwash ad music. The music generally is very good - nice blend with the sound design baked into some tracks. I love a good warning siren in scifi.
The game drops the drama of the shipmates for the psychedelic stuff after the Jimmy reveal. Having played How fish is made, I thought there was still going to be a surreal or scifi aspect about what was going on given how much they focus on the mouthwash so it’s a nice swerve that the game is mostly metaphorical when things get surreal. I empathised with Curly since I’ve been in a similar position feeling responsible as a senior colleague and relatively powerless to do much about others’ bad situations, particularly sexual harassment. Having to address horrible issues in work environments while social pressures push back is the real horror. I think the story is told very well but was sick to my stomach of how much Jimmy fucked everything up. It’s too miserable for me.
Curly expressing my inner job anxiety
To quote the Steam discussions forum ‘Yo man Fk Jimmy’
9 Likes
also while I think it’s a little ridiculous that this game has a performance setting that’s effectively “4090+Gsync only” since it’s barely giving me a consistent 50 FPS with Full RT + 4K + DLSS Quality + Frame Generation but it does look fantastic in a totally novel way
1 Like
I love how Indiana Jones automatically changes out of his disguise clothes and into his adventuring outfit of jacket and fedora upon entering a hidden tomb or whatever. You can change clothes whenever you want but since I’m in an area that requires a disguise to move around freely I just leave the disguise on all the time.
It just looks so funny to enter a room and then see your arms flail around as he puts a hat and jacket on in two seconds.
11 Likes
!!! Let me know if you ever looking for people to play it again with! I haven’t tried multiplayer yet–the question of how the group decides which direction to go in intimidates me–but I’d like to!
2 Likes
Totally!
It is definitely chaotic with four players, so you have to have a bit of good humor about it + one person who is the dad/mom of the group to coordinate everyone for like conveyor belts and boss fights and map traversal.
It’s a biiiit of a pain in the butt but once you get the hang of it, people start getting into the motion of travel without much hassle.
3 Likes
I think the way the difficulty scaling works in this game is kind of whack, where the opponent AI gets more or less skilled depending on how well you do. So apparently if the game seems impossible, you can just lose a few matches as quickly as possible and it thinks you must be stupid and drops the enemy AI significantly.
I think this was how I ended up beating the last few matches because otherwise it seemed impossible.
2 Likes
I have a thousand horsepower Dodge Viper in Gran Turismo 3 now and it’s hilarious how many walls you can run into and still keep an 8 second lead.
8 Likes
I played My First Gran Turismo and was shocked how I was trying to be a good driver and the AI just ran me off the road so I was suddenly playing it like it was on the PS1 and frankly that made me sad.
8 Likes
atom rpg is like a pure distillation of the russian fallout 2 mod. that means its largely full of amazingly humorless cultural references, bizarre dialogue, and every man being a complete and horrible dog you can lead around by the penis while they say misogynist stuff to you. i walked up to a bartender and the two “rumors” he described to me were the plots of the movie Psy and Fallout New Vegas.
i feel like 
8 Likes