Yeah, my first playthrough of MGS3, I got the shotgun and immediately took my shirt off (in game or IRL? i mean, probably both) and painted my face with a skull (in game only) and became death, the destroyer of ruskies. Game ruled for just rolling with this, and only scolding me about it once, in a totally deserved way.
8 Likes
Used some Christmas gift money to pick up Ys X Nordics.
So far, I liked the theming and feel of IX more, but I am still early for a modern Ys game, so I gotta let it settle in. The combat is pretty good in this one though, with a duo being a little easier to handle than a trio. Itās still good, but I would say right now, of the modern 3, the ranking is:
- IX Monstrum Nox
- X Nordics
- VIII Lacrimosa of Dana
I never finished VIII though.
Itās also hilarious that after what a big deal the Nord gods were in the plot of IX, the Nordics in X are Normans, not Nords, so they have a different god. Maybe this gets addressed in the plot, but who knows. Also, given his record with boats, handing the wheel to Adol is a bold ass move. This game takes place between Oath in Felghana and Celcetta though, so maybe he hasnāt trashed too many boats yet. Just likeā¦more than 0.
EDIT: Wait, I got the order messed up and X actually takes place right after 2, thanks helpful Ys fans chart:
Love that it leaves 5 off because 5 officially doesnāt exist in English. Though there is a fanslation of it, so I will probably mess with that soon. It looks like a really odd game for the series.
13 Likes
That chronology makes Star Wars and Zelda look pretty straightforward
2 Likes
thereās an amulet that makes you immune to lightning, making galamoth a trivial encounter
i canāt remember where you get it though
4 Likes
Victory Heat Rally is a great little package. Itās mostly what youād expect from an arcade rally racer with drifting. Races mix circuit and rally racing and other minigames. I think a lot of what I enjoy about it comes down to aesthetics but the progression is worth highlighting.
I really miss games that ask you to do singleplayer events to unlock the full rosters and its something Iāve been hoping to see a resurgence of in the indie space. I LOVE character unlocks as a progression reward. I think itās a reward system that got pulverised by the anxiety that local multiplayer friend groups just torpedo anything that doesnāt have the full roster unlocked from the start. Yes, itās annoying but I think itās also what helped give singleplayer legs to the same kinds of games. I miss this mostly in fighting games but racing games have a great structure for new unlocks as well. You fight characters in bossfights to unlock them. First two guys on the roster are almost exactly the same design though just one of them has a hat and shades. Everyone in this universe is a cool dude or a curvy babe and the babes are the stars.
Drifting mechanics have some good layers to keep them tough to master even though itās straightforward. The rules are:
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Drifting has 3 levels of boost dependent on the duration of the drift
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If you get through a drift without touching anything (curb or car) then you get a sustained boost, equivalent to the level of drift
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If you touch anything while drifting you lose the sustained boost and only get a sort of ākick-boostā, so youāre still rewarded for the drift but punished for collision
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After charging a drift, the boost activates about Ā¾ of a second after the drift button is released. This means you can hold drift again to continue the drift in another direction making S-bends possible to maintain a maximum boost once you get through. As long as you can control your car and keep momentum, you can drift indefinitely.
Early on you can succeed without making that much use of drift but the second championship requires developing mastery. The game doesnāt fully explain these rules but gives you the pieces to figure them out. Thereās a series of tutorials masked as minigame events (slaloms, avoiding traffic, maintaining boost through a checkpoint etc.) to get you to think more deliberately about these concepts which works nicely as both a break from races and an engaging explainer. The only thing is they play you quite long unskippable videos to introduce a lot of it. You will learn to drift properly.
The boost-loss rules are good but shouldnāt result from collision with other cars as well since the AI doesnāt do a lot to drive evasively. They basically arenāt aware of you and youāre punished for having a brain when locked on a drift course
The music is excellent. Spunky Dreamcast beats everywhere, liberal Amen break drizzle with lots of shouty samples. Same kinda deal as Bombrush Cyberfunk leaning towards early 90s dance. The high saturation palette is another thing I crave from more games. It works so well for low-poly styles which need flat stripes of colour everywhere. Itās good, I think it would be a good local multiplayer evening if I ever did such things.
14 Likes
How do the twin 4s fit in?
1 Like
They donāt, actually. Both were replaced by Celceta when that was released.
3 Likes
i got myself a 1TB microSD card for xmas and have been using it to install all the homebrew ports on my vita, with the idea of figuring out which ones are actually worth installing and which are neat but perhaps not advisable for an actual playthrough. others, i just couldnāt tell what they even were - āMario Kart Vitaā sounds interesting but whatā¦ is it?
so, iāve installed a bunch of them and am slowly going through them to see whatās what. i will be reporting back on these.
speaking of the above, āMario Kart Vitaā turned out to be a fan homebrew. not bad! as far as those go, but lacks power-sliding and the collision is a bit off (so i didnāt spend too long with it)
some of the things iām trying out:
- The Simpsons: Hit and Run (Android wrapper)
- Crazy Taxi Classic (Android wrapper)
- RVGL (Re-Volt rewrite / port)
- The Conduit HD (Android wrapper, originally a Wii game)
- Galaxy on Fire 2 (Android wrapper)
- WipEout Rewrite (source port)
- Tomb Raider 1 & 2 Classic Collection (Android wrapper)
- REDRIVER 2 (Driver 2 source port)
- Super Mario World (source port)
- The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (source port)
- Super Mario 64 (source port)
- Cave Story (CSE2 source port)
- Kero Blaster (Android wrapper)
- Spelunky Classic (port of the Game Maker: Studio port of the original freeware)
- Hydra Castle Labyrinth
- AM2R (Another Metroid 2 Remake) (native, but I think this version is considered deprecated in favor of using YoYoLoader to run the latest GM:S version)
- SDLPoP-Vta (Prince of Persia source port)
- Cannonball (OutRun re-write)
- devilutionX (Diablo source port)
ā¦and a bunch of others. GTA, Sonic, Quake, Doom, old Mac stuff (Pangea Software), Final Fantasy, Falloutā¦
for now, i can at least report about a few:
- Crazy Taxi Classic is trash because, like the PC port of the original, it entirely lacks analog control
- The Conduit HD is pretty terrible, canāt recommend. it was slightly more charming on the wii.
- Cannonball has some audio crackles when a race starts in 60 FPS mode but actually works seemingly fine afterward
- Spelunky Classic has a strange default button mapping and no option in-game to re-map
- Super Mario World plays flawlessly but has ugly scaling artifacts - thereās an .ini option to use ālinear filteringā, so hereās hoping that isnāt horribleā¦ or maybe i should be re-sizing the whole thing to the vitaās native resolution? not sure yet
- Link to the Past has widescreen and it works surprisingly well
- Tomb Raider 1+2 runs at 60 FPS in widescreen, same with Super Mario 64
- Galaxy on Fire 2ās ship handling feels bad here for some reason
10 Likes
we do live in the future sometimes
5 Likes
Thank you @Tulpa.
17 Likes
i tried out that atlyss game because it sold itself on being a pso-like. have not found anyone online that hasnāt immediately run up to my character and typed out ā/nuzzles your balls āuwuāā so this probably isnāt the game for me.
15 Likes
oh right i also ran into a bug in soul reaver 2 on my way to janos audronās hideout where raziel vanished into thin air, a loud droning noise began going off, and the camera sank lower and lower into this purple void.
15 Likes
This seemed to fix the steering for me in Crazy Taxi Steam version:
6 Likes
silentās patches for various games are universally great, essential, etc
7 Likes
Ok, bringing my āfinally finishing some games this weekā streak to a close with God of War Ragnarok.
I adore this game. Both it and its predecessor are, imo, both the best non-Japanese brawlers and the best non-Japanese JRPGs (in story and systems structure) ever made. they use their ensemble really, really well despite the fact that you spend 90% of them controlling one guy ā this is like the main design triumph here imo even as the combat and story are very very good ā and this sequel technically has way more interludes with guest party members and narrative reasons to separate you all before bringing you back together. big Final Fantasy 9 vibes if thereās anyone for whom that is a draw.
they have a few flaws ā fundamentally uninteresting Sony puzzles (a la Horizon or TLOU), a very badly balanced Hard difficulty (it has never in my life taken me longer to decide to just play a game on normal difficulty because the way it changes your hitstun in unforgiving ways that kinda lack visceral feedback is reminiscent of Witcher 2, even if Normal is a little too easy), and enough padding that I put this one down for most of 2 years before finally being in the mood to finish it (the main story is close to 20 hours as is, which is the one way they struggled to reconcile JRPG vs brawler, and they dump some fairly meaty side quests on you every few hours every time you get to an open area).
that said, I think they are a huge achievement, I really love the cast and the storytelling and all of it, and I feel like they are kind of slept on because God of War used to be so tacky and because these new ones intentionally give off the same āohhhh ohhhh all the misery and violence is so terribly importantā vibes as TLOU2. but honestly they are really really good and like, more attentive to their inspiration than I think they can get credit for. they are both (very, very explicitly; no subtext) much better dad games than all the other dad games out there rn and a much better evolution of what bioware was reaching toward with ME3 at the end of their heyday than anyone else has managed before or since.
10 Likes
also as someone who did not play RDR2 or TLOU2 and was also conscious of them being under discussed here because I was kind of losing interest in what HBO-adjacent games were trying to achieve by the end of the PS4 generation, I think this is a much easier recommendation on a few levels that is at least as conversant with current AAA storytelling
1 Like
Is that saying Origins happens after 1&2? That doesnāt make sense does it?
2 Likes
Thereās a note on the original page that talks about it. Basically Origins takes place 700 years before 1 and 2, but the plot of Origins is a lot more interesting if you play through 1 and 2 first, so that is why it is there.
3 Likes
They really go places!
1 Like
Finished Resident Evil: Revelations. It was ok. Probably better than 6.
5 Likes