Throwing the very idea of series chronologies into chaos
6 Likes
I need to finish the first game but every little square inch of game surface being a tidy little loop around on itself thing with every single corner having one of 8 different collectible things in it was driving me insane. also the mist maze and hell trials were hard
3 Likes
I ended up just buying this to satisfy my curiosity and turns out that weird Japanese arcade game I saw at the bowling alley back when I was a kid is indeed this game. I distinctly remember the attract mode alternating between cutscenes of pilot dudes giving a thumbs up and jetting off into space, and a some shots of a blue haired anime popstar, both while some very chirpy energetic music plays. I think they must have had the Japanese cabinet because I sort of remember not being able to read the title.
The game itself seems like a pretty decent shmup, if not particularly remarkable. It mostly feels like an Aleste game. Pretty disappointed that the movieâs titular song doesnât play during the final stage. It does play during the end credits (if you finish the game twice in a row) but it feels like a big wasted opportunity. Besides some other chiptune Minmei songs that play during the high score entry screens and other places, the only Macross music is a few quick soundbites here and there (another big missed opportunity is no voice sample going âProtoculture!!â when you kill the final boss). The actual in-level music is basically 90s Shmup music, but itâs pretty good on itâs own merits.
Over the years I have accumulated a bunch of Coles Myer gift cards from my mother that I had no idea what to use for, and also my dad gave me some money for Xmas so I decided to use it all up and finally get a PS5. Iâm pretty sure I ordered the Slim, but unless they gave me the wrong version itâs the bulkiest looking slim console I have ever seen.
The first thing I decided to do so I could experience the power of the PlayStation 5 was⌠to pop in Sword and Fairy 6, AKA the most poorly optimised PS4 game ever made. Good news is, it now has a buttery smooth framerate which is a major improvement over the single digit FPS it had previously. Not so sure about the draw distance and other weird graphical glitches as I assume those are baked in, although the draw distance didnât seem as bad as I remember.
I seem to get a lot of weird purple colours showing up when I try to use HDR. It tends to go away if I switch the setting off and then on again, but it happens fairly frequently. Iâve seen it happen on the PS4 as well, but only maybe a couple of times. Not sure if itâs related to the console or the TV, but I figure I might leave it off since apparently my TV only supports 1080p HDR anyway.
8 Likes
took a break from playing Every Sonic Game to play⌠Freedom Planet the Sonic fangame turned original IP
Beat Lilac the dragon-who-in-no-way-resembles-a-dragonâs story and enjoyed it enough that i immediately started a playthrough as Carol the wildcat, who has to engage with the (very good) level design a bit more cuz she doesnât have Lilacâs Sparksteresque recharging speedboost (she does have a motorcycle that can climb walls though!) I will most certainly also play through Milla the basset houndâs story as well, she has more of a weird action-puzzle moveset with a main attack inspired by Lyle in Cube Sector of all things. plus shes adorable
Actually i was only aware of the Sonic connection, and vaguely that there was some Mega Man X/Zero influence there too; its actually got much more diffuse inspiration than that, the action & enemy design are extremely Treasure, the A/V style is on some rad MegaCD/PCE/2D Saturn import shit, and the story and voice acting are uhhh someoneâs mildly edgy My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fan project (tone: affectionate, i really liked it but itâs not gonna be everyoneâs flavor of cheese)
Also, to my surprise it has a medieval Chinese aesthetic thatâs actually pretty tasteful and cool and consistent?? i mean, someone like u_u whoâs more knowledgeable on the subject could speak to this better im sure
I think it speaks pretty highly of this 2014 indie gameâs polish & quality of spectacle that i played it back to back with Sonic Mania and absolutely found it comparable
also the bosses, while cool got way too fucking hard for me by the end BUT you can freely change your difficulty on the select file screen, i had to dial it down to Easy (your health regenerates) for the final stages and Casual (health regenerates even faster + lowered enemy damage) for the last boss. i was invested enough in the story that i really wanted to kick that guys ass
13 Likes
yeah, in addition to the hard mode being bad, the amount of distracting optional stuff they give you is also kind of bad (theyâre much better as 20 hour games but if you go off the main quest at all they easily tick up over 30 and youâre like this is kind of too much, but then half of the sidequest writing and rigging is also really really good so it makes you want to see it anyway).
I also like how the subtext of these games is âif you unleash a sultry hulking Mediterranean on Norse Gods he will accidentally keep endearing himself to and destroying the entire pantheon.â itâs true to my life as well!
3 Likes
So part of the reason I modded my PSP is there are a lot of Falcom games on that thing, and those can be comfort food to me. So today I finished the confusingly named Legend of Heroes II: Prophecy of the Moonlight Witch.
Why is that name confusing? Well Legend of Heroes I is actually Dragon Slayer part VI, and is normally just called Dragon Slayer: Legend of Heroes. Also there is another game that is LoH II, that is just called that. Both of those were on the PC-88 and other stuff, and you can get them on EggConsole if you want to deal with all that language I canât read. Or you can play the first one, localized, for the TG16CD, but not the second. Prophecy of the Moonlight Witch is technically LoH III, and part of its own trilogy of games with LoH IV and V. But for some unknown dumb reason, Bandai published LoH IV as Legend of Heroes A Tear of Vermilion over here, and made LoH III become LoH II. Luckily, though the two are connected, you can play them in either order, as long as you play LoH V/III last.
So Iâm going in the order of their original release. And man, this game was weird. Itâs pretty slow, but that just meant it was nice bedtime fodder. The story is really surprisingly intimate, focusing on two friends from a small town on a religious pilgrimage that gets JRPG-y in scale, but focuses still on the two of them and some people they meet on the way. There is no âoverworldâ to speak of, and you just walk everywhere between towns. Itâs all really cute and low stakes, and though you end up with a bunch of spells, you only need like five of them. Some characters never get spells, but still have MP with nothing to use them on. I giggled a little.
Nothing in it was very challenging, until the last dungeon which is just a giant fucking maze. I FAQed the hell out of that. There is a cool feature where the game keeps track of both your partyâs history, but then also the history of the Moonlight Witch, who you learn about in your travels. Itâs cute.
Graphically, itâs the sharp 2d sprite on 3d backgrounds that Falcom was doing a lot in the 00s. The localization is hot fucking garbage though, which actually was kinda charming in the end.
If Iâm making this sound good, you probably should lower your expectations. Itâs still kinda sicko land in terms of any modern shit, but that is OK. Comfort food.
12 Likes
Stealth is no longer nice and friendly in Indiana Jones, now that Iâm in whatâs gotta be the last area.
This Nazi camp has like a dozen different openings and every single one that Iâve tried has got me shot into Swiss cheese.
4 Likes
so even though i thought the demo was terrible, i decided to give Contra: Rogue Corps another shot because itâs free on PS+ and they finally made it compatible with the PS5 lol
i started to reconsider the game when i heard that the director of Neo Contra and Shattered Soldier oversaw its production, and it was designed by the team who did DQXI, among other pretty good games.
initial first impressions were, âhey, this is actually pretty fun,â but after about an hour or so of going through missions, it became clear that the game is pretty repetitive and mostly kind of boring if youâre playing it by yourself. they talked about wanting to modernize Contra with this game, and i guess what they meant by that was to turn it into a multiplayer shooter with cooldown abilities.
it kind of feels like a mobile game without the gacha aspects - you seemingly have infinite lives and i canât determine what death actually means other than lost time. the game is not particularly challenging and the level design is essentially non-existant, but it allows 4-player local multiplayer, so i bet itâs probably fine in a context where folks are hanging out and maybe paying half attention to what theyâre doing.
i tried to host a multiplayer room and had no one join. then i looked for multiplayer rooms and there were zero.
lol, if anyone wants to try playing this with me so we can have the intended Rogue Corps experience, lmk
there are some sublime moments - i like shooting through the doors into the next part of the stage. some of the bosses retain the dumb, over-the-top energy from previous Contra games. the dialogue is so, so stupid and they say fuck a lot, so someoneâs heart was clearly in the right place.
7 Likes
they make it a little too nonobvious where to get the disguise in thailand (I felt like their organization of the side content in that area was a little haphazard too, like they were getting tired of curating the game world), I would look it up just so youâre not struggling, itâs not a fun game to struggle at
1 Like
ended up finishing soul reaver 2, and spent an inordinate amount of time tracking down a ps2 rom of defiance, since the pc version donât work so good these days.
man, the developers of the soul reaver 2 remaster were seemingly hell-bent on making janos audron look real sexual. thank you.
8 Likes
speaking as someone who sat down and beat the game by themselves, I realized years later while thinking idly about nothing remotely related to the game that the reason large chunks of the game are filled with awful, spongy enemies and bosses is they tuned the game for 4 players and didnât scale health down
7 Likes
I spent about two hours doing this the first time the game went on sale for 10 bucks.
Probably impossible to schedule but Iâd reinstall and try it again between Jan 3-5 (free Playstation multiplayer days)
2 Likes
I finished Indiana Jones. I even got all the achievements. Good story. I could actually see this as a real Indiana Jones story in between Raiders of the Lost Ark and Temple of Doom, which is how they positioned it. It works.
Itâs a little janky as far as the gameplay but feels like 95% of the rough edges have been smoothed over. The combat and platforming are a lot smoother than they look from trailers and quite fun once youâve got the hang of things. By the end of it I was looking forward to going back to previous levels and getting and doing all the stuff I missed just to have an excuse to go through some of those places again.
Combat is really fun after you get all the skill books and taking on a dozen opponents becomes not only viable but often preferable to spending a lot of time sneaking. I would just blast through a zone and clear it out then go back and pick through it for all the stuff.
I talked crap on Troy Baker in the beginning but after spending 50-60 hours with his version of Indiana Jones Iâm going to say he really does do a pretty job playing the character. I wasnât always thinking it was Harrison Ford but I was never taken out of it thinking oh thatâs Troy Baker.
Game runs pretty smooth for the most part on Series X but that LOD system struggled in Sukhothai lol trying to draw all that foliage and those shadows are pretty low resolution in general. Despite that the game still looks really good, especially up close. Really great textures and materials.
As a whole, considering all the gameplay systems of combat/exploration/narrative, it feels like a bunch of constituent parts that on their own would be a 6 or a 7 each but together they add up to an experience thatâs easily an 8 or a 9.
Looking forward to the DLC now. Maybe weâll get a sequel.
4 Likes
I spotted it, but, well.
I snuck in the facility from the back, saw it, but grabbed it in the most pratfall-ass way - accidentally leapt off the high spot I was going to slink off of, landed right next to the guard I was trying to avoid, cracked him across the head with a bottle and alerted the nearby general, grabbed the uniform and hid in a bush for a while til I was in the clear.
It worked out, but itâs funny that the general kept making his little loop and flipping the fuck out at the naked passed out guard.
1 Like
giving up on MGS3 for the time being
OCD and open-ended game design donât go together
edit: also started and subsequently gave up on a new game in Dark Souls
6 Likes
If your tv only has a HDMI 2.0 connection HDR doesnât work right on the PS5, most obviously the reds look pink but there can be some other oddities.
2 Likes
Open ended? most sections are really narrow and almost claustrophobic. Not everything is for everyone, so you do you but that makes no sense in my head.
Yeah most of the issues seem to happen if the TVâs HDR setting is on âdynamicâ, which is the only one where the colours otherwise look correct. Otherwise everything either looks washed out or has a piss filter over everything
1 Like
I played Shadow Generations. Iâm not very far into it but it already is without a doubt the best gameplay of any 3D sonic game and the only playable one since Sonic Adventure 2. Theyâve added legible discreteness to what was otherwise an excessively and problematically fluid gameplay and control loop, and while it breaks up the signature sonic speed, itâs not a big deal; it doesnât detract from the -idea- of speed, it can be rationalized as bullet time, and the positive impacts on playability are total. Iâve never seen a game repair itself to this degree before. The most annoying aspects of Sonic: Generations are also gone. Overall 11/10 improvement.
6 Likes
Itâs a good likeness for sure but one funny comment I canât get out of my head is some of the effort grunts when vaulting ledges and such he also tries to maintain the Harrison Ford sound and it almost sounds like Garfield.
7 Likes