was gifted Lego City Undercover by my partner so I’ve been playing that. Better writing than every GTA, although that’s not a high bar to clear. Basically the Lego Star Wars games but with open world driving.
4 Likes
Playing the hell out of levels in Hitman again, still in the Hitman 2 set.
This…I wanna say third time, going through the game, I still kinda hate Santa Fortuna. The targets suck, the areas suck. I dunno. There are some funny kills, certainly, but if you’re being sneaky there’s just so much waiting and twiddling your thumbs for things to happen. For the level being a lush jungle it’s also surprisingly lifeless? Not to say there aren’t a ton of people around in the coca fields or in the village, it’s just…I dunno. Not really a fun level.
Mumbai, on the other hand, whips. Where Santa Fortuna’s three targets are boringly evil, the targets in Mumbai are rotten in a much more fun way, and the level feels more more alive with all the people milling about in the streets. I can’t for the life of me remember how to make the main, secretive target meet with the other two, so I’ll probably have to look it up.
Did the tailor bit for my second try at it and I forgot how good the bit is where 47 haggles with the fabric merchant he sells his fabric for a few coins, which are plentiful in the level, but if you just stand there and stare at him through the whole thing he continually lowers his price until he begs you to take one for free and leave him alone.
9 Likes
I streamed two games for a captive audience for my birthday and hoo boy they could not have been more different.
Funko Fusion: It was $10 but goddamnit that could have been, I don’t know. Gas in my car. A good burger. The movie Good Burger on Blu-ray. Anything but this.
This game…it’s some incredibly busted puzzle and level design with an All The Stars Are Here veneer stretched over its wretched corpse. Nothing about this game feels good to play in any way. They use the licenses available to them in an incredibly surface level way. I started on The Thing level and it’s just…getting attacked by the Norwegians from the beginning of the movie? As you round up huskies?
That took me like an hour and it’s just…the first of like ten levels in that world alone. The He-Man level was some sort of weird tower defense game. The Jurassic World one was trying to shoot dinosaurs before they escaped (I don’t think they actually do). The Scott Pilgrim level was an incredibly lifeless recreation of that first fight.
It’s bad. It’s not even funny ha ha bad or ironically good bad or anything. It’s bad bad.
It’s also somehow 50 GB? Terrible.
Balan Wonderworld: Okay now we’re talking.
I feel like the term “fever dream” gets bandied around a lot, maybe a little too freely, but this certainly fits the bill. What a weird, weird game.
I’m assuming I gotta circle back to earlier levels with different costumes to get all the stuff in there…I’m gonna be thinking about a lot of this stuff for a minute… the giant farmer, the corn, Pounding Pig…
15 Likes
Nothing else in Balan lives up to the Box Fox. But then I’m not sure anything in any video game lives up to the Box Fox.
10 Likes
Marvel Rivals seems to have gotten people to care about these characters by making them cunty and/or tom of finland. They were free to make choices the MCU never could.
10 Likes
High emphasis on free there
2 Likes
finally switched from Whisky to Crossover after the maintainer admitted he wasn’t maintaining it anymore
it is slightly better!
4 Likes
been playing the Arknights Endfield closed beta
(this is your only warning, this is a phone game post)
okay so it’s basically a Genshin, insomuch as Genshin is now a codified genre of (phone) game after making billions of dollars for 4 years. except because since Arknights prime is a tower defense game, Arknights Genshin has to have building
so they went overboard and put a whole ass factory game and now the things you would usually do in menus or short spurts of gameplay (crafting and organizing mats, making gear, gathering resources) is you fucking playing anime Satisfactory. it’s incredibly, wholly unnecessary and really hasn’t justified itself (especially the part where you run across the open world for 5-10 minutes while building power poles and running power lines) but I think I’m slowly getting factory-game pilled, if only because I’m forced to engage with it
however my opinion of the overall game is highly influenced by the fact that the Arknights devs actually make male and brown animes (I am starving in every other game for brown animes and there’s only so much fine ass I can look at before I need a change of pace)
8 Likes
Halls of Torment is pretty cool though like many of its ilk I’m not sure it outdoes Vampire Survivors
Points for requiring a little more dexterity though, like you actually have to dodge boss attack patterns and such, a little less mindless than games like these usually are
5 Likes
Played like 3 levels of Sky Odyssey, thanks for the rec @vodselbt . where has this game been all my life. I like the airplane designs. Levels are challenging thus far but mostly doable, im undone by my own recklessness.
9 Likes
Think I lost my patience in Hifi-Rush with the level that isn’t even a metaphor but literally about a big-headed creative (who just does literal JoJo poses and quotes What Is A Man?) drains the budget of his project while everyone under him suffers.
You also go to virtual reality rooms that…look exactly like the area you are in.
It’s just about as indulgent as anything I’ve ever seen but I guess the message is making video games is hard and I’ve seen that exact message made by one person.
Also got to the Number Girl song so you know.
Anyways what an incredible fumble from my very positive first impression. Also I noticed my power brick was under the comforter as I was playing so here’s hoping it didn’t fry itself. And I didn’t set the house on fire so that’s good too.
Oh my favorite themes Corporate Sabotage and Game Dev Is Hard. You licensed Number Girl and Nine Inch Nails for this? The whole time I am trying to trick the creative into blowing his budget I have to think is that what this whole game was? Is this just a giant thumbed nose at Mikami or that one lady? It’s certainly not for me.
Still the best animation I’ve ever seen.
11 Likes
the game’s pacing takes a nosedive around then but picks back up after that, though it’s still much worse than it feels like it should be. something about the visuals and the traversal make it drag really really badly
4 Likes
Finally got round to reading (and enjoying!). RE: Endless Ocean Luminous, Was gonna say that you might have more joy with Beyond Blue as I found it nice and compact and you don’t have to rely on luck. Generally pretty chill and felt like it had a clearer direction than what I saw of Luminous (I didn’t end up playing it).
3 Likes
also for anyone else thinking of doing this: Crossover runs an annual sale on Cyber Monday when you can get it for like $20 a year which seems fair to me considering they still employ most of the mainline wine devs (though I’m pretty sure Proton still rebases onto Wine regularly and the Steam Deck market is big enough these days that Valve are probably keeping them in business too), but if you like me did not know this and you don’t feel like paying an annual sub cost until it gets marked down again, the Crossover cracks are actually open source(! it’s just a bash script and a Python library that you drop into the .app bundle to override some behavior before re-signing the binary locally), which – sorry, I’ll pay for it next year, but that rules, been a while since I appreciated the Mac platform that much these days.
anyway Metaphor and Animal Well work on my laptop now so maybe I’ll actually finish them
4 Likes
update: entered my Captain Planet villain arc
this is one (1) of three production lines to make one item to craft gear that will probably be thrown out sooner than later
combat’s fun though, so it’s just barely worth it
I still have not been given a reason as to why this isn’t RPG menuing other than “we need a hook!”
6 Likes
currently replaying Yakuza 0, although its on PC instead of PS4 where I played it last time so I have to do a new save and I cant play on Legend mode. Anyway, this time Im completely leveling up my character, and fighting Amon which means doing all the substories and the business minigames for both characters. I also want to complete the arena. I do not plan on upgrading the Legend style skill trees as I think it makes the characters too powerful.
the first time I played this game I blasted thru it , more or less and I came away like it was “just ok”. I thought it was charming but I didnt get how it kinda served as where the series found its place in the west? and I felt annoyed about how it recontextualized my precious ps2 originals. anyway I got over everything and, by playing more thoroughly, I have really come to appreciate the game.
I am only on the 7th chapter, of 16, and a long way from completing my goals for the chapter… its a long way to the top in Cabaret Club Czar. But if I can complete it I should be able to bankroll Majima’s skills and unlock the rest of the skill trees. I’ve only completed two of five Rival Battles with the The Five Stars of the Cabaret Club scene in Sotenbori.
5 Likes
Below is so boring!
1 Like
I was doing all this stuff and just kinda stopped halfway through. Somehow the melodrama stopped powering it all for me.
2 Likes
Spent some time yesterday trying to get back into Phantasy Star. Having your restorative items be Burgers and Cola is bizarre enough, but I came across the town and prison where a bunch of shabby dudes are like “Hey man can you spare a cup of Cola? No? Fuck off then!!”…it’s just such a weird vibe.
Anyway the dungeon music is driving me crazy. I’m trying to find a robot now, I guess.
13 Likes
Chibi-Robo!: Clean Sweep
A sequel that didn’t need to exist. Too similar to the original to stand on its own while failing to capture what made that first game so interesting. The cleaning has been promoted from what was a more ambient element to now being the mechanical focus that drives all other progression in the game. You don’t stumble on family happenings as much anymore while exploring the house, you mostly have to instead do a bunch of cleaning first (which involves a really tedious touchscreen minigame where you sift through dust for precious minerals to sell by shaking the stylus back and forth violently for far too long at a time) which then nets you money to put into a piggy bank that THEN eventually triggers the next plot point.
The plot itself tries for something tonally similar to the original but doesn’t quite have the same light touch to pull it off. It bites off a lot, tries to tackle poverty in a way that feels kinda insulting and grief in a way that could of have worked better if the main female character wasn’t such a blank slate. Even worse is she’s meant to be a grown-up version of the daughter from the original, but I guess aging has also wiped her of all personality as she now plays the generic role of “WOMAN”. This is all made worse by the inclusion of at least one uncomfortably lecherous scene involving her as well (there may have been more that I’ve since erased from memory…). It’s clear it was written by someone else. Most remarkable thing about it I guess is how much of the original’s scale they were able to squeeze onto a ds cartridge but… outside of that this whole thing felt mostly like a waste of time, you’re better off with the original.
BONUS SIN: Inclusion of a pig cop that at first seems like a bit of a loser and the game makes fun of but then later gets valorized. They also make you dress up as a cop yourself and drive a cop car around… horrible stuff.
13 Likes