Stuck in several Sky Odyssey missions - the branching levels mean you can try different ones if you get stuck in one, except I am stuck in most of them. Starting levels over when you can insta fail them is also brutal.
6 Likes
Upān Down, trying to break through Level-2. This game is addictive and fortunately thereās an emulator. Otherwise I would have to contribute 2000 Yen to it every day, at least.
4 Likes
i think this game is like exactly the size it should be but i do wish there were like a hundred more mazes i wish it was like basically the size of proverbs
i also played this itās pretty great and also like perfect in size and scope i wish it were a real lcd gameā¦
10 Likes
We watched the ending in which the player character looks at goatse and this ends the world somehow.
So nothing happens in the whole game. There wasnāt even a final boss! Just uhā¦they looked at constellations and the ending triggered, I guess.
6 Likes
20 Small Mazes was a cute little thing. I remember playing an itch game that did something similar with like 20 or so Wario Ware sized minigames, itās a fun formula.
I had the Atari 2600 adapter for the Colecovision when I was a small child and Upān Down is one of the games I most fondly(?) remember for it. Looking back it was a fairly brutal port but there was still something charming about trying to collect flags while jumping around (and frequently off) those almost isometric roads.
3 Likes
So I switched to Grip in R4 and had a lot less trouble with basic mechanics. The PAC toggle for accelerate worked like a dream, but coupled with the grip I didnāt really have to do much but steer and break occasionally. It simplified things so much that drifting becomes less of a concern and just getting through a race without touching anything replaces it as the goal. I guess Iām realising that singleplayer racing is often just a case of threading a needle at max speed long enough that you just pass the test. The other racers are essentially moving checkpoints with collision detection. They donāt really interact in any dynamic way and mostly complicate certain turns when youāre trying to overtake at the same time. You soon learn to hate the little wiggle animation your car does when it hits something. Wiggle = slow = D:< . I think drift would be more fun even if I lose all the time. I need something to get better at in a racing game.
Every track must have an aircraft do a flyby, takeoff, or land Āā it is the law. The easy mode has you under the wing of an encouraging young heiress vs medium which has some moody mechanic constantly talk shit about you. I wonder if the grand prix is structured the way it is to alleviate the writing burden of each teamās dialogue. They have unique dialogue for placements in each race but most races later on only let you progress if you get first, so the writers only have to write a win or lose response rather than 1st, 2nd, 3rd, loss for all 4 teams. Itās weird thereās writing at all but I appreciate the effort to give it a bit more of a vibe.
The final race was a nice surprise when I saw my car get upgraded (+45mph max speed whaaaaat) and the final track is just a curvy, no-frills circuit where they just let you loose with power. Love when a game celebrates its simple pleasures.
I also played My First Gran Turismo. Not technically my first (I played a bit of a PS2 one at a friendās once) but I appreciate the gesture as a free demo/miniature game that openly invites you into the baby highchair version of a highly intimidating sim. I feel like MS Flight Sim or Eve Online could stand to benefit from similar. That said, I also canāt shake the dread that MFGT is a sign of a franchise struggling for numbers in a sea of megatreadmills, like tapping from a deathwatch beetle.
Anyway, a woman called Sarah explains to me how to turn corners and analyses the finer points of being in motion and then slowing or stopping. I really appreciate it as a gesture that works to make you feel like you are progressing through a very small version of Gran Turismo. I donāt think Iām a convert though. It takes about 2 hours to do almost everything, and you can easily 100% it and unlock all cars giving you a taste of the completionist aspect of it but without the vastness.
āI need something to get better at in a racing game.ā He says! The thing you get better at in GT seems to mostly consist of slowing down the right amount to take corners such that you no longer move at a thrilling speed. GT has always seemed like a sicko series but with a classy allure. Itās all very pretty but the style doesnāt feel right for me. Itās like going past those central high streets that are only for rich people. It feels very clean and safe, but you donāt really feel like you belong and it makes you want to start subverting it or just go hang out somewhere less affected.
This is the second racing game this week where a friendly woman in an easy/beginner-friendly variant of said racing game has gently encouraged me to get better at turning corners in my high-powered car. Iām wondering if race car game developers think the best way to improve a playerās skills is to appeal to their enjoyment of flirty flattery.
10 Likes
Sarah gets a little passive-aggressive if youāre terrible and want to practice to get the gold. āHave you considered watching the demo run for guidance, it might really helpā yes thank you Sarah, now get out of the way, I need to find the sweet spot for feathering the throttle of this BMW that loves to slide the back end out
6 Likes
finished control. other than from software games and like, free-to-play FPS, this might be the first recent-ish AAA game i play in many years. single-player, story focused āprestigeā experience, all that.
i liked it overall! itās cool thatās its obssessed with multimedia as a concept, like its freaking 1998 or something. i respect it. by the latter half the game starts feeling really bloated, though. maybe thatās just what these types of AAA games are like now, but i was really overwhelmed by the sheer amounts of Stuff in there (thereās even a āquick missionā feature that pops up on screen that just feels spiritually close to those gacha daily challenges or whatever).
this does make me excited to play alan wake 2 in the future
9 Likes
I played with the ui off and that made me miss out entirely on that extra mission stuff, cause I never got a popup for it, I just kept wondering what that alarm sound going off in the building was every so often, and it sounds like the game was better for it. even missing out on that though the game is atypically long for a remedy game
8 Likes
blessedly, alan wake 2 dropped all the destiny-lite looter shooter elements remedy flirted with
5 Likes
nu pokemon snap is pretty fun, i like taking photos of the cute animals
5 Likes
I liked Controlās random events and want to defend them a bit. The combat was more interesting given their time limit: in the rest of the game itās too easy to constantly take cover and wait for attacks to recharge. And the way these popped up unexpectedly in previously visited locations made the complex and its infestation feel more dynamic.
We take it for granted at this point, but isnāt it really unnatural with traditional single-player games how you can take on everything at your own preferred time, and cleared areas permanently remain cleared? The playerās the only one with any agency and everybody else is just sitting passively in their rooms waiting for them to arrive, which usually flies in the face of the storyline. I took Controlās events to be a way to tackle that longstanding problem.
12 Likes
I played this new Nifflas game today, Xenosphere. Itās free and short, and a little annoying in places but maybe not in the way youād expect.
Edit: Oh, I guess itās not so new after all. Dracko mentioned it months ago.
9 Likes
I want a shooter where I have to retreat from enemies and a jrpg where losing battles is as acceptable as failing dialogue checks in disco elysium
12 Likes
Stalker 2, especially after the 1.1 patch, is all about running away from fights
8 Likes
Yeah, but making every game a timed challenge is a pain in the fuckin ass. Itās part of the suspension of disbelief. I mean, you can (and I did) ignore Controlās timed sidequests completely if you wish, itās not like they actually represent a creeping threat constantly pushing against your safety zone. They are very clearly just More Content that give you a mechanism to grind for another +1% reload speed dingus if you want, and I think they and the dinguses they exist to purvey are Controlās biggest flaw.
Thereās an entirely different game to be made with Controlās premise that is kind of like the strategic layer of XCom or something, where youāre managing area defenses against incursion and assigning your personnel to tasks and stuff, and that would rock pretty hard I think. But Control is not that game.
9 Likes
So I took a chance on a cheap beat to shit SNES from Facebook, and now I have 1CCed Super Aleste. Game rules.
16 Likes
Iāve gotten far enough in Cielās route today that Iāve unlocked 4 curry artworks in the gallery
10 Likes
Continuing to plug away at Star Wars Jedi Survivor and continuing to like it. I finally met the incredibly tiny alien Scottish fisherman who rustles up fish and then talks about his sordid past. Heāsā¦heās so smallā¦but I like the detail of the little starfish perpetually stuck to his little diving helmet.
Still continually running up on stuff I canāt pass, making me wonder if Iām doing something wrong. Lotta laser shields, lotta heavy items marked red that I gotta assume I get some sort of force boost for later on. Not really annoying as much as I worry Iāll forget where theyāre at for coming back later. What was annoying was a little floor hatch I could open, but the game was incredibly finicky about where exactly I needed to stand to rip it off. Button prompt visible and everything and nada. Took about a dozen tries.
Game still likes to up and crash on me occasionally. Probably pushing my PC too hard as the processor goes. Still! Rad game that I paid all of $15 or something for, Iām not gonna complainā¦too much.
4 Likes
i donāt think we have a thread for Fantasian: Neo Dimension, but i also donāt know if iāll have enough in me to sustain making one
so
i know this has been out for a little while, but my copy of the game arrived last week and i fired it up for the first time this past week. about 6ish hours into the game, what i find most remarkable is that we have a brand new Playstation One RPG on our hands, here. truly, it feels like a step in the direction that FF7 and 8 (and i suppose 9) were all going. i donāt recall feeling this way about Lost Odyssey or Blue Dragon (i havenāt played either since release, so maybe my memory is fuzzy on the similarities, now), but i am immediately struck by the Playstation-ness of this game.
those prerendered backgrounds were, of course, essentially like dioramas to begin with, so it makes sense that an RPG based around diorama design would evoke similar feelings. i also find myself wondering about things like the little shiny points on the ground where items are - the kind of thing we saw in Squaresoft RPGs up until Sakaguchi left - i wonder if these were literally his ideas, or if these are ideas he just liked from back then and he still wants to use them. the crystal save points, etc.
anyway, so far nothing in the game has necessarily impressed me aside from the detail of the dioramas, but i am having a good time with it. i am wondering how much more it will expand as a game as i play it. the Uematsu soundtrack ranges from āthis is really niceā to āthis is sort of boringā - the battle theme, especially, is a let down.
i started this up despite not having finished Metaphor ReFantazio but tbh i still donāt really feel like getting back ot that one.
15 Likes