Finished Jedi Survivor and the PS5 says I spent like 83 or 86 hours playing it which feels unlikely (I don’t feel like I played a bit more than three hours a day every day since I started) but my gut feeling is that rest mode at times screws with the playstation game time tracking, also 38 minutes of that was simply the end credits.
Game doesn’t drop the ball in the end run, I did some brief post-game stuff mainly just going back to the saloon but even with a couple legendary fights and force tears out there I think I’m good leaving this as how the story ends, not picking the lightsaber back up and going back to work.
Anyways I think I’m gonna play Extreme Evolution: Drive to Divinity next, that feels suitably different.
I have to beat four racers to unlock more upgrades and things in Tokyo Extreme Racer, except I can’t figure out how to make them show up. Sometimes parking areas have NPCs that will give hints as to when racers will show up but I don’t find them very often, I just keep beating other racers and hopefully they’ll appear at some point, right? There’s one racer who wouldn’t let me challenge them, and it wasn’t until I found a random NPC that happened to comment on them, that they won’t take a challenger until I have their same car. There’s another driver called IMMORTAL JOKER that drives an xB, and I haven’t figured out his deal yet.
Thing is you can’t just buy new cars, you have to unlock them with skillpoints you get from winning races, and you cant use those unless certain conditions are met, so I can’t just buy a Supra.
Yeah there’s a new game + level 1 challenge, and I assume it means not being able to use any traversal ability whatsoever including fast travel and double jumps! I’ll try it when the game is less fresh in my mind.
One of the coolest aspect of the warp anywhere feature is how it is used to unlock secrets. There’s this very tall place that’s impossible to climb, you can teleport to the bottom, double jump to « unlock » the upper node on the map, then teleport to that node, double jump again to unlock the upper node, etc etc. To climb forever in the sky
I tried the Wizardry Digital Eclipse remake. Its reputation was bad on SB, and good elsewhere. But I liked Digital Eclipse’s Karateka making of enough to give this one a chance. Well. SB was right. It blows. Wizardry did not need long animations, ugly art and half baked QoL. Fuck.
I’m totally ready to get into Wizardry the Five Ordeals instead. It is made of like 12 J-Wizardry scenarios including high quality user-made ones, and going through them all must take like 500 hours and a lot of graph paper to map the dungeons. I may have to post in the mid-life crisis post
I’m also on my 8th NG+ SaGa Emerald Beyond playthrough now. I had done 4 earlier this year, and 4 just last month. I’m still nowhere near done with this. None of my characters have even unlocked dual wield yet. Some stuff seems to be locked behind 6 playthroughs if you aim for it, maybe 20 if you don’t. I can play about 30 more times and will be far from seeing all the weird branching path variations this game has. Which is fine, the game doesn’t keep track of them anyway.
The battle system remains more engaging than just about any other JRPG even on NG+8
I remember when this game gave me a terrible first impression but can’t understand it anymore. I’ve gone too far now and love everything about it including the worst awkward dialogue scenes
Been replaying ib. I think I get it now, have to amend my earlier statement on it which is ahistorical. It’s rpgmhorror escape rooms without the formulaic logic puzzles or incongruity with the engine (no vestigial JRPG menus) nd more streamlined interaction - seemingly effortless ability to guide ur intuition visually nd build natural drama out of its level designs. Totally confident in spite of the number of tricks it pulls - etc etc. Good yarn
My feelings on The Witch’s House, on the other hand, have cooled a bit!! I used to have a Carl Barks / Don Rosa comparison in mind for these two but that doesnt hold up in the slightest (I haven’t read enough duck anyway). Just a bunch of admittedly often well-timed haunted house parlor tricks. it has a few “creepy” moments of calling out the player/acknowledging saves but those are just a part of its broader habit of jibing/messing around with you. WHAT IM SAYING IS it’s more fourth wall-agnostic than ostentiously breaking which is appreciated atm. It has some fun
I like that almost everything in this game is examinable. Usually that’s a “rookie error” but the game times (enough of) its moving furniture antics well enough that the repetitive object descriptions keep you on edge. It contains a lot of dumb joke options or obvious death scene triggers but knows how to play w ur expectations as above, its not exactly revolutionary but once the “do nothing” option gets used in a puzzle nothing feels sacred. Its puzzles have none of the scope or verve of Ib’s but at least contextualize their stupid little mean tricks tonally. The part of the 4th floor puzzle where u hit a pumpkin four times always annoyed me though
Bomb Rush Cyberfunk did I get the name right? Someone mentioned this was by The Dutch and that makes sense in my head, somehow.
It’s shockingly subdewed and quiet for a Jet Set Radio Fan Game. It really just wants to be a JSRFG right down to slow cutscenes explaining some overblown mystery. I’m roughly in the middle of the game now, and that it has settled into video game is more pleasing. Do the things, skate around, try to ignore the music and the visuals are just three photocopies of some other games.
It starts in silence in a police station. The loading screens are silent. The hideout area has Kingdom Hearts 2 style wind-blowing in the background. I think not having DJ Professor K really hurts the whole thing. The whole thing could use just a little bit of more modern sexiness to the characters. Somehow it being about cyber-brains does nothing for it feeling original.
One of the songs sounds like Japanese music from 10 years ago and that frankly excites me as opposed to sounding like JSR’s music from 24 years ago.
I really wish games wouldn’t do that thing where all the graphics and even UI text is consistent pixel art, but then when someone talks it’s an incongruous high-resolution font.
No matter how faithful a spiritual successor, I don’t think anything could compete with the potent nostalgia I have for discovering Jet Set Radio Future for the first time… as a pack-in game with the original xbox… on Christmas day… as a child.
Like the game’s not even necessarily bad, it just can’t compete with that sorta time n place magic…
can’t say I’m having a fun time with King’s Field III…yet. maybe it’s because I’ve been playing it coming home tired (and maybe getting a little faded >_>) but I was pretty lost for a stretch and the flatter, larger, more open spaces are not inspiring…yet. Hyrule Field comes to mind, “we can make big 3D spaces now” but how are you filling that space in 1996? I found the comparatively simple horizonticality (ha) of the separate levels of the first game easy to deal with and flow with and endearing to get to know and the verticality and interconnectedness (and the exterior vibe etc. (I’ve not felt nice little moments like that first Kraken or the skellies behind the waterfall etc.)) of the second game inspiring. now, encountering locked chests that will require a bunch of keys I don’t have in these sprawling spaces is sigh-inducing and the early focus on the keys that open doors but you can also take them back to juggle between doors to other areas and then you reach the barracks where you need like five of them to unlock a series of them in a single corridor…it’s not getting me excited…yet. gonna keep pushing through. I have a Jail Key now and even though I’ve unlocked some cells I don’t know of a clear path forward…yet
also I played some Calcium Contract and it’s charming tho maybe I was hoping for more exploration and less arena shooting with some annoyingly aggressive enemies but I’ll probably pick it up again. I also have Extreme Evolution: Drive to Divinity but I’m waiting until I’m in the right headspace…idk what that means exactly but I’ll know when I feel it cuz I’m pretty excited to have a go
anyway, it wouldn’t be King’s Field posting without some corpses
i want to see developer commentary on kf3. specifically why they made a sequel where no walkable geometry can ever overlap. was this the cost of the big sprawling zones? it’s so weird how there’s not so much as an arch you can pass over and under, and definitely no holes with secret paths to drop down
Picked up Ender Magnolia for switch, and it’s a neat sequal to Ender Lillies, but about a third of the way in you finally pick up a power up that allows you to parry and then you start having to parry and I don’t think I want to parry in a videogame again. Maybe games having to be soulsish will slow down soon
depending on your issue with it, rr64 is the exact same game but with better/clearer visuals and nicer menu presentation, + analog control that does not rely on a touch screen
it’s still not as fun as any of the ps1 games tho i couldn’t tell you exactly why. music choice definitely contributes but it’s probably something else too
edit: like, i don’t mean it just has the same tracks. IT IS THE EXACT SAME GAME WITH THE SAME PROGRESSION.
I’m beating the remaining 200cc staff ghosts in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Some of them are tough. Most of the world record replays on YouTube are not instructive because the techniques are beyond me.
Just because you can play as babies doesn’t mean it’s a game for babies.
Finished Ds1. : ) After 91 hours, finally had to learn a bit of actual correct dodging to clear the final boss. ^ _^ Had a lot of fun with the game; I liked DeS but didn’t quite feel like I’d want to replay it after getting through–Ds1 though I think I could end up doing NG+ if I need more Souls after playing through the later games.
tried the beyond citadel demo last night and am disappointed this png scaler is so resource intense i have to reduce draw resolution to 50% while running it at 30 fps
other than that, i die a lot. a lot. gun handling kills me. first stage with real gun shooting enemies keeps killing me in the entrance rooms. this would be fine but another way my computer can’t catch up is that reloading the stage takes something like 2-3 minutes while the game screen is totally frozen, and its starting to feel like i spend more time loading the stage than attempting it. i can’t comment on the level design cause i don’t get to play it.
i appreciate that when im dead the girls will keep shooting my corpse, filling my health representation avatar with holes. nice touch.
a lot of the detail work is impressive. testing the gun in the tutorial room i cocked it a bunch, throwing away unused bullets. then i noticed the bullets where on the ground and i could pick them back up. neat.
also some girl called me sister familiarly. this is a magic spell to ward off me testing if peaceful npc can be killed.
