Based on screenshots I was under the impression the game had “grass world / fire world / ice world” platformer syndrome, which seems likely to disappoint people who appreciate the original game’s world design.
4 Likes
yeah, this is why i’m kind of reserving total judgment until the end. i don’t know that the team necessarily understood the aesthetics or world of the original game; however, they definitely understood the gameplay, it seems.
it’s a mixed bag, potentially! but i’m gonna give my money to Sunsoft
3 Likes
Last week I replayed Amnesia: The Bunker on its hardcore “Shell Shocked” difficulty mode, which works like a randomizer shuffling the locations of keys and essential items, while also upping the variability of the behavior of the Beast that hunts you the whole game. Additionally, it makes it so that you require gasoline to save the game. It was such a blast to play. I really think that game was slept on, assumed to be a minor and insignificant sequel to a streamerbait game from forever ago at this point. But it is certifiably one of the best survival horror games ever to be made. Exquisite.
And this week I’ve been progressing further in FFV, trying to wrap that up. I am getting tired of 2D FF games and looking forward to cinematic heft of the 3D era, and other 3D JRPGs. But it’s really good nonetheless. It has ample personality in its presentation and, yeah, the job system is fun. I feel like I’m only just now starting to understand it fully, and have spent some time x4 grinding Art d’Objects for mass job experience to get my dudes in a good state with their Freelancer jobs. But now I realize all my weapons kind of suck. Progression! How I missed you during my time playing FFIV…
6 Likes
back on my wizardry bullshit, but this time i decided to actually use the new custom portrait feature. now i can go through the game with a ha ha hee hee party.
29 Likes
Which version is this?
2 Likes
this is Five Ordeals on Steam
5 Likes
Katana Zero is a sidescrolling version of Hotline Miami and like other games in this vein it tries to do “mindfuck” stuff and it’s like mildly successful at that but my favorite part is the little dialogue roleplay bits. I think they might slightly influence how some scenarios play out although it’s not really changing the course of the plot. Nice world building, good visuals and fun synthwavy music that works good for slicing up goons.
Anyway, very much inessential but diverting enough and refreshingly brief. I think I played through most of the game in one sitting. I hope it doesn’t do any true ending bullshit and make me replay the whole thing.
12 Likes
In a uniquely dumb situation where I don’t really like Pokemon TCG Pocket’s gameplay but am playing it a lot because it’s so easy to get a match. Meanwhile I am putting time into learning Virtua Fighter 5 because it intrigues me and not being able to find more than 2 matches in 40 minutes. This was the case for the PS4 rerelease anyway, Ultimate Showdown which has the same version update as the brand new Steam release REVO. REVO has far more active players but way less customisation options to try and push the costume packs. So I bought REVO and now that I actually have people to play with I enjoy VF5 a lot. Its pace is definitely an adjustment from Tekken, but I think the 3 button simplicity helps a lot. Am enjoying countering jab spam with Aoi and punishing people who don’t know how to tech roll with downed throws. I can only get away with this mischief for so long but am having fun learning.
As for Pokemon TCG, the mobile game is like a simplified version of an already relatively simple card battler. They really should call the game Coin Flippers. I’ve never seen a game rely so heavily on coins/d2 for game balance. It gives some cards a decent cost tradeoff for the damage range but the problem is the ranges include 0 damage.
e.g. A 2colour/colourless cost evolution, flip 4 coins, for every heads do 40 damage.
It leads to absurd situations and the strongest meta decks are like playing Craps. The problem with these all or nothing designs is you can play the game correctly, fully load up a beast and sheer luck means you do zero damage or win by default. Some cards are so powerful, many players just concede as soon as they are revealed.
Misty is a trainer card that asks you to flip coins until you get tails. For every heads you can attach that many energy to a water Pokemon. It is almost always 0 heads or like 5+ heads. In one game both I and my opponent played Misty with our water decks and both flipped tails leading to fucking nothing happening. What are we doing here? The game’s engine has shut off.
Some of this card art is great though.
Still plugging away at Hifi Rush. I still like the cosiness of it even though I imagine the tone is grating to many people. I just like that the developers made the game I would’ve liked to make and seemed to enjoy doing it. I’m unable to play the game without my tongue crushed against my palate. I find hitting beat hits both relaxing but also unconsciously putting my body into max tension.
9 Likes
holy shit, now THIS is video games. i should defintiley look more into the wizardry games in general
5 Likes
From what I gather, people seem to be saying this is a bug and you need to restart your game to fix the inability to matchmake.
2 Likes
Fighter / Fighter / Priest
Thief / Mage / Mage
………………
I want that team
I’m going through the Price of Deception scenario in Wizardry 5 Ordeals, which seems to be a « tutorial » for the actual 5 Ordeals. It still lasts dozens of hours
Performance navigating the dungeon is awful, just moving in a grid is terrible, in 2025. I read this as an encouragement to turn on instant moving between tiles. Which is liberating frankly. It’s funny how much better this game feels than the Digital eclipse remake despite much worse UI, performance etc, just because it moves at x10 speed
Nothing quite like drawing your own maps
Turning on some option in the settings allowed me to create some advanced classes right from the start, eliminating the need for reclassing. But only 1 out of 4 is decent right now frankly (samurai) Maybe all the advanced classes in Wizardry have always been a trap
6 Likes
get a ninja on your team, maybe even more than one, and you’ll be able to steamroll your way through the game
they’re fast, they hit hard, the gain a natural armor class bonus every time they level up without any gear equipped, and can randomly one-shot any enemy in the game including bosses
3 Likes
They updated Tokyo Xtreme Racer to make one of the bosses less hard - previously it was only really possible to beat them by upgrading a certain car, then tuning it in a specific way for better acceleration, and then challenging the boss at a specific spot on the C1 inner loop where the AI would have the most problems - and even then you had to have luck on your side. The gap between how powerful you’d be able to make your car and how fast the boss was is really big.
Well now it’s still hard but in order to get their car you have to beat them twice, the second time they’re at the original power level pre-patch.
Enjoying it but wishing i could be driving some of the later game cars. Pretty much the fastest thing right now is the Rx-8, everything else is locked behind progression.
7 Likes
So I am now a good 3 or so hours into Owlboy and… I want to find the right way to say this. It’s not the “few people spent several years making their dream project and created a classic” experience some people tried to sell me on near release, it’s not even particularly close. There’s a lot of design quirks, feedback and telegraphing things can be downright poor at times, and for as much effort as they put into the pixel graphics they sure love to put filters/lighting(?) over them to simulate time of day changes that makes them look rather muddy. Even when it is humming along it’s not hitting the highest of highs or anything. It may end up one of those “7 out of 10” games, and that may be with generous scoring (or maybe not, maybe it front loaded the iffier areas).
That said… I appreciate it? You can tell a lot of work and passion was put into it, they had grand visions and a bunch of ideas and they took the 7-10 years they had to get it done to the best of their abilities. Often those type of games have higher peaks than this one has had so far (and TBF lower points as well) and yeah, a lot of these projects end up in this high density pixel art adventure with plenty of story mold, but while others are now exhausted by them I’m kinda glad they are out there. Maybe I’m a soft touch after seeing all the utterly passionless games released each day with ever more AI art or designed to resemble the game of the moment a month ago as much as possible, I’m just glad they care even if they aren’t as clever or creative or have as great a grasp on game design as they think/hope they do.
16 Likes
11 race series left in GT3 Professional, one of which requires an S rank license, which will be a pain to get.
1 Like
Uh. I remember mine being pretty dead weight in the PS3 one.
I also could never wrap my head around bare handed ninjas instantly killing demons while katana wielding samurais could not
Would you use one as a thief replacement or are they that much worse at trap identification / removal? I am very afraid of a trap teleporting the party into a wall
2 Likes
toaplan is i think my favorite developer of the moment
fire shark, hellfire, and vimana are the ones i’m feeling most acutely right now
8 Likes
vimana is so good
also try rally bike and outzone, these three are easily my most-played toaplan games
1 Like
I polished off Faxanadu last month. Beautiful game, sweet and generous. I’ve been itching to give Fool’s Errand a spin since @Infernarl had shown it off at the meetup. The frame and progression is so consuming. I get a little too absorbed whenever I get into it.
The game is presented as a story about a Fool, of tarot deck extraction. When I first started, I simply kept reading the story and followed him as he wandered confusedly over the world. It was only when I reached the end that I realized every page had a button. When pressed, these buttons reveal a puzzle. Some puzzles are simple, picture tile matching or word searches. Others are complicated. One of my favorites involves a series of oval buttons that each have an effect on a group of letters. Hitting them in the right sequence creates a phrase.
There is a third category of puzzle among these pages that eats at the edges of expectations. I won’t describe these because they’re too delightful to stumble on.
On top of it all, these puzzles and pages feed into an overarching riddle that I haven’t even begun to tackle.
14 Likes
