games you played today: winning eleven

[Rudie]

I went home last night and collasped with a 39.2 Celsius fever last night. It has thankfully gone down since then but it did make me miss seeing a friend and instead I just played a bunch of video games I’d been meaning too all day.

Glitch Dungeon Crystal praised by @khan and it is really good! Unique graphic style, the puzzles made do a few thinkems. Will consider getting it on Steam when it comes out (I pretty much only play PC games when I am sick or streaming something to hate.)

Dead or Alive Ultimate I thought this worked in cxbx! It just kept crashing and uh running at 3fps.

Turok The Dinosaur Hunter Thank you giant book corporation for letting me play this game for free. I would and did hate it in 1996/2006/2016. But here in 2025? I had a good time with it to a point. When it was sicko FPS platforming I loved it. The biggest danger is these guys that shoot tracking lasers at you that just eat at your health and the game is relatively stingy on recovering it. These dudes will frequently be in an i covinenent spot and just start shredding you before you know. I got to the first boss which was two jeeps in a row and then a guy that had hitscan and a million health and I went “Thank you good bye!” And uninstalled.

Blade Chimera thanks for the demo! Didn’t like it.

Neon Inferno this studio’s previous game Steel Assault had a joke in the credits just for me that I laughed at for a good 15 minutes. The reflection mechanic honestly reminds me of Gunsport. The best pixel graphics you’ve ever seen once again showing you…Blade Runner. There is a part where it says “Civilian” and the only solution is too kill them which well, that sucked!

Devil’s Third
I had to open up my wii u folder and see that there. Had to restart my computer 3 times to get it running properly. I just finished playing because it keeps crashing at a point so think I am done. Everything about the moment to moment is probably the best Itagaki has ever directed. That it starts in an all white Guantanmo Bay Prison and then proceeds with America invading the Panama Canal…honestly okay it crashed. I got the picture. It is of course gleefully violent in a way I just found gross.

Parking Garage Rally Circuit Sega Saturn Visuals, Ska Band I know Soundtrack, Drift based time attack courses? Fantastic little game.

[L]

B3313 fanart

zhjake (@zhjake.bsky.social)

Alsp I watched the video and scowled because I hate 0.7 Vanish Cap and Dry Downtown (Dire Bubble, Jolly Roger Coastline and Tall Tall Treetops are great though)

[iguferon]

i started playing blitzkrieg 2 and the default audio balance is so severe that a single explosion peaks the audio. this is a game with massive tank battles. i set the sfx audio to almost zero and it still happens. the sound designer was a fucking artilleryman apparently he cant hear shit. I do like that the reinforcements counter spins down like your hp in earthbound though

[ellaguro]

this fanart is very cool - thanks for sharing!

you hate Dry Town?? watching someone stream the game and reach that area is what made me play the game to begin with.

the guy from these videos does say that SGI Indy is one of the worst stages which i completely disagree with. i would support more totally unhinged and cryptic level design like that and less endless variations of vanilla Mario 64 in the set - which is one of my big complaints with the whole thing, as well as the jumpscares varying in quality and getting a bit old after awhile.

[shnozlak]

Its really accidentally interesting that deafening explosions overwhelms the game playing them.

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Ive been playing D2 on the Dream Cast and it is interesting.
I was wanting some killer 7 vibes and went to the silver case but ended up finding them here.

Something about shadow the final destroyer!?

Any way this guy’s goons whip auto automatic weapons on an airplane and start threatening everyone before God throws a rock at them

You survive the resulting plane crash and something is afoot. Something with tentacles. A sort of plant like Thing or Things has taken over the bodies of the plane crash victims.

The protagonist Laura Parton (Not Palmer!) is as pictured. Sort of a blonder, mute Dana Scully looking office lady who moves through life with grunts and looks. She is equipped with a red business suit, pumps, a sub machine gun and a rifle that is only for hunting animals. (And shotgun shells I have so many shotgun shells and no shotgun.)

You team up with / are rescued by another woman Kimberly. Who is way into poetry and pills branded as “Linda”. Though she says she quit drugs. Who is unlike our hero in possession of a coat and pants.

Shes not the only Linda enjoyer in the zone

The eye makeup in the game is STONK.

Kimberly introduces us to our themes. Loss / longing, death, the “Killer instinct” and animals possessing “Life Force” that you/they gain by eating other life forms. “what Im saying is! Eat lots and get better!”

She then introduces you to the auto grill.

A device that exists in inventory space and turns all dead animals inserted into it into powerful healing items (meat).

This game is not vegan friendly. You must kill 3 rabbits to continue.

Birds are worth 1 meat, rabbits 2, an elk is 3 and an entire moose is 4 meats.

As demonstrated so far the game is strange at its baseline. Which is compounded by the growing mystery you get clues about through inconsistencies in the information presented to you.

Mechanically the game is also unusual.

The rifle scope is the funniest scope in any video game. When you zoom in the camera physically moves without changing its field of view. If you zoom the scope in you can see over the tops of hills and around objects. If something comes between the disembodied scope cam and the player it snap zooms back to behind the object.

Fighting is done via random encounters in which you become fixed to the spot and must machine gun your way free… with infinite ammo thankfully. You turn to face a monster via the X and B buttons and aim with the stick inside the game window. This game really feels like its meant for a light gun. You can grill meat during battle to recover health.

Moving in rooms is nicely streamlined. You move from point of interest to point of interest like a VR game. If there is nothing left to search in part of a room you cant physically go there anymore.

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I am in the middle of Disc 2 so far. Its pretty good. I would not be surprised if it gets the bad kind of creepy ala deadly premonition. I’m getting that vibe from it and how its treating Kimberly.

I’ve not reveled anything you dont learn pretty early on.
Why the meteor? Shadow? Cloaked figure? Monsters? Drugs?! Graaaampa??? Christmas???

[Annetts]

@shnozlak

an entire moose is 4 meats

This is poetry.

[StellaUnderscore]

yeah, looking back mayyyyybe i should have started with 1, but so far it doesnt seem to matter that much, which is very good. the only connection point really seems to be the fact the evil miasma exists n stuff. also, holy shit FTNW’s cast is so good.

i saw a video about it in my youtube reccomendations which is why im playing it. like ur telling me im not supposed to see a ps2 rpg about a kid that dresses like kurt cobain but apparently lives in “the 20s” (citation needed, this game just feels like its ever decade of the 1900s in america all at once, its fantastic) and stabs people with a knife and has a sanity meter and minigame battle mechanics and not immediatley jump on that shit? it’s peak…

anyways, like i said, im really loving it so far, but the 2 biggest issues i have right now is that:

1. hilda’s calorie mechanic is a cool idea but the calorite meter cant even fluctuate on its own and at least for right now, enemies give barely any calories at all, so she’ll just turn into pink bat and die before she can get into curvy form. its REALLY annoying. if i were to go back and time and get a job at xseed i would have made it so the calorie meter goes down when she uses magic (like idk shes extering her body to do the spells or something) and physically attacking gains calories (i dunno make her want have lifesteal or something, lmao). at the very least they really should have made blood suck actually do damage (like you cant even use it in double attacks… why…) and made the area where her form becomes pink bat WAY smaller
2. and issue 2 is that natan feels just so undercooked. hes the same level as everyone right now (like 14-15) and he is just not pulling his weight at all. rapid shot is a complete joke and never hits anything and he just does so little damage in general. compared to hilda’s issue though, its just really dissappointing rather than annoying lol.

but either way all that being said they arent even HUGE issues, cuz i think there are items for hilda’s calorie meter later on and like i said, for better or for worse the calorie meter just never changes on it’s own lol. i love this game so far

[daphaknee]

yeah shadow hearts always have a couple characters that like pale in comparison to your more fleshed out mechanically party members. I also rememeber not being fat enough (shadow hearts 3 was the one I played the least but since I’m replaying them now I’m excited to revisit)

Natan was kinda boring except for his hunting of Mysterious Unidentified Animals. I loved the MUA shit

[daphaknee]

venba is FINE but you can never go back just one step you have to start over the whole recipe and cooking mamma’s mechanics are still way more engrossing even though it’s a budget game from almost two decades ago. also the holding down the button to click and drag something across the screen feels bad. Just let me click to grab and unclick to ungrab. duh. DUH.

the story is cute and the recipes are really cool and the music is good but the play part of the game, the part that actually makes it a game really kinda sucks

I’m also not a fan of the ‘one of the steps is blurred, you better figure it out!’ mech like I guess that’s the only ‘challenge’ but therss always a button on screen that says GIVE ME A HINT so I dunno there’s just zero friction aside from dragging shit from one side of the screen to another. I need to play more to see if it ever gets minigame interesting

oh also also the bubble outlines for EVERYTHING are becoming distracting and annoying cuz it looks like a kid pix brush filter. I wish I could turn it off

I do wanna keep playing and see more story so there is that

[hellojed]

Playing Motor Town, which has been sold as GTA minus the guns. You get odd jobs driving taxis, busses, and making deliveries. You use money to buy and fix up fun cars. It’s very early on, the bus mechanics are interesting - to me - and there are a ton of very specific vehicles like Lada taxis, VW Buses, I saw a Greyhound Vista Cruiser in there? It seems like the developer took a huge low-poly asset pack and then made a big game around driving with it. Not actively pissing me off like NFS Unbound did and I can listen to podcasts while I toot around the island.

[iguferon]

oh that sounds awesome

[Kilroy]

I played DDR X3 today in an arcade. The pads were unplayable, which soured an experience already made bad by my horrible shape (I can barely play an 8 footer? Wtf)

[L]

Dry Town and Dry Downtown are separate stages. I like the former a good deal but the latter feels like just a more on-the-nose retread of the former. I think Wet-Dry Paradise (my favourite stage, tied with Limitless Lighthouse) is a better “remix” of the Dry Town concept.

[hellojed]

Some more motortown stuff

1. certain cars can only be bought if you find them, the the only way to buy a Lancia Delta-like is to find it’s remote location and buy it there. Kind of simulates finding cars for sale in people’s yards.

2. really easy to flip over, and you have to pay for getting your car recovered. Actually you pay for a lot of things (warping home, summoning parked vehicles, etc)

3. you have to buy wheels and upgrades for those wheels individually, not all at once. This means you can mix and match wheels - but also meant I ran out of money buying only 2 of 4 needed wheel spacers. But you can drive with 2 out of 4 wheel spacers on the car.

4. handling is…unreal vehicle physics, something I’m intimately aware with and requires months of finessing to get right. I spin out a lot.

[aislesgrises]

introduced two friends to tokyo jungle, one of whom got really mad she had never heard about it

[StellaUnderscore]

i finally ranked up to A rank in GBVSR today, if that’s anything. admittedly this should have happened way way way sooner but i am so chronically addicted to labbing and i am plauged by being very tired a lot of the time. really proud of myself though!

[LaurelSoup]

What would Ditko make of this

[MintyJuffowup]

Patiently awaiting the video game adaptation of Mr. A.

[Tulpa]

Ken Levine’s Mr. A

[Kilroy]

Beat Chapter 4 of Final Fantasy XV.