Red Dead Redemption II (PS4): this week on The Van der Lynde Variety Show, Arthur Morgan discovers a derelict derrick, a dead dude, and a denuded dinosaur in that approximate order; provokes a gentle man* to anger by making it rain**; and takes his first step on the road to Perdition that is cigarette card collecting
Thought of the Day: HISTORY IS WRITTEN BY FOOLS
*not really
**pig shit
yeah, a lot of these are grab and get killed situations. Like the claymore I grabbed from the bridge right as the dragon burnt me to a crisp
I always took this as a sign I won the fight in online once a guy switched to these
I would agree
I liked pissing off the cowards who would rely on mouse aim sniper bullshit by playing on controller and juking their shots until I could tackle and beat them to death. we cannot cede the town of valentine to crazed men with rifles!
I’ve somehow done most of the challenges in Hitman 2’s Whittleton Creek and still can’t get 20/20 mastery…but I did finally get around to doing the objective where you do everything possible to make one of your targets - a frail, hobbled old man - happy, and the end result is hilarious: once you’ve done all these little tasks to make him happy, once the final one is checked off, he suddenly goes from being doubled over and hunched, slowly walking around, to doing this super jaunty little walk. Borderline Fleischer cartoon strut. Happily sauntered up the stairs and smoked a cigarette right next to a leaking gas canister and blew up.
What’s down here? [killed by boss and two poison dogs immediately] oh
other way around tbh
This is definitely the average Dark Souls experience FWIW, it’s a fairly universal speed bump.
i’d still recommend trying to kill the black knights before getting too much further, if only to make sure you’ve got a decent handle on the combat. if i could manage it as a sorcerer, i don’t doubt you could ace it with a proper melee build. maybe go with something smaller/faster than the claymore, tho
Last night I played a little bit more Unfair Flips and after 10 minutes of flipping a coin I asked myself what am I doing with my life and I quit.
I played about 30 minutes of Squirrel Stapler and got bored of it. I dunno if these faux-retro post-ironic comedy-horror games really do much for me.
this summer heat got me into the mood for some eco-terrorism, so i started to play through Final Fantasy 7. have you guys heard of this hidden gem? it’s pretty great! barret is my favorite friend, i love his win dance where he does the golfer yes followed by a big punch up to the sky. such a cool dude. i really admire his tendency to be angry and yell about all the injustices, i think i could lean into that more sometimes. all of the other friends i’ve met are pretty nice to have along too, especially red 13- good dog. i’m playing on my partner’s steam deck and, at first, i somehow made it so that everyone had limit break all the time and we were all invincible. this was not so fun. turns out that friction thru fighting really helps you feel a sense of camaraderie with your fellow rebels.
speaking of- i was never a turn based combat kind of guy until recently but now i like the slower, more deliberate pace of it. it also allows me to recover when i do dumb things like fight a monster on an adjacent elevator with only barret to do long range attacks and keeps me from getting all flustered and pressing random buttons. some of the monsters are real good, like the big house and flappy plants. the little sperm dudes and geckos- not so much. sometimes the battles get annoying, but that’s mostly my fault for wandering around and getting lost in the overworld.
the little towns themselves are so good. i love walking around and talking to all the people because they’re all so bummed out about being broke or the planet being destroyed- just quality being-a-human kinda stuff. there was this one dude in sector 7 who nailed it by describing the world as strange and wonderful and it’s true! in the middle of all this bummer shit, there’s this great little restaurant that sells three things: Korean BBQ, Sushi Set, Daily Special. my dream restaurant, tbh. those are some of my favorite things. it’s mad corny, but this lil’ rag-tag avalanche group got me feelin’ a certain way for the real world future. just a reminder of like oh yeah, things are (always) terrible, but people do come together and fight back against oppressors and most people are generally just doing their best to get by. i don’t know if i would have really understood what was going on in the game if i had played it as a kid in ‘97, so i’m glad i’m getting to enjoy it now.
From what I understand from it’s designer’s intentions, that means you actually successfully won Unfair Flips, congratulations
I’ve never heard of that game, but had to reply cause I’m just thrilled to see the Spelunky series acknowledged. I’ve been playing the 2nd one again, I love it when you have to like “train” for a game.
Balls to that, go pick up the zweihander. ; D
Red Dead Redemption II (PS4): wandered into the burnt remains of a town whose name escapes me (Limpany - Eds) where i uncovered a lockbox containing a gold bar and a recipe for horse stimulant
also ran into a self-styled explorer who sold me a treasure map before he left for Japan. seems like i’ve seen a rock formation like the one on the map at some point, but i can’t recall exactly where
unsure whether i should keep playing- feels like i’m hitting/about to hit that wall i always encounter whenever i press on with these things for any amount of time. afraid that if i try to continue, i’ll just set off my OCD or w/e it is that compels me to regard a save as “tainted/ruined/etc.” and scrap it
Balls to that, go pick up the zweihander. ; D
isn’t that more of a Barbarian/Knight thing? i’d assumed the thing to do with a Wanderer would be to lean on bleed damage, at least in the early game
The thing about dark souls is that anyone can use any weapon if they want it bad enough 
I’m not sure if I accidentally referenced spelunky or you just replied to the wrong comment here but whatever, I’m always happy to get in on that. I play a couple runs every once in a while because I still want to get to the end of the Cosmic Ocean just once. I think my limit was like 54. I think if I’m honest with myself the first Spelunky HD is the better game but I still love em both and the draw of playing way too many levels always gets me.
SHORT VERSION: Seriously disappointing! Unappealing character design, unfunny jokes, cringingly racist, bloated with gimmicks, and basically just not very fun to play due to a lack of care put into enemy and encounter design.
LONG VERSION: I reviewed this one back in the day and wondered if I was too hard on it, so I went back to play it and… I was too easy on it, this game blooowwwssss.
A big problem people have is the new cartoony aesthetic. There is some of this in the environments, such as being a tiny dude in a giant yard full of trash, but for the most part the environments are fine, and I appreciated the variety after all the desert in FE, though I felt SE did that already without having to clutter the fields with stuff that block you view.
It’s the enemy/character designs that people really hate, and yeah, they went pretty overboard with making them goofy and cartoony. I like some, but so many feel childish… the bulls are turned into windup toys for example, and there are literal Wizard of Oz style witches. Giving the missile robots t-rex heads I was okay with, but then going overboard and giving them cigars… and stereotypical Chinese mustaches?! Which leads me to…
The biggest problem with the new character designs is how incredibly racist some are. Like, 1950s racist! I was embarrassed on behalf of whoever made this, it’s sooo fucking bad. Basically every Asian stereotype is in here, and we have racism towards other cultures, too! I haven’t cringed at a game so hard in years.
Leading me to my next complaint, this game tries so hard to be funny and it very rarely is. For one thing, there are about 20 million Duke Forever jokes. The jokes are CONSTANT and while it made me smile a few times, 98% of the time it was just embarrassing, like a 14 year old came up with it. The cutscenes are particularly painful, especially since it feels like they go on forever.
And this game just doesn’t shut up! Maybe Sam could have said more and been more funny in the first game, but they went WAY too far in the other direction here. It’s not just Sam, it’s also all the characters he meets, and his AI companion who constantly points out the obvious while making lame jokes.
But maybe the game itself is good? No, it isn’t.
For one, I understand them wanting to put more variety in the game because the first could get repetitive, but instead of finding interesting ways to make the FPS action feel fresh, they loaded the game with gimmicks.
Lots of vehicles (and a giant hamster ball) for example, and about ten thousand turret sections. Also lots of moments where you have to defend something/someone, and really unimaginative segments like being stuck on an elevator while being attacked.
There are lots of new enemies here, which again I appreciate because the first game could have used more, but so many feel crap to fight and don’t feel like they pair up well with other ones.
The original Serious Sam had a small amount of enemy types, but they were all used together so well to make fun waves… it was an extremely finely tuned game. Here, it feels like there is a lot less care in both enemy, wave, and arena design.
In fact, there are a lot fewer arenas here… a lot of areas feel like they wanted to copy Halo’s small skirmishes around small structures, and it just doesn’t work with Sam’s style of gunplay.
A lot of it has to do with the fact that once you kill an enemy, the exact same one will spawn from the same spot… so, many waves feel like they were copy and pasted. As a result, despite arguably having more variety than the first game, it actually manages to feel more repetitive, due to moving forward, fighting a small group of enemies who keep respawning from the same places, moving forward a little, and repeating.
As you get further in the game, the small groups of enemies turn into larger groups of enemies, and the game gets even worse for it.
Also, due to this style of level design, there is FAR too many ducking in and out of cover for a Serious Sam game.
ALSO so many of the new enemies just feel annoying to fight instead of fun, like those damn witches on brooms.
Also it feels like your hit box is too large? I kept getting hit when I felt I should have dodged whatever hit me.
Also, this is WAY too long for the kind of gameplay it offers.
ALSO, I got softlocked multiple times.
Basically, this game feels bad to play, and feels like a chore and a slog really quickly.
Could the first game get repetitive? Yes, but loading it with gimmicks and too many poorly tuned enemies wasn’t the solution. Could Sam have talked more and could it have leaned more into the quirkiness? Yes, but they went overboard with the humour here and, unlike the first game, it’s utterly charmless.
I’m glad they went back to basics with 3… you could argue it went TOO back to basics, but I prefer that to whatever the hell this shit is.
I bought this for Switch, then felt bamboozled because I thought it was a traditional boomer shooter, but it turns out it’s yet another arena FPS, just with some puzzly/jumpy bits between battle spaces.
I tried to enjoy the game for what it actually is, but unfortunately this game requires LOTS of precision aiming and movement, and it is just not possible with the Switch controller… the game very VERY quickly became infuriating and I ditched it.
If I get this for free on PC I might try it again, but I’m not paying again for a game that shouldn’t have had a console port to begin with.
EDIT: Apparently I should have used a control method called FlickStick which I’ve never heard of, and after trying it… no, give me a mouse and keyboard, thanks.
SHORT VERSION: Great art, but the mood and aesthetic failed to grab me, and the simplistic puzzles involving manipulating enemy paths to trigger things for you just wasn’t compelling enough for me to finish this game.
LONG VERSION: A puzzle platformer from Amanita, this one didn’t do much for me.
While I appreciate the artistic skill that went into the visuals, the game has a spooky YA graphic novel vibe that didn’t really click with me.
It all takes place in what is referred to as a “mansion” hidden under your apartment, but to me it just felt like an abstract collection of random rooms that didn’t feel like a whole at all.
There is a non-verbal story going on about some giant creature destroying the “mansion” and some friendly bird creatures you meet who are trying to stop it. Again, I didn’t think it was bad, it just didn’t grab me.
As for the game itself, much of the game involves manipulating the (simple) movement of enemies so that they they can stand on switches for you. A lot of this also involves turning on lights, which turns enemies into furniture which you can move around.
The whole monsters turning into furniture thing felt like a play on seeing monsters in the dark which turns out just to be your dresser or something… which contributed to this feeling like a spooky book for kids.
The puzzles are a good difficulty… just hard enough to feel satisfying but and not brick wall you for too long.
The problem is, I just didn’t find the mechanics very interesting… it all felt too simplistic, and like I was playing a 00s Flash game with a budget.
At one point I figured out a puzzle, but failed in executing it due to some tight timing, and I thought… do I care enough to bother trying this again?
I decided no and I checked a longplay to see if things got more interesting later on and found out… a little, but not enough to make me want to spend another couple hours with this game.
So yeah. This isn’t a bad game, I just didn’t find it compelling at all. I’m sure other people will be more into it.
Is this game broken and janky and frankly a mess? Yes. Has the writing also aged badly in some respects? Also yes.
STILL FIVE OUTTA FIVE FOR ME, I love running around as a vampire in goth LA. The atmosphere, writing, less “hmm” characters, world, and gameplay when it WORKS all make it up to me. Ah, to be a goth again… sadly there is nothing sadder than a middle-aged goth unless you’re like, Trent Reznor or someone.
I guess I should play the sequel someday even though I know I’ll hate it, and not just because the publisher fired one of my friends back when it was looking like it could actually be good.
But I’m so desperate for another vampire imsim…
Oof, I bounced off this once hard. I appreciate how colourful it is, that it still has the Chuppa Chup branding, the music rules, they gave you more hit points and made it easier to regain them, and I like that they have a new sexy lady ninja ant, but everything else about this game sucks haarrdd and is worse than (the already mediocre at best) first game.
The level designs are huge and meandering, the controls feel rigid, you run way too fast, enemies attack from off-screen (with tiny bullets) leading to lots of unfair hits, there are tiny enemies you keep running into, enemies blend into the background, enemies rapidly respawn (they stayed dead even if you died in the original game), BUT the worst thing of all is that you need to collect a billion items before it lets you leave a level which suuccckkkssss. I’d probably like this a lot more if it just let me leave once I hit the exit, like in the first game.
An extremely mediocre 3D space shooter where the main highlight is the cheesy FMV scenes that are like a budget Battlestar Galatica, with the best scene being when someone dies via a self-inflicted wang shot.
The game itself is okay at best. They try to keep things varied by letting you change your loadout (rarely necessary), and they have space battles, planet surface battles, and you even get to pilot a mech sometimes, but the majority of missions are the same “kill all the enemies” variety (with the odd different objective here and there) and feel samey before long. There are a LOT of missions, too, but at least they’re short!
Oh, and the non-space battles have much worse draw distance on enemies which can be annoying.
Not terrible, but you’ll tire of it well before it ends.
UPDATE: I looked at the PC version which looks very different… there are some 3D levels but also pre-rendered Rebel Assault style levels? They were completely absent in the PSX version. Interesting!
SHORT VERSION: A run of the mill bowling game that relies on EXTREMELY 2000s edginess, this was decent enough for a budget title back in the day but there’s no reason to seek it out now.
LONG VERSION: A decent enough bowling game, the main selling point for this is the collection of oddball characters, such as a hot goth chick, a hot army chick, a hot biker chick, and a hot old lady. Well, maybe the last one isn’t so hot. Lots of boob bouncing going on, too. All the male characters are… MOSTLY inoffensive stereotypes, at least the ones I saw. So yes, this is an EXTREMELY 2000s game. The environments are a little creative, too.
Unfortunately, all the characters have like two or three quips each (at most), and they get repeated A LOT.
You can unlock new outfits and bowlers, and apparently there is a graveyard alley with zombies you can unlock at the very end, but I wasn’t interested in playing long enough to see that. One part of me wants to see if it actually plays different, but I really suspect it will just be a normal alley with different set dressing. EDIT: I looked up someone who played through the whole game, and yeah, it’s just a bowling alley but… in a graveyard, and the zombies are new “outfits” for the characters. Which is kinda cool.
One of the characters you unlock is clearly based on The Dude, except not nearly as cool.
Each of the characters have different strengths and weaknesses, and you can pick between different balls. The characters aren’t well balanced at all, especially the ones you unlock who are just generally better at everything. Like, The Dude is just best in every category, why play as anyone else?
It IS pretty funny how the old lady just plops her bowl along the alley, though.
It’s implied that different balls can modify your stats, but none of them do? Maybe they forgot to add that in. Or they ran out of time.
Once you get past the presentation, it really is just a run of the mill bowling game with no frills. Better than what we usually get from Midas, in that it’s an actual functioning game.
Interestingly, this was released as “Championship Bowling” for the Xbox in the USA… I wonder which version came first.
Some friends and I bought this for a buck, and then spent several hours flying around with jetpacks killing hordes of dinos together, one of the best dollars I’ve ever spent.
Objectively, it’s not particularly good, but it’s incredibly daft fun… especially for a buck!
