Games you’ve played today: Fourteen by Kazuo Umezz

[username]

games you played today chronicles X: ten things I played about you

Just Platformer 100 [03_steam_icon] Get your triple-jumping seal pup up a series of platforms (not sure how high it goes = ooo). A precision platformer in a similar vein to LOVE 3 but jankier and cuter, and the stages–although they just keep flowing upward mostly seamlessly* so maybe you can’t call them stages exactly–are much more minimalistic and the puzzles much cleverer. I mean dang this is really good so far! [01_potions] The game sets new respawn points for…

So completing the cycle I ended up playing Just Platformer 100 thanks to @smbhax ‘s write-up here, which I think he only played because he saw me mention it in the random game topic. The write-up linked still stands so let me just say that despite its incredibly generic name and utterly basic look there’s an hour of solidly done platforming in there. It breaks down to five or so areas each built around a different mechanic but the core remains managing your jumps as you try to reach the next platform up and hence get a newer checkpoint and it manages that very well. There are some occasional bugs and an important mechanic is never even hinted at (although without it you’ll never get beyond the halfway point), it isn’t by any stretch essential but it’s good at what it does, thanks to smbhax for vouching for it!

Hopefully someday… (also let the record show that I finished it in like 54:47, the timer keeps running through the credits >_>)

[DaleNixon]

More Two Worlds.

There is unbelievable endearing jank in this game. I genuinely do love it.

I finally got the ability to resurrect things. I went back to the starter town and resurrected everyone I accidentally got murdered by aggroing the final boss in the first two minutes of the game.

They just got up and went back to their duties. Some even had new quests for me or gave me experiences for completing quests for them I didn’t even know I was doing!

When you put enough cold or fire or poison or spirit damage in a weapon, the numbers glitch out and stop going up. Rest assured, player, you can leave the inventory screen and come back to see the numbers have in fact gone up!

Breaking into someone’s wardrobe or treasure chest in their house right in front of them and stealing shit causes them to attack you, but if you jump on top of a barrel or other slightly higher than the ground structure, they’ll sheathe their weapon and immediately talk to you like nothing’s wrong. Then you can sell their stuff or use it to boost your weapons and armor. Sometimes back to them even!

I found a couple of dark tower areas with pentagrams and necromancers and shit that have sick looking necro mount undead horses you can ride. I’ll try to get a screenshot. Too bad the horses are so jank!

[vodselbt]

I am astounded by how interesting and complex the scenario of Knights of the Old Republic 2 - The Sith Lords is. It is so rife with mystery and intrigue. I am nearing the end, and I can tell that there are just so many ways this could have played out. There is something very interesting to me about how many actors in this conspiracy are drawing their enemies closer or out of hiding by letting themselves be captured, be taken as weak, etc. There are themes at work in this star wars story. For once it’s about a story about people instead of generic abstractions!

[vodselbt]

Also literally every part of this game that the broader internet thinks sucks I actually think is great. Peragus is awesome. And the droid factory is really cute too. I think I saw people say that it would take me 2-3 hours to complete, which I cannot comprehend being true for anyone; unless I don’t actually have the real content restored droid factory somehow?

Edit

Ah.. turns out I don’t. So I can’t really comment on M4-78’s quality.

Honestly my least favorite part of the game so far has been Nar Shadaar. And I say that even while I admire what is happening there, with you arriving to town and baiting your enemies to reveal themselves by making lots of commotion. It was just maybe a good deal too many cutscenes and character swap sequences for my liking. Still cool.

[Tulpa]

m4-78 “restored” is mostly an empty and interminable dungeon where you go from point a to point b over and over for 3 hours, with nothing engaging at all to keep your interest. It’s the main reason I stopped trusting “restored” mods

[iguferon]

m4-78 isn’t even part of the restored content mod it’s a separate addon you install with it specifically because it’s not nearly as finished as the hk factory so exists mainly as a what could of been thing

and the kotor 2 restored content mod is great, idk why anyone would hate on it, most of what’s restored actually is largely stuff they didn’t have time to put in. the only truly egregious thing is the terrible voice actor who appears in the dantooine ruins who can abscond with the lightsaber part you need if you pick the wrong dialogue option and it’s mostly because her va is so placeholdery it’s jarring

the hk factory is disliked because it really depends on your tolerance for listening to the same guy talking to himself for an hour

[vodselbt]

Oh you mean the baby-voiced padawan?

[iguferon]

yes lol

[daphaknee]

the way they knew that factory part was boring and unfinished so its like an add-on for the restored content mod instead of being there by default is so nice actually. ive played kotor2 so many times and have never done the long factory part ever. the other reason most people hate it is because no one (rightfully) puts hk47 in their party, so by the time theyre forced to use him there he has dogshit everything and surprise! hes your main guy for three hours

oh wait im getting my factories mixed up. look, im a factory avoider period. they let you skip the hk one if you dont use hk in your party and the droid shit hell factory doesnt come in the content mod by default. i am sorry. i hate factories

also that blue lady stole my lightsaber part last time i played even though ive played so many times, being able to be locked out of LIGHTSABERS that early and easily is diabolical

[daphaknee]

@vodselbt

Nar Shadaar.

its really hard to get excited for parking garage world, at least theres good pazaak

[Tulpa]

I was only talking about the m4-78 “restored” mod

[Rudie]

@Rudie

I can feel every cutscene of Sonic Unleashed making me stupider. It’s worse than a cartoon for 7 dollars at super market check out.

Okay look I fucking love Sonic. This game is absolute trash. It is a character action game for 8 year olds except the jump sucks. It has NPCs for no reason. It is about the world being broken apart by Eggman to release Dark Gaia and also Sonic is a werehog. Then I have to replay levels to try and find coins and I just start crying. You collect so much shit. Vinyl Records and Books (but you need a bookshelf to view them) and VHS tapes. I still have no idea where you use these items. Or why I can buy fruit. Why do I get missions from an Italian American Hot Dog Vendor?

The World Map is truly horrid.

I’m having a great time because my friends are with me. And my best friend, Sonic The Hedgehog.

[hellojed]

Finished Star Fox Assault in one marathon session this evening in a discord Voice Chat. Thankfully a bunch of people showed up to provide moral support because the game goes from A Kids Game to Fuck You Here’s 10000 Targets firing at you at once. The game shifts from Panzer Dragoon Orta to Earth Defense Force. You have to traverse sprawling bases and levels with multiple stages, and the default Arwing lazer is incredibly wimpy so it’s very slow going until you can find an upgrade.

One ground mission has you at the old Dinosaur Planet, which means that Star Fox Adventures is canon. In this mission you have a bunch of ground targets you have to get but also your wingmen will get attacked, or a lot of air enemies will show up, so you have to get to your arwing and do some air battle stuff for a while until the heat dies down, then go back to ground level and keep blasting. It feels like it’d be dynamic, but there’s no downtime - it’s all pretty intense.

Worse is the pop in, your team mates will be getting attacked and will be right ahead of you but won’t render until they’re a lot closer, so you are basically flying towards nothing and having to shoot at nothing half the time until you get way up close. It’s very annoying.

One mission which is right before you enter the infected planet took me 30 minutes. The map is huge. all the targets are spread out, and each one is it’s own little maze and combat encounter. It feels so padded out. I was using the sniper to one shot targets because it takes so long to wear enemies down. Everything feels like a bullet sponge. The machine gun is really fun to use but some enemies have shields and so you can’t just waste everyone. The game smartly gives you hallways filled with trash mobs for you to waste though - this is important game design.

During the call people in chat kept finding Star Fox comic panels from the 1991 comic and I wanted to ditch the game and read it! but not until i finished the game, reading the comic would be my reward. Look at how sick this shit is

Anyway. Star Fox teams up with Wolf in this game. It’s really hot, or would be if I wasn’t totally thrashed.

this angle on Falco is insane. Anyway the whole reason this game got on my radar was someone

Anyway this game has a lot of sacrificing. There’s an evil alien Flood-like that is infecting the galaxy. General Pepper gets infected and you have to blow up his mech while he’s trapped inside and begging you to end his life. The Great Fox gets infected and Peppy sacrifices himself. Wild stuff

You blast your way to the center of the evil alien planet and kill the queen. a 3 stage boss fight. But before that is an endless maze filled with enemies. I died so many times, and I had to restart with the single laser, which made boss battles so much longer. I got to the final stage of the final boss with a sliver of health left and I died. So I stopped the program and…FOUND SOME CHEATS. I also found a cheat for a turbo button because I was so tired from mashing the A button for hours on end (yes, there is no automatic fire!)

The alien force or whatever is a hivemind type deal and star fox’s dad tries to talk you into surrendering to the void

Finally there’s a whole-ass Sin-And-Punishment bossfight in a tunnel

Thats a wrap on Star Fox Assault.

[tacotaskforce]

@hellojed

I also found a cheat for a turbo button because I was so tired from mashing the A button for hours on end (yes, there is no automatic fire!)

From what I remember of Star Fox 64 one press of the shoot button will fire 3 volleys before starting to charge the homing shot. That way you can tap the fire button with a rhythm to maintain max uptime without having to mash out every shot. Did they make 1 press = 1 shot in Assault?

[hellojed]

I don’t remember. I think it’s one shot one press.

[hellojed]

One thing I didn’t like was that a lot of air combat games will not let you do loops or invert, and Star Fox Assault won’t even let you do that in space, so it makes positioning yourself really hard.

They really tried padding the game out, with massive sprawling levels and making the enemies bullet sponges, but by the end it becomes a real slog.

These levels must not have been easy to design since you have to have space for Sky, Ground, and On-Foot sections. They also double as multiplayer spaces.

I could see this game having a great co-op mode. Someone’s in a tank, someone’s in an arwing, you have multiple enemy waves. But that’s Earth Defense Force.

Parts of the soundtrack reminded me of olde Anime Space Opera Sci-Fi which was cool, made me wish the game were a little more longer.

[jujotech]

I can also vouch for Just Platformer 100! It’s a great little game, classic style of lone dev short indie puzzplatformer, could have been a flash game twenty years ago, that I’m very happy to see is still being made in a sea of roguedeck buildlike soulsuck.

[Rudie]

I finished Metroid: Rogue Dawn which rocked. It is a romhack of the NES game. Several times I mutter exclaimations to myself about its quality. The denseness of the world is so impressive.

It is basically a different game but like many many romhacks you should have played Metroid before you play it because it is Metroid, barely. I could make a grand claim it is a top tier NES game except several of the design decisions (in that it is tightly design and thoughtful) means it is not a NES game. The way the game leads the player to correct paths is World Class.

They do just enough with the barebones story that you are an evil maybe clone of Samsung Alan and have to capture a Metroid. How they hacked in SM Wall Jumping into here I do not know. It is really really good!

Because of the dense-ness of the world I do recommend playing it in as few sessions as close to each other as possible. Even with a brillant in game map it would be very easy to forget where you have and have not been or forget that the game world loops for the player’s convinence and not for exploration.

also thank you save states so I could avoid the frustation of 3 sicko You Only Got One Shot.

And again world class environment design. Some of the best to ever do it on NES.

[Iammadmak]

Played Fallout 76 for the first time in years, never got far into it but it is nice to roam a wasteland.

[hellojed]

Rogue Squadron 2 is apparently really hard to emulate on Dolphin, and I can see why, the game still looks really amazing.