I tried it and got a big run going. I am playing on PC and it isn’t too bad. Kind of engaging actually but it still would be nice to have a sorting option. I can only imagine how bad it would be with controller or touch pad.
It’s a good sit back and watch a a video and eat some snacks with off-hand or focused distraction material. Definitely a bit time dangerous but we are having a cold and rainy spring so it’s not too bad for me right now.
I got a very, very, very cheap code of the Mortal Kombat Legacy Collection (I am not spelling that with a K, sorry) and naturally hopped in and did what I do in all MK games - try and pull off Fatalities in training mode.
Two things! One, the timing and inputs for some of these things are so fucked. Probably easier on a stick than a pad, but still some real contortionist shit and wild inputs. Two…they’re so quaint! Like, I know they were extreme for their time, but none of them are nauseating in the way latter day MK fatalities tend to be. Pretty sure they didn’t make underpaid interns look at accident photos and videos and get PTSD to do 'em, either.
It’s also kinda nice to actually play the arcade versions, after having played so much MK/MK2/UMK3 on Genesis as a kid. Always was paranoid of the no kids signs at the arcade, and stuck to Darkstalkers or whatever else there was back then.
Beat Tunic in that I got to the primary/maybe bad ending and it is amazing how little of the “deeper mysteries” and such you have to bother with to do so. I seemingly am two manual pages short of all of them but I am unsure I feel the need to dig in much further, I know for some people whatever is left is the main draw of the game but it feels so superfluous given that I already reach the/an ending.
I never had a feeling of unlocking hidden depths of puzzle when I played tunic and I 100%ed it. You aren’t missing anything, my experience of the game was just constant anticlimax, a feeling of “is that it?”
tunic is a little too fond of those secrets in landstalker and super mario rpg where you go behind the isometric scenery
Peter Jacobsen’s Golden Tee Golf (PS1)
A port of the Golden Tee Golf '97 arcade game; the PC version–and its demo, which I played for a recent episode–came out in '98, but this PS1 version, also by the arcade devs themselves, Incredible Technologies, didn’t make it out until 2000. But it DID come with double the number of courses (6).
(The back of the game case advertises “Exclusive Tournament Mode allows players to unlock special courses and features”; under Tournament mode, the manual says ‘The object is to score below the “stroke goal” for each course. If you can beat the course, you will unlock a mirror version that will be playable in other game modes.’ ‘p’ Then it lists the “stroke goals”: Pine Creek +2, Ridge E, Red Sands -2, Woodland Ridge -6, Pearl Bay -10, Canyon -15. ‘‘pp’’ But anyway in theory you can unlock mirror versions of the 6 courses.)
And rather than having to try simulating the arcade machines’ trackball control, the default controls here let you use simple button presses to set up your aim, hardly any quick timing required! It’s definitely different for any golf game but kinda nice; the puzzle comes in that you still don’t have fine horizontal aiming control, so you have to learn how to make small adjustments by hooking the ball.
The distance indicator on the mini-map shows the max range of your club WITH bounce–which upon reflection is probably how all golf games do it, hm that would explain why I sometimes “shoot short” into bunkers in other golf games! So yeah I gotta get used to that. ; D It just comes up a lot more here because these fantasy courses love to cut the fairway with water hazards.
Any amount of hook or slice or whatever cuts at least maybe 8 or 10% off your range, so you gotta figure that in.
The voice-overs are really great, from Jacobsen telling you uh you’re the greatest or something, out of the blue, to the whispers as you go for the hole, to the guy with the over-the-top Scottish(?) accent on the flyover description of the hole. Jacobsen’s number of random lines seem a bit limited so maybe even him telling you you’re the greatest or whatever will get old eventually, I dunno.
What’s also great here is that the game is in effect running in 16:10 anamorphic widescreen–and the 2D art for the early GT games was clearly created for 16:10, but the games ended up being squished into standard 4:3 arcade cabinets–so if your TV or whatever supports it, you can finally set GT97 to its artist-intended aspect ratio, rather than having to endure it squooshed into 4:3 like in the arcade or in the recent collection by Digital Eclipse. ‘p’ And of course it’s easy to set it to 16:10 in an emulator like DuckStation, which has an option for that aspect ratio.
I also like how if you crank up the internal resolution in DuckStation, the tree sprites in the distance, and on the mini-map, get super-detailed. = D
It’s not the best-playing golf game, it’s true; the kinda crude control, while way more to my liking than simulated trackballs, is still pretty limited, and for that matter so is the terrain. But finally in its proper aspect ratio, and with controls that don’t force you to pretend you’re using a trackball, the game is kind of different and weird enough to have a certain charm. … I think. I mean, I was running a little dry there by the end. (Oh, no pun intended, but I WAS on one of the desert courses there and I don’t really like how those look, I with Incredible Technologies hadn’t felt the need to make them 1/3rd of the courses in every game. ‘p’) We’ll see how long it takes for me to be tempted back to play through a course. ‘p’
I think for me it was all about the journey more than anything else. Finding and deciphering the various cryptic (and not so cryptic) clues, seeing the weird lore, translating the language , all of that is what carried me, and I still haven’t solved the final final puzzle (which as I understand unlocks a THIRD wave of stuff that I think you maybe access outside of the game?
Anyway, if you weren’t particularly enthralled getting there then I dunno if the remaining stuff will do any more for you but it’ll be there if you ever get curious again.
i didn’t get far at all in Tunic because i was so offended by how bad the combat was that i lost faith it could do anything that would interest me.
i’m not really sure why it had combat at all. what’s up with all these Metroidvanias with perfunctory combat? having a bunch of disparate systems to “add variety and depth” isn’t a design cheat code; it actually raises the bar because each of those systems needs to justify itself. otherwise you’re just playing a bad game every time it forces you to interact with the bad systems.
FWIW I think Tunic’s combat is at its worst early on which is a legit issue (I know multiple people who bounded off it early on because of it) and improves a bit once you get a shield and other options, but I don’t know that it is ever good enough to be the primary verb you interact with the game with.
I actually like the game map and all the poking around to find various chests and such you can’t normally see due to the camera view, I actually think the map/world construction is the strongest aspect of its surface design and is actively neat.
The actual for lack of a better term “cryptic” stuff is where it sorta loses me as it just sorta exists on its own, like the game doesn’t do a good job of justifying why I should bother beyond it just being there. I feel the faint need to get the last two manual pages as there is a reward for doing so and it’d perhaps open up something else, but in said manual there is sort of a checklist for 100% and various mysterious things around the world that I don’t understand the actual purpose of. I guess for some it simply existing is enough reason to go figure it out but I think the game drops the ball a bit in terms of justifying it in game, perhaps it does so once someone digs into it a certain degree. The couple odd bits I solved were rewarded with special chests that had random unexplained stuff inside that rewarded me with a Playstation trophy which doesn’t exactly intrigue me.
Tunic had combat because zelda had combat, and the combat had the standard measure of soulsian influence that a modern populist indie game is supposed to have to maximize engagement
yeah the latter part of your sentence is exactly why i felt offended and not just annoyed.
I “finished” Gothic II and by finished I mean that the final dungeon was so glitchy and janky that even with patches and debug mode, it didn’t feel worth it to see the final cutscene.
So the exact same thing that happened to me with Gothic. Still an incredibly charming game, I think the first 3rd is the strongest, as after a while it feels very repetitive. But damn figuring out how to play Gothic in a large city was so fun.
I do have Gothic III which many of you have told me is crapola, but i may boot it up to see whats up.
Thinking I will either chip away at the ultima games i bought years ago, or go back to my old friend, looking glass Immersive Sims
I played through this freeware game Tomb Raider: Side Scroller Edition. I was sort of expecting some kind of joke game like the Half-Pint map for Half-Life, but it was actually really good? This sorta slow-paced jumpin’ and clamberin’ works really well in 2D, it turns out. All the levels look really good, just this nice sequence of dioramas, and there’s none of the “where the f do I go” moments from the originals. I did quicksave after pretty much every platforming section tho, to keep things breezy…
Got an Eagle and and an Albatross in a 10-person game of Super Battle Golf, still finished in third, about 200 points behind the leader. Still a great time, and I hit four people at once with an ice cube launcher, sending at least one person hurtling off a several hundred-foot cliff.
For some reason I was always delighted by these, I just ate it up
Combat is there for friction so you feel like you’re on an adventure which is funny because it’s kinda just cosplaying Zelda 1 and Demons Souls and other “foreign weird things” which is maybe the most honest thing a weeb could do idk I have a vague memory of Toby Fox on train jam wearing a fox outfit so
I am unsurprised by any of this
it feels lazy/cynical to me. maybe i expect too much of game designers, but i at least expect the same of myself too.
since Derelict Star doesn’t have combat, i wanted something that would provide a similar amount of friction/emotional high to boss fights, so i just made it so you couldn’t use checkpoints when returning power cells to your ship.
it did not take long to come up with this idea – it fell out naturally from the premise of trying to emphasize the focus of the game, which is movement and exploration.
my game doesn’t have combat because it’s not at all necessary, and i haven’t received any feedback that claims it’s lacking or not deep/varied enough without it.
edit: i think i may have willed this into existence bc now i do have a negative review that does say the movement is not enough 
. but definitely a minority opinion, regardless.
Doing a kotor rerun.
Forcing myself through 1. I dont think I’ve ever managed a dark side playthrough ever. 2 planets down and now on korriban, still just slightly light side but will definitely kill carths son in front of him. Malak sucks as nearly as much as the party members. Will also side with the cannibal fish people as well.
Playing on switch but will need to switch to pc for 2. Will be nice to have party members that I’m not looking forward to killing.
I am finding Disaster Report (PS2) to be really charming. It’s slow and clunky so that it has a really interesting pace, though it doesn’t really demand much from me or create much challenge through its controls. I can imagine it being really engaging to drag a clunky character through really precarious environments like these, but so far I’m mostly just running. I have done a little bit of platforming, climbing vertically through across the floor of an office building that tilted over, which was surprising. So maybe they have more ideas up their sleeve later on. Either way, I am really enjoying the spectacle of it and its presentation.
I’ve played a little bit of Disaster Report 4, which apparently isn’t well received.
