one of my main annoyances with tunic was sometimes it was just hard to tell when the line crosses the path, and when you’re doing so many inputs, it can be tough to tell if you made a mistake, just read it wrong, or misunderstood the solution
Still love it though, but this kinda gave me some anxiety
FWIW the one I went back to that sort of showed me what this specific aspect of the game was the one fairy that is hidden behind a room where you see one enemy knight walking around an unreachable room in a specific pattern, I tapped in said pattern the second time I went there as I watched him do it and nothing happened. The good news is this way I did the weird homing three light deal first so I knew to associate the two but I could have been making progress on these for a good bit as opposed to having to track them all down now.
I finished my playthrough of the first semi-official Starcraft expansion, Insurrection. I journaled the whole thing on my site if you want to read level-by-level thoughts.
The gist, though? Feels like they were actively learning to make maps over the course of the expansion. The Terran campaign is full of pure dogshit - huge maps with bad layouts, miserable objectives. The Protoss campaign fares a little better, but relies too much on “starting a level with your units already under attack”, and is also kinda Terran campaign 1.5.
The Zerg campaign is dope, though. Feels like a much more mature design compared to the previous two, and does away with the narrative which didn’t flow and had plot threads go randomly missing. Best of all I got to use an overpowered zergling named Devours Children to obliterate Terran bases single-handedly.
All I have left now is Retribution, which will get the same journaling treatment. And then it’s on to Warcraft 3.
finished death stranding 2, the chunk immediately before the kinda linear several hours of Kojima Ending stuff where you have most of the map and all of the tools was great fun
then a quick run through rondo of blood, i oscillate between rondo and bloodlines re: “best castlevania” but definitely on a rondo kick at the moment
baldur’s gate iii is so superb, yo
i haven’t thought of it lots in a while, but that game was one of those special Moments that happen so rarely since the dreamcast died, where a game managed to be so uncompromisingly Itself that the act of engaging with it changed, enhanced my brain chemistry
i never actually finished the main campaign
i got to just before things began to wrap up, and emotionally i didn’t feel able to continue
i know there’s a godzillian of paths and endings, but to the campaign where i’d invested hundreds of rapt transcenent hours, there was but a single finality
rather, i started over with a new tav strikingly similar to my original tav but physically and psychologically wizened by the journey of my first campaign—a telltale scar here, an attitude change there, an according shift in perspective and priority and behavior
it became a matured what-if scenario
that campaign only made it a fraction as far as my prime tav’s (only just, maybe, to act 2… ish) before sf6 fell in my lap and totally diverted my center of focus—right around when long covid was making it hard for me to concentrate on anything that wasn’t happening immediately in that moment
sf6, i also consider miraculous—for different reasons, but there is a striking amount of overlap with bg3, at least in the abstract
sf6 is more literally just the kind of game the dreamcast served to explore, with a touch of that mid-late 2000s deconstructionist eye (pac-man ce; gradius v; outrun2)
every game that kenta cho ever wrote
it’s also given this classical cranky kof fujoshi here a window to finally appreciate the street fighter dev/design history, expressive intent, and mythos i had written off for 30 years—and through that, catalyzed a broader fae obsessive investment in the granular cosmology of other non-snk versus fighters
bg3 tho—
whore of lore, there’s a handful of creative works i can call pivotal to the development of some part of the person i am and want to be
diane duane’s so you want to be a wizard; susan cooper’s the dark is rising cycle; david macaulay’s motel of the mysteries; nick bantock’s griffin & sabine; barks & rosa’s collective Duck universe; trent reznor’s the downward spiral; the marx bros.’ a night at the opera; charlie kaufman’s adaptation; studio pierrot et al’s the mysterious cities of gold; rebecca sugar & co’s steven universe; sega’s phantasy star ii
baldur’s gate iii is easily one of them
I have a ridiculously long save in Football Manager that I started in FM24 and carried over to FM26. How long has it been going on?
Well, I’m in 2084, that’s how long.
I started in Japan, won a bunch of stuff (although not the AFC Champion’s League because I kept running into Saudi/UAE teams who had insanely good old top-level Euro players in their squads) and then moved to Europe to take over Union Berlin, who were struggling at the bottom of the Bundesliga.
We’ve ah…won the last 40 league titles in a row after winning our first title in the late 30s? We’ve passed Bayern for most Bundesliga wins. We’ve passed Real Madrid for the most UEFA Champion’s League wins. Why am I still doing this? Well, it’s a bit of a comfort food thing really, the little motions of playing the game are like subconscious at this point and it’s also not easy enough that I can totally check out – we’ve gone out in the Round of 16 and the QFs of the last two Champion’s League.
I’ve recently rejiggered my tactical setup this year as I was previously trying to go for controlling games, keeping the other team at bay by holding the ball and methodically picking them apart. The issue with this style of approach is if the other team scores first (possibly because, hypothetically, your keeper is in the habit of just throwing the ball in the net whenever it comes near him or your defenders are collectively a bunch of psychopaths who enjoy giving away penalties for fun) they can just create three lines of defenders right on top of their penalty area and are perfectly happy to let you tap the ball around between your defenders. So I needed to hike up my pants and wade into the FM26 tactical system.
Now, tactics in FM24 looked like this:
Whereas FM26 tactics look like this:
Having the ability to set both In-Possession shape/roles and Out-of-Possession shape/roles is actually really cool. You can do some really silly stuff with it, and I appreciate that. However, you can see a bunch of the UX problems that FM26 has here by comparison, instead of seeing most of a tactic (Player Instructions are buried away in both situations) in one easy block, it’s three different screens. And it’s two to three clicks from the main tactic screen to get to the Team Instructions.
Some notes about the lineup there, this is for a home game against Hertha Berlin, our hated rivals, who we haven’t lost to in like, twenty years (everybody involved in that game was flogged and paraded in shame around the Brandenburg Gate). You may note the only difference between IP and OOP is that the right defender plays really aggressively when we have the ball, stepping up a line from the defense and getting forward as often as possible. My regular starter is exhausted, so instead I’m playing Petrov, a petulant Ukrainian teenager who last week: came on in a game we were shamefully losing to Hoffenheim, put in a 6.2 rating (6.7 is ‘average’), then came to me after the game demanding a new contract to reflect his new playing time, then threw a fit when I rejected that notion, resulting to him being demoted to Union Berlin II, who play in the 3.Bundesliga. I was planning to sell him in January when the transfer window opens again; however, I needed him for this game, Hertha are an absolute mess of a yo-yo club that have been relegated three times in in the last eight years, and he should be able to just, you know, not fuck up, like you did last week, Evgeny.
So of course he waltzes into the Hertha penalty area ten minutes into the game, receives a neat slide-rule pass from Schwaebe cutting in from the right wing, and roofs a shot into the top of the net. Well-played, kid.
The rest of the lineup is a little scuffed as well. The LB (who pinches inside when we have the ball to create a wide back three with the two CBs) is our backup, as the starter is suspended because of accumulating too many yellow cards. Like the starting RB, our starting right CM is also exhausted, so we’re playing a half-fit backup in Arnal, our starting left CM hurt himself in training the day before the game, so the usual starting RW has been shifted there, so we had to bring in Schwaebe. And the starting striker got injured on international duty with South Africa and while my fitness coaches think he could make it for 75 minutes of the game if we needed, I don’t want to risk further injury and instead have opted for Cruz, a brick shithouse of a Colombian who I’m also training to play in central midfield. He winds up stabbing home from close range in the 20th minute, so I feel justified in that choice.
You may be able to tell from the screenshots that the new system is…a tad more aggressive. If we’re going to leak goals, we might as well try and score as many as we can.
EMERGENCY PHONE GAME POST
we’re snow back gooners
Snowbreak is back an-
oh. oh. damn.
you ever open a pantry you swear you just stocked and it’s fucking empty
the game’s archive/index thing where you can look at all sorts of character and world stuff and is a pretty common gacha game feature is currently gone because they’re still making a censor pass on all that
a lot of skins are gone. a lot of (paid!) interactive scenes are gone. the new animations they just added for flavor in the character management screen were apparently too horny. you used to be able to view models and that’s gone because apparently looking lovingly at butts was too much.
DO YOU LIKE HOTPANTS OR SPATS? EVERYONE HAS HOTPANTS OR SPATS NOW.
also there’s more sleeves now? are arms that sexy? are they trying to block pits?
random example because I have proof: Tempest used to bare more when you built up her mechanic meter
she’s a bit more chaste now
hey, as an upside the daughter-wife Eatchel finally got a bra. good for her.
the game part is still the same. glad to have it back. I don’t think the game (product) survives this unless they pivot hard to feet. I mean, harder to feet. they had already pivoted to feet.
anyway I’m just counting the days until end of service now
I think I may be over leveled in my run of Earthbound I’m doing. I just got to master belch and I killed him on turn one. I didn’t even get to use the fly honey on him. I shot a big bottle rocket at him and then hit him with PSI Pissin and that was it
sounds like a bottle rocket working as intended
I keep hearing glowing recommendations so I’ve finally gotten around to starting to play Dragon Quest 3. First I bounced off the NES version (the input lag made me flip out like Jonathan Blow) and then the SNES version (the garishly detailed art doesn’t work for me), but it turns out the Game Boy Color version hits the sweet spot
In the SNES and GBC versions, there’s a “personality” assignment system that affects each party member’s stat growth, and I found it peculiarly anxiety-inducing. Before the main story begins, in order to determine your hero’s personality type, some kind of mysterious invisible god asks you your real name and birthday, gives you a multiple-choice quiz, then makes you play through a brief & morally freighted scenario in a pocket universe. It reminded me of the Star Trek TNG episodes where the jester god Q teleports Jean-Luc Picard into staged scenarios to make prove his worth not just as a captain but as a human being.
This time round, I got the scenario where I’m a loyal soldier to a king and I happen to overhear him scheming to create a pretext to attack the neighboring kingdom to seize their resources. Naturally, I made the choice of trusting my own judgment and refusing to obey the king’s order to go to war. Then the pocket universe disappeared and the divine voice started lecturing me on my personality type. He/she/it said I act kind and ethical outwardly, but really I think I’m smarter than everyone else. People aren’t as dumb as I think and they actually pick up on that. They even pick up on the slightly mercenary attitude that I cloak in my do-gooding. Wow. I felt personally attacked. Anyway my personality type has a 130% INT statgrowth bonus so I’m pretty happy with it.
Having a day-night cycle with tougher monster encounters at night first struck me as “sure, one of those, more tension on long overworld trips I guess” but then the really cool moment was when I got back to town and all the NPCs were totally reconfigured and had different dialogue.
Then, the first dungeon felt special in how thoughtfully it was enmeshed in the overworld. It started as a cave that goes under a strait to to the foundations of an ancient tower, and then you have to journey to the top of the tower. In the underground portion, there are sidepaths leading to two additional cleverly hidden exit spots on the world map. And in the aboveground portion, the way you can at any time exit to the overworld by (intentionally or not) falling off the side of the tower made it feel palpably exposed.
That’s a gorgeous screenshot. How did you take it?
Trying to find a video pinball table I can vibe with. Reinstalled Pinball FX after a few years and narrowed down my 31 purchased tables to–oh one I don’t even own but it’s letting me play in a 24 hr pass or something which is something they meant to phase out 2 years ago but apparently still happens randomly as a bug. ; D (There are still silly bugs around like I locked my controls double-mapping a flipper, which you aren’t even supposed to be able to do haha sheesh.)
Anyway the one table is The Addams Family whose left side I always found too forbidding–but where I’m maybe finding some possibilities–and whose big white conical flashing lights threaten my dumb old eyes. Found if I lower the gamma to minimum it might be bearable (given my usual this probably makes it worse but no migraine yet haha).
Also important seems to be cranking the table music as loud as possible. ^ _^
Oh it seemed silly to have to go through the horribly spammy main menu to get to launching just one table and I was wishing there was a way to launch to a table directly from a shortcut icon and wouldn’t you know, there is–something they implemented to help support peoples’ virtual table set-ups or something I guess. Anyway it’s a command line thing like
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steam.exe" -applaunch 2328760 -table [tableid] -GameMode Pro -Physics Realisticalthough I don’t think you need the -Physics parameter actually since each mode seems fixed to a single physics type now, so probably just
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steam.exe" -applaunch 2328760 -table [tableid] -GameMode ProSo that’s nice. And there’s an Nvidia Reflex option now to possibly reduce input lag I guess; it doesn’t seem to have made anything worse so far, anyway (although input lag wasn’t bad even 2 years ago with vsync off).
The Williams table IDs are
AfM – 119
BK2K – 190
BR – 118
BR – 188
CV – 127
CftBL – 131
DDaHER – 135
ES – 189
EatPM – 197
FH – 134
HC – 126
IJtPA – 133
JY – 110
MB – 130
MM – 109
NGG – 128
PB – 194
RaTRS – 125
SC – 122
SS – 198
STtNG – 163
SoF - 149
SpS – 129
TAF – 156
TCP – 121
TGHS2 – 111
TMBoP – 148
TPZ – 120
TX – 196
TZ – 162
ToM – 117
TotAN – 132
WCS – 157
WW – 124
Ww – 168
Wd – 195
The pinball game I’ve probably logged the most hours in is Pro Pinball: The Web for the Saturn.
I pressed F12 in the Steam version of Retroarch in 4k with the built-in handheld/gameboy-color-dot-matrix.slangp shader preset.
To be honest, my memory of how the gameboy actually looked has been so overwritten by now that I have no idea if this shader is actually authentic or not, and in a way it can’t be because it’s blown up to a 32 inch monitor, but I liked the faded mosaic look a lot anyway. At times (like with pixelated water ripples) it also reminds me of a Game of Life grid. It’s almost the antithesis of a CRT shader, in that it’s all about emphasizing the squarish separateness of each pixel instead of making them bleed together.
Ooh didn’t come out for Japanese Saturn, huh. I’ve owned the PS1 version. It was okay. Feels slow and floaty now after Pinball FX’s “Pro” mode with its extra playfield tilt, but so does nearly everything. I think I ended up liking it more than the others in the series.
Oh hm I haven’t tried the updated Timeshock
which has apparently been abandoned more or less. Hm.
Tried out Pro Pinball Ultra. After installing from Steam it asks you to make an account to share high scores but you can’t because the server is down. Then it makes you download another 6xx MB to get to the main menu. Control mapping to my DualSense didn’t really work. I made a DS4Windows profile mapping the default keyboard keys–of which there are a surprising amount–to my controller instead.
It then makes you download another 6xx MB to get from the main menu to the table (if their DL server ever goes down I guess the game just won’t work at all for fresh installs…). The table is hi-res Pro Pinball: Timeshock. There’s an operator’s menu with various adjustments but you can’t increase the table angle. It plays okay but it’s always been a kinda bland and generic table and still is. Graphically it looks nice and you can adjust various lighting sliders if you want.
I’m asking Steam to refund it though.
Hmmmmmmmmm I love the DQ3 personality quiz but I’m starting to suspect part of why it’s effective is the liberal in us loving the personal attack out of left field, and the quiz is actually often just trying to pass plain old conservatism (→ do not question your king) as wisdom
Relatedly, for a while I ran a page where people could rank the digital versions of pinball tables in The Pinball Arcade–this was in the PS4 era. The final rankings I recorded in the forum thread about it The Pinball Arcade table ratings | Digital Pinball Fans were
Pinball FX ended up taking over the license to do Bally/Midway/Williams digital conversions.
