Gitaroo Man in a one-r to the camp fire scene.
Surely they must have made this easier? Was always a fussy game and now with added input lag
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A post was merged into an existing topic: daphnys radioactive inclusion zone
Kane And Lynch 2 is relentlessly unpleasent but on purpose rather than due to jank or anything else. I keep thinking about how it’s doing things that, say, The Last Of Us wouldn’t do. Every firefight is a disorganized mess, an absolute disaster. You are not a Tier 1 Operator you’re a middle aged naked man who’s been cut up with a box knife and woke up in a dumpster. The idea of the game camera not just being a physical object but a character unto itself is really interesting - when you sprint in the game the camera shake makes you genuinely nauseous. There’s that scene in the car on the highway, and the camera is pointed up so Glazer doesn’t see it, it feels so sneaky.
Then there’s the music, I can’t remember a game where ambient cheerful restaurant or shop music plays while so much violence happens. This is actually how trauma feels for me, I’m in a shop or whatever and imagining the worst things happening while the shop music plays in the backround, and Kane and Lynch 2 are actually presenting it. Characters are allowed to express emotion, the banter between the two protagonists is funny, tragic, and reflects the deep exhaustion and pain both are going through. I can count on one hand the number of AAA games with dialog that isn’t cringey (at best).
The use of the mosaic filter to hide nudity/gore somehow amplifies it. Like you shouldn’t be looking at it but you know it’s there.
Anyway, if I ever resurrect my 3rd person shooter it’s going to borrow liberally from Kane and Lynch 2.
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Kane and Lynch 2 is in the can and holy shit I can’t think of a game where my own frustration at the relentless and endless waves of enemies and dying over and over was also reflected by the game characters themselves, who are so so over this shit. Me too Lynch! I was really starting to get very nasty and angry at the enemy NPCs in my way.
I do like how they finally get to the big gangster guy and because all the windows are blown out you can’t hear a word he says, and then he gets shot and the level ends.
The start of the final level is a really nice callback to Heat’s final scene. It’s calm, and open, and quiet. Kane and Lynch are in real clothes again. I had to keep replaying the very last encounter because I would either die at the bottom of the stairs into the plane, or once the game glitched out and kane and lynch were standing there while the plane took off and a far off enemy poured bullets into their indifferent bodies. But finally I got to the very end.
Unlike Kane and Lynch 1, I feel like this game understood what worked for it’s cover and fire system, and built the levels and art around man-made structures. It also kept areas small and I felt like that let them make the game very detailed and taught. There wasn’t really a lull or a feeling like the game went on for too long. A lot of people scoff at a AAA game’s campaign only being 3 hours but that is almost the right amount of time.
I think it’s weapon system is a lot better. Being able to reload is nice. The inclusion of a lot more guns, some of which are actually accurate, is nice too. When you get the machine gun you feel like a fucking god and it’s feels so good to just rip half a magazine into a bunch of cubicles and computers. I had to switch to mouse and keyboard near the end because a controller does not have the reflex and accuracy needed to get through some parts.
It kills me that despite the camera being handheld and moving around so much, the shots are actually composed and framed correctly.
An oppressive, claustrophobic, and nihilistic game unlike anything else. AAA will never make anything like this again because AAA is almost dead. I am interested in visiting Shanghai because I played this game.
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My friend played the helicopter level with me on PS3 on a crt with the world’s shittiest built in speakers and I genuinely wish I had a recording of the audio soundscape of that level.
Maybe the most sublime thing I’ve ever experienced in a game. Now I know what the cameraman was hearing standing behind them inside the chopper.
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Landstalker continues through the dwarf village and into the mountains and lake district. Its upping the verticality and increasing the difficulty of jumping puzzles. the hardest stuff from the last cave is now the easiest in the lake shrine. The level design is starting to activity fuck with me, misdirecting via false infrence. Im doing things that feel like sequence breaking to clear ordinary rooms. I check a play through and yeah thats how its done. (But despite finding a ton of secrets the long player has like 8 more hearts than I do!?!?) I love that the designers were willing to be this mean.
The new shoes I got via an optional boss are sick.
The layout of the island is featuring more and more loop backs that feel clever.
So far despite a lack of graphical differences every dungeon, shrine, cave, crypt, mine… has had a distinct feel and while there is a game loop of sorts its a lot looser than I’m used to. It results in a really varried yet cohesive feeling game its regular in its irregularity. It stays fresh.
I also love that Im always short on cash. In any zelda at this point I’d be so loaded money would be meaningless. Another nice zelda difference is having 50+ hearts and anything that would have been a heart piece is just a full extra heart here. Heart peices are also your measure of attack strength. Its efficient and makes a secret found that much more of a Tah-Dah moment.
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After years of false starts I finally finished the Santa Fortuna level from Hitman 2. I don’t know why that one killed my Hitman momentum so hard. It’s a good level, but perhaps more sprawling or less intuitive to navigate than most others? Three targets is a lot.
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Steam NextFest making me sick. Everyone is so nostalgic.
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yeah i’ve played a bunch of demos (will post more impressions later) and i’ve been getting that feeling too a little bit, it really bums me out.
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it’s only increased my conviction that I could at least improve a little part of the world by following through with my idea to make the video game adaptation of the Don DeLillo novelization of Disaster Report
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I would play White Noise for the Sony PlayStation 2
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Video games have too many Ratner’s Star’s and not enough Libra’s.
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To actually be on topic for once in my life I had a big smile on my face the entire time playing the demo of Mindwave even if i’m at least a decade older than the target demographic.
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beat the The Legend of Zelda for the first time in 20 odd years, about 60-90 minutes a night-ish over 12 days before bed. I recalled things like having to use the bait on that enemy in the dungeon and using the whistle on the fountain (back in college I probably peeked at gamefaqs) etc. but mostly, using nothing but the instruction manual this time, it was fresh, as exemplified by the fact that I spent a lot of time scouring the overworld before realising I had missed the raft in dungeon 3 
but that did beef me up quite a bit and inscribe the overworld on my brain more (I was too lazy to make a map which woulda been useful, just wrote down the NPC hints) and if I feel I’m in good hands re: action and world design, I quite enjoy wandering and poking and getting lost and trial and erroring. this makes an adventure for me and I did go into this seeking some kind of spiritual companionship while working on my own level design, hoping for some of that Metroid resonance I got a few years ago. I got it!
I know, just browsing through backloggd/reddit/whatever that the “obtuseness/directionlessness” of these games makes them unpleasantly archaic for many game players but I find it a much more endearing conversation to have with a game than one where the bombable spots are telegraphed, like where’s the fun and mystery in that!? my tolerance for that kind of (to me) condescension evaporates as time goes on (and the potential for these spots are clear in dungeons (even more clearly ah-ha’d with map in hand) while less so in the overworld but like with Metroid, you get a sense of the pixel possibilities, sense > sign)). also I like the absence of tall grass which encourages compulsive mowing. here you need to risk going toe-to-toe with baddies for resources, much more tension and weight to that. also I like that heart containers give you a whole heart and I’ve been ruminating on the line between “treasure hunt” and “collect-a-thon” and I know which side I want to fall on…
some screen GIFs (hidden for flashing lights)
I think the only thing that made me sour was around dungeon 8 and certainly dungeon 9, like Metroid was a challenge but I don’t remember anything quite as cruel (maybe Mother Brain?) as being thrown into a room with like 6 Wizzrobes warping around shooting at you while a bunch of Bubbles are threatening to disable your attack…or anytime I have to deal with a room full of Darknuts (I’ll admit maybe I suck at positioning Link under pressure)…it’s so mean! Like-Likes are a funny kind of mean though, I only got got once…and this is just plain funny:
now…I don’t really stand behind my next impression, but it was an impression. I didn’t need to go to bed right away after beating the game so I thought, “Why not boot up Link’s Awakening?” and after conditioning my taste buds to savor the spartan deliciousness of a cold glass of water with a single lemon wedge, it was like taking a gulp of sugar water that is more sugar than water. I’ve long held that this is my favourite Zelda! but everyone’s quipping so much and Link is all cute and bouncy and there are Mario characters and…I am not kicking it off the top of my list now but it was just a lot more fluffy coming off of TLoZ. then I booted up The Adventure of Link (actually it was my plan to play that one first and get more than halfway through (all I’ve previously managed)) and felt relieved again while also getting my ass handed to me. I will beat that game some day! maybe soon. or maybe I’m Zelda’d out right now. bottom line, shocker: The Legend of Zelda is a good game!
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basically a game i definitely didn’t play today but i technically played it so it is not a definitely:
consider getting into ff9. install ff9 and the moguri mod on my steam deck. talk with my gf about ai. play some ff9 with the 2020 version of the background mod. get to a point in alexandria castle where i remember the eerie crawly effects of early gen ai stuff and why i stopped playing ff9 with the mod the first time. put ff9 on my anbernic handheld and look for a decent crt filter. it works and i like it. i wasted time being curious but i will never stop wasting my time being curious. i will die twiddling
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I played some Skate Story. Which made me roll my eyes at its word-salad hell-demon-eyes-skateboard Eat The Moon plot. The on rails sections aren’t great either.
But every once in a while it backs off and you’re playing abstract strange Tony Hawk with a smooth jazz sax soundtrack. And I thought “VIDEO GAMES.”
I love that every skateboarding game has to invent a new control scheme. Its a tradition at this point.
It was a Plus game so trying it was easy, actually buying and playing to the end, I’m not sure. I think I would click with and be annoyed by it in equal measure.
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