basically any game I hear about him complaining about goes instantly on my list. Leap Year? Derelict Star? Now this? Great. Gimme
Meanwhile I’m finishing up Lies of P, which I both feel like I want to get over with, but also don’t want to let Gepetto win so I’m not just skipping the final fight, if that is indeed what happens. I feel like ultimately it’s a good soulslike game but something about it keeps it from being as great in my mind as many of the souls games. A little bit is the linearity, a little is that it doesn’t have the weirdness and mystery of the FROM games, a little bit is that it has some pretty messy hitboxes, and a little bit is that it feels like it went on a bit too long. The peak for me is mostly when a weird monster also merges with a puppet body to have some absurd combination of monster and puppet movements.
I’m glad I played it but I’ll be happy to put it behind me, and I doubt I’ll replay it anywhere near as much as any of the souls games. But I might replay it someday - there’s a solid core in it and I also didn’t find everything so that will always drive me at least a little.
I was one of those who liked the prior game (and got it in one of said giant itch bundles) and was looking forward to trying this demo… and they somehow completely busted the steam input with playstation controllers and never got around to fixing it in said demo :\
Quick thoughts on some games I played recently.
Bumpy Grumpy: A classic arcade throwback from the mad lads at Mommy’s Best Games. You basically have to dodge your way through traffic as fast as you can, each of the twelve areas introduces its own new enemy/obstacle (well I think the last one just throws everything at you) and once you get used to it it is basically managing speed/danger as best you can as more points = more lives, and you likely need said lives. I got all three endings in just over 45 minutes and there isn’t so much strategic depth to make going for high scores interesting for its own sake IMHO but it was a good type of arcade fun while it lasted.
Chessformer: Chess themed puzzle platformer where you gotta take out the king (obviously), it had enough puzzle variety to last the 90 minutes it takes to work one’s way through but it is very much one of those games that is missing something to elevate it beyond just fine. It feels mean to say but it has a very cheap feeling as well, it’s not like chess pieces need elaborate animations but it basically looks identical throughout and the feel is just kinda functional. Still like the idea at least.
Path to Mnemosyne: An old random game names game I finally got around to, I had to try it because of its odd infinite scrolling world/aesthetic. It was worth it because of said aesthetic; the actual puzzles included to spread them out were pretty generic and nothing to write home about. Kinda what I expected and hence hard to recommend playing it over just looking at it, but hey look at it.
ChromaGun: Paint-based Portal-like, what struck me isn’t how they didn’t seem to have a good grasp on second level puzzle design (i.e. puzzle design wasn’t particularly deep/tricky) but how the demo for the second seemed much stronger. Good to see that they at least appeared to learn something from the first go around.
I played the itch.io Act 1 of this, years ago. I remember being positive about it and unsure if I would play more and had a real confused moment trying to figure out what this demo was in relation to that. I should check it out because I have no actual memories of playing it!
I got to the last level of Nubby’s Number World and LOST because I did TOO GOOD a few levels back, which is maddening. I didn’t quite get an infinite combo, but it was pretty intense. I’m…not entirely sure how it worked, but my intuition did not steer me wrong. Switching two items in the order helped and, again, I’m not entirely sure why. My brain just delivered that to me without explanation
I’m done with this game as soon as I beat the boss though, I do not need to pull the arm on the slot machine for every supervisor. It’s a very generous slot machine, but still a slot machine at the end of the day.
Replaying Resident Evil 2 remake with all the infinite ammo guns. I don’t remember the guy doing the William Birkin voice being this bad the last time I played it. Also, Chief Irons voice does not match his look.
Giving up on Rise of The Ronin because it is an Ubisoft Ur-Game that feeds on depression and I find out it is 1AM as I do another task I didn’t care about the last 6 times I did it, oohh another check on the checklist.
Maybe I’ll go back in a week or a month to unlock Kyoto, seeing Bakumatsu Edo and Yokohama was great fun. Freeing a rotten farmhouse and seeing AKASAKA (a high-rise, 300,000 dollars a year for a condo area) made me laugh for 5 minutes straight. I feel like everything with Edo was made with historically accurate spite.
Edit: finding out Oodaiba started out as cannon batteries in the far reaches of tokyo bay in response to the Black Ships.
Hadn’t played Dark Souls 1 in years so I felt like it was time to do playthrough. Feels like I’ve gotten super rusty since some bosses took me a fair bit longer to take down. Seems like not many other people playing, but I did manage to summon for three bosses and got invaded once by a trollish guy with the father’s mask who kept spamming one of the pyromancy spells, and made sure to shut the parish gate before killing me just for that extra jerk factor.
I saw at least 4 vagrants, which feels like almost as many as I’d probably seen across all previous playthroughs. I guess with fewer players it’s easier for the lost souls to make the rounds or something.
Gave up on Manus, I ain’t got enough patience for that guy these days
I meant to take a ton of screenshots of Cape Hideous but after like 90 seconds I was so entranced by it that I forgot to. Highly recommended, glad I finally played it, today was the perfect morning for it, can’t believe I love video games again . . .
I played Mecccha Chameleon and it stuck me as hunter 90% of the time. I think I got to be a part of the hiders twice. If you’re going to make millions of dollars at least make hunter selection not random.
The kids are at my mother in law’s and Rudie made an offhand comment about The Dig so you know what I had to do. Take four hours and play it in its entirety.
I owned this game and played through it maybe like twice as a kid and always considered it a dark horse of the LucasArts catalogue. I had considered it wonderful and now after today I think I have downgraded it to pretty good. The puzzles are mostly of a solid practical variety, though one (where you build, I am not joking, a literal mousetrap) verges on silly and a few require not “pixel hunting” exactly but noticing details that blend, I think mostly by accident, too well with the surrounding scenery. The dialogue is perfectly functional but a bit wooden, as is the voice acting, and there’s a kind of leaden 90s feminism that I’m sure read as even a little bold at the time but now barely passes muster.
But still. It’s a first contact story on a mysterious crumbling beautiful alien island, I mean, this is the stuff dreams are made of. Still probably in fourth position after Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, and Monkey Island. Fighting it out with Sam & Max (far funnier, equally beautiful in its own milieu, less wonder, worse puzzles).
Hoping to play this for the first time in the near future, I’ve really been on a kick of short, more narrative games (Just finished Auridia and I highly recommend it, neat little 5 hours metroidvania style game) and this one has always been on my list, but I am always bad at actually following through on backlogs and instead just play the next thing I see.
Shit I wrote that whole fucking thing and forgot to analyze in detail this one mechanic in The Dig that significantly impinged on my enjoyment.
So The Dig is nearly entirely UI-less. You control a grey crosshair that turns blue when over POIs, and otherwise there’s a tiny box with an “i” on it in the corner that accesses your inventory. Gone is he traditional verb-interface of other adventure games (like the flaming hand/foot/eyes/tongue tattoo of Full Throttle). Presumably this is in order to evoke an unmediated, “cinematic” experience, and it’s fine as far as it goes.
That does mean verbs are limited to 1. click on thing 2. use inventory item on thing (by opening inventory, clicking on item, which turns your cursor into the item’s icon, then right-clicking to back out and clicking the item-icon-cursor on the POI). The game still has an Examine function, which is represented abstractly by a bright green magnifying glass in your inventory that you use like any other item, which of course just introduces a new ludonarrative weirdness instead (everything else in there is an actual physical item in the world of the game, but Boston is not literally pulling out a magnifying glass every time he wants to look at something).
This means that clicking on things naked, i.e. without an item, is MOSTLY, USUALLY, KIND OF, the equivalent of using the “hand” verb of other adventure games - viz., to touch it physically. If the POI is too far away to touch, or the game knows it’s not interactable at this time (even though the player doesn’t yet) it acts more like an examine - Boston will spit out a voice line referring to the POI. But sometimes he will comment specifically on why he refuses to touch the thing. Sometimes a naked click will give you the exact same voice line as Examine, but sometimes Examine will give you more or different information. This inconsistency is really annoying! It means that in whatever situation you decide to try out click vs. Examine, you will draw conclusions about the nature of this difference that will be wrong in a different situation later. Probably half of me getting stuck on puzzles was due to this mechanical flip flopping. Poor form.
