I went upstairs to smoke weed and then came back to find Signalis open. Zaku started it up herself and played for 45 minutes apparently while I was gone. She turned the extended inventory option on somehow too. She’s so brave.
21 Likes
Played a bit more Deltarune, am bad at the combat on keyboard and mouse. Also am in the Forest Temple in Ocarina of Time.
6 Likes
Went in for some emulation of the NES demake of PacManCE. It’s probably my favorite way to experience the Pac.
9 Likes
I REGRET SAYING THIS
spoilers for the end of Armored Core
The final mission, “Destroy Floating Mines,” is conceptually wicked cool. Lured into a trap by your Raven colleagues, you have to blast your way out of the Nest you’ve been picking menu options from the whole game and ultimately get into TWO fights with the terrifying #1 ranked Raven, Nine-Ball. like i love that you think you’ve killed him once but barely get a second to breathe before he attacks AGAIN… cuz it turns out both he and your mysterious handler, R, are AI. it’s a fairly cryptic ending im still not 100% sure what any of it was about. That’s From Software for you
there’s a really awesome bit where you have to leap down what feels like an endless vertical shaft… that follows the most annoying segment of the game, where you have to ascend an equally long shaft with your AC’s thrusters and land on inexplicable floating cube platforms that have turrets set up on nearly all of them. There are also enemy ACs floating about taking potshots at you. Getting hit causes you to recoil, potentially missing a jump or losing your boost… and then you fall aaaalllll the way back down and have to start again.
i very quickly said NOPE fuck this and savestate scummed my way through. life too short.
Also Nine-Ball is NOT a fair fight but that only made it more satisfying to exploit his AI and cheese him. From, never change
still a very cool game, gonna mop up missions i didn’t do then mess around with Human Plus. for those who don’t know, that’s a feature of the original AC where if you go too deep into debt, your character sells their body to science and you have to restart the game, in exchange for keeping all your current parts and getting a permanent, unique upgrade. It’s i guess kind of a “punishment” but also kind of a mercy difficulty mode, and also also a very weird early New Game Plus to boot. like there aren’t any drawbacks besides restarting (and i mean it’s not a happy fate for your player character but whatever, you get superpowers)
i both want to do it just for fun and also so i can import H+ abilities into the expansions… wehehehehe~
10 Likes
played ff9 for like 6 hours? in a good way? wasn’t depressed or anything just zoned the heck out lol
game is beautiful (kinda wish i had turned the shader off for this)
15 Likes
Norco: a point and click in the modern style, which likes to toy with minigames and other facets of videogame presentation to evoke certain moods or emotional registers. Given its flirtations with magical realism and its setting in deindustrialized rural America (here, the suburbs of Louisiana and the bayous beyond) it immediately invites comparisons to Kentucky Route Zero, in my mind a masterpiece, but ultimately leaning too hard on that comparison cheapens both games.
Norco isn’t really magical realist in the thoroughgoing, literary way of KRZ. It’s mostly a noir, a detective thriller set in a fallen, enshittified world. It’s got a near-future, almost but not quite cyberpunk flair that is highly prescient and speaks to the shrewd cultural awareness of the writers: climate change, corporate malfeasance wearing a “sustainable” smile, all jobs crumbling into the gig economy, the way 4chan style “injokes” metastasize into aimless reactionary movements for lonely men, the hollowing of the natural and mental world that follows from submitting to “AI”. Incredibly insightful in the amount of pain, weirdness, and discomfort people are willing to suffer just to have a little bit of human normalcy, what they will overlook to have a car that runs and a house without flood damage and a couple hours to spend with their kids.
The presentation is incredibly slick. I don’t think I’ve ever played an adventure game that felt this good to play in a kinesthetic sense, weird as that is to say. Delicious interface, always keenly aware of its subject, sometimes diegetic, sometimes abstract - a masterclass in UI design. No voice acting, which is a fucking godsend. And great art, which maybe goes without saying for these “high end” indie games. Any of the many character portraits is avatar material.
The puzzles are laser focused, thematic, and easy. The game gives generous hints in the form of friends that follow you around as your “party” (an almost ironically lazy nod towards the game’s tiny flirtation with occasional jrpg trappings) and I almost never needed to use them, much less cracking open gamefaqs, which never even occurred to me. Personally I think this is a strength rather than a weakness; it makes the obstacles you overcome seem surmountable, and the reason why no one has solved them before you is obscurity, disinterest, or a lack of will, rather than a need to be some kind of symbolic logic prodigy. It also means I never faced the frustration of not being able to accurately tell the game what I wanted to do or extract some information I needed - another tip of the hat to its strong mechanical design.
Not a lot of catharsis on offer here, like any good noir. The ending simply leaves you with the weight of what you’ve discovered and a world unmoved by your personal revelation. Forget it, Kay. It’s Norco.
15 Likes
That’s way more positive than I was on Norco!
And I would have played Armored Core sooner had I know it was sicko 3D platforming.
3 Likes
I bought the new Rhythm Heaven (Groove) in part because of the extensive couch multiplayer mode. But it turns out my wife is terrible at rhythm games!! No!!
Every new Rhythm Heaven is like every other one with a fresh coat of paint, but we love seeing the new paint
My new favorite stage is Slice N Dice Kitchen so far
The new RPG side mode Beatspell shakes things up a bit, since instead of perfecting the same pattern every time like in every other game, you choose your own rhythm to cast different spells depending on the situation. So far it’s mostly « Fire fire fire (gets hit) Heal heal heal fire fire fire », but it looks to get more complicated
(tip : the tutorial will tell you to alternate between A and B for Beatspell but rapidly switching between A and B will absolutely murder your right thumb after a while. You can switch to A and Down instead and it’s much better)
The game uses a robot girl with a machine voice that reads all texts and every line. She sounds slightly hopeful and desperate and clearly robotic, always a bit off. It’s already charmingly retro in the era of AI voice acting. She can also describe every scene, which makes this game one of the few videogames that can be played by blind people
Super cool game as expected
12 Likes
I’m shocked at easy rhythm paradise (FUCK the 4th of July) is except when it isn’t. I suspect that a lot more work went into making the beats trademark Catchy than the rest which makes finding a given beat a lot easier but that also means that the improvisation, at least so far, has taken a hit. I’m of two minds about this because it’s easy to decry the lack of Friction in these modern products but also the says simon mantra of everything especially pre-wii is a trick you can only pull of once, or twice with a touchpad.
Even moreso than beat the beat this is going through the motions (get it?) and while I’m glad Tsunku Mars beat his health issues, him and his 4chan dweller friend’s style is a bit oversheened for my liking but as The Last Ever Switch game it’s a 7.5/10 sendoff the console deserves.
6 Likes
I am also Grooving in Paradise. At first I’m feeling that this isn’t really much more developed than the Wii project. It definitely skews fairly easy with the occasionally stricter timing. I find the videogame hurdle one (Hop n Slide) really picky. Not many of them are jumping out at me as classics yet though I did like Slice n Dice Kitchen also. Maybe I need to sit with it more. I like that they don’t feel the need to translate lyrics in this one. Kpop has saved us from awkwardly stretched English lyrics.
The best part so far is the multiplayer stuff and luckily my partner can rhythm. It feels like this is where they put the sauce and we’re really enjoying the co-op stuff. Volleyball-ish is very fun with friends. The presentation on the spike is glorious.
We are also obsessed with Cake Wait where the closest to an accurate countdown gets the cake.
It has so many fun details. Your pompadours grow when you win. Getting a perfect time generates rizz. Counting down silently from 20 is the most fun I’ve had with my partner outside of the bedroom. Maybe the later solo stages get better but I’m craving the multiplayer more.
Beep
9 Likes
Found this random puzzle game online, came out last week. It’s a first contact story set in the 1970s, you need to learn how to communicate with aliens starting from basic principles (math) and building off that into deeper concepts. The first 2 hours are basically math homework (very linear and there’s very little self expression in the puzzle solutions) but the idea is sort of neat, I’m surprised no one’s made this classic sci fi concept into a game before. Considering the timing with the Project Hail Mary movie from earlier this year, I can see this game rising from obscurity to being popular.
15 Likes
I played Super Turbo Anniversary on a cocktail cab in a Osaka Hotel. The more I learned about the cab the more deranged it became. The controls were just completely fucked. P1 had no heavy attacks, P2 had 5 of 6 attacks but the kicks were all on the wrong buttons and light and medium punch were reversed.
The sound emulation was horrible. Vocal tics came out a second after they were thrown.
So my surprise when Lady Rude pressed the credit button and pulled up a menu. For one of the Capcom collections, on switch? What cursed device had I stumbled into. I thought it was just a mame cab.
Then I saw a guy as Boxer barely beat Akuma in a dirty street arcade and as soon as the last hit happened get up and walk through a door. I was clapping to no one. Sometimes you are reminded video games rock.
15 Likes
Titanium Court is clever mechanically, but the writing and delivery of it all is what makes it truly stunning, and I am absolutely enamored. I’ve been really loving games that are focused on writing lately (Titanium Court, TR-49, and Penrose are all on my list) and damn is it really just feeling good.
3 Likes
FWIW I’ve seen a few people who’ve put a ton of hours into The Message from Deep Space who consider it game of the past several years, but while it eventually encompasses stuff beyond just mathematics the mathematic stuff does get more advanced than games usually deal with. Was thinking of giving the demo a shot myself this weekend so I guess I’ll see!
2 Likes
Ace Combat 7 is way better when you play it coop with someone as single-minded as Trigger, sitting next to them like you’re their WSO, having to explain the shit on the radio they are simply not listening to because they’re busy trying to out-post stall manuever enemy aircraft in a fat ass Su-34 Fullback and constantly calling out the actual targets to make sure bro keeps their murder type ADHD under control for five minutes to avoid failing the mission. I kept screaming PUT YOUR NOSE ON HIM! FUCKING KILL HIM!! KILL HIM KILL HIM KILL HIM!!! because, well, when in Rome, right?
I love being Prez, 10/10, would do again
13 Likes
Undead Burg is pretty hard for me but I think this is the point in any From Soft Souls Like Game where you sink or swim. Either you learn the game or walk away. Been able to get to the mid boss a few times but not reliably. I did get the ring by sneaking past the really tough enemy and running away. I think once I know the controls better I’ll get more consistent on taking down enemies. Its just rough out there.
10 Likes
i can practically do the burg with my eyes closed now and have to remind myself that it took like five hours over multiple ragequit sessions to beat it my first time
hell just getting past the handful of guys guarding the aqueduct out front took forever. Love how many hollows are set up to dome you with a firebomb from high cover while you’re trying to fight their buddies
8 Likes
make sure to use two handed attacks if you aren’t already, they let you hammer on shields until the enemy staggers. the hollows in undead burg fold easily to the right kind of aggression
7 Likes
Yesterday I played my real favorite game, “whittling down my Steam wishlist during a big sale”.
A lot of time spent in menus but still a very satisfying experience
9 Likes