Grandpa Gamin' thread 👴

[Grandpa]

I know everyone here is sick of Sony and their “bad sad dad” genre of games…good thing this is my thread to go wild and yak 'em up ehehehehe

God of War: Ragnarok: still extremely early into the game, finally got to a sorta open area where the game is maybe finally stopping with the handholding for a minute.

Mostly just writing this to say that the writing/acting for Odin is so goddamn perfect. He’s just this skinny little bald guy who comes into Kratos’s house, fast talking and wheeling and dealing. Just a super slimy, weasely guy. Thor is pretty fantastic, too.

[Grandpa]

We had some moments in Fortnite last night that made me hoot and holler. This might be the best multiplayer game I’ve played.

Maybe I will be “that guy” and upload replays that won’t really convey how wild it was in the moment.

I will not be “that guy” and make an awful face on a thumbnail.

[Grandpa]

Last night I beat Spider-Man Remastered on PC. I hadn’t really played the game since finishing the DLC as it doled out on PS4 back when, so let’s see.

Pros:

• Feels pretty nice to play it at 60 FPS (most of the time) on more or less the highest settings.
• Swinging around the city still feels pretty neat.
• The production values are still really good, and when the game wants to, it looks insanely, uh, expensive (I haven’t come up with a better way of putting it in four years, sorry).
• Some of the performances are pretty damn fantastic. It’s obvious from the instant you see him show up, but the vocal shift in Otto Octavius over the course of the game is so damn good. The absolutely venomous voice he lands on towards the end is such a good transition from his kindly voice at the start, and the little clues along the way are clever, y’know, for a AAA game.

Cons:

• Oh god it’s so boring. Once whatever first-time experience/Marvel love/“ah wow I’m swingin’ over here” magic has worn off, the game is just the most paper thin activities repeated ad nauseam across the city.
• Even the big set piece missions, as visually impressive as they are, are fairly…pedestrian? There are some neat setups that differ from the open world filler, but it’s all just sorta junk food at the end of the day. And that’s fine, it’s OK for a game to be junk food, except…
• …it’s way too bloated with “stuff” to ultimately be the same thing over and over and over again.
• A nitpick we discussed elsewhere, but a lot of the unlockable costumes either clash too much aesthetically to use during the story, or are ugly and boring, or are all pulled from the MCU movies (so, ugly and boring).
• If you play the DLC, I sure hope you love Hammerhead, and to a lesser extent, Screwball. But mostly Hammerhead. And the words “Silver Sable,” since you’ll hear that name constantly, too.

I do love some of those costumes, though. Ben Reilly, Spider-Punk, and that cel-shaded 60s comic one look great, and I’m kinda partial to the MK1 Spider-Armor (especially since I can turn on ray tracing with that costume and drop my PC to about 6 FPS).

Anyway! I guess if you’ve never played it, it’s fine. And though I haven’t played it since it came out, I suspect Miles Morales holds up a lot better, if only because it’s shorter and smooths out some of the rough edges.

(Oh yeah, one last PC nitpick, but while they’re pretty good about changing all the button signifiers to Xbox buttons, during stealth segments they’ve left the little indicators that let you know when you can zip attack/web 'em up green and pink, respectively, rather than change them to yellow and blue. Oversight? Readability? Who knows.)

Also uhhhh I beat Portal on Switch. Always a fun way to spend about two hours.

[username]

@Grandpa

I do love some of those costumes, though. Ben Reilly, Spider-Punk, and that cel-shaded 60s comic one look great

I believe I wore the Scarlet Spider and that cel-shaded one just about the entire game, so hard agree on that.

[Grandpa]

I made a big GOTY post on Cohost. I should have done it on my Tumblr but it’s easier to format on Cohost so, oh well.

Anyway if you’ve read my posts you’ve read this post, but maybe you want to “revisit the hits.” Well good news.

Oh boy here it is, my Games of the Year 2022 list!

[Grandpa]

Keep forgetting to update this thread, even though the updates would be “Uhhh played some Modern Warfare II and Fortnite.”

I spent a shockingly long amount of time playing the demo for Tinykin on Switch. It’s…great?! That more games don’t do “you’re just a little guy in a big giant house” as a thing…it’s criminal. Thank you, Tinykin, for rectifying this.

Only gripe I had with it was that the graphic style they’re going for (you’re sorta 2D, in a 3D space, constantly facing the camera) means there’s some dodgy depth perception issues when you’re on narrow platforms. You get used to it pretty quick, but I definitely ran into a few areas where the ambiguity of exactly how much space you take up/foothold you have led me to my death (the checkpointing is extremely generous).

Guess I gotta pick up the full thing soon…can’t stop thinking about being just a little guy…

[Grandpa]

Decided to finally give RPCS3 a good workout, by playing one of 2011’s big releases - Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse. Dragged some folks here into watching me stream the whole thing on Discord, so we could all have a nice chortle at the very good and absolutely not horribly dated and problematic jokes.

It’s…not as bad as it could be, but rest assured, it’s not good.

“It seems like it makes good use and understanding of its license” - Grandpa

That’s a little back of the box quote, if they want to do an HD remaster of it some day.

Still inexplicably available for Steam via Amazon! $50! Don’t pay that much!

[Grandpa]

Wound up buying Tinykin and finishing it over the course of, uh, yesterday. It was great! Not sure I can remember the last game I played that felt that fun to just run around and explore every little nook.

[Grandpa]

Finished God of War: Ragnarok. Well, the main story at least, still a ton of little things to collect and shit to fight.

I…liked it? I think the ending is just so damn bittersweet, verging on melancholy that it maybe left me feeling a little empty, in some way.

Spoilers

The whole theme of “letting go” is kinda funny, in a way, because even though the Atreus/Kratos dynamic is often, well:

At the end of the game, after a choked up Kratos bids his son farewell as he goes off on his own journey, sure enough I’m sitting there googling “WHERE TO FIND ATREUS AFTER RAGNAROK.” You miss the little jerk when he’s gone!!

It’s kinda funny how after the old games (and even some of the last game) had everyone attempting to speak in very, uh, theatrical ways, they drop the pretense and everyone just speaks normally. It works! It’s just odd when you stop and think about it.

That said, I laughed a lot playing this one. The funny bits are pretty goddamn funny. And even on my decrepit PS4 Pro, it still looks pretty dang good. I dunno, no real complaints I guess, other than the lack of resolution for poor Sindri is a huge bummer. Guess that’s life, even in a game!

Even though there’s a lot of post game stuff to wrap up (these optional berserkers are so much harder than the final boss fights), I am now afflicted with The Sickness and have installed God of War 2018 on my PC (looks good! Runs well! Kratos is way too fucking mean! They softened him up a lot in Ragnarok!) and started emulating God of War (put David Jaffe in prison for this box kicking section, and all the damn tip toe beam segments).

Anyway, if you wanna know the ultimate fate of Kratos and get a good chuckle, he learns he’s destined to become the God of Peace.

[Grandpa]

This is going to appeal to absolutely no one, but I got a copy of Spongebob Squarepants Cosmic Shake today, instead of Tuesday when it’s supposed to come out, and, uh:

1. It’s a pretty standard 3D platform game, not terrible but nothing special.
2. It looks pretty good on Switch! Better than I expected.
3. Holy shit the writing is so bad. The jokes and dialogue make me feel like I’m disassociating, or having a stroke or something. I haven’t watched that show since it came out, but surely it wasn’t always this incoherent?

Anyway I dunno, it was $15, if I wanna hop on platforms and collect shit, it will be there, waiting for me…

[Grandpa]

Too lazy to copy and paste it all here, so here’s my lazy write-ups of Ragnarok and SpongeBob (I liked one and suffered through the other. Which is which? You’ll never guess! nah you’ll guess correctly)

Games I've Finished in 2023, Part Two

[Grandpa]

Been working my way through Metroid Prime Remastered for the first time (I played some of it on the Wii Trilogy set, made it to Tallon IV, but it never really clicker for me).

A few things I guess!

• It’s old news in 2023 but - damn they really did it, huh? They made Metroid into a first person shooter in 3D and it by and large carries over.

• Given how many first person games absolutely fuck up on first person platforming, it is goddamn remarkable how good it is in this game a solid 90% of the time. Very rarely do I make a jump and feel like I’m gonna miss where I’m jumping to. No “gotta stare at my feet so I don’t slip and fall” as with some other games.

• Some of the enemy movements are so goddamn irritating that I can’t imagine having done it on the stop-and-pop old control scheme, or having to point a Wiimote to the periphery and pray I turn fast enough before some ghost hits me with a Kamehameha.

• Fuck Space Pirates and their jump scares and their hardiness. And fuck the weird bloopy noise a Metroid you can hear but can’t see yet makes. That’s the mark of a true Metroid game right there. Pissed off thinking about them. Good on ya, Retro.

I just got the X-Ray visor and the plasma beam, so I guess a whole shitload of backtracking is in order.

[AutomaticTiger]

The idea behind prime is that you don’t need to stop and pop. You lock and strafe. You only really need to stop and aim when solving puzzles and stuff, most fights will just let you lock on. Dodging attacks and waiting for openings is more important than accurate aim in prime.

[Grandpa]

This not only checks out, but maybe is also a knock on the new twin stick control scheme. You’re much more mobile, so it’s easy to forget the dodge is there (save for certain enemies that almost require it - those large beetles that try to ram you in particular).

Also probably just a knock on me that I forgot about the dodge mechanic after not using it for a good while.

[Grandpa]

At the final area of Metroid Prime. Probably got more to say later, but real quick:

• This map sucks. Not like, the world and environments (though I find the areas outside of the initial jungle are kinda dull), but the actual map. Especially having to figure out all these damn elevators in the mines.
• This whole switching thing sucks. Scrambling between beam types and visors. The visors in particular are bad (apparently they render the thermal vision differently than the original, so it’s all incredibly blurry now), but the beam switching is even more cumbersome, which is great when you’re fighting a giant boss who sends color coded minions to fuck with you during the fight. I dunno who thought “hey what if we made Metroids split in half, and then you gotta play Simon while trying to kill them before they grab you” was a good idea, but it wasn’t! It’s bad!

I dunno, game is OK. Ready for it to be over I guess.

[Grandpa]

Okay, I beat it.

Kinda shocked that the game has text telling you to evacuate, and then it just…ends? A cutscene plays? No escape sequence against a timer?

Looked up the 100% ending since I only got 92%. It’s…fine? I dunno! I guess I could find out more if I dig out my Trilogy disc and hook my Wii U up again, play Echoes.

[username]

Metroid Prime is legit great but the last stretch of it is definitely the weakest in the entire game.

[Grandpa]

Been playing Animal Crossing, just a little, since @VastleCania has gotten folks talking about it a bit again. I kinda missed it! Plus it led to this fun bit of dialogue:

I said I was gonna do a Chris run in Resident Evil but have instead spent all day playing the ugly Switch version of Dragon Quest II. Once you get past how awful it looks, it’s pretty dang fun.

[Grandpa]

I’m real glad Dark Souls taught me perseverance through failure, because I must have fallen off the lighthouse in Dragon Quest II about half a dozen times.

Probably would have been less painful if I remembered that Quick Saves exist. But it also let me level up quite a bit and get a pretty badass spell, so it all works out.

The back half of this game feels weirdly aimless! There’s at least one person in each town who will kinda let you know what’s up, more or less where you need to go, but that’s kinda it. You just gotta wander around and get beat up by increasingly red and angry baboons and rats and stuff til you find where you need to be.

Still enjoying it, though!

[Grandpa]

Pulling this thread limp and dead out of the creek like that scene in E.T.

What the hell have I played in the last few months, uh…

Dragon Quest 2: Haters be damned, this was a good one. It has its share of bullshit (some real punishing mazes, so many dungeons where one wrong step sends you to the bottom to start over, incredibly difficult final two areas) but damn if I didn’t love it.

Bowser’s Fury: I left this one hanging (much like the post-game for 3D World in general) and went back to it. It’s…fine. I really enjoy the parts where you do your standard 3D Mario bullshit. I like it a lot less when the mandatory Bowser segments pop up.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: Now here’s a little hidden gem y’all might have missed! Anyway, I liked it! I think once you get enough hearts and Bright Blooms to manage it, The Depths are kind of a waste (potential, time, what have you). And the final fight is just sort of a pushover after all the build up. But hey! Everything else! Pretty good! (Wait no, one nitpick! Silver enemies! Not fun! Just damage sponges that make you burn through you weapons, and knock you down to a single heart if you get hit. Emblematic of everything bad of a so-called difficult enemy)

Storyteller: Ah dang, this one seemed real cool from the the trailers, and it kinda is! Plopping characters and scenes down to fulfill the story as hinted by the title makes for…generally pretty fun puzzles, though occasionally there’s zero wiggle room between what you’re sure will work and what the developers intended. It’s supposed to get a decent free expansion before long, so maybe it’ll kinda fix up some of what bugged me!

Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster: Aw yeah here we go, Baby’s First Final Fantasy (I played a few hours of V on GBA and to Disc 2 of VII, but this one I finished! It’s first!). A very enjoyable, brisk game with a few inscrutable moments (I must have missed whoever tells you where to find the airship in some town). That final boss though, holy moly. Excited to see what the infamous 2 has in store.

Undertale: I am too old for this game. This isn’t an early boomer onset take of the story or characters or anything (they’re good!), I just struggled like crazy with the combat? Dodging? Whatever you want to call it. Abandoned a Genocide Run at Undyne…I’m just too slow to pull this off (it’s also probably slightly easier with a keyboard than Switch controls). Glad I got to at least see the main two routes through, though!

Final Fantasy Adventure: Currently chewing through this. Holy shit they try to do so much with so little in this one. Every time I’m sure I’m near the end another few hours of areas and dungeons pop up. Now I gotta run across the rivers and see what areas are open to me.

Also worth noting that the music in this game drives me fucking insane (the loops are very short!), but I keep pulling up the Adventures of Mana OST and listening to that for a while after playing it. Amazing what some proper instrumentation does for a simple composition.