I’ve been playing through this for the past week and just got past the random stealth segment and mainly I wonder why those are still a thing. The game also has the trademark random shmup stage and like… I can play good examples of these as a full game whenever I want, I don’t know why I’d want to play through what is almost always a brief poor version of them in the middle of another completely different game.
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Yeah it feels a bit like they overextended themselves a bit to reach kickstarter stretch goals or something. The difficulty is really whack as well, even after gaining a full row of hearts I still seemed to lose half of them every time I touched spikes or lava, yet falling into a bottomless pit gave no damage.
One other weird little thing that bothered me for silly reasons is how they seem to imply that the protagonist of the original Wonderboy is a different character to the one from Monsterland / Dragon’s Trap. I’m pretty sure the english instruction manual for Wonderboy in Monsterland at least described it as a direct sequel with the same character
Yeah the damage choices they made are often baffling. Sometimes it feels like you could just tank hits if you wanted to, other times something that feels like it should be minor completely wipes you out.
Wonderboy has such a crazy game history that it is probably easier to consider the original protagonist to just be Master Higgins and everything else spinning off of the follow-up, but I’ve admittedly not spent much mental energy trying to fit all the various games together.
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I’ve been playing The Pedestrian, and I’d recommend it to anyone who liked Continuity.
I’m about an hour in, and I’m impressed. The gimmick of jumping around to different surfaces in different environments works well and the puzzles are fun (though not particularly challenging so far).
I finally bought Ikaruga on the switch and I’m playing it for the first time. This shit is hard! The scoring system seems understandable, but actually putting it in practice is more complex than I’d expected. I also can barely beat stage 1. Anyone have any tips?
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Your first time through, maybe just focus on playing through the game and not worrying so much about the scoring system. i.e. just try to survive and learn enemy patterns and formations and stage layouts.
when you finally beat the game (because it keeps getting harder), then go to youtube and watch some high-score videos so you can get a sense of how you should be trying to get your points up. the game has a lot in common with rhythm games, really.
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Play on easy until you feel you realize normal has more advantages.
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NOISE1 got a patch that stopped it dropping keystrokes
I’ve never been so stressed playing hide and seek.
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I don’t know if the Switch version has the same practice modes that the Gamecube version did, but once I got to the point where I could play through the first three or so stages without dying an embarrassing amount of times I went into practice and started to learn each section of a stage one at a time.
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I tried playing Dog Days. I really didn’t like it
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I’m still proud of you for trying
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i’ve been dragged kicking and screaming back into monster hunter generations and now i’m addicted to it again. classic monster hunter is absolutely my jam.
and then tonight, i remembered that ps2 emulation is a thing and it doesn’t run like shit on my pc. i got some fanmade iso with a bunch of shooters on it (lots of cool japan-only stuff), one of which is a decent space invaders compilation. the big selling point is being able to listen to other taito music while playing.
oh and i decided to fire up the square-enix ps2 classic, all-star pro wrestling 3.
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I’ve been slowly working my way through Halo: Reach and realizing just how much it sits at the bottom of the valley between the peaks of the kinds of mechanics I enjoy in shooters.
On one side you have large, tactical-oriented games where it pays to do recon, plan out your strategy, setup contingencies and try to minimize the length of gunfights as much as possible through good positions that minimize return fire and exposure while allowing you to leverage your weapons to their best effect. All the while you use things like diversions, quiet takedowns, and explosions to manipulate your enemies in ways that maximizes their vulnerabilities.
On the other, you’re moving through enemies like lightning and have such an overwhelming advantage in single combat that the game becomes much more about threat prioritization in real time and keeping hordes under control as you move, shoot, and take the fight to your opponents in a nearly unrelenting fashion. Cover isn’t a concern because enemies either won’t get the chance to hurt you, or won’t be capable of hurting you before you’ve eliminated them as a threat… because you need to stay ahead of that curve as falling behind the rising threat that enemies present means you’re more and more likely to be overtaxed and defeated.
The stop-and-go combat of Reach feels extremely weird to me, and I honestly find the pace sluggish without the payoff of planning and executing of something like Rainbow 6, or even Metal Gear Solid 5. Yet, at the same time, enemies cut through health and shields fast enough and take long enough to die that pressing them usually feels or turns into a suicide rush.
Oh, and anytime I don’t have the sprint mod equipped I feel like I’m wading through molasses.
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over the last week i have been slowly, but surely, finally getting into morrowind. it’s been a bit of a process–figuring out which mods improve the game to an extent it’s measurably more comfortable to play, struggling with the janky ‘hard fantasy’ brutality of the early game, and finally beginning to feel powerful enough that i’m no longer going into random caves near seyda neen and getting stomped. i learned to keep a better eye on my ‘fatigue’. stealth and stealing still feels like an awkward little dance between myself, nearby npcs, and the f9 key… and i still can barely cast magic… but i’m strong and fast. bounding through the open fields is fun as hell once you get that mobility pumped up.
long story short: it’s a very different experience from other elder scrolls games and you really have to approach it as this weird, aging relic that will blossom into something more liberating if you persist. and damn, the flora + fauna really are some beautiful alien shit. (install the real-time silt strider rides mod!) pretty sure i love morrowind, now.
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are you using the plasma pistol
do you have a list of the mods you found worthwhile? been meaning to get into morrowind since, uh, 2002
honestly find the plasma pistol + magnum elite combo really fuckin’ satisfying
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Gris has to be the biggest 180 I’ve had recently. The beginning has my jaw on the floor. It was stunning. I wanted to just see more of the game.
Then it gave me a double jump.
And it started to have an indie game plot. Then I exclaimed “This is a fetish thing.” And the credits all have male names and the ending is My giantess statue mom/wife/girlfriend lesbian? Relationship about healing the world with color and maybe a metaphor for an abusive relationship.
So a few months after I get Mikey’s conclusion that they didn’t need to play it after watching a let’s play.
I will say there’s something different about running an exe. I compared it to a youtube video and the youtube video did not impress me as much as the program’s openning even if they should be functionally identical.
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first, maybe look into openmw and see if you’d rather use that. i think it’s supposed to be better for bugs and stability, but i went with the goty because afaik some mods won’t work w/ openmw.
graphics extender
script extender
code patch (which by itself contains many improvements)
patch for purists
enhanced overhaul
better balanced combat
better heads/bodies (undies)
graphic herbalism
graphic mining
weapon sheathing w/ included mod for 2h weapons sheathing animation
real-time silt striders + boats
… that should be everything!
i turned off real-time shadows because i’d see npc shadows thru floors and that brought my fps back up to 60 in towns. def spend a little time tweaking the graphics extender settings to your liking.
also i moved windows around so my ui looks like this in menus:
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Here’s a cool seemingly little-known feature of Morrowind that seeing the map reminded me of: if you double click on the region map (the more zoomed in view), you can leave little markers with notes on them! Really useful if you’re trying to remember where a particular NPC or thing is
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