I’ll keep that in mind when I get there.
Also, apparently it is basically the PC version, and you can get it to run at 60FPS and such with hacking, but it will probably melt your switch.
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yeah heavensward was when i actually started caring about characters names and remembering who they were written as, rather than recognizing chars as signposts that look like animes
like a realm reborn was a drag that kind of pickedup, but heavensward STARTS that strong and gets better and better. i loved main heavensward but then i got to the between expansion stuff (dragonsong) i cried even more!!
One of the bad things that made the Thief reboot game bad was that every single time you searched any drawer or picked up any object there was an entire smooth lavish 3-second animation of your guy opening the thing and taking the thing, which is an action you perform about 10 times per room. But I still kind of got a tiny immersive thrill out of it every time…
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I sure have been playing a fuck ass load of World of Warcraft
Dishonored 2 is donezo. I might play Death of the Outsider some day but not any time soon.
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Tokyo 42 is great in the ways I expected (finding secrets is fun, the aesthetic is great, the soundtrack is also quite good) and kinda blah in the ways I expected (combat mechanics are sorta whatever mostly, writing thus far is terrible).
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The writing really dragged down the aesthetic for me. I think I’d restructure it by leaning into the puzzlebox nature and give the player more freedom to discover consequence from poking at switches.
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BA name one game you wouldn’t restructure in exactly that way
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Currently playing Majora’s Mask while getting a pedicure
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I’m really not as enamoured with Capy’s apple Arcade game as everyone else seems to be
Holy shit, you know the “match to win a free game” thing at the end of a game of pinball that you never ever win??
We won!! Magic!!
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uh
uh
wait, I’m shoveling the coal and warming the engine and getting rolling
ok –
This freedom and agency is neighbors with Sidequest Content. So games that half-step-it suffer when they lose their pacing. Best recent example is Control, which can’t decide between the thrust of its campaign and poking into its cabinet of curiosities, and ends up a good third too long for the mechanics and art budget it has (it’s still excellent, and probably Remedy’s best project). Really, anything that ought to be four of five hours long but ends up at seven, eight, twelve is in here. So the bulk of the PS2 and 360’s library, the half-linear game.
More broadly, I think pacing is a very tenuous concept in most games. Those bloated linear games? They’ve absolutely abandoned any sense of pacing while they ape the storytelling forms of two-hour movies. Action and horror games demand tight pacing, and benefit the most from closing down. I think this is why Platinum has been so hesitant to abandon its level structure. But even within these, the most important type pacing is encounters, and there are well-developed tools for these in more open designs. It’s pacing multiple encounters over time that gets very difficult in more open structures; even Resident Evil has trouble keeping players from dithering away in decompression.
Roguelikes (and The Dungeon as a primordial concept) are good tests of this. I think they work best when they contain more freedom than can be safely experienced. The dungeon is most interesting when it’s mostly dark & unmapped, full of potential. Pushing into the corners and knowing it is satisfying but destroys the fear and excitement. The roguelike floor timer (Spelunky’s ghost, Shiren’s wind) add constraints and tension, but preserve the player’s agency to choose where they want to go. I think resource problems, like tough monsters and limited health and energy do similar.
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Doom (2016) had a great shooter combat insight and layered sprawling level design inherited from the Looking Glass DNA Doom 3 cribbed and it couldn’t map them together; Arcade Mode, with its timer, sewed it back shut and unified the ideas.
Are you a bad enough ninja to kill the president?
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last time I was in Oakland I got like 4 on @Infernarl’s Rollercoaster Tycoon (RIP) and one on Cactus Canyon at a place that actually charges money to play. It was insane.
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yeah you can change the odds for the end game bonus challenge and apparently a bunch of places just set it to zero
but in that part of oakland its like someone set off an EMP that just changes that one dipswitch, so everyone can be a winner (except me i didnt get any free games in oakland)
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I finished up Deadly Premonition today. I “died” and had to continue three times:
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I failed on the very first QTE in the game as I didn’t know they were a thing
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I opened a door and walked into a room that didn’t load, eventually falling into oblivion.
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I failed to complete the fishing quest in a timely manner.
This feels appropriate for the game.
…The fishing in this game is awful >_>
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It’s Elvira now.
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