ugh I’m getting hyped for this but I need to finish TR-49 first
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I enjoyed TR-49 a lot
really fond of this era’s preponderance of database games
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Entering the endgame of NEO: The World Ends with You.
Combat in both TWEWY games is centered around pins that can do a variety of things–emit flames, create gravity fields, lauch boomerangs, etc. In the original game, because all of the pins were assigned to Neku and required different inputs, you were only ever using one at a time, and combos were a matter of getting into a groove between Neku and the top screen character, who is doing their own thing.
In NEO, though, all of the playable characters share the same field, and each only equips one pin at the same time, and all of the pins are activated with button presses, completely changing the combat; now it’s really all about finding pins that work well together and chain into one another well enough to quickly build the combo meter. It’s not the original game’s combat, which was a very bespoke thing, but when you do get in the groove, it feels really satisfying. On the other hand, not getting into the groove is the worst thing ever, especially in the higher difficulty levels.
Surprisingly, there’s no system to incentivize consistently giving certain pins to certain characters. You can just switch whenever, which gameplaywise makes the characters interchangeable in ways the characters in the original were not.
On another note entirely, while it’s in no way surprising that male characters outnumber female characters, it’s weird that this extends to the other random players that make up enemy teams, and so uniformly. It’s especially weird when the one team headlined by a woman and called “Variabeauties”, which you’d expect to be the token girls-only team, still only has men in its rank and file, except now they’re gay-coded, at least in the translation. I imagine its a resource allocation thing, but it’s still very blatantly so.
Plot spoilers within
I really like the game’s initial fakeout regarding Neku’s return: having it be Beat instead is clever and ultimately better for the narrative, since the problem with “main character from previous game returns” is always that they quickly overshadow the new main characters. And then actual Neku returns and becomes part of your party, and that doesn’t work nearly as well. -_-
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database games
speaking of which Database Detective is on my list. need to brush up on my SQL
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still haven’t gone back to Roottrees Are Dead - when I saw it was being released I bought it but then never restarted. I also have a promise to a friend to get Hypnospace Outlaw played.
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Finished Deltarune Chapter 5. Extremely lucky that the part I kept getting filtered by was effectively one move away from beating the boss. Looking forward to the next chapter. This one ended on an intriguing note.
Edit: Also made progress in Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth
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played UN Squadron. I love a tracked aircraft carrier in the middle of a cave
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OK, not QUITE done with TR-49 but I did a bad thing. accidentally, because I knew what would happen but I got momentarily confused and did the wrong input next, and then I reached an ending. I have started on Message From Deep Space anyway and am up to act 9, right after functions . Cranking away!
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Spoilers about that same thing
Yeah I was kinda hoping that Neku would never even show up after a certain point, plus the whole thing of whether Rhyme would be Dead or not in the sequel…
I do like that Beat went from being a skater kid to a hypebeast guy or whatever in his 20s though lol
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I almost fumbled my way into the bad ending of Suikoden 2, thinking the “Lets just run away” prompt was a joke that would give me a funny response and then continue on like normal. Also, once again, I got about 80% of the way through before finding out how to recruit the person who lets you rest up and save, although at least this time there’s a save point at the base anyway.
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Having a hard time defining my feelings on Message From Deep Space. I have been doing recreational math since before high school. As a purely logical exercise, I shouldn’t really want to do this. And this feels like the puzzle equivalent of “after the first 3 seasons it’s going to get real good”.
BUT here’s the thing
Because of the framing device, in a way, it makes complete sense that these early puzzles are fairly simple and frankly a little tedious if you already know exactly what you’re looking at (I’m almost to 150). What I’m doing isn’t a beginner logic problem, I’m establishing a language, and by that merit alone I find myself interested in the steps of progress. Also, If you’ve ever read a Raymond Smullyan logic puzzle book, this is exactly what he does. He might push a little harder, but he delivers step by step the building blocks for success, and then hits you with something absolutely wild. In a way, it kind of feels like reclaiming my youth, reminding me what I liked about this kind of process in the first place. I haven’t done real logic since college, and while the basics are all pretty obvious to me, I know those skills are stale, and I really do want to see where they’re going even if I’ve spent something like 4 hours on what for me are skill refreshers.
Of course, what this also gets me thinking about is playing the saxophone (or clarinet) again. Because I haven’t done that since college either and those skills are absolutely stale, but my hasty nature (speed up, defense down) refuses to let me remember what it was like before I knew how to do it, so I keep getting immediately frustrated. But what if I actually started with the basics, and simply went from there, doing it slowly, tediously, simply and repetitively? And I mean, to be fair I’ve thought about this before, this mental block, but doing this in the form of the game is kind of giving me the framework for that mentally.
So all in all, I don’t know. But Doppler needs to chill out.
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dopp’s a good guy, he’s just easily excited
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Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth might end up taking me longer than Final Fantasy XV. That seems excessive, but it’s also been a while since I found a meditative flow for a video game. I’m going to keep playing it.
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Reinstalled Halo MCC onto my steam deck as I no longer have and pay for xbox live and played a couple of multiplayer matches. I am still bad but it’s still fun.
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Finally played Cuphead properly last night, game rules. Almost done with world 1, just gotta beat the frogs. I can get through the first two phases untouched but damn the slot machine is hard as hell.
So far my favorite has been the blimp lady, adored all of her forms, especially the big moon.
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(i got the gt7 ending movie (game sucks) and 100%d the new shutokou battle (game rocks) and still wanted more car fun so) i’ve been playing ridge racer v, which is absolutely unmatched in its aesthetic experience among the other ps2 launch titles. its clean menus and smooth, almost cel-shaded car models zipping around at an unwavering 60fps make the game so visually engaging no matter what you’re doing. the music is very time-and-place in a very good way: some pleasant techno, a bit of digirock stuff, and one straight up hard gabber track for kicks (haha). oh, and another time-and-place feature: a radio dj that will make earnest quips during the race à la contemporary ddr’s “you’re not an ordinary fella!”
more important than anything, though, is how the driving feels. i’m truthfully hard-pressed to name a racing game that’s, moment to moment, this rewarding to nail some clean laps in. and it’s really all about putting out some good lap times: there is no ai rubberbanding, so you are either fast enough, or you aren’t. what’s even cooler is that the small handful of cars all handle very differently from each other (like “i’m trying a new weapon in monster hunter” kinda different) such that you need to change every bit of the accel/brake/corner approach triangle depending on what you’re driving. it’s nice to find a car that really works for your style, and switching cars and suddenly seeing every corner in a whole new light is a really cool experience.
i got the credit roll on normal and found out there’s a final championship you can only do on hard mode, so i’m doing a replay on hard. and it is indeed hard! i had to switch to and learn a different car that was harder to handle but faster just to have a chance at winning races. i’ve since gotten used to it and have cleared most of the game at this point save for that aforementioned final championship (which i tried once, but failed out on the final race) and one more bonus race i have yet to unlock.
yesterday i did the 99-lap bonus race; the difficulty was tuned so high that it took me about 60-70 laps just to make it into first place. i don’t like anything on the soundtrack enough to listen to it on repeat for an hour and a half, so i just slapped the espgaluda ii ost into my walkman and zoned out. i had a good time.
the weirdest thing about ridge racer v, though, is seeing a copyright date of 1999 on the back of a ps2 box. it makes sense, but it still feels almost anachronistic.
anyway, yeah, ridge racer v. a trim and focused work of early ps2 excellence with a great aesthetic. namco was really on something good with graphic design in the late 90s/early 00s (mr. driller, ace combat 3, the smash court games, ridge racer 4/v, and certainly more); i wanna dive into that little stretch of their output more.
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In a Ridge Racer?
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Caddywack
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OK, got through act 2 of Message From Deep Space and NOW it’s coming. Guess I know exactly how many of these things I’m gonna have to get through! Plus I wouldn’t be surprised if there were extras for special ideas or maybe something freeform.
I also just remembered that I never really gave a solid attempt at Sethian
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got the first ending of fez, felt kinda empty. it almost makes me want a monitor or tv or something so i can read the glyphs better
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