i tried to play horsey game which seems like my kind of stupid but i spent about an hour not learning any of the interesting things it has to offer so i gave up. i have better things to do with my time than watch a truck slowly drive around while i try to figure out why everyone loves this game
i mean i kinda know. i just don’t actually care to experience it myself, i guess
it’s an old psp networking thing, i think in this context meaning it supports the rescue feature that’s also in later shirens
i rolled credits on this last night!
the last set of levels and ending was a surprising swerve, sending you into the casino game show zone and introducing the game’s first and only power up, a flashing star that sends you into a rainbow battle frenzy. the vague military trappings of your earlier deployments are gone and maybe you’re only doing all this for someone else’s enjoyment?
well the ending itself doesn’t address any of that, instead offering a flashback vignette about the protagonists pre-mecha life that shifts into anime VN presentation. this didn’t work as well for me, i didn’t care for the art style shift and it read more like a tie-in to some yet unreleased future work than a conclusion to the game i just played. maybe it makes more sense if you find all the terminals?
also to get this out of the way: it is very evident this game was made by horny lesbians lol. let’s hear it for horny lesbians! my gripe is not about that part. some ridiculously stacked anime baddies arguing about their feelings doesn’t make a gooner game imo, i just felt like it should’ve maybe been a secret ending you had to collect enough context from terminals etc to see — that would’ve been a better payoff maybe? as-is i have no emotional investment in these people so it lands flat.
all that said despite the small stumble at the end, i really enjoyed getting there. i haven’t been this pleasantly surprised by a dev’s first effort in a long time. definitely a highlight of this year for me.
I hope the error wasn’t fatal because this game is fuckin great. More sbeeps should play it. Did it ever get finished?
Vincent is also a secret character, which adds massively to his mystique.
Magus is the better version of Vincent though.
Beat God of War…while I did wind up doing more side stuff (all of the spirit quests, I think all the dwarf quests, freed all the dragons), I’m still a huge baby and shitty at enduring the extraction shit of Niflheim, the challenges in Muspelheim, and all of the Valkyrie fights.
Still though, I had a good time. I may dip back in and try to endure those things and persevere, or I may just play stuff I didn’t already finish nearly a decade ago.
Like I forgot to post that I beat both Portal and Portal 2 during most of this…not that those are long games, just, it’s a pattern, hahaha. Time for something new/new to me.
There was a debate somewhere else I frequent recently over whether Portal 1 or 2 is the superior game, do you care to toss your vote either way?
However: to answer your question no I thought Vincent was pretty lame in 1997 at the age of 13 too. I mean all of the FF7 characters are corny in their own ways but I was much more of a Barrett/Cid guy. Still am I guess.
These days I have a lot more respect for Tifa. But everyone knows that the actual worst character in FF7 is Aeris. Obviously.
FF6’s cast is so much better than 7’s. This isn’t just some knee jerk reaction I’m having. Or maybe it is but it’s still relevant. I think.
Although one of the things missing from FF games is ugly characters. Really wish anyone in FF12’s party was ugly. Just hideous or weird.
I think the first game is sort of a tighter experience in general. 2 is good, but it has some parts that feel kinda obtuse and sloppy? There was one point involving the gels and a very tall vertical chamber that…I got past it, but I’m not entirely sure how.
Some day I’ll get to play the co-op campaign, where I hear 2 really shines.
As writing goes, though, both are good. JK Simmons gets some real good lines as Cave Johnson in 2.
Portal is a perfect video game along the same lines as T2 being a perfect movie. Portal 2 is a bunch of puzzles and some funny jokes.
I managed to play through the first section of co-op once with someone who only did so to get an achievement, I think that was the way it went for most at the time of release (that achievement while well intentioned was probably a mistake).
Chapter 1 (which is a coherent story beginning/middle/end apparently, though I haven’t played what was released in the last year or so) is finished IIRC, but there’s more to come.
I love Corru.Observer (as you’re well aware) and it’s genuinely very funny how Homestuckian it is.
Finally finished Digimon World. That was great. Digimon is cool as hell, dudes.
Watching the credits, I couldn’t help but notice a certain name…
John Brandstetter…fucking…Johnny Turbo worked on this game!
aeris is good when you realise that rather than the pure maiden she’s often depicted as in artwork and such, she’s actually a weird jerk. this trait is present but downplayed in the original, but from what i’ve seen, boosted significantly in the remake
Portal is made of puzzles that feel good to solve.
Portal 2 is made of solutions that it tells you and then congratulates you excessively for doing what you were told.
I thought this was the joke of the campaign and the real shit is the coop mode
Was starting to think I made a mistake picking up that cheap shady key of Star Wars Galactic Racer, seeing as I was losing a race or two in over and over again.
Anyway, it’s more of a Dead Rising or even like, Hades sorta situation. You eat shit and restart tours over and over, you do enough races to unlock little racer style buffs, you get enough currency to put a few points towards stat boosts here and there, and then it gets easier. You’re never gonna win with the default speeder with zero stats, you just gotta power through.
It’s a neat system they’ve got going. There are better rewards than standard races if you opt for Eliminator or Time Trial races, but if you blow those you gotta restart the whole thing, so early going it seems safer to tackle standard races.
Occasionally there’s an opportunity to meet with other racers and cut deals. On my best run, a guy offered me a random part with an unspecified Fault (debuffs that can come on parts like this, or in rare events where you hit something hard enough not to crash but to put your ship in disarray and trigger a repair QTE - if you fail it, Fault). The one I got from him was a really good Afterburner boost, with the caveat that if your speeder exceeds 450…whatever Star Wars used for mph/kmh, you risk immediate overheating and explosion. My earlier crash fault delayed Afterburner recharge by nearly 30 seconds. When I got the chance to repair one of those, I fucked up and did the overheat…was never gonna beat Sebulba after that flub…
Anyway! Cool game.
Also enjoying Star Wars Galactic Racer. Unexpectedly enjoying my racing roguelike. Does feel like a grind to get permanent upgrades but at least it’s fun. I find the boost situation interesting. You have the usual boost that recharges over time but then there’s the mega boost that is on a cooldown but when its active it replaces the regular boost and once activated you either hold it or wait until the next cooldown. It’s kinda neat tension to push the player into long boosts when so many tracks have very tight tunnels or corners.
If I have a criticism I feel like the game lacks a bit of sugar. Your player character is a bargain bin Mandolorian character and the actual podracing, so far, is only accessible in the arcade mode. Not only that but you can’t seem to do a custom podracer race outside of the online mode. They’re really cool though I just wish I could choose my vehicle and track.
There’s 3 vehicle types which are just balanced, boost, and handling and then the 4th, podracers, are just F-Zero level of speed. I assume we might unlock podracing in the campaign but so far it seems like you’re just limited to generic space car.
