I’ll end up in conversations where people talk about how great Ghosts of Tsushima is and I begin to soften and think, well, maybe I should give it a shot. And then I find out something new about it like this and then I harden again.
10 Likes
i too harden for haiku
7 Likes
Every conversation in that game is will you take the path of honor (Samurai) or betray your father’s legacy and sneak in the shadows and actually repell the barbarian invaders before they invade mainland Japan (ah yes, nationalism and Japanese identity in..the 1600s???). This ninja behavior will forever tarnish your family’s legacy.
There is a side story about a royal grandmother who takes up the sword and John Wicks everyone who killed her family/servants/slaves/gardeners. That was like a real story I guess.
9 Likes
Finished Sirrus’s area in Myst 4 and I have to say, if the question is whether Sirrus is doing well enough that he should be free, it’s not looking good for him. But I will add, while I don’t know what exactly transpired before they were imprisoned, the place he is trapped in doesn’t speak well of Atrus either. This is not a place of reform and self reflection, it’s a place of madness and I can’t imagine anyone coming out of there thinking better of their captor.
13 Likes
I get the vibe that every member of that family is way too certain that their actions are justified, Atrus especially, having only played Myst and Riven.
7 Likes
Went back to Assassin’s Creed Shadows. For as huge as the game is (there are three enormous territories I’ve barely touched still left), I’m apparently also almost done? With the main story, possibly. Maybe. Just two targets left, unless they pull a fakeout and add more or something.
The last one I did sort of accidentally, and it wound up being really good. It was pretty obvious who the guy behind the mask (I mean, he wasn’t wearing one, but all the bad guys were during an opening encounter, so, y’know) was from the jump, but the story with him was very effective.
Still really impressed whenever there’s a huge thunderstorm or snowstorm in the game. Less impressed by every fort encounter being more or less the same, but what can ya do.
4 Likes
Wasn’t expecting Pilotwings jetpack-like mechanics in Rebirth of Final Fantasy VII, yet here I am in the Nibel region.
2 Likes
Donkey Kong Bananza: played like an hour of this against my better judgement and am now regretting it- probably should’ve left well enough alone until i was feeling it again
still not sure how i feel about the game’s general aesthetic (if aesthetic is the word i want)- the little googly-eyed rock/crystal-folk are a decent riff on Rare’s approach to character design, for example, but how the fast-travel eels are seemingly made of the same stuff compels me to overthink this underground world’s ecology (probably not the word i want, but i’m too tired to care)
5 Likes
I too am playing Bananza (got a deal on an open box switch 2) and I’m still in what’s functionally the extended tutorial so I’m not sure I have a full handle on what it’s trying to do but damn does hitting buttons feel fucking great in this.
4 Likes
In not-AC Shadows or The Swapper gaming: uninstalled Sonic Racing Crossworlds. Just don’t like the way the game handles compared to the Sumo Digital games.
In hindsight maybe I should just switch to a more Handling oriented character (I’ve just been using Sonic, who is naturally a Speed character), but even so there’s enough stuff that’s got me just kinda 
about it.
I dunno…maybe I’ll reinstall it to check out the DLC tracks. Play as “Hatsune Miku.” Then uninstall it again.
2 Likes
Really getting into Poinpy. It’s a very well tuned game. Continuing to combo once you fulfill the requirements for the current set let’s you skip ahead in the list of sets. It gets you to the point where your ability ceiling is really efficiently.
Other than crazy taxi on the plane I’ve never spent this long on a phone game. Very generous to make this free.
I’ve got the second environment unlocked and I’m just barely falling short of getting the next one.
7 Likes
HIDDEN PAWS
SHORT VERSION: Look for cats elsewhere! This looks cute in screenshots, but it has awful controls that make exploring the dioramas a chore, and there is too much repetitive poking around boxes and similar to find cats who should be more cleverly hidden.
LONG VERSION: I enjoy games where you look for cats, and I enjoy exploring 3D dioramas, so this seemed like a match made in heaven but NOPE.
First big problem is that the controls feel awful, and can’t be customised. For one, the camera rotates on an axis instead of just spinning in place, and you have to hold a button to rotate it too, and there are also other issues. Really, the game would be dramatically improved with traditional FPS spectator controls.
But then comes the game itself… I just wanted to look around these cute low poly dioramas and find cats hidden among them, but so many cats are hidden in things you have to interact with… you’ll search in so many boxes, closed windows, etc. It gets very repetitive, is unimaginative, not to mention cruel to the cats!!! Who put this cat in a barrel and closed the lid??? I will kill them.
There are also balls of yarn to find… I don’t know why, I’m just here for cats.
There is at least no penalty for using the (sometimes useless) hints, no time limit, etc. and it lets you progress without finding everything, so it’s nice and chill in that way…
But it just controls so horribly and feels so repetitive quickly.
SNAKEYBUS
SHORT VERSION: Your mileage my vary (oh ho!), but I found this creative if janky take on Snake and Crazy Taxi to be a fun, satisfying time. This is one bus I’m glad I didn’t miss!
LONG VERSION: Look, I know this is a meme game. I know it’s full of pre-built assets that clash with one another. I know it’s janky as heck. But… I kinda love this game. I am a jank lover, after all!
It’s a bit like a mix between Snake and Crazy Taxi. You start with a small bus and go to pick-up people at bus stops (actually they just get sucked in while screaming as you drive by), then drop them off at the next destination. Once you drop the people off, your bus starts to grow. The more people you drop off, the more it will grow, and the maximum amount of people you can carry at once will also increase.
So yes, eventually the map will be full of traffic, that traffic being your own long ass trail plowing through the streets.
It’s definitely one of the most creative takes on Snake I’ve seen! And despite the jankiness of the physics and controls, though has gone into the mechanics and I think it works well.
The bus is always moving forward, but you can speed up or slow down. Hitting your own tail (or hitting anything else except water or falling down a pit) doesn’t automatically end the level (thank goodness). Instead, if you’re stationary for too long (like if you get stuck against a building or your own tail with no room to move), THEN the level will end. And it works!
There is also drifting which works amusingly well considering your bus with a billion attached carriages. But it makes the game feel good to play!
You also have a powerful jump, though the cooldown is long if you drain it all, and air control is quite difficult so I avoided anything other than a straight up unless I was desperate. It’s also very easy to get stuck somewhere you can’t move if you’re not too careful.
And I love how this all worked, and loved finding the best routes for my snakebus while keep space for my future self, jumping over intersections to let me drive under myself later, and eventually having an entire map full of my snakebus efficiently driving and flying around, like a bus-shaped assembly line running through the map until I inevitably crash. It just felt so satisfying and fun.
The maps alternate between “real world” ones, basically cities and towns, and more abstract and surreal ones. The latter are better suited to the gameplay of snakeybus, offering more interesting situations and challenges, where as the real world ones are more chill and relaxed due to how flat they tend to be (there are of course lots of buildings in the way but you can jump those), plus there is something “cozy” about driving a bus around cities. All the maps work fairly well, with many possible paths and well placed drop off points.
There is also an “endless” map which has no passengers or drop offs, and is just an infinite road to drive and chill down, and an “aerial” map in a cave where all the passengers and drop off points are in the air… the air control in this game is pretty abysmal (deliberately, I assume), so I didn’t bother with that one much but I like that it’s there.
There are also a handful of different busses to choose from, and both those and the other maps are unlocked through play.
The music are generic lo-fi beats, but I enjoyed them well enough and thankfully this was made before AI music became a thing…
The biggest problem I have with the game are little things… like it not saving which bus you were using (I always use the party bus) or what map and mode you were playing when you return to the main menu. Come on, it’s the most basic thing!
BUT YEAH, it might be too asinine for some people, but I really enjoyed this chill, creative meme game.
CLUSTERTRUCK
SHORT VERSION: A very fun and silly concept, this is a good time for the first world or so, but once it becomes too heavy on RNG, it becomes an exercise in frustration and feels like it’s wasting your time.
LONG VERSION: Another meme/joke game, I remember being super excited for this one because it looked so fun and silly, but was ultimately pretty disappointed with it.
Looking at my old save, I first ditched it at the end of world 3. I played it for longer this time, and realised I was right to ditch it because world 4 gets even worse.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. This is a first-person platformer where you have to get to a goal, and to reach that goal you must ride on and jump across a cluster of trucks! The levels get more tricky as you progress, such as adding increasingly complicated obstacles, multiple clusters of trucks you need to transfer from, floating islands, etc.
This all sounds like a fun time, but unfortunately it’s more of an infuriating experience due to how RNG heavy the experience is. The trucks all crash against each other, the physics sending them left, right, up, down, all over the place, and it feels like so much luck is involved to actually get a good route to the goal without all trucks deciding to tell you to go fuck yourself.
It also seems to punish trying active play… standing still on trucks seems to be much more safer than jumping forward and trying to get a good time, plus I kept running out of truck to jump on when I tried to get ahead.
Also, having to jump in any direction other than straight ahead from a standing position is a nightmare. Luckily most levels have the trucks trying to head in a straight line so the devs must have realised that.
The real nail in the coffin was when I got to the fourth world, and there was a level with like 50 spinning lasers that you had to get through… except the speed of the lasers was also RNG, so it often seemed actually literally impossible to get through most of the time?? Nuts to that.
You can unlock (unbalanced) powers that can help mitigate some of this stuff, such as slow-mo, double jumping, a jetpack, etc. but it wasn’t enough to make me feel like this wasn’t just an RNG heavy waste of time.
SCREAMER
SHORT VERSION: Screamer wants to be Ridge Racer on the PC, and while it has a delightfully colourful 90s aesthetic and a good selection of tracks, the track design itself is a bit bland, and the AI is annoying. This game didn’t have me screaming for more by the end!
LONG VERSION: The developers of Screamer clearly were trying to make a Ridge Racer or Daytona style game for the PC (yes I know the latter had a port), and aesthetically, they nailed it!
All the tracks have their own setting, they’re all colourful with bright blue Sega skies, and the backgrounds are animated TO HELL. There is SO much going on around these tracks. Planes and helicopters flying around! Vegas style moving neon signs! Fair ground rides! And I love all that!
There is also a bigger selection of cars than most arcade racers of the time and while they don’t feel as good as in the classic games, they handle pretty well. The game also has six tracks instead of the usual three.
A problem I had was the track design. Sure, there are more here than your typical arcade racer of the day, but they lack memorable moments. You know, when you come up to a certain tricky turn or tight passage (or combinations of such things) and get yourself hyped, saying you’re going to nail it this time.
The tracks here are 90% wide roads with long turns or straights… not very exciting or interesting. I get if the early tracks were like this, but they ALL are. Sure, they try to spice it up by having turns in rapid succession, or having hills or curves, but they still feel all the same apart from some sharp turns here and there.
As a result, the tracks all kinda blend together despite having clearly very different layouts (and aesthetics).
I suspect this may be because they didn’t know how to get the AI of the other cars to navigate more complicated tracks (especially since I think there are… nine? other cars during races).
Speaking of opponent AI, it’s pretty pathetic on the first two difficulties, with you ending up in front pretty easily and having the track to yourself. Once you hit the third difficulty, it’s rubber band hell.
Worse, if the other cars just tap you, they’ll often send you flying to the left or right. One time I was stuck between two cars and kept pinballing between them while they weren’t affected at all (it was kinda funny). Another time I got knocked into a barrier and couldn’t get out, softlocking me.
By the time I got to pro mode, I just didn’t find the core of the game interesting enough to make me race each track near perfectly while avoiding opponents who can instantly ruin your race, which is what the pro mode asks of you. It at least lets you instantly retry races without any penalty, but I just lacked the interest.
After pro mode, there is a “bullet league,” where you only race against one racer in the “bullet car” which you can then unlock… but I didn’t do that myself due to getting sick of pro mode. I got about halfway through it before ditching it… had my run ruined by a jackass hitting me from behind one too many times.
Also the game crashes sometimes… one time it happened when I finished the race and it didn’t save me coming first in a pro race… I think the game is a sore loser and did it on purpose!
Another complaint, the fifth track is too long, especially on the two lower difficulties because it gets so boring driving on these wide open roads with no opponents around.
What else… there is multiplayer, and the solo modes are single race, championship (race all six tracks over four difficulties), time trial, cone chaos where you have to keep your timer up by hitting cones, a slalom mode, and a mirror mode you can unlock.
Oh, there is also a lot of pop-in, but I guess that’s true some of the games it took inspiration from.
But yeah, it nailed the aesthetic of the games it was trying to ape, but missed the things that actually made them classics. This isn’t a terrible game and I had fun with it until pro difficulty, but it just can’t compete to the far better 90s arcade racers out there (and there are a good number of them), and ends up feeling pretty mediocre.
Still, I love those animated and colourful tracks! Might be worth a play if you’re into that stuff, too.
SQUIDLIT
SHORT VERSION: A short, charming homage to OG Game Boy platformers, this game doesn’t aim high but is still a solid, recommended bit of light entertainment. I ain’t squidding around!
LONG VERSION: A short (under an hour) and sweet homage to Game Boy platformers of old, I quite enjoyed this!
It takes heavy inspiration from the aesthetic of OG Game Boy games, with cute sprites full of personality. The music also consists of boppy chiptune jams.
The game itself is a left to right platformer, with the main mechanic being that when you jump again in the air, you shoot out an ink attack below. You can do it a few times to extend the length of your jump.
They don’t do much with this mechanic (though there is one clever boss fight against a book), but it’s a fun one to play with. They try to add some variety to the game by having a couple (inoffensive) collectathon levels, a few light puzzles and bosses here and there, and “town” levels where you just talk to other critters… most of the game is about platforming and attacking enemies, though.
The writing is charming, if a little too twee at times, and helped make this a fun romp.
So yeah, reminded me of the original Kirby a bit… both are short, both are easy, both are whimsical, and both have a unique mechanic. This isn’t as good, of course, but it’s still a short, pleasant time!
They made a sequel which I’m keen to check out.
WHIPSEEY AND THE LOST ATLAS
SHORT VERSION: Looks great, but is a pretty generic 8-Bit style platformer with little interesting going on, doesn’t feel great to play, plus there are too many cheap moments. Whipseey did not fill with me with whimsy! It’s short, at least.
LONG VERSION: Excellent sprite work and animation!
The game itself is a pretty generic 8-Bit influenced platformer, taking the whip from Castlevania, the aesthetic and level flow of Kirby, and some combat design from Mega Man (except not done as well).
I do like the variety of environments and sprites, but actually playing this is kinda boring. The whip doesn’t feel great to use (too much of a wind up), especially when you have to use it to grapple things rather than just use it as a weapon.
You can also jump on enemies to knock them upside down, and use the whip to hover after a jump, but that’s about as deep this gets mechanically.
Level design is also rather bland and, once again, generic.
The game also has some really cheap moments, mainly thanks to the fact that it loves bottomless pits, and putting enemies in places where they can easily knock you back into said pits… it’s not an interesting form of difficulty. It doesn’t help that Whipseey himself feels rather stiff to control.
I kept getting knocked into pits on level 3 and almost quit, but managed to make it through and then breezed through the rest of the game (there are only 6 levels… you can beat this in under an hour).
But yeah, it looks great and has visual charm, but gameplay-wise this feels so generic with little interesting going on. I feel the dev has potential for sure, though. But in regards to Whipseey, there are definitely better NES style games out there to play instead. Also, lots of actual NES games.
MONUMENT
SHORT VERSION: An incredibly janky FPS, I was digging this for a few of its five levels… but then it also got buggy, boring, and annoying. I feel the fact that I beat this is a monument to my patience!
LONG VERSION: I bought this for something like 50c ages ago and immediately bounced off it, but I gave it another try. First things first, it actually feels decent to play on the Switch unlike a bunch of other FPS games I’ve tried recently.
But boy howdy, that doesn’t stop this from being one of the jankiest pieces of jank I’ve played on there!
It wants to be a mix between Quake and Serious Sam… from Quake, it takes the hell dungeon aesthetic/level design, and full 3D environments.
Except so many levels consist of long, flat corridors that feel more like Wolfenstein 3D than Quake. There are certainly some moments that make use of 3D space, especially after you get a teleportation device on level 3 which leads to a handful of mildly interesting moments, but the bulk of the game is boring corridors and boxy rooms.
From Serious Sam we get enemies warping in rather than being pre-placed, except it’s not nearly as well thought out. For one, we get those corridors filled with enemies which isn’t exactly thrilling combat. The game also loves to spawn enemies both in front and behind you in those tight spaces, which rules (sarcasm).
There are a decent variety of enemies, though they don’t work well in groups so you tend to just fight one or two groups of each type at a time. Some of the enemies are just really annoying, too, like a fucko who keeps warping all over the place.
The game also looks and feels so janky and amateurish… all the models look like they’re prototypes, the environments have objects copy and pasted all over the place, and it all just has the look and feel of an early 00s budget FPS from the Eastern Europe… reminded me a bit of the freeware game Cube 2: Sauerbraten, too (I need to replay that).
… but upon replaying Monument, I dug this vibe! I mean, I wasn’t going to give this game a high recommendation, but for the first 3 levels, I was enjoying the jank. It felt somewhat nostalgic.
…UNFORTUNATELY…
Also starting from level 3, things start to go a bit pear shaped. Enemies bug out and will just stare at you, with you being unable to kill them. Enemies will suddenly become immune to most weapons for no apparent reason. Sometimes the hitbox on an enemy will suddenly become tiny, and you’ll miss if you don’t shoot the legs. Not to mention problems the game already had such as getting stuck on geometry, or getting soft-locked while exploring (there are secrets, but a good chunk are ones where you have to walk through false walls… those are lazy and boring and I prefer “look can’t touch” secrets which there are also some of here).
And then there is level 4 which is this hugggeee, massive level where you constantly go back and forth… go to this side to get a key, go to the other side to open a door with that key, which leads to another key for a door back on the other side, etc. And so much of the level consists of long, boring corridors with dull, boring combat encounters!
I was going to ditch the game there, but checked online and… there was only a (crappy) boss level after level 4 and then the game ended, so I stuck with it. Sunk cost and all that. The boss level is awful but thankfully is also super easy to cheese.
I guess I got my 50c worth, but I wouldn’t recommend this at all. Feels like a buggy, unfinished student project with little interesting to offer, and there are so many better options for Boomer Shooters out there. The team behind this do have potential, though.
Apparently people on Steam like this because it’s easy to get all the cheevos, so I guess it has that going for it?
15 Likes
Finished playing through Detective Instinct: Farewell, My Beloved, a first-person mystery adventure.
It is going for an Ace Attorney investigation-mode thing, it does a fine job of it. I always liked the investigation parts of Ace Attorney games more than the trials. Cool music,
pleasant pre-rendered environments with FMV window technology, the characters and their animations are handsome and funny, these Turf Master guys were my favorite:
Further information on the Golf Guys
Probably the best part of the game is when you go on a little imaginary golf vision quest with the golf guys and you get to play a little hyper-micro game with a video game golf swing meter. More of this kinda stuff, if there’s another one of these, please.
There’s some hand illustrated flashback stuff, at times, presented in the main window, apart from the pixel-animated characters during normal dialog, this stuff isn’t as handsome tbh but it gets the job done. Also at times the characters move into the backgrounds to interact and become little pixel people, which is fun imo, wouldn’t have minded more of that.
The snappy menu feel, dialog ticker sounds and the specific feel of the dialog…rollout, a real quality craft dialog rollout and menu snap game feel here. I’ve said it before so many times the Ace Attorney games are wonderful but there are issues with its dialog rollout and menu snap game feel there are too many hitches and pauses and we can all read way faster…
There’s very little…deduction or puzzle solving, you’re just kinda moving through the events. It doesn’t seem like there are fail states. Your girlfriend gives you a little quiz (is it possible to fail? I could not tell you) at the end of each chapter to verify memory and reading comprehension.
So a well made game product, imo, but maybe after three hours or so it dawns on me that oh, I guess this train here is the whole game. Thought there would be more…adventuring involved here. That’s on me, that’s my bad, I never watched that trailer I copied at the beginning of this post…it seems very honest about The Train. You start off in a separate location for the introduction crime-scene segment, but after that you’re on the train with the cast of characters for the rest of the ride. The train has 6? 7? backgrounds in total? In practice, in feels like a single Ace Attorney case with no trial, and lasted me about 5 hours. Hard to demand more from the first offering of a small team, and what we do get is so nicely realized. Also I guess I didn’t really care much about the plot, but what are you gonna do, it was fine I guess?
I hope it does well and we can get another one of these.
9 Likes
If you can find someone with an equal appreciation for Snakeybus I am curious how you make out with multiplayer mode. A friend and I screwed around with this for like two hours and then never touched the game again. I admit it’s novel and works better than I would have expected and there really is something kind of compelling about the ridiculous jumps but ultimately I just couldn’t with this one
3 Likes
You can unlock original arcade games for your hideout in Splatoon Raiders and they’re actually pretty fun. I have not actually watched the video below because it starts with a game I haven’t unlocked yet and I don’t want to spoil it.
7 Likes
There were a handful of truly miserable levels and the jank is real but I did feel like I actually reached a decent skill level in Clustertruck. Even when I was trying to will the jank into doing my bidding I didn’t feel like I was wasting a ton of time waiting for favorable RNG.
My enjoyment of this game was greatly increased by supplying my own soundtrack
2 Likes
tried some demos.
smtvengeance lacks confidence like anything atlus made after the ps2 and ds eras. heavily tutorialized starting corridor like, for real are you gonna fucking TELL me sometimes talking to characters gives you sidequests right before that happens this is obnoxious
girl from gunma kai demo is incredible, immediate attack on all senses what is this border and voice holy shit i feel like i clicked in on a site thats already installing 40 root kits on the computer, and then its such pure nonsense that selectively simulates the msx and i cant even be mad about that. also lmao wdym there’s a neptunia collab in here what? based on a light novel? collect famous items from gunma? theres always a little box explaining enemies on the screen? love this
9 Likes
80 hours into Assassin’s Creed Shadows and I’m just now learning who the assassins are. Maybe that’s my fault for fucking around and not mainlining all the crucial story missions. But really, it’s a long fucking game.
Capped off tonight with the most boring boss fight in any of these AC games that I’ve played so far. Just Yasuke, with a bow, slowly shooting at a guy who keeps smoke bomb disappearing and slowly shooting arrows back at you.
I don’t think I was underleveled, these designers just decided to throw a slog in there for fun, I guess.
If it weren’t for the alarm bells that summon these giant fuck off samurai guys that are incredibly strong and bulldoze you, I’d never bother with the bow or teppo. Alas, sometimes it’s best to forego the naginata or big ass spiky club so you can snipe those dumb bells off the towers.
2 Likes
poinpy is cute. good fidget toy
6 Likes