I apologize in advance for how long I suspect this post will be. I did feel something preventing me from scrolling right to the bottom of the four-digit-post-number thread and have several thoughts banked up.
mtvcribs I hecking love that Hobbit Gamecube (and presumably PS2/Xbox) game. I will steal it back from my dad and replay it some day (I know he hasn’t touched it)
MDS-02 Harvest sounds like it has a lot in common with Rymdkapsel. Rymdkapsel has a much simpler combat system, where you simply construct defense rooms that can be manned by two of your workers. Most of the strategy of the defense is simply where you put these rooms and which of them have workers at what time. There is a lot of construction: of gardens which grow raw material, kitchens, that make those materials into food, dormitories where food can be used to make new units/workers, extraction centers which take resources from the environment, and engineering stations which can create some additional resource whose definition escapes me (they are all represented as shapes with differing colors). One of the more interesting challenges as you do better in your runs is optimizing where you construct the various rooms. You can assign each worker to a task - construction, cooking, defense - but cannot directly point them in the direction you want them to go to, sometimes observing your line shaped underlings taking an inefficient route while watching the enemy countdown move forward. Space is an interesting resource, especially as each room and traversal corridor is a tetromino shape which rotates with each new structure built.
connRARRR I didn’t enjoy this game too much either. I think I enjoyed some of the shock moments more than you did, and I didn’t read the mental health subject matter as exploitative. I wholeheartedly agree with your perspective, but I didn’t get to it on my own; I’m surprised that I didn’t, considering my frustration with mental health depictions in other media - Silver Linings Playbook for one (perhaps amplified because I don’t think Jennifer Lawrence or Bradley Cooper could act their way out of a short pile of tissue paper). The main story beat of this game was somewhat unceremoniously spoiled by The Escapist’s Yahtzee of all people. That, and the final puzzle is kind of ruined by playing on console IMO.
As for what I’m playing, I’ve had Elden Ring as a background game cadence since about May. I recently picked up BotW for switch in a bizarre Target online order scenario. I’d played it on WiiU but wanted to revisit it without having to fiddle with the tablet (I like the WiiU but holding that thing is unpleasant). This would make it the third big game I’ve juggled with Elden Ring after AI: The Somnium Files 2 and Yakuza 0.
I am almost done with Danganronpa for the first time, and I love it. I knew I would enjoy it at least a bit after loving the Zero Escape games so much - I know they’re a different team under the same publisher, but the premise is fairly similar. I thoroughly enjoy the vibe of walking around the school, the music, the Ace Attorney Lite sections. I am excited to play the sequels and am currently imagining the repercussions of mentally ranking this above 999. The area I’ve found this game lacking is honestly in the amount of characters; there are segments where you can choose to “hang out” with 1 of the 14 other students there, and most of them I was viscerally disinterested in talking to until I had discovered how to max out everybody.
I, somewhat arrogantly, think I’ve solved the philosophical dilemma of the game though (big spoilers): If all fourteen of the other students murdered the rich kid, Caesar style and didn’t point the finger at each other, they would all escape. This hinges on everyone agreeing that daddy’s money fueled sociopaths are less human than other people, so maybe it would work better if this was set in the current year.
I tried to play LA Noire in anticipation of Action Button S2E2, but I didn’t really like it too much. The interrogation mechanic felt somewhat shallow compared to Ace Attorney, which is admittedly a lot more gamified and pulpy. This is my first Rockstar game, and I can sense some of the realism that I saw both disparaged and celebrated during RDR2’s press cycle. Maybe I’ll pick this up again.
I’ve plugged about 20 hours into Pokemon Scarlet. I don’t like it that much. I played Shield close to when it came out and adored it. I think the open world format doesn’t work all that well for Pokemon whereas the wild area in Gen VIII felt pretty novel and interesting. I haven’t checked out Legends, and maybe I’d enjoy that more. I’ll likely finish this spurred on by some of the cool new mons.
