(Archived 2022) The thread in which we talk about games we are currently playing

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@“edward”#p79463 Le Guin’s most direct statement

Well, her most direct statement in the form of a novel... ;)

Anyone read her version of the Tao Te Ching? I'd like to read it sometime and compare against the copy I have (wherever it is...)

I finished Eliza, which, being a game with a few significant choices near the end, allows you to lean into or away from the high concepts it presents at its beginning; that is to say I'm sure there would have been a bit more Lathe of Heaven stuff if I'd stuck with that path, but that didn't seem like what the main character would want (nor||(a)|| is it what I wanted). An interesting companion piece! Might even make more sense to play this first as it's more of a primer on the ideas it presents rather than a lengthy dissertation (something I appreciate about it, it understands its limits and doesn't overstay its welcome).

I bought the second Voice of Cards game, The Forsaken Maiden, on the weekend and have been playing it.

It's quite enjoyable and has some interesting structural decisions for an RPG.

They've either got a new editor/translator or have made a decision to punch up the writing. I've had to look up definitions for some words like `sagacity`, `evinces` and `Ibis`. There IS a new narrator too, who sounds more upbeat than the last.

The gameplay is a bit more challenging too, it's not difficult but not baby-game-easy anymore. I've had to use healing items and spells frequently. You have to make choices between strength and speed too.

I think the characters have been a bit weaker so far. One of the main characters, the aforementioned maiden, literally can't speak. So there's not much inter-party dialogue. The player character has less of a personality too. I'm probably less than half way through the game, so they hopefully will develop more.

It has the same classic Yoko Taro writing, lots of twists and turns. I've already accidentally had a hand in a NPC's death :(

Will Voice of Cards be GoTY two years in a row? We shall see...

@“captain”#p79485

I‘ve read her version of the Tao Te Ching a number of times. It’s my favorite version of the text, even though it‘s basically just her rewriting a translation.

Even with that, I’d say The Lathe of Heaven is the most Taoist text she authored, with parts of Earthsea being second, and then the Tao Te Ching being third.

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@“edward”#p79500 Tao Te Ching being third

:0

Forgive me, I have been presumptuous and a fool

@“captain”#p79505

Ha!

I was sort of joking but also I do actually think that order is correct, haha

New Pokémon Snap is starting to feel to me like a lost GameCube sequel. Simple graphics and gameplay but with loads of %s to fill. Mission-based (not to say we don‘t still have games structured around missions but I feel like they were more common before open worlds) and a bright colourful world (blue skies!!) that looks especially evocative on this OLED. Does anybuddy feel me on this?? It’s like a sixth gen throwback with the rough edges sanded off.

I‘m going to start Live A Live tonight (I avoided the demo to go into it fresh, and the slow as shit shipping meant it only got here today)! I’m a little torn about it, because it‘s one of those games. You know, THOSE games, the ones that got tons of coverage in 90’s American gaming magazines but that never got released in the States. I‘ve mentioned it before, but I got VERY excited about many of these games back then, and I’ve chased down a few after the fact, but not Live A Live, because RPGs are language intensive, and back then my Japanese reading comprehension was even worse that my current, somewhere below grade schooler level.

My experience with most of these games is that they have been mostly disappointing! And I'm not talking as though they're bad games or something! It's just that there's no real way most of them can live up to 30 year old hype! So I'm just hoping that Live A Live will be interesting, that's all. It just has to not be boring, and maybe have some interesting construction or mechanics. So we'll see! I'm sure there are other folks who are playing it too.

@“connrrr”#p79631

I can‘t tell if you’re onto something or if it's because this was designed specifically to tickle 20 year old memories of staying up late, drinking mountain dew, and dominating the TV room with 3D pokemon

@“edward”#p79640 another thing is the limited voice acting feels very of that time. This is the first Pokémon game I think I‘ve played with unique voice actors (i.e. not cameos from the anime), but they’re mostly only busted out in snippets.

I was bored and upgraded my PS Plus service to Extra in order to play Stray, but hey, it‘s not so bad since there are some games I might be interested in trying. One of the games that was in the backburner was Wolfenstein: the New Order since I got it on Epic, but I got interested in playing in the console since to me it feels comfier.

Well, apart from the beginning of the campaign (which was too sober-toned, a little bit more ceremonial than I’d like), I feel it‘s a really funny campaign. The game has its issues: the stealth portions feel good, the chaotic gunplay feels even better, but it’s like the middle ground between both doesn‘t feel as tight, so in my opinion it’s like there‘s no fluidity. In that sense, I feel like 2000s games were better in that regard (I mean, the Medal of Honor, the Return to Castle Wolfenstein), as it isn’t as wacky as this Wolfenstein is. But the gameplay feels fine, it encourages you to try and be chaotic, and it has the Wolfenstein vibes I always liked. Also, I dig up the characters: I feel they got the perfect touch between weirdness, humanity and all sorts of things in your side characters, while the villains… well, I feel not so much. It's decent, to sum it up, and it mixes well different types of fun and also a little bit of a darker tone (narratively talking) compared to other goofy FPS games.

@“xhekros”#p79722 I quite liked The New Order and if you enjoy the goofier parts of it, you'll enjoy The New Colossus. I found both of those games really charming, with the second one feeling like some kind of dark comedy sitcom. Agree with you that pure stealth and pure chaos are very good, but the stuff in the middle can get a little meh.

On an unrelated note, I finished Insomniac's _Spider-Man_ last night. The last quarter or so of that game is not great. The whole city collectively decides that you need to die and you are just constantly being shot at. The combat system is fun, until you realize that you can do every fight with just your right hand (zip to an enemy, launch enemy, air combo, repeat) and all the challenges in the final act are just "BEAT THIS GUY'S ASS"
I've mentioned this before, but man... This game's story is incredibly dark. It left me feeling bad. Spoilers below

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The final act starts with Doc Ock and Mister Negative forming the sinister six and unleashing a plague on NYC. Aunt May catches it and Peter has to choose between giving her all the anti-serum they have or using it to make more to save the whole city. Peter then has to watch his aunt die while he's holding the cure in his hands. His aunt who did nothing but serve the community and run a homeless shelter. That happens immediately after Peter defeats Doc Ock and sends him to prison. Keep in mind that Peter saw Doc Ock as a father figure and strived to be just like him, and had to watch his mental health deteriorate from brilliant do-gooder to unhinged psychopath in roughly 32 hours. Oh yeah, and Mr Negative exploded his parents while Norman Osbourne and Doc Ock were doing experiments on him as a kid. The game ends on a "high note" when we find out that Miles has powers now and Peter and MJ are back together. But that only lasts for 2 seconds before they show Harry Osbourne in a big tank of green goo. See the plague was actually an experimental treatment to cure whatever disease that Harry has. Game couldn't end happy, we had to tease the next villain that's going to kill thousands of New Yorkers.

I kind of love that The Popular Animal Meme Games (goose and cat) seem to be some of the most divisive things that I‘ve seen crop up among the IC community. I guess when things get so wrapped up in very online meta-culture, it makes for a pretty messy and interesting variety of personal perceptions. On my end, I’m really persnickety about meme culture and millennial-adjacent “humor” that is more manufactured quirk than it is anything clever or satisfying (context: tried Monster Prom on Game Pass, uninstalled in minutes flat). I played through the Goose Game and thought it was a finely crafted traditional adventure game that (understandably) leaned into the meme culture from a marketing perspective when the internet discovered it, but did not really lean into that style of humor in the game. Being a goose also felt meaningful. Most of what I did in that game were goose things, both foundationally (floating to a location, picking stuff up with my beak, not having hands) and extraneously (honking). I‘ve only observed Cat Game and that’s all I‘m interested in doing, because it strikes me far more as a thing that is more acutely aware of the meme potential of the cat (there wasn’t really goose meme culture before Goose Game; cats are like unicellular pre-evolution meme culture, they‘ve always been there) right from the creation of the idea. I assume there was a genuine spark of desire to make a Cat Game, too, but you can’t not be aware that the whole idea is going to make you popular on the internet. And while it seems like a well-made game, too, being a cat seems a whole lot less essential to the whole journey than being a goose, because the dang goose didn't have a backpack full of Sierra adventure game items or have total fluency in any danged human languages.

Stuff I've actually been playing, though. Live A Live is a treat; folks that don't like the still dumbly named HD-2D might want to look at the demo, because it does not do the low-res, earth tones, mega tilt shifted particle and lighting jamboree of the previous games on that engine. It still leverages bokeh, modern effects and crazy good modern sprites, but looks a lot more like a souped up version of the PS1 and DS JRPG style of using sprites on a polygonal background, which is a style that is just premium in my eyes. It's a lovingly done remake and it makes me feel good that such a thing is on the charts in 2022. Bless the manageably-lengthed RPGs of the Super Famicom. So far, I've enjoyed the Near Future -- which is one I've seen maligned the most -- more than any other scenario. It manages to tell a story with a chaotic say-yes-to-all-ideas quality without falling into utterly incomprehensible territory:

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You're a psychic orphan boy up against a motorcycle gang who is harvesting the bodies of 2,000 children to turn them into still-living liquid in order to power a military-industrial giant robot built from the enormous idol of a bird-worshipping religion, which is also in on the conspiracy.

I've also been working my way through Capcom Arcade Second Stadium in a really joyful way, which is that I did not read the list of games included and have been soaking them in chronologically with no peeking using my 8bitdo arcade stick. I'm probably a little more than halfway through the games, somewhere around 1992. I might talk more about them, but so far Son Son is a surprisingly addictive high-score chaser that empowers my inner Southern man to say _son_ ironically when I die and I wish one of you would come over with a whole bunch of beer and play through all 50-something levels of Magic Sword with me, that game is a beast. It's like if you only went in a one direction in Tower of Druaga (speaking in terms of how mysterious the items are) and it was painted on the side of a van.

But to my surprise, the standout has been Three Wonders. I fully expected somewhat throwaway games on what was one of those "three-in-one" value cabinet type of deals that benefitted operators more than players. And Don't Pull is on there for no other reason than that (it's good, it's just very weird as the two other games are deeply connected and this one is...rabbits -- even though it could've totally been done with the stylistic trappings of the other two games). But Midnight Wanderers is a side-scrolling, two-player action game with a whimsical, almost Pierre Culliford-meets-Renaissance-depictions-of-space theme. It's extremely Metal Slug with Da Vinci and astrology-inspired art, dense pixels and shockingly gnarly looking bosses, and it all leads to you acquiring Da Vinci's flying machine, called the Chariot. Which leads into the second game, Chariot, an STG and direct continuation with the same theming, player characters and some shared enemies. While that one is a solid Cotton-like (with some added mechanics that you wouldn't expect in a three-pack) and worth it for the, again, gnarly bosses (which even decompose in wicked ways), I'm a big shmup boy that was surprised to find how much more I preferred the run-and-gun game of Midnight Wanderers. It's really delightful and pretty unique in its presentation. And I'd never heard one word spoken of it before -- it's always a treat to come across something new to you.
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Still haven‘t recapped my GBC or NEOGEO Pocket color or Wonderswans, but it is for that very reason that I decided to try my gameboy coloring on my recently perfected GBI setup on my CRT. Didn’t take any photos but it was looking really sweet, somewhat to my surprise. I mainly played Wario Land 3.

I like that I have a chance to play along with someone in this thread since @"connrrr"#502 is also dipping in after WL2. This is rare because I really only play whatever I feel like with very little outside influence.

Anyways it's a great game. It's curious to me since the design of WL3 feels like the odd one out. This is probably just my personal point of view and bias, because I played this one the least?? Because everything about it seems like the odd one out.
More than WL1, 2, or 4 I feel like this game has Wario's Woods vibes.
and, this is quite a stretch to say it was intentional, but even the music feels like it leans more towards Wario's Woods, **to me**. Plus the overworld being a mainly forested snowglobe.
https://youtu.be/LVwy_A4GaBE
the map themes for day and night both sound **to me** like they're just about to go full Wario's Woods cover. Much more jolly and less jaunty than anything else in Wario Land 1 2 and 4. Especially wait for the ending of the Day Map loop, the way it ties it up sounds almost exactly like the wario's woods stage clear theme.
https://youtu.be/TsaWf2E0jdU
It's uncanny. Similar scale and rhythm. Especially when played at 1.25x speed! give it a listen.
This is the second time in a month I've noted similarities like this in a Nintendo game so maybe I'm just going crazy. Especially since no one else thought that the Star Fox 64 Map screen was referencing the Defender II NES port mission start screen like I did.
So yeah I'm not gonna stretch it and say these two songs or games are connected at all. Just vibes. I just read up as a refresher on all the credits for WL1-4+woods, and it'd be pretty unlikely for there to be any cross talk between woods and the R&D1 games. Also 1 and 3 had the same composer, which is weird because WL3 sounds so different to me, haha. Probably because 1 and 2 dance around the same theme and 3 just had different direction overall.

I still think Wario Land II is a perfect game, from story to pacing, gameplay, level design and music. [damn this song is good.](https://youtu.be/OF2mfOA9bz4) Hello, this is my nostalgia talking. Wario Land II is the definitive personification of Wario. Wario IS the gameboy IS R&D1 IS the gameboy sound hardware used to maximum effect. It's just a 25% pulse wave or whatever, but that's the "wario instrument". Is the Super Metroid & Super Mario World of Wario.

They kind of abandoned the main theme of 1 and 2 for WL3.

My main criticism of WL3, which, doesn't ruin the entire experience for me, so don't blow this out of proportion, but, with the way Wario's powers are nerfed, it seems like it has less respect for my time. Bashing only 1 row of tiny blocks at a time like shoveling in minecraft (hate to use that comparison lol) whether that's by dashing or butt slamming, until you get the appropriate power up just slows down the game. Backtracking stages, going back to the shadowy figure to tell you which stage to check next, getting super lost not knowing where to go next, all serve to slow things wayyy down in what was once a very fast-paced framework in WL2. Other things: most of the signature metroid and wario secretly destructible blocks gone, and many of the blocks are now blatantly labeled, which in this context breaks the seamless storytelling, world building, and immersion IMO. Wario Land 3 also commits the sin of booting you out of the stage after opening a treasure chest, when you often will have multiple keys and access to multiple chests. You are forced to play through the stage four times. That's a sin.

In the same way R&D1 made a Zelda for Gameboy with an opening like a Miyazaki animation, they made wario, arm flexed, practically charge dash attack right out of the screen and into my brain directly. Then he turned into a ball and [never stopped bouncing around in there. ](https://youtu.be/cSWXGPA86rM) ( ಥ◡ಥ)


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now that I'm done waxing poetic (if you could even call it that) about a repulsively stenched old man (you know you love it):

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@“tokucowboy”#p79778 (there wasn’t really goose meme culture before Goose Game;

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@"connrrr"#p79631 I can speak to the concept of it being gamecubey, but I haven't played or seen much of new snap at all! So don't let me burst your bubble-- it is a gamecubey thing just like the recent kirby was a gamecubey thing... Nintendo is doing a lot of things they should have done 15 years ago, before they got distracted for two hardware generations in a row. When I think Pokemon Snap on gamecube, I think of all the N64/DD games that became gamecube games, and how apparently easily they ported them. Pokemon snap on gamecube would definitely have those "rough edges" you mentioned, and use modified N64 models like Colosseum did. My biggest turn-off is of course that I don't know or care to know any of the newer pokemon. I'm not gonna play it. But do I have any point I'm trying to make with this paragraph? No, not at all. Except that the Nintendo Gamecube

@“treefroggy”#p79812 There sure was goose mean culture. Growing up in Kentucky, I once saw a goose beeline from the pond straight to my friend Roadie's nuts. He was wearing basketball shorts, too

@“tokucowboy”#p79835 it's in their nature. guess that makes it the big brother of memes.

…Genes.

Roadie brought his tool to a sword fight.

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@“treefroggy”#p79812 Except that the Nintendo Gamecube

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I‘ve been listening to a lot of Sonic music recently as I’ve been walking about in the sunshine, and I strongarmed myself into jumping into Sonic Adventure 2 again. I had a lot of fun playing this when it was released on GameCube, and again when it was released on Xbox Live Arcade. Those Sonic / Shadow levels are fun, the Tails and Eggman ones aren't too bad if you know the layout of the levels, and the Knuckles / Rouge ones are… yeah.

I thought I'd struggle to readjust to the controls but well,...

Still got it,

Volume warning: for some reason OBS was capturing the planes and missile explosions at a ridiculous volume.

https://twitter.com/AGDDavies/status/1552375099415842817?s=20&t=yrYXn5I4WkKh8dK4SsvMXg

@“LeFish”#p79934 dang, those camera angles are just about perfect at any given point in that stage! Why do newer Sonic games have so much trouble getting stuff like that right?

I‘m pretty much locked into the A Ending of Valkyrie Profile now and I still think this is one of the best RPGs I’ve ever played. Astoundingly unique and beautiful in every way.

The A Ending requirements are so labyrinthine, it makes me really curious how people managed to get it back in the day with little to no help! I feel like nowadays games rarely require much of you to see best endings and such, you get a flowchart or clearly delineated points of convergence that reveal themselves in different ways. Would be curious to talk to people who played in back on PSX and what their experience was.

@“LeFish”#p79934 favorite stage, favorite ska song