@“Gaagaagiins”#p86795 guy runs a demon school you think cats are out of the question?
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@“captain”#p86796 guy runs a demon school you think cats are out of the question?
yes because cats are sacred
cats are canonically angels, dogs are demons (e.g. cerberus). so he can make a bobdog, but not not a bobcat.
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@“saddleblasters”#p86801 dogs are demons
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Bouncing around Castlevania games is interesting because these early ones all have skills that transfer to one another. Every time I hop to a new one and play around for a bit (currently tinkering around in Rondo of Blood) I feel that I'm better than I was the last time. Which, I guess, I am.
It does make my strange impulse to play all the Castlevania games feel more doable. Because I gotsta say, fellas, playing Castlevania 1 made me feel like a baby who had never opened its eyes before while these stupid skeletons bonked into me.
I got Splatoon 3. I‘ve only played it online so far and I’m really enjoying it. Not sure how different I feel about it than S1 or S2. It‘s gorgeous, plays well, feels good, sounds great. I am saving the single player content for instances I don’t have internet like long car rides or flights.
Last night I kept getting booted from the network, so instead of doing single player I looked at the SNES collection maybe to play Street Fighter or something because I can't remember what's on the service. I got a third down the list and realized Panel DePon was on there. I played that instead and damn I love that game. Tetris Attack is my favorite puzzle game, so finding it on there was such a nice surprise. Highly recommend if you haven't tried it.
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@“yeso”#p86687 The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow
Completed this game today and can confirm it’s quite good. Does some perfunctory adventure game puzzle stuff that blunts momentum a bit imo, but not too bad. Real solid writing and memorable visuals I’d recommend it. Prob my GOTY 2022
@“yeso”#p86997 nice - I’m keen to check it out once I’m done with the new Monkey Island. Not that monkey is a particularly long game, rather I haven’t played it for more than a couple of 45-ish minute chunks so far (plus a whole lot of pause/idle time in the background)
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Yesterday I grabbed Vampire Survivors after receiving multiple, independent recommendations. My first impression was “…not sure I understand what the fuss is about” — and then next thing I noticed I had “just one more game”’d myself through a couple of hours without realising it
Some of the things I've been playing recently:
That said, the enemies you bribe join your kingdom and can be used to create either armour or to provide skill points, which in turn lead to permanent buffs. Whilst ostensibly a good system, about a third of the way into the game it gets pretty grindy as you have to play the same level several times to get the resources you want as certain enemies only appear once at all in any level, and as a result the game overstayed its welcome more than an oblivious and sociopathic post-party guest would. Glad I only paid [one Bison dollar](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Shxiy7l5b_4) for it.
Splatoon 3: Not much to add to what others have already said but I‘m really loving this. I only played around 30 or 40 hours of Splatoon 2, and sometimes reluctantly, but the vibe, colours and feel of Splatoon 3 have made it feel like more of a hangout game than its predecessors did. I’m mostly enjoying the Salmon Run / Horde mode and the fact that they've added in an extra wave at certain times where you can fight a gigantic Salmonoid called Cohozuna. I love it. Feel free to jump in with me if you see me playing, folks.
Kwaidan ~ Azuma Manor Story ~: I feel like I have a lot to say about this game but to keep things relatively brief this is a visually PS2-reminiscent throwback character action / survival horror game with gameplay more closely resembling early Resident Evil games for good and for bad. You're given a choice of using tank controls or more modern 3D movement, and your choice determines the visual style of the game: "retro" or a slighty more cel-shaded look - I went with the latter.
Set in 1930s Japan, a nearby manor is overrun with yoki and you must figure out why and what the heck to do about it. Over the course of two to three hours general gameplay involves finding keys or items to make progress, limited health potions and save items (though there are plenty as long as you exercise a little conservatism, and hitting enemies with an _unnecessarily obtuse_ combat mechanic that involves pressing a separate button to the attack button to choose whether you attack high, medium or low, and then pressing the attack button, and cycling through each of these attack styles as and when necessary. To defend you have to press the "walk backwards" button, which has no other use other than to defend - weird. It's frustrating when there are more than two enemies to deal with at once but this doesn't happen often, and it's not so frustrating that bosses can't be dealt with competently.
However, I did really like this game save for one particular sequence involving a first-person puzzle involving finding 12 numbers associated with a kanji, and then using those to figure out a combination lock puzzle. I think this would be pretty annoying if you were kanji fluent as there's no in-game record of each one you find but if you're not, good luck and get a notepad and pen (or watch a let's play). I liked it, though I did again only pay one Bison dollar for it.
Picross S Mega Drive and Master System Edition: It‘s Picross and it’s got its teeth stuck into me with some catchy-as-balls music.
Momoko 1200%: I picked this up when G-Mode had a big sale a while back on their Archives series. It's a 2D run and gun shooter sequel to the Famicom's Momoko 120% originally released on mobile. You play as Momoko, who is defending her school / office building against alien invaders. It plays really well, and it feels really good to run, slide and jump around enemies as you beat each level. I'd have been impressed if I'd seen this on a phone in 2006!
I've also done some Master System channel hopping too, including:
@“LeFish”#p87017 I really, really like Kwaidan. It has some cumbersome bits but I really enjoyed the extreme focus the developer had. I just couldn't do the last boss though. It was far too difficult and frustrating which was a real shame.
Yeah, it was unnecessarily difficult and I dread to think what it would be like with tank controls. I agree that it had a very tight focus, and the small manor setting played into some good. straightforward puzzling.
You ever just sit on your couch and think to yourself, “It's been a while since you played Mario 3,” and so you spend a few hours jumping on goombas even though you own, like, a thousand games you still haven‘t played and you really wanted to keep playing Rondo of Blood tonight, but the moment you start up Mario 3 and you can’t really just stop without saving the princess.
i spent the last month playing through persona 5 - i'd started a file back in 2018, played obsessively for a bit, and then lost interest and dropped it. so it goes. this time i made it through to the end.
i wish the game was more hangout-y. my favorite bits are rainy days when the percussion-free version of "behind the mask" is playing and you can go study in the cafe in shibuya. real good comfy vibes. i liked a lot of the dungeons but i sort of can't stand the calling card/infiltration mechanic, especially since in practice all i did was warp to the boss room and initiate the fight - it didn't build any kind of tension for me.
i am extremely curious about how good the script is in japanese - i know there was some discussion about the translation when the game came out, but i'm not qualified at all to comment on that particular aspect. i did notice that a lot of the dialogue felt incredibly stilted; it really hurt the experience, since i just kept thinking about how i'd rewrite lines to flow better or make more sense in context. even the _final cutscene right before the credits_ had a line like that. it's rough!
still, it was a fun time - it was, like, compulsively playable until the fifth dungeon, then got good again for the sixth. it sort of tapers off at the end but that's still like....... a lot of good game. it already feels dated (royal might feel less weird, but i have the base game) in a lot of ways, i'm curious to see how the next one changes things up, if at all. and i'm excited to go back and play p3 and p4 now!
@“leah”#p87100 https://youtu.be/Uq7kyf1T_lk
@“rejj”#p87103 i cannot agree more
I tend to struggle to get into anything consistently, but for some reason Vampire Survivors has really hooked me lately. It‘s an easy game to play, but it’s extremely rewarding and addicting. It‘s also really easy to get time in on my Steam Deck while playing, and I feel like this may be my new addiction for a while. It’s got a great gameplay loop, and a ton of interesting and unique items that vary run to run. It‘s absolutely worth your time and money while still so cheap at only $5, and plays great on Deck (I’d argue better than PC).
The other game I played a decent amount of through Hurricane Ian was **Mad Max**. I've yet to see the movies, which is something I absolutely still need to do, but I adore the gameplay combination of Arkham's straightforward combat and a car upgrade system that reminds me of "Earn to Die," a phenomenal 2D car game I played on iOS years ago. Upgrading the car is such an entertaining way to progress, I really enjoy the customization options. It's a cheap game I rarely hear anything about, and I'd recommend picking it up next time it's on sale
Neither of these are masterpieces, but they're so uniquely good in their own weird ways, and I absolutely think they're both worth anybody's time, even with their jank. If you're able to pick these up at the right time, you could get them for a combined $10, and get so much fun bang for that buck.
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@“leah”#p87100 i am extremely curious about how good the script is in japanese - i know there was some discussion about the translation when the game came out, but i’m not qualified at all to comment on that particular aspect. i did notice that a lot of the dialogue felt incredibly stilted; it really hurt the experience, since i just kept thinking about how i’d rewrite lines to flow better or make more sense in context. even the final cutscene right before the credits had a line like that. it’s rough!
An added wrinkle to this is that, in addition to some of the patches cleaning up the original English script, Persona 5 Royal had even further additions, fixes, and changes made to the base script as well. It's a weird one! Would also be interested to read impressions on how good the original JP script is.
Beat Contra (fan translation), Super Contra and Akumajou Dracula all for the first time ever over the weekend, now I’m playing Akumajou Densetsu and taking the hard route and it’s soooo dirty with these falling blocks and checkpoints
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Been playing Simple 2000 Series Vol. 78: The Uchuu Daisensou which I think got localised as Space War Attack.
It is an Ace Combat-like. The enemies are aliens that have those big tusks old kaiju sometimes had. The missions are very short and take place on five different maps because it is a budget game.
The game handles pretty competently and is one of the better Simple games that I've played. It is easy AND breezy.
Forgive the link to my twitter but the forum won't let me upload images from my phone and I want to show the game off.
https://mobile.twitter.com/chopemon/status/1577020924045295618
Been playing Catacomb Kitties from Riddle Fox Games, which is a one man development team by Paul Jessup who some may recognize as a little known SF author who gained some acclaim, like, fifteen years ago.
The game is cute! It‘s really just wandering around and doing Dragon Warrior style combat with enemies on a procedurally generated world. So there’s not much to the game except fighting and leveling, but I do like it and some of the more cat obsessed among us may like it as well.