I’m still chugging through FIST and I’m still really surprised at how well made and thought out it is. I’m used to average action-exploration games being pretty bland (and unmemorable, even if they’re fun) so it’s been really nice. My only real complaint so far is that I don’t so much care for the underwater bits, but I never care for the underwater bits.
I’m thinking about what’s next since I’m pretty sure I’m nearing the end of FIST, and someone suggested Blossom Tales as a low key Zeldaish game that ties sub weapon use to stamina (solving one of my Zelda nitpicks of having to gather arrows from tufts of grass). Not really expecting much, but maybe it will be a good time!
Played A Short Hike tonight. Lovely sweet little bitesize adventure game. Had no idea beforehand it was set in Ontario! Reminded me a little of here but also Eagle's Nest in Bancroft and of course Algonquin Park. Adam Robinson-Yu had an AMA about it a couple years ago. Think I would like to finish collecting those shells for that kid and tuition for that older kid.
@“connrrrrrrrrrrrrr rrrrrrrrrrrrrr rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr rrrrrrr rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr rrrrrrrrrrr rrrrrr rrrrrrrrrrrrr rrrrrrrrrrrr rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr r”#p89381 whoa, you just made my love for A Short Hike grow, which i wouldn‘t have thought possible! Ontario?? i’m from there!
Scorn is really good. It‘s bleak yet packs in the hangout vibes. I’m soaking in the soundscape and taking screenshots as much as I‘m feeling tense. It’s nice to be set loose exploring a place without being overwhelmed with exposition
Anyone played that Slice & Dice? It‘s a rare phone game pickup for me (on itch and Android), and if you ain’t tired of ~ roguelikes ~ it‘s pretty neat. Tiny little pixel art and very satisfying dice rolls that act as your party’s moves in turn-based battles (each of 100ish character classes has a six-sided die with six possible actions, which you can customize with item pickups and gear). It‘s got Slay the Spire-like broadcasting of your enemies’ actions, so it becomes about prevention as much as it is about offense, and has a big emphasis on generously re-rolling and undoing actions to hone your turn (which often still results in you just scraping by). And while you can read a lot of easy to access tutorials, it's one of those fun-run games that makes me kind of revel in slowly figuring out more layered mechanics on my own as I go
Poppin in real quick to say I am enjoying resident evil on the SEGA Saturn. It’s my first time getting to the first boss. I’m playing as jill.
Now I can finally read this comic series my friend made. I remember as they were coming out, thinking one day I will play that game. That was over 12 years ago lol
Bowser‘s Fury is a lot of fun. I enjoyed the teamup between Mario and Bowser Jr. and the music in these games is as usual terrific. But I can’t stand seeing the calico moms cry—it is too much. They should bring back the P power bar from SMB3 and let me run to fly again.
after restarting RE1 a million times, I finally got in the swing of things and got my momentum going and was properly conserving resources. Always had a bounty of herbs, ammo, ink ribbons stashed away, but was still creeped out plenty of times.
I was addicted! I didn't lose steam until the caves. I had to retry the first run of the caves three times before I found the type writer, then I realized I needed to restart again and bring an ink ribbon because apparently they don't toss you one before the spider boss. I was also being overly conservative with magnum rounds and not running away enough. I was trying to kill the hunters with the shot gun.
Anyways I made it past the spider, fully explored the caves and made a save before heading to the lab, where I made like an hour+ of progress before dying. There's no typewriter that I found so I lost all that progress. The way I died was so dumb. I placed the boxes over the poison vents and then pushed the steps to the button, but one of the boxes didn't register and the room filled with poison and I died anyway. bummer!
I didn't play at all today because I was working.
I need to push and make the final stretch! I've been micro managing my way through the game... time to get sloppy!
My wife‘s company began giving employees mental health days here and there throughout the year. She had one today and so she got to sleep in. We love the Civilization games and she’s been looking for something like that but with better diplomacy. Last night we talked about Crusader Kings III, which seemed like it might be what she wants, though neither of us has ever played a Crusader King game.
Well, it's 10:30pm and she's been playing it since about 10:30am when she woke up, excepting the time between our kids getting back from daycare and going to bed (which was early today since they both seem to be sick). I have no idea if I'd like this game, but she sure does love it! This also does remind me of how we got into Civilization several years ago.
I was gifted Pokemon Arceus for my birthday so I've been dabbling in that here and there. It's fun! I love squawking pokemon and so on. It seems like a game built on sidequests, which has the potential to be my absolute nightmare, but so far it's been pretty enjoyable.
I played the first few minutes of Persona 5 Royal on Switch and holy moly, when I saw a few smart people complaining about the game’s localization a few years back they weren’t messing around. This shit feels downright amateurish, like 00s scanlation level - everything’s translated so word-for-word literally from the Japanese you basically need to take extra time to puzzle out all the tortured sentence structures, passive voice and vague pronouns just to figure out what the fuck everyone’s talking about (and that’s in a game script already filled with JRPG Proper Nouns). Hey guys, Japanese and English are different languages ya know! Google Translate is actually not a gold standard for translations! Never thought I’d be nostalgic for whichever Atlus localization employees first decided to keep honorifics in the monolingual dubbed-over English scripts for past Persona games, but turns out those localizations were pictures of elegance by comparison.
Also I can sure tell which character in this game is the bonus waifu added to sell the obligatory updated rerelease, because the game absolutely crams her into the spotlight in no time flat, before even introducing the rest of the cast.
i beat psychonauts 2 and after letting it marinate for some time… i have come down on the side of Good Game, but maybe not Great Game. i‘m a little wary of the school of mental health thought that everyone is valid*, and i think the game (unsurprisingly) lands in that zone…. >!having maligula be a literal war criminal, and then making her related to raz, sort of puts it in a position where it can’t engage with that character with nuance. raz can‘t hurt the feelings of his sweet old grandma, you know.!< i would like a version of this game where you just play through a bunch of gorgeously-designed mindscapes without the pressure of an overarching story to link them together, because level-to-level it’s extremely strong.
i also played through _the silver case_. that shit ruled. i love the way that it talks about state power and the way government turns people into instruments, i loved the slow pace, i loooooooved the writing and the visual style. this was my first suda game and i wasn't sure whether i'd dig it, but yeah it's good.
i was thinking about diving into another big jrpg but actually signalis comes out tomorrow, and i want to get into that next. to fill the time i've been playing _automaton lung_. great eerie vibes in that one. i like that it's about as gamey as you want it to be - you get a level select early on that you can totally ignore, there's very little direction or structure. it's a good game to jump into and out of - perfect portable stuff.
*to be clear, everyone is valid, but i think the pithiness of that often implies that concrete harm done should be waved away because the person who committed harm is also suffering - and i think the game falls into that trap a bit.
@“2501”#p89915 Glad to see you say this – I‘ve also been playing on Switch and while I don’t think it‘s as bad as all that so far, I’ve definitely noticed the script needs an editor with a much better grasp of English and a much better grasp of…writing dialogue. I wish I could call out some specific examples. It‘s not like meme-ably egregious Zero Wing stuff, but pretty often there will be a sentence that clearly no English speaker (let alone a teen!) would utter, and they’re almost all pretty easily fixable. I was surprised because so many people raved about the writing in this game over the years (but then again I‘ve seen tons of gamer praise for the narrative in Xenoblade God Dang 3 this year, and I wonder if some of these people have read a book or watched a movie that isn’t on Netflix, paging @“yeso”#385)
A lil off-topic, but I noticed similar issues with the English script in the first episode of Chainsaw Man. It's just inconsistent, and almost always stuff I can remedy live from my couch, which makes me think there's just a single position -- a single script pass -- missing from the localization teams of these high-profile projects. I work in localization on the voice side of things sometimes, and these two big-ass properties back-to-back have got me more interested in peeking at the scripting and directing side of things down the line
@“tokucowboy”#p89940 The sad part is, I’d bet decent money that the translator’s (surely an entire team, with a script this huge) grasp of English is just fine; they’re probably under the impression that stilted word-for-word literalism equals fidelity to the original text written in Japanese. That’s the kind of sophomoric understanding of how languages and translation work that nearly always distinguishes an amateur job from a professional one, particularly in fields like video games and anime/manga where foreign “purist” fans will excessively fetishize the original text and have an outsized paranoia of “censorship”. I remember back in the day Tim jabbed a couple games with these kinds of overly slavish localizations by soeculating that the translator was probably “the president of his high school anime club” - you rarely if ever see that stuff in film or literary translation, lol.
Anyway, though: after all the ranting I did on this topic a couple months ago, I’m actually going to come out and say that _Xenoblade 3_ deserves credit for at least _attempting_ narratively interesting stuff with _some_ degree of success! I’ll take “ambitious and problematic” over “polished and safe” in this stodgy, conservative medium any day. So if kiddos dig its narrative, good for them. Hopefully next they play _Xenogears_ and _Chrono Cross_ and realize what they’re missing!
Been playing Metroid Zero Mission in the same order that I played it 20 years ago - shortly after playing Metroid 4. I really like the game's map design. It forces you to find “secrets” and you feel like a genius every time you do. I think it completely replaces NES Metroid except as a historical artifact.
On a whim, I also powered up _Uniracers_. Look, it's _Uniracers_. It's weird and not very good. Very 7/10 Insert Credit by not 7/10 want to play the game.
@"2501"#281 @"tokucowboy"#653 @"yeso"#385
“_Persona 5_ does several things very well, but the thing it does not do is respect your time.” I don't remember if that paraphrased quote was from Kat or Katy on pre-Patreon Blood God a long time ago, but I think it’s the best way to summarize the game.
Been playing quite a bit of _Star Ocean 2_ which was recommended to me by @"Danimal"#731 in another thread. It's like an alternate-history _Final Fantasy_. I love it. Give it a try if you haven't.
