@“BluntForceMama”#p46436 I was worried that Tim’s Cyberpunk review would come out right before my engineering license exam and I would have to prohibit myself from watching and studying would be even more irksome.
> But uhhhh that didn’t happen. Test is come and gone, no review. I’ve been Cyber-Punk’d.
Hey, I hope this went well. I sat for the EIT (for those of you not in the field, it stands for Engineer in Training) in Mechanical Engineering when I graduated a looooong time ago and passed it but didn't feel like I exactly knocked it out of the park. Anyone who passes the PE (Professional Engineer) exam has the right to say that they know their stuff. Good luck!
@“sabertoothalex”#p46547 Also good joke: one of the characters in the game is an unhinged FBI agent who hates Alan Wake and only refers to him mockingly as other authors. He calls him Dan Brown once and it was extremely funny.
I wish I could remember the one that made me laugh the most, doesn't he call him Brett Easton Ellis at one point
Some lunchbreak type of thoughts on games I‘ve recently played I’ve been meaning to swing by with. Just stuff I haven't mentioned in other threads:
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Tetris Effect(:Connected et al) is the Target art of video games. There‘s gonna be some pretty decent, on-trend abstract stuff in there – much better than what you’d find at Wal-Mart – some things that if you didn‘t know they were from Target, you might put on the wall. Maybe you’ll even find a Basquiat print or something like that. But there‘s definitely gonna be a lot of living, laughing and loving, and a bunch of wooden planks that just say “Kitchen” or paintings of the Eiffel Tower. This game answers the undying stupid video game forum question perennially asked by perennially insecure video gamers: “What game would you show to someone to [basically legitimize video games?]” It would really impress your parents and coworkers, and they don’t even have to control the camera with a secondary analog stick. All that aside, the Tetris is good, you can play while high, the main theme is a guilty pleasure (especially when it kicks in online), and the rest of the songs that have lyrics make me want to fly back into space where this is only EDM
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Bonito Days (a "Monkey Target-like") is so close to being enjoyable. The [city pop soundtrack](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IFMV1OkOAc&list=PLPLBhqSYeWYgTj_hL7K79TdUiS0C_aEgq&index=7) is novel and it manages to be both pastel and a little twee -- like that whole itch.io package (I say as someone who likes itch.io a lot) -- while still being cool. But, man, I wish it would tell me one single thing about what I need to do to keep my fish in the air and I am honestly shocked that it doesn't keep score in any way, shape or form. Especially the latter seems like an oversight that's really hard to understand
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ActRaiser: Renaissance feels a whole lot like a lost Sega Saturn game and I like it
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Sin & Punishment is still the coolest game on the N64
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I‘ve really been enjoying Winback for a kind of dissonant reason. While the cover system was very modern for the time, and the controls behind that system relatively complex for the N64, it has become really comfortably straightforward in the wake of all the decades’ worth of games it influenced. Just a simple action movie garden grown around a single concept that feels good to do (popping up, shooting, popping down). The (so far singular track of) music is good, and your guy is named Jean-Luc Cougar, which adds to the whole sort of mediocre 3D Elevator Action Returns vibe that I get, if that makes any sense at all
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Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania is really lovingly made, good-assed Monkey Ball. I understand that for hardcore Monkey Ball people (M. Ballers), it's not the engine that Amusement Vision and Nagoshi built for Monkey Ball and later F-Zero. That was a very special thing, and I emphatically agree that I wish it were better preserved and more accessible. But I don't know what Sega was expected to do in bringing a whole legacy of Monkey Ball to modern platforms (like, build it on top of a GameCube emulator or something?). So what we have is a very content rich, extremely charming game that celebrates a whole lot of Sega (you can be a Game Gear in a ball) and introduces Very Good Monkey Ball to new people while scratching that itch for people who aren't full-time M. Ballers. I love the way that bananas act as in-game currency, I love [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyfLkhtLrbg). I think that it's insane that people are in jail for weed while the people who designed the launcher levels run free
The recent(ish) "Monkey Ball's physics are broken" zeitgeist and that of the N64 Switch emulation stuff brings a thing to mind. I wish the gaming community would do better about expressing issues of preservation without making hyperbolic statements that clearly apply to few more people than a niche. In both Banana Mania's and the N64's case, I have seen so many uses of the word "unplayable." I have seen Big Gamers legitimately suggest that people would "be better off" playing the games on original hardware or -- verbatim -- that they'd have "a better experience buying a used Wii and modding it," as though any of that stuff is tenable for people who aren't major enthusiasts. Stuff like that is pretty disingenuous (I do not believe most people would enjoy modding a Wii more than they would turning on a Switch). For most people, this is very good Monkey Ball (for context, I played both GameCube Super Monkey Balls at the time and fire up Monkey Ball on Naomi now and then; I am having a very good time). For most people, this is a fine way to play N64 games. I'd love it if we could continue to amplify issues of preservation and put pressure on companies like Nintendo and Sega to do preservation better, without discounting the entire experience of people who don't know what Popful Mail is.
I just played through Clayfighter 63 1/3 and Clayfighter: Sculptor‘s Cut for the N64, and I gotta say, these games are extremely dated in a way that I wasn’t prepared for. The SNES Clayfighter game is the one I grew up with, and thought while it isn‘t a great game by most measures, it’s at least charming light satire on Street Fighter. The presentation is great and the silly variety of characters brought something special to the game. I think characters like Helga and Blue Suede Goo were in good taste. Clayfighter 2: Judgment Clay is where the series seems to have started to appeal to the more edgy 90s kid. They replaced those two characters with Hoppy, an action movie parody, and Googoo, a “ghetto baby”, and it got worse from there.
In the N64 games they continued replacing some of the more unique characters with lazy stereotypes. They added a Caribbean witch doctor who is obsessed with chicken and a Chinese guy who fights with a wok and chopsticks and yells about different chinese food dishes. It's just lazy and uninteresting and sticks out like a sore thumb. There's also Earthworm Jim, and knowing what we know about its creator being a racist misogynist transphobe, it reflects poorly on a game that is 24 years old. All of this just amounts to the game feeling like its made for a type of teenager who doesn't exist any more (especially considering how often it references things like Nixon on Laugh-in going "sock it to me!").
The actual gameplay has potential. I think the AI is pretty good especially on the harder difficulties. I love that they added mechanics present in other games, like the Fatalities or "Claytalities" from Mortal Kombat, the Combos from Killer Instinct (only they subvert it by pointing out how weak you are), and the 3-level bar for super combos from Street Fighter Alpha. But utltimately this game doesn't hold up that much on its own as both a fighting game and as a satire. Its a shame, but I think this series ended exactly when it should have.
I would love a western company to make a game lampooning modern fighting games in the vein that Clayfighter originally set out to do. I think the key to it is to make it all come from a place of appreciation, otherwise I don't think it works quite as well as it could have. Clayfighter isn't a bad series, I think it just got caught up trying to appeal to its consumers in a way that stifled its own creativity.
With apologies to @JoJoestar and @yeso , I tried playing some G-String… but lemme tell you why they call it G-String… ‘cause boy is it easy to get lost up in the crack of something!!! I spent an inordinate amount of time while playing that game just digging around for the critical path. 30 seconds of progress later I am back looking for just where the hell I’m supposed to go. I don‘t necessarily dislike not having a glowing arrow telling me where to go but I can’t stay invested in it.
Does the level design ever become, like, comprehensible, at any point?
I started Gnosia a couple of days ago which I‘m enjoying quite a lot. It’s a pretty decent Werewolf / Secret Hitler-esque social deduction game played over microloops of up to 10-15 mins max, sometimes just 3-4 mins, with the overall narrative being told through different events that take place depending on the conditions of the loop. My only real criticisms are that It‘s a little repetitive and some of the AI logic can be questionable sometimes but it’s a neat take on the format. I like that no matter how successful you are that you are always making progress whether narratively or in terms of stats/experience/skills so even on the loops where you get outright murdered on the first night then there's no real loss.
@“Gaagaagiins”#p47450 Level design and difficulty is 100% all about the pathfinding and the “where is the exit” environmental puzzles. Might not be for you! Although honestly, gameplay is not the reason why I like the game. I enjoy HL2 style shooters but for G String is the art direction, music, world building and aesthetic where it's at.
@“Gaagaagiins”#p47450 you‘ll become familiar with some of the designer’s idiosyncrasies. but part of the game's appeal is that it gives you a lot of weird geometry
It has a lot of “can't believe this is the actual path and not a glitch” nonsense that I found personally very endearing. Sorry for being the kind of weirdo that enjoys progressing through a game by jumping on a wire coming out of a random pile of rubble.
@“JoJoestar”#p47464 It has a lot of “can’t believe this is the actual path and not a glitch” nonsense that I found personally very endearing. Sorry for being the kind of weirdo that enjoys progressing through a game by jumping on a wire coming out of a random pile of rubble.
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@“yeso”#p47461Gaagaagiins you’ll become familiar with some of the designer’s idiosyncrasies. but part of the game’s appeal is that it gives you a lot of weird geometry
To be clear, I think it's an interesting way to make a game, I just don't get it. I might keep trying, I did get stuck at a spot where I thought the path forward was one spot being covered by a sniper drone, but I couldn't get a good look in the area because, well, sniper drone. So I tried that for a while and kept reloading and getting sniped until I gave up... only to find some other little crawlspace somewhere else that led to a flooded basement... only to go over every room in there 3 times to find that _that_ was a dead end, too. I got so fed up I loaded up a Let's Play to see that the path forward was the spot being covered by the sniper drone after all lol.
I'm a bit torn because I don't mind watching the Let's Play to see what the deal is, but the Let's Play didn't turn on subtitles, so I can't really hear the dialogue either. So maybe I'll keep trying and just bring up the Let's Play to figure out where to go next when I need to.
I played 90% of Order of Ecclesia back in early October and then got busy just before the final boss. Now I‘m fighting it and it’s making me frighteningly aware of the fact that I have never actually beat the boss in a legitimate way (it‘s Dracula, I don’t know why I‘m dancing around the subject). It’s hard! I want to do the combat & platforming trials you unlock about halfway through the last level too but I might just give up after beating Dracula. Back when I first played it I used some cheap glyph + equipment combo which can kill him in five seconds, but playing it the “correct” way is honestly quite a trial. Following this playthrough I maintain that it is the best of the Igavanias.
Also decided on a whim to play Trico again. Something I feel makes it unique (besides the elephant in the room) is the way space is constructed and the way you interact with it:
- ||You make your way through these massive rooms which are massive _for a reason_, but it doesn't feel artificial in that way—it simply feels like a worn out old sacred space you're discovering.||
- ||The telegraphing of what you're supposed to interact with or not is blurrier than in other (big-budget post-6th gen) games. I see the Icos occasionally compared to From games but they really don't feel similar at all to inhabit—Souls games have some weird spaces for sure but they are also full of tight hallways with bowling bumpers (curious how King's Field compares). I enjoy the way that in Trico and SotC (maybe I should call it WatC to uphold my principles) you can climb on a bunch of handholds on walls, vines, etc which don't lead anywhere, they're just there to make the world feel more like an actual place (and to delay your figuring out the solution to a puzzle). Making a game where giant bosses have to have collision detection all over led to some really interesting world design (if that was in fact the line from point A to point B)||
- ||The puzzles occasionally rely on a more "real-world" kind of reasoning (is there a more accurate term for this mode of game-relevant thinking? Something that describes how in Breath of the Wild you have to|| ||cut down that one tree to make a bridge rather than use some prescribed key item on an artificial lock barrier to advance,|| ||or stacking regular old breakable crates to reach a level entrance in Deus Ex or something. Not that there's an exceptional amount of this in Trico, but the fact that you can interact with most surfaces in the world makes it feel more like you're intuiting solutions to more real-world plausible kinds of situations, e.g.|| ||dragging a wagon beneath where light is showing through a grate in the floor, then allowing Trico to catapult you up toward the grate.|| ||I don't know, maybe these are different phenomena since in Trico there is only one solution to a given problem. Still lends the world a sense of verisimilitude somehow.||
- ||The boundaries to the space you're in feel very natural. The space you're walking in is either a priori closed off because there are visible walls around it—it's a room—or else you're crawling across bridges, scaffolding, scaling towers, etc. But ever-present in the background is the rest of the fortress: huge atria, towers and their spires, crumbling pillars, crenellated parapets extended for miles; surrounded at a distance by the walls of the intriguingly bizarre crater valley. You'll see a given architectural feature while exploring one part of the fortress and have no idea whether you'll go there later or not. Sometimes you do, sometimes you don't; sometimes you return to an earlier part of the fortress after it's been altered in some way. There's no (obvious) way to tell where the journey will take you.||
On top of that they made ||a real living animal|| and put it in a video game.
(spoiler-tagging everything because I really don't know how many people here played this, I know treefroggy hasn't and I will preserve the frog's innocence darn it)
Oh and has anyone played The Caligula Effect? I came across it browsing the PSN store recently and thought, man, I guess it‘s about time we’re seeing something trying to capitalize on the popularity of post-P3 Persona (not that those games haven‘t themselves lifted a lot from popular VNs (and probably a lot of doujin stuff I don’t know about (honestly though where else is that ransom note-looking big shaky capital letters oblique angle text coming from?))). HOWEVER, curiously enough the game was written by… Tadashi Satomi???
I'm kind of intrigued, especially as it's on VITA (3rd sexiest video game console)
Just a reminder to everyone who listens to Insert Credit to put aside a lazy Sunday afternoon or two somewhere to sit down and play through カエルの為ために鐘かねは鳴な (rom. Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru), aka The Frog for Whom the Bell Tolls. Just a lovely little treat of a game!
Also there's apparently a DX edition style ROM hack out there some folks made that added full colour to the game and dang based on screenshots they did a great job and I regret not knowing this before I started playing it.
@“Gaagaagiins”#p47560 i can confirm it is a delightful game. i haven‘t completed it yet, as it was starting to get a bit annoying, but that’s probably just me sucking. it seems like the dx version is coming out next year, so hopefully that fixes my annoyances (although i‘m not sure how you’d go about doing that… (and if doing that would even be a good idea))
Recently replayed Nocturne to get hyped for SMTV. Did the Yosuga ending which I hadn't done before. I will say, I am very happy with the new Merciful difficulty along with NG+, it lets me focus on the story.
Playing the Alan Wake remaster got me in the mood to finally finish CONTROL and that‘s a great video game! I think the FMV/world building/Remedy stuff is soooooo sharp in it, def the best they’ve done. Just such a fun concept, weird enough to still feel like you‘re experiencing something that has some real jus behind it in a way a ton of AAA stuff doesn’t.
This was also the first game I've played with any RTX stuff on and wow that shit looks bonkers!!! Turning even a couple of those features on makes a massive difference. DLSS also seems like straight up magic, my computer is good but not THAT good and it let me use a lot more of those features than I otherwise would be able to I suspect.
Based on someone (I forget who!) recommending it on here, I‘m playing Umurangi Generation, and it’s a delight! It nails its aesthetic perfectly, and there all of these tiny little details that make me smile, from the text-to-voice here and there, the colours, the low fi assets, the music… I'm at a loss to think of any negatives about it at all: even its low-key jankiness feels like an essential part of the experience.
But... yeah! I've also been thinking of it as secret third game in the Jet Set Radio series, since I'm not sure I've played a game since JSRF that commits to its aesthetic as perfectly as this does.
I bought Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars (long title!) last night and played about 3 hours of it. This game is extremely chill. You get a lot of freedom in the world map, there's a brick path showing you where to go but you dont need to follow it and can explore for treasure chests. I explored so much I ended up in some woods which are meant to be after the first dungeon. I then continued the story and blasted through the dungeon with my massive 11 attack and beefy 10 defense.
I enjoy the battle system in this. The gem system keeps it simple but there's enough depth to keep each one engaging even when over leveled. When up against tougher enemies you can do some neat strategies.
The story has been pretty basic so far but seems like it will have some depth later on if the character cards are anything to go by.
I went back after getting sidelined and finished Shining Force II! My first Genesis RPG ever and I feel like I picked a good one. Also, yes, for anyone wondering about [ending spoiler], ||I did know about the special postgame fight and I did whup its ass.||
Overall a nice breezy snappy game and I think they didn't totally understand what they had made on some level because a) having like 40 battles in the entire game rules b) keeping XP you accrue even after you leave a fight (and also die I think? I never died and can't remember) seems so far ahead of its time we're not even there yet today c) nice little touch there with cutscenes skipping if you leave or lose a fight and come back
However.......... there are recurring fights in just a few handful of places on the map?? What is the purpose of those?? You don't need 'em to grind because you can grind on any fight anywhere. I never retriggered a battle from walking around on the overworld without it feeling like it was wasting my time. This causes a very funny one because [vague story spoilers] ||you lose access to the starting areas of the game for most of the game after a certain fairly early point, but you return to it in the endgame|| and there's a battle there that re-triggers if you got to that spot of the map that is from the first fights in the game.
Anyway _Shining Force II_ is still like a 9.00/10 from me and that only makes it not a 9.05/10, but you know. If only RPG encounter design had gone more along the lines of combat encounters being countable on the fingers and toes of, I dunno, 2-3 people, and repetition of any fight is only to facilitate completion, and if you're gonna have XP and levels you keep any XP you generate at any time... Beautiful game regardless.