@“connrrr”#p98987 yeah that was just pretty much a bad game. I‘m vaguely familiar with the tropes I guess it deconstructs, from hanging out in the weebosphere for so long, and I don’t play a whole lot of VNs. I don‘t think I should have to. I think the mental illness topics it employs to shock the player were used straight up irresponsibly. The program glitching was extremely contrived! And the game is too short to develop any of its ideas to a meaningful extent, I suspect because there was not enough thought behind them. Reaching into the program files to delete a character was maybe the most inventive part of the gameplay, and I’m sure it‘s been done before, I just can’t name an earlier precedent—if it hasn't, then bravo.
For a fourth-wall breaking horror game that doesn't suck, play Mortis Ghost's *Off* instead. It's what I wished I was playing instead from about the jumpscare on.
@“rejj”#p99004 I don't think I paid for it either. This was not the Plus version I played, which I think is the only paid edition.
More elaboration: I thought the setup was too generic for the player to have to sit through so much dull, tropey dialogue to get to the payoff, and the payoff wasn't worth it or surprising and I did avoid spoilers—about all I knew were the content warnings. I get that they were setting up a spring board for their twists later, but I think that those twists weren't earned because they were built on the backs of edgy imagery like hangings and cutting*. I see an attempt to develop characters like Sayori and Natsuki (I gravitated toward Yuri in Act I and wish I had aimed for Natsuki instead but I'm not gonna suffer another playthrough, sorry) but I don't think those went anywhere genuine, and in fact I kind of felt Sayori was emotionally manipulative and reminded me of a lot of people I have had to cut loose from my life. I don't know if that was intentional or not. I thought some of the poems were good. I thought the weird eyes Yuri looks at you with in the later acts were funny.
*And to be clear I don't think >!teen suicide or self-harm!< should be off-limits stuff for a horror game or any game, I just think they were brandished cheaply and the devs did not do a whole lot of substance with them.
Our time at the hospital between my newborn's feedings has mostly been spent gaming. My wife has been playing Let's Build a Zoo on the Switch. She informed me earlier today that she mistakenly sent an influencer character into a snake pen and they were killed by snakes, but couldn't figure out how to remove their body from the pen so she just moved the pen. The thought of an actual zoo doing this made me laugh.
I myself have been playing through the NES catalog looking for gems I may have missed over the years. Most recently I played M.U.L.E., which I didn't completely understand due to not finding and reading the manual, but found it to have some of the most amazing cover art I've ever stumbled upon.
i’m playing _beautiful desolation_ after getting it for free on gog a few months ago. i’m having a very nice time with it. it’s a point and click adventure game set in a post apocalyptic south africa - like, long enough post apocalypse that some semblance of society has rebuilt in the ruins. the world feels really detailed and the pre-rendered environments are sooo pretty, if sometimes a little difficult to visually parse. the music and sound design are both phenomenal as well.
gameplay isn’t really that special - there are some puzzles to solve and mini games to find, but it’s mostly a go places and talk to people game - but it’s sort of nice, it feels low stress and it’s a nice virtual world to spend some time in. i recommend.
That Hyper Gunsport is pretty cool, huh? Now I just need to play it with people.
Just before the holidays I finally decided to start up **Final Fantasy XIII** and that has been a blast. I'm a little annoyed at myself for letting people put me off it for so long. The combat system has been very enjoyable - timing attacks just right to keep air combos going is very satisfying.
It is no longer my Day of the Birth but I wanted to let you know guys it has made me very happy the warmth and spontaneous unanimity in the way you have all congratulated me. I was mostly joking (although it was 100% true that it was my birthday), but you have proven again how cool these community is.
Right now my Top 1 priority is putting the last couple of hours into GoW Ragnarok, a game I got on a whim after not liking the 2018 reboot all that much (I didn't dislike it either, it was basically another iteration of the quintessential Sony prestige AAA), and despite the huge list of reservations and all the skepticism with which I started the game, I find it really hard to complain about this one. It's not groundbreaking, it doesn't reinvent the wheel in any way and it is basically a well presented action/adventure affair clearly inspired by the Batman Arkham games with a sprinkle of Zelda, but everything is so well put together and rounded that coalesces into just a Good Time, something I have only been able to say about a minority of games at this level of production (Witcher 3, the most recent Spider-Man and very few other games).
@“Syzygy”#p99103 It seemed very interesting! I just didn't have much time to get into it. I might play a few games prior to human multiplayer to get at the very least a base understanding of it.
I played Hyper Gunsport, 1 v 1 style, with my kids. We played with what I'm going to call the Branden approach: after a winner is declared, the winner rotates out and the loser faces the next opponent. The older of the two is much more skilled at games than the younger and myself, so in the spirit of having a good time, the losers got more reps in.
The competition between the two got fierce - enough so that I had to shut the game off and send them to their rooms to cool off. It was still better than the younger getting nonstop pummeled and vowing to never play again.
For my second 2023 game experience, I was blindly (having only learned of it existence today) playing the 2013 indie freeware adventure game CRYPT WORLDS: YOUR DARKEST DESIRES, COME TRUE. The vibes and atmosphere were superb, and I was getting really into its weird economy but after about 2 hours I tried to climb to some place i wasn't intended to go and got stuck in geometry and since the game autosaves I kind of ruined my progress. Going to see if I have the energy to play through the beginning again and report back.
(edit: after playing through the couple of hours I got to play, I found out the music and the audio design is made by frequent guest of the insert credit show Liz Ryerson!)
</s>> (Snowdecahedron) SAYS: “Crypt Worlds owns. I've been eagerly anticipating the sequel for a long time now, but Lilith has also made a bunch of other games. I really liked Song of Homunculus which you can find here.”, and tips their hat.
@“穴”#p99162 I spent a couple of days talking with Lilith/Cicadamarionette/Rusalka/whatever the name she uses now via google chat (lol) for an essay I was trying to write for college. The essay got rejected because videogames are scum in the eyes of the faculty of philosophy but chatting directly with her for a while was pretty fun!
This year I decided to finally play some games I‘ve been meaning to get around to so I ordered Mother 3. I pulled out the gameboy in preparation and my GF had a copy of The Sims Bustin’ Out on it. I played a few hours, it's compelling!
haven‘t really settled on one thing to play recently so I’ve been sampling a bunch:
Dragon Age Origins: still plugging away at this, I still like it! Nothing really super grabbing me about it but I enjoy the general feel of being in the game. Feeling burned out by the amount of text.
DQ Builders 2: I think this game is mostly phenomenal but it feels a little too hooky sometimes, it compels your addictive play brain centers in a real absorbing way which feels a little gross when you come out of the haze. In the moment it is super fun and I love the little island challenges. I don't find myself wanting to take part in endless self directed building so having the story missions is nice but...once again there is just too much text. You're going through dialogue after dialogue after dialogue and it's actually super exhausting. For the most part the writing is really boring with the occasional good gag or something so I've just been skimming and skipping as much as possible which I don't love. I feel like I'm wasting my time.
Sports Story: This is cool but also has too much text and it's all pretty boring
Xenogears: Only a handful of hours in and I like basically everything they've done so far except...are you kidding me with the platforming controls?? I sure hope there aren't too many sections of this game that hinge on you having to make stupid little jumps in order to proceed because I would like to stick with it.
FFXIV Shadowbringers: after a super strong start the game kind of regresses into the usual structure of all the xpacs and I'm finding quite a bit about the narrative really starting to feel boring. >!Nobody really dies, every bad guy can be redeemed, everyone is just so disgustingly nice to each other that I feel like screaming at anyone to have a real personality!<. And it just takes so long for anyone get to the point. Soooooo much text. I will say that I am actually having a good time playing and exploring in it though!
a consistent theme throughout all of this is that I'm feeling extremely burned out by the amount and quality of text in a lot of these games. I feel like I used to have a lot more patience for this kind of overwrought or meandering game writing. I find myself wishing everyone would just get to the point instead of inserting tons of words to basically say nothing. And it's not like the words themselves are a joy to read like you would get from a good book or something where wandering text can be fun. It's all just kind of boring!!!