@“Chopemon”#p116720 dang those graphics are amazing!!
does VP stand for Vampire Power?
@“Gaagaagiins”#p116760 I'll look at those reccs! That format of play is a blind spot of mine so I appreciate you giving a little more perspective.
@“tapevulture”#p116763 it sure does!
wow I threw etrian odyssey untold on my 3ds cuz I never played any of those games and I was expecting like, punishing 80s wizardry type shenanigans but so far this first forest level is chill? what a weird lil unique way of bringing this style of rpg into a more modern context. I was just planning to skip around a bit for like 15 minutes but it‘s strangely absorbing, drawing my lil map, and it’s been way more than just 15. also I went straight to the fm soundtrack and that was the correct choice
oh my god they made this one woman Canadian and she's from Ontario???
I played and finished the Golden Idol expansion: The Spider of Lanka. My only criticism of it is that I wished there were more of it to play!
Strongly recommended for fans of the game.
If you have played neither, well then go and grab yourself a copy of the base game and have a blast.
I‘m playing through two recent games right now, but I can give my first impressions:
The one I’m spending more hours and investing in is Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2. The game continues a year after the events of the first Fuga and it‘s for sure darker. While the premise is the same and the stakes feels lower, there is a event that darkens the story and makes it (so far) more interesting. I think it gets better in some points and worse in others. The best part is that there is more elements into the story. There are airships that would give you some bonuses and make the fighting bits more interesting, as also there are some of the characters that have been flipped through the use of guns and bonuses, so you’re not sitting there on the first title‘s laurels and also the airships can make some air attacks, give some health or mana recovery and also make you move to some places. I tend to do those in order to explore and get more objects, and there are also a little bit more things to do while on the tank. The bad part is that, since the stakes are lower, the game feels more comfy, but it makes you less invested in battles except for one thing: there is a new spicy thing that would incentivate you to keep your tank high on health and defend yourself more, and with the addition of some new abilities, well… there is some interest in making you play a New Game Plus, which is nice because the fights are as fun as the first.
The thing I wanted to say and I’ll keep in spoilers, which is the spicy element: ||You won‘t be moving only in one tank, since you’d move to at least two, but since both combine, you have two ultimate weapons. Since you control the Tarascus, you get the Manganarm, which would work similar to the Soul Cannon, but with the exception that the person you would put there would get unconscious. The spicy thing is both of the tanks would combine into one, and so you‘d have the Soul Cannon, but you can’t control that. The Soul Cannon would select a character randomly, so you get kind of a counterclock battle where you need to finish your enemy in 20 turns, and that would happen only if your tank gets down to more than half your health, so you‘re in your best interest to defend and keep your health up more, as well as trying to use as many states possible. This, I believe, is good since it makes you think about bonuses and such.
Also, there is some areas where the airships won’t take you unless you complete the game, so…||
The second one is _Humanity_. I played it a little bit and while I don't fancy puzzle games as much since I'm not too able, this is a game that can make me interested in the genre. As a videogame journalist in Spain said it, think more as you're a human trying to control and make water flow, but you have the structure to make water move. You can do some really interesting thing with the characters, and the game is also very comfy, since you're moving humans that flow, come and go through a door continuously, so you can retry, experiment and move. The game presents you with some mechanics and then explores those into different levels. You have to take every powerup and mechanic in your arsenal to take you to the goal, but you can also gain abilities by making Goldies (which are like big golden humans) get to the goal, so there is a kind of replayability and experimentation that feels very nice because every element plays into it: the techno is nice and comfy, the animations are really bubbly and feel really good to the fingers (there is one that I'm not comfortable yet, which makes your shiba inu get into the bodies of the people and flow through them) and the levels are minimalistic but makes you think, explore and see whether you have left something or not. It feels very nice atm.
@“xhekros”#p116978 Thank you for this! I had no idea that Fuga 2 had come out already. Good to know!!
@“whatsarobot”#p116980 Well, the problem with the second Fuga is that it came the same week and a day prior (I believe, correct me if I‘m wrong) to the Zelda release. Luckily, Humanity didn’t get as cursed as Fuga, but I'm having so much fun with it in little spurts that I might buy it full price and enjoy it fully.
I‘m playing a bit of Humanity every day and not moving on until I have got all the Goldies in each level. When I put it down after a few hours on Sunday, I felt like I had just finished a gruelling day at work. I was using my head so much and solving lots of problems and really thinking hard about the solutions. I was exhausted. I don’t find puzzles easy. 10/10 current GOTY. I love it.
@“Chopemon”#p116987 I‘m glad the IC Zeitgeist seems to like Humanity because I looked at it and thought "It’s a puzzle level from Ratchet and Clank" and didn‘t want to investigate it more! I’ll take a look at it again.
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@“deepspacefine”#p115563 “how to deepfake dad”
Hello, yes, this is Dad.
I played that Diablo IV beta and enjoyed it a lot more than I expected! I also really liked the control scheme on the controller (always used to play on PC) and I love the fact my Dad eyes can actually read the fonts! Very excited about fonts!
But their bundling is **so dang confusing** I cannot figure our which edition is "for" me.
I think I'm just going to get the cheapest one as I'll end up with more skins in that game than I would ever wear anyway and the battle pass won't launch for a whole quarter anyway and it's $10.
@“antillese”#p117007 I have never played a Ratchet and Clank so I can't comment on that BUT Humanity has lots of twists and inventiveness and it definitely not a one trick pony.
I almost never like solve a puzzle games. Professor Layton can shove his matchsticks up his top hat. I love Humanity. It's the only puzzle where I'll sit, leaning towards the TV just studying it. YMMV of course.
because i will never shake the habit of playing games wayyyy late, i just got through titanfall 2's campaign.
i love it! it's my favorite FPS campaign! level design as good and varied and creative and trippy as anything i've played. i'm fine with there not being a third one; they've already nailed it.
Not exactly related to above discussion of Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2, but not unrelated: I played through the first Fuga's demo available on Steam over a few days, and, boy, is that both an exceptionally illustrative demo as well as an exceptionally generous one. You get to play 3 out of the game's 12 Chapters and get both acquainted with seemingly most if not all major gameplay features, and even quite familiar with the core mechanics.
It is certainly one of the games of all time (it rules but wow is that quite a particular choice of aesthetic and thematic material)
I started playing New Adventure Island on my PC Engine Mini and I am kicking myself for handwaving this series because it wasn‘t Wonder Boy/Monster World. This is one of those games where very simple gameplay is executed in a super engaging way. It has the sense of speed that made me like the Sonic games and other inspired fast paced platformers like Crash Bandicoot or Freedom Planet, but I love that it forces you to speed through every level because of the energy meter and having an energy meter that has to be maintained instead of a timer gives the gameplay a different frantic feeling than say, a Mario level where the gimmick is the timer is short because you have to grab fruit that is also dissapearing. On top of that, the bright colors and aesthetic and lovely and the soundtrack is fantastic. Plus, you can be a caveman on a skateboard so it is an automatic thumbs up from me on that. It’s super difficult but it never feels frustrating thanks to the bite sized levels and pace. I definitley want to check out the rest of the Adventure Island games after this.
@“HeavenlyHalberd”#p117066 I always say Adventure Island has the best video game timer ever. More games should be copying this instead of Mario's!! Great to see others opening themselves to the truth
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@“saddleblasters”#p116249 I think I first saw it in a Nintendo Power review?
For anyone who cares, here is the preview I must have seen for Magician's Quest in Nintendo Power (issue 238, Feb 2009), from when it was referred to as "Little Magician's Magic Adventure":
[URL=https://i.imgur.com/zjS55gc.jpg]
[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/zjS55gc.jpg[/IMG][/URL]
I guess I like the new Star Trek game but it‘s been frustrating. Had a few hours in then it crashed my computer, then reverted to what looks like a cloud save, but from autosaved state at the opening cutscene. And it wasn’t saving to the disk at any point, so all my progress is totally wiped lol. It hurts because there's no way to skip cutscenes or dialogue
I suppose that's just a bad break and doesnt reflect the game itself though, so my thoughts apart from that are: it doesn't quite have the tone and feel of TNG or DS9, but thankfully it's not at all cloying or ingratiating like recent star trek stuff. The story has the scope of a good one-off plotline, but with more beats and incidents. I mean that it's not like a save the galaxy kind of space opera plot, which is good imo
It's rough from a technical pov. It maxes out at 1920x1080 and really chugs at times. It has the sort of empty and stock asset-padded look of like _Disaster Report 4_ - which has it's own oddly pleasant quality - but it's clearly budgety. The game alternates between two narratives and main characters, and I think one of them has noticeably better animation and character models and I wonder why this could be. The engineer character's half of the game has its _Banjo Gyro_ moments
Overall I'd say it's fun enough. It's kind of like playing the 30 total minutes that the Mass Effect series was any good (walking around the space station and talking to people) but it's 9-10 hours worth of that stuff (purportedly, I could only play 3-4 hrs before the game destroyed itself)
I finally picked up a PS5 a little while ago and wanted to try a game with some graphical chops, so I played through Horizon: Forbidden West over the past couple weeks. It certainly is a beautiful game, but I struggled with a lot of it. I recall enjoying HZD back in the day, but my experience here is making me wonder if I still would.
I could rant for way too long but I'll try to be brief, the combat is distinctly unsatisfying - unfair feeling. It's absolutely chock full of stuff: weapons, skills, traps, ammo types, "valor surges". I'm sure there are combinations of these that are ridiculously overpowered but I just couldn't bring myself to care enough to invest the time/energy into experimenting. So, I pretty much just spammed arrows and heals the whole game while getting tossed around like a ragdoll by the giant machines.
There were quite a few narrative elements I was uncomfortable with (beyond many plot beats being extremely predictable). Early on there is a mission where a guy is organising a strike, using union rhetoric but is actually totally self-serving >!(you eventually run him out of town)!<. The messaging felt quite anti-union to me, and your character is immediately and unquestioningly on a mission to force people back to work.
Thankfully that's only a small segment of the game, but throughout there is a weird vibe where all the "natives" are uncivilized, ignorant and basically helpless without you. Your main character is essentially infallible and perfect in every way, dismissive of people's beliefs and concerns, and is immediately worshipped by everyone she meets. It feels like it uses a lot of unpleasant tropes from media, like "white saviour" kind of stuff. It's not exactly overt because it is transplanted into a totally different set of circumstances, but I still find it a bit gross.
Still, it sure is a good looking game. That was what I signed up for and it totally delivers in that department. Just incredible.