(Archived) The thread in which we discuss the videogames we are playing in the year 2023

video games
1549

@“Karasu”#p128018 I need to get back to Bayonetta 3 too… I loved Bayonetta 1, didn‘t quite gel with Bayonetta 2, and couldn’t get into Bayonetta 3 at all. I think what I liked about the game (exploring the surprisingly long levels and comboing the scrubs) was pretty much replaced with big action set pieces. I have only played a bit of the third game but felt like the technical limitations of the switch and the desire to have big kaijus show up meant that instead of fighting a lot of smaller enemies it is all about big showdowns with oversized bosses. The fights aren‘t bad but Bayonetta’s movement is pretty fundamental to my enjoyment and Bayo 3 slows her down and interrupts her a lot.

Like, Bayo 1 she turns into a freaking panther and it makes platforming super fun! Then in the new one she stops walking so that a Godzilla wannabe that doesn't move well slowly attacks the enemy.

In between Baldur's Gate 3, which is fantastic, I've been playing the Katamari games and I'm chewing on We ❤️ Katamari. More game sequels need to be themed around how much everyone loves the first game. It's very funny that the 2nd game in the series is all about nostalgia for the first... Which they also do again in Katamari Forever too lol. I mean, there's not _that_ many places to go with Katamari considering you rolled up the dang planet in the first game, but it's kinda funny that the sequels decided to really lean into the fact that it's the same game and we love that dang Katamari!

1550

@“Tradegood”#p128056 I feel bad my playthrough of Bayo 1 was kinda ruined. My first problem was I wasn‘t very good at stylish action games back then and had a serious button mashing problem, and I was also playing it on a friend’s 360 and I got to at least Route 666 (the motorcycle sequence) but I couldn't hold onto the save. I tried the opening moments of 2 and the combat clicked with me much more quickly, but before I could clear time for it her voice actress made an absolute fool of herself on twitter and the shadow very much remains cast.

Also my favourite addition to the series with *We* ♥︎ *Katamari* has got to be the flashbacks to the King's life and his suffering from success and coming to terms with it lol. It's actually a treat I liked better than following the Hoshino family. I haven't played any of the games afterward so I don't know what narratives they might frame themselves with?

1551

I have spent quite a while feeling generally unenthused about playing anything. There‘s a bunch of stuff that I have started and genuinely enjoyed, but haven’t felt the hook pulling me to come back and keep playing.

I started Viewfinder, which is neat! The puzzle mechanic is amazing -- seeing it work for the first time elicited a real "..oh **wow**" moment. I really should get back to it and keep going.

I think mostly out of just wanting a game to hang out with, I grabbed Yakuza 1 Kiwami from GamePass, and am starting that up. I've never played this one! I _wanted_ to like Yakuza 7 far more than I ended up actually liking it -- the turn based combat where position mattered but offered zero ways to manipulate positioning felt awkward, and when playing it I really was not in the mood for the pressure of juggling jobs to manage party XP to try and level everyone up "correctly". Here's hoping I can just run around and enjoy some mayhem.

1552

@Karasu please update us on your feelings if you get a chance. I was so immensely turned off by Bayonetta 3, too – the narrative stuff was a like a paint-by-numbers “how can we make Bayonetta awful and disappointing?” activity book (suddenly heteronormative Bayonetta replaces big drag show energy with, I dunno, Pepe Le Pew vibes?), awkwardly fumbling with a slow and massive monster further disengaged me from what I thought would be a hands-on character action game, and it all looks like a six pack of dingleberries (the dithering, bad upscaling and low resolution topped off with horribly compressed .MP4 cutscenes made me feel completely disconnected – I would so much rather look at Bayonetta 2 in every respect). I think I‘m happy to write it off as not something I need to play, but I’d be really curious to hear if you've turned around on it at all after some time away

1553

@“treefroggy”#p128015 psp ridge racer 2 is available on PlayStation plus and it is very very good.

1554

Have y‘all played them Ys games?? Would you believe me if I told you that they were a good time??? Over the past few weeks I’ve played through Ys I & II on PSP, Ys III on Genesis, and just a couple of hours ago I finished Ys IV: Dawn of Ys on the PC Engine CD with the English fan translation (and fan dub). After posting I will likely start up Ys Origins. After I finish that I will play Ys V on Super Famicom. Then Ys VI on PC. Or perhaps I‘ll play the Super Famicom version of Ys IV, Mask of the Sun. I could keep going, but I’d rather go play some more Ys. When new games get ya down, dive into some Falcom games. There‘s a bunch and apparently they’re all fun and everyone but me knew that.

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@“connrrr”#p128060 I feel bad my playthrough of Bayo 1 was kinda ruined. My first problem was I wasn’t very good at stylish action games back then

Honestly I don't think you're supposed to be 'good' during your first run through bayonetta. I sure wasn't! I think you're expected to get stone and bronze rewards. Then as you start learning it more and pull off dodge offset and **ሠጎፕርዘ ፕጎጠቿ** it becomes easier.

the shadow does indeed remain cast, lmao.

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@“connrrr”#p128060 Also my favourite addition to the series with We :heart:︎ Katamari has got to be the flashbacks to the King’s life and his suffering from success and coming to terms with it lol.

So true. The King of All Cosmos and his wifey belong in the [#EmotionallyHonestRelationships](https://forums.insertcredit.com/d/169-any-emotionally-honest-relationships-in-video-games) thread.

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@“deadbeat”#p128099 Ys Origins

My favorite Ys game! It feels so good to play. I hope you enjoy it!

I've tried those fan translated snes games but don't really get too far in them, but they always seem to have a lot of opening dialogue and then my emulator gets scuffed or something and I lose progress.

1557

@“deadbeat”#p128099 I‘m also on my own Ys journey right now! I did I & II chronicles+ on PC, III for PC Engine CD, IV for PC Engine CD (also with fan translation/dub), V for SNES, and I’m about to start VI on PC. So far I think my favorite was IV, though II was also very good. V is my least favorite so far; I thought it was pretty middling.

I'm playing them in release order (more or less), so it'll be a couple more games before I get to Origin. I think I might also give Strategy a shot, since that seems like kind of a weird thing and I've got this DS.

1558

I rolled credits on Pikmin 2! I don‘t blame >!Louie for wanting to stay behind, but he’s going to run out of whatever it is Hotocatians breathe if I don‘t go back for him!<. I guess I’m not done yet!! But I've already 100%'d half the areas. You can repay the debt from treasure collected in the first two alone.

This game continues to make me feel things. The pikmin are so sweet, but also fearsome. Their life cycle is disturbing. The implications of the bulbmin are too much. I love the suggestion that whatever reason there is for humans disappearing from the planet and pikmin and bulborbs etc. taking our place are connected.

One note for Swiss/SD2SP2 users: I had experienced some skipping in FMV sequences when playing the first game, but they've all run perfectly in the second one so far. I don't know why.

1559

@“xhekros”#p127884 Oh it‘s a super slow burn. Didn’t help that I was running an int build which doesn‘t pay dividends until late game. I had to raise int to around 63 to use the staff I wanted, and 70 to check out the spell I really wanted to use. Overall pretty cool and interesting experiance. Maybe I’ll do the new game plus mode when I'm like 70 in a retirement home with some more free time lol.

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@“Tradegood”#p128102 Origin is actually the first Ys game I‘ve ever played, though I’d only played for an hour or so before getting distracted and playing something else. That was a couple years ago now, back when I thought there‘d be no way I could catch up on such a long running series…turns out it’s not as daunting as I thought. Anyway! I played through to the second zone tonight, and I gotta say I‘m digging the game a lot more now that I have context for all the people and places. This next bit isn’t a story spoiler but since I know there‘s someone else playing through the series I wanna keep basic gameplay details under wraps in case they want to go in completely blind. >!Would you recommend playing both characters back to back, or are both characters’ stories similar enough to be a bit of a drag if played in succession?!<

@"Mnemogenic"#p128108 You've been posting about your journey in this thread, ya? I remember seeing some Ys posts throughout the year and those are what gave me the push to finally dive in. Assuming I'm remembering correctly, thanks for posting and making the games sound fun! I enjoyed IV a good deal, but II had a couple of fist-pump inducing moments that are hard to beat imo. Plus I really liked being able to give people gifts!

I told myself I'd play them in release order but when I found out there were like, four meaningfully different versions of IV, only one of which was made by Falcom, and that that version wasn't released until sometime in the 2010s...well I decided that I'd have to play all of those versions, but playing two versions of IV in a row to stick to release order would probably burn me out. So now I'm getting a little wild with it, and will be sprinkling in Origin and the other IVs when I think I'll enjoy them the most.

1561

Tim Rogers' “25 Best Games of 1994” got me jonesing for some oldies.

Sega's 1991 Spider-Man arcade game is great fun. Even superheroes have bad posture. This is one of my favorite beat 'em ups because I love how the game changes when the camera pans in and out of the city. This may be my favorite Spider-Man games because less is more. I don't want an in-depth plot involving the bad guys; just give me a great design and let me punch them.

On the SNES, I began Super Mario World again. I usually get my Mario fix after about 30 minutes of gameplay, so I've never made it past the second castle. I played through F-Zero. This is one of my favorite racing games. The pink car doesn't have much get-up-and-go, but I find it gets the job done better than the others. The last two games I played were Gradius 3 and Race Drivin'. I forgot about the slowdown in Gradius 3, but discovered a patch made by someone named VitorVilela7 that makes the game playable. It was so good I tried the past on Race Drivin'; not the greatest game, but a lot better thanks to VV7.

1562

man, i‘ve played ys 1 in like four incarnations (pc engine cd, some dvd version i got from japan in like 2002 which i wish i had cuz the packaging was great, now the steam 1+2 thing) and beaten it a bunch but…. like…. none of the other ys games??? i’ve gotten like a quarter of the way thru ys 2 but never beaten it for some reason??? there are so many of those dang yses i wanna try out, too! also there‘s a falcom game from the like 2002 era called Zwei!! which i remember liking the look of and some of the music, and i tried to play it but i could barely read hiragana at the time, but it’s on steam now with an english version, so maybe one day i'll dig into that. why did i post all this, who knows!! i really oughta give ys the full playings-through it deserves tho. except i might skip ys 3 cuz i dunno about that one (or two, or like, however many games are called ys 3 but are different games)

1563

also i keep thinking about, what if i played bayonetta and tried to see what's up with those games, but i hate her sarah palin glasses so i just skip it

1564

@“sdate”#p128141 probably not but does this include the PS1 Quake 2 maps? That is how I played Quake 2 way back when and spent many long summer days playing nothing but 4 player split screen death match on that version.

1565

People playing Ys games: don’t skip Oath In Felghana. It’s one of the best of the series and also one of the best games

1566

I also finished FF1PR on Switch.

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@“Toph”#p127482 the Pixel remaster version is not the same game as the original

I did feel a little strange not just because I used cheats after a certain point, but because of how much the Pixel Remaster version feels like a new game: I played it wanting to get some kind of historical context for the series (and Stranger of Paradise) but didn't want to wade through the NES game, which I assumed would have required a lot of grinding, and which besides has a bunch of nonfunctional mechanics. But after finishing it I'm kind of thinking, man, it would've been sort of cool to wade through a little of that NES game! Probably not finish it, though. I'll dip my toes in someday. With similar context-informative aims I wanted to play the whole game with the original music, but that seemed silly after a while: the game is so different that it's not like playing with the original music makes it any more historically informative/authentic, and also, the new arrangements are [so good](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyXrAJtZvao&t=3480s).

And besides the nominal cheats, how about the dungeon map!

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It even updated which doors you’ve entered so you wouldn’t end up accidentally backtracking

Looking at the map while inside a dungeon room also allows you to see what is in every other room: unsure if that was intentional as it makes many of those rooms completely pointless (i.e. you know there aren't any chests in them).

FF Pixel Remaster without cheats is fun—I played it for about 6 hours that way, it just would have taken much longer to finish and I wasn't up for that.

[URL=https://i.imgur.com/ZyTWOQY.jpg][IMG width=600]https://i.imgur.com/ZyTWOQY.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

I liked naming my party members in this more than in FFs 6 or 7, where the characters have defined personalities and narrative arcs. Giving my monk/blackbelt a feminine name felt almost transgressive. I do enjoy the narrative-heavy FFs more than this early D&D style, but this was cool. Maybe it's time to [Etrian an Odyssey...](https://forums.insertcredit.com/d/2599-this-odyssey-isnt-going-to-etrian-itself)

[URL=https://i.imgur.com/mFpJnVk.jpg][IMG width=600]https://i.imgur.com/mFpJnVk.jpg[/IMG][/URL]
[URL=https://i.imgur.com/76jZLSH.jpg][IMG width=600]https://i.imgur.com/76jZLSH.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

1567

my Ys binge is looming on the horizon. PC Engine/TG16 version for me probably.

@"connrrr"#p128112 Those endings are so rewarding. love the incorporation of live action footage.

Last, can't believe it but I've become a train gamer. The only gaming I've been doing this month is Etrian Odyssey III, and it's been exclusively while riding the train.

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@“captain”#p128181 The new arrangements ARE really good! I went back and forth with both sound options throughout my playthrough. And that map trick felt pretty intentional to me, and I appreciated it whole-heartedly.

Also I can't remember the names of any of my party off the top of my head aside from my Black Mage who I named Renault. I keep thinking I named my Black Belt Biscuits but I know thats just my mind wishing I named them Biscuits.