You don’t want to know how much money I spent trying to get this from various claw machines before eventually buying it for like $15 in Akihabara.
And I don’t even care about vocaloids!
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SVC CARD CLASH encouraged me to pick up the Capcom Fighting Collection vol. 1, and I have mixed feelings about Darkstalkers 1: The Night Warriors. For a fighting game in '94, it’s undeniably impressive and feels like a breakaway from traditional fighting games from the time. Sort of like a precursor to anime fighters. The backgrounds are very impressive and the spritework is very expressive with great animations. It feels like a Saturday morning cartoon when characters get electrocuted or burned up.
However, I don’t really care for the majority of the characters. Not because they’re spooky, it’s just the style they leaned into is not my preference. Morrigan and Felicia are definitely the standout designs and Talbain and Anarkaris are ok concepts even if I don’t feel particularly inspired by them. But I dislike all the others. Bishamon seems very flawed, and he doesn’t really play like it feels like he should. His sword is too short or something, he doesn’t have good neutral attacks. Sasquatch and Rikuo are ideas I want to like but I dislike the designs. Victor Frankenstein and Dimitri are dull to me. Then there is L. Raptor, who might be my least favorite character design of all time. Not only is it frustratingly aggressive and hard to counter, it just spams the move where it turns into a bug and it’s gross. I just don’t like seeing it. He does not earn the sick guitar riff after beating me.
The game also plays very diagonally. It could just be that I’m more used to fighters that read your inputs and punish you for jumping too much, but this game seems to expect you to jump around a lot even though movement is slightly muddy in the way that other games of the time are. I feel like the timing might be easier with the speed on ‘2’ instead of ‘1’, but in general playing the CPU is more difficult and less rewarding than I want it to be.
It’s interesting that I’m coming away with a negative impression of the original game even though I really enjoyed what I have played of Darkstalkers 3: Vampire Savior: Lord of Vampire. I think the speed and jumping works a lot better as the series goes on, and the characters get a lot more interesting. I like that this collection lets you see how it evolved, but I don’t know that I have much reason to return to DS1.
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I beat Fire Emblem Sacred Stones. In a first for my relationship with the series, I let some characters die. I was deep into chapter 20 when I accidently left one of my rogues in range of the boss who one shotted him and I really didn’t want to restart. Then I started the final chapter and made it through ok. Nobody died and I was able to carefully defeat (what I thought was) the final boss. Then the real final boss shows up, puts my whole team to sleep, and proceeds to pick off one character per turn until they woke up. In the end I lost 6 of my guys in addition to that one rogue. But not Kyle! He survived the boss with 4 hit points, what a legend. I did keep a save from before anyone died, so if I feel like it I can go back and do some grinding and go for a no death run. But I’m done with the game for now, I’m ready to play some other stuff. I like sacred stones, definitely a lot more than blazing blade, but Awakening and Echoes still reign supreme for me. I see myself replaying sacred stones some time in a few years. I see it as a game that gets better the more you know about it.
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I just rolled credits on Paradise Killer. What an experience!
Honestly, looking at screenshots/video of the game initially would have had me immediately categorize it as “This is not for me” but it was so praised here that I decided to give it a shot anyway, and now, finally getting around to playing it, I’m very glad I did.
I’ve spent a lot of time between sessions thinking about the characters, the island, the mysteries, and humming the music. I can’t wait for Kaizen’s next game, Promise Mascot Agency, (exploring as a truck is even more fun that exploring in first person!)
Anyway, highly recommended. I had to make some tough choices at the end. The single trial at the end of a lot of evidence gathering really sets the stakes high.
At the end of the trial, the only suspects left alove were Dr. Doom Jazz, and Crimson Acid. They were also the only suspects that Lady Love Dies slept with during the investigation.. I’m sure there’s no connection there, though…
Anyway, not sure what I’m playing next, but this one will stick with me for some time.
@Chopemon, your game rules!
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oh i think this is for me alright okay
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i finished pirate yakuza!
23 hours with quite a few side stories done!
THEY ALL JUST LOVE EACH OTHER SO MUCH
i think it’s the most wall to wall fun you can have with an rgg game. but, yknow, it’s majima, so it would have to be.
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I’m about 2.5 hours into Wanderstop and I’m not feeling it, although I’ll keep playing because it does seem to be looking up. The first hour was pretty boring but there’s some slow character development now?
The high point so far has definitely been Dirk Warhard. It turns out Davey Wreden is good at writing.
I got one of those android phones with a game pad attached that they call retro handhelds. The most fun I’ve had so far is on this arcade cab called Dragon Breed. Excited to learn more about arcade games. Also started psx suikoden 2 and so far I like the way it looks most of all.
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having a good time with mega man legends so far!
the controls felt clunky at first, but I’ve gotten used to them
the art and environments are particularly charming: there are a surprising number of spaces (like most of the stores in apple market) that seem to exist just to add some flavor to the world, it’s fun to find the little jokes they’ve hidden around if you examine/talk to everyone, and I appreciate that the NPCs typically have something new to say after each part of the game - it makes the world feel alive.
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I finally had the energy to sit down and play a lot of Avowed. I even got to the end. I definitely like it more than a lot of their games but it’s still not all that great. Definitely worth the 20 dollars on PC Game Pass though. I like hitting things with swords more than shooting things with guns it turns out. The story is forgettable but the games does have well made maps with lots of places to hind little treats everywhere. It rewards exploration well enough and I was playing it a lot just to see if there’s a little trinket around this corner. There is no new game plus or I’d probably play a few hours into it just to clobber some under leveled guys for a bit. It left me wanting more. I think I’m going to get Dread Delusion just to do it some more.
Let me know if this is a mistake.
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Dread Delusion rules. No mistake here
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alright, I"m going to get it and Xanadu Next
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You convinced me.
Also, I just started playing FlyKnight. I had a great time with it for 90 minutes. Just solo play at this point. It’s a neat mix of Old School Runescape and older-styled first person dungeon crawlers. Not quite a Morrowind vibe, more Daggerfall.
I’m probably like 2/3 of the way through GTA IV. I’m about to meet Jimmy Pegorino. This is the fourth time I’ve reached this point in GTA IV, though have only finished it once way back on the PS3. It’s going to be tough to finish GTA IV again plus continue on with Kingdom Come Deliverance 1, considering how long that game should be, with this Steam Spring Sale. I picked up a bunch of games included SMT V:V. AND on top of all that Valve is almost ready to release an update to Proton that will fix the invisible cursor in Grim Dawn so I’ll finally be playing through it on the Deck.
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i have beaten all the regular dustforce levels SS and am attempting to beat Yotta.
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I’ve hit a bit of a motivation wall with Expelled! after about 5 hours. Where I have a few ideas of where to progress next, but thinking about the actual step-by-step process of performing each of those in succession is enough to make myself want to play/do something else.
It’s a common problem I have with “unlike those old fuddy-duddy point and click games, our interface is simple and intuitive” variants on the adventure game. Where eventually they want to do a use object1 with object2 puzzle and it’s always the most unintuitive and convoluted process.
It feels like it might be worse than Overboard was in this regard. But I’m not sure if it’s just because that game was a sudden release with no expectations, while this one I’ve been anticipating for quite a while.
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I finally got around to playing Thank Goodness You’re here last night, on my first ever game streaming session to boot! Thanks to everyone who took time to hang out with me and ask some very awkward questions on the meanings on some words, which hopefully I answered as politely as I could.
The game is a lot of fun. It’s incredibly silly, has some lovely laugh out loud moments (as some of you heard) and is well worth a few hours of your time. It’s easy to finish in an evening and if nothing else, will help people learn about how silly England actually is. One thing that did shock me, is how rude it got towards the end. There were a few sequences which were very out there, but did add to the overall charm of the game. It did remind me of older British games, such as the ones you’d get on the Spectrum/Amstrad/Commodore 64 - which were simple in their controls and you didn’t actually do a lot, but they were fun. The comedy is the star of the game, and as I always do whenever possible is give a big mention to Matt Berry who was in the cast, doing what he does best - an over the top English accent to full effect!
This one doesn’t need a huge seven plus post review, because it’s not long enough to do that! What it does need is a rating, and I think because it’s so English and if that’s your cup of tea I give it:
/
I’m only deducting a point because of gratuitous cartoon nudity, and I am still very English and we don’t talk about that!
If anyone’s interested, I may actually try and stream again before my annual break from dad-work, and probably try and dig up some other English classics from my childhood - so if anyone fancies that let me know!
Tally ho old beans!
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Inspired by the rating with my guts thread, I’ve been playing Klonoa: Door to Phantomile from the Phantasy Reverie collection.
I’m experiencing a stew of Ristar, Kirby 64 and Chrono Cross, which is pretty remarkable considering it originally came out before two of those. Although it shares strengths and similarities with each of those games, it sits very comfortably as its own weird and wondrous vision. That reminds me, I love the choice to call each stage a Vision!
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Whoa, there was a Klonoa Beach Volleyball spin-off. That sounds awesome.
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I’m curious, does the marrow thing have any significance beyond that it sounds like he’s singing about a penis, and you get to blush and feel tittilated even though he’s technically talking about a squash? Does the marrow hold any other cultural significance or symbolism?
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playing a little Rise of Ronin on the PC. Have had zero tech issues despite reports of it being a cataclysmically bad port but smooth sailing for me 
. I like the game a lot. It has a lot of Stuff in the ubisoft sense but it’s much smaller and denser in terms of physical space and overall pacing that this is not much of a problem. I suppose it would be fairer to compare it to Nioh though but it’s not as technical and rigidly formal. Feels like a looser and lighter Ninja Gaiden to me, got a lot of PS2 game in there it’s cool
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