Heck yeah, I need to train up my Q-Bee before we meet again!
3 Likes
Yes!! Time to train!!
And the winner is...
2 Likes
Now that Iāve got a CRT setup working, Iām dipping into my small PS2 collection here and there. First up was a title I remembered being solid: Shinobi.
Itās still pretty solid, as it turns out! The tate mechanic was a cracker; chain four or more kills together to get an escalating damage and score bonus, and a fun little cutscene at the end of your chain where all the enemies youāve killed slide apart into two pieces. Itās neat how it frames each encounter as less a matter of survival and more of a puzzle to solve (and a high score to optimize). The wonky lock-on targeting kind of gets in the way of that, making it hard to prioritize the targets you want to prioritizeā¦ but hey, we canāt all be perfect.
Unfortunately Iāve also found out that it triggers motion sickness for me, so thatās going to be a small doses kind of thing for now. Next up, Iām weighing my options: Rygar? The Getaway? Or start digging into the Saturnās library with JB Hunter: Blue Chicago Blues?
7 Likes
hyperkidmorph2mr.gunner
Found and played this game the other day and itās an immediate candidate for my game of the year. Anyone whose favorite Treasure game is Gunstar Heroes, Alien Soldier, or Sin and Punishment (i.e. those with phenomenal taste) has got to hang out with this immediately. Mega-tight single-session boss rush with massive dudes who only have like one or two simple attack patterns ā of course not to confuse āsimpleā with āeasy.ā Itās more of a Treasure game than even most Treasure games, and yet I canāt even tell if these guys have actually played any of those. This is the highest praise I can award an action game.
11 Likes
The itch page is taking me back to cluttered MySpace pages.
2 Likes
Iām ready to be hurt by Takahashi insisting that the most interesting and important thing about Xeno is making sure all of the games are connected by a tapestry of titties and indulgent personal fan fiction, but for now? For now ā whipping out my phone to type this out as I slowly walk to New LA, lazily squeeze all the drops out of the prologue ā Xenoblade X is still so fucking good.
Iām remembering whyād Iād sit with this for six hours at a time in 2015. Very few game worlds beg you to explore them like this. Itās all so very beautiful and singular looking in video games ā and look, thereās a treasure dot on the map. Why not send a drone up and see? Why not take the leap? Thereās no fall damage buddy. Thereās hardly any gravity even. And dang itās nice to have this looking so crisp, full of little polishes everywhere ā theyāve somehow made maybe the best treasure-opening feeling with a little hold of the A button and a sprinkle of HD rumble.
Maybe the philosophy 101 body pillows from Xenoblade 2 are lurking around the corner. Maybe theyāll sneak attack in the last hour of a 200-hour game, like in Xenoblade 3. But maybe not. Maybe Takahashiās better this time. We used to be so good together.
11 Likes
Just a reminder on Xenoblade Chronicles X: you can redo the design and even the gender of your main character after a certain point in the story. That came up because I was feeling conflicted about whether to go boy or girl. I eventually went green boy (my first playthrough was girl), but reminding myself I could change later if I wanted made me feel better.
5 Likes
Iām about to say, for the 900th time probably, that Iām in the home stretch of Ys IX, a game that just doesnāt know when to quit? Please donāt get me wrong: I like this game. It does most of the things that make Ys VIII a fun game, and mostly in better ways. Itās fun to a point to jet around stages and so on, but once youāve found almost everything, it loses a lot of its charm. I appreciate having side quests that are actually mostly meaningful, but I wish for the last chapter they would have just given them all to me at once, because I feel like there are like four rounds of them. The resolution to the major storyline question (that everybody is a homunculus, a twist I saw coming from 3000 miles away) is interesting for the most part.
More than anything though, Iām just ready to be done with the game, so that I can play one of the handful of things I want to try next. I think Iām heading for the last boss, but will it really be the last boss, or will I have a few more rounds of going back to the base and completing two or three more side quests? This sounds ridiculous, but itās literally where I ve been for the last ten hours or so.
2 Likes
Got Xanadu Next on the spring sale and it a decent action rpg with bewildering controllers. Iām playing it with a controller but you canāt go to other item boxes or change tabs with the direction pad. If I use the mouse to do so itās invisible so I have to guess where it is. It feels extra jank and for me thatās kind of its charm. Iām putting it on hold until I can connect it to my larger crt which I think would serve its graphics style the best. Iām playing the Mario rpg remake until then.
5 Likes
ever since Falcom started with Orb Technology theyāve been like this. Wonder who came up with the orbs
6 Likes
Apparently Iām playing Kingās Field II? I didnāt realize the KF games got final fantasy number shifted and western KF1 is Japanese KF2 and Japanese KF1 was not officially translated. It looks like there is a fan translation of KF1, so maybe Iāll swing back around to that one later. But until then, Iām very much enjoying Kingās Field II. Itās great to know From Soft were good at crafting a world to explore way back then. And like the souls, Iām able to keep the layout of the world in my head without a map (even though there is technically an in game map). I was worried it would feel too primitive and at best be a historical curiosity, but itās a real one, man. The controls feel surprisingly great. Strafing around with the shoulder buttons rules. I should say, though, it feels great when itās not running in single digit frames per second, lol.
5 Likes
Toshihiro Kondo
He went from owning a falcom fanpage in 96 and writing fanfics, to joining the company, writing the Legend of Heroes scenarios, then directing the Ys games, and now heās the president of the company. Heās the #1 Falcom fan.
11 Likes
good for him but I think he may be too into Falcom, and it shows in the product lol
9 Likes
Whatās amazing about trails games is they never end, but they also never begin
14 Likes
The truest thing ever written about the Trails series
4 Likes
The story justā¦Trails off?
3 Likes
So, I just finished up the game Paradiso Guardian
Itās a metroidvania, leaning almost entirely into the āvaniaā part of the word, with similarities like a leveling system, weapons to acquire and buy, and castle to explore. There isnāt a ton of stuff thatās all that new here, but there is the Holy Flare mechanic where dodging will slow things down to a crawl, make you immune to damage and let you regain your mana for a limited amount of time. Mastering is essential and while it works for the most part, the timing can feel off on a lot of moves, making me feel the need to dodge well before I would normally expect to.
In addition to this, you can develop bonds with some of the bosses you face and summon them on a cooldown timer. The neat thing is that you can challenge these bosses multiple times at increasing difficulties to unlock all new special attacks from them.
The castle itself is fine. It all looks really good, but it can be kind of a pain in the ass to navigate. The warp system is kind of inelegant, and there arenāt enough locations. Thereās also some pretty rough backtracking with one section resulting in a huge amount of looping around. It felt like I shouldnāt have been able to go through there without the superjump, but I didnāt know that. Not great.
Perhaps the biggest thing that stands out about this game is the art design. There is a very specific sort of aesthetic that the developers have gone for and youāll notice that every single character is male and they range from āripped anime twunkā to āside of anime beef.ā
Look, Iām burying the lede here. The big thing about this game is: it is gay porn.
Let me clarify, it isnāt in the entirety of the game, your character is not running around with his dick out or anything like that. And this is 100% a two-handed game. You can actually turn off all the porn if you like.
In fact, it almost seems odd that this wasnāt sold without the pornographic content and then had the XXX stuff behind some DLC or something, but perhaps they didnāt want to compromise the vision and I can respect that.
The porn itself comes after beating a boss or obtaining a new skill from a boss. This is where my assessment of this game gets weird because I donāt know how much I should be reviewing the pornographic content??
If I have any criticism of it, itās that there isnāt much in the way of variety when it comes to body type, but if youāre buying this game for the carnal aspects, you likely already know what you want from it. I think thatās something Iād expect from more of a dating sim. And hey, I think itās fine pornography.
Again, this is weird. I know I did a blurb about another pornographic game from steam next fest, but this also feels kinda awkward. I thought it was worth highlighting as itās not a genre that we see getting lewd all that often and thereās a lot of work put into the gameplay aspect. Itās not amazing, but itās more than I expect. Itās totally decent. From what I can tell it had a real rough launch and the developer has worked on it more to remove bugs and expand it a fair bit. Thereās still some kinks, but it all works well.
So if you wanted Castlevania: Symphony of the Night with a scene where Alucard gets it on with Richter after defeating himā¦ well, this isnāt that, the character dynamics are all wrong for that, but this is probably the closest youāll get.
7 Likes
Wrapped up what I think is all of the Dogtown related quests in Phantom Liberty. I decided to start fresh for the DLC because I just wanted to play the new content and forget about the rest. Had a pretty good time overall. I let Songbird go. Which Iām not sure if a lot of people did because sheās was not honest with you about how things were gonna go, but the game seemed to react well to me wanting to help her anyway.
A highlight for me though was the Mr. Hands quest where you decide who is going to be the next leader in Dogtown. Becoming Cuban and walking around while even the BARGHEST people are scared of you was an interesting change + you got to say things like āHavana sends its regardsāā¦just ridiculous stuff, I love it. I wish there was more of that to be honest. I understand they couldnāt retrofit quests in the broader world that used the impersonation technology, but it would have been a nice kind of quest to engage in for the fun of it.
I could have continued past the DLC content but I felt satisfied with what I got and didnāt want to tack on another open world game as Iām currently playing The Witcher 3 as well.
4 Likes
Pun intended, or not?
As far as my gaming is concerned: Finished low rank in Monster Hunter: Wilds after about 15 hours in the game. The last few fights are excellent; itās a bummer that it takes the game about 10 hours to get there. I had been skipping all of the dialogue and cutscenes because I just couldnāt be bothered, but thereās lots of talking if youāre interested in that.
Monster Hunter is one of the series that each iteration is so similar that the differences are incredibly pronounced. For example: Iāve struggled more with the camera in Wilds than I did in World or Rise. Also, despite the proposal of this being āWorld, but bigger!ā the maps have a sense of having more corridors than world did. Part of that is, with the mounts, your tracking and chasing sections of the hunts have been entirely eliminated. Youāre just moving from arena to arena to fight the monster in, and the arenas feel tight and limiting.
Thereās QOL elements that are obvious improvements, but took me awhile to get used to. Cooking your meals on your own whenever you need to, for example, was something that I struggled to put into my prep routine for the first several hours.
All of this to say: Itās monster hunter. Itās not doing anything radically new, itās not a dramatic departure for the series, and it still can provide the highs other MonHun games have given you in the past. So if you love MonHun, youāll most likely at least like this, and if youāve never been able to get into it, this most likely wonāt change that.
At least going by Steam achievement data, this is the most commonly chosen Phantom Liberty ending (8.7% vs. 5.4% for the next-nearest one)
1 Like