started Yakuza Kiwami 2 today and i’m happy to be playing a Yakuza game again after so many years. only did chapter 1 so i played basically nothing and watched plenty of cutscenes lol
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I started Yakuza 6 so I’m basically having the same experience. Yakuza is so cool 
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Yo dawg I heard you like misting, so I put Myst on your MiSTer so you can Myst while you MiST.
(This is the Saturn version, it’s terrible.)
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My reaction to making a discovery in Today’s Blue Prince session and seeing what I got as a result.
Yeah agreed. It’s hard to explain but I think the real-time element, the way you check in every day, profoundly influenced my decision-making. Obviously I knew, rationally, that there wasn’t a little guy in my computer, but I felt bad leaving him in there anyways and wanted to make him comfortable.
ENDING SPOILERS [DO NOT OPEN]
In my playthrough I don’t think I ever even saw the exit (or at least I didn’t recognize it); I just focused on making the cave nice for my shade. He had a musical instrument, paper and chalk to make art with, dozens of books to read, a bed, a little mushroom farm, running water, fuel for a fire. Once I got all that stuff set up, the cave became the place he spent most of his time.
Waiting out the 400 days - more like six months with all the renovations to the cave - was an interesting challenge. I’m not religious in real life, so I thought I would try something new and actually have faith that whoever wrote the game would reward my (our) patience with something nice. The ending I got instead, after half a year of emotional investment, made me feel weirder and sadder and guiltier than I think any videogame ever has lol. I wanted to play it again, try to escape this time, but I knew the intent was for me to leave it there and sit with those feelings, so that’s what I did. In fact I reinstalled the game just now to confirm nothing has changed, and yeah this is still all I see:
Good game
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Nice!! I was still stuck on Expert last time I played 
Really wanna get back into it and play the new songs that came with 1.5
1 Like
3rd Battalion
general update about Burden Of Command - the game part is still quite cool. Feeling somewhat dismayed by AI stuff appearing, though in this case I think it’s an attempt at upscaling lower res images instead of generating entire ones. Still looks like shit though. A real shame because I’m envisioning a world where this game had the visual consistency to look like an Osprey book, but it can only do that in fits and starts here. Not to backseat develop, but I dont understand how you can’t get the images you need and at the proper resolutions during a 10 year development timeline. But what do I know
On to initial stages of Operation Husky (allied invasion of Sicily). Got betrayed by an Italian and the idealistic, naive platoon leaders got killed. But then he was back in the story scenes after the battle, but then he was dead again in the next battle
The developers have stated there is AI upscaling of videos (You can see this in the garbled background words of some of the old video interviews) and images. But nothing AI generated. It doesn’t look amazing regardless.
I did find some of the colourisation they did to be garish in the way that isn’t typical of AI. Which tends to favor stereotypical, but inaccurate, muted tones.
1 Like
Having played a lot more of Liberty or Death now and I’m feeling more or less over it much in the way I tend to get when I get to the “painting the map” parts of an EU3/4 or CK or Civ playthrough. I recognize that I’m on the back 9 heading towards and win and funny enough, playing as the nascent USA, my conclusion is gonna be the historical one so it’s not even a fun like “alt history” to keep me hooked, so I just kinda went, “oh ok i’m gonna win and it’s gonna be like the real world” and the wind to keep playing flew out of my sails
On the whole, it’s a great strategy game from that era, and I absolutely love to see 18th century Brit/American folks rendered in that awesome early 90s KOEI style, and the interfaces and everything are incredibly charming (the little soldier icons are adorable)
2 Likes
it’s not that, there’s written text in some images that has that AI wobbliness
This can (and does in the interview video footage early in the game) happen from AI upscaling.
I don’t know if they’re using generic ethically-dubious AI models that normies use to do the upscaling. Or something more designed for the purpose in the style of Command & Conquer remastered (that people were completely fine with at the time). But I’ve not seen any evidence of straight up fake images.
yeah it’s hard to know. There’s an image of a K-ration set which has that obvious tell in the lettering, then a couple other b&w shots of soldiers in the field where it looks like an AI pass reconfigured what would appear as patches of indistinct darkness with weird solid shapes. But one of those images was dated and credited, which makes me think it was an attempt at upscaling. They seem to have used volunteers to put all that together so maybe it was like one guy was trying to help. Such an eccentrically put together game. The problem with using any of that shit is it then calls everything into question which is a bummer
But again- just remarking (which maybe I should stop because the aggregate effect might appear too negative). My overall impression so far is quite positive. My rec is for any Fire Emblem or FFT people interested in trying a western more “hardcore” or “realistic” kind of TTRPG give this a spin when the price is right
2 Likes
I just read @adashtra’s review on the Verge of South of Midnight, and I’m really interested in playing a game that speaks so strongly to the American Black Experience.
Ash also laments the lameness of the combat. @Tradegood how much combat is there? What is the ratio of combat to good stuff?
I’m almost definitely going to play this game, but now I’m deciding between play it now or wait for a sale.
6 Likes
Ash’s review was the one I was waiting for the most, and I can’t wait to pick this one up now
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I played ENA: Dream BBQ. I spent 107 minutes with it before rolling credits on Chapter 1, which seems to be all there is of the game at the moment.
I didn’t know about ENA before and heard of the game thanks to the vvideo qvoormes thread. I only watched one of the ENA videos on youtube to see if I’d want to check the game out so I didn’t have much context or background knowledge.
Gameplay wise there isn’t much to talk about. You walk around in a 3D world, talk to creatures and collect things. It’s a servicable base for the surreal audiovisual experience waiting for you. There isn’t much of a deeper story. Dialogue is short weird, snappy and fully voice acted. A lot of the characters seem to speak in different languages. I picked up English, Japanese, French, Italian and Russian.
I liked the mix of 3D environments and 2D characters and it overall felt like a labor of love. It feels like an evolution of LSD dream emulator and Yume Nikki but the fully voice acted and mostly funny dialogue robs the game of the mystique these other experiences are imbued with.
Overall I enjoyed it and want there to be more like this game but sometimes it veered a little too strongly into “lol so random” territory for my tastes.
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back when freedom was still free
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Glad you enjoyed it! I personally found the higher stakes to be just the opposite. I haven’t toched anything other than gold stake in ages, outside of the challenge runs that are all set to that difficulty.
I think it clicked for me when I started to think of the scoring requirements in terms of “enough” get the minimum amount of points necessary to get past the round and spend all other resources on a long term plan for the endgame, econ jokers in the beggining and later ones that help with consistency.
I think that’s the big thing that puts the skill ceiling back up on the higher stakes, once you score 400,000 in ante 6 you just gotta up your chances of hitting that straight or 4oak every time. With both these hands and upward planet cards + a good scoring joker make the number big enough, the challenge comes from finding a way to reproduce the big enough number.
Then the added difficulty of rentals and perishables (a wonderfull piece of design if i say so myself) just become more nobs to dial in when getting “enough” (ooh this perishes in 5 rounds but if i skip i can get to the final boss with it active, or, this will tank my econ by i can score enough without needing to buy anthing else and win anyway)
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Doing the thing I try my best to avoid and spinning a few games at once:
-Kena: Bridge of Spirits = have not touched it in a month, probably have a few hours to go. Enjoyable, feels like an appetizer.
-Skald: Against the Black Priory = been reading a lot of books lately, not been in the mood to read my games as well even though this has been very enjoyable otherwise. Only a few hours in but may need to restart.
-Astlibra Revision = starting Chapter 3. Loving it lots, just have not had the time to sit and concentrate with the game for a few weeks. Should be able to continue without restarting.
In the meantime I have been partaking in some Burnout 3: Takedown on PCSX2. Game rips hard, and looks fantastic with the patches. Trying to get all Gold while jumping in here and there when time allows. Finally installed Dr. Robotniks Ring Racers last night (in response to being a Mario Kart enjoying contrarian) and it’s pretty cool. I still need to spend a bit more time with it but the ring/momentum system feels meaningfully different and interesting. The graphix are sick. Early days but liking it more than CTR.
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I am currently playing no game.
I’m waiting for the Suikoden potluck to begin and for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 to come out. I’m just kind of refreshing Insert Credit Forums repeatedly.
7 Likes