Here we are again: the thread where we discuss the games we are playing in 2024

I played Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together for the Sony PlayStation. A friend of mine is playing Reborn and I started up the PS1 version so we could compare notes.

It’s a peculiar game; I liked it. It was fun to make my team of guys and watch them grow. The localization was pretty awful and I only note that because I kinda lost track of the story about halfway into chapter 3 and I feel like the localization didn’t help.

The battle mechanics, as far as I understood them, felt wildly unbalanced, but that’s not a bad thing, necessarily, but it made for some silly situations. I wasn’t disappointed that I just level grinded the challenge out of the game.

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I still think about SOMA all the time.

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I finished the main part of Dondoko Island from Infinite Wealth.
It’s ridiculously addicting and a great way to make a loooot of money.
I quickly became a millionare, and even more quickly spent almost all of it on: a bat, a wrench and a choker.

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I never played any of the other ones despite wanting to try 3 on the vita way back when. I’d say go for it if customizing a big cool robot is more fun for you than actually playing as it lol. Can’t say the story has hooked me very much either.

This weekend @safety_lite and I hung out while she was in town for SFZF, and had the privilege to play a ton games together! We played some mini-golf (she won by 2 strokes!), went to a barcade, and played a smörgåsbord of co-op games that I’m going to retroactively dub our Insert Credit Decathalon worth of games. It was not competitive but we did show each other some games we liked and discovered some new ones too!

  1. Sunset Riders - (winner: safety_lite !!)
  2. Virtual On - (winner: tradegood !!)
  3. Smash TV - (winner (safety_lite !!)
  4. Soul Calibur - (winner: tradegood !!)
  5. Pinball (Addams Family, Medieval Madness, Monster Bash) - winner (safety_lite !!)
  6. Super Monkey Ball - (winner: tradegood !!)
  7. LIVE-A-ƎVI⅃ - (winner: not really a competitive game tbh !!)
  8. Guilty Gear -Strive- - (winner: safety_lite !!)
  9. Street Fighter 6 - (winner: tradegood !!)
  10. Ridge Racer R4 - (winner: safety_lite !!)
WINNER:

and the tiebreaker:

  • Messing Around in Gravity Rush until the wee hours of the morning - (winner: friendship !!)

image

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Wonderfully lovely post. Games are good.

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SOMA is fucked up and I love it dearly.

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I’m the lead art director for a game, and the director is having me play this for our pre-production phase, so I’m getting paid to play it and eat cheese snacks.

(The vegan kind.)

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Please enjoy and report back (about the vegan cheese snacks).

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I really liked Soma too. I might try to convince a friend to play it together in October.

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Such a great time @Tradegood !!! :smiling_face_with_three_hearts: :smiling_face_with_three_hearts: :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

I get surprisingly emotional thinking about our tranquil moment of remembrance on the last hole of mini-golf before putting in unison and watching our little guys slowly getting carried up into the great beyond :smiling_face_with_tear:

Diagram

For full experience

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May your balls climb as high as your dreams.

If you folks are ever in the vicinity of St. Louis, MO we’ve got a pretty good little retro inspired mini golf course here. I like this Pac-Man hole that is seemingly impossible to do in under 17 strokes

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I’ve only relatively recently become conscious on the term “liminal space”, and it kind of struck me… is this game the epitome of that concept? Is it even moreso than newer titles aiming for the same aesthetic (see: a specific kind of indie horror game), because it wasn’t deliberate?

Hell, even the music sounds like something that could be piped through a vacant mall.

(And yes, every time that one tune comes on, I catch myself singing “London cab. I’m driving a London cab”.)

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Played Remnant II with a couple buddies this weekend, and what an incredibly silly video game. I really like that it unabashedly just lifts stuff from other IPs; there’s a Bloodborne level for crying out loud. On that same note, it’s genuinely impressive how varied the enemy types are, and interesting how massive that maps can be. Interesting, but not always good. The map is NOT GOOD by way of it being pretty difficult to parse, and there’s a lot of dead ends and multiple paths that end up being sort of nothing. All in all, a pretty fun shooter!
I also continued Red Dead Redemption 2 and I can’t wrap my head around this game. I’ve actually gotten pretty used to the weird, rockstar jankiness that permeates throughout the whole thing, but I can’t get over the messaging and writing. Is the game trying to tell me that Arthur is a good person? Is he someone to admire because he cares about his family, despite the hundreds of murders? Is he the 19th century Dom Toretto?

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whoops didn’t mean to make this post a reply and I don’t know how to fix it :|

I’ve been playing through the Mass Effect trilogy for the first time. It’s been a pretty fun time so far! I tried the first one back in the day when it came out and reeeeeally didn’t grok it at all, which was disappointing since I really like scifi. I sort of wrote the whole series off after that and maybe tried to start the second entry but it still never clicked.

This time around I’m playing the Legendary Edition and I set out to play through all 3 games.

The first game I still find terribly boring. I guess it’s because I knew how much better 2 is so I kind of blazed through it and didn’t do any side missions. As soon as I started number 2 and could control Shepard and see characters moving around it was clear how stiff the first game is compared to the second.

Mass Effect 2 has been a hoot and a holler though! I’m loving this game. The combat, graphics and interactions are all such a huge improvement over the first game. Every area has a lot of life and character and I’m actually interested in going to explore the different planets and talk to people.

I’ve been playing my Commander Shepard as a “space dad”. I gave him the old guy skin complexion and he’s got a permanatly dour expression. He stands up for what’s right and cares about helping others, but he also doesn’t put up with bogusness. I find it hilarious when I go to pick the negative option and the text reads something like “you shut up” and then Shepard just tears the person a new one (or physically assaults them) and I’m like whooooooaaa too far buddy.

The Mass Effect series is the wife’s favorite game series of all time and she’s been having fun watching me play through and trying her best not to backseat game. She was, however, floored to find out I didn’t talk to anybody on the ship and build the character relations and stuff. I honestly didn’t know that was a thing. I knew you could go around and talk to people but I didn’t know it was an integral part of getting to know the characters. She told me she spent half the game doing that and was disappointed that I didn’t care to talk to anybody. Space dad doesn’t have time for relationships.

Overall I’m having a really good time with these games. I’m taking my time with the second one and really soaking it in and I’m excited for the 3rd game. I know there’s a lot of hoopla about mismanaged expectations and stuff but it looks like it’ll be a fun ride.

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(spoiler-free image) This is further ahead, but just so you know:

chapter and mission name

Chapter 6, “The Fine Art of Conversation”

It would be difficult to come up with a less helpful way to describe the action this prompt leads to than “Get Up.” What’s happening is you’re eavesdropping, and “Get Up” does not make you get up and walk away (the clear connotation of the phrasal verb “get up”), but instead makes you move closer to it and grants you the opportunity to act on the information later (even though you can hear the whole conversation perfectly, and could have thus acted in the same way, without Getting Up). They could have written “Get Closer,” “Listen Closer,” or even “Intervene,” which would have been about as much of a falsehood as “Get Up” as far as communicating what Arthur does when you push the button, but would have more directly conveyed the choice you’re making and saved me from needing to redo the first half of the mission just to push the button.

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I wanted to take a breather for a few months after beating Kiwami 2 and let myself naturally feel the itch for some Yakuza again, so I started Yakuza 3 last night. I’ve only played through the opening bit, but this seems to be generally regarded as the least liked mainline game in the series and I’m digging it so far. I could see people bouncing off the combat if they started the series through 0 and Kiwami 1 & 2 with those smooth combat systems, and while going back to the older style of OG 3 feels much stiffer, I still think it feels good and I have no problem with it. I heard people have a lot of story issues with the game as well, but it has an intriguing premise and I’m fascinated to see how they explain it. I’m excited to go hang out in Okinawa.

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Dude, YES! This sort of thing happens all the time. There’s a lot to say about how the game constantly railroads you and isn’t always clear on what the intended path is.

how far along are you in RDR2? I dont think it’s like a masterpiece or anything but it does eventually have answers to your questions, in a way. The “turn” kind of bummed me out at the time but that was by design and I appreciated it in retrospect. Hard to talk about without spoilers though depending on where you’re at

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