I’ve been playing this! This series in general has always been one of my comfort plays and I had privately decided there probably wouldn’t be any more of them once AlphaDreams went under, so I was super excited when this one was announced.
So far, it’s been a blast to play! It’s probably a little too easy for most RPG folks, but there’s something rewarding for me about finally getting the timing right on all of the moves, especially the counters. In fact, I’m getting so good at all the timing of the regular moves that I find I rarely bother with the much more touchy Bros Moves that have lots of picky timings.
I’m probably going to start a DQ3 Remake run soon though because I find I do best when I have multiple games going at once.
Comparing Peach to Astro Bot is an interesting exercise, isn’t it? There’s probably something in there about how, if the overall package is inviting and rewarding enough, even a relatively high amount of friction becomes not an impediment but a pleasure to overcome. Maybe Peach is like an all you can eat cake buffet, but all of the cakes are mediocre and a day past fresh, but Astro Bot is one large and extremely delicious cake, but you have to correctly answer some mildly difficult trivia questions first (I have played neither of these games).
And heck yeah Bowser’s Inside Story, dude! Best use of DS tech ever, and still maybe the best localization I’ve ever encountered. They worked magic on the original script.
This has definitely ruffled some feathers, especially in the glossing over/absence of coverage for Tetris games after the mid-90s. I remember gsk expressing some disappointment on Cohost, and was reminded again about it when a piece went up on Canon Fire this week. I was a little disappointed to see something like Tetris Plus not getting in there somehow.
I’m hoping to check out the documentary piece of this down the line for whenever the game goes on sale. But I also only learned this week that the ACA TGM 2 port had released on Switch last year, so that’s been covering my Tetris itch.
Roller credits on Days Gone. Whew. I really thought I’d never finish. There’s so much to do in that game. Overall I had a really good time with it though. I haven’t played a game like that hours wise in a long time where I looked forward to each session. Ended at 73 hours! Thinking I may let it simmer a bit before moving to the next thing whatever that might be.
I’m about to beat Bayonetta for the first time after an episode of Retronauts from last month got me to finally give it a go. I’d always been intimidated by the “character action” genre (we gotta find a better name, I propose 3D beat em’ ups or brawlers or something more specific) but as I’ve gotten better at action games over the years, I’m getting the stone rank on every level but still having a blast. I think this is going to send me down the Devil May Cry rabbit hole next at long last.
Nice, yeah the game is definitely a fun time independently of the scoring system. Have a favorite weapon combo? Boss fight? I really like the ice skates—I don’t think they’re especially “useful,” but the movement animation looks great and I like how Bayo holds the sword behind herself when skating
fucked a little with Tetris Forever but it’s really Tetris Company + Bombliss Forever plus Henk Rogers jerkoff for what I’ve played. a whole collection of the worst versions ever of Tetris ; thankfully there are Bombliss aplenty. but their hastily written paragraphs about SEGA and TGM impact on the franchise (and the lack of any Tetris with Card Captor Sakura mention!) makes it a big dud, especially considering how good the Karateka and Jeff Minter collections were
after a few hours in DraQue3 remake I’m not that bothered by the new character sprite work, which gets less uncanny as time progresses. it’s OK. HD-2D still looks weird
I just finished up Rise of the Golden Idol. I thought it was pretty good. I definitely enjoyed Case more, but I think it’s a pretty good sequel nonetheless. I feel like the setting of the first game works better and imbues it with a little more grandeur. That said, they do kinda hold the larger narrative together better. It’s a little more focused. I think I just liked the twistiness of the first game’s narrative more.
I played a few hours of Disillusion ST and I really like it. It’s doing the sort of Yume Nikki thing of wandering a weird space and looking at stuff and talking to things, though this has more to look at and talk to. I’m trying to find a set of important objects, and so far I’ve found a mirror. I don’t really know how to look for them, so I’m just wandering and playing Triple Triad. I’ve gotten familiar with some of the “important rooms”. Stuff keeps happening so I’ll keep wandering.
started earthbound on the miyoo mini and got to my first sanctuary. cannot wait to just stand in the middle of the street of twoson and vibe on that music.
against my better judgement I picked up the Dragon Quest III HD-2D edition. First thing I want to say is that I’m happy to support Artdink. But the second thing I want to say is that the game does look real bad. Looks just like the promo screenshots, it’s not any better or worse on the switch screen. Either I need my eyes checked or all of you lying rats do
I think Dragon Quest VII looks great. Sure it has sprites in polygonal 3D in common, but it’s a unified style, which HD-2D is not imo + there are political disagreements too
I totally agree with this. It was really a Bullet Proof Software documentary more than a Tetris doc. I also think the desire to tell the story chronologically hurt their ability to tell the story super well, because there are a ton of players during 1986-1989 that they gloss over. Tetris as an arcade phenomenon is interesting, and they just kind wrote a paragraph that Sega was involved then at the very end showed “the Guinness records for the largest playable tetris arcade machine” and that was the end of the story. I would have also liked to see more about Robert Maxwell’s attempt to get Gorbechev to cancel the Nintendo contract so the brits could control tetris, but they kind of just stopped talking about Mirrorsoft after a certain time, so they could tell us more about the McNugget cross-promotional strategy to make Tetris more popular in china.
The failure to find a real successor to Tetris could be interesting but it’s at odds with the mission which seemed to be showing BPS and the Tetris company in the best light possible. They really go out of their way to say how fair their licensing contracts are which raises some flags for me.
Having all those bad versions of tetris and bad spinoffs was kinda fun, but they really needed more good ones in there.
half-life 2 had a major update for the 20th anniversary (it’s free rn incl. the episodes) and i took the opportunity to revisit since i haven’t played this since i was like 21 and uh i guess my seasonal depression benefits from reload animation asmr
i’m still just getting in the airboat but wow this game has nearly perfect pacing!!! i remember feeling bored or at least kind of annoyed by how clinical half life 2 feels to move around and shoot in but i’ve really come around on it, especially the way it sounds. In contrast to something like modern DOOM, the violence is very terse, everything feels tight and sounds punchy, crisp, percussive. the way the mix ducks under exploding barrels when they snap open is really nice. The extremely aughts’ shooter techno is cute. i wish audio design in general had taken more cues from HL2. I wish valve had remembered their own lessons when they werre designing the steam deck UX lol
Finished recently Chants of Sennaar, so I’m still gathering my thoughts, but it has some good and some bad things. Spoilers ahead:
The good bits are everything that is tied into language. It feels there’s good worldbuilding in the details. Not only the forms and the languages are intuitive, but they tie in form, meaning and some of those relate to some puzzles and the different tribes and floors. It makes a lot of sense that it ends up tying in itself when you reach the final floors and how does this correlate also to the different teleporters and such. I think this makes the best part of the game, even if the ending kind of totally doesn’t hold on some meanings (it works regardless, but I feel there are some loose ties that I don’t get).
The bad part is that some puzzles are not as good as I thought and some were very frustrating. Maybe I’m not good at puzzles, but there’s one that I don’t remember nicely in which I feel might be the best part of the game, but apart from that everything I feel is quite good, so…
Trying to finish Persona Q after years and years of having it gathering dust on my 3DS. My clock says 110+ hours, but i’m sure the clock is wrong. The final stretch is so so so horribly long and grindy i’m sure i should stop and surrender to the fact that i will never finish this. But i’m really curious to see the end, and i want to start Persona Q2.
Because I didn’t have enough going on game-wise (joke), I started the DQ3 Remake this weekend and predictably it’s a good time. DQ3 is one of only a few games in the series I’ve never played for whatever reason! I don’t really have anything to say that hasn’t already been covered, but I have to say I’m a fan of its look-- unlike a bunch of folks, apparently.
Really, I think they could have slept on tying it in with previous HD-2D games, because this feels a lot more like the DS remakes of DQ IV-VI (or even the PSP versions of Final Fantasy I and II) than it does the remake of Live-a-Live? And those DS versions are the ones I came to love the series on in the first place. But QoL stuff here, like letting you walk faster and speed up battles, really makes a difference for me.
Literally my only complaint is that saving is surprisingly slow? I’m playing on Steam Deck and it’s just bizarre that saving your game takes way longer than you’d think it should. But that’s hardly a dealbreaker for me.
