I played PuLiRuLa for the first time, and it is a breezy unique 20 minute experience like none other.
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I‘m in the final main story act (IV) of Get in the Car, Loser! It’s been a good game to play in small chunks before bed. The combat took time for me to adjust to, but it started to feel like a rhythm game once I got my grip on it. The third act did some really interesting stuff with it‘s story (and presentation) so I’m excited to see how it wraps up. Fun stuff.
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Mega man legends 2 is a real piece of work. I sense some deep issues that may have foreshadowed the multiple cancellations and subsequent curse of Mega Man Legends 3. I'd really like to find some info (or watch a long ass video 
) about the development of these games.
I guess I’ll post a full review in the mega man thread? For now I’m in one of the final dungeons. Feels like the worst is over and it’s smooth enjoyable sailing from here now that I’m back in Yosyonke where the game design is good. The 6 hours of filler in the middle of the game was pretty cringeworthy though. It’s so front-loaded atmospherically, and then doesn’t deliver the depth-per-area that the first game did…
I also picked up Shadow Tower again for a couple of hours. Just married it long enough to have a mental map of the first three or four floors. Since there’s no telling where the first save point is, I have basically “re-rolled” and started the game over a million times, playing the first few rooms until I got it down to a science where I could make it to the save point without taking a hit and maxing out weapons and exp gained.
Other stuff I’ve been hitting on PSIO:
Just finished playing through Persona 5 Tactica after I came across it on Game Pass the other day. It was solid enough, though I wish the dialogue was tidied up a bit. It felt like the devs were constantly shoehorning filler lines in because the game has nine characters and Atlus wanted all of them to get representation. Just a lot of generic power of friendship talk with multiple characters all spewing out the same general thoughts back to back.
Of my handful of gripes with the game the most surprising to me is the music. It's the only Shin Megami Tensei/Persona game I've played where I thought the soundtrack was just okay. Here's probably the best track in the game for reference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNEEymi7_OM
I'm not the biggest fan of the execution of the calendar mechanic in the Persona series so I wasn't too sad to see it omitted, but having no social connection mechanic at all felt odd to me.
The battles are nice and short (I spent more time reading dialogue than fighting) while all the action is snappy. The movement mechanic is nice, your characters moves freely over a grid overlay and snap to one of the tiles when you select an action. Feels a lot better than most grid-based SRPGs I've played where you select a character, scroll over tiles and then watch that character move from point A to B. It makes me pine for a Tactics-type game like this with a jump button and platforming elements.
Tactica is about what you'd expect on face value: a decent game if you enjoyed Persona 5 and like tactics games.
I was interested in No Straight Roads for a while, and found it for cheap (plus given it's just 6-7h) so gave it a go.
The concept being: an EDM empire has taken over Vinyl City and our rock band protagonists must fight back. This translates into several 3D action boss stages where enemies/bosses (EDM artists) attack on beat while you move and combo more freely (doing well dynamically transitions song parts into rock variations). Action design seemed like something interesting on paper but hard to execute properly, and well, it kinda was unfortunately.
With tighter action could've been spectacular I think. Still, looks cool, sounds great and is nice and breezy; had a good time overall. Developed by malaysian devs which is also neat.
For fun, my boyfriend and I created lists of games to-play in 2024. We tried to say “Pledge List” but kept messing up and saying “Drudge List” so that's what it became. I made a Gold Section for For-Sure Will Finish Titles and Silver for Already In Progress or Very Interested. Today I finished my first game, EarthBound and wrote a little bit about it here: https://cohost.org/JXUA/post/4168432-the-dredge-list-ear
I'm sure there's not much new to say about the title but I feel happy to have something to share and I got to talk through some personal stuff.
ol, just beat Mario Odyssey and like, the whole final battle to end credits sequence was such a cool little surprise >!…wasn‘t expecting the like pop punk vocal track at all, becoming Bowser was rad as hell (and somehow I was able to turn my brain off enough the whole time that it came as a surprise) and the way the princess peach was like, so sick of BOTH Mario and bowsers shit she was just like, enough, I’m out, hop on the boat if can make it but byeeeee!<
anyway I'm interested in the post game stuff I have heard about, especially cuz all those big metal cubes I kept seeing might amount to something now? what a solid game
oh yeah and now I'm just in >!the fucking mushroom kingdom too!< which rules
@“leah”#p148015 I waver back and forth with this game, but I 100% agree with you.
playing Arma 3 with the Antistasi mod and I must admit it's pretty good. The mod is a persistent multiplayer insurgency scenario in which you start with a rag tag bunch of dudes and then do guerrilla style operations, slowly building your forces up to eventually displace the occupying army (it can be more complicated than that, allowing for rival insurgent factions to compete with and even an additional invading force for a multi-sided conflict).
I'm playing it singleplayer and it works great that way. Still in the early going: have a squad of 8 dudes armed with WW2 era submachine guns (thats all you start with) and doing hit and run raids on military patrols to steal rifles, plate carriers, and helmets. We even scored some kind of armored truck. It's a slow burn pace, lots of scouting and planning. There's a fun mechanic for blending in with civilians to lay low or to spring an ambush. It's sort of like FPS jagged alliance.
Lmk if anyone wants to start an insert credit server. Seems like a low/occasional commitment
@“bwood”#p148342 yeah i mean i can‘t say i’m having a bad time with it - it‘s good switch-era nintendo game feel, which means it feels totally smooth and nonthreatening and frictionless, it’s made very specifically to be enjoyable. it‘s like a 3.5/5 kind of game if you get what i mean… which is not to say that it’s a 7/10, and it's only striking me this very moment how dissimilar those scores feel despite being more or less identical mathematically.
Spent about 10 hours with Fate/Samurai Revenant so far
For any who don't know Fate is the massive multi-media franchise that centers around sorcerers using the reborn spirits of [major historical figures](https://www.worldhistory.org/uploads/images/14751.jpg?v=1694201043), who are turned into [anime characters](https://gamepress.gg/grandorder/sites/grandorder/files/2017-07/059%20Jeanne%20d%27Arc%201.png), to fights various magical wars for various magical reasons. It started with Fate Stay Night, a visual novel that I liked but found far too long, and has over the years become one of the biggest media franchises in existence. The mobile game Fate Grand Order is one of the most profitable games of all time I think. I'm a pretty casual fan of the series, I played the original VN but haven't seen any of the animated offerings. I have played some of the spin-off games like Fate Extra and the Extella games. They're mostly enjoyable but nothing too worth getting excited about.
Samurai Revenant is shaping up to be the best of the bunch for me so far!! Koei Tecmo has basically made a Yakuza-lite set in the Fate universe. It's an action RPG type of thing where you get story missions, small contained Edo period environments, get into fights with various thugs around, beat them up, and then continue the loop. The gameplay when you're fighting grunts is small scale Musou but they've included more meaty enemies in each encounter that require more specific non-mashy actions to take down. Bosses are Soulsish with a lot of timed dodges, parries, and all that. The story is quite fun and has a nice balance of comedy and real narrative. I say Yakuza-lite because it doesn't contain the depth of side content that Yakuza has, there's some side stuff but it isn't as meaty.
Really like it though, would recommend if you want a breezy and fun action RPG.
I finished my first game of the year - Yakuza Kiwami. Took just under 30 hours or so, started it in December last year though. I enjoyed it, was a lot of fun, but did find by the end I wasn't bored more than I lost a bit of interest in the story and all the side-quests. I try and do as many as I can as I play a game, yet with this I felt they were a bit more of a distraction than crucial to the gameplay (Karaoke for example).
Now I've unlocked the extra stuff - is it really worth doing? I don't think I'd handle another playthrough, but some of it looks fun. I'm asking the nice people here, do I get more or have I missed something which can be gotten by going through the extras?
@“Tom of the Fog”#p148436 There’s basically no reason to engage with NG+. And Premium Adventure is just a convenient way to complete any substories you missed; it’s like a free-roam mode that exists outside of the main story. Neither mode really adds anything, save for some extra costumes.
So yeah, I wouldn’t say you’re missing toooo much. (As a personal aside, I complete all the substories when I play a _Yakuza_, but I regret it every time lol)
Over the last few days I played Robocop: Rogue City and I‘m minded to say that it’s become one of my favourite games in the last five to ten years. One of the most off-putting aspects of most FPS games is the emphasis on speed and the necessity to have split-second reactions to things that will kill you in one go.
Robocop is a much slower paced game that you can chill out with the environments in, and that comes down to how much Teyon have nailed the feeling of embodying Robocop's slightly sluggish, mechanical movement - that it's not a high-octane game is perfect.
There's a lot of cool stuff in the game too, like being able to hang around the police station and exploring Detroit to discover some really good, emergent side quests. The writers have clearly paid attention to the themes of the first film and leant on those rather than veer too much into the silliness of the later scripts, though there is some real good, hammy 80s stuff too. Detroit feels like a place rather than a set of levels.
I hope that this is a foundation for Teyon to build on for their next game because I was really impressed with how much of a good time I had with it, and I'd love to get more of the same in the future.
I played enough of Granblue Fantasy Relink to know I‘m probably gonna buy the full game. Hilariously I think what sealed the deal was when I got to a treasure chest you open by collecting glowing crystals within a time limit. That’s exactly the kind of PS2 shit I didn‘t realize how much I missed. The map also has a lot of vertical structures you’re encouraged to get on top of that don‘t always 100% feel like you’re supposed to be able to which somehow just makes it more satisfying when you can
The battles in the demo at least are piss-easy which kind of makes me wonder if even just more of this kind of stuff would have made me enjoy FFXVI more, even it was still the same difficulty. Probably still could have used a fishing minigame
I‘ve been on a FMV game kick. Started with Voyeur which is like that movie Rear Window except the neighbor you’re snooping on is a self made billionaire that's running for POTUS. The game leans heavy on the silliness, and I laughed with it. Gave me that weird real satisfaction of taking down a candidate.
I moved to Gabriel Knight after that. It's only got a few FMV clips. I figured I'd start with it before moving on to the sequel which is all FMV. The puzzles aren't "bite tongue" obtuse, but there are gamefaqs inducing sequences like the one with a gift certificate you find in a bookstore that you trade for a hot dog that you then trade to a break dancer for help. I didn't finish it, and I might just move on to The Beast WIthin tho I do dig the voodoo vibe.
The game that really hit for me is Phantasmagoria. You play a writer that's moving into a maniacal fun house of a mansion in a remote town with your husband. No surprise, the house is haunted. The way the FMV is overlayed onto prerendered backgrounds and the labored acting give it all an unsettling otherworldly feel. It's on the simpler end of adventure game puzzling too so it's all about simmering in that atmosphere.
Will probably check out Psychic Detective or that JB Harold game Blue Chicago Blues next
@“Bbtone”#p148457 Thanks for the honest advice there. I tried a bit and found a few random side quests and a lot of fights but didn‘t feel it. I may try again but I’m glad to know I won't miss anything by not playing it further. And I do have Kiwami 2 ready!