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

[Death_Strandicoot]

It’s Steam Next fest, which means demos!

I Just finished the demo for Luna Abyss. I found it pretty cool. It has first-person bullet-hell combat, which normally I would find overwhelming. Thankfully, the game features a Metroid Prime-like lock on, so aiming while dodging isn’t a must.

I played a bit if a couple strategy game demos as well. Demonschool (have you heard of this one?) and Metal Slug Tactics both seem pretty great. I usually regret buying strategy RPGs (Fire Emblems, Triangle Strategy, Unicorn Overlord) but I have a feeling I’ll be playing both of these.

Next Fest demos still to play include:

• Aero GPX
• Bō: Path of the Teal Lotus
• Mira and the Legend of the Djinns

Anyone else playing demos? Any good ones? Anything others should check out?

[Karasu]

I had big plans to start playing the Demonschool demo last night, but I had a Very Close Call with a vehicle while in a crosswalk (I had to dodge a car that was rolling forward unexpectedly as I was crossing and then fell against the curb and got all dinged up-- I’m okay though, just cuts and bruises), so I ended up just playing through the last few puzzles of Namco Picross because I couldn’t focus on anything interesting.

Namco Picross is good and all; it’s Picross of course, and it works perfectly with Namco spritework. But at the same time, it’s extremely weird what games they selected to pull from (Wagan Land and Battle City seem to have gotten much more exposure here that I would have expected), and what games were excluded. I suspect it’s that this should be Namcot Picross, because even though they don’t specify in the case of arcade ports, but they all seem to be Famicom/NES games. I’m not sure why I expected otherwise!

[mack41]

@Death_Strandicoot

Metal Slug Tactics

IT’S ALIVE!?!?!

Feel like SRPGs were nowhere to be found when I wanted them in high school/college and now we have a plethora of neat options.

[connrrr]

I played the first two Samorosts (2003, 2005) the other month and enjoyed them a lot. Very detailed in their art direction and very silly. The puzzles feel like more of a pretense to get you to interact with the weird alien landscapes than real challenges. Lovely games!! and I could have played the both of them AT ANY TIME in the past 18+ years.

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I also finished Yakuza 3 Remastered (2021) by more or less beelining the main plot and not doing very many of the sidequests; Premium Adventure is unlocked for me now so I’d like to peck at those. This was a frustrating game to play. I loved Okinawa, I loved the orphanage and I loved the kids—or more specifically I loved Kiryu being a good dad to all these orphans. There’s a whole stretch of the story where your main focus is to mediate, comfort and support these kiddos and the game doesn’t half-ass it. One kid who wants to be a wrestler finds out he might have asthma. Another steals money from one of her siblings. There’s a kid who has to be set straight for saying something racist. There is something so refreshing about taking a very typical adventure game framework and with it asking me to help children characters get along or grow from their mistakes, and even doing so by tasking me with what would be really ordinary objectives in any other scenario by “gathering intel” and “collecting items” and shit but without the climax being some high-stakes physical confrontation (besides play-fighting on the beach). It’s great and I had a great time.

I also love Rikiya! Rikiya is totally devoted to his aniki Kiryu and the two share a beautiful brotherly dynamic together throughout most of the game. I did in fact shed tears at his death scene, and I’d had it spoiled for me by a suggested search on google. The rest of the Ryudos are great too: Mikio is good with kids and Nakahara’s love for his adopted daughter is genuinely moving. The story excels when it’s forcing these tough macho characters to be emotionally honest and nurturing, and if that weren’t only half the game I might be satisfied with that. The other half deals with Kamurocho business and in there is a parallel plot thread that is obviously meant to contrast against the healthy paternal role models we see in Okinawa. Main antagonist Mine’s lust for power and money is exposed in the final battle as empty and unfulfilling, as he seems to be having a breakdown at the loss of his father figure and the only person in his entire life to have shown him any real kindness. That’s ok motivation to become a villain, but I really can’t get into the plodding exposition and rote animation in every cutscene dealing with the crime drama side of LAD. I’m not very familiar with Japanese gangster flicks and I don’t think I’ve read any real gangster manga. Has the draw for this series always been like that it’s a playable Battles Without Honor and Humanity? and to be able to appreciate all the repetitive wide-eyed posturing and gruffness I need to be steeped in the tropes cited? Because I find it all very predictable and it gets on my nerves, and no one is ever talking about anything interesting. Send me back to Okinawa if Tokyo isn’t going to pull its narrative weight.

Then there’s the battle system which only starts to feel kinda good toward the end of the game when you’ve unlocked a bunch of abilities and buffs, but it still doesn’t ever feel great. This might’ve had a positive impact on how battles play out though as every time I was accosted in the street by some punk with something to prove I got annoyed enough to really enjoy letting them have it, or at least try my best to get the fight over with quickly. At worst though, fights feel tedious and unfun and this was with the game set to easy the entire time. Boss fights usually feel drawn-out. Overall a mixed bag but I’m glad I played it because the parts that shine I appreciated very much.

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I’ve also been playing FFXIV and though I’m not very far at all I am having fun inhabiting that world! Did you know you could play this thing for free up to level 70 with no restriction on playtime all the way up to the Stormblood expansion? I’ll probably keep updates on my adventure to the FF thread.

[Death_Strandicoot]

Alive and awesome! Set to release this Fall.

[Mnemogenic]

Does Mohammed bin Salman still have a majority stake in SNK or did that change? I felt weird about Metal Slug Tactics when it was revealed for that reason.

[tokucowboy]

1000xRESIST has added a map. Now I can love it even more. Chapter 6, adoring the lean into cyclical revolutionaries becoming both martyrs and demonized propaganda figureheads

1000xRESIST | Available Now (@1000xResist) on X

[FishHead]

My ability to resist buying this game grows weaker by the minute.

[tokucowboy]

you should buy it 1000x

[Death_Strandicoot]

I wasn’t aware of this, but I just looked it up and he owns 96%

[Mnemogenic]

Yeah it’s a bummer.

[Privately_Attack]

technically not playing this yet but unfollow me now this is all i’m gonna talk about something something you know the tyler tweet Back With A Vengeance. A look back, and a look forward at Shin… | by Privately Attack Nobuo Uematsu With Questions | Jun, 2024 | Medium

[Privately_Attack]

also been playin Diabler 4. Regret to inform you that it’s really good
https://privatelyattack.medium.com/oh-no-diablo-iv-is-really-good-fca6adcb3fc8

[tuxedomonk]

I’ve been feeling nostalgic lately, so I’ve just played through a couple of decade-old games: one for the first time, the other for the third or even fourth(!) time.

The sad news of Arkane Austin’s closure pushed me to finally play through Dishonored (2012). The story didn’t do much for me, but I was won over by the game’s setting. Everything about it is so bleak on the surface, but the more you inhabit it the funnier it gets, which really is a great way to experience the spirit of the nineteenth-century police state: when you first have to sneak around them, the cops hobbling around on robotic stilts are frightening, but just for a second, until you get close enough to see how ridiculous they actually look.

I also just rolled credits again on Max Payne 3 (also 2012, crazy that I played the hell out of this before I was old enough to drive, let alone drink), whose depiction of police violence takes what might be the dead opposite tack of Dishonored: everywhere the tone is pitch dark, sometimes tiringly so; as a character, Max is the most sad when he has a sense of humor; his action-movie redemption arc turns out to be just a sideshow to an unstoppable parade of cruelty, and if we pretend to forgive him for the unforgivable, it’s because we pity him, not because we like him. There’s definitely a lot to criticize about this game’s story, how it treats its themes, its real-world setting, etc., – but in the end, the sheer fact that this sweaty, anguished and bald Max Payne survives as a bonafide, fleshed-out character owes so much to James McCaffrey’s wonderful performance. RIP.

[treefroggy]

I’m pretty far in DQV. Loving it.
My casual runs of Toneko Mystery Dungeon were going really well before I messed up.

[Tradegood]

After beating Chapter 5 of Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door, I’ve just about entirely lost interest in that game. I feel bad about it because I did enjoy parts of it, though the idea of playing another 15 hours is unappealing. The game definitely has some high highs, but it’s weighed down a bunch by the diversions and backtracking. When the comedy misses it can also feel too broad or kid-focused and the whole thing falls apart.

Paper Mario has a problem getting the show on the road. You are a passenger on that adventure and not in control. For example, at the start of Chapter 5 you walk to the ship, captain is missing, find the captain in the bar, back to the ship, navigator is missing, then back to the bar, explore the town, break into his house, so back to the bar, back to his house, back to the ship, and you get stopped for sidequests along the way. After you arrive at your destination, captain and navigator are lost again, so 2 screens forward you rescue the captain, then 2 screens backward for dialogue, then 2 screens forward to get a coconut, then 2 screens backward to get a coca-cola, then 2 screens forward to go to the navigator, then 2 screens backward to get the captain, then 2 screens forward to the dungeon entrance. It’s tedious and drawing things out like this messes with comedic timing.

I still mostly have good will toward the game. I can see why the game made a big splash at the time, and people who have warm feelings for it are valid. But I think the world has changed since it came out, and the novelty has worn off. I can see why this is such a mythical thing for kids who grew up with the gamecube, but as a PS2 kid playing it in 2024 feels like I’m chasing someone else’s nostalgia.

The writing is still charming though.

On the other hand, I had a much better time this past weekend playing through Solar Ash. What a cool game. Definitely a bit janky and fiddly, but the platforming was nice and I love that art style. The way that movement and 3D areas were created on top of each other makes me think Hyper Light Breaker’s going to be real good. I just hope they lean closer to the sparse environmental narrative style of Drifter, instead of being as exposition-heavy as Solar Ash was.

[sabertoothalex]

Before The Green Moon is restoring so much of the love I once had for the farming game genre, mostly by making a game where the non-farming stuff is so poignant and delightful! You farm, you build relationships, you see events, you buy new equipment, all the stuff you know and love is there. But it’s just more thoughtful and mature in execution than so many of the games in that genre these days. The game is really successful at making you consider how you balance work, poking around the world, and your want to be social with the people around you, which feels very intentional.

It has been a rough time for games with farming/life living for me. The post-Stardew boom of these games, and the emergence of a codified “cozy” genre, has fallen completely flat for me. And the OGs like Story of Seasons haven’t had a game I’ve liked for more than a decade. For people who also have big love for a bygone era of these games(maybe @treefroggy ) I feel like this is one to definitely try to see if it clicks with you.

[BoldOblique]

Oh this is so great to read. I’ve felt the same disappointment these last few years RE: farming/cozy codification. I thought that Green Moon game seemed like it might be doing something genuinely new so it’s nice to see it might b delivering in that.

[mindleftbody]

I’m playing dragon warrior 3 on gbc, really enjoying it. Named everyone after suikoden 1 characters. It’s been talked about a lot on this forum but there’s a sense of adventure and exploration that I get from a game like this that I just don’t feel when I play newer open world style games that try so hard to have that stuff.

[Taliesin_Merlin]

Just finished Lunar: Silver Star Story Touch. It’s an amazing port for such a small team. I’ll mostly touch the quality of the port and then more briefly the game.

(ETA: There is also apparently bluetooth controller support.) Touch controls were fine after I got used to them. Tap to move had very limited pathfinding, so I opted for the virtual analog stick. In a few hours I was gliding around quite well, with only the occasional slowness avoiding an enemy before entering a doorway. Menus were like the Playstation version but touch-enabled. There was some clunk to the inventory management (figuring out tapping a submenu at the middle of a screen rather than character icons at the top). But to their credit, everything was responsive, so once I knew the controls, I could shift around stuff quickly.

They had two artists listed in the credit for implementing widescreen, and they did a great job. Only in a couple of places could I guess that I wasn’t looking at original art, and then only because I realized the camera wouldn’t pan that far left or right in the original.

Their script is the Silver Star Harmony (PSP) script from XSeed, which incorporates a lot of the Working Designs script (PS1). So the most 1990s-topical jokes are ironed out, but a certain kind of personality is kept: fun, lighthearted, earnest in parts. It’s well suited for a game where frequently you can talk to NPCs multiple times or revisit them later in the story and hear new dialogue. For text nerds, this may be the best version, aside from a bit of heavy-handedness with titles around Mia and Lemia. (“Majesty Mia” doesn’t have quite the right ring to it.)

One note for font nerds: the graphics options can also change the font. I acclimated to the adaptive widescreen font. The original Saturn proportions use a different font I find more jarring. Neither is quite the Working Designs font.

As for other toggles, their difficulty options allow both the Japanese and Working Designs base difficulty and either level scaling or not. They also had some other features (Saturn or Playstation music! the widescreen option I mentioned versus original ratio!). The Saturn music sounded really good; I could hear some additional instrumentation that is flattened on the Playstation soundtrack. They also had speed options. I played the entire thing at 3x battle speed, which brought the total playtime under 20 hours.

Overall, if you’re interested in Lunar, this is the version I would recommend.

Otherwise, I have a lot of nostalgia for Lunar. It is one of my favorites. So in lieu of writing many more paragraphs, I’ll try to keep it brief:

• It’s a love story that involves mostly teens and young adults. As that goes, it is very well done. Alex and Luna are the childhood friends who have deep feelings for one another. Mia and Nash are close friends where Nash clearly has a crush and Mia is fond of him but mostly noncomittal. Jessica and Kyle are the wild, carousing, hot and cold couple that could make it all their lives or could make it six months.
  

  

• Besides that, I’ve always loved the world of Lunar. The world is centered on a founding goddess, Althena, and her four dragon + one dragonmaster protectors. Towns and people have a lot of character. There is a floating magical city, a town centered on music, a fishing village. The backstory is that all this is a post-exodus civilization from the Blue Star, with some outcasts (the Vile Tribe) who long ago rebelled against Althena and were exiled. It’s good lore.

• Music is by Noriyuki Iwadare (Grandia, some Langrisser, the first Growlanser, some Ace Attorney, and others). I love his town music; he excels in cheery vibes. The battle music and more somber melodies are good too. Bonus points for writing music for a world where the divine magic is music.

• The combat is solid turn-based combat. There are a couple of frills, like the attackers having a certain amount of movement to approach a monster to hit. The early game tends to have 2-4 characters; most of the rest has 5. Spell options are carefully curated. Status effects do have effects on non-bosses and are sometimes useful, but spamming attacks will get you through the game. Bosses have satisfying difficulty.

• Overall, I think of Lunar as a game that is an excellent ride: the length of Chrono Trigger with the vibes of a teen love story crossed with delightful fantasy. Would replay yet again.