Sometimes you need some help with a game to get the full experience you want out of it! I got very far without any help in Tunic, but I wanted to get as much as I could and did from it, bar the very VERY last quest as that was a bit much for me. I am not looking to get achievements from games except the ones I want so it ended exactly how I wanted - even with some help!
Guides rock - not for everyone of course, but for those that enjoy them they are awesome.
Tried out that Limited Run (digital) release of Tomba (I think they’re calling it Tomba: Special Edition?) today, and it’s pretty good. It’s very well presented with a whole ton of art, manual, and promo scans (you can even toggle English translations of handwritten Japanese text on stuff like concept art and level designs) and lots of new video interviews with Tokuro Fujiwara. You get a nice CRT filter, what seems to be good, accurate performance, and even a rewind option, which is not a given for post-16-bit rereleases. The only thing I can dock it for so far is that it stands by the PS1 button mapping in terms of button location (so, for instance, on Switch, you’re confirming with “B” and backing out with “A”), but the modern layer of menu controls revert to the console’s default controls (so to save, rewind, explore the museum and so on, you’re confirming with “A” and backing out with “B”). That’s a little weird
But Tomba’s also a little weird. It’s a really neat thing to revisit as a game that’s adjacent to both late-era 2D platformers and early-era 3D exploratory games, so it finds its own way to do both of those things in a fashion that never really happened again. It feels very odd and, at first, clunky to return to as both of those things now also feel so codified, but that’s only retrospective – it’s interesting to experience that knowing the context, and you feel its thoughtfulness even if you gotta do a little grappling because the context changed over the years. Best way I can put it is that while the expansion into 3D made most games with platformer DNA expand outward, Tomba took the platformer inward. Almost like asking “what’s inside of that diorama that we haven’t explored yet?” rather than trying to break outside the bounds of the diorama
Also, just found out Fujiwara’s directorial debut was Pooyan, so I’m appreciating his obsession with evil pigs (I hate cops, too). Also appreciating the perfection of his post-Capcom studio’s name and logo:
Tunic is lovely, I had a lot of fun just messing around with the post-game stuff in that one. You can just perpetually do new game+ and gain so many upgrades your HUD meters reach the top of the screen. Making me wanna revisit it now.
Now that’s a health bar and then some! I can see why new game + is appealing to do, especially to just fill the screen with bars!
What do you possibly have left to do?
I just finished Nine Sols too, and it’s also my GOTY at this time. I think this game was made for me.
I agree with your take on the story, and I also liked how each boss represented some sorry if Taoist cautionary tale.
Lady Ethereal might be my favorite boss fight in any game. Though the scenery for that fight…well, it’s something!
Small nitpicks:
I did not love the stealth segment in Jiequan’s section. Thankfully, it was short.
There is a room in Ji’s section with 3 green pillars that rotate to horizontal or vertical and a bunch of portals. I had to look up the solution to that puzzle because I spent way too long stuck on it.
I couldn’t tell what giving the map chips to Shanhai9000 did. My maps filled in fine without that?
I got the three-phase version of Eigong, and lost track if how many attempts I made. That fight might have been a touch too difficult.
oh, they give you a little tracker for the collectibles you’ve gathered in that area. also getting all of them is a sidequest thingy
eigong was too much for me until suddenly it wasn’t? the clear felt as natural as breathing when I finally got it even tho every run up to that was pretty rough
Yeah, I finished the last phase with a health vial to spare. It took hours of attempts to get there though.
I’ve been getting really into Pac & Pal. Played it all night, no one ever told me it was this good. Conversely I see people are hating on it, which makes me sad. It’s so fun! You need to pick cards to determine your path and have a ditzy little friend who absentmindedly hands over food to the ghosts. It’s cute and dynamic, lots of moving parts. I love it.
I’m not sure if I’m being too critical of Red Dead Redemption 2 or not. This game feels ubiquitously half baked and restrictive, while simultaneously bragging about how open world and immersive it is. Getting immersed feels impossible while the game always exposes itself either with glitches or silly mechanics as a “video-game-ass video game”.
That being said, the game is incredibly charming. I get frustrated with the experience, but in a way that makes me want to play more. It’s like pulling up carpet to find beautiful hardwood: there’s something beautiful right there, but someone decided to cover it in tacky bullshit
Don’t anybody sleep on the demo of Shadow of the Ninja Reborn! I shouldn’t be surprised at how good it is given I’ve loved all the other Natsume Atari releases, but… yeah! It’s real good stuff!
I bought Outcast: A New Beginning when it was on sale. Holy smokes is this an archaic open world game. It feels like a piranha bytes game just dragged into the present. I can’t recommend it but it’s an interesting artifact that I can’t imagine how got made.
I’m on a bit of a game boy kick currently: I’m going back and forth between The Frog For Whom The Bell Tolls and the Pokémon TCG game.
I was curious about Frog because I’m a big fan of Link’s Awakening and I read somewhere there was some overlap in the teams, but otherwise didn’t know what to expect. So far I find it incredibly charming! The hijinks-filled story and auto-battle system make for a breezy and fun game.
I’ve also been enjoying the Pokémon TCG game. It’s clear a lot of care went into the adaptation - I’m especially impressed by how many animations there are for attacks and status effects.
Absolutely devoured this game as a kid. I’d love to see more…TCG RPGs, for lack of a better term
The more I play Animal Well the more I’m impressed with it. It manages that incredibly rare feat of making you feel like a genius when you solve a puzzle. Several things are put together in a way that you “accidentally” learn something without it being signposted. It’s quite clever.
yeah um nine sols is going absolutely insane
Yeah!! That reminds me: I forgot to mention it, but all the different themed card clubs you have to walk around to find opponents really give the game much more personality than a simple menu system would have
Heck yeah! I wasn’t aware there was a demo, but I’ve just downloaded it because it does indeed look awesome. Thanks for the heads up!
From the vantage that the game was promoted and discussed at release for a peerless sense of realism, you could be even harsher. As you’ve been saying, the realism stuff is mostly bluster; the level of detail in the game is uncommon and creates a unique texture, but is not a substitute for real history. In some important ways I don’t believe the cost of development and the endless finessing of the presentation made the game more meaningfully complex or rich.
On the other hand, is the game itself bragging about those things? Or is it how video game culture conceives of it? Not intending to put words in your mouth or assume anything on your part KingTubb; I find it challenging to talk about popular games without reflexively acknowledging their place in mainstream video game culture, which affected my first time trying it in 2019. I couldn’t ignore ambient discussion of the game and what many players considered its virtues… aspirations to cinema and therefore artistic legitimacy, (supposedly) realistic detail, boundlessness in design, endless quests and customization and activities and several different brands of cigarettes… which was all difficult to appreciate when (a) I don’t otherwise enjoy Rockstar’s kitchen sink game design and saw or assumed the presence of many of their common issues here, and (b) immediately brushed up against the repetitive and laborious first few missions (ride here, establish the plot, ride here, wade through snow, raid cabinets, ride here, more exposition, ride here, shoot faceless enemies—die? do all that again, no skips), the awkward movement, the ridiculous number of button presses required to do anything, the same old Rockstar cutscene language, and so on. Not all these frustrations have disappeared: a few weeks ago I ran into a crash in the middle of a cutscene at the end of a 20-minute mission which I then had to do all over again, relistening to every conversation, replaying every set piece, all drama and urgency gone; it was a blemish on the previous several hours of the game.
Aside from bugs and crashes, I wouldn’t say I have any more patience for Rockstar’s design—my dislike for GTAV and the first Redemption have grown, if anything—but in RDR2’s case the carpet has been easier to tear away, and the hardwood floor easier to admire. Riding around the landscape is a worthwhile experience unto itself, and alone might make it the best game I’ve played this year; RDR2 is one of if not the only game which justifies this kind of ludicrous attention paid to lighting detail. All the concessions to realism work to facilitate role-playing—changing clothes, getting a haircut, bathing, eating, smoking, brushing your horse, going to bed at night, etc. It’s the most elaborate and self-serious[1] box of toys ever made, and is more interesting because the toys sometimes have minds of their own.
Thinking about RDR2 like it’s Death Stranding helped, too: the rhythm of pressing buttons in both games is much slower than most others, controlling the character feels more like manipulating a marionette than the 1:1 acrobatics of a Mario. Traversing from one outpost to another without falling over or smacking into a tree is itself a victory; in turn performing ritual actions like grooming and sleeping, while mechanically superfluous, for me aesthetically reinforce the significance and weight of actions which do not factor at all into other video games, stuff like walking through camp while admiring the sunrise, feeding your horse periodically, and using the Howdy button combo to see what everyone in camp is up to.
I’m surprised to like the game as much as I do. It is patience-testing and rewarding on account of qualities mostly unique to itself
this tone at least for me is markedly more successful than RDR1 and especially GTAV, which both tend to treat everyone and everything like a joke (less severe in RDR1’s case but still) ↩︎
You might not like it but this is what peak-dateability looks like.
Took advantage of the sale in the US e-shop and got my figurative monkey paws on Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania. Can’t say I’ve played a game in recent years that is as immediately fun as this one. Like the time from I want to play a video game to I sure am playing a video game is so frictionless.
It also instantly activates the speedrunner brain. Got to world 1 stage 2 and my first thought was I’m not gonna go around that! I’ll jump over the gap!
Checked out Before the Green Moon. Didn’t make it to the moon, just scratched at the Earth a while.
Wrote a little: sleep now
