Mine was probably on a demo disc around 2000s. It was like a battle on some destroyed city, had futuristic tanks, aircrafts and anti-air. The tanks had WW1-style tracks, like they were huge and squeaky and the size of the whole side. The anti-air had Σ-symbols (faction maybe) and shot blue lasers. The closest I have come to is G-Police, but that’s not it. It was on Win98 most likely.
All the Game Awards chatter and the current sale made me take the plunge on Clair Obscur" Expedition 33 and I’m so glad I did. Only ~8h in or so but it is such a vibrant, wild world to explore and it makes me think of the classic JRPGs I played growing up. The introduction of more active battling mechanics like parrying and dodging adds a level of complexity to the combat that I enjoy, even if I cannot for the life of me get the parry timing right.
Steam Deck took a couple minor tweaks to make it look good and the hair effects still are a bit janky (eg. Gustave’s hair will light up from a light source making it look grey). The soundtrack is phenomenal and was the first time in a long time that I’ve wanted to buy a game soundtrack (this battle track in one of the early areas cemented this as something special to me).
Super worth it and excited to dive in deep on this one.
I did see a tip about turning up the volume for sound cues when I was digging around trying to find if there was some kind of setting I could enable for a more visual cue (like you get for a Jump attack). I don’t usually play games with headphones on but I find myself doing that with this one!
The Steam Deck experience is pretty good. The issues I’ve had with the characters’ hairstyles catching the light weird seems to be more an issue of the lighting in general. I was in the Stone Wave Cliffs which has a lot of caves to explore and a lot of instances where there’s a “light at the end of a tunnel”. What I noticed was the light at the end was almost too bright/overpowering and it made it impossible to see the cave around me which, while maybe accurate to what you’d experience in real life with losing night vision and whatnot, makes it really hard to see/navigate. Similarly some of the menus are noticably darker as if I would need to turn the brightness up but not every menu is like that either. Just some weirdness there and I haven’t tried that section on my PC to see if it’s just how the game is or how the Steam Deck is handling it. Otherwise though, the Deck experience is pretty good and I’m getting into it for a couple hours a night without much issue. Definitely not the cleanest/fanciest graphics but in the “good enough” camp for me that aside from the lighting woes, I don’t notice much of a problem.
The lighting on hair is beautiful on ps5, I can see how it wouldn’t not scale if you don’t have the specs for it.
Your experience with the deck made me curious on the system… so I checked some of my CSGO skins and one that used to be $10 was selling for $145 on the marketplace. I sold it, and the next day Valve discontinued the lcd steam deck 😂 so rip that idea, the oled versions are too pricy for me
The first one I found out was called Nanosaur and even has a free download. I played like 20 minutes of this in grade school one day and never got a chance to play it again during my childhood.
The other is insanely obscure, because I’m pretty sure I know the name of it but cannot find any trace of it. It’s a fantasy themed RPG maker XP game I’m fairly certain is called “The Under” Where it starts as a training mission but your team discovers strange things going on and reality re-writing itself. It uses a real-time turn based combat (similar to final fantasy) and…
spoilerEveryone in the party except the kobold dies at the very end.
I’m also fairly certain the person making it started working on a sequel that had a small demo I played. A quick google search brought up another RPG maker game called The Under, but this isn’t the game I’m talking about.
Dinopark Tycoon (I went back to play it and I somehow did worse than my elementary school self, loool)
The other game I never found but it was on the same computer. It was a point and click puzzler where you played a character that looks very similar to the character in the modern game Braid. You start, stranded on a beach and worked your way inland. It had a creepy vibe due to the aesthetics.
I’ve found LLMs quite good for identifying things like this sometimes … I also know how frustrating it is to remember and not be able to find the games!
The trusty twinkpad will play a lot of ‘good old games’, just to name a few:
Doom(s), Quake(s), Unreal, Deus Ex, Elder Scrolls (Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim), Thief(s), Dungeon Keeper(s), Carmageddon, Fallout(s), Resident Evil(s), Vampire: The Masquerade, Hitman(s), Clive Barker’s Undying, Gothic(s), Half-Life, Tomb Raider(s), Myst(s), Monkey Island(s), Baldur’s Gate(s), Icewind Dale(s), Diablo(s), GTA(s), KotOR, Outcast, Serious Sam(s), Cave Story, Dark Souls (1 & 2, bcs 30fps, but only barely/unpleasanty?), …
Maybe some newer retro ones, like Dusk?
Or not that visually important games, like 2D platformers and management games, etx - like Stardew Valley, Terraria, Dead Cells, Disco Elysium, Hollow Knight, Celeste, Momodora(s?), Spelunky(s), …
For more engagement: a Doom reskin where you shot balloons at some (to child me) scary af toys that came alive and were ornery. Windows 3.1/DOS era, was part of a shareware collection.
Edit: You know what I don’t think this was what I’m thinking about BUT I did play this and may be mixing the memory with another shooter in the same collection.
Chex Quest? I remember the cereal had a Doom reskin and it scared me too much. I feel like if they had just changed the worldspace default color from black to white it would’ve been less scary.
Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart - A super fun and challenging Mario Kart style game made in the original Doom engine.
CatsEyeXI - An unofficial, custom Final Fantasy XI MMO server with fast leveling, solo play and many quality of life features. (Following guides is still recommended, because it's a complicated and vague game at the best of times!)
ETLegacy - A free to play version of Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, a fun and fast team-based first person shooter.
There was this game I swear was called Solaris but was not able to find. The whole thing is a model of a star system with a couple dozens of oddly-named planets and you need to “shoot units” at the planets you want to conquer. You basically have to estimate how many units you need to take it over or something.
I’ll probably never be able to find it cause I can’t even describe it so well haha
That’s what sprang to mind for me as well. There’s another version somewhere with viruses/bacteria where you’re in a petri dish and can find/modify your dna for better traits in certain multiplying/attack/defending strengths.
bin.pol.social
Aktywne