brsrklf

brsrklf, 7 miesięcy temu

Child of Light? Side-scrolling RPG, with a young Austrian princess waking up in a fantasy world. Very artsy and oniric, emotional but more on the hopeful side.

brsrklf, 7 miesięcy temu

Three very different games I actually took notes for :

La Mulana. In the “modern” version you have limited memory space to save some of the many texts you find, but you’ll need more than that to solve the puzzles anyway. Good luck trying to scribble the weird pixelated symbols on your notes, too.

I play Shin Megami Tensei games with notes to optimize fusions, when I have a particular demon in mind and I want them to inherit the right skills. Later games let you see fusion results, but only one step ahead.

And then there’s spacechem. I love Zachtronics games in general, and all the following ones tend to be progressive in difficulty and let you experiment from a good enough solution to better solutions. As the first, less refined one, spacechem is special. Before long it needs planning and calculations to even get something that works.

brsrklf, 7 miesięcy temu

I am curious how you scribble your way out of Daggerfall’s dungeons. Even the game’s 3D automap is basically too messy to be of any use.

brsrklf, 7 miesięcy temu

I played that long ago (I had a MM1-5 collection on a CD-ROM).

I finished the Clouds of Xeen side without much trouble, I was even surprised when I realized I had found that part’s ending (I think, anyway). But I never could do any progress on Darkside… Not sure what I was missing.

brsrklf, 7 miesięcy temu

I thought that too for a while! I had played Lands of Lore first, and I just assumed MM worked the same way.

I liked Lands of Lore a lot, but it terrified me at times.

brsrklf, 7 miesięcy temu

Good, Ubisoft, please continue giving me reasons not to buy any of your games again. It’s been like 10 years now.

brsrklf, 7 miesięcy temu

Some games fix this issue by making the player trigger the change they want and bring the fight to the big powerful threat themselves, on their terms.

In fact one of my favorite RPG has the player characters being the ones trying to end the world as they know it.

I do think the extreme example, the old RPG trope of the big bad looming over in the red-tinted sky and being just minutes from firing the world busting laser while you finish your quest list, is rather cringe. Maybe don’t invoke this in a game where time is basically irrelevent.

brsrklf, 7 miesięcy temu

Depends. If they’re already in a position of power, they basically win if nobody rises against them.

What often happens is they did try to stop the hero through the game, and failed.

brsrklf, 7 miesięcy temu

It’s

spoiler just in caseXenoblade Chronicles 3

brsrklf, 7 miesięcy temu

I think they’d already lost their way a long while before that.

They started as indies grouping together to get visibility, at a time when Steam still curated every game and accepted maybe 4 games a month (yeah, hard to imagine today. It’s still hard to be noticed, but for the opposite reason). Back then they distributed only DRM-free games too, with eventually a Steam key option.

At some point they opened their own store and started including big publisher games, and really became just another store, and mostly a key store too. They spew some bullshit about not being specifically a DRM-free store, but really “DRM-agnostic”. “We don’t restrict publishers’ choice of DRM, they can be DRM-free if they want!”

And I’m like, dude, it’s not a stance, Steam technically doesn’t either. You may need the client to install but plenty of games don’t run on any DRM, not even Steamworks.

brsrklf, 7 miesięcy temu

They told me I was too young. They told me I needed more training. I told them to drop dead! How ironic…

brsrklf, 7 miesięcy temu (edited 7 miesięcy temu)

I’ve played Tales of Monkey Island. If you’ve played Telltale’s version of Sam and Max, it’s pretty much the same kind of take. Probably suffers quite a bit from the episodic format, and puzzles are a bit straightforward compared to classic monkey island games. Fans of the series mostly consider it a huge letdown.

Can’t say anything about the more serious parts of the Telltale catalogue, I’ve never played those, but for having played this, the 3 Sam & Max seasons and Back to the Future, there was certainly a Telltale formula that started annoying me after a while. They went less and less subtle about crafting their dialogues so they all lead to the same answer, they clearly wrote their stories with an objective to reuse character models and assets, and they still used that in-house engine that looked and controlled terribly, barely improved through the years.

brsrklf, 7 miesięcy temu

Maybe it’s because I played them too late, but while I mostly had a blast playing HL2, the first one never clicked for me.

I know, it’s been very influential and new when it released, but it was still quite straight a FPS game. Whereas HL2 is like a crazy theme park of different ambiences and mechanics.

brsrklf, 7 miesięcy temu

I remember the sense of Pride and Accomplishment everyone got from that game back then.

brsrklf, 7 miesięcy temu

So now their solution to the whole “don’t you guys have phone?” situation is to keep designing for mobile but port those everywhere.

I think I’ll keep not giving a shit, thank you very much.

brsrklf, 7 miesięcy temu

Animal Crossing is a special case (and one that made a lot of people angry back when the game released).

One console is tied to one “island”, which means all accounts on the same switch play in the same town. Each has got their own house and inventory, and can contribute to the island in some ways…

But only the main account, who started the save, is “resident representative”, which means they’re the only one who can build or relocate stuff, and who can start community projects needed for the island to progress.

So yeah, all other players have an inferior experience. Which is a bit of a baffling design for a family game such as this.

brsrklf, 7 miesięcy temu

The quotation marks are a nice touch. Quality trolling.

brsrklf, 7 miesięcy temu

This is not the case with the sega games we’re talking about. The announcement specifically mentions the games will still be available to download if you bought them before the delisting.

brsrklf, 7 miesięcy temu

You’re right, this is what they’ve been announcing. The games you’ve bought will still be available for download.

brsrklf, 8 miesięcy temu

Well it’s likely, the expeditions make everyone go to the same spots and this one is particular is supposed to be done without hyperdrive, so everyone is going to visit the same 5 systems and their planets.

brsrklf, 8 miesięcy temu

I’ve been playing mostly expeditions for a while (on PS4, occasionally VR : on a non-pro PS4, this is rough). I am getting a PC VR headset soon so I am waiting for that to double dip and make a clean save again.

Good thing is there are ways to unlock past expedition rewards on PC. I’d have no way to transfer them otherwise. They need to stop this limited time FOMO bullshit. I understand why the old expeditions themselves can’t be maintained but there should be ways to get the unlockable stuff.

brsrklf, 8 miesięcy temu

Roberts is relatively well-known in and out of the Star Citizen community for being a perfectionist at the best times.

In a parallel universe, Roberts would have been allowed to continue working on Freelancer, and it would still be in development hell in 2024 with no end in sight.

brsrklf, 8 miesięcy temu (edited 8 miesięcy temu)

You’re probably right. But getting free rein and an almost infinite source of funding is certainly not that environment.

brsrklf, 8 miesięcy temu

It was technically always licenses for every video game ever commercialised. It’s just that a publisher has no practical way to control what happens to someone’s floppy/optical disc/cartridge/whatever physical media.

brsrklf, 8 miesięcy temu

Yeah mostly soothe them with music and keep their feeder going, but you’re always going to find one or two escapees.

brsrklf, 9 miesięcy temu

Has it ever been something else? Nobody using “woke” seriously has ever been able to define it.

brsrklf, 10 miesięcy temu

Connectivity is just one of many problems with joycons.

The shitty sticks that may or may not drift after a dozen of hours and the faulty rail cable that disconnects the SL/ SR buttons are worse.

brsrklf, 10 miesięcy temu

8bitdo SN30 pro. Small, lightweight, perfect button placement. SNES controller designers knew their shit, just add two sticks and a pair of triggers and you can play almost anything with it.

brsrklf, 11 miesięcy temu

Yeah, I got it mostly for the campaign, hoping for more Baldur’s Gate. It was so disappointing.

The story was uninspired, but most of all solo gameplay was so boring. One character, one NPC companion and you couldn’t control them in any way, starting at low level, all of that made your strategic choices practically inexistent.

And then the engine breaking everywhere causing it to rewind your action after 5 seconds because it suddenly remembered “hey, you were not supposed to be able to go there, we’ve put a bunch of knee-high crates to block that 5 meter wide empty hallway!”

brsrklf, 11 miesięcy temu

I’ve not played Forbidden West, but I’ve played all of Zero Dawn. I’ll just say, as much as I like the game (I do, quite a bit), it’s bad at being open-world.

Most narrow paths are only related to quests, and if you try exploring them before you need to go there the game punishes you by making it a chore to go and to leave for no gain. Also, the terrible message “you’re out of bound, turn back now or we reset to your last save” is one of the worst failure at world design ever. It pops up constantly if you’re just trying to explore.

And yes, I tried playing HUD-free for a bit (I had a great experience doing that on Breath of the Wild). As you said it’s almost impossible, the environment, while looking good, is way too messy to spot the small details you’re supposed to… Unless you turn on the magic compass and GPS.

In other games, paths and important items are highlighted with lighting and clear and functional visual cues. Beside the infamous yellow paint, HZD does almost none of that efficiently.

brsrklf, 11 miesięcy temu

It had a few graphical upgrades through the huge content updates it got year after year.

Now there is more biome diversity, more decorative flora, better underground environments, more creature types…

If anything, they tried so much to populate it that sometimes I feel it’s lacking some truly desolate environments. “Empty” planets are uncommon, and even those are mostly cluttered with weird stuff and “anomalous” living things.

brsrklf, 11 miesięcy temu (edited 11 miesięcy temu)

Yah, I haven’t tried latest update yet. Problem with NMS is that it’s a bit daunting diving into it again and again, I don’t like returning to month-old saves and starting from the beginning takes ages. Especially that with all the content updates, you get a dozen simultaneous quests jumping at you at first occasion.

I’m still doing expeditions, and that in itself is already a ridiculous commitment IMO. I wish we could just do them at our own pace, the time limit is baffling. I noticed that last expedition literally 2 days before it ended, I got everything, but it was a freaking race to get there.

brsrklf, 11 miesięcy temu

Even if it’s self-imposed, that still sounds like a terrible idea to me.

brsrklf, 11 miesięcy temu

Hoopa : “Just gonna drop a bunch of those legendary idiots for shits and giggles. Catch, trainer!”

brsrklf, 11 miesięcy temu

If someone complains about buying a finished game and not getting more of it later, they’re idiots and there’s nothing you can do but ignore them.

Publishers that do ultra-early access/roadmaps/live services with promises of content/bug fixes/trust me we’re making the rest of the game later, are clearly to blame for the mess too. They’re the ones poisoning the well.

But plenty of games release in a final state and that’s okay. They have to be firm about it though.

brsrklf, rok temu

I don’t know what kind of funny or what style of review you’re looking for, but there’s Matt McMuscles, who does “What Happened” and “The worst fighting game”.

What happened is not technically always about bad games, but about troubled development in general. Most of them do end up rather disastrous or at least disappointing and are known for it though.

The worst fighting game, however, exclusively reviews bad games, since, well, he’s looking for the worst one.

brsrklf, rok temu

I didn’t know he did that, just checked… And yeah, the voice and tone are very recognizable but it’s also a bit funny that his character is a skeleton there too.

brsrklf, rok temu

Single joycon is barely usable, but the Wiimote was terrible for sideways holding.

Its shape was clearly never intended for it, and the d-pad was absolutely awful, one of the worst I’ve used.

The d-pad worked as buttons (which was how most games used it, in vertical mode), but for movement it was very stiff and almost impossible to get diagonals. For a console that featured virtual console heavily and needed a lot of classic controls, that was very bad design.

brsrklf, rok temu

Hey, I backed that Kickstarter a long time ago!

Time to revisit it I guess.

brsrklf, rok temu

The French branch filed bankruptcy 10 years ago.

Some of the stores became Micromania-Zing (owned by gamestop) which amazingly enough still exists.

Yeah, those have been primarily funko pop stores for years too. Their new games are like 20% more expensive than everyone else, and their second hand games priced like everyone else’s new.

brsrklf, rok temu

Game doesn’t exist anymore where I live, but the last thing I bought from a similar store (down to overpriced games and being mostly about merch) was a 8bitdo controller several years ago. I was there, price was not excessive, and it was slightly more convenient than having one delivered.

Beyond that… I went a couple times just to pick up a free event pokémon on 3DS, and nothing else, and I think the last actual game I got from them must have been Order of Ecclesia on the DS.

brsrklf, rok temu

Until they give a “better” reason, I am going to assume the one they hinted at is true, and Microsoft just decided that it was worthless because it wasn’t “Mikami’s studio” anymore. Honestly, I already suspected it.

In which case, fuck them. These games were not made by one person, a studio is bigger than its director. And the rest of them didn’t get even one chance to prove themselves.

Truly shows how little they value the people who make their games.

brsrklf, rok temu

I did see a few low-poly, very PS1 or N64-looking indies recently, even going as far as mimicking the weird texture wobbling from the PS1.

But Penny’s big breakaway is not really low-poly, or something that looks like 5th gen/PS1. Not graphically anyway.

Though it’s mechanically rather retro, with the focus on move combos, scoring and speedrunning. It’s almost more of a linear kind of skate or jet set radio-like game than a platformer.

brsrklf, rok temu

Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance / Bomberman Tournament multiworld

So… that’s a thing apparently.

brsrklf, rok temu

It failed completely at being a Metroid game. It’s obvious the single-player “story” was just hastily hacked together from the multiplayer mode.

Maps were linear, without any kind of secrets or exploration. They were mostly boring corridors between multiplayer arenas for fights against bots.

The only abilities were different coloured guns, and while the MP trilogy gives the four beams specific properties to interact with the environment, I can’t remember what most Hunters guns were supposed to do beside opening corresponding doors.

There were three boring and mostly static bosses in the whole game, two of them copy pasted once to make it last a bit longer.

I don’t even think its controls or arena map design felt like Metroid Prime. The very limited Metroid Prime 2 multiplayer felt more like “competitive Metroid Prime”. It was more fun to me anyway, not that I’d buy a Metroid game for multiplayer.

brsrklf, rok temu

The reveal wasn’t a complete surprise though.

It was hinted that guy would return in MP3’s ending, and apparently in Federation Force too (I haven’t played that one, but of course the reveal has been floating around).

Sure, it was still kind of hidden, but for those who recognized him at all, chances are they’d knew that too.

The trailer certainly failed at making his apparition exciting in any case.

brsrklf, rok temu (edited rok temu)

I have a personal beef with that game :)

I am sure there are people with good memories of it as an arena shooter, but I had little interest in that. And as a Metroid, it sucked (…sorry)

I remember trying the First Hunt demo, that was a demo cartridge from the beginning of the DS and was supposed to be a short teaser for what Hunters would be. Back then I thought, yeah, with a game around it, it could be great.

Turns out the actual Hunters was absolutely nothing like that, and focused only on multiplayer. The only reason they tacked a half-assed single-player mode on it is so it could be sold to people who wanted an actual Metroid game. I’d respect the game more if they didn’t try to sell it as more than it really was.