whatchu playing now

Streets of Rage 3
Bare Knuckle III

So BKIII is the Japanese version of SOR3 and it is WAY easier. This does not mean it is easy though, it only means it is possible to get through stage 1 without using a continue. American version of Streets of Rage 3 is one of the more difficult games I've ever played.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VWsJPJ19DA

That level with the bulldozer is all-time unfair.

all that and he's beat by a girder

i love the energy meter for 'wall'.

i guess i only played Streets of Rage 1 & 2.

man why doesn't axel just jump over the damn walls

sor3 is weird. it seems like it admits to tactics then it doesn't really.

I think after you get past the stage where you are fighting kangaroos and evil dominatrix clowns they just figured they could get away w that.

Played 2-player Hyperstone Heist for the Genesis last night. Got to Super Shredder and then we died and we were out of continues! The music in that game is incredible. Orchestrated speed metal.

i'm still playing bg2.

eu4 always with the eu4. genovese colonial empire.

wish i could get into eu. each time i load it up there are like 300 tutorials

if it helps you still won't know what the fuck is going on if you sit thru the tutorials

Sadly not as into Mirror's Edge as I'd hoped (hinges way too much on barely-disguised quick time events, which fuck that). Surprisingly way more into the first Metal Gear Solid than I expected (tough but mostly fair, cutscenes and dialogue that are reasonably well-written and not totally perfunctory, generous with the game saving, and the controls and camera, while occasionally obnoxious, are better than those on a lot of the PS2 games I've played). I still haven't been able to get past the first boss yet, though, so we'll see how long my admiration lasts.

is there some kind of amazing online tutorial that will teach me how to play?

there is a lot of user and wiki content so possibly but i'm not aware of anything myself. i think you just need to start playing it with the expectation that you won't know what you're doing for a long time. start with france: raise a big army and start some beef. you can go a long way with them without having to worry about some of the more arcane stuff for a while and you will pick up a good foundation in manpower/supply, tech advancement, diplomacy, religion. you can dip your toe into trade and colonies if you want but you'll still be able to do plenty without. and you'll have the immediate objective of unifying france to get your teeth into, which definitely helps the transition into the sandbox. you'll always have something to do with them and that is certainly not always the case elsewhere.

have any of you played crusader kings 2 and can you take the same approach there? tried to get into it but get caught up on figuring out how levies work and what a demesne is and somehow the game had me entering into an affair with my own wife

ftl

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow
Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance

Aria of Sorrow is incredible. Are the GBA Metroids this good?

Harmony is cool too, if only because the lead character is dressed like anime Santa Claus.

I remember the GBA Metroid I played being awesome

this is gonna make me sound like a crazy person but i've gotten into watching lets-plays of EU4 and i don't even own a PC. they're weirdly soothing?

any you'd recommend? esp for newbs?

there's a youtuber by the name of shenryyr2 who i gather is some kind of god at it. he doesn't really do tutorials but a lot of the rhythm of it comes out via osmosis.

my general sense is it's just not a 'for newbs' game, you just kind of have to keep jumping in at the deep end until it clicks

jeez, just had a click around that guy's YT, he is nutso. if i had infinite hours i would watch the lot. but yeah, as a learning experience you probably already need a foundation to get anything from someone like this.

Aria of Sorrow is incredible. Are the GBA Metroids this good?

yeah he's also endearingly/annoyingly ignorant of actual history & geography

i just wanted some cool flowing graphics of a map shifting slowly over time while i did other shit.

xp

*checks england ca. 1650* "a republic? england went republic? wtf, that makes no sense"

was that cromwell? idk I'm too lazy to wiki at the minute

metro: last light
had no idea the wolfenstein remake is more then just "lol nostalgia", preview trailer got me intersted

xp yeah

just finished back to the future telltale game, it was pretty fun, but if it hadn't been for walking dead s1 i dunno if i would've had the patience. now i am trying to play sam & max penal zone and it is next-level inscrutable adv game :(

Did any of you happen to see this week's Steven Universe where Steven gets obssessed with this epic Pokemon/Final Fantasy-style Mini Golf RPG? Man, I would love for that to actually exist.

no but that sounds great. i also love the SU where garnet becomes transfixed with the meat beat mania arcade game

hah, that was great too!

ftl

Played a little "Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia" yesterday and holy crap am I addicted to these Castlevania games...

I got stuck on the second DS game and never moved onto that one

Fuckin' boulder, I hate you

been playing the tomb raider game from last year and goddamn, this is the metal gear solid game i wanted instead of guns of the patriots

solo castle crashers insane mode, the endless air comboing has a meditative appeal despite zero margin for error

Risk of Rain

In what I'm sure is news to no one, Portal 2 is an absolute delight. We'll see if my GF agrees if I manage to convince her to try out co-op mode.

yeah the second act of portal 2 where you're climbing your way out of the old laboratory is one of the best gaming experiences ever imo

Warning: the co-op puzzles are a little harder (and generally, way better) than the single player story puzzles. Also lacks most of the charm that story has, but that's an easily forgivable sin.

Ya know what, I forgot about the robot hi-fives. Maybe not.

That is, it's still pretty damn charming.

played co-op with my gf at the time and i was so bad at it that i cried tears of frustration and embarrassment and she was really horrible to me in front of her friends lmao

Well, at least there's no chance of that, thankfully. The scant time she's spent on anything FPS-ish has been mostly about trying to figure out why she can only see the ceiling as she's running into walls.

I just got to the deep, deep underground part of the game last night and was a little wary about whether it was going to still hold my interest now that I'm no longer in the testing chambers. I'm glad to hear it stays awesome.

Oh, and I was wondering if it was a stupid decision to buy it from the PS store (seeing as how I'm rapidly running out of space on my PS3) but I seem to be avoiding the ridiculous load times that I've heard people complain about, which I'm sure only enhances my joy.

Peggle 2 (360) is more of the same with slightly better presentation, but... that's pretty much what I wanted.

I only know of it from Carbot:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lwSXSOzRjk

I put about a good 20-25 hours into Dragon’s Dogma 2 and have some things to say, haha.

Played a few hours of the 1st one a few months ago. Thought it had the bones of a really cool game, but it very much felt like a PS3 game, so seemed like a sequel that took its ideas to the next level sounded perfect. Set it aside knowing 2 was around the corner.

DD2 starts out kinda boring, then opens up and gets interesting, and then unfortunately gets boring again. It doesn’t feel like a significantly updated iteration of the first one. I’m totally down with fast travel being not something you can rely on, but I quickly found my journeys across the map to be repetitive. Same cycle of goblin camps every 30 yards, occasional big monster, some caves to explore that typically aren’t that interesting, treasure chests that are always “hidden” in the same types of areas. After Elden Ring, that kind of open world feels ancient.

Quests are dull and rote. The “emergent” gameplay scenarios that are played up aren’t exactly filled with variety. You kinda see the same sorta stuff happen pretty regularly. Not a lot of enemy variety either.

It gets very easy once you get your character’s class high enough. Game more than subtly suggests to try out new classes, but after spending a lot of loot on upgrading class specific gear I’m not too keen on starting fresh every few hours. And I think having to constantly change your class to keep the game interesting is kind of a cop out of game design.

So IDK, I put it down for now. A lot of the potentially-alienating-to-casuals features aren’t really the problem for me. I’m a From guy, so that’s what made me interested.

Played it on PS5. 30 fps, which is disappointing, but performance problems haven’t been much of a problem.

Two point and click games: strangeland and the excavation of hob's barrow. Strangeland is directly inspired by i have no mouth and i must scream, and does it well. Hob's barrow is a slow burn paranormal investigation sort of like gabriel knight. It's let down by an ending where the player character does a dumb thing that you can't control. These games both scratched an itch but i'd like to find some more innovative games in the genre.

we talked about 'hob's barrow' last year, enjoyed that and the similar (style wise anyway) 'the case of the golden idol'

will checkout strangeland

Hobs Barrow stars Karlach! I haven't played it yet but the comparison to Golden Idol has piqued my interest.

Hob's Barrow has cutscenes that look like rotoscoped footage into pixel art. I liked those. Its gameplay is very different from deduction games.

helldivers 2 is fantastically dumb fun, 'live service' done right. i recall bouncing off of destiny 2 after about 15 minutes. surprisingly nontoxic and friendly atmosphere among players for the most part also

finally got sick of hades, just in time for hades 2 early access (i think)

Venba is a real heartfelt treat. If I'm a little teary while playing, it's because of all the onoins I have to chop

Finished Venda in a few sittings. Lovely lovely lovely game

It's actually my favorite game from last year, and they also released the cook book as DLC recently.