whatchu playing now

Hadn't heard of Oxenfree, looks good

I noticed earthbound on the 3ds store, never played it. should I?

if you like fun, then yes.

idk if earthbound is fun

if you like the meditative distraction of a simple rpg grind and also like corny jokes then yes

like a lot of those snes era RPGs earthbound hasn't aged that well as a game but it's still got good storytelling & a unique style

mother 3 is better though...

one of my many terrible secrets of shame is that i've played earthbound like 5 different times, and i've never really made it out of the initial village area. does the game ever leave that stupid village? after about 10 hours i get bored

i'm sorry, the village isn't stupid. it's actually pretty great. i just wish i could get past it.

i haven't played it in like 10 years so i forget the details but there's definitely multiple villages/towns/cities/areas

http://i.imgur.com/iEJ97QP.png

i have really played the shit out of risk of rain recently. when you get in the groove, it's very calming.

i got to the desert in Earthbound. the music in that game is incredible.

Earthbound is great played on an emulator or with someway to fast-forward it. I originally beat it like in '06 or so with a controller and zsnes on my work laptop.

Bought Singularity on steam sale. It's from 2010, and boy does it ever embody that. Primary design ideas blend a shit load of Bioshock and some Call of Duty. The Bioshocky world-building(and retro filmstrips/audio logs) are not lower in production value, but at least they tried.

Earthbound is great played on an emulator or with someway to fast-forward it.

I think the white album is a little padded, so I like to combat this by listening to the whole thing at 1.5x the correct speed

last time i got into earthbound i was playing on a borrowed snes cartridge (this is like... 5 years ago) and i got just about as far as the part where it asks for your real name. then i had to return the cart. i reckon another month and i woulda beaten it, p sad. i was like really far in i think too. excited for this mobile opportunity to play it, def gonna beat it this time (and before the 4th generation poll i run in the fall-or-so, too)

Partner bought Far Cry Primal the other day. Its a suprisingly fantastic take on the FC franchise. It has the basic structure of FC4 - take over villages and territory - but the whole controlling animals and crafting primitive weapons is a lot better than it sounds on paper.

xp iirc there's a lot more game beyond that point

he said a month tbf

i actually had never played beyond the second (i think) town until recently, when i got to the big high-rise town, and now i've paused again for like a month and i want to get back to it but, oh, also i don't

ultimately, it's worthwhile imo. that game is something special

yeah recommended playing for everyone who likes charming weirdness, that game sets the bar for charming weirdness

I've tried with Earthbound a few times but the beginning (first couple of days I guess) feels slow and not huge fun. is that me or the game?

http://i.imgur.com/Uc2as1F.png

salt & sanctuary.

paging adam bruneau, paging adam bruneau, i think you would love this game (sorry if you try it and don't like it but it's only $18 which is one of the best bargains for a new game that i can remember, ever)

AB i think you'd like it because it's such a great combo of dark souls and castlevania SOTN. it obviously rips off elements of both but the enemies are new and unique, and the boss battles are intense. also this is heresy but tbh i'm enjoying it better than dark souls just because S&S is a 2D platformer and i'm much, much better at that than 3D

i think you've talked me into it. now when can i find time to play it.

I've tried with Earthbound a few times but the beginning (first couple of days I guess) feels slow and not huge fun. is that me or the game?

― Szechuan TV (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, March 16, 2016 3:00 PM (5 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's definitely the game yo

otoh as of 15-20 hours in i don't think the game it is at any point trying to be either i. fast-paced or ii. fun particularly, and i think it has virtues other than these

i finished kane & lynch 2, which i hadn't thought about it but it's interesting to be stalled in that game and earthbound simultaneously--they're both player-hostile in not-entirely-dissimilar ways

earthbound isn't player-hostile? it's just reflecting the Dragon Quest steez of the times

who put this giant pencil here / oh it's just here

Re: Salt & Sanctuary, it's amazing how well they translated Dark Souls boss fight mechanics into 2-D. I think the jumping aspect (you can freeze in mid-air when attacking, can't remember if that happens in Castlevania or some other game?) adds some complexity. Figuring out the attacks of this dragon boss yesterday was just as satisfying as Kalameet in DS...it seems impossible, then eventually you relax and start looking at the tells instead of the health bars, and it's not so hard after all.

The one thing that stresses me out about Metroidvania games is when you get that new ability that lets you traverse different parts of the world. I know I'm never going to remember all the places that I should backtrack to, and the thought of running through it all is a drag.

KM thanks for the recommendation! sounds right up my alley. unfortunately i don't have a PS4 and can't find out when it comes out on Steam. everywhere lists TBA

S&S sounds so cool but i was watching the gameplay and the visuals look pretty washed out and boring?

I guess? I like the look of the game and different areas have somewhat different palettes, but I suspect that visuals don't matter to me very much in games (compared to other people).

looks v nice imo. found it a little tough to get into, the gameplay not quite as much of a pull as the actual DS games, but liking it a lot now i am over the hump.

i've become obessed with driveclub bikes over the past couple of days after picking it up in the ps store sale. it's really good! start a track in time trial mode and just endlessly looping around it on a massively overpowered superbike, shaving fractions of a second off my best time every few laps, is weirdly meditative and soothing to me.

picked a great time to buy it too, like 24 hours before the developer got shuttered by sony :(

Yeah was gonna say

i look forward to enjoying it for a month before sony shut down the servers and it becomes unplayable

Despite having very little time to play games at the moment, I've managed to find myself juggling several after my birthday yielded many games/gift cards for games. So I'm currently playing Heavy Rain on the PS3 with my wife, and revisiting Pokemon Yellow on the 3DS virtual console.

A friend also bought me Bloodborne on PS4, so I'm trying to come to terms with playing a properly hard game. I'm also still churning through Fallout 4 (which I'm really just not enjoying as much as I'd hoped), and I'm nearly finished Shadowrun: Hong Kong.

Really like the look of Salt & Sanctuary, but think I'll wait for the Vita release. I also want to wait for the Vita release of Hyper Light Drifter, which comes out on the PC in just over a week, but I backed it on Kickstarter for 2 copies so I'm getting it on PC first. Hopefully it's good enough to revisit on the Vita when it eventually ships.

I get the impression Sony are taking Driveclub in house rather than shutting it down? So server switch off seems unlikely, it might even end up getting more frequent updates.

this is my favorite trap room in Salt & Sanctuary so far, i did the exact same thing:
https://youtu.be/VNP1FSDUx3M?t=366

haha, i haven't gotten that far yet, although i have reached the edges of the hall of cages. i'm planning on spending a lot more time with it on saturday, though.

when i left off, i was kind of unsure where to go. i seemed to have reached a point where i could only go to 2 new areas, both of which featured enemies that were way too difficult for me. one of them was the castle sort of off to the upper right, and you could only access it by using the obelisk that lets you flip upside down. soon after entering, i almost always get annihilated by the little floating flame skulls. one hit from them seems to deplete more than half of my life bar, even when i'm wearing armor that's fire-resistant. i dunno, maybe i need to just spend more time leveling first? (i think i'm around LVL 29 right now)

the castle is the place to go, and it's definitely a difficulty spike. i admit i looked up where the sanctuary was and ran there, then ground out some levels (the only time i've felt the need to do that) and learned how to deal with the skulls (ie don't get hit by them, and you can touch them without damage as long as they're not firing up).

another non-obvious thing that helped a ton is that you can level up the same stat multiple times on the same node. at first i was going through all this useless stuff on the skill try just to get another point of dexterity.

damn, this looks really good.

try = tree

also how often do you guys have that horrible moment of self-awareness when you realize how ridiculous the minutiae of any game must sound to anyone who hasn't played it?

when four people are nattering on about how the yimmicks are totally fouling up that last jump where you should be able to get a toehold but the crumbling turf has led to a faceplant on the spikes BUT the anti-yimmick jodhpurs you purchase from the second merchant at the ice station (the hidden merchant, not the guy with the dog) totally make that jump a breeze and you can even backstab that fucker and kick HIM into the spikes.... that is the moment when i get my credit card out and walk sadly to the teevee to buy another game i will not likely finish. the seduction of the gullible through excitable argon wins again.

"jargon", not http://s1.thingpic.com/images/px/8egCww5y5x8bTXdbLJvhcZBc.png

and learned how to deal with the skulls (ie don't get hit by them, and you can touch them without damage as long as they're not firing up).

aah, thanks! i didn't realize you can sometimes touch them without getting damaged, so the way i was approaching them was kind of crazy and counterproductive. i'll give it another shot.

re: self-awareness and insane minutiae, i usually try to dial it down but on a thread like this i'm just let it all hang loose