whatchu playing now

oh that's a fairly big disadvantage in that game once you start playing against good players

are you playing turf war still or have you gotten into the ranked modes? i preferred the latter, other than clam blitz which i hate

downloading Lonely Mountains: Downhill now. i watched a 10-minute video, and it appears to be a chilled out Trials-like game, in isometric view. instead of revving engines, think bird sound, wind and rustling leaves. i heard the words "marble madness + trials" and was instantly sold.

tell us how it goes!

that game is good

I ordered a TurboGrafx-16 Mini. Impulsively. I want Splatterhouse on tap.

Playing Days Bygone and Idle Mastermind on my phone. Days Bygone is one of those idle waves games like Clicker Heroes. It's "free" but you need to pay around $15 to get to the real game, with automatic combat and fast resets. Currently at floor 2500, where it feels like there's little progress, and the next upgrade/change to the gameplay is at floor 3000. I don't know if I'll continue. Idle Mastermind is a very nice "true idle" game, where it helps to check up on a few times a day but otherwise it runs itself. The paid content isn't worth it, and the ads are optional and capped at four a day.

Lonely Mountains is so good! very addicting, hard to put down.

i am sure that a lot of my love for it comes from it's resemblance to marble madness in some ways -alternate paths that are harder but faster, momentum based physics, isometric view, alternate control schemes.

but it's got its own thing going on. earlier i described it a "chill "game, based upon the lovely sound design. there's no music, just nature noises, waterfalls, and an awesome spinning chain sound when you catch air. i love it. there's no announcer screaming at you, no crowd, no dumb c-grade major label guitar rock in the menus.

however, the experience of playing it can be as stressful, depending on how you play it. there are 4 mountains, with 4 trails on each mountain. so 16 trails in all (i think). each one has around 8 or so challenges, which get progressively harder. the first one is simply to get to the bottom. then 2 beginner challenges - get to bottom under a certain amount of time, and get to the bottom crashing x or less times.

the interesting thing - and this is hard to explain, my apologies - is that your total time for any trail is based only on your best times from each of the trail's sections. there are 7-8 sections on each trail. let's say you do terrible on section 2 and crash 8 times. each time you crash, you go back to the last checkpoint, and your time also resets back to what it was when you reached the checkpoint. the only penalty is your crash count.

what this means is that the "beat x time" challenges consist of you figuring out how to get a really good individual time in each segment. this usually involves some sort of crazy-ass shortcut. so the "time challenges" are deceptively more interesting than they might seem, because they will require exploration and some creativity in order to figure out the best routes and pull them off.

the earlier time challenges are pretty easy to beat, but the more advanced ones are fucking intense! that's what i mean about the stress. if you decide to do these extra challenges and try to unlock the other bikes and get all the gear and all that shit, you will be intensely paying attention to the game and regulating your breathing patterns. or not...you could just take a lovely bike stroll down a trail and look for the 4 hidden whatever stones in each level.

didn't mean to write a megapost, sorry. but last thing, just to hit the important part - it just feels good to bike around. the momentum feels really good. it's easy to get into a mesmerizing groove not unlike that of the Alto's Adventure iOS games. it's fun just to do the normal turns. when you crash, you never feel ripped off, it usually seems fair. i could go on. it's fun!

@ciderpress - yeah I've been mixing it up betw turf war and ranked, mostly because the latter has 5 minute games and more fun game modes (excepting clam blitz which I also hate.)

heard the performance of lonely mountains, void bastards, and the wonderful 101 are all ropey on switch. waiting for a patch on each before diving in

lonely mountains sounds good

just started kentucky route zero. it looks great, though it's been hard to play such a dark game on the hand-held switch while i hide from my children on the porch with sunlight glaring off the screen. feels more like an "experience" than a game.

yeah its in that blurry space between game and visual novel

heard the performance of lonely mountains, void bastards, and the wonderful 101 are all ropey on switch. waiting for a patch on each before diving in

yes, the frame rate does drop on occasion. normally i don't even notice frame rate drops, so it must be pretty significant

also want to say: a much better name for Lonely Mountains would be Trails. that's a bummer, because there's no way we can have Trials and Trails in the same era as Outer Worlds and Outer Wilds

heard the performance of lonely mountains, void bastards, and the wonderful 101 are all ropey on switch. waiting for a patch on each before diving in

jrpg fans have been dealing for years with Trails and Tales both being major series names, i think bicycle game fans could hack it

woah - tried splatoon with the joycons docked in the little handgrip thing and the game plays night and day better with motion controls. even with the sub-optimal right-stick placement and lacklustre R1/R2 buttons, I saw a marked improvement in performance. time to pick up a cheap pro controller I guess

esp good wrt verticality

yeah once you get the hang of aiming with the motion controls it's impossible to go back

dunno if there are any cheaper 3rd party controllers that have working gyro. probably not since i assume that's the expensive part to make

Started playing a little bit of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon® Wildlands ... I think this game is sort of underrated? I would never play it solo but it's a very fun headset game.

my kids just busted out spiderman again today and.... goddamn it is the best game. it's really just two things: swinging across manhattan and melee combat, but i have never seen either done so well.

started uncharted 4 because I want to see how this story ends. lovely so far

btw NBA 2K20 is on sale on the ps4 store for 5 € ! on switch for only 3 € but I'm guessing it's not gonna run so well on there.

Return of Obra Dinn hooked me early and, following two one-hour play sessions, I pulled up on thisMonday night around 9pm to have a focused go at it. At 5am, I was down to the last five or so names/weapons/murderers; I haven't had an OCD play session like that in a long time. Finally broke down and consulted the internet and was immediately justified with "there's no WAY i could've figured that out / brute forced that answer." There are a handful of killings that just aren't well portrayed but, in a game of this complexity, I suppose it's unavoidable to get a few clunkers. Looking up three names at the end got the job done without making me feel like either I or the developer had fucked up too bad.

In any case, it's definitely one of the best games I've played in years: mostly challenging without being too frustrating, gorgeous art style, compellingly quizzical plot, great voice acting and sound design.

If you've been curious to try it, the secret is that it's basically Clue (I think the brits call it Cluedo?) on a mass scale, but much more engaging.

on to Baba Is You now. I love the idea behind it but moving the words around gets tedious and I'm still figuring out the rule sets as to when something is corporeal or not. you feel very very clever when you get something right but the ones that you can't unlock make you feel very very dumb. let's see if i can beat it.

the MUSIC for Obra Dinn is very very good btw
https://soundcloud.com/randall-klaver/sets/the-return-of-the-obra-dinn

baba is you was extremely satisfying up to a certain point, but i hit a wall where even when i had a pretty decent idea of how the puzzles might be solved the complexity of moves required became too tedious to be worth it. it's a shame because i loved most of it and it had a great soundtrack and atmosphere to hang out in.

still looking forward to obra dinn eventually

both of those games i respect a lot but didn't really have much fun playing tbh. obra dinn in particular has a great concept, game mechanic, visual style, etc. but ended up feeling like work

i still pop into baba is you occasionally, it's a good game to play if you've only got 10-15 minutes

Observation seemed so completely like my jam but it ended up so tedious :(

I can see where obra dinn would feel like work if you came back to it a few times. It's a really complex problem and relearning all the pieces would be a bummer. Doing it in one powerplaythrough felt like high sleuthing.

did anyone else end up trying Trails Lonely Mountains: Downhill?

I have been fairly addicted to it since picking it up a few days ago. I just unlocked the third mountain last night, which is a desert themed one, and it is maybe the best yet.

the control takes a while to get used to, and i've seen them criticized a bit online, but to me they're the best part of the game. if anyone gives it a shot, be sure to try the alternate control scheme, rather than the default.

yeah i've already given it my blessing on here i think

i got it. after about 15 mins of not really vibing to it i'm all in. the strategy appears to be to ace each section. so if you feel you're a bit slow in one section you should deliberately crash in order to try again. and by 'a bit slow' i basically mean not going hell for leather on any short cut you can find. it encourages you to be insane, which i is pretty awesome.

i've been planning on checking it out but i'm juggling too many games rn to buy it atm

the strategy appears to be to ace each section. so if you feel you're a bit slow in one section you should deliberately crash in order to try again.

yeah, the gameplay loop of it is really strange. for all the challenges that involve the best time, you can re-do each section as many times as you want to try to figure out the fastest way to complete it. luckily, it has a super meatboy/celeste style "instant restart" every time you crash, so as soon as you screw up, you're back at it again.

but then for the "fewest crashes" challenges, you're taking your sweet ass time on each section. i find these to be the least fun, so far.

but the most fun of all (imo) are the ones where you have to make it all the way down the mountain without crashing a single time, while also getting the best time, because it's a mix of taking the crazy shortcuts so you can get a top time while trying not to be too risky so you can actually get to the bottom. very intense!

tracer which control scheme do you use - default or the alternate scheme?

but then for the "fewest crashes" challenges, you're taking your sweet ass time on each section. i find these to be the least fun, so far.

actually, i want to revise that. it's still fun, and it's definitely way more relaxing and chill. i guess i just really find the timed challenges to be thrilling and compelling

i use the “screen-based” setting which i think means that the stick is mapped absolutely to the view you’re seeing. the other one is relative to the rider in the bike, so absolute left on the stick will turn him left if he’s facing away from you but right if he’s facing toward you.

Observation seemed so completely like my jam but it ended up so tedious :(

That's how I felt too. The 'mind probe' sections were overly long and just boring to me.

but I'm back to farming sim 17 and just loving the relaxation that comes with mowing grass.

ended up feeling like work

― na (NA), Wednesday, May 20, 2020 9:53 AM (yesterday)

All video games are like work.

We’ve been playing a bit of Lonely Mountains. It’s good! What a nice thing.

I'm a fan of Lonely Mountains. I need to pick it back up.

alright, i give up; I'll get it now.

most games involve work, it’s not the same as feeling like work

I picked up Inside today on PS4. Like 7-8 bucks right now.

Really great. I loved Limbo when I played it many years ago but had this unreasonable persuasion that I wouldn’t really dig this sorta thing in 2020. Very wrong. Beautiful atmosphere and design and does a hell of a lot with simple mechanics. Totally transporting.

There’s a deal where you can get Limbo and Inside as a package for under 10 dollars right now and I recommend grabbing that if you haven’t played them.

Grabbed the bundle!

lonely mountains is fun but FRUSTRATING, lots and lots and lots of crunching deaths

hakuna matata

splatoon 2 is incredible - would never have put any money on nintendo developing a shooter that's as well balanced and rich as this. still suffers from some kooky, classic nintendo design decisions (can't change aiming sensitivity mid-match, can't change weapon types readily, can't quit out a lobby easy etc) but all told it's a minor miracle

enjoyed the splatfest. not sure why they can't just re-run old splatfests in perpetuity

ok i got lonely mountains. i started playing the beginner mode where you're untimed and it took me like 30 minutes to finally get to the finish line and i crashed 100 times approximately, so i was like "this is fun but i'm so bad at it, i'm never going to be able to beat the timed modes." then i started the easiest time mode and was immediately in a groove, cruising down the mountain, only crashed a couple of times, and beat the 3-minute mark on my second try. it was so satisfying. i love how the untimed mode sets you up to get the feel of each path so when you move into timed mode it's already starting to get engraved in your brain. i haven't even really played around with shortcuts yet. i suck at action games so i don't know how deep i'll get into it but i'm enjoying it so far.

we've had splatoon for a couple of years and i've barely played it (it's mostly my kid's game). someday i should get into it.