whatchu playing now

I loved attack of the mutant camels and how they stomped along but fair to say it's not up there with gridrunner. My brother says Minter was a creepy mofo and it was an open secret that he did unspeakable things with his llamas! I don't think he did Deus Ex Machina for the c64 and it seemed annoyingly pretentious to 10 yr old me. I can't believe he's only 11 years older than me, he looked like he was in his 30's in the 80's to me.

oh no those poor llamas! and he seemed so benign. distressing.

next time I talk to my brother I'll ask him if he got this info from a reliable source - just in case I'm besmirching the guy! But he is the software writing biz and knows lots of ppl in the industry.

i already believe it #teamllama

Been working through some stuff the last couple weeks:

BABBDI - Short, free (on steam at least) first person platformer/adventure game where you have to escape a abstract brutalist hell city. Recommended.
Sludge Life 2 - the grimy, goofy open-world exploration platformer gets bigger, goes vertical, and adds a cigarette bumming mechanic and not much else. If you liked the first one, you'll like this one, but play SL1 first.
Trombone Champ - Finally "beat" this one. Very fun, very dumb rhythm game with a puerile sense of humor (hope you like seeing poop!) and lots of public domain songs. They keep doing free updates with more tracks, too.
Lonely Mountains: Downhill - Thanks to all the people who recommended this upthread because it fucking rips. I do get annoyed with how often foregrounded tree branches block your vision though.
Balan Wonderworld - Bought this expecting a trainwreck, but I'm kind of enjoying it after a couple hours. Deadly Premonition is maybe my favorite video game of all time though so ymmv.

castlevania: symphony of the night

playing on an emulator on my laptop while on a lonely month-long research/work trip. i bought a little usb controller (shaped like an snes controller). supposedly this game gets very easy at some point but either i'm really bad at it or i'm still at the challenging part. the design is amazing

so happy we love katamari reroll is available. Something about that flower level floods me with endorphins.

flopson: 8bitdo sn30? i have a similar one but the left analog stick broke.

i beat danganronpa v3. funnily i have no interest in the extra modes after these games end, despite doing the personal time/dating sim stuff during the game. will probably finish phoenix wright spirit of justice next.

also playing some dumb idle games listed on galaxy.click

Bought Dave the Diver and played it for a bit tonight. I think I'm going to like this a lot.

A bunch of stuff on my wishlist went on sale, or at least past my comfort-level price point, so I picked up both Teslagrads, Tchia, Dredge and the PS5 version of Night in the Woods. Oh, and Remnant: From the Ashes, whose sequel is imminent and already getting great reviews. The last thing I need is more games, but I feel like I got a rhythm right now that's mostly disrupted by diving into 100+ hour monsters.

flopson: 8bitdo sn30? i have a similar one but the left analog stick broke.

this one looks way cuter and higher quality, might actually cop one, thx for the tip. this is what i bought:

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71gFUv3JC5L._AC_SL1500_.jpg

I need a new PS game and don't feel like playing most kinds of games. Might finally try Control?

"Control" does get kinda repetitive, but it's pretty creative and has stuck with me. One section of the game in particular is one of the most memorable sequences of anything I have ever experienced.

Control is the closest to a "normal" game that also feels like a mood piece that I've played. I was very bad at it and didn't love constantly hearing gun noises, but it's really aesthetically engaging

It's either that or Hitman I think. Everything else seems too slow or too frenetic, or too story-driven and long.

Yeah maybe Hitman would be a good pace for some convalescence. Every time I see videos of Control there's so much running and shooting. Vibey shooting I'm sure, but still.

Hitman is an absolute blast. It's basically like a methodical coyote/roadrunner cartoon where you are playing as both at once.

Busted out the original MYST on my steam deck for some midnight gaming in bed last night. Perfect environment for it. A beautiful game, keen to unravel the mystery.

Ok I splurged on Hitman and spent all day playing, got through the Paris & Italy missions. It's a lot of fun, though I feel like I'm not playing it as creatively or wackily as I could be. There was an exploding golf ball though.

It took me forever in Italy to realize I needed to leave the mansion compound and go on a scavenger hunt to find the lab entrance.

The best way to explore the creative stuff, imo, is to trigger some of the specific missions, which basically walk you through the most Rube Goldbergy stuff. But I learned quickly that there really is no wrong way to play. If you come across a target and see a window, by all means, just shoot them (if you can get away with it). But the convoluted stuff is the most sadistically satisfying, especially in the Colorado level, iirc. But all of them, really. The AI and writing is really sharp, and at its core there's something really fun about attacking someone with a cheeseburger.

I want to say there's a particularly good Dunkey Hitman video, he's really good at doing the right wrong things (and vice versa).

Current rotation: Elden Ring, Disco Elysium, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, Zelda, Trackmania, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Breakpoint, Exoprimal, and Dave the Diver.

god bless unemployment

finishing up Zelda, doing all the quests I was supposed to do earlier that were clearly signposted but I wandered off on my own. which was a bit of a mistake as I now have new powers/equipment upgrades that would have come in real handy at points. oh well I had fun exploring anyway!

oh and I've been playing a few rounds of Super Video Golf which scratches that itch for a quick round of retro golf, including low poly trees, 3 button press controls and low bitrate audio samples.

Can't stop slaying spires, pls send help.

haha yeh that game is addictive, think I played 40+ hours of it in one week

Did another Hitman 3 level, and while the game itself is great there are lots of weird things about the scaffolding of the game that drive me crazy.

Like, there's no main menu option to just continue where you left off, just to load previous saves or do a bunch of weird alternate campaigns or modes that I don't want to mess with yet.

And when you finish a mission, it apparently doesn't create a save at that point? You can only load a previous save our move on to the next mission. But if you exit to the main menu at that point, you need to finish the previous mission from your last save.

I only noticed this because the internet went out during a storm and I played the rest of the level offline. But now I apparently have to play the *entire rest of the game* offline, because I'm always continuing from an offline save? Even if I start a new level and save, then go online from the main menu, it forces me offline to continue.

Not that it matters since it doesn't affect gameplay, it's just dumb. Let me know if I'm being an idiot about this.

I didn't know you could play offline! I thought it was one of those games that required an internet connection, for some reason.

Not entirely unrelated, I decided to go back to Signalis and pick up where the fake ending left off, and the fucking game had bumped me back to the tail end of Nowhere. Fuck that, see you later, Signalis, it was nice meeting you.

It just doesn't give you experience points or ratings/achievements. But the xp must just be some leaderboard shit, without in-game ramifications (I wasn't sure before).

re 8bitdo controllers

as someone who now owns too many of these, i prefer the pro to the sn30 slightly. they are both good tho. a pro (or pro 2? i can't remember) + an m30 (the sega-style 6-button) are in heavy rotation, the sn30 i use less these days. wish i had been able to find the m30 in the cure colorway (japanese saturn style i think?) but i just got the genesis black one

if feeling like a real super nintendo controller is your main want tho, the sn30 absolutely feels like one, only real differences are a couple of extra buttons + it doesn't feel worn from 30 years of white knuckle un squadronning

anyway i just realized what thread this is so i will say JAGGED ALLIANCE 3

beat it once and immediately started playing it again. can't remember the last time i did this. long time coming for a real sequel to one of my fave games of all time. by jove, they did it. they really did it

I had the demo for one of the Jagged Alliance games back in the 90s and I played that one level literally dozens of times.

I need to get in on this.

Can't stop slaying spires, pls send help.

― emil.y, Sunday, 23 July 2023 19:27 (two days ago) link

haha yeh that game is addictive, think I played 40+ hours of it in one week

― ( X '____' )/ (zappi), Sunday, 23 July 2023 19:35 (two days ago) link

Sorry to be terminally out of the loop but what is this? The board game? I can’t find a computer game called just ‘Spires’ from a basic search.

It's called Slay the Spire and it is a video game.

It's also nicotine in video game form.

ΔV: rings of saturn

it's the kind of game where your crew looks like this

oops, hit post before i included the image and before i typed anything else, but i'll just leave it at that i guess

https://i.imgur.com/bjDhAHP.png

Loool, I just realized I'd been playing the missions from Hitman 1, not Hitman 3. I swear, the main menu is so confusing.

Ok so far the actual Hitman 3 missions are both way easier and more fun

Hitman 3 iirc is like the apotheosis of gameplay and scenarios, plays well and looks great, too. Then again, the first full level of the first game is the Paris fashion show, and that's among the most fun and creative of all the levels (though a little overwhelming when you're just starting out). Just a fun game all around.

Yesterday I started Bioshock, which I've always heard good things about. For an old game it holds up pretty well!

No idea which Hitman, but I remember watching Funhaus guys playing the race track level which was amazing.

I think that's the ... second one?

the mascot costume in that level cracks me up

I love how the game does not take itself too seriously.

glad to hear Jagged Alliance 3 is good. someday... someday...

I can confirm that Marvel Midnight Suns passes the "I'm just going to play for 30-60 minutes before bed, oh god it's 3am" test.

yeah that game absolutely slaps, i was obsessed with it for weeks at the start of the year

I need to get that one. Waiting for a deep special

ΔV: rings of saturn looks good, tempted by this

I tried Katamari reroll, but couldn't get past having to use the keyboard in the tutorial urgh.

I'm surprised at the sophistication of "Bioshock," especially for a 16 year old game. The design, the gameplay, the enemy AI (especially the Big Daddies). And it's not particularly easy, either.

bioschlock