whatchu playing now

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

It is kinda schlocky, but I don't mind.

I'm surprised at the sophistication of "Bioshock," especially for a 16 year old game.

would you say this about a movie

(bioshock significantly less sophisticated than system shock 2 iirc not-of-course-to-mention deus ex tho i do like the twist well enough)

I don't know those games. But xpost yeah I would, and have, about the way things are made. Like, I watch "Sunrise" and think, huh, this movie looks really cool for being 100 years old. I guess one distinction in my mind is that essentially video games often *are* special effects (and vice versa, given how much contemporary computer effects frequently remind me and others of video games), so when I see a 16 year old game that presages stuff I see in slicker, more contemporary games, I think that's pretty cool, too. Like the telekinetic power in "Bioshock," that's straight up something used in "Control." Though for all I know, maybe that's in a hundred games pre-Bioshock and 100 games since as well. But anyway, that's what I'm playing.

okay but proportionally to the age of the medium this is like being surprised by the sophistication of the empire strikes back

nevertheless i was taking "sophistication" in a fuzzy and technically incorrect way (as, like, "depth"), sorry, so if we are just talking about technology (+attendant accumulation of technique)-- like whoa i didn't know they did deep-focus photography back then-- whoa i didn't know they had physics systems-- yeah it's true that not much has changed between the ps3 and the ps5, either because of decadence or because not very much time has passed, or both. i am just maybe overly thingy about assuming video games actually "improve" w technological development any more than any other medium does

anyway ground zero for throwing havok-physics-enabled objects around with magic in a first-person shooter blockbuster that everyone played is half-life 2 (2004), which my literal dad is playing rn, that's been nice.

I can't even remember much of the original Bioshock because the much worse sequel displaced it in my memory.

I really wish the Orange Box was available on current gen consoles (same for Portal 2). :(

For some reason I thought people liked Bioshock, that's the only reason I'm playing it.

Oh they did, I remember liking it, it's just been so long that I can't remember much about the game itself.

You can play portal 2 on the Xbox series consoles! It was a free game on Xbox gold a few months ago. Tbh it’s a crime to play any of the other 4 games on console though; shooters should always be played with mouse and keyboard

Speaking of the Portals, both of them are on sale on Steam for $0.99 each or $1.48 together.

Lol, I don't think I've ever played a shooter with mouse and keyboard. Maybe the o.g. Doom, but that was just keyboard iirc. Haven't played a game on pc for many years.

I'm surprised at the sophistication of "Bioshock," especially for a 16 year old game.

would you say this about a movie

― difficult listening hour

if it was a 3d movie sure

i would be surprised if "scar 3d" was in any way sophisticated or even watchable in 2023

Maybe the o.g. Doom, but that was just keyboard iirc

you rc: a literally perfect control scheme, which m&k itself adulterated (out of axial necessity) before the gamepad did (out of demographic necessity)

m&k itself adulterated (out of axial necessity)

(the alternative being worse, as when you scrambled to find PAGE DOWN to tilt the gun up to shoot the stormtroopers on ledges in dark forces. fortunately they were stormtroopers)

If you can find a way to play some shooters on m+k Jordan then you owe it to yourself! I recently went from doom ps5 to pc with doom eternal and it makes such a difference

I almost mentioned Dark Forces! I did play that as a kid. I truly don't know if I could adjust to m&k now though, I'm so used to controllers.

I really don't play shooters anymore though. Sounds like Armored Core is going to be interesting with a controller.

I'd never played any shooters before I bought my Switch way back when, so when tried Fortnite (which was free and when everyone was talking about it) my reaction was basically, how the fuck do people do this? I literally had no idea there were people playing with a mouse and keyboard. Once I learned that, I realized someone with a controller really has no chance against that kind of precision. Fast forward to buying Doom 2016, and at first I might as well have been playing with my knuckles. It was impossible. So I lowered the difficulty and got a lot better at it, especially with gyro controls, though never finished it (both because it got too challenging but also because the port was janky). Fast forward again and I get a PS4, at one point buying Doom again (because it was on sale for next to nothing, and looked and played better), and once again the curve of learning with a controller was super tough. But somewhere in there I played one of the Wolfenstein games, and I eventually figured things out. Same with other shooting games.

So my long story short limited experience/experiment is that different games are designed with different degrees of pinpoint precision, but many are maybe slightly more forgiving than they first appear (like Uncharteds or RDR2, which I know shooter fans criticize for being too easy) and with enough practice less precise tools like a controller can get you where you need to go, at least in a single player campaign. But a shooter against other people? I would guess a controller permanently puts you at a non-competitive disadvantage.

most shooters don't have console <-> pc crossplay

i feel like they have for the last decade or more?

online fps is its own thing tho, you might as well be fully on board or just not into it, it doesn't feel like a world worth half-arsing

oh maybe now that every game is its own little social media platform instead of the console OS being one

Back into RLcraft this week, the minecraft mod that makes the game both brutal and beautiful to play.

Will's review corner: Baldurs gate 3 really is that goof holy fuck

Good*

Finished "Bioshock." Thought it was pretty good! Certainly felt pretty original. I know the third one is particularly divisive, but was one of you saying the second one was disappointing, too?

Oops, I totally forgot there was a Bioshock 2, I was talking about Infinite.

yeah infinite is a legendary dud, one of the most hyped games of all time at release and pretty much everyone hates it now

what about black & white

i mean, how does it compare. i'll take my answer off-air

black & white not on the same order of magnitude of backlash