whatchu playing now

Helldivers 2 is wildly fun. Thought it would be one of those "only good with friends" multiplayer experiences, but having a good time playing with randos as well. Helps that it's easy to accomplish objectives without verbal comms, can just turn voice chat off and have at it.

Got some kinks to workout, particularly in matchmaking, but it's Starship Troopers: The Game and they seem to have actually pulled it off.

Old-games-with-new-fan-translations likers, Linda³ Again has a basically complete translation (I haven't seen anything they missed yet but it isn't a 1.0 so YMMV)

I was pretty hyped to play this weird TG16-era (updated w voice and video for ps1) for quite some time, knowing very little other than "it's an RPG but it breaks a lot of the RPG rules" and I gotta tell you, this game got its hooks in me unlike anything else lately. It has 3 scenarios and I am closing in on finishing scenario 1 in, what, 10 hours? So not even a serious time commitment. You should play this

I missed the word game in there after the parentheses but you get it. I'm excited

i'm too tired and lazy to go through the effort to this kind of stuff anymore, but it warms my heart to see someone else putting in the work to play these obscure translations

i've been on a search action jag
haiku the robot: short homage to the metroid series. fast movement, no wasted time.
astalon: has the look of the msx games that inspired la-mulana, but this game is more based on legacy of the wizard, with different characters who can get past different obstacles. huge map. lots of bonus modes that i haven't done yet.
blasphemous: currently playing. The edgelord stuff turned me off at first, but i've figured out that it's doing it so hard that it becomes camp. This is a game where there is a room where a giant has six swords in his torso and he pulls one out to give to you, then you walk down one hallway and there's a monk with a second head on his chest who sends you on a quest. The game has the soulsborne difficulty of infrequent save spots and some cheap deaths, which aren't things I care for but I can put up with them.
souldiers: also currently playing. The game starts out hard, but then you get to a village where you can upgrade everything and it becomes much easier. Despite it being yet another game with soul in the title, this is more along the lines of metroid difficulty, where combat is mainly a diversion, than soulsborne difficulty.

Helldivers 2 is wildly fun. Thought it would be one of those "only good with friends" multiplayer experiences, but having a good time playing with randos as well. Helps that it's easy to accomplish objectives without verbal comms, can just turn voice chat off and have at it.

this game has really taken off. it's a lot of fun and the community achievement aspect is cool

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9STizATKjE

Ff2. The leveling system really put me off the first time I tried but it's really not much different from the traditional xp level up system. Far darker than ff1

Curious about Helldivers 2 hype but also concerned that it clearly brought out a bunch of fascists on Twitter to say how much they loved Starship Troopers unironically

Finally finished "Far Cry 3." The gameplay was fundamentally ... fine, but boy did the game emphasize what a difference good writing and characters makes. Which is to say, this game lacks those things. Again, what is here is competent, fine, but aspects of it were so silly or stupid that I was convinced I was heading for a twist, or fake-out, or some sort of reveal or surprise at the end. But nope, just kinda dumb. Which I found surprising, tbh, since it doesn't seem like it would have been that hard to add one in, even if it was something surfacy deep, like ... Jason was playing a video game all along or something, or Vaas (who is barely in this?) is actually your partner and you have been complicit in what you thought you were fighting against or some bullshit like that. Instead, this game literally just ends and that's it. Nothing to chew on at all. Which is doubly annoying, since I have several more of these games that I paid $5 for. "Far Cry 4," "Far Cry Primal," "Far Cry Blood Dragon," "Far Cry 5" (which I at least got for free). Oh well, I'm sure they're all competent, too.

What next, though? I need something other than one of these open world games. Maybe "God of War Ragnarok"?

I have 1600hrs played in apex. christ

on scenario c of linda³ and lemme tell ya

i like this game (but hoo boy scenario c is overwhelming!)

Looks cool!

Might check it out when I burn out on ff eventually. I've got some thoughts on ffx! It's the best worst best game! Really something special. My least favourite game play and story of any I've played, but also so unique in both aspects that I can't help respect it. Just finished off seymour for maybe the last time? Tides is not having an acid trip in the dream that he is. Tidus is the dream that will end dreaming at last.

I just realised why I love Final Fantasy and what links them all together besides being rpgs: they are all so unapologisingly maximalist. There's really nothing else like it

Also tidus's running animation is just adorable

*tidus is now having

"least favourite game play" what did you hate about it?
Ithink it's one of my fav of the FF battle systems, but it's been a long time since I actually played it so ...

The tedium, having to swap in characters for them to level. The games difficulty pacing is great if you do swap characters every round making sure you are spending 7 actions on an enemy that you could beat in one. If you don't go through this tedium, you're pretty likely to get slapped hard towards the end game unless you love grinding. I love that it focuses on weaknesses beyond the typical elemental stuff. I love the summons. I love Rikku's mechanics. I love that there are 7 genuinely unique characters who all have their use. But the tedium of swapping + the tedium of summons animation is a bit much.

Again, it's really unique and so even though it pisses me off and I think it's bad and annoying, I also think its great and I love it lol.

I'm the sort of person who has a team and sticks with it so I never switch out the characters. if there is a forced team change later on I get fucked over tho lol
e.g. playing Persona 3 atm and the dog and the kid and stupid junpei can fuck right off

That is correct

Fuckin' Stupei

How can ffx be your favourite and you don't switch out characters! But yeah, that's normally my strat.

cosign junpei hate

Didn't realize Pentiment (out now on PS5!) was a point and click game. Bummer, I don't really find those things compelling. But people love this one, and it's only $20, and I like to support good work ...

I lost interest at the halfway point but until that point it was a great experience. Well worth $20 even if that’s as far as you get!

lol maybe I will wait until it is half-off, then.

I have 1600hrs played in apex. christ

I've probably put about the same into Dark Souls 3, but in my defense most of those were on the exercise bike.

It's a good story, Josh! Writing is excellent throughout with some delightful characters.

Turn off the writing sound effect immediately though.

I wouldn't really call Pentiment "point and click." You're not really doing Monkey Island-type stuff. It's more of a low-key adventure game with some odd minigames scattered throughout. As has been noted, the writing is really really good. It's the most "book-like" game I can think of that isn't straight up IF.

I've been playing the demo of Unicorn Overlord. I've never played a game with this kind of "configure your units and throw them into auto-turn-based-battle" system before, it's interesting.

Yeah, point-and-click has a very specific meaning, but if you think of it literally (as opposed to the genre) it does apply to Pentiment. I'd say though that it plays closer to a 2D Obra Dinn (of course without a supernatural pocket watch of death) in an Umberto Eco-adjacent setting.

The art and animation is great too!

Relevant: https://kotaku.com/pentiment-on-playstation-and-nintendo-switch-1851278458

A smaller and more reserved title compared to the rest of Obsidian’s catalog, and an expertly written story that offers the player choices in how they navigate an intricately designed Bavarian town and the murders happening in it.

Balatro…

that one seems cool

I think I have Obra Dinn, and it seemed super cool, but my general rule of thumb is that if I also need a pencil and paper, maybe the game is not for me.

Man, now I'm trying to remember some game I had for the Apple II GS (I think) that was set in some dystopian alternate reality, and there may have been pigs (or police pigs?) and it might have involved vacuum pipes sending instructions around this giant office building (a la Brazil), and there was this one part that was just this convoluted series of bureaucratic tasks that drove me nuts as a 13 year old (or whatever I was). No idea what it was called.

Haha I had that, it was called "Dream Zone," and it was deeply frustrating! There are walkthroughs on YouTube (that music will take you back). The people who made that game later formed Naughty Dog!

hmm, maybe? title doesn't ring a bell...

Huh, maybe it was "Dream Zone"! What a pain in the ass that game was. That was Jason Rubin and Andy Gavin!? Funny.

In the tradition of Tass Times in Tonetown, Dream Zone follows in the tradition of the text/graphic adventure. It's obvious that Dream Zone has borrowed elements from the aforementioned text/graphics classic and doesn't do the job quite so well but does stand out in its own right.

You're having trouble sleeping. You seek the help of Sigmund Fraud, Psychomental Health. He administers a surge of power through your body plus a liquid concoction that will induce a sleep that will put you at battle with the beast that harbours your nightmares. In this state, you can then defeat him and sleep peacefully ever after. If not, you will never wake.

Dream Zone is the brainchild of Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin, who both worked on design while Gavin worked on coding the game and Rubin drew the wonderful cartoon style graphics. Like Tass Times, you have a text-entry parser but you can use the mouse in combinations of using the action buttons and objects in each scene.

Dream Zone is not an easy adventure. There are plenty of ways to die and because you are living the bizarre reality of a dream, if you think too rationally, you'll get nowhere to solving the puzzles. This aspect is unique, because the situations you encounter are common themes found in peoples' dreams, which hopefully you'll be able to identify with. Too bad if you can't remember your OWN dreams!

Some parts of the game can be downright annoying however, chief among these is the necessity to interact with the local bureaucracy. You HAVE to continue to move within the building where they tell you to...believe me, it WILL get you somewhere in the end. Every item to be put in your inventory has a use, which is good. Every person who can follow you around your dreamscape can help you, but in most cases, they can hinder your progress later in the game...not good.

Certainly, it's a tough adventure game. It should keep you stumped for many, many hours. And that's not a bad thing. It's better to use some lateral thinking, instead of simply using logic means to solve puzzles found in the 'adventure' games of more recent years. Andy Gavin has created a solid program and Jason Rubin's graphics on the whole are very well drawn which maintain a style all their own. The two later worked on Keef the Thief, a role playing adventure with a difference.

https://www.whatisthe2gs.apple2.org.za/dream-zone.html

the situations you encounter are common themes found in peoples' dreams ... chief among these is the necessity to interact with the local bureaucracy

checks out

Balatro is extremely good. My favorite joker so far is the one that adds more multiplier every time you convert a two pair... somewhat like Ouroboros in Inscryption.

I have 1600hrs played in apex. christ

the apex of gaming

Mispelled team fortress 2

I've been enjoying my first-ever playthrough of Castlevania SOTN (the true apex of gaming) on my retro handheld. This game looks phenomenal on a 3.5 inch 4:3 screen. Also the soundtrack, holy smokes. I'm actually sort of astonished at how diverse it is: symphonic stuff, thrash metal, jazz fusion, prog, house, baroque harpsichord shit--it's all here, and somehow it all coheres.

truly one of the best OSTs

i recently bought the ROB/SOTN bundle and finished rondo of blood the other day (loved it,) so i'm looking forward to playing SOTN for the first time ever after hearing so much about it.

the main game i'm playing atm though is MGS 5, which is very absurd, feels very large, and is quite fun. i played the prologue first and thought it was extremely lame, so my expectations plummeted while i had thoughts like "maybe even only vaguely realistic military-ish games are not for me," but once i got through the long and boring expository opening sequence i started having fun. the gameplay loop of going to the field for missions and going to the mother base for upgrades and hanging out with my diamond dogs is working for me

damn, wait until more plot and cutscenes talk about the diamond dogs back at the base

they’re bros forever

I also just remembered the nickname of Revolver "Shalashaska" Ocelot and I’m laughing

balatro looks awesome

i've been playing a bit of helldivers 2 and honestly....it's pretty fun. goofy, ott, but it does what it does really well

also need to return to BG3, which ate up my life for a little while right after christmas

damn, wait until more plot and cutscenes talk about the diamond dogs back at the base

they’re bros forever