/games/ - Video Games

>>60841
yeah i'm really disappointed in this game. the distances between random generated places on the planet is too far to comfortably explore, you spend like 5 minutes running in a straight line every single time. the base building serves no purpose, spaceship combat isn't fun, space travel is annoying, everything to do with space ships is lame, all the starting perks aside from the background story ones are pretty much worthless, even on max difficulty enemies are pathetically weak, you can rarely ever make decisions in quests, the lockpicking minigame is aids, picking up a hamburger on accident results in the entire city picking up their weapons and firing at you, the npc crowds in this game do nothing at all, npcs dont seem to have schedules (like close shop, go to bed, walk around town) and the world feels lifeless and artificial, succubi rule the organizations, fight alongside men, and there's a 50% chance that someone's race is some flavor of brown

>>60841
If you want to know why the game is this bad, you should watch the credits. 95% of the devs are pajeets and other street shitters, basically, cheap laborers with no passion for what they do. I quit after getting the ship and never looked back. It is one of the worst AAA games I've ever seen. Not to mention, it has 1070 in minimum requirements while looking just like F4. It is crazy, Todd is a money hungry lunatic who doesn't give a shit at this point.

>>60902
Did you read his review? It's pretty positive and he mentions multiple times how it's better than previous Bethesda titles in several key areas.

Armored Core won. I had no interest in either BG3 or Starfield but now that even normies see them as flops the only game that stands out this year is AC6. I think it'll win GOTY this year kind of like when Sekiro won in 2019 over a bunch of AA titles.

>>60904
>I think it'll win GOTY this year
If you mean at TGA then Baldur's Gate 3 and Tears of the Kingdom are the only real contenders

>>60904
it won't win because it's not an open world game in which you have to sink 200 hours to beat, normalfags today seem to think the amount of time you played a game is the only thing that matters, I hope you're right because it is a better game in my opinion
>>60905
I'd say starfield too

>>60905
They might be in the pool for GOTY but I doubt they will win
>>60908
>it won't win
It will since it has a better story+gameplay than Starfield, BG3, and TOtK

Finished Quake again. Just playing the same games over and over and over again.

I just finished Super Meat Boy Forever well at least the main story it's not as good as the original but it's still an alright game.An autorunner isn't what I would have gone with but if you can look past that it's a solid platformer.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder
I 100% completed it before launch and thoroughly enjoyed it. I've never been especially impressed by 2D mario, so it became my favourite of those by default.

Finished Diablo II again, but this time it was version 1.0, I found the old CDs laying around somewhere and figured I had to beat it since I never had.
It's like a whole different game, rare items are actually useful and you don't just spend the entire game hunting for runes, it's also a bit broken, beat it with whirlwind barbarian at level 45 (that's a level you have halfway through the game, usually)
It also feels much more atmospheric for some reason, closer to diablo 1, I feel like act 5 is a huge change of feel from the original game.

Talos Principle 2

Don't care too much about the philosophy, but the puzzles were neat and a great sequel to the first game. Way too much walking though

Would recommend though if you like 3D puzzle games

>>61036
I really wanted to play that game because I loved TP1 but it's like 50 fucking gbs, what's up with that

>>61038
I bet the bulk of it is uncompressed audio.
That is usually the culprit.
Even UHD textures and a bloted as fuck custom engine don't take up that much space even if it's a large game.
It's not compressing the audio that turns a 10 gig game into a 50 gig game.
Shit is dumb because most people play using shit speakers and headsets so barely notice the difference.

Just finished RE1: Directors Cut as Jill. Fairly sure I got the bad ending though, but I don't think I care enough to replay it. No intention of playing 2 or 3 either. I've got my fill of this genre.

The best word I can use to describe it is "fine". It's not bad, it's not great, it's just "fine". The game gives you enough ammo to kill almost everything in the game (which is good because half of it seems to be in tight corridors and rooms)

I did try RE1 Remake a few years ago and I disliked it. Inventory was always full of garbage, zombies regenerating (unless you keep backtracking so you can burn them) and other crap I just didn't care for. The original felt much less tedious

The Coffin of Andy and Leyley

I didn't really do my research on this one and it bit me in the ass.
Turns out it's technically not complete yet. Only the first two ep. come out and most of the branching paths end on a cliffhanger.
Checked out the forums and it's supposed to be 4 parts in total and at least a few months before part 3 is out.

I WANT IT NOW!
For a walk and talk game with very light puzzling it's actually really good. The story, the tone, the fucked up collection of characters, and the humor, I love it all and want more.
But if I knew it was incomplete I would have held off until it was finished before playing it.

It probably won't be finished until next year, and that's if things go smoothly. If something goes really wrong then it might not finish at all.


Another "game" I completed tonight was Locke(d).
It's was a mysterious VN that I went into blind.
It's very short, has no branching paths or alternative endings, and no meaningful choices.
Basically it's just the author talking at you, and it thinks it's deeper then it really is.
Was honestly just bored by it.

Don't wizzies finish games anymore?

Here's a couple I beat, both are shin megami tensei tactical games, I started them at the same time just to compare, one is the first tactical megaten, the other one is the last (not counting persona 5 tactica or that fire emblem crossover)

>Majin Tensei
It's sort of a weird game if you consider latter releases and, while I appreciate the effort put into it, it really shows its age. The game went more for a fire emblem style, but instead of a rock-paper-scissors system they opted for a race-based thing in which each race of demon is vulnerable to certain races (or magic element) and almost immune to other races, this makes the game unnecessarily complex in my opinion, thankfully the developer agreed with me and added an in-game chart with weaknesses, or you could just go by the rule of thumb that flying demons hurt other flying demons and ground demons hurt other ground demons, doesn't work for every single case, but at least you know for sure ground demons NEVER hurt flying demons. Speaking of demons, there are quite a bunch, you recruit them in traditional megaten fashion and it's really easy, there are only 2 dialogue options and sometimes the right option is pretty obvious. It's good that it's so easy to recruit because the fusion system fucking blows, more often than not the resulting demon will be worse than either of the two demons you're fusing, also you have to pick each one individualy before it shows you what you're fusing so it's tedious and useless, I just stopped fusing demons altogether and still had plenty of demons to fight. This is not the only tedious thing in the game, there are missions that are a slog to get through, HUGE maps, with a lot of enemies and tiles that keep spawning demons you have to kill to finish the mission, and it just takes forever, they're not particularly hard, they just take forever, some maps are in a desert setting, in which you can only move one or two tiles per turn, this is insane, sure you could use flying units, but they're only good for other flying units, so yeah, it's just a pain in the ass. Some other maps work as dungeons and some use teleporting pods you have to blindly step in and it's just trial and error until you find your way through a dungeon, not a fun time.
The plot is the usual megaten fare of word went to shit and you have to kill satan to save it, in this game instead of having the traditional law-neutral-chaos routes you have a bad, good and 'true' ending, I got the good ending because I knew how to avoid the bad ending, but for the true ending they require you to be some sort of clairvoyant, there are some maps you have to play in certain order, some of them you have to play them multiple times (they don't tell you this, of course), so I'm satisfied with the ending I got, I can't be bothered.
Presentation-wise, it's great, great graphics and music, the monster designs are great too, I just love this era of megaten.
In conclussion, it was a good game, with some weird mechanics that got too tedious way too often for my taste.

>Devil Survivor 2
Ok so now we went to the opposite side. While I found some scenarios in the other game way too long, in this game each map is small and missions are quick, in fact you could finish some of them in one or two turns if you play your cards right. There's no recruiting now, instead you get an auction house in which you buy demons with the money you make in missions, kinda weird but it works well enough. Fusion now is way more streamlined, you can see what you're fusing before picking two demons, you could also search by result, which is insane, you could even argue it makes the fusions too easy, but I don't mind.
Now, you may think these changes make the game easier, but I think this game is actually more difficult, at least in the high difficulty setting.
The presentation now is 100% anime, they got the guy from Durarara! to design the characters and it could almost pass for a persona game, this game is as persona as smt gets. I'm not saying it's a good or bad thing, I'm just describing it, although I do preffer stuff like Strange Journey personally. Music is also great but since it's a portable game you can tell it wasn't their main focus.
The game is divided by days and each day there is a new monster attacking Japan, these monsters remind me a lot of the evangelion angels, in fact there is a moment I feel it's directly rippef off eva, but it's a cool concept I guess, each monster is named after one of the ursa major stars so it's also good for learning astronomy, I guess? They never say why the ursa major and don't go very deep into this, it's a shame, feels a bit half backed.
Anyway, it's a good game if you don't mind the personification of smt, I personally had a great time and will do all endings in ng+, speaking of which ng+ feels pretty meager, not really a lot of cool post game stuff and you have to kinda know what you're doing to unlock things.
Anyway, I enjoyed both games, and I know it's not fair to compare two games that are like 20 years appart, but I can't help it since I decided to play them at the same time, there is a Majin Tensei II I hear is way better, gonna have to try it to see.

>>61212
>Don't wizzies finish games anymore?
Been playing games that don't have easily defined endings.
Like playing that tony hawk remake/remaster.
Or playing CS2.
I probably only "finish" games like 6 or 7 times a year.

>>61216
I get you, been playing a lot of non-beatable games lately

Yesterday I finished Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered. This is going to be a long, convoluted and filled with spoilers review, so if you want to experience this game for yourself, don’t read this post beyond this paragraph. I’ll just say if you like Spider-Man, you’ll like this game a lot. OK, now to the review.

This must be the ultimate game for casual gamers. It requires absolutely no thinking whatsoever. Every mission is clearly marked on the map. You have a special scanner that highlights everywhere you need to go, everything you need to do, interaction with every single object is literally hit F and the game doesn’t even let you read plot exposition by yourself. When you open a document in-game that gives you plot exposition, the voice actor gives a summary of the whole thing in case you’re not literate, which I honestly found completely hilarious. Every aspect of this game is twice digested and I think I’ve never seen a game doing this amount of hand-holding, it was quite an experience to play an ultra polished game for the cool gamers™ out there as I don’t usually play big studio games unless it’s a franchise I’ve been following for a very long time like Fallout or Zelda.

Yet I played this one because it’s Spider-Man. I’ve been following the comics since childhood. I am completely out of the loop as far as SM games go though, the last one I played was the 2000 Neversoft’s Spider-Man N64 port, originally a PS1 game and I had good fun with that. I mention this game because it’ll be relevant to this review. I’ll divide the game in a few parts and comment on each section.

Puzzles 1/10 - I’ll start with this one because it’s arguably the worst part. There are 3 types of puzzles in this game but all of them are a slight variation of the shape matching toy for kids. It’s not even in-game, you have to access it on a separate screen, it feels straight out of Google Play for your Android phone. The developers knew this was complete and utter busy work so they included an option to skip all the puzzles and I think they were so painfully aware of how bad this was because they don’t even have the heart to take away the XP you would get from solving them. You get the XP even if you skip them. It’s a way for the game to tell you it’s sorry I guess.

Combat 6/10 - Amazing how combat in Spider-Man games has not changed in 20 years. The fights are pretty much the same as Neversoft’s Spider-Man. You get close to the enemy, you click to dish out punishment until the enemy dies. Sometimes you have to hit a button to dodge. You get several gadgets in this game but they all make you feel more like Batman using a bunch of toys than Spider-Man. Besides, you have to select different toys with the mouse and doing that kills the rhythm of the fights, so I barely used them. You don’t need it anyways, most fights are easy enough. The difficulty is in the number of foes you have going at a single fight, it’s not rare to have a literal mob all trying to hit you at once and it felt satisfying to dodge all of them.

It is a completely basic and tired formula but at least the game nailed the formula correctly. The animation is also pretty polished. Hitting and dodging enemies felt pretty good for the most part, even though there’s like only 4 types of enemies for the entire game. A guy that tries to punch you. A guy that tries to shoot you, a guy that tries to hit you with a blunt object and a guy that flies around. Getting close and clicking away will solve 90% of your problems.
Traversal 8/10 - This is the reason why I decided to play this game to begin with. Swinging around the city feels amazing in this game. They really got it right I think. You really feel the level of freedom you get when you’re Spider-Man. Manhattan looks very polished and cool and I quite enjoyed the level of details it went into it. One thing I loved is the fact you can actually see inside people’s apartments. They are not all unique of course but there are many types. Office, bedroom, living room, etc. I think this part of the game works specially if you live in a city and you get periodically stuck in traffic. It’s almost depressing experiencing the city as Spider-Man in this game and knowing you’ll never come close to feeling like that in real life. It’s that good, at least in my opinion.

The main problem with traversal in this game is how it has a low cap to energy so it doesn’t matter how much energy you give Spider-Man, he’ll always go at about the same velocity. For example if you jump from a very tall building, conservation of energy dictates that when he swings back up he’ll have a lot of stored energy and will go pretty damn high and fast. But it doesn’t work that way, there’s a cap on his speed and how high he will go so jumping from a 30 story building or the Empire State Building will give you the same energy which is quite ridiculous. He reaches terminal velocity jumping from only 10 meters high. I know this is probably an engine limitation but it does reduce the fun a lot.

Open World stuff 6/10 - You have a good looking Manhattan to play around but there’s not a lot to do. The side missions are few and the stuff to collect is also very limited. There’s pretty much only two things to collect: 50 backpacks and take 50 pictures from tourist sights and that’s it. I can imagine tons of little side quests you could do in this world like delivering pizzas (since they obviously love the movies and ripped several scenes from them, a pizza delivery repeatable mission would be a nice touch) collecting comic books issues, finding SM graffiti, the list goes on.

The repeatable missions are either go here, beat waves of identical enemies, sneak missions or chase the drone. And they’re fine for what they are but, again, this open world environment looks so good, it deserved a lot more. Also it’s funny how the developers always assume casual play throughout the game. In between main missions, Peter Parker always ends his lines with “Better go do some spidey things” but I had always pretty much everything there was to do as soon as it became available so there was no spidey things left to do in between the main plot missions. I guess people are not into collectathons anymore but it was not nearly enough to scratch that itch in my case.

Story 10/10 - And here’s where this game gained my uttermost respect. Now everybody has seen this happening before. A big studio gets a license to make a video game/movie/series/whatever and they have writers there that don't give a flying shit about the material. They don’t care about those characters at all so they go to what is popular and safe. I’ve seen this done to Spider-Man many times. A bunch of disinterested writers get their hands on Spider-Man, what do they do? They make a SM origin story and then proceed to use Venon asap. Happens all the time.

Not here though. I can tell somebody in that team of writers cared. Somebody in there loves and understands Spider-Man so we get this pretty good plotline exploring Dr. Otto. Only someone who understands the world of Spider-Man would make a move like that and whoever it was has my appreciation. Not only Oc is the most interesting villain of all the great villains SM has (you would have to read the comics to know) his version here is damn perfect. In fact I empathize with the doc here more than any of the other characters. And then they also made a pretty damn enticing Wraith narrative as well. For a first game! Bold move.The DLCs are less interesting but not bad, either.

Music ?/10 - Since I was looking for a slice of life Spider-Man experience (just web around the city pretty much) and turned the music off. The music is this grandiose symphonic stuff that was really trying to make everything in the game this tremendous, heroic thing and I just wanted to relax and swing around buildings. It’s probably fine.

Screwball 10/10 - I found it hilarious how there’s a bunch of kids complaining about Screwball on Steam reviews when the character is a representation of their generation. So yeah, for causing that reaction she’s alright in my book.

Mary Jane 0/10 - Why would developers do this I’ll never understand. You get several missions in this game that you have to play as Mary Jane. It’s the sneak in and out sections and they’re excruciatingly boring. Why the hell would anyone want to play as slow Mary Jane when we could be Spider-Man? I don’t get it. And it also ruins the enemies since they’re shown to be upstaged by not at all powerful Mary Jane. There are also missions like that that you play as Miles Morales, a SM I never cared about.

So all in all I love playing through this. It took me 4 days to 100% everything. Now for people that play a lot of games, this might not be interesting at all. I’ve read plenty of reviews saying this is just an Arkham’s Asylum game but with Spider-Man and worse gadgets which is most likely true. I’ve never played any Arkham’s Asylum though and SM has a definite advantage over those games and that is sunlight. Gotham looks gloomy and I have enough of self made gloom myself.

If you like Spider-Man, this is definitely something you’ll enjoy a lot. Just a heads up, the plotlines don’t follow exactly as the comics so don’t expect that. I feel like I have to say this because some people get pissed when that happens. If you like casual games on top of liking Spider-Man, this is definitely for you. It’s a very basic but solid beat’em up. If you don’t care about Spider-Man and you like to think for yourself when playing games, yeah, this can be safely ignored. There’s nothing in here for you.

Some more pictures. There's a picture mode that removed the HUD but I only realized it after a while.

RoboCop is one of the best games I’ve ever played in a very long time. Maybe it’s in my top 10 favorite games of all time, which is strange because this game has a number of shortcomings, probably due to being a small team with limited budget. Yet there’s so much love poured into every detail of this game it’s hard to not overlook its faults. I first realized I was completely captivated by Rogue City when I went to visit a k-mart around the corner just so I could browse the wares. Ice Creams, several soda brands, frozen pizzas and so on. The world of this game is rather small but the developers clearly love the source material and nailed every single aspect of Robocop and the city he lives in, perfectly capturing the visuals and atmosphere of those movies. Even if you don’t care about RoboCop (I watched the movies once but I’m not particularly fond of them) you can tell people behind this cared a lot about getting this thing right.

I began playing Rogue City expecting a mindless, action-focused FPS (that's what I got it in the first place) and ended up getting a thoughtful plot, endearing characters and even some decently put together RPG elements to go along with the FPS sections. I think the reason I like this game so much is because I never experienced so many depressing, moving, thoughtful and hilarious moments in such a small package. They managed to put in a whole lot in that small portion of Detroit you walk around and serve. Also RoboCop himself is a great character and he’s even more relatable and interesting than in the movies. I guess because there’s a lot more going on around here with all the little side stories you can play out and affect your colleagues and friends it’s pretty damn great. Dialogue is hilarious and the humor rings very true to the source material but it’s even better. Lots of lines here I would like to memorize and say to myself from time to time. At the same time the city itself is depressing as hell. It gives for a nice bittersweet experience.

Gameplay wise, I really felt like RoboCop. You move pretty much like you would expect to move as Robocop. You are a walking tank and this FPS is unique in that regard. You’ll be getting shot A LOT. It’s very hard to avoid damage in this game. I mean you’re huge, shiny and there are tons of enemies shooting at you. You’ll be getting shot but that’s part of the experience. Your firearm has a blank check for ammo so you can shoot everyone to your heart’s content and it does feel like you're giving quite a punch with the sound, animation and recoil. Some enemies are a little spongy though.

The only real problem with this game is that there’s no manual saving and saving points are far in between sometimes. I had to redo a few missions because of this but it bothered me none since I plan to replay this game anyways but I can see becoming a problem for some, maybe most people. Another problem is how small the open world section of the game is. It feels a little cramped and tiny but then again, I feel like this was due to budget and limited number of people working on the game. However they more than make up for it by telling a captivating story and making the best use of the limited number of characters you meet.

Funny thing is I don’t even care for FPS games. Only one I actually like is Quake. This one though is very special to me now. I’m even going to re-watch the movie. I’m sure the game actually surpassed the original in terms of best RoboCop content out there. You can pretty much experience everything the game has to offer in about 20 to 25 hours. It took me only two days to finish but I binged, playing like 12 hours a day because I was having so much fun and the world was so engrossing to me. Definitely recommend this one, even if you don’t care about RoboCop. I assure you if you play this you’ll care about Robo soon enough.

>>61233
I played some spider man game on the xbox 360. Swinging around was the best part. Pretty much the only part that I can even remember enjoying.

>>61235
ive watched a video about how the interior rooms were generated. very cool use fo shaders

>>61212
have you played the original games on DS? idk if I should go for these or the 3DS remakes

I finished Tyrion Cuthbert. Its an ace attorney like indie game.

Ehh, its nice that somebody tries making more games like these. The first case was a standard tutorial case that can almost be skipped because I've played every single mystery murder game there is nothing tutorial case does nothing for me at this point

2nd case was surprisingly good. 3rd was awful and retreads too much of 2nd case. Could have been skipped in hindsight

4 was fantastic. Really entertaining and kept you guessing with the culprit too

Then the final case falls flat on its face and has stupid twists.

Ace attorney game have this unique pacing. They can be a bit too slow but its all part of the charm. Every character is larger than life. Odd contrast to have this game where the judge calls in a witness then they just have a 10 minute statement and theyre out of the game.

Sry for my retarded english, I'm not good conveying my thoughts plus not a native speaker

If you like Ace attorney games I would advice you to play cases 2,3 and 5. Its not a long game (12 hour all cases) But you dont gain anything from cases 1 and 3.

Finished nocturne, I had finished it before but I had never gotten the "True Demon" ending.
It's as good as I remembered it, full of bullshit deaths too, every battle is a coin toss pretty much, if you get bad rng you're toast, especially at the beginning of the game, I wouldn't have it any other way. Last boss took me a few tries until I got lucky enough to beat him with him casting some bullshit spell that one shot my main character.

I beat 3 games this week

>Prince of Persia (DOS)
It's great, I love this kind of game, I see it more as a puzzle/memorization game than an actual platforming game. A lot of people would say the trial and error part of the game is bad game design, and they may have a point, but I still loved the game and getting further each run felt rewarding. The time limit seems a bit restrictive a first but it pushes you to play better, and at the end of the day, it's not that bad, it only took me a couple of days to get used to it. Anyway, great game, the snes version has better graphics and more levels, but the DOS version felt smoother.

>Flashback (Genesis)
After PoP I wanted another game in this style so I decided to try Flashback, it's set in a cyberpunk future with very stylized graphics and even "fmv" cutscenes, which was huge back in the day, the game starts nice, with more focus on puzzle solving than platforming. But starting on level 3, the game just turns into screen after screen of enemies with little to no platforming or puzzles, I never considered combat the strong suit in this kind of game and I suffered through the last 3 levels (there are 5, so over half the game), enemies are annoying, they just move at very high speed towards you and since it takes forever to pull out your gun and shoot, you end up getting hit a lot and just dying trying to get away from them and even if you manage to shoot them, I played the game on hard which made every enemy a bullet sponge, real fun. I found the last level particularly frustrating when you had to deal with more than 1 enemy at the same time. It's a shame, feel like what creativity they had to make graphics and plot they lacked on level design, more style than substance, wouldn't recommended, at least not on hard.

>Dragon Quest (NES)
Dragon Warrior if we're going for the localization title. After Toriyama died a few days ago I felt compelled to play one of these games and since I had only played V I decided to start from the beginning. Now of course the game feels primitive being one of the first JRPGs, you only have 1 character, and there's basically no strategy (just leveling up until you're strong enough, getting the best gear and attacking enemies until they die) but I absolutely understand how important this game must've been, being a kid in the 80s and having a whole world to explore, discover secrets, finding new weapons and armor to equip yourself and killing more powerful enemies, while still being able to go to the first map and easily killing the monsters that used to give you trouble, it gives a sense of adventure you couldn't see in other games back in the day, unless you were playing wizardry or ultima on a computer, but I doubt a Japanese kid would even know those games existed. The game has none of the obtuse shit you usually see in old games, there's nothing that you couldn't figure out from the dialogue in the game, there are a bunch of remakes with QoL improvements but I wanted the original experience and I gotta say I enjoyed it (just had to speed up the emulator a bit on long grinding sessions).

>>61418
I've also been thinking of playing Dragon Quest, namely DQ7 on the PSX. I had an old CD1 to CD2 save file that was at like +80 hours lol. Last year I figured I might as well start over from the beginning, and I made it to a very memorable point in the story… but I haven't played since then. As much as I love it, it is a very long game and it does get very tedious at times…

Finished Elden kino, peak Action RPG.The stance break system fixed the ds3 combat by encouraging you to make charged attacks, guard counters and jump attacks instead of spamming R1 all the time, is not a linear piece of shit and has and actual color palette,the only real flaws are the repeated content and the post-Leyndell endgame. The next evolutionary step for action RPGs would be to make party-based combat that doesnt feel like shit.

Finished AC4 Black Flag

The naval gameplay is fun for a short while and then it very quickly gets boring and tedious. Half of the main missions seem to be "follow this guy and stay within range" which is never, ever fun. There's a ton of collectathon grinds that add literally nothing to the experience beyond padding out playtimes, but thankfully you can skip it all.

If you like pirates and want a shortish 15 hour or so story (main missions only) then you might like it. If you have no interest in the theme/era, then don't even bother.

>>61423
Yeah that pretty much sums it up. I played it until I fully upgraded my house and then I lost all interest. I should probably delete it because I have to admit to myself I don't care enough about the story or the gameplay to finish it.

>>61418
I really hate your zoomer-tinted way of reviewing games.

"FMV"? Those are not "fmv" cutscenes. FMV cutscenes were their own special thing back in the day.

>>61430
>zoomer-tinted
what the fuck does that even mean

beat Alone in the Dark
Amazing how much credit resident evil gets for basically ripping off this game

>>61419
Maybe play one of the shorter games like V, I have the same problem with long games, I just lose interest

Finished umihara kawase, with all backpacks, doors, levels and endings. It was pretty good but infuriating at times, especially with the enemy spawns.

Yesterday I finished Phantasy Star 3 with my brother. It’s funny, I had the impression this is by far the worst of the first 3 Phantasy Star titles but reading my reviews for Phantasy Star 1 and 2, it seems like they’re not too far apart. The third one for sure has the most scattered art direction for the monsters. They’re all over the place and most look rushed to meet the deadline. They have no uniformity whatsoever, some look like crappy Dune character clones, others like wind up toys. Music is generally good and the idea of playing through several generations of the same family is pretty interesting, despite the fact the game stays pretty much the same no matter who you’re playing as. Plot for this one is about this big bad that made his way into the spaceships the Palmians used to escape the destruction of their planet thousands of years ago. The ship you’re in has been drifting in space for who knows how long because there’s no one left that knows how to pilot the thing. A classic Star Trek tale. There’s also a cyborg revolt and family feuds, all told in a rather disjointed manner. There are so many monster encounters and MacGuffin hunting inside labyrinths even if you’re trying to follow the plot you’ll forget what you’re doing most times.

The game looks OK and sounds good. Combat is the same old same old, not really a problem. The real problem with Phantasy Star 3 is the backtracking and the layout of dungeons. The amount of backtrack is truly mind boggling. It feels like the game is trying to defeat both your characters with the monsters and you personally with constant backtracking, furiously testing your patience every time you have to go somewhere. To make you more likely to quit, the dungeons are built to force you to zigzag towards your target, and the correct path always turns out to be the longest one.

So anyways, we cheated. One hit kill and invulnerability. The thing is, those two cheats only solve the heal items maintenance (as in, you don’t need any), leaving the most frustrating part of the gameplay intact so you can experience it in all its glory. All that said, this game does have a lurid charm to it and there are several cut scenes that punctuate the milestones in the plot rather well. So you keep going. We also used maps and a FAQ. There’s enough going back and forth as it is and wandering around lost in those huge maps was out of the question.

It probably took around 10 to 12 hours to complete this thing. It was worth it in a completionism sort of way, having played the first 2. Now the fourth one is the last of the ‘classic’ Phantasy Star titles before the franchise became an mmorpg thingie. I heard good things about 4, I’ll guess we’ll see.

Finished Beyond Oasis
it's good

I just played through Defense Grid: The Awakening. Out of the blue I felt like trying a tower defense game and after perusing the Steam list and doing a quick internet search this one looked like the one I would have the most fun with. There are so many tower defense games out there now but very few are strictly tower defense, usually they’re a mash of genres with stuff like resource gathering or base building and that sort of thing. Defense Grid wants nothing but to be a tower defense game and that’s what I was looking for.

The graphics have an alluring appeal to it, the towers and aliens have just the right amount of color, without becoming jarring or bleak. Music is OK, I didn’t pay much attention to it. Gameplay is very repetitive actually but in a relaxing sort of way which is a hard balance to achieve. I think the difficulty is a bit wonky though, where most of the stages (there are 20 of them) feel a little too easy and you can pretty much brute force your way to victory by spawning a huge amount of guns in the obviously right places. Then, by stage 17 or 18, the game sends wave after wave of very spongy enemies that can breeze through your defenses. The level called Waste Disposal took me about a dozen tries to get through and that’s when you begin to realize there’s very little room for error with this game. In fact your best bet is just spawning cannons, they’re relatively cheap and carry a heavy punch.

The most fun levels were the ones you get to shape the path the aliens take by placing towers in front of them in order to make a labyrinth to mow them down more effectively, but those are rather rare and far between. Most of the time the aliens are running through a predefined path and you just get to choose your weapon, usually the cannon or the meteor strike that is not that great but it has a great range, so it’s worth it. Enemy variety is minimal, but then again, you won’t be looking at them closely, it’s mostly a green crate looking thing with spiny legs attached to it. Some look like bugs and that’s about it.

I’m not sure how well I can judge Defense Grid given the only other tower defense game I’ve played is Plants VS Zombies but all in all I had a really good time with it. I know there’s a Defense Grid 2 so I guess I’ll be checking that one next.

Took me about 10 hours but I beat Lust From Beyond.

Couldn't find all the collectables and it has a second ending so I might play through it again using a collectables walkthrough, but that is for another time.

Controls were a bit clunky but overall I liked it. The other world was very cool looking and the puzzles were in that right spot between being too easy and not making sense to the point of frustration.
That said, for a game with so much, well you know, the character models seem almost intentionally unappealing. Actually digesting the plot overall it could be said that the game has a generally negative view of sex, somewhat like old horror movies. So while there is gratuitous sex and nudity it is almost universally depicted as a bad thing, disgusting, and leading closer to destruction. Which honestly I expected from playing lust for darkness.
Speaking of which the world building is much more fleshed out and the story overall feels very complete.

Not sure why but the load times are absurd. Like 2-4 minutes long for some reason. I hate the way most doors and draws work. The walking speed is too slow. The combat is clunky even for a horror game. Really I could come up with dozens of small little complaints that add up to make Lust kind of annoying and unpleasant.

While the aesthetics were good same with the sound, especially of Lusstgar (the other world), and the story held my interest. Unfortunately the game play and amateurish feel of the game really hold it back.
It just feels like the devs need to make a modern action game or something to pratice focusing on improving gameplay and game feel.
I mean they are great level designers. I didn't feel lost once despite how elaborate the layout of some levels could be. But moving around, interacting with things other than puzzles, interacting with inventory, and especially combat all are pretty bad and hold down the rest of the game. Also feels fucking weird not to be able to jump at all, but falling 15 feet is fine. Granted puzzles are directly built around you not being able to jump, but it still feels fucking weird.

*shrugs* I could be better but it just isn't.
3 out of 5 if I am being very generous.

>>61543
This looks so odd. In one hand it looks like my type of game with the whole gothic Cthulhu look and atmosphere going for it but then they also included orgies and sadomaso stuff which puts me off. I guess this is the type of game I would have more fun just watching it instead of playing myself.

A solid 7/10, A fun but very hard beat em' up game. It doesn't explain it's mechanics very well, and drags on towards the end a bit.

Finished playing SMT Nocturne HD Remaster
I wanted to play and actually beat this before SMTV Vengeance came out, I've emulated the game a few times over the years but always quit around the Nihilo Assembly.
The remaster for this game was kinda lazy, I thought people were over exaggerating when shitting on it but no somehow they released it with 30 FPS and the same shitty compressed audio. Luckily there were mods that fixed a lot of the issues.
As for the game itself I mostly enjoyed it, the encounter rate could get annoying at times and some of the later dungeons get really obnoxious with the invisible teleporter but the atmosphere was great throughout and the combat was always enjoyable. I ended up going TDE since I didn't care for any of the Reasons or the teacher.

>>61550
play Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner 2

>>61551
I'll give it a try, should I play the first one before that? I've heard mixed things about the combat but I can put it up with it if the atmosphere/characters/story are good enough.

>>61552
you don't miss so much but you can play it before the second one

>>61550
the brutal encounter rate for all the smt games is what turns a 5 hour journey into a 40 hour game. I still remember that miserable tower you were expected to climb at the ending.

Game: Zombie Exodus Safe Heaven
Genre: Text Based CYOA

The level of details and character creation is a nice touch. The only thing I can't over with is its unfinished structure. I don't think I'll be still alive when part IV comes out