whatchu playing now

i remember the lag being pretty terrible even on the original Dreamcast. you're playing the PC port i assume?

i fuckin love space channel 5, dunno if i ever played the sequel

playing majora's mask 3ds. i'm about as far as i've ever gotten in MM -- just past the opening section.

... maybe MTG Arena is for me after all lol

Cloudpunk DLC was released this week, even tho I know these are only short and not really substance heavy I really enjoyed the base game so I'm looking forward to starting it this weekend.

Then the devs drop this on us
Nivalis!

guilty gear strive seems good, the ways in which they've simplified the series's mechanics are really smart. just gotta hope they fix the broken-ass lobby system

Just got hold of Legend Bowl, I hear good things and it looks really nice, trying tonight.

I bought La-Mulana 2 on sale and decided to go back and finish the first game -- I had gotten to the midgame before, then quit after looking up the solution to the 'birth' puzzle. I'll be using hints even more liberally this time.

Downloaded Chivalry 2 last night and it is FUN.

Picked up River City Girls a few weeks ago for some dumb beat 'em up fun, and it is exactly as advertised, with the added bonus of genuinely funny dialogue. The main theme song is awesome, too.

Case in point:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2vCuLGJtEc

Played Frostpunk last night -- of ever you wanted to play a Civ-like but with more environmental catastrophe, it's very good!

60 hours into La-Mulana 2, the 2018 sequel to the 2005 game (and its improved 2012 remake). I love the brutally hard puzzles, but I don't like the brutally hard late-game enemies and stages. There's a stage called Ancient Chaos which delights in throwing you into lava and hitting you with lasers. I'm currently stuck in the Underworld, trying to figure out these gates of hell.

I do recommend the game to anyone who likes hard puzzles. Most puzzles get a vague clue, then you get to the room where you see the puzzle, then somewhere later there are more explicit clues. A lot of the puzzles have more than one way you could figure them out, which is a definite improvement over the first game, which was at times impossibly cryptic (like finding the big brother's shop, which requires you to buy items from the little brother's shop -- huh?).

Some noteworthy puzzles:
- The Brahma's Trials puzzle. This is a game-spanning, associative, Riven-like puzzle. Love it!
- the "colossal dragon" puzzle, which I had to look at hints to solve, but is very clever. From looking at the steam forums, everyone gets stuck on this one, although I believe it is fairly clued.
- Something that seems like a useless extra turns out to be required. It's regrettable that the clues to this are so obvious. Could have been a real stumper, like the sleep puzzle in the original.
- the "footprints" puzzle was a bit of a let-down. Seemed like it'd be really complicated, but then I found the main room and it became obvious.

Not exactly a puzzle, but a nice troll: after beating an early boss you find 3 tablets that each describe an item from the original game. Two of the items can be found soon afterwards. The other item is one of the last items you get in the game. It had me going, "am I missing something???" until I looked at the wiki and saw that I was a lengthy fetch quest away from getting it.

Finally got around to playing early '00s-set AOL Instant Messenger simulator Emily is Away (released 2015). The nostalgia is deep. The character dynamics and writing are... a little concerning. Played through a second time to see how things would change and it still felt a little weird. Emily Short's take was pretty much how I felt. (Spoilers, obviously)

I have tried to get into the La Malana games but something puts me off, maybe the annoying flying enemies that constantly kill me.

Something similar, Sydney Hunter Curse of the Mayan, a bit slower paced but a very well made adventure platformer imo.

would love a metroid type game with inscrutable puzzles like la mulana but without the difficult enemies. i'm sure there's a bunch out there but almost every 'metroidvania' that gets press these days is 10% metroid and 90% vania

my problem with metroidvanias is if I put them down for a week or two there's no way I can remember where in the hell anything is

Microsoft Flight Simulator is out on Series X/S Game Pass. I found the controller setup for PC a little half-baked, but it seems like they ironed it out for the console release. I played through the first two sets of tutorials and am ready to start really getting into it.

Yakuza Like a Dragon: I'm up to Chapter 5 and loving this game so far.

I spent a little bit of time with Monster Sanctuary and Crosscode, which both made a good first impression.

Pretty deep into Outriders, which is my group's co-op game this summer. It's basically a Borderlands-like, including the bad writing.

i am in the caves of qud. actually not really, i'm still not able to get very far, but i have heard of the caves of qud to the north and hope to get there someday

they're good caves

Ste: La-Mulana 1 has an item that makes you immune to bats and you can get it around halfway through the game, after you get bombs. Of course that was the one item I didn't find until I finished the game and looked everything up. I actually thought the enemies in LM1 were pretty easy aside from the bosses.

I finished La-Mulana 2. The hell gates turned out to be the final big puzzle that I needed to finish. Interestingly, the game flat-out tells you how to get infinite subweapon ammo late in the game, making the final bosses easy to cheese, and I did indeed cheese them. I enjoyed the game, but the late-game platforming difficulty makes me rate it below the original.

Sydney Hunter I own but I couldn't get my controller to work with it. I'll try again. Montezuma's Revenge was the first mazy platformer I played and I have fond memories of it. I also need to try out The Maze of Galious, the game that directly inspired La-Mulana.

Random question – has anyone played OBRA DINN? Was wondering whether to buy it on Switch, or on MacBook as it seems like a keyboardy type game? I dunno

I played it on PS4. The controls are very simple so keyboard/mouse is not necessary, although I'm sure you could play it that way.

I played on Switch. I had to turn the look speed down to like "Glacial" or whatever to not get seasick (lol) but yeah perfectly fine on console

also it rules

it was originally a wasd + mouselook pc game so it's most natural on there but its also a puzzle game with no realtime elements so playing it with a controller is fine even if youre bad at 1st person controls on console normally

ok will prob go for switch, it still feels substandard playing games on mac

glad it rules! I actually know absolutely nothing about how it plays, just heard lots of recommendations and sounds curious

i've put over 100 hours into Dragon Quest XI over the past few weeks. i don't remember the last time i played a classic turn based jrpg, but this one officially got its hooks in me. i just started the final act, so probably a good many hours left. game is loooooong.

i've been playing dragon quest XI as well. i have basically no experience with JRPGs and i have mixed feelings about some aspects of it but it has grown on me. i just got through the end of act I in yggdrasil.

Dragon Quest XI is like watching a pretty good shonen anime where you occasionally have to think about a boss fight and get to put on some cool outfits

im back on my rimworld bullshit w the new dlcs, it is an easy game to get extremely lost in

Montezuma's Revenge was the first mazy platformer I played and I have fond memories of it

For me will always be my favourite, i've played it on so many different platforms now and it's always great.

hmm maybe I should give Mulana another try then

Dragon Quest XI is like watching a pretty good shonen anime where you occasionally have to think about a boss fight and get to put on some cool outfits

the great ace attorney. really liking this one so far, it feels a lot fresher than the apollo games. the historical setting & context makes the stakes feel higher, and it's breaking series conventions in some interesting and earned ways

I definitely want to play that.

Ace looks really interesting - is there actual gameplay or is it mostly just watching a story?

its got some light point+click gameplay in the investigation segments but its mostly a lot of reading + making some of the logical leaps yourself via choosing which evidence to present

the original trilogy is on switch and is pretty classic stuff if you like murder mystery games/VNs. the one i'm playing is a spin-off series that just came out

I heard the new one was the best one. I’m in the market for a game with light interactivity as I’ve just had mild hand surgery and can’t do button mashing for a month or so. I think the only VN I’ve played was “surviving high school”, which was really fun. I’m just wary of paying for something that has almost no interactivity at all

yeah its definitely low interactivity, the appeal is more the story & the mystery-solving & all the goofy caricature-ish characters

Gonna experiment with spirit of justice on the iPad, it’s like a quid

I believe the quid only buys you the first (short, tutorial) case. Still a good intro.

no joke, i think super monkey ball: banana mania may be my most anticipated game of the fall

I, too, am enthusiastic about the return of Super Monkey Ball

i didnt play any of them the first time around so i'm excited for that yeah

I thought I'd start with the very first Ace Attorney game, on iPad - it's super adorable for a game about murdering women!

I also bought Obra Dinn on Switch, which is incredible so far. At first I thought it would be too grim - "Great! I'm watching a 90s-themed pixellated murder-suicide!" - but solving the individual crimes is *very* satisfying. And because there's so little tutorial and hand-holding, I appreciate the occasional "well done!" messages even more. God it's grim though!

I started Paradise Killer and I'm super confused. Lots of fantasy world lore dumps that sound crazy, then it's a murder mystery? I'll give it more chances.

I learned that there are Blaster Master Zero games available on PS4 (and Switch etc) a la Metroid Zero, very curious to try one of these.

The first one is really good. I haven't played the second one yet. There's a third one coming out soon.

yeah its definitely low interactivity, the appeal is more the story & the mystery-solving & all the goofy caricature-ish characters

― ciderpress, Saturday, July 31, 2021 2:58 PM (six days ago)

When you say low-interactivity, do you mean the new one has *less* interactivity than the previous AA games, or the same? I adore the original trilogy and am after something to distract me from life, so was thinking about getting the Chronicles (I never went further than the first trilogy as the new characters looked kind of annoying in the other ones, don't know if I'm missing out).

I also love both Obra Dinn and Paradise Killer, if that gives you an idea of the sort of games I like. And in fact, if it does, please recommend me something, I really need something new to play.