- Joined
- Jul 30, 2016
Metroid Fusion for like the sixth time.
What game did you finish today?
- Thread starter homerbeoulve
- Start date
- Joined
- Sep 26, 2019
I beat Fun House on NES.
It's beaten. Maybe not by the standards of stringent nerds who'd screech about cheating in a game that's over 30 years old, but I consider it beaten. I don't want to play this game ever again. It's been one of those things I've played on and off over the years, thinking someday I'll actually get through the whole thing, but I won't. The game just keeps going, and going, and going. It's very repetitive, and you'll see pretty much all it ever had to offer after the first couple of dozen levels.
So, I launched Mesen, started it up, and went to work. I eventually found out that the level it takes you to can be modified by a single byte. Changing the bite to any number higher than the final level just crashed the game, so I chose a later one and stepped through them one by one until I found the final level. Turns out there were 72 of them, total. I only ever got to the half-way point, and the levels just became more and more tedious.
Here's the byte:
The last level is one of those where you have to play it perfectly, because there's a timer that starts too low. So I found the timer value at $04F0, and froze it. Then I beat the level.
No final boss, nothing. The ending is three screens that loop forever.
I should beat more bullshit NES games this way. It's fun to stomp them by just finding the right values in RAM and changing them around.
It's beaten. Maybe not by the standards of stringent nerds who'd screech about cheating in a game that's over 30 years old, but I consider it beaten. I don't want to play this game ever again. It's been one of those things I've played on and off over the years, thinking someday I'll actually get through the whole thing, but I won't. The game just keeps going, and going, and going. It's very repetitive, and you'll see pretty much all it ever had to offer after the first couple of dozen levels.
So, I launched Mesen, started it up, and went to work. I eventually found out that the level it takes you to can be modified by a single byte. Changing the bite to any number higher than the final level just crashed the game, so I chose a later one and stepped through them one by one until I found the final level. Turns out there were 72 of them, total. I only ever got to the half-way point, and the levels just became more and more tedious.
Here's the byte:
The last level is one of those where you have to play it perfectly, because there's a timer that starts too low. So I found the timer value at $04F0, and froze it. Then I beat the level.
No final boss, nothing. The ending is three screens that loop forever.
I should beat more bullshit NES games this way. It's fun to stomp them by just finding the right values in RAM and changing them around.
Road Work Ahead
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Nov 4, 2020
Broke out the PS3 and finally played through the first infamous game. It was pretty good, I'd probably rate it a 7/10. The biggest thing is that it didn't overstay it's welcome, I finished the main story + side quests in about 20 hours, which is plenty. I'd rather have a fun 20 hours than 100 that started dragging 40hrs in.
I will probably pick up and play the second game next.
I will probably pick up and play the second game next.
- Joined
- May 14, 2019
Mafia: Definitive Edition, as someone who didn't play the original.
It's mediocre.
It's mediocre, but it was still worth playing and was engaging most of the time. I was mulling over whether that maybe didn't mean it was actually good. It falls into a camp, I think, of games that I've played that are entertaining while they're running but leave no impression behind the minute they end. Some I've played like that recently were Call of Juarez: Gunslinger (decent arcade game but awful plot) and A Plague Tale: Innocence (very good setting and production value, but no real gameplay and failed to develop its ideas).
It's also incredibly overrated. People talk like it's some great Godfather level masterpiece, and it's more proof that people will accept any slop as long as it has the theming of something. And people like the most generic garbage available. The story is basically the same shit as any GTA or GTA clone, just better because by taking away the open world it allowed them to have actual pacing and have events that happen over time and what not. And the missions are decent. They never come anywhere close to the heights of Mafia III, but they don't have the massive amounts of copy-paste open world filler bullshit either, so it balances out. There's often little glimmers of spectacle here and there. It kind of feels, in a way, like playing Call of Duty: Prohibition if that makes sense, and it's at its best when it confines itself to the only thing it can do somewhat well, shooting. Whenever it moves towards a more narrative thing, its horrible stealth (it's just basic ass walking behind a guy and taking him down) or its horrible driving (race mission, escort mission) it gets bad. Which is a shame because it did have some good ideas with the cars, like the camera tilting when you turn/drift (feels very physical) and having dedicated chasebreakers for car chases (like Assassin's Creed 3 did with foot chases).
The story just plods along, basically a three act struggle of some random sociopath lucking into becoming a mobster, then a very bloody gang war, and then it all falling apart for him at the very end. I actually liked Paulie's sadsack/resentful fuckup character quite a bit and the build-up to the ending. (Not the ending cutscene, though. Feels like a kid's grade school class presentation. I prefer the original.) The portrayal of the Mafia felt very inauthentic, both with the silliness of them running around mercing a million cops left and right, there not seeming to be any real triggermen or hierarchy (one of the interesting things about the Mafia) besides the three losers.
The world is bland and forgettable. It's a product of its time and it was a bad time and it's good we've moved on to better things. This is honestly something they never really improved on, Mafia III moved it to a flashy setting and managed to make that, visually and in terms of street plan, boring too.
Gunplay had a strange lack of weight to it, very little punch to the guns. However, I will say: this game shows that you can do GTA's shtick without the auto aim garbage. I know that there's settings to turn that off, but that doesn't change that the game is balanced around it, so you're either forced to play Kirby for adults where you can't lose or you have a VERY hard time. Mafia is well-balanced in its gunfights. I think the car combat could have used more thought, but on foot it is solid. I'm convinced Rockstar does what they do because they don't want ANYBODY, any potential sale, to be put off by the possibility of having to click "Load Last Checkpoint." The horror.
The one thing that impressed me: the game does actually depict the collateral damage that gangster fuckwits cause. There's a scene where you accidentally blow up a man's wife with a car bomb instead of the man, and there's a scene where a bunch of people get gunned down for being in the way of an attack on the don.
I wish people made open world games where you play as LAW ENFORCEMENT and GOOD GUYS instead of reveling in flith.
I'll give Mafia II a second chance one day (I got the bundle of all three). I wasn't impressed by this, though. People have awful taste.
It's mediocre.
It's mediocre, but it was still worth playing and was engaging most of the time. I was mulling over whether that maybe didn't mean it was actually good. It falls into a camp, I think, of games that I've played that are entertaining while they're running but leave no impression behind the minute they end. Some I've played like that recently were Call of Juarez: Gunslinger (decent arcade game but awful plot) and A Plague Tale: Innocence (very good setting and production value, but no real gameplay and failed to develop its ideas).
It's also incredibly overrated. People talk like it's some great Godfather level masterpiece, and it's more proof that people will accept any slop as long as it has the theming of something. And people like the most generic garbage available. The story is basically the same shit as any GTA or GTA clone, just better because by taking away the open world it allowed them to have actual pacing and have events that happen over time and what not. And the missions are decent. They never come anywhere close to the heights of Mafia III, but they don't have the massive amounts of copy-paste open world filler bullshit either, so it balances out. There's often little glimmers of spectacle here and there. It kind of feels, in a way, like playing Call of Duty: Prohibition if that makes sense, and it's at its best when it confines itself to the only thing it can do somewhat well, shooting. Whenever it moves towards a more narrative thing, its horrible stealth (it's just basic ass walking behind a guy and taking him down) or its horrible driving (race mission, escort mission) it gets bad. Which is a shame because it did have some good ideas with the cars, like the camera tilting when you turn/drift (feels very physical) and having dedicated chasebreakers for car chases (like Assassin's Creed 3 did with foot chases).
The story just plods along, basically a three act struggle of some random sociopath lucking into becoming a mobster, then a very bloody gang war, and then it all falling apart for him at the very end. I actually liked Paulie's sadsack/resentful fuckup character quite a bit and the build-up to the ending. (Not the ending cutscene, though. Feels like a kid's grade school class presentation. I prefer the original.) The portrayal of the Mafia felt very inauthentic, both with the silliness of them running around mercing a million cops left and right, there not seeming to be any real triggermen or hierarchy (one of the interesting things about the Mafia) besides the three losers.
The world is bland and forgettable. It's a product of its time and it was a bad time and it's good we've moved on to better things. This is honestly something they never really improved on, Mafia III moved it to a flashy setting and managed to make that, visually and in terms of street plan, boring too.
Gunplay had a strange lack of weight to it, very little punch to the guns. However, I will say: this game shows that you can do GTA's shtick without the auto aim garbage. I know that there's settings to turn that off, but that doesn't change that the game is balanced around it, so you're either forced to play Kirby for adults where you can't lose or you have a VERY hard time. Mafia is well-balanced in its gunfights. I think the car combat could have used more thought, but on foot it is solid. I'm convinced Rockstar does what they do because they don't want ANYBODY, any potential sale, to be put off by the possibility of having to click "Load Last Checkpoint." The horror.
The one thing that impressed me: the game does actually depict the collateral damage that gangster fuckwits cause. There's a scene where you accidentally blow up a man's wife with a car bomb instead of the man, and there's a scene where a bunch of people get gunned down for being in the way of an attack on the don.
I wish people made open world games where you play as LAW ENFORCEMENT and GOOD GUYS instead of reveling in flith.
I'll give Mafia II a second chance one day (I got the bundle of all three). I wasn't impressed by this, though. People have awful taste.
- Joined
- May 14, 2019
And now I finished Mafia II. It was better than Mafia I. I can see why I quit it as a lad (and I actually got quite far in). Mafia II succeeds at telling a much more interesting story about its main character, who is not interesting in and of himself, but his life story is. Way better than Tommy Angelo being Generic GTA Clone Guy. But, Mafia I has way more shootouts, and in the remake has controls that aren't extremely clunky. So it's a real tradeoff. I found Mafia II incredibly slow (despite only being 10 hours long and telling an epic sweeping tale). It felt more grounded, usually, and I suppose it was also more meaningful in terms of events building towards a future payoff. But the downside is that it seems, worse than most games I've played, to forget that it should at the end of the day be a game.
Mostly I just liked the 50s setting, once that came in. I found that the open world content was completely unengaging. I started out roleplaying going into restaurants and shopping, and at some point just gave up. You lose all your property TWICE, too. I didn't give a shit about muh friend Joe being killed at the end because he was a pure sleazeball. Liked how real and ethnic the city felt. The map itself is boring, but it did a good job with having the Irish, the Chinese, the Blacks, the greasers. I think the Blacks should have been used a bit more.
It was okay. Mafia I felt more fun to play but also felt like disposable trash at the end, to be forgotten about immediately. Mafia II was less fun on average, I just wanted it over with at the end, but it felt satisfying to finish and then think about.
I will maintain that Mafia III has the most interesting story out of all of them, just a victim of its repetitive territorial control crap.
Edit: Mafia II has being growing on me.
Mostly I just liked the 50s setting, once that came in. I found that the open world content was completely unengaging. I started out roleplaying going into restaurants and shopping, and at some point just gave up. You lose all your property TWICE, too. I didn't give a shit about muh friend Joe being killed at the end because he was a pure sleazeball. Liked how real and ethnic the city felt. The map itself is boring, but it did a good job with having the Irish, the Chinese, the Blacks, the greasers. I think the Blacks should have been used a bit more.
It was okay. Mafia I felt more fun to play but also felt like disposable trash at the end, to be forgotten about immediately. Mafia II was less fun on average, I just wanted it over with at the end, but it felt satisfying to finish and then think about.
I will maintain that Mafia III has the most interesting story out of all of them, just a victim of its repetitive territorial control crap.
Edit: Mafia II has being growing on me.
Last edited:
- Joined
- May 14, 2019
Firewatch. I didn't like it. First things first, it's a three hour walking simulator. I got it for $2, so I'm going to compare it to a movie, because that's what it is at the end of the day. It starts off kind of shitty with this choose your own adventure, artsy shit about your tragic backstory. I would have rather learned this stuff some other way. Then you meet the annoying cunt who is going to be corresponding with you. A whole Summer working in Shoshone park, more or less completely isolated in your tower talking over a radio. She's okay, but I mean, I wouldn't like her in real life.
I didn't like it. I think there's a screenplay in there, and that would have been the proper medium for it. I've said before that a good test for a game should be, is the experience of watching it different from that of playing it. And in this case it is not. You have dialogue choices, sure, but you know how it is, not substantial in a way that matters, just flavor to make you feel like you're talking. It's even short enough that it could have been a movie, could have been a movie with all the tedious walking around the woods stripped out and shot like a damn movie. This was piss.
You find out, fairly early on, that people are spying on you and her. It gets creepier and creepier, and starts to tie into this strange, off-limits research station. This is where the game hits its height, although I was pretty sure there wasn't going to be any conventional horror scares, I found an oppressive sense of paranoia and dread. Seems like youre caught up in some sort of psychological research. Eventually it turns out that it was all just some crazy dude that killed his son. The radio bitch kept talking about the son a lot, but it was boring so I must have missed some detail, I never got the significance of it and her gay vendetta against the dad. Then radio bitch runs off and leaves you blue-balled. Also, she's a cheating whore.
I didn't like it. I think there's a screenplay in there, and that would have been the proper medium for it. I've said before that a good test for a game should be, is the experience of watching it different from that of playing it. And in this case it is not. You have dialogue choices, sure, but you know how it is, not substantial in a way that matters, just flavor to make you feel like you're talking. It's even short enough that it could have been a movie, could have been a movie with all the tedious walking around the woods stripped out and shot like a damn movie. This was piss.
- Joined
- Jan 29, 2022
Gravityqueen4life
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- May 29, 2019
finished playing Sunset Overdrive. i liked it. sure the games comedy is subjective and will turn alot of people off but i thought the fourth wall breaking and the culture references were so bad, its almost charming. The game is not ashamed of what it is and wears its selves with pride. The gunplay is not that great. fighting the robots is a pain and every other enemy can be killed in the exact same way with little thought put into it. were the game is really fun is the platforming sections. the devs really took thier time bulding this city you can jump around and run through. half the fun is just going to point A to point B. it would have been better if they unlocked some of the movements bit earlier like air dash and double jump.
overall, it was a fun experience and will tackle the DLC at some point later.
the soundtrack is a real banger as well.
overall, it was a fun experience and will tackle the DLC at some point later.
the soundtrack is a real banger as well.
- Joined
- May 14, 2019
I finished my Sleeping Dogs replay (only played it one other time, over a decade ago). It disappointed me but I can still what it was that I latched onto. A big part of it, i think, is just differences in how I feel about GTA clones and Ubisoft Games now. Short: I used to like them and now I don't, particularly.
Gameplay wise - as in moment to moment - it's pretty good. I do think that it should have given the combos earlier (by the time you get half of them youre into the stage of the game where every mission devolves into shooting) and maybe other kinds of variety, but it was a huge novelty to have a martial arts open world game, it worked very smoothly, and it had way more depth than the shitty Batman system that came to infect everything. The shooting is piss, I remembered it being really cool but you have very clunky shooting with goofy, toy-looking guns. The one thing that made it "cool" was the bullet time gimmick with automatically going into it while vaulting. That, I think, is great, should be included in any game that's going to do bullet time. I wish they had developed that idea a lot more, like including a "dodge the bullet" mechanic (like Superhot, but in third person) and such. Played it up. Foot chases are great. There's no real parkour as such, but very often you have chases where you can contextually jump (and if you fuck up it staggers you a bit) fences and gaps and such in chases. Cars handle like toys, that sucks, but they get a dedicated drift and ram buttons, and most importantly, the ability to jump to another car and hijack it like a movie. All told, the gameplay is fine in the melee, acceptable in everything else, but it's the combination of all these things, all of which have more thought put into them than the typical GTA clone/open world game, that makes it so much better. Often you have to do a minigame for cop tasks like breaking and entering, triangulating a call, hacking cameras, etc. and it really adds to a feeling of immersion despite being very shallow.
The open world? Dont' know a lot about real life Hong Kong's geography, but I thought it felt half-baked. The Night Market area is brilliant, most of North Point (first ghetto area) is good. Central is a bland urban area. The other areas just feel like weird, identity-less appendages of the two main ones. The side content is pretty bad. Not counting racing just because races are obligatory in these things (apparently), you really just have karaoke, because the two gambling minigames (mahjong poker and cockfighting) are ridiculously out of the way and boil down to little more than pure luck, it's a waste of time. The side missions are both completely insubstantial and too short to be upset about; you can often just do one on the spot and it's no big deal. I did many of them but didn't press myself, past a point, to bother with going out of my way. I thought it was interesting how it had a variety of cop missions where you fulfill some SWAT-like role (including being a hostage sniper, though it isn't actually a sniping challenge, there's no marksmanship angle involved), but it felt completely disconnected from the free roaming. I wish it had instead worked like a police mission from San Andreas, where you can get in the cop car and then it spawns this stuff as you drive around.
Story-wise, it's decent with a strong intro and a strong ending. It's simultaneously absolutely absurd (the idea this undercover agent can become a crime boss and murder hundreds of people without getting into any trouble with the law, or it sinking their cases) and played completely straight, but I still found it much more gripping than a typical GTA/GTA ripoff type story. It does have a big problem in that Wei is way too unreasonably angry; it's like they wanted to set up this conflict between him and his superiors, but they forgot to build up to it, so he comes across as completely unhinged when he's cursing out his handler right off the bat.
Overall, it didn't hold up to my memory but I can also see what SHOULD have been the start of an entire, multi-game franchise, or another installment in True Detective, that should have been a major GTA competitor to this day (like Battlefield and COD compete). Instead, it got completely fucked over.
Gameplay wise - as in moment to moment - it's pretty good. I do think that it should have given the combos earlier (by the time you get half of them youre into the stage of the game where every mission devolves into shooting) and maybe other kinds of variety, but it was a huge novelty to have a martial arts open world game, it worked very smoothly, and it had way more depth than the shitty Batman system that came to infect everything. The shooting is piss, I remembered it being really cool but you have very clunky shooting with goofy, toy-looking guns. The one thing that made it "cool" was the bullet time gimmick with automatically going into it while vaulting. That, I think, is great, should be included in any game that's going to do bullet time. I wish they had developed that idea a lot more, like including a "dodge the bullet" mechanic (like Superhot, but in third person) and such. Played it up. Foot chases are great. There's no real parkour as such, but very often you have chases where you can contextually jump (and if you fuck up it staggers you a bit) fences and gaps and such in chases. Cars handle like toys, that sucks, but they get a dedicated drift and ram buttons, and most importantly, the ability to jump to another car and hijack it like a movie. All told, the gameplay is fine in the melee, acceptable in everything else, but it's the combination of all these things, all of which have more thought put into them than the typical GTA clone/open world game, that makes it so much better. Often you have to do a minigame for cop tasks like breaking and entering, triangulating a call, hacking cameras, etc. and it really adds to a feeling of immersion despite being very shallow.
The open world? Dont' know a lot about real life Hong Kong's geography, but I thought it felt half-baked. The Night Market area is brilliant, most of North Point (first ghetto area) is good. Central is a bland urban area. The other areas just feel like weird, identity-less appendages of the two main ones. The side content is pretty bad. Not counting racing just because races are obligatory in these things (apparently), you really just have karaoke, because the two gambling minigames (mahjong poker and cockfighting) are ridiculously out of the way and boil down to little more than pure luck, it's a waste of time. The side missions are both completely insubstantial and too short to be upset about; you can often just do one on the spot and it's no big deal. I did many of them but didn't press myself, past a point, to bother with going out of my way. I thought it was interesting how it had a variety of cop missions where you fulfill some SWAT-like role (including being a hostage sniper, though it isn't actually a sniping challenge, there's no marksmanship angle involved), but it felt completely disconnected from the free roaming. I wish it had instead worked like a police mission from San Andreas, where you can get in the cop car and then it spawns this stuff as you drive around.
Story-wise, it's decent with a strong intro and a strong ending. It's simultaneously absolutely absurd (the idea this undercover agent can become a crime boss and murder hundreds of people without getting into any trouble with the law, or it sinking their cases) and played completely straight, but I still found it much more gripping than a typical GTA/GTA ripoff type story. It does have a big problem in that Wei is way too unreasonably angry; it's like they wanted to set up this conflict between him and his superiors, but they forgot to build up to it, so he comes across as completely unhinged when he's cursing out his handler right off the bat.
Overall, it didn't hold up to my memory but I can also see what SHOULD have been the start of an entire, multi-game franchise, or another installment in True Detective, that should have been a major GTA competitor to this day (like Battlefield and COD compete). Instead, it got completely fucked over.
verissimus
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Nov 3, 2018
- Joined
- Jun 22, 2015
Finally finished Skies of Arcadia: Legends.
Found it to be a really enjoyable experience. Great cast of characters, I love games that use the whole "old sky dwelling civilization" aesthetic, Great story and premise, the sound design of the spells and battle skills is wonderful. The early 2000s polygon graphics may be dated but the solid art design and charm more than makes up for it. Really appreciated RPG games where grinding feels natural. Resource gathering was perfectly balanced. Never felt as if the game was stretching its playtime by maliciously making the player grind for levels, money or items.
Thanks to @Vyse Inglebard for the early strategy tips, I see why this game is so fondly regarded.
Found it to be a really enjoyable experience. Great cast of characters, I love games that use the whole "old sky dwelling civilization" aesthetic, Great story and premise, the sound design of the spells and battle skills is wonderful. The early 2000s polygon graphics may be dated but the solid art design and charm more than makes up for it. Really appreciated RPG games where grinding feels natural. Resource gathering was perfectly balanced. Never felt as if the game was stretching its playtime by maliciously making the player grind for levels, money or items.
Thanks to @Vyse Inglebard for the early strategy tips, I see why this game is so fondly regarded.
- Joined
- May 14, 2019
Depending on how you count it, Destroy All Humans remake (I played the original, may have actually been my first real open world game). I didn't force myself to finish the final boss fight, I don't give a shit. It was oaky. It's kind of outdated, but still holds up well. It was the right decision to stylize the graphics. The humor sucks, it's just a weird mixture of period pop culture and literary allusions, "ha ha 1950s people were secretly gay/horny," and McCarthyism jokes. It's not done well. Crypto and Orthopox are done well, so is Armquist, they basically make the game. You can tell how much enthusiasm the devs had making those mission loading screens, labor of love.
Gameplay wise it's fine. Could have used (even back in the day) more enemy variety and what not, but the basic guns are fun to use and all have some distinct purpose. Single enemy, fling them with psycho. Crowd, use electricity (since it chain attacks). Horde, use disintegrator ray. Saucer is fun for the novelty of flying a flying saucer, but wasn't used much (should have had dogfights with planes or helicopters).
I don't know. It was a good game in its day. Still decent. I liked 2 back in the day. I heard the series went badly downhill in 3 and 4, which is a shame because it should have been a great series.
Gameplay wise it's fine. Could have used (even back in the day) more enemy variety and what not, but the basic guns are fun to use and all have some distinct purpose. Single enemy, fling them with psycho. Crowd, use electricity (since it chain attacks). Horde, use disintegrator ray. Saucer is fun for the novelty of flying a flying saucer, but wasn't used much (should have had dogfights with planes or helicopters).
I don't know. It was a good game in its day. Still decent. I liked 2 back in the day. I heard the series went badly downhill in 3 and 4, which is a shame because it should have been a great series.
- Joined
- May 14, 2019
Maneater. It was decent, but what I see is more of a foundation, a proof of concept, for a better game if they were to make a sequel. I'd compare it to the original Assassin's Creed in that regard: it had interesting ideas, but there were severe flaws in its execution.
What you've got is a shark, and it's all presented like some trashy Shark Week show. Goofy but still clearly rooted in real life, in that your shark is doing some very over-the-top stuff, but it's still just a shark. I actually wish it leaned much heavier into goofiness, had story missions with absurd plots and more wild scenery. You start off as a little baby in the bayou, progress through a heavily polluted lake with industrial ruins in it, then go into an urban ocean environment, and then just kind of out into the ocean. There's 11 regions in total, but the pacing is not balanced; it feels, at least, like the freshwater sections drag on a very long time relative to the rest of it. Or perhaps they just make more of an impression.
Gameplay is simplistic. I think all of the fundamentals are fine, but it needed tweaking for boat combat. You get your health back by eating monsters, you can thrash around (which feels extremely good, it's a hold-trigger-and-wiggle-joystick thing) to stun them and do bleeding damage, you can tailwhip them to stun but it only actually stuns them sometimes, you can tailwhip things like you're a baseball bat, you can breach out of the water and use that to get on land or onto the decks of ships. Fighting other sea animals is mostly just a dodge-fest, but it works, and the way it scales up is wonderful. It's one of those things where there seems to be a mix of region scaling and level scaling, and it feels very natural as part of that "from little fish to big fish" fantasy. Early on an alligator is brutal to fight, extremely dangerous and imposing. By the end that alligator can be bitchslapped out of your way, but a sperm whale feels the same way. Very nice progression. With boats, however, there's so much gunfire spam that it isn't all that fun and it feels like all I can do is just spam attacks and ultimates and then break off for a while. Much worse, actually, if you're in an area with little depth, since you can break off the fight but not just dive to heal (eat fish) and come back. I wish they would have just slowed it down. Have the gunfire, spears and such be more distinct attacks with different ways to deal with them. It throws dynamite at you that you can knock back, but I never once did it successfully.
What do you get story-wise? Not much. There isn't much it can do. Jerry the Narrator is boring and a nuisance, I hated him by the end. Always saying the same lines or 50 different variations on the same idea. Mostly you'll have quests to Kill 50 Sea Bears or whaPtever and its usually framed as controlling animal overpopulation or getting revenge on the humans for something. You've got boss fights against human characters, which sounds cool, but they're all unceremoniously introduced with the same cutscene and all die with no fanfare. They're not unique, there's no boss fight gimmick. It's the exact same shit as every other boat. Pretty sucky to be honest. The animal boss fights are the animal, but higher leveled. Pretty simple. Truth be told, the main quest is all there is to do, but it's kind of shit too, and the ending was fucking awful. Just a lazy one-stage boss fight that ends abruptly.
The game world is okay. At first I was dismayed at how small it turned out to be, but I was greedy and ignorant. It's exactly as long as it needs to be, as it even can be with a premise like it has. You've got various biomes among it all. The more interesting parts are front-loaded (bayou, lake, city area that has tons of islands with ponds in them where you have to hop between bodies of water), but the deep sea does have its stuff. Coral reefs and what not. There's an area that's themed around whale shows (like theaters that can be accessed through underwater tunnels). It could have used some more deep sea content, like a deep trench (wouldn't look realistic, would be compressed like really old games, but imagine a Marianas-like area), stuff to do around the oil rig, battle sites, sunken ships like a carrier large enough to explore, lakes and rivers that aren't polluted. I think there is room for a sequel.
Overall, interesting experience. Was reasonably fun. Pretty mindless. Pretty unique, which is the important thing. It's good to see people making off-the-wall stuff like this without it just being indie trash or Goat Simulator tier (nothing against that game, but it ushered in a bunch of awful imitators).
Edit: In my ramble I forgot to bitch about the progression. It sucks. I had this impression, from the starting body type being Tiger Shark, that there would be a really fun thing with being able to Frankenstein a shark abomination out of several real species. Like being able to equip a hammerhead head, for example. But that doesn't happen. There's three sets corresponding to the three basic things you do (kill people, kill boss animals, find locations that are sometimes amusing and are sometimes dumbass pop culture jokes), and they're all goofy fantasy world. I WANTED TO BE A HAMMERHEAD DAMN IT.
The economy doesn't work great either. Four types of resource, some logic to what animals drop what, use them to upgrade. But it isn't like you ever really have a need, motivation, any thought at all about farming a specific type of animal (like turtles for minerals).
The wanted system was fucking awful. It would spawn boats right on me and then they never stop coming. I think there was a missed opportunity to have a bit of stealth. If your fin is visible, people should be freaking out and reporting your location if you're already wanted. If you pick people off then you should get less heat. Heat should die down slowly on its own, kill a patrol and it takes time for more to come, but wandering boats and subs and scuba teams with snipers and ambushes and stuff roam about that region for a while.
Basically, one aspect I liked the most was feeling like a living submarine when I'd cruise on the surface of the water, do dives, constantly spam the fuck out of the sonar button (which actually felt really good, usually I hate Eagle Vision ripoffs but it felt natural in this case to be regularly pulsing it). And so yeah, imagine something that feels like you're a "silent hunter," you know? But that also requires a reason to tangle with people. I think they should have had, instead of random animals being loaded with mutagens, mutagens should have been like the main fuel of leveling up and only really found in people (have a throwaway joke line about corn syrup and contraceptives) and in certain danger spots with fucked up mutated monster animals.
Like I said, it's a good proof of concept. If they bother to make a sequel they could probably make something way better.
What you've got is a shark, and it's all presented like some trashy Shark Week show. Goofy but still clearly rooted in real life, in that your shark is doing some very over-the-top stuff, but it's still just a shark. I actually wish it leaned much heavier into goofiness, had story missions with absurd plots and more wild scenery. You start off as a little baby in the bayou, progress through a heavily polluted lake with industrial ruins in it, then go into an urban ocean environment, and then just kind of out into the ocean. There's 11 regions in total, but the pacing is not balanced; it feels, at least, like the freshwater sections drag on a very long time relative to the rest of it. Or perhaps they just make more of an impression.
Gameplay is simplistic. I think all of the fundamentals are fine, but it needed tweaking for boat combat. You get your health back by eating monsters, you can thrash around (which feels extremely good, it's a hold-trigger-and-wiggle-joystick thing) to stun them and do bleeding damage, you can tailwhip them to stun but it only actually stuns them sometimes, you can tailwhip things like you're a baseball bat, you can breach out of the water and use that to get on land or onto the decks of ships. Fighting other sea animals is mostly just a dodge-fest, but it works, and the way it scales up is wonderful. It's one of those things where there seems to be a mix of region scaling and level scaling, and it feels very natural as part of that "from little fish to big fish" fantasy. Early on an alligator is brutal to fight, extremely dangerous and imposing. By the end that alligator can be bitchslapped out of your way, but a sperm whale feels the same way. Very nice progression. With boats, however, there's so much gunfire spam that it isn't all that fun and it feels like all I can do is just spam attacks and ultimates and then break off for a while. Much worse, actually, if you're in an area with little depth, since you can break off the fight but not just dive to heal (eat fish) and come back. I wish they would have just slowed it down. Have the gunfire, spears and such be more distinct attacks with different ways to deal with them. It throws dynamite at you that you can knock back, but I never once did it successfully.
What do you get story-wise? Not much. There isn't much it can do. Jerry the Narrator is boring and a nuisance, I hated him by the end. Always saying the same lines or 50 different variations on the same idea. Mostly you'll have quests to Kill 50 Sea Bears or whaPtever and its usually framed as controlling animal overpopulation or getting revenge on the humans for something. You've got boss fights against human characters, which sounds cool, but they're all unceremoniously introduced with the same cutscene and all die with no fanfare. They're not unique, there's no boss fight gimmick. It's the exact same shit as every other boat. Pretty sucky to be honest. The animal boss fights are the animal, but higher leveled. Pretty simple. Truth be told, the main quest is all there is to do, but it's kind of shit too, and the ending was fucking awful. Just a lazy one-stage boss fight that ends abruptly.
The game world is okay. At first I was dismayed at how small it turned out to be, but I was greedy and ignorant. It's exactly as long as it needs to be, as it even can be with a premise like it has. You've got various biomes among it all. The more interesting parts are front-loaded (bayou, lake, city area that has tons of islands with ponds in them where you have to hop between bodies of water), but the deep sea does have its stuff. Coral reefs and what not. There's an area that's themed around whale shows (like theaters that can be accessed through underwater tunnels). It could have used some more deep sea content, like a deep trench (wouldn't look realistic, would be compressed like really old games, but imagine a Marianas-like area), stuff to do around the oil rig, battle sites, sunken ships like a carrier large enough to explore, lakes and rivers that aren't polluted. I think there is room for a sequel.
Overall, interesting experience. Was reasonably fun. Pretty mindless. Pretty unique, which is the important thing. It's good to see people making off-the-wall stuff like this without it just being indie trash or Goat Simulator tier (nothing against that game, but it ushered in a bunch of awful imitators).
Edit: In my ramble I forgot to bitch about the progression. It sucks. I had this impression, from the starting body type being Tiger Shark, that there would be a really fun thing with being able to Frankenstein a shark abomination out of several real species. Like being able to equip a hammerhead head, for example. But that doesn't happen. There's three sets corresponding to the three basic things you do (kill people, kill boss animals, find locations that are sometimes amusing and are sometimes dumbass pop culture jokes), and they're all goofy fantasy world. I WANTED TO BE A HAMMERHEAD DAMN IT.
The economy doesn't work great either. Four types of resource, some logic to what animals drop what, use them to upgrade. But it isn't like you ever really have a need, motivation, any thought at all about farming a specific type of animal (like turtles for minerals).
The wanted system was fucking awful. It would spawn boats right on me and then they never stop coming. I think there was a missed opportunity to have a bit of stealth. If your fin is visible, people should be freaking out and reporting your location if you're already wanted. If you pick people off then you should get less heat. Heat should die down slowly on its own, kill a patrol and it takes time for more to come, but wandering boats and subs and scuba teams with snipers and ambushes and stuff roam about that region for a while.
Basically, one aspect I liked the most was feeling like a living submarine when I'd cruise on the surface of the water, do dives, constantly spam the fuck out of the sonar button (which actually felt really good, usually I hate Eagle Vision ripoffs but it felt natural in this case to be regularly pulsing it). And so yeah, imagine something that feels like you're a "silent hunter," you know? But that also requires a reason to tangle with people. I think they should have had, instead of random animals being loaded with mutagens, mutagens should have been like the main fuel of leveling up and only really found in people (have a throwaway joke line about corn syrup and contraceptives) and in certain danger spots with fucked up mutated monster animals.
Like I said, it's a good proof of concept. If they bother to make a sequel they could probably make something way better.
Last edited:
verissimus
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Nov 3, 2018
Wild Guns again, but this time with no continues. Been sort of trying to beat it without dying once but it's really rough.
Shart Attack
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Mar 14, 2022
Murder by Numbers. It's a mystery story visual novel that's tied together with picross/nonogram puzzles. You have a little robot sidekick who can scan a crime scene. His camera is broken, so his scans come in as picross puzzles you have to solve. Cute concept, and I like picross. Too bad the story is pozzed as hell. Chapter 3 of 4 takes place in a drag bar with drag queens and pride flags everywhere. I had no real problem with it until the story stopped dead in its tracks for the Indian female main character to lecture the white male detective about pronouns... in a game that's set in the 90s. Why? Why does every fucking piece of media need to lecture us about gay stuff and social justice? Why set your game in the early 90s if everyone is going to talk like 2020s millennials about 2020s millennial things?
Christ. 6 out of 10. Novel concept, a nice range of picross puzzles, could do without the fucking lecture on drag queen pronouns, thanks.
Christ. 6 out of 10. Novel concept, a nice range of picross puzzles, could do without the fucking lecture on drag queen pronouns, thanks.
- Joined
- Feb 19, 2020
verissimus
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Nov 3, 2018
Gravityqueen4life
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- May 29, 2019
finished Fate CCC a second time for the true ending. i find it funny that the main villains goal the entire game was basically to make everyone in the universe COOM endlessly and herself COOM like no one has ever COOMED before..
Gligamesh as a servant made the ride even crazier and fits with the story more if you gunning for the true ending. Gligamesh was the main villain in the franchise around that time so having him as a ally and seeing his worldview was pretty interesting. also helps that his crazy strong and turns most fights into complete jokes.
Gligamesh as a servant made the ride even crazier and fits with the story more if you gunning for the true ending. Gligamesh was the main villain in the franchise around that time so having him as a ally and seeing his worldview was pretty interesting. also helps that his crazy strong and turns most fights into complete jokes.
- Joined
- Jul 13, 2018
Ender Lilies
Forget why I dropped it years ago but after the trailer for the sequel I figured I'd give it another go and I just burnt through it in a few days. Really great game although a lot of the Spirits (attacks) didn't really stand out to me so I mostly stuck with the same loadout of Sword, Big Hammer, and Counter Shield through the whole game. All of the difficulty seemed pretty front loaded as well, by the time you get to the midgame it doesn't really seem to ramp up at all. Looking forward to the team shitting all over Team Cherry by announcing a sequel and having it out before Silksong is even mentioned again.
Forget why I dropped it years ago but after the trailer for the sequel I figured I'd give it another go and I just burnt through it in a few days. Really great game although a lot of the Spirits (attacks) didn't really stand out to me so I mostly stuck with the same loadout of Sword, Big Hammer, and Counter Shield through the whole game. All of the difficulty seemed pretty front loaded as well, by the time you get to the midgame it doesn't really seem to ramp up at all. Looking forward to the team shitting all over Team Cherry by announcing a sequel and having it out before Silksong is even mentioned again.
- Joined
- May 14, 2019
Mad Max replay. It was pretty good, but I have a very foul taste in my mouth from the ending.
I compare it to Black Flag because it has the same division of gameplay into two basic segments (car and foot), which in other games aren't that distinct, but here they are. Unfortunately, it leans much more heavily on foot, which is NOT where it shines. The game world is absolutely bloated, but in the end I cleared every single camp (but largely ignored everything else) because the game, surprisingly, just kept improving. It's like the opposite, in that regard, of Sleeping Dogs, which I replayed recently. Seemed kind of shit upfront, but grew sweeter and sweeter all the way up to the very end. Also like its opposite, is very minimalist with its story.
The world of Mad Max is stupid, intentionally stupid. Barbarians living in the desert somehow keep a petrochemicals industry thriving, which you capriciously destroy to the detriment of your own allies. Men produce industrial amounts of gasoline but cannot make industrial amounts of gunpowder. It's grimdark schlock. You eat maggots off of corpses. Every single camp is full of hordes of mutilated bodies that are so fresh that it implies that this territory suffers a genocide every day just to replenish it.
I love it. It's stupid but it is the kind of stupid that grows on you. Best of all is the way characters speak, a mixture of boyish slang and lofty theatrics. You'll have characters with names like "Cock Locka" and "Scabrous Scrotus" (get it? scabby scrotum? lolololol) talking like they're straight out of the Bronze Age. Max himself is completely out of place. This world has the opposite problem of Fallout: instead of being too barbaric too late in the future, it's to barbaric too early. Max himself is only middled aged and remembers a civilized world, but somehow these degenerates have reverted to unga bunga in a single generation.
The melee combat is good in the sense that its mindless and functional, but it's nothing you would ever seek out for its own sake. Arkham ripoff. That was actually what killed it in the reviews, way back when. I think there were two ways they could have taken it in a different direction. One way - less likely since it wouldn't have felt Mad Max - would have been to make it like knights. Scrap armor, swords and maces and stuff, give it an "I'm a knight but I made my armor from mommy's kitchen" vibe. The other way would have been to go wrestilng mode. See, Max's combat style is just brawling with occasional wrestling moves, but you don't actually control it. Think the automatic counterattack animations from Ass Creed, but more boring. Should have gone martial arts with it and had controllable wrestling, eye gouging, biting. As is, it's dull. Healing comes from drinking water or eating maggots/dog food/rats you find, which is pretty cool, it feels gritty and immersive.
The car combat, pretty cool but not enough of it. You'll run into cars frequently, but will either be overleveled or underleveled, and its usually just a few. You'd think a Mad Max game would have some badass and crazy war rig boss fights, but it doesn't (even the melee just recycles the same boss fight a million times). There's actually a stunning range of enemy vehicles, some of them with unique mechanics, but there's actually so many that many of the interesting ones are barely seen. Car combat just feels good. You have ramming side-to-side, ramming with nitro, grinding into them, flames (like a grinding attack with more range, but wastes your gas), a rocket launcher, a harpoon for ripping off parts to expose weak points, weak points to shoot with your gun. Feels good, a system that has more potential than it needs because it rarely puts you into a long extended engagement.
To its credit, though, it has these neat races where you can kill your competition and the goal is just to reach a place... by any means. I very much like that, races where there's a clear suggestion of what route to take, but it's up to you to figure it out (and the AI does'nt all take the same path).
The world? It holds up, but not as well as I remembered. It's all desert all the time, but it does a damn impressive job of squeezing that desert for variety. About half the map is empty ancient seabed with shipwrecks and like, about half is rural wasteland with skeletons of towns and dead trees (I think it's too ruined, I would have liked to have seen more standing structures that were identifiable). The most distinctive areas are:
- A great sandy desert area with buried structures, namely a vast buried airport that you get to drive inside of, very memorable
- An apocalyptic feeling garbage dump, sinister and imposing and heavily fortified
- A black bleak volcanic area, dead volcanic, jagged rock outcroppings and dark
- A green sickly sulphuric area with active geysers and pools and what not
- A white chalky dead coral reef that kinds of shine, has impressive dead structures
It can be very surreal when it wants to. But oftentimes the best regions are the ones way off at the edge of the map, barely used.
The camps can be generic drivel, and they can be very distinct and interesting. They tend to have a layer of outer defenses to suppress (which usually pose no threat) and then some gate, or the hidden gate if you find it (and you will because this game is afflicted with Yellow Paint Syndrome to an awful extent). Then its set up like a maze of arenas. It really does feel like you're penetrating someone's castle, layers upon layers of walls and defenses, often making very clever use of natural defenses/terrain. Some of it is outright fantastic.
The story is cool. Isn't much of it, but cool. Your dude is basically traumatized from his tRaGiC bAcKsToRy and keeps everyone at a distance. Winds up falling in with this hunchback prophet-mechanic (speaks in preacher style the whole time) who is the best character in anything ever. Goal: get back some stupid piece of shit car. Max is extremely autistic, even though his new car is already better, he insists on having EXACTLY the car he wants. Along the way you run into some desert whore (concubine) and her daughter and the game tries to shame Max into cucking and taking them in. She's actually rather well written, comes across as intelligent, shrewd, a survivor in the way that most women would actually be in a world like that.
Where the final ending went wrong (spoiler) is that it had Max kill his own ally. The prophet-mechanic refuses to get off the car when Max is going to do one last ditch (and ultimately unnecessary and useless) suicide attack, and Max, without hesitation or reflection, fucking plows right into the enemy killing his own mate that did everything to get him to that point. It was consistent with the story up to that point - Max was losing it after his own selfishness got the bimbo and future bimbo killed and so he commits murder. I hated it. Fuck you, Avalanche.
10/10 should have gotten a shit ton of sequels, met my expectations better than Sleeping Dogs, people have awful taste and that's why we can't have nice things like this more often.
I compare it to Black Flag because it has the same division of gameplay into two basic segments (car and foot), which in other games aren't that distinct, but here they are. Unfortunately, it leans much more heavily on foot, which is NOT where it shines. The game world is absolutely bloated, but in the end I cleared every single camp (but largely ignored everything else) because the game, surprisingly, just kept improving. It's like the opposite, in that regard, of Sleeping Dogs, which I replayed recently. Seemed kind of shit upfront, but grew sweeter and sweeter all the way up to the very end. Also like its opposite, is very minimalist with its story.
The world of Mad Max is stupid, intentionally stupid. Barbarians living in the desert somehow keep a petrochemicals industry thriving, which you capriciously destroy to the detriment of your own allies. Men produce industrial amounts of gasoline but cannot make industrial amounts of gunpowder. It's grimdark schlock. You eat maggots off of corpses. Every single camp is full of hordes of mutilated bodies that are so fresh that it implies that this territory suffers a genocide every day just to replenish it.
I love it. It's stupid but it is the kind of stupid that grows on you. Best of all is the way characters speak, a mixture of boyish slang and lofty theatrics. You'll have characters with names like "Cock Locka" and "Scabrous Scrotus" (get it? scabby scrotum? lolololol) talking like they're straight out of the Bronze Age. Max himself is completely out of place. This world has the opposite problem of Fallout: instead of being too barbaric too late in the future, it's to barbaric too early. Max himself is only middled aged and remembers a civilized world, but somehow these degenerates have reverted to unga bunga in a single generation.
The melee combat is good in the sense that its mindless and functional, but it's nothing you would ever seek out for its own sake. Arkham ripoff. That was actually what killed it in the reviews, way back when. I think there were two ways they could have taken it in a different direction. One way - less likely since it wouldn't have felt Mad Max - would have been to make it like knights. Scrap armor, swords and maces and stuff, give it an "I'm a knight but I made my armor from mommy's kitchen" vibe. The other way would have been to go wrestilng mode. See, Max's combat style is just brawling with occasional wrestling moves, but you don't actually control it. Think the automatic counterattack animations from Ass Creed, but more boring. Should have gone martial arts with it and had controllable wrestling, eye gouging, biting. As is, it's dull. Healing comes from drinking water or eating maggots/dog food/rats you find, which is pretty cool, it feels gritty and immersive.
The car combat, pretty cool but not enough of it. You'll run into cars frequently, but will either be overleveled or underleveled, and its usually just a few. You'd think a Mad Max game would have some badass and crazy war rig boss fights, but it doesn't (even the melee just recycles the same boss fight a million times). There's actually a stunning range of enemy vehicles, some of them with unique mechanics, but there's actually so many that many of the interesting ones are barely seen. Car combat just feels good. You have ramming side-to-side, ramming with nitro, grinding into them, flames (like a grinding attack with more range, but wastes your gas), a rocket launcher, a harpoon for ripping off parts to expose weak points, weak points to shoot with your gun. Feels good, a system that has more potential than it needs because it rarely puts you into a long extended engagement.
To its credit, though, it has these neat races where you can kill your competition and the goal is just to reach a place... by any means. I very much like that, races where there's a clear suggestion of what route to take, but it's up to you to figure it out (and the AI does'nt all take the same path).
The world? It holds up, but not as well as I remembered. It's all desert all the time, but it does a damn impressive job of squeezing that desert for variety. About half the map is empty ancient seabed with shipwrecks and like, about half is rural wasteland with skeletons of towns and dead trees (I think it's too ruined, I would have liked to have seen more standing structures that were identifiable). The most distinctive areas are:
- A great sandy desert area with buried structures, namely a vast buried airport that you get to drive inside of, very memorable
- An apocalyptic feeling garbage dump, sinister and imposing and heavily fortified
- A black bleak volcanic area, dead volcanic, jagged rock outcroppings and dark
- A green sickly sulphuric area with active geysers and pools and what not
- A white chalky dead coral reef that kinds of shine, has impressive dead structures
It can be very surreal when it wants to. But oftentimes the best regions are the ones way off at the edge of the map, barely used.
The camps can be generic drivel, and they can be very distinct and interesting. They tend to have a layer of outer defenses to suppress (which usually pose no threat) and then some gate, or the hidden gate if you find it (and you will because this game is afflicted with Yellow Paint Syndrome to an awful extent). Then its set up like a maze of arenas. It really does feel like you're penetrating someone's castle, layers upon layers of walls and defenses, often making very clever use of natural defenses/terrain. Some of it is outright fantastic.
The story is cool. Isn't much of it, but cool. Your dude is basically traumatized from his tRaGiC bAcKsToRy and keeps everyone at a distance. Winds up falling in with this hunchback prophet-mechanic (speaks in preacher style the whole time) who is the best character in anything ever. Goal: get back some stupid piece of shit car. Max is extremely autistic, even though his new car is already better, he insists on having EXACTLY the car he wants. Along the way you run into some desert whore (concubine) and her daughter and the game tries to shame Max into cucking and taking them in. She's actually rather well written, comes across as intelligent, shrewd, a survivor in the way that most women would actually be in a world like that.
Where the final ending went wrong (spoiler) is that it had Max kill his own ally. The prophet-mechanic refuses to get off the car when Max is going to do one last ditch (and ultimately unnecessary and useless) suicide attack, and Max, without hesitation or reflection, fucking plows right into the enemy killing his own mate that did everything to get him to that point. It was consistent with the story up to that point - Max was losing it after his own selfishness got the bimbo and future bimbo killed and so he commits murder. I hated it. Fuck you, Avalanche.
10/10 should have gotten a shit ton of sequels, met my expectations better than Sleeping Dogs, people have awful taste and that's why we can't have nice things like this more often.