Lurker > Paratroopa1

andylt posted...

I really like that game, but like you I probably have it a step below top tier. I think the philosophical stuff isn't quite as strong as (major spoilers) the initial figuring out where you are, and the whole thing about civilisations borrowing/stealing from the past. Wish they'd gone into the Egyptian and Sumerian part more! Also some of the characters could've been given more to work with. But still, a really fun game.

Yeah I totally agree with this. Forgotten City is a tricky one because I do feel like it left a lot on the table but what's there is still really good and memorable and worth playing.

PumpkinCoach posted...

yeah, for a time loop game you don't really have to loop in forgotten city that many times which actually kinda feels right because of how violent, harrowing, and best avoided the process of resetting the loop is. as always, i must sing the praise of galerius.

I feel kind of bad about some of these writeups because I feel like there's a lot more I could say about Forgotten City, but I don't always have the words in mind and I just kind of have to put out there what I've got and move on. But there are a lot of small things about Forgotten City that are worth talking about and Galerius, who is both good as a character and good as a game mechanic, is worth mentioning. I love that he functions as a way to get a lot of stuff done quickly without having to redo it every time, but then I love that the twist that comes with that is that Galerius becomes known as a hero among the town for all the deeds you tell him to do, I was expecting him to be merely a matter of convenience and not have that be part of the plot!

My comment about Outer Wilds was meant to be completely flippant lol, although I really hadn't considered how long a lot of the time loop games that came out this year had to have been in development, so it feels like some kind of weird simultaneous discovery, like when a baby name becomes super popular for no reason

I worded it poorly, I didn't mean like in the "it was nominated for GOTY" sense but rather the "a good number of people thought this was one of the best games this year" sense (every other game on my list up to this point has been way more marginal than this except maybe Fall Guys)

Kenri posted...

My guess is The Forgotten City, pretty sure I've seen that called a GotY contender. Deathloop's a good guess too though.

We have a winner!

#34: The Forgotten City

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/8/1/AAA-H0AADbph.jpg

Another emerging genre, or I guess pervasive theme, in today's gaming is the time loop. 2021 was absolutely filled with them, and I expect to see a lot more of them in the future. Maybe it's because everyone's trying to ride on Outer Wilds's coattails, maybe it's because the pandemic has put us into some kind of melancholy state of wondering what we could have all done differently, maybe people just realized time loops are real fuckin' good.

I love time loops and I'm never gonna get tired of them. As cliche as they might seem by now in video games, they serve a really good purpose, especially in adventure games. A lot of these games are all about experimentation and failure, trying to figure out what you can do and what gets you killed, and normally there's just a lot of saving and resetting involved - but the idea of a time loop lets you integrate that system of experimentation and failure into the concept of the game itself, into its core gameplay and narrative. There's so much that you can do with that! It's not just a gimmick for its own sake, but something that changes the way a game can be interacted with. I think that's great. Give me more time loops.

A friend of mine is having the usual post-Outer Wilds blues of I'll Never Play A Game Like That Ever Again and asked me if I recommended Forgotten City as a game to fill that void. And, well, no, I can't make that recommendation; nothing is really like Outer Wilds. But if you want a fun little time loop adventure with a cool premise and surprisingly good writing that lasts about 10 hours and doesn't overstay its welcome, you could do a lot worse.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/8/2/AAA-H0AADbpi.jpg

The Forgotten City has you exploring ruins in modern times and falling back through time into an ancient Roman city. Its 20 or so denizens live in harmony under the Golden Rule; treat others as you would want to be treated. If anyone breaks the Golden Rule, then everyone dies. You are informed, unfortunately, that you are here because someone is about to break the Golden Rule, and it's your job to go around town, talking to people and trying to figure out who's going to break the rule and kill everyone.

The premise was an instant hook, for me, and the game ultimately delivers pretty well on it, albeit not perfectly. I don't want to get too deep into spoilers on this game, just for the sake of keeping the review brief and not having to spoiler bar stuff, but the game has some clever little time loop tricks to it, and some fun philosophical quandaries. The game really loves its ancient Roman/Greek moral philosophy and is really happy to get into the weeds with it and discuss the nature of what really is a breach of the Golden Rule and what isn't, and this kind of stuff is where the game shines. It turns out that there's a surprising number of absolute bastards in town committing bastardly acts, and everything is not well in the city, and the game does a pretty good job of examining the thematic throughline of how bad people can get away with doing bad things.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/8/3/AAA-H0AADbpj.jpg

It doesn't quite do EVERYTHING I wish it could have done, gameplay-wise. The game is fairly short, and for a time loop adventure game, it's extremely easy; most of the game's major problems don't really require a lot of puzzle solving to figure out, usually just talking to another person and then coming back to the problem with more information kind of makes it work out. As a result, it's almost impossible to not be able to finish this game; it's constantly herding you towards the solution, and I imagine everyone will finish it in about 10 hours. I think that this game could really have used a lot more clever problem solving, but it is what it is. There's still enough here that makes it fun to play, and sometimes it's nice to not feel totally overwhelmed in an adventure game.

The Forgotten City began life as a Skyrim mod, and it shows. I'm not actually sure if it's still running on the Skyrim engine or not, but it sure feels like it. The world feels like it's mostly comprised of borrowed 3D assets, and character models have that kind of slight early 10's uncanniness about them. Honestly, though, I actually sort of appreciate it. There's something I really enjoy about seeing the economy of their development here; it's hard to explain, but it's like, the sense of satisfaction I get out of seeing something executed well within a developers' meager means and budget. This game has tons of moments where I appreciated what they were able to do with this Skyrim mod and what they weren't, where they decided to put their resources into making this game interesting and unique, etc. It's a relatively unambitious and carefully scoped game, and there is sort of an artform to that.

This game has a pretty interesting story, really solid voice acting, and enough interesting adventure gameplay and NPC Quest-iness to keep me entertained for its runtime, and I don't ask for a lot more. It does what it sets out to do and sticks the landing on its premise. As I alluded to, I've seen a lot of people who REALLY loved this game and thought it was one of the best they've played this year; I wasn't quite to that point, but I do think that this will be a game that I'll remember for a long time nontheless. It's no Outer Wilds, but if you're looking for something that kind of fills a very tiny portion of the void left by it, The Forgotten City is worth a look.

Next up: It's a Metroidvania! It's not Metroid Dread. Try a different one. It's not Axiom Verge 2 either, I forgot to list that as a 'game I should have played.'

I'm not gonna spoil anything on my list needlessly

I keep forgetting to resize my screenshots so that they don't take up the entire page, sorry

#35: Spookware

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/2/4/AAA-H0AADblg.jpg

There is an emerging genre in the indie space, and we need to talk about it. I don't have a name for it yet, but I like to call it the "NPC Quest." This type of game may be purely story driven or it may have some gameplay, but a large portion of this style of game is walking around a world, meeting a series of fun, cute, and increasingly useless NPCs, and talking to them, sometimes to advance the story, sometimes just for fun, experiencing the game's witty writing along the way. Obviously, the big establishing place-setter for this genre is Undertale, without question. It's not the FIRST game to do this, but it is by far the most popular and influential. Yes, Undertale has gameplay, it has story, but it is MOSTLY about walking around and talking to NPCs. And that aspect of the game is great! Undertale has dozens and dozens of cute characters to meet and quotable lines to read. It takes good writing and design to make this type of game compelling, but it can work, at very little development cost, which is why we're seeing a lot of indie games doing this now. Point is, Spookware is one of these.

It also happens to be a horror-themed WarioWare game, which is the meat of the game that you're talking to NPCs to get to.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/2/5/AAA-H0AADblh.png

Spookware has a bit of a confusing history which needs to be addressed, because it's actually three games, and not just one, but they're all 2020-2021 games so no eligibility problems here. The original Spookware was a short game jam game; a short series of games you can play in just a few minutes. It's like WarioWare, which I probably don't need to introduce; you have extremely short minigames that pop up with their own control schemes and goals, and you have about five seconds to figure out what to do and beat the game. It's fast and frantic and Spookware really understands how to capture that same feeling. The horror movie aesthetics, which range anywhere from 'spooky skeletons' to 'slasher flick', are also a lot of fun; you can just tell the dev had a fun time designing the visuals and putting the games together. They all have a sort of handmade style to them like someone took a lot of clip art and made a puppet show out of it - that's the best way I can describe it. It's an unpolished jam game that lasts a few minutes (although it took me a few tries to beat), but it's a good proof of concept. And they built upon it.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/2/6/AAA-H0AADbli.jpg

The second game is Spookware @ The Video Store, which is itself part of an anthology of horror games that I didn't play and don't remember the name of, but I just love the idea of an anthology of short horror video games; it feels really true to the tradition of the horror genre. This is only a little bit longer than the jam version, having a couple of sets of games, but it also introduces a framing device; three skeleton brothers named Lefti, Midi and Righti, and the microgames take the form of horror movies that the brothers are watching. This framing device is a lot of fun, but it's still not a full game yet. Both of these previous games are available for free as Spookware: Watch Party on Steam, and I recommend checking them out.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/2/7/AAA-H0AADblj.jpg

Then there's Spookware, the fully realized version of the game, and this is the one that's available in the Ukraine bundle, if you bought that. Well, I say fully realized, but it's episodic - only the first three episodes are out right now, so as of now it's an incomplete game, but I'm talking about it anyway since what's there lasts for probably about 2-3 hours and holds up pretty well on its own. In Spookware (just titled Spookware), you again play as the three skeleton brothers, watching horror movies in the basement, but then the game takes a turn into the NPC Quest thing I was talking about earlier. In between playing sets of microgames, you wander around and talk to people and have a madcap series of adventures, occasionally discovering more microgames to play along the way, until you get to a new set of microgames at the end of the chapter.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/2/8/AAA-H0AADblk.jpg

Walking around and talking to people could overstay its welcome pretty well, but the skeleton NPCs that populate the game are fun to talk to, and the game's writing plus the occasional microgame getting thrown into the mix keeps things fresh. The game also manages to not overstay its welcome by having every chapter be different; not only are the scenarios different but the theming and style of games and even the framing mechanics around them change, new gimmicks showing up along the way. And the microgames themselves are a fun reward for playing through the game; it's always exciting to get a new batch of them, and the anticipation for them makes them more fun, in a way.

The best thing I can say about it is that I'm really excited for further chapters to come out - what's here is still a pretty long game, so once all the promised chapters are out this could turn out to be a pretty long adventure game with a full WarioWare's catalog worth of microgames to play, and the thought of that is pretty enticing. I'm looking forward to seeing where this one goes and I feel like it might be worth revisiting on a future goty list. I figure that developing a lot of microgames takes time with having to make new assets and controls for each one just for 5 seconds of gameplay, which is why the game paces them out with a story in between, so I expect it'll be a little bit of time until we see further chapters, but hopefully it'll be before Deltarune comes out.

Next up: Remember when I said I had three Time Loop games on my list? I lied, because I'm an idiot and miscounted. There's four Time Loop games on my list. This is the first one of them, and also I think the first game on this list that was really taken seriously as a GOTY contender.

Is this a LMS topic

Anyway Top Gun Maverick is a super mediocre movie but it's a prestige film for dads that appeals to boring masculine ideals so everyone slobbers all over it, shrug, I can't say I'm surprised people went apeshit for it

DoomTheGyarados posted...

Yeah, and boy did spec chat not like that take LOL.

I still wish I had seen through some things better and just been less burned out, but yeah.

I wasn't really in spec chat and I only looked at the game kinda after it was all done but the last straw for me was Mr Turtle saying that it's suspicious to not be voting, after he had just voted for the 4th time the entire game... on day 6 (and he was town)

Before you say the world is going to shit, it's probably important to note that from the statistics I've been able to find, this is Japan's FIRST gun-related homicide of 2022

like, for the whole country

my mom is based as hell, I would never want to not be her

Look all I'm saying is that The Guardian and the BBC are more transphobic than like, I don't know, the New York Times or CNN (even though I hate both of them)

LightningStrikes posted...

Also, Britains TERF problem is a fraction of Americas

I think Britain's news media is largely more anti-trans than the US's is, obviously not Fox news but there's otherwise a lot more platforming of TERFs in britain

That game was a potato sack, I don't think there was a ton you could have done to differentiate scum from town reliably

Crescent-Moon posted...

So like.

Are we talking Wand of Gamelon or worse?

about that level

Mega Man ZX Advent contains some references to it and it was acknowledged as a real game in the 20th anniversary art book.

tazzyboyishere posted...

No idea this existed but time to check out. Can't leave a Mega Man game untouched

Don't say I didn't warn you

Mass Effect

I do actually have experience with Mass Effect, although it's been many, many years. I haven't played it since 2008 or so, but it turns out that Mass Effect is an incredibly memorable game, because I feel like I remember most of what happens in it (some of the plot recaps helped though). Wasn't sure what to expect out of this run - 1h 30m definitely implies that some fuckery is going to happen, but I wasn't sure how much fuckery because I've never seen a Mass Effect speedrun before and I have no idea how broken the game is.

The answer is - a fairly significant amount of fuckery, although the game mostly does get played normally. On a scale from 1-5, where 1 is glitchless and 5 is wrong warping to the credits, this is about a 3.5 or a 4 - most of the game's objectives are completed in a roughly normal order with a bit of sequence breaking, there aren't any HUGE portions of the game skipped entirely, but there's a ton of cutscene skips and out of bounds galore, which makes this run super fun. Although I prefer to play glitchless runs when it comes to speedrunning games myself (glitches can just be so hard and annoying to perform and don't feel fun to do), when it comes to a showcase like this, I love a glitchy run, showcasing what happens when you break the game as much as it can be broken. And so far, on that glitchiness scale, this is the first run that's glitchier than a 2, which makes this the most fun run of the marathon so far for me. I also just like runs of adventure games where there's strategizing to the macro-level routing and you get to see things pay off later in the run.

Great commentary throughout this entire run, and it's well paced without a whole lot of boring downtime, aside from a few terminally boring Mako sections that you can't do anything about. The combat in ME isn't the most interesting to watch and it's hard to tell what's going on, but they explain most of it well enough that it's easy to follow. But the out of bounds stuff is the real star of the show here.

- "You're gonna see me blowing myself up with a grenade to put myself in combat just so I can run." This is the original version of the game rather than the Legendary remake, and in this you can only run if you're considered 'in combat', which doing damage to yourself can trigger. I love stuff like this.

- This run almost IMMEDIATELY begins with what feels like a surprisingly easy out of bounds that skips a bunch of the first mission. Nihlus lives! (Not really)

- I also love the glitched cutscenes that happen as a result of not getting certain characters. We don't pick up Ashley early on so we're just talking to nobody. Sadly, we do get Ashley later.

- Speaking of which, Garrus and Wrex are never recruited in this run, which is bullshit. We do get Tali at least though (and Liara much later).

- "There's an important shot right here, gone but not forgotten in Legendary edition, and that'll be in just a moment here, right... now." And it's a shot of cleavage, of course. It's a good cleavage shot, I admit.

- "We're gonna go talk to Joker, played by Seth Green. RIP to his apes."

- The Citadel is so awesome, so it's really a shame that most of it gets skipped in this run. Oh well!

- I enjoyed the glitched cutscene where you get a cutscene to play while you're in the pause menu and the subtitles come up.

- When you're the captain of the Normandy, you don't just walk into the Normandy. You do a quicksave/quickload, fall through the top of the skybox and the entire planet, and crash through the Normandy's ceiling, completely skipping talking to everybody. That's the kind of privilege you get being the captain.

- We end up in the skybox a lot this run.

- I enjoy the runner/commentators apologizing for the fact that they have to do renegade options throughout a lot of this run just because it's faster most of the time. Poor Rachni queen!

- The Mako "controls like an RC car" and "is a bouncy castle on wheels" and that sounds about right based on my memory and my experience watching this run. There's really only this one difficult Mako section in this run, but it's something. Love the part where they get it through the narrow section it's not supposed to go and it just barely has enough maneuverability to get through everything else.

- There's a sort-of-softlock glitch at one point where Femshep just randomly turns into Broshep. I don't see this as a problem; we stan a transmasc king. Yeah, all your abilities drop to level 1 and you can't do anything, but that's just how transitioning goes.

- Riding a box out of bounds like Silver the Hedgehog was probably my favorite trick of the run. It just sort of... works? It's barely even a glitch, they intended for you to pick up a box and move it around, although probably did not intend for you to be riding it at the time. I like that they level up Liara and bring her basically JUST for this one trick (it doesn't feel like she does a ton in combat since they have an awesome pistol by this point).

- The game ends with one of the few paragon options saving the council after a mostly renegade run, which is funny.

- There's a Mako glitch exhibition at the end and it's comic gold. It's a great cap to my first "highly recommended" run of the marathon.

- I feel guilty that I have so much more to say about a run like this than others but I guess that's natural, it's the longest and most involved run so far.

---Highly Recommended---
Mass Effect
---Recommended---
Shadow of the Colossus
Rolled Out!
---Maybe Recommended---
WarioWare: Touched!
---Not Recommended---
Sonic Generations

I will be skipping Kirby and the Forgotten Land for now, but I WILL come back to it once I've beaten the game, which will definitely be before I finish this project. Pokemon Snap will be next.

Rolled Out!

The first game this run I haven't heard of! Helix ran a really great Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz run last AGDQ so it's great to see them running this Monkey Ball clone, and damn it really is a Monkey Ball clone - every aspect of it seems designed to give pretty much the same experience, just with the serial numbers filed off - and a few new gimmicks as well. I was pretty impressed by the game, for starters - the gravity gimmick in world 2 was super awesome and the portals later on were weird and interesing too. The run, of course, is just really solid. There isn't a whole lot more to say than that. Helix executed it well, although not perfectly (one level took a lot of attempts to get through), and kept the commentary fun throughout. Just a good run of a game that deserves some publicity; it's actually really cool to see that they gave it a primetime spot with all the other heavy hitters instead of relegating it to the late night slots. I think the Monkey Ball crew have really garnered a lot of respect over the years.

I feel like, for runs like this of an unfamiliar game, I end up talking about the game itself more than any aspect of the run. But Monkey Ball - or a clone of it, in this case - is one of those runs where it's a long series of modular levels instead of an adventure with a lot of different stuff to talk about, so there's not much to say except that Helix rolled the ball good. That type of run could overstay its welcome, but this one does not. It's about as long as it should be, and I'd rather it be longer than shorter, which is good.

- All of the game's six playable characters are they/them except for one, and I don't know which one I would have expected to be she/her, but it definitely wasn't this bizarre chess creature that they play throughout the run.

- Lots of cool features in this game. It has a minimap! Do any of the SMB games have a minimap?

- Really cool, chill soundtrack in this one which I wasn't expecting - less frantic than most of the Monkey Ball games. Apparently @Toxtricity had something to do with the music in this game? That's extremely awesome if so! I trust their music tastes a lot.

- The announcer saying START or GET ROLLIN' or whatever instead of GO really throws me off though, especially since they sound so much like the Monkey Ball announcer.

- "I'm gonna lose my mind." "Your marbles?" "Yeah you're right."

- They said they were gonna use the focus meter at some point way later in the run, and if they ever used it I totally missed it so I still have no idea what it did.

LeonhartFour posted...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUsb2LvSmfM

if there's something close to a bad song on the DKC2 OST, it's probably this one...?

what the hell no, in this house we respect funky kong

Phantasy
Zelda

Kenri posted...

Okay, not really. My actual guess is... let's say Nina Aquila: Legal Eagle.

(...Damn, I really should have played this)

(The best part of getting people to guess what game is next on the list is that they might unwittingly recommend me games they think I've already played and liked, which is probably a pretty good indicator that I should check them out)

#36: 30XX

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/7/0/AAA-H0AADbCS.jpg

20XX is a Mega Man X-style roguelike that came out a few years ago, and it did make my game of the decade list at #76. Let's pull up a quote and see what I had to say about it...

"A lot of UI things are kind of messy, some of the visuals don't really 'pop' all that great, the music and sound are average, some of the level design generation is ill-conceived at best, there's bugs, and it overall just sort of lacks a sheen of polish that I'm used to seeing in games; you can really feel how 'indie' this one is, to put it bluntly."

Glowing review! Of course, it goes on to say that in spite of all of this, the game is fun as hell, which it is. It's fun to dash and blast your way through enemies and wall jump off platforms and find cool abilities that let you shoot giant charged shots and double jump and stuff like that. The lack of polish is a little bit of a damper upon the whole formula, but there's always the possibility of a sequel. What if 20XX, but polished? A thousand years in the future (I guess), but only about four years in real time, 30XX enters early access.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/7/1/AAA-H0AADbCT.jpg

The first thing that immediately stands out is, holy hell, the visual style has gotten a complete makeover and it is gorgeous. The glow-up that this game has gotten is possibly unlike any sequel I've ever seen in gaming before, at least not since the 90's. The hand-drawn flash-game-like graphics of 20XX have been overhauled into an ironically more 'retro' pixel-art style that pops off the screen, and it's like going from a 4/10 to a 9/10. The difference is stark. The environments and backgrounds in this game are stunning, the animation is fluid, the character designs look great. I know I just said RITE had some of the most pleasing pixel art graphics I'd seen in a while but 30XX tops it. The soundtrack of this game, also, has really grown on me - I made a reference to Echocave's theme, which is in vgmc, but the whole thing stands out to me as an improvement on 20XX's competent but more forgettable soundtrack. Everything in this game is a bop.

As for the gameplay, everything has gotten a fine layer of polish. The level design has notably seen a huge uptick in quality. 20XX had a sort of problem where levels just felt like a weird mishmash of platforming sections cobbled together in a way that didn't always feel coherent, but 30XX seems to have solved this - even though levels are randomly generated, they are usually generated in a way that feels a lot tighter and more deliberate. Some weird open spaces pacing issues still occasionally exist, but for the most part every level's gimmick gets used in cool ways that somehow still seem different every time - the Penumbra level and its red, blue, and green platforms that swap every time you jump off of them is especially cool. Maybe because I just haven't seen all of the level building blocks enough to get tired of them yet, but nontheless I'm impressed with the level generation.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/7/2/AAA-H0AADbCU.jpg

There are still some issues I have with the game - the boss designs aren't always the most compelling or easy to understand at times, and I feel like powerups have been tamped down a bit; I feel like there's a lot of powerups that just feel like sidegrades or niche bonuses that feel beside the point. And while the controls are solid, I do feel like the dash is a bit slow - I really want the dash to propel me, but it doesn't feel like it gets much speed in this game compared to the MMX series or to 20XX. Also, I feel like this game, like its predecessor, continues to have a problem with sloppy UI and menus, as well as the weird presentation in its lobby area. It's hard to explain, but it just feels more slapdash than it should in a game that is otherwise presented beautifully. Maybe these issues are why I haven't gotten as hooked on this game as I want to be - it's also possible that some of this is just early access jankiness and things will be polished a bit more in the future, I don't know.

I have to admit that in spite of my complaints, this game is a really excellent sequel, and this is the first time on my list that I feel like I might be making a huge mistake ranking this too low. I look at how good this game looks and sounds and how fun it is to play and I go "#36? Really?" But then I look at the 35 games below it and I go, yeah, it really has been that kind of two years. Everything on the rest of this list fucks. 30XX is still in early access, so maybe I'll have a chance to revisit it in the future and get properly hooked on it and write about how I should have ranked it in my top 10 before. We'll see! Hopefully we'll still be in the year 20XX by the time it's all finished.

Next up: This game was the reason I bought the Ukraine bundle.

andylt posted...

You nailed it with all the tiny unnecessary details that were added, every little thing you can think of to do results in an amusing outcome.

This is like my favorite thing that some games do. Super Mario RPG and Paper Mario were great early examples of this, but Undertale really took this concept and just hit it out of the park. I love when games are crammed with weird, fun details and responses to bizarre choices.

N64, GC, Wii, GBC, GBA, DS

didn't get a 3DS until a year or two later, since the 3DS had an utterly awful launch. I was late onto the Wii U and Switch.

Mr Lasastryke posted...

and yeah, that twitter ban video is something.

he's literally comparing physicians who perform transition operations to nazis.

I've been warning about this guy for years and years now, I hope people start taking him deadly seriously

tcaz2 posted...

TBF he also said he plans on Ch2 being the longest of them so hopefully the rest won't take as long.

Who knows if that will actually end up being the case.

I'm a little skeptical that this will be true just because I feel like Toby is more likely to get in over his head and take too long than he is to cut corners and shorten the length of something - it's possible that he really doesn't intend for those chapters to have as much material but I detected a hint of hopefulness that it wouldn't take him until 2027 to finish this game.

On the other hand, I don't want to promise myself in my own mind the possibility of "Undertale but like five times as long" so I'm not gonna get my hopes up or have any expectations about the game's length. If chapter 2 is nearly the halfway point then that's fine!

MrSmartGuy posted...

Oh, just thought of my top answer for this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZceekooDGo

This song is so insanely grating, and I don't understand how it's THAT bad, when the regular battle theme is one of my top 10 favorite video game tunes ever:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oy-2BmuqkFE

I would have said this answer is good, seeing as that first track is one of my least favorite works of video game music ever written, but I don't like this soundtrack as a whole so it didn't meet my standards of 'bad song in a great soundtrack', haha. That theme is significantly worse than the rest of the soundtrack though so it's a good shout.

Glad you enjoyed it! I loved it when I played it back in 2015 (I wasn't one of its earliest adopters, but I did play it before it seriously exploded in popularity - like, before the games contest) and I've always been curious if it was just really radical and new at the time and if it's more quaint now or what. But yeah I do think it's a really fantastic game. When you have style and heart like Undertale does it ages pretty well. I love the characters and the writing, the soundtrack is obviously great, and the gameplay is fairly simple but doesn't overstay its welcome over the runtime.

Deltarune is a good followup, but it's only the first two chapters so far (which are free) so it's hard to know how it compares to Undertale since it's not finished. Those two chapters by themselves probably have about as much content as Undertale does though, if not more, so they're pretty appreciable experiences by themselves. Some things that Deltarune does are improved in ways that make it hard to go back to Undertale, but at the same time it also sometimes has a hard time capturing the same lightning in a bottle that Undertale has, as ANY followup to a lightning-in-a-bottle game is going to have. It's about as good as he could have done, considering. So yeah I would recommend Deltarune for sure.

#37: Bean and Nothingness

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/7/1/AAA-H0AADapT.jpg

One of my friends, incnone (former Necrodancer champ), is one of the designers of this game, so I was kind of obligated to play it on his behalf. Fortunately, it's actually really good, so I'm not just plugging it because a friend made it! It's exciting to get to recommend a super obscure game that a friend made that deserves a little bit of love - it's a big reason why I enjoy making these lists in the first place.

Bean and Nothingness is a sokoban puzzle game in which you plant beans and grow them into monsters, which you then have to manipulate to get to the goal. I absolutely suck at this game, to be clear, and I haven't gotten very far in it, because it gets pretty hard pretty fast, so I don't know exactly how long it is, but it seems likely to be pretty lengthy.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/7/2/AAA-H0AADapU.jpg

(Pictured: some stuff in the game I haven't seen yet. Oh god, what is happening? I'm scared)

I think the closest comp to this would be something like Baba Is You. It's nowhere near as good as Baba, absolutely nothing is, Baba is probably the best puzzle game of its kind ever created, but it does have a little bit of that same spark that Baba has. The puzzle solutions aren't quite as emergent as Baba's - there's usually one way to get through each puzzle - but every puzzle has that little spark of ingenuity that makes for a great puzzle. Surprising interactions between monsters and environment and solutions that lie just outside what the eye can obviously spot at a glance creates a fair bit of frustration, just enough to give you that great 'aha!' moment when you realize what you can actually do with the mechanical parts that each level gives you. Every monster does it own thing, and you have to figure out how to use the beans you're given to create the right monsters and deploy them at the right time to achieve your objective.

I don't know how far I'll be able to get in this game - I'm going to have to chip away at this one pretty slowly over time, a couple of puzzles every now and then when I feel like it, but I'm excited to work on it because it does have that element of not simply being a series of chores to be worked on like some other games of this type, but a series of specifically tailored challenges to be pondered over. The different mechanics of each monster make every level feel unique and worth tackling.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/7/3/AAA-H0AADapV.jpg

(Pictured: some more stuff that I haven't gotten to yet. I don't understand, and I'm terrified of what this game will do to me if I get this far.)

I wasn't sure if I should include this game on my list since I didn't see that much of it - I'm not even really in the midgame yet - but what I've played of it I was pretty excited by so I felt like it was worth including on the list, especially due to its obscurity.

Next up: This game has a fucking BANGER of a theme that is in the ongoing VGMC.

Isquen posted...

For what it's worth, I still enjoyed the Emerald rando.

Oh yeah I'm still looking forward to it, didn't mean to imply the run was bad, just that it was mildly cursed

WarioWare: Touched!

Hey, it's a game I know. Well, I knew it, anyway - it's been a hot 15 years or so since I've last played it, so it's nearly all unfamiliar to me by this point. This is apparently the first time a WarioWare game has been run as a GDQ, which is simultaneously surprising because the series is pretty high profile, and not at all surprising because there isn't a lot of good speed tech and it's hard to speed up the game.

Shasta certainly tries his best to. The boss games work out decently for saving some time, but any time he saves off of the microgames that he can save time on (ones with the long timer, or ones you can intentionally fail) he probably lost most of it due to unintentional pausing. Ah well. I think a WarioWare run is both good and bad for GDQ viewing. On the plus side, the sheer anarchy of the game means there's ALWAYS something interesting on screen at all times, so it captivates the attention easily. On the minus side, there isn't really a lot of interesting speed tech to be seen here, so it just kind of feels like a very fast longplay of the game, not really anything special. I enjoyed it well enough, but it's hard to say if it lends itself well to the format.

- The format for WarioWare, explained: "As you can see here, stuff is happening, a lot of... a lot of wild zaniness, really all you gotta do is when the microgame pops up you gotta be as fast as you can." Yeah, that sounds about right.

- "Since we're not on couches, this is actually armchair commentary, so we're here to point out all your mistakes."

- Shasta is a charismatic runner, but he's really speaking a mile a minute here and I feel like I wouldn't understand a lot of his explanations if I didn't know the game well.

- "Imagine a bus. Anyone know what a bus is?" "I'm from America, I don't know what public transit is."

- I know Ashley's theme is the one true autoscroller of this run, but don't do donations over it! That's just blasphemy!

- "In my defense, this game is sensory overload incarnate."

- "They don't call me clutch masta Shasta for nothin'. They also don't call me that."

- I can't recall if this is the first time I've seen someone use the microphone to control a game at GDQ, but it's certainly a rarity. Taking off the mask made me realize that all of the commentary so far has been a bit muffled, but it's actually for the better because it takes the edge off some of the sharper sounds.

- I think since this run feels so much like a longplay anyway, I'd rather just see all the cutscenes, since they're pretty entertaining in a WarioWare game. It makes sense to skip them playing fast as possible, but I think we're past the point of worrying about that in GDQ.

- This run makes me think about how much I'd like to see Get It Together at GDQ. That one seems like a more interesting speed game, since games end as soon as you beat them most of the time, and character selections means there's some actual strategy in terms of which characters you can win with fastest. (This run also makes me think about how we'll NEVER see Rhythm Heaven at a GDQ.)

Rankings! I reserve the right to change the tiers or the rankings at any time.

---Highly Recommended---
---Recommended---
Shadow of the Colossus
---Maybe Recommended---
WarioWare: Touched!
---Not Recommended---
Sonic Generations

Sonic Generations

Never played this game, didn't know that the 3DS version was different from the others. I have sort of a muted relationship with Sonic. None of the Sonic games are really among my favorites and I didn't grow up with them as a nostalgic thing. Sonic speedruns are hit or miss for me - the best ones are really great, but sometimes it's hard to really appreciate the action in them.

As far as Sonic games go, I found this run a little bit on the dull side. The action in the modern levels was pretty good, but the classic levels just felt kind of wrong. Way, WAY too many autoscrollers in this game, and that unfortunately included many of the bosses. Not the most cleanly executed run either, which didn't help. The commentary was okay, but a bit of a step down from SotC. I'd skip this one unless you're just a huge Sonic fan and you'll watch any Sonic game. I just didn't find a lot to latch onto here.

- BIG THE CAT! BIG THE CAT! BIG THE CAT! Big the Cat was a big meme throughout this run despite the fact that he does not appear in this game. I appreciate this.

- I know the special stages make for good donation fodder and all but it just really sucks to run a game with this many absolutely brutally dull autoscrollers. Other Sonic games have this problem too. The only good thing is that Sonic's run cycle at the start of them is fucking hilarious.

- The Big Arms theme was cruelly cut short by one of the only bosses that you COULD beat quickly in this game.

- We got a mention of orbs in this one, which makes the first time I think we've had a standard GDQ meme trotted out. I guess it's been three years since we've had an audience, so there's a pretty large gap in time since the last time anyone had anything to meme. I'm curious to see going forward if the old standard memes have dropped off a little bit.

- The music in that one water level sounds like Louie Louie and I can't get over it.

- I don't have a lot more to say about this run - I tuned a lot of it out. I ended up focusing on weird shit. Like, what's up with the houseplant? I get that they're all in armchairs in order to create social distancing but why the office vibe?

Let's get this show on the road.

I'm mostly skipping downtime in between games (unless I decide to just let it run for background noise for a bit) but for the time being - until I get bored of it - I'll be watching interviews and prize segments. And I wanted to get off my GDQ watching right, so I decided to watch the whole pre-show to get in the mood.

- The hosting team here is great - I love these lovable dorks. adef steals the show here though - his comedy bits are legitimately funny (one of the rare people who is actually funny when he's trying to do comedy) and every delivery he does is solid gold. I loved the cutaway of him sprinting through the parking lot to get ketchup packets from McDonald's. I hope he replaces SpikeVegeta forever (sorry Spike).

- The cut to Shout holding a Mareep was also great. I want that Mareep.

- I admire the bit they did with people racing using goofy speedrunning moves but it went on a bit long.

- It's funny to hear them hyping up runs knowing that some of them go awry in the future - I'm aware that people didn't like FNAF and Emerald Randomizer went hella over estimate.

- Love the MSF representative here not dancing around the political issues of the day here - they're doing work in Ukraine, they're putting vaccines in arms, and yes, abortion is part of healthcare. That last one was particularly pointed.

Okay, actual runs now.

Shadow of the Colossus

I briefly played Shadow of the Colossus once a long time ago - I think I beat like four or five of the bosses and didn't play the rest. It's a good game, but it's not really 'my thing'. I admire the design of the game and the design of the bosses and such but it's a game I would rather watch someone else play than play myself. So this run is perfect!

I don't think I've ever seen a speedrun of this game before because I honestly had no idea that it had a time trial mode, and I don't think I've seen some of these later game colossuses before, so this a new experience for me, at least I think. It's a good one! I liked this run a lot and it made for a really high energy run to start off the marathon. It's all killer, no filler; getting rid of all the explory parts of SotC and getting right to the meat keeps the pacing of this one brisk and entertaining throughout.

- I love the props of the whiteboard and the giant dice here. They're fun! The concept of fighting all the bosses in a random order is good and adds a little extra spice to this run. I smiled every time the camera zoomed in on the whiteboard - it's so amusingly low-tech.

- Horse pets were the donation gimmick of this run and I enjoyed it dearly. Everyone counting while the runner gently pats a horse is great. (I had no idea until now that Agro was a girl btw)

- I appreciate this game's commitment to designing bosses with butt ladders to grab onto.

- Some cool skips in this run though they sadly didn't all go off without a hitch. I enjoyed the Gaius jump, aka "Space Jam." I've played enough of this game to be impressed by the number of ways you can send Wander flying up to the exact spot you need to be.

- Also loved dropping a torch off the edge and getting sent flying by a colossus trying to kill itself.

- "Foxy, just so you know, you're my beardy boy." "Thank you. I wear it with uh... it's pride."

- The jump stab, or the sexy slash as they like to call it. I'm going to document every instance of a stupid tech name.

- Pathing through all the 16th colossus's missiles were cool - I like how they just kinda had a route devised that happens to make every missile miss slightly.

- That's never happened before x1

- I was slightly worried about the promised ukulele duet at the end of this run, but I needn't have been. It was fire. Absolute banger.

- Sent why are you wearing your mask weird.

The JSRF version omits 'I don't give a flying fuck though' which makes me sad

Birthday Cake is fucking awesome

good cat

MoogleKupo141 posted...

i find this track deeply annoying

https://youtu.be/1J9INI06jxA

im pretty sure the rest of the soundtrack was good, but somehow this is the only track I can clearly remember

jesus fuck this music with Suikoden's western box art gave me a fucking out of body experience

I kind of like Danger to be honest in a slightly ironic way, the beginning is like "OH NO" and the track has like seven different ideas that range wildly from good to amusing to baffling

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_g63yl8OUk

The MMBN series is usually really good for music but then there's this. is this good? is this bad? I don't know but it's hilarious

okay I thought of one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHjc9uDQna8

Every time I enter a town in FFV that has this theme I brace myself a little bit

GuessMyUserName posted...

this topic is greatly confusing me with y'all just posting bangers except for Janus

like am i reading the title wrong or something or has nobody actually heard a bad song before

I think some of these have to be shitposts tbh

azuarc posted...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0IJPzf4mO0

67 seconds of awful, and then 53 seconds that don't make me want to completely murder everything.

And before someone says it, The Oracle is amazing.

agree, the Oracle is a great theme

I feel like the bramble levels are meant to be pretty major setpieces of DKC2, it's a decent response but I don't feel like Bramble Scramble is a totally random part of the game, it's like the capstone level of the third world

Haha dang I like both of the themes you put in the opening post

I'll try to think of something - I'm sure there are examples but they're not coming to me

Not really

Here's what Windows 2.0 looked like, for instance:

https://technirvanaa.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/210672-03_msft_history_slide.jpg

Every image I googled of Windows 2.0 has that extremely cyan vibe that Dum-Dum was going for, which makes me feel like it's really the inspiration for the entire game's aesthetic.

https://www.zdnet.com/a/img/resize/ad9a603d79da853e7339d26d4bfbd8dcef671cf6/2015/07/23/db9b07b8-1bd3-4451-9365-7bd336f4d7dd/cmwindows1-0jul15a.jpg?auto=webp&height=675&width=1200

Here was Windows 1.0.

-hotdogturtle-- posted...

I'm surprised that I've never heard of Dum-Dum if even for the obvious "if you like Hypnospace then you should try this" comparisons that I assume were its main selling point.

This is probably the second-most obscure game on the entire list, and I have absolutely no idea why - I stumbled upon it doing some deep searches for new games to play and it's really very good and well-produced so the total lack of any kind of press surrounding this game is a bit baffling

This is why I was really excited to make this list! Eventually I will get into talking about all of the obvious great games that everyone's heard of, but a solid third of the list is still comprised of games that I think are more unknown than they should be.

Hypnospace Outlaw on the Switch seems like an extremely weird fit - I can't imagine playing it without a mouse and keyboard on a computer monitor. It's great, though! Very worthwhile.