Lurker > Paratroopa1

#38: Dum-Dum

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/9/5/AAA-H0AADaW7.jpg

One of the games from last decade that I played too late to include on my list, but would have, was Hypnospace Outlaw. Hypnospace Outlaw was a loving tribute to the anarchy and visual chaos of the late 90's internet in which you controlled the entire game through a virtual OS, your desktop being transformed into that of Hypnospace's own design. It is fully immersive in a way that few games are able to be; by taking you completely out of your own computer and into the fantastical simulacrum of another, it allows you to play pretend as though you really are in that OS, your very own computer taking the form of something from an alternate universe. Hypnospace Outlaw is great; it takes the concept of browsing an alternate universe internet in a fictional OS and gets really weird and creative with it, making for a fun literal-point-and-click adventure game.

Dum-Dum isn't as good as Hypnospace Outlaw, but for someone who's suddenly looking for more experiences in the genre of 'fake OSes', it's a real treat nontheless.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/9/6/AAA-H0AADaW8.jpg

Instead of the late 90's internet, Dum-Dum is instead a love letter to the operating systems of the mid-80's; in particular, Windows 1.0, though there's some Apple II influence in here as well. I think this is a game best experienced with little spoilers, since it's a little mystery/puzzle game with some fun twists and turns, but the basic gist is; you're a user of the HOGO OS 1985 edition, and through the use of the system's limited online functionality, you stumble into a vast corporate conspiracy which it is unfortunately up to you to solve with your dum-dum brain.

The big star here, of course, is the fake OS that is central to this game; the HOGO OS. Based off of the earlier versions of Windows - before 95, at the very least - booting up Dum-Dum forcibly full screens you into the game and into a fictional OS that would be more than 35 years old today, totally immersing you in the latest computer technology of 1985. Cyan and magenta abound, simple functionalities like a word processor or a clock seem state of the art, and everything has the feel of something like an elaborate toy rather than a modern computer. HOGO OS comes with lots of fun little gizmos to play with; just browsing its simple games and apps, LARPing being a child using an OS for the first time, is really half the fun of this game. You can't do too much with the apps, and most of the games are too simple to have much fun with, although a couple of exceptions exist - the surprisingly challenging puzzle game Hogoball, and one game that's basically a Wordle clone before Wordle! You can even literally write real code in Basic using this fictional OS, although I don't know Basic well enough to do anything more than print out "Hello World."

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/9/7/AAA-H0AADaW9.jpg

The actual story and the puzzles you have to solve are pretty fun themselves, too. The premise of the game is that the computer geniuses behind the conspiracy are so smart that they'll see any countermeasures coming - except for those thought up by the dumbest person alive, which happens to be you, making you the perfect unwitting operative for this mission. I found myself just a bit disappointed by this premise, as the game never quite lives up to the idea of "outwitting a smart person with dumb ideas" - most of the game as a puzzle game is really fairly straightforward and just requires straightforward smarts to figure out, and rarely does the game ever demand a truly stupid solution that would make you feel clever for thinking of something as stupid as possible. That said, the way the game weaves its story and its puzzle solutions into Dum-Dum's various programs and games is really clever, and surprisingly robust - the game took me over 5 hours to beat, which is longer than I expected out of a game like this.

There's a certain sort of nostalgia I have for old computers that Dum-Dum really effectively taps into. I prefer the much more functional computing technology we have now, of course, but Dum-Dum harkens back to a time when computers were just sort of fun, weird little gadgets that felt like their own little worlds, and I do kind of miss those days sometimes. Everything from the color schemes to the design philosophy to the lack of quality of life (only three windows) feels really spot on here, and perfectly evokes the feeling of an era I wasn't even alive for - my first Windows OS was 3.1. If Hypnospace Outlaw was appealing to you, I'd also check out Dum-Dum; it's a fully worthy companion piece, and it's a pretty obscure one, so I'm happy to signal boost it. And if anyone's played any other games kind of in this 'fake OS' vein, let me know, because I'm low-key obsessed with the concept.

Next up: This game has more reviews on Steam than Dum-Dum, but I still think it's the most obscure game on my list, bar none. It's a Sokoban-style puzzle game from late 2021. You're not going to guess it unless you've seen me playing it on Steam.

Suprak the Stud posted...

Para is much nicer than me

I am aware of the circumstances of that run, and I think I'll be happy to test your theory

I haven't watched even a single second of SGDQ 2022 this year. I am going to watch every single second of it and talk about every run.

why

Normally, our family has a vacation over the week of July 4th. This has an annoying habit of coinciding with SGDQ, which I mostly missed last year - I watched some of it but not a lot. This year, our vacation was moved back a week to the week before July 4th, which made me happy, because I thought I would be able to watch SGDQ... alas, SGDQ also didn't take place the week of July 4th this year, but the week before. I didn't want to sit around on my ass scheduling my vacation around people playing video games online, and my phone's battery basically waves the white flag the moment I open Twitch, so I abstained from the event completely.

But now I'm thirsty for some GDQ. Everyone else who watched is worn out of it by now but I'm totally fresh and ready to watch some speedruns. I won't get the full GDQ experience of watching dumb prize segments or sitting around listening to donations waiting for the next run, but I will watch the runs themselves.

are you sure about this

No, but I've done it before. I did it for like AGDQ 16 I think? I think I tried to do it for SGDQ 16 after that but I ran out of steam and didn't finish.

aren't you doing another list right now

Yeah, I'll work on them at the same time. That one requires me to think about what I'm writing more whereas this mostly just requires me to watch and take a few notes. I need to strike while the iron's hot on this list, so I'm not gonna wait around so that I finish the other one.

Runs I might skip because I don't want to be spoiled on the game:

Kirby and the Forgotten Land - I am playing this game right now! I'm through the third world, so... probably about halfway, maybe a bit less, I guess? I may use the time-honored GDQ tactic of 'stalling' since this one's early - or maybe I'll skip it and come back to it once I've beaten the game. I would really like to watch this one so I will probably find a way to fit it in.

Omori - Spoilers for my goty list, but I didn't finish this. I wasn't enjoying it, but a lot of people swear by this game a lot, so I'm not sure if I should leave this one and come back to it someday - on the other hand, if I wasn't enjoying the game, I might not feel compelled to go back to it anyway, and seeing this run might be the only thing that gets me interested in it again, maybe I'll be more interested in the game after that. I would like advice on this - if you played Omori tell me what you think.

Super Mario Odyssey - I've completed this game, but I didn't do everything. That was a while ago, and I think I'm over it, so I'll probably just watch and see what I missed.

Tunic - A very new game! I want to probably buy this for the Steam summer sale, so maybe I'll try to blow through it by the time I get to this point in the marathon. I have no idea how long it'll take me to get through the marathon up to this point, so we'll see if I need to stall, or delay this one, or what.

Celeste - I haven't played the DLC. I am sure that I can just do it sometime before I watch this run, so I'm not worried about this.

Control - This one will be another game-time decision like Tunic. I already own this game and it's been on my to-play list for a while, it's just a matter of sitting down and doing it, which I will. I have no idea how long it is, but I can probably put this one away before I get here. Kirby, Tunic, and Control will be my major projects to get out of the way for this list.

Elden Ring - This one is at the very end, and I have no idea what I intend to do about it. I want to play Elden Ring unspoiled, so I probably will do that before this, and I have no idea yet if I intend to beat Elden Ring or not because I'm not even sure I'll like the game. We'll see.

Every other game is either one I've played/beaten, one I don't particularly care about, or one I've never heard of, so they're all on the table. If I see a game that I suddenly really want to play, I might stop the run and play it or something, we'll see how it goes.

Okay, that's it. I dunno when I'll start watching the first game but it'll be sometime soon. I just wanted to get the topic up to get me started.

Do people have different KFCs than I do here, because like, their fried chicken is worse than grocery store and even gas station fried chicken, it's just awful

I'm never going to eat at CFA so easy choice

I own I, II, and III for the GB and I'm annoyed at myself for skipping IV and V as a kid because I-III are nothing special (which is why I didn't bother) but then IV and V are actually good

Very little discussion of MMIII here, which is hands down the most difficult game in the classic series hands down, despite otherwise being the most nondescript of all of them

I'm glad I'm not the only one who saw Plucky Squire and went 'holy shit'

Even if it doesn't deliver much more than what's in the trailer, if it delivered only that it would still be worth my time

Really running the gamut from mediocre to awful here

X8 > X5 > X6 > X7

But none of em are a prize

MMBN2 is my favorite game in the series but I suspect it's mostly because it's my first. It does also have the best soundtrack though imo.

To be totally honest I thought they might never rerelease MMBN2 because of this. I bet they at least go in and clean up some of the random "damns" and "hells" (if I recall correctly one of the bad guys literally says 'damn it to hell' lol)

Oh you're right, my info was old

That's amazing news for MM11! I hope they'll take it as a good sign

Ori has a faster start-to-tears time than fucking Up

I genuinely didn't think it was possible to like X3 the most

X2 > X > X4 > X3

Fun fact: Despite being the worst BN, BN4 is the second best selling BN game. Oh sorry, I meant the second best selling Mega Man game (behind only MM2). Fresh off an honest to god masterpiece in BN3, at the height of the popularity of the series as a franchise with the show and toys and all that, they put out BN4. lol

NFUN posted...

Whazzat? You want summa dis WHISKEY?

I mean, there's so much more than just this. Everything in Netopia is completely off the rails. There's definitely some random npc dialog that got past censors.

It's really funny because BN3 is so straightforward and tame by comparison - it's the best story and script BY FAR, but it just lacks BN2's complete and utter anarchy

MMBN1 is probably more like 10 hours to beat, the rest I'd say 20 makes sense if you progress at a fairly leisurely pace

4, 5, and 6 give you a completely different set of bosses/allies and powers you get, which is pretty significant, but not worth playing both games for unless you really want to. It is a shame though because all the different bosses are fun and the fusions are fun to play with

3 was different - blue version was like a 'special edition' they released later in Japan but they gave us both versions. They're BARELY any different at all

andylt posted...

This trailer is better than the one on the Direct. I've never played these and knew nothing about them until Para happened to talk about them the other day, but they look pretty cool. Never played a Mega Man so this would probs be a weird place to start though lol.

I like the trailer music!

Battle network is meant to be a great place to start. It's really its own series and it's not meant to have continuity with other MM games. Most of the game's bosses are based on bosses from the original series, so that's really fun for fans of the classic games, but you don't need to be familiar with them at all, it doesn't matter.

Wow did we speak MMBN collection into existence?

NFUN posted...

6 doesn't have liberation missions

It has a similar style of puzzle minigame that goes on WAY TOO LONG

Crescent-Moon posted...

BN4 has "Netfrica" as a location.

They live in tents and their champion fighter is a young black boy.

He uses a generic evil-type navi.

The game is as bad as that sounds.

I mean yes, but also, let's not forget how utterly unhinged BN2 is

BN4 is garbage but I actually liked BN5 a lot. BN6 is good too but it has some... annoying issues

3 > 2 > 1

2 continues to be underrated but 3 is unassailable

Rocket 10

Rocket 9

Hey so, I actually forgot when I put this list up that I'm going on vacation this week! I won't have a computer, just a phone, so doing any writeups will be impossible, sadly. So bear with me while I take a week off and I'll come back with the rest of this list over the course of July. Didn't get a writeup done today because I was focused on vacation prep and I need to sleep now.

The list so far:

39. One Step From Eden
40. Mario Golf: Super Rush
41. Pawnbarian
42. RITE
43. The Pedestrian
44. BPM: Bullets Per Minute
45. Murder By Numbers
46. Fall Guys
47. Luck Be a Landlord
48. Webbed
49. Dorfromantik
50. The Legend of Doom

I'm really excited to talk about the rest of this list! I enjoyed all of the games I've talked about so far and they only get better from here.

Rocket 8

damn, oh yeah him. he's also hard!

Dels posted...

i should finish it out at some point.

i got stuck at a boss on mmbn3 that i could swear was like, absolutely unbeatable and 10x harder than anything i'd encountered in the games (beyond secret post-game bosses which i didn't do)

but also it was just a random story boss like 1/3rd through the game so there must have been something wrong with me for not being able to do it because there wouldn't just be a difficulty spike like that out of nowhere?

BubbleMan is known for being one of the hardest bosses in the series

Rocket 7

MMBN4 is the black sheep of the series for a good reason but BN5 and BN6 are good

Dels posted...

well i think mmbn1 is lovely idk if there's a reason people think it doesn't hold up.

It just feels like a prototype of the rest of the series to me. It's an easier, shorter game with largely less interesting bosses and less interesting chip designs, lacking some quality of life features that exist in later games, with an internet world that doesn't look as good. (Also Elecman's level is probably the most annoying puzzle area in the series I think)

Rocket 6

The house of representatives is not the savior you think it is

Rocket 5

Rocket 4

Yeah just start with MMBN2 or 3

Rocket 3

Sorry about all these screenshots coming out in terrible quality by the way, I'm fucking some of them up apparently because I'm lazy - I'm just pulling them off the internet and resizing them to give a little bit of visual flair to my writeups.

#39: One Step From Eden

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/5/7/AAA-H0AADYWN.jpg

One Step From Eden is Mega Man Battle Network, but as a roguelite deckbuilder akin to Slay the Spire. Yeah, that's pretty much guaranteed to be a winner. I bought this one right away and I don't regret it, even if I do have a few issues with the way this game plays. Yeah, I'm just getting right into the game here, no rambling intro paragraph about some unrelated thing.

Mega Man Battle Network, for the uninitiated - if there's somehow uninitiated out there, who the hell are you - is a spinoff Mega Man RPG series for the GBA. In it, you move Mega Man around on a 3x3 grid against a 3x3 grid of enemies, and you have a 30-card deck of 'battlechips' that you randomly draw from, which give you a hand of attacks and abilities to use in the fight. It's one of the most elegant combat systems I think anyone's ever made, although that's really a writeup for a different list than this one (I'll get to it someday). While MMBN already polished its own system pretty much perfectly by the third game, there was always plenty of room for someone to come in and do their own twist on it. Hence, One Step From Eden's MMBN roguelike.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/5/8/AAA-H0AADYWO.jpg

There are some differences here; it's a 4x4 grid instead of a 3x3, and instead of having a 30-card deck of battlechips that you can't reshuffle, instead you start with a small deck of 4 and build it up, and you can reshuffle the moment you run out, though it takes a few seconds to get them all back. There are different characters with different starting abilities and decks, and you take them through a flowchart of levels very much like Spire's, fighting bosses and collecting items and such.

On paper, and mostly in practice, the game is really good. All of the characters are fun and different to play, and the variety in both chips and items is excellent. Bosses are well designed and have cool attack patterns. The presentation is sleek and stylish, with the visuals and music both on point; I'm kind of a sucker for this millennial cyber-anime vibe it's got going on, although I do think most of the character designs come off like edgelord deviantart OCs.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/5/9/AAA-H0AADYWP.jpg

I do think there are a couple of problems; mainly that there's a readability problem with this entire game where there's a lot of stuff flying around and it's really hard to keep track of the action at times, and most of the basic enemies are really hard to remember so it's not easy to internalize what they actually do. Also, this game moves faster than MMBN, so a lot of the times it feels like instead of lining up a chip to get the best shot in, the best thing to do is just spam every chip you have on hand and hope for the best, and just reshuffle if you have to. It can sometimes feel hard to build up the right synergies in your deck, at least for me, and I end up having a lot of random garbage that doesn't go well together - the strength of MMBN is that you can carefully plan your deck to synergize well, but here you're just kind of stuck with whatever you end up with and you have to make it work. There's some mechanics I don't intuitively understand well - I still can't really tell you off the top of my head what 'flow' does and how it works.

For the most part, though, even just resigning yourself to mashing attacks and hoping it works out is still a viable strategy, just because the game plays really well. It moves too fast and I don't feel like I've mastered it at all, and I'm not sure that I ever will, but I'm really glad that a game like this exists. They should combine all my favorite games with roguelikes, really. It's a free ride onto my favorite games list.

Next up: People who enjoyed Hypnospace Outlaw may also like:

DragonGargoyle posted...

(Also your top 3 for 2010-2019 are some of my favorite games in general. rn I consider Undertale to be my #1, and BotW is the most relaxing experience I've had with a game)

I will say for the record that there is a game missing from my top 3 of last decade because I played it like a month after I finished that list, but it'll probably come up at some point in this list (hint)

Rocket 2

Why the fuck don't I remember this

fake fan smh

wait when was there putt putt

azuarc posted...

Surprise, it's just Xenoblade DE.

Surprise, nobody got it.

#40: Mario Golf: Super Rush

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/9/8/7/AAA-H0AADYTj.jpg

I really like golf, which is a shame, because I hate basically everything about golf. From the environmental impact of all the water and land use and all of the labor that goes into its upkeep, to the inaccessibility to anyone but the rich, and the elitism and gatekeeping that comes with that. There's a whole attitude about golf and the types of people who play golf that is utterly noxious to me and I really can't in good conscience support the sport. At the same time, the rare times I am on or around a golf course and I shut all of that out for a moment, golf courses are beautiful. I'm the sort of person who enjoys really quiet and gentle activities in the outdoors far away from most other people, so golf is perfect. The rolling greens and the smell of fresh grass on a sunny day are perfect, so long as I forget the real world costs and inequalities. This makes golf a perfect sport for the realm of fantasy.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/9/8/8/AAA-H0AADYTk.jpg

Mario Golf is an institution. I've never really cared for other golf sims; too dry, too many stuffy white men in polo shirts who I don't care about. (Golden Tee does get a pass though, those games are cool.) Introducing Mario into the mix, though, livens things up a bit. Mario Golf for the N64 was great - just simmy enough to kinda feel like real golf, just wacky and arcadey enough to not be boring as hell. Really walks the line just right.

And it did so for four games, with Toadstool Tour being a nice upgrade to the 64 version, and the GBC and GBA installments adding cool adventure/RPG elements into the mix. And then Mario Golf... uh, kind of died for a bit? Not like F-Zero died but not really that far off either. It's hard to believe that between 2005 and 2020 we only got one Mario Golf title - World Tour for the 3DS, which I remember being sort of disappointed with but maybe it's just because I don't like playing as a Mii in story mode. It's been 17 fucking years since we had a console Mario Golf! The last one was Toadstool Tour! They didn't put out a Mario Golf title on the fucking WII for christ's sake! The console that's practically made for a golf game!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/9/8/9/AAA-H0AADYTl.jpg

But it's finally time, and now we have Super Rush, and mostly I'm just glad it exists, because it really strikes me how long it's been since we've had a new console Mario Golf. I haven't really sat down and played as much of it as I really should have before writing this writeup, but what I've played I've really liked. I mean, it's Mario Golf on the Switch. It's a perfect game to take outside on a nice sunny day and relax with. It's as polished as you'd expect from the series, it looks great, and its new gimmicks are fun. I'm a huge fan of speed mode - cutting out having to wait for other peoples' turns keeps the whole thing moving a lot faster and it adds some interesting little strategy elements that didn't exist before - how much time do you want to spend lining up the perfect shot? And it's got online play! I think this mode's a necessity for online play to be fun, probably, just because it cuts down on the waiting.

I haven't really played the story mode. I don't know what it is I have against playing as a Mii but it just annoys me to be playing as an ugly Mii in the midst of a bunch of way cuter characters (see also: Animal Crossing). Maybe I'll go back to it sometime. Dunno if I'm missing much. I think there's some other modes that I haven't gotten into as much as I should have - maybe I'll take my Switch outside and have a few rounds as the weather heats up. In any case, not much more to say about Mario Golf. It's exactly the Mario Golf that it ought to be, as far as I'm concerned, and that's good enough.

Next up: One of my favorite games ever, but in roguelike form, is a pretty good way to get my attention.

Rocket 1

I'll check out The Long Dark

#41: Pawnbarian

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/7/6/0/AAA-H0AADYQA.jpg

For some reason, about two years ago, Youtube sent me down a chess rabbit hole. You know that thing Youtube does, where you watch like just *one* video on a topic that's slightly outside of your usual watching habits, and Youtube goes, alright, time to pull up the entire catalog of things related to this and see what gets clicks? Yeah, I don't know which chess video it was that I watched that caused it, but Youtube went 'aha, chess, she's into chess now' and decided ALL of my recommended videos were going to be chess for a bit. To be fair, it worked. I don't really know why I got interested in chess - I don't really play. Not more than anyone else does anyway, I obviously know HOW to play chess and I understand the basic principles of how not to play the shittiest possible chess, but that's about it. But watching lectures about famous chess games and how to play better chess was really interesting to me anyway, and watching them made me feel like I knew something about chess and like maybe I could even learn how to play it well one day. Anyway, I don't know why I opened this writeup with a paragraph about chess, because Pawnbarian is not chess. It is a chess-themed game, but it's not chess.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/7/6/1/AAA-H0AADYQB.jpg

Pawnbarian is a chess-themed roguelike in which you have your player character on a 5x5 grid, and a deck of cards, each card representing a chess piece - you move the squares indicated by the chess piece. You starting deck includes kings, knights, bishops, and rooks, all of which move exactly how you'd expect, as well as pawns, which also move as expected, moving only forward except diagonally to capture, but they 'promote' to queens if you move to the back rank. Also on the board are enemies that you must defeat by moving onto their space, as you do in chess; sort of like other similar games like Into the Breach, the enemies move first and display their 'intents', each of them having their own attack patterns and abilities, and then you play up to 2+ cards of you own, moving your piece to capture the enemy pieces and avoid being attacked. It goes for several levels, and in between levels you can upgrade your cards with powers or recover your health. It's not really a deckbuilder like most of these games, your character's deck remaining the same throughout, but it does have a lot of the other trappings, such as incrementally increasing difficulty levels like those found in Slay the Spire.

I think I originally played this game as a flash game on Kongregate or something, but it has been polished up and upgraded into a fully-fledged game, and it's quite good! The premise is awesome and hooks you immediately. It starts out seeming easy but quickly gets quite daunting, and you need to play really sound tactics to advance. Enemies have quite tricky abilities that require you to defeat them in certain ways, requiring clever and patient use of your cards to make good moves. It lacks the hallmark variety and randomness that most roguelites tend to have, but the tradeoff is that you can't rely on spinning the roguelite slot machine and hoping for good items; you need to play well in this game. It demands it, and it expects a lot. I sort of appreciate the tactical prowess this game requires for something seemingly so simple.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/7/6/2/AAA-H0AADYQC.jpg

There's a lot of different characters with different starting decks and abilities, too, which really gives you a lot more to do in this game. Each character plays completely differently and has their own gimmick, and usually their own little fairy-chess pieces as well. I really like the Mystic, who can't get armor upgrades for their cards but creates safe zones whenever they move that prevent enemy movement and give you defense, and whose special "Ghost" piece lets you move to any unoccupied space on the board, which can be upgraded with cardinal or diagonal after-attacks for devastating effect. They're all fun to play - except for the Shogun whose whole gimmick is that they're shogi pieces instead (a sort of Japanese chess) and I can't remember how they work at all.

I haven't been able to advance too far into the higher difficulty modes, but they go quite far. Even at the first level the game is already pretty tough and I doubt I'll be able to get much further than that, because this game seems to have a way of punishing my impatience and maing me feel like a fool. As far as roguelites go, I didn't spend quite as much time absolutely hooked on this one, as it lacks that addictive quality of every run being totally different, but it's nevertheless an extremely precise and well designed strategy roguelike that I'd recommend checking out. You don't even have to be good at chess!

Next up: Oh boy, it's time for a tentpole Nintendo game! Which one is it gonna be?

Rocket