Lurker > Kenri

Yeah like. I get that the pressure was on him to keep going because he was bringing in tens of thousands of dollars, but I feel like a host should have shut it down for his safety (also for liability tbh)

I feel like we're running the risk of having a runner drop dead at AGDQ right now

This StepMania exhibition is insane

Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe technically takes over 10 years

I wanna say I hated the Venture Bros. Scooby Doo parody too but I probably haven't seen it since the first time it aired

Xiahou_Shake posted...

This literally happens in Blue Lions and as good as that route was thanks purely to Dimitri it was pretty bizarre to have a majority of the loose plot threads from White Clouds just totally vanish.

Right, I know it happens in Blue Lions -- that's why I rate that route highly! I feel like it doesn't drop nearly as many threads as people say it does, it just glosses over some of it. And those parts are mostly bad so glossing over them is a good thing!

In FE yeah kinda! I think TWSitD is kind of a tumor on the second half of 3H's plot and the game would be better if they never came up again after the end of White Clouds.

But Claude is also just not a terribly compelling protagonist, and nobody in Golden Deer feels as connected to what's going on as the Lions do.

3H is the only game where the quality varies wildly between routes (well. I guess Fates but they're all really bad so it doesn't matter). Really hard for me to rank. Blue Lions would be top 3 easy but Golden Deer is down there with Awakening and Sacred Stones and stuff.

Joltik
Shedinja
Beedrill
Combee
Dwebble
Volcarona

stacked. bugs too good.

The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe (Steam)

I posted my thoughts in the Stanley Parable topic but I'm just putting this here for completion's sake.

Tomomi (Steam)

Okay so this game fucks. Definitely exceeded my expectations. It's a metroidvania that plays super fast and the combat is simple but good. I wish there was less anime nonsense because the rest of the story is just gay and cute but oh well. Don't let the main character's design turn you off, every other character is better designed. It is pretty short though, I beat the whole thing in one (admittedly long) sitting, final time ~2h45m.

Yeah I think I agree with Tony here about it being the wrong move, but it's hard to say.

Only tangentially related but I hate how every controller is different these days. You tell a friend "press B" and they just hit you with a blank stare. "Playstation X" *still blank stare* "Xbox A" "Ohhhhhhhh"

Anyway X is bottom for me, even though I don't play Sony consoles that much it feels more consistent there than wherever Nintendo has decided to move it to

It must be a gacha game, right?

Gible
Garchomp
Rayquaza

lol yep I got that one. One of my favorite gags is the broom closet being boarded up if you visit it too much.

I got a couple more endings, the epilogue, and the test achievement so I think that pretty much wraps up the game for me.

I think playing it in 2023 made the original content less poignant? The Ultra Deluxe content feels pretty relevant because it focuses on sequels but idk, there are a lot of meta-commentary games about player choice, and honestly some of them were already years old in 2013. That being said the banter was still pretty enjoyable. Fun game.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

Extra keeps getting better and Premium is still a joke.

At this point I feel there needs to be a hard shift with some kind of make good from Sony, I feel like these "Premium" releases are intentionally antagonistic.

Or someone just needs to hire an assassin against Jim Ryan.

The utterly bizarre theory that Sony themselves have forgotten which tier is which continues to gain credence

Leonhart4 posted...

I'm surprised there's still this weird aversion to these things. They're totally harmless.

Having an achievement pop after an emotional cutscene or whatever absolutely makes a game worse, so they're not always totally harmless if implemented badly.

(Extra bonus points if the scene was watching a character jump to their death and then an achievement pops and it's called something like "Not the Fall That Kills You". Complete mood killer.)

Okay, I put in some more time. I solved the awaiting input puzzle, got the whiteboard ending, checked out the new content, and got an ending with credits. Where you watch Stanley not pick either door from above. I think I got other endings too but it's hard to keep track of what counts as an ending and what doesn't. So far my favorite sequence might be the skip ahead button, it just really appeals to my specific sense of humor.

What I have left is:
-Survive the countdown.
-Find the last figurine (the one in a red and blue place...)
-Other stuff??

MacArrowny posted...

But there was one point at which I hated this game and would've given it a much lower score if I'd quit then, which I was tempted to (like, bottom five on this list even). I was stuck at the third level for a couple days and felt like I was making absolutely zero progress. It was incredibly frustrating and I wasn't having very much fun. I decided to keep playing for one more day before giving up, and thankfully that was enough for me to do it. I beat the third level easily on that run, and didn't have too much trouble with the rest of the game (other than the squid assholes on level 6), and would even say I quite like it overall now!

Haha, I one-shot areas 3 and 6 without much trouble. But I was stuck for a long time on areas 1 and 5.

I agree with you about the story being better when it was about the alien planet rather than Selene. Kinda ended up hating the story by the end. Oh well.

Hmm I don't like most of these

Zapdos
Rotom
Magnezone

My first thought was Star Fox 64, but after considering it further my actual answer might be Sayonara Wild Hearts

Yeah this is straight up falling through the floor Sonic Adventure style lol. It happens the most when entering the second office room at the beginning of the game and immediately when the game starts, but has also happened to me in the stairwell to the boss' office, on the lift to the facility, and other places. Also sometimes I can walk through objects that should be solid (including walls, leading to falling out of bounds). I want to say it's tied to leaving a room too quickly or staying in a room too long, but that's just my perception.

Maybe it's a Steam Deck thing, though it's supposed to be verified. *shrug*

Okay so I started tonight and got the following endings (spoilers just to be safe): shut down facility, reactivate facility (died though so I assume there's more to solve here), confusion ending, museum of game's development, answer phone, dream/crazy ending, galaxy light show/suicide. I think that's all, some of them kinda blurred together. Also several endings where I just died without fanfare. There's some stuff I can't figure out yet like the elevator in the boss' office and the computer in the second office room that's awaiting input, it increments the first two loops you interact with it on but then vanishes.

Gonna take another crack at it and head through the new content door tomorrow maybe.

Biggest flaw so far is that I fall through the floor, like, a lot. At first I thought it was actually intentional because of where and when it was happening, but then it started happening fairly deep into specific runs which is just frustrating.

TomNook posted...

I have fapped to Bubble Bath Babes on NES, yet I have never fapped to Axiom Verge 2. Therefore at least one NES game is objectively better looking.

this post was way funnier when i read it as Bubble Bobble

I hated all the debuff shit in Fates but daggers were definitely the best implementation of it. If it's just daggers and not also skills/every silver weapon/etc I'd be okay with it.

MacArrowny posted...

I dunno, I feel like everyone agrees poor frame rate is bad/a flaw.

maybe for video games but definitely not for movies; lots of people think 24FPS looks much better than higher frame rates. unstable frame rates might be universally a flaw though.

here's a random example: https://gizmodo.com/the-hobbit-an-unexpected-masterclass-in-why-48-fps-fai-5969817

By art classes you mean classes where you actually do art? Those are obviously important too but very few people are gonna have expert knowledge about even one art form if that's required.

Lopen posted...

I don't have the depth of study to articulate to them why they're wrong

And here you just... admit you don't have the knowledge required to support your opinion (which wouldn't even be required except that your own argument says it is) but also you're right anyway, and people who disagree with you are wrong even though maybe they do have this expert knowledge.

like... is this performance art you're doing right now?

Lopen posted...

Having a lack of self confidence is saying "b-b-b-but that's just an OPINION!!! MY ART APPRECIATION CLASS!!!"

Just because you don't have the knowledge on the topic to grasp why the thing you like objectively sucks doesn't mean it doesn't.

how do you write these two sentences right next to each other. you just need expert knowledge and then you'll know what art objectively sucks and what doesn't, but also learning about art in college is bullshit and leads to having the wrong opinions?

masterplum posted...

banksy is no better at art than a toddler.

I'm sorry man but this is objectively an insanely funny example

Loving this definition of objective that involves lots of people thinking something is or isn't a certain quality.

Spheal
Articuno

Anagram posted...

This is by far the most stacked poll for me.

I think I agree. I don't like the Jynx or Mime lines but everything else is pretty great.

Kaze and the Wild Masks (Steam)

she wild on my kaze til i mask [EXTREMELY LOUD INCORRECT BUZZER] she kaze on my mask til i wild? [EXTREMELY LOUD INCORRECT BUZZER] she donkey on my country til i kong [EXTREMELY LOUD INCORRECT BUZZER]

Lopen posted...

When you say "Axiom Verge 2 is wonderful art and anyone who disagrees doesn't understand art" it's more like "Murder is a perfectly acceptable form of resolving disagreements" in terms of a stated 'opinion.'

bad example, lots of people believe this (definitely more than 30%), they just find ways to justify it

Natalie posted...

Replace Symphony with Rondo, then. Either way, they represent the last era of major devs funneling real resources into sprite artwork.

Rondo doesn't look nearly as nice as Symphony though.

(I think I agree with you in general though, I'm just being difficult.)

MacArrowny posted...

Have people seen artists do those "here's an updated version of a work I did a year ago" type things where the artist wants to show how proud they are of how much they improved? Are people here saying the new versions of those aren't objectively better?

Absolutely blindsided by the direction this post went. There's a whole joke that people often can't tell which one is the older art in these comparisons.

Mewtwo59 posted...

I've been busy this weekend so I just caught up with the topic. Looks like you didn't get Juni's event, so here's a reddit post that sums up the most messed up thing Kaga did:

Hmm Gamefaqs doesn't like GIFs so just imagine the Ratatouille reading meme here

There are some that I'd call closer to FE, but still not terribly similar, like:

Shining Force
Warsong/Langrisser
Zone of the Enders: The Fist of Mars
Super Robot Wars (at least some of them)

For newer games, there's stuff like:

Banner of the Maid
Symphony of War: The Nephilim Saga

And X-COM goes... somewhere in this comparison. Idk.

Natalie posted...

There's a reason no sprite-based game in the last 25 years has matched the visual impact of Symphony of the Night: nobody has the time and budget to put in that work.

I mean, SotN cribbed a lot of its sprites from Rondo of Blood, so this one feels like a slight miss? Like yeah that game is fuckin beautiful but they also took a lot of shortcuts.

Don't most SRPGs lack a universal counterattack? My experience has been that FE is pretty unique in letting you always counter, especially since it lets you do it at full power.

shane15 posted...

I'm not a fan of all these retro looking games. The devs are just pumping out these games to cash in on nostalgia. Why make a game like Octopath Traveller in full 3D with modern graphics when you can do it for a fraction of the price with a retro look but still charge full price. They've found a way to make 30+ year old games again and got people to buy them. They do the same with the anime style game. Only difference is they at least keep them a few generations behind at most graphics wise.

I'm not gonna defend SE's "HD pixels" style too much but in general I really like pixel art and think it's the best looking art style for video games. It also looks to me like a whole lot more care and effort goes into beautiful pixel art than most other games, even those with technically superior graphics, but admittedly I don't have the expertise to know if I'm right about that. Regardless it's pretty strange that you're acting like people get somehow tricked into buying these games rather than genuinely preferring them this way. There's a reason (well, multiple) I buy barely any AAA games but tons of indie ones!

StealThisSheen posted...

I think people need to start accepting that there is a difference between "ugly" and "style I don't like," and that... Yes, there are going to be games that exist with styles you don't like.

And then there's Nidhogg 2, which is just both.

Natu
Gardevoir
Sigilyph

SeabassDebeste posted...

what does dual mono mean?

Psychic/Psychic

MacArrowny posted...

Hint: sometimes it's nice to play a game where the bad guys you're fighting are just 100% evil and there's no real need to develop them (2017)

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus

tried to find a funny joke answer and couldn't

Cool is definitely a more apt descriptor than, like, functional or good.

I like the Steamworld Dig games for what they are. They're cheap and don't have any big issues and you can just play 'em and then they're over. But yeah 2 didn't exactly wow me.

I unironically love the mechanic where a unit's horse can take damage and die. That's unadulterated Kaga right there.

On the other hand, spear might being "x + yH" sounds like something you'd read on a shitty Magic the Gathering card from Homelands.

Dogworld (Steam)

Not sure how I feel about this one. It's billed as a Metroidvania but it's very very linear without much reason to backtrack or explore, and not even many upgrades other than new guns (no way to upgrade health, for instance). But as you keep playing the gameplay gets more exciting - there are some tricky platforming sections that especially deserve praise - and even the silly dog apocalypse setting starts to get some engaging lore.

Unfortunately you then get to the end of the game and realize that this game fucking hates you, the player, specifically. The final boss is an incredible jump in difficulty, comparable to playing Super Metroid but instead of the normal final boss you have to beat Nightmare King Grimm. There's a point of no return before the final area, so you can't go back and upgrade your weapons. If you're like me you unlocked the secret weapons before going through this point of no return, only to find out that they're possibly worse than the weapons you had to destroy to make them. And then when you beat the final boss, finally, you discover that you're stuck with the bad ending because of something you didn't do 4-5 hours ago, in a game that is about 6 hours long with 2 of those hours being trying to kill the final boss.

Dogworld is almost certainly meant to be replayed but yeesh, I think I'll just play a game that respects my time instead.

The Doylist answer is probably that multiple characters got combined into at least Phoenix, and possibly Zak also, and originally the plotlines were separate.

The Watsonian answer actually is just that he's an asshole and kinda dumb, I think.

Peace___Frog posted...

And people say conservatives have no sense of humor

Next joke gonna be "I vote for Donalds but I identify as someone who voted for McCarthy"

UshiromiyaEva posted...

Lot sof new Engagage content out today from news sites, including Digital Foundry! Haven't watched any of this yet, and there's probably more I missed.

https://youtu.be/73M4hiy8jIk

https://youtu.be/DMGCtrfbZQc

https://youtu.be/Yw8GXd8UhXo

https://youtu.be/_GC8j5NUjI0

https://youtu.be/F8o1OwPpvyY

Not trying to be a downer but I couldn't even make it through that first clip. Serious Fates vibes in the worst way.

Gotta be Sly Cooper

Splatoon 3