Lurker > Paratroopa1

It's nice to see whenever a newbie to the series understands how good 5 is

Kenri posted...

I'm not sure there's a good solution that keeps out 100% of junk while accepting 100% of "legit" games (even if they're bad), but yeah something needs to be done. A complete ban on anything with AI generated content would be a good start except AAA publishers probably wouldn't like it.

I feel like it should be as easy as just having a review process! Just have someone who approves new games by review and keeps out stuff that's obvious slop that would just junk up the system. It's not really that hard to figure out which games are just random garbage and which ones are legit games (even if they're not very good).

Lava

Super Mario Party Jamboree (Switch)
-
Lorelei and the Laser Eyes (Multi-platform)
-

I haven't had time to play the game for a couple weeks but I will resume soon

10

I think there's almost a 0% chance that anyone taking the deferred resignation gets paid even a dime

I watched Emilia Perez and yeah it's one of the worst movies I've ever seen, let alone ones nominated for best picture

Felvidek (PC)
Nine Sols (Multi-platform)
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (Xbox, PC)
Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth (Multi-platform)

Life is Strange: Double Exposure (Multi-platform)
Unicorn Overlord (Multi-platform)
Another Crab's Treasure (Multi-platform)
Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story (Multi-platform)

8

Developing a competitor and then making it open source is a really funny way to crash another country's economy

-
Rise of the Golden Idol (Multi-platform)
UFO 50 (PC)
-

Thanks! Appreciate it, this has helped me patch some holes in my library that'll be affected by the upcoming library sharing sunsetting

Quake 2 would be nice

7

eh

Sbarro

LightningStrikes posted...

Karla Sofa Gascn, Emilia Prez

Bracing myself for an extremely stupid culture war cycle

2

hombad46 posted...

Deluxe asks if you've played the original and acts differently if your answer is 'no'

It'll be fine.

I completely forgot about this. Yeah, just play Ultra Deluxe.

Yeah, I don't think playing Deluxe without playing the original should be a huge problem. Deluxe is in some ways designed for people who HAVE played the first, but I think it's also meant to be a perfectly fine way to experience the game for the first time for new players as well.

My only suggestion on Deluxe is to ignore it when it tries to give you "new content" at first (you'll know), explore most or at least some of the rest of the game first and save it for later. You SHOULD do it eventually, but not right away.

Oh interesting! I didn't get a chance to play that one 2-player yet

Piano

STREAM 34

Lords of Diskonia, Part 7

One more go at the final mission, and it was extremely easy this time! I basically blew threw two easy battles and that was it. I was a little bit thrown by the Queen, but - I can't even remember what I did, I think I just threw a dragon at it or something. Easy! Gold secured. But yeah, that cherry is going to be a nightmare. The game isn't that hard but it's so easy to just get a bad start. And that's exactly what happened - after winning one mission to start a streak, my very next one had an awful start. My opponent had more gold, more units, more skills, and the first combat just went horrible - I didn't have very good units, but they had a spider, that spider was the frontline unit, AND they were allowed to use the spider on turn one. Killed two of my units and poisoned two others. I ended up just restarting the game just to see if it was even possible to save scum - no, it isn't. Oh well. This one's gonna be really hard given that the AI is just blatantly unfair with its play - it makes a major mistake on maybe 5-10% of its moves or so, and the other 90-95% are perfectly engineered to do the most damage possible. It's really hard to play against this, especially if you're at a disadvantage - the only advantage I can find is that, as a human, I'm better at planning - the AI does leave itself to getting knocked into the water, or has a tendency to play units that aren't as useful or prioritize targets badly. But yeah, this is... hard.

Warptank, Part 8

Did the other half of the levels and got the cherry. The only level I couldn't figure out was the one that was stuck inside walls from all sides, but after a little bit of exploring I found the fake floor I could go into. I knew where the final sector was already - I'd been there before, just had to go back. Most of the coffees were too hard to find without using a guide, and I had to use a video to find one of them because the solution was so difficult. The final sector was fun! It's cool that this game has so much unique music and stuff in it - I wish every game in UFO 50 was as fleshed out as this one. Warptank is a pretty solid game but I don't like it as much as the other good games and maybe it's just because I'm too stupid to figure out where to go half the time.

Barbuta, Part 2

It's Barbuta! I decided that in honor of GDQ, I would finish off this game, since it's the only one from the GDQ run that I haven't finished yet, and it taught me the fastest route - I didn't realize I could skip so much of the game! It makes sense though - you need a lot of upgrades to get to the A/B room to see the solution, but I've already seen it, so I can just grab the platform item, do the A/B room, and go to the end. It took three tries getting to the final boss - dodging the attacks can get a little hectic and I didn't realize how big his hitbox would be so he squished me once. Third time I played it perfectly and got the cherry. I do intend to still return to this game one more time to do a 100% run where I see everything in the game, since there was stuff I missed on my gold playthrough. I think the cherry for this game sucks, and I'm going to pretend that getting every item is the true cherry goal. But for now, I have 35 cherries, and that's my unlock goal to open up and play...

Seaside Drive

Seaside Drive! We're finally breaking into these last few games of UFO 50. I wanted to savor them for as long as possible but we're really winding down to the end here. I'll be sad when it's all done - I have enjoyed this collection of games so much despite a lot of frustration with some of the games. Anyway, Seaside Drive is good, there's not a lot to say about it. I wasn't thrilled about another shmup, I was worried it would be a Star Waspir situation, but no this is probably the easiest of the lot - though it's still not too lenient. I lost a life on the first two stages first run through and died in level 3 - but on the runback I got the bonus stages on level 1 and level 2 which gives you a whole +2 lives? Sheesh. I'm not a fan of this rich-get-richer design but whatever! The vibes of this game are great, I love how it goes from day to sunset to night to sunrise, and the fish-themed level at the end is amazing with its orcas and SHARK WIZARDS. The mechanics of this game are okay but I sometimes wish I could strafe and shoot. It was pretty short and I beat it in under half an hour, but I didn't have quite enough points for the cherry, so I guess I'm going to need that third bonus game out of level 3 for it - I took only two deaths, once on level 3 and once on level 4 but that just wasn't enough. A decent game, probably smack dab in the middle of the pack overall.

Hot Foot, Part 4

Well, I gave it a try. At first I thought I was doing better, and I kinda was! I got past game 3 and got the gift, finally! Wow! And then I got completely overwhelmed in game 4 and lost 15-5. Yeah, this game is meant to be played co-op, isn't it? Jesus. This is easily the hardest game in UFO 50, there's just no competition whatsoever.

Campanella 2, Part 7

I finally had it. I *had the run*, damnit. I took the key in sector 1 and got really lucky in The Rink - I opened the key door since I was going to Temple Grounds anyway and I got free armor anyway! Amazing. I also had the kill-for-fuel thing, so I really thought this was it. I got to the sage in Crepelia for the first time and fought the final boss, which was really easy to do. But, on the escape sequence, I didn't know where to go - I followed my compass arrow, but that was just leading to stuff in the wrong direction, I thought I was going the right way because there were fuel rings in that direction but ultimately it was a huge wrong way that led me nowhere, and there was no time left to go the right way and win. So I lost, just like that. I had no idea what I was doing - I didn't know there were arrows showing the way to go because it just looked like background noise to me, I couldn't see them because I was focused on piloting the ship. Ugh. Well, I'm playing better now so I guess I can get it next time probably but how demoralizing. One last frustration with this game before I can finally beat it for real.

Yeah, I think I beat it on my third or fourth attempt. I was kinda whatever about it on my first play but on my second play, when I saw that everything was randomized, I was kinda excited! It's not a very deep game, but I think it's the most underappreciated game in the collection.

I thought about asking for AA trilogy since I don't actually own it for some reason and it'd be nice to have, but I'd rather someone who hasn't played it get it

WazzupGenius00 posted...

Those Digital Eclipse collections (Atari 50, Tetris Forever, Llamasoft, etc) absolutely should count, so much work is put into those

Yes, without question. They're original games.

Taiji is great, scratches the Witness itch perfectly

Against the

Quick list of stuff I watched and would recommend highly:

Pikmin
Portal 2
Kirby Air Ride
Astro Bot
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
Shenmue
UFO 50
Metroid Prime
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Super Mario Bros.
Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando
Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster
Batman Forever: The Arcade Game
New Super Mario Bros. Wii
Fallout: New Vegas
Super Mario 64 A-button challenge
Golf With Your Grandmother
Who Shot Johnny Rock?
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
Hitman: Blood Money
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
Elden Ring Lockout bingo
Elden Ring Saxophone showcase
Crazy Taxi
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Super Metroid

If you want just the must-see hits I'd strongly recommend the New Super Mario Bros Wii piano run and the Super Metroid race at the very end of the marathon. The Elden Ring lockout bingo race was extremely good too (I don't even play the game).

Last #1 seed - Choose one

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

Last #2 seed - Choose one

Unicorn Overlord

#4-5 seeds. Choose four. Top 4 voted get to be #4 seeds

UFO 50
Tekken 8
Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door
Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth

5-12 seeds - Choose 10. Top voted gets a 5 seed, the rest will be seeded based on totals.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
Lorelei and the Laser Eyes
Ace Attorney Investigations 2
Life is Strange: Double Exposure
Rise of the Golden Idol
Super Mario Party Jamboree
Animal Well
Crypt Custodian
Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore
Cryptmaster

12-16 seeds - Choose 8. Top voted gets a 12 seed, the rest will follow based on votes. (Six of these games will not make the bracket)

Infinity Nikki
Botany Manor
The Jackbox Survey Scramble
Princess Peach: Showtime!
Mario and Luigi: Brothership
Pacific Drive
Beastieball
Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story

I associate Sora with Square's brand, not Disney's, it's obviously pedantic to insist he's not a Square rep imo (unless you are very explicitly ONLY talking about business)

Lolo_Guru posted...

Do you want a co-op partner for it? I've been grinding that cherry solo myself and have gotten pretty close.

lol maybe? I dunno, I want to try to do it single player but we'll see

Yeah, I'm worried it could be a little time consuming to win two matches and then get bodied by a shit setup in the third but we'll see I guess.

switch

Three times in a row? Not so bad.

CoolCly posted...

I've hit a brick wall in Block Koala. I went from "oh cool a neat little puzzle solving game! I love these" to "i have no idea what to do" real fuckin quick

I'm not even 10 levels in ;_;

One of the levels in the first 10 levels - I think it's level 8? - is one of the top 5 hardest puzzles in the entire game. I'm not kidding or exaggerating here, this is just straight up a fact. The puzzle difficulty in this game is not linear.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/4/47ee7f61.jpg

Here's where things currently stand, for me. I have 17 cherries remaining. I want to "unlock" the remaining games at 35, 40, and 45 cherries, giving me incentive and savoring these last few unplayed UFO 50 games for as long as possible!

In order of how much effort I think each game will take, here's the remaining cherries I have (not including unplayed)

Warptank - At first I thought this would be hard, but eh, I'm like almost halfway done and I can just look up some of the secret stuff I haven't figured out yet. Just a matter of time.
Barbuta - I still haven't come back to this one since the very beginning! I'm so annoyed I didn't get it on my first run just because I got hit once. I've seen the speed route of this game and it should be not that big a deal to pull off, but there's also the whole NW corner of the map that I never explored for some reason and I'd like to do a full run and get up there just to see what's going on - I wish cherry was more of a 100% thing.
Lords of Diskonia - I only have one more mission to go, and then I don't know what the cherry goal will be but it's probably not so bad?
Mooncat - I never came back to this one for some reason, had a friend who wanted to see it but never got around to streaming when he could watch, I'll just have to play more. This one will still take some effort since I still know so little about this game.
Quibble Race - Playing for 10000 is annoying, it shouldn't be that hard but it'll just take some finagling with the rng
Pingolf - Pretty challenging, I'm sure I can do it if I set my mind to it
Campanella 2 - I'm pretty sure cherrying the game will be as easy as golding it, and I've felt incentivized to keep trying, but man it's hard.
Mortol II - Still haven't really played this game at all! I'm sure it won't be that bad when I put my mind to it? I just really wasn't into it the first time I played.
Rock On! Island - I do NOT want to do this one. Doing the final mission while taking no damage is going to be sooooooo tedious.
Valbrace - Still a lot of game left to be played in this one and I really don't want to.
Star Waspir - This game is fucking impossible and its only saving grace is that it seems short.
Combatants - I'm sure I can figure out this game eventually, somehow! It doesn't have that many levels!
Hot Foot - This seems like it's going to be the hardest cherry to get in some ways. I haven't even done three games in a row, you want me to win six, all by blowout? How am I gonna get this one without a co-op partner? Absolutely insane goal.
Fist Hell - This is one of my least favorite games - I haven't been able to motivate myself to play through even the second level - and it's notoriously one of the hardest cherries in the game. I dread this one above all else and it might be what keeps me from finishing this challenge.

Bushido Ball

Bushido Ball rocks and I'm so glad I went back to it for the cherry. I was intimidated for a while because it felt like winning with no continues would be impossible (without changing the settings, which you can apparently do to "cheat" but I wasn't willing to do that), but I went back to it, using my main man Raizo after experimenting with a couple other characters, and I just practiced and eventually got better at the game! While Yamada was the scariest opponent to fight because his AI just plays crazy defense and has insane trick shots, I actually ended up losing to Kotaro the most I think, his shots are just powerful and hard for me to track fast enough to play defense, so it kind of ended up being a game of "the earlier I get Kotaro the better" since the AI gets harder as you go. I had less problems against Ayumi and Chiyome but never got them late. Tomoe would kick my ass at stage 5 a couple of times. Ultimately I got Yamada on stage 5 and just whooped his ass like 8-2 for the win. I really like Raizo, his wave slash is great at forcing the issue and while he doesn't have a lot of control, if I wait for the AI to move out of position a bit I found I could almost always sneak a shot by them. I haven't played this game multiplayer but I bet it's great.

Rail Heist

What an amazing game, probably the best game in the entire collection. I played this one over a lot of sessions and currently it's my #2 most played game behind, of course, Grimstone (what is it about this universe?). Until the final level, getting the pacifist star on the train car with a lot of dynamite was probably the hardest; it was hard to find non-violent solutions on a train where everything is a weapon, but I eventually managed. I was blown away that the game actually had a third act plot twist, given that it has almost no plot, lol, but the last two levels were awesome. The Final Score took me two sessions to beat by itself, it was actually a pretty linear level but figuring out the solution was really complicated. I still don't have the pacifist star for it! It's the only star I'm missing, but it turned out I only needed like 2/3 of them for the cherry so whatever. I'm determined to get that last star. Anyway Rail Heist rules. Every level is just so open ended and requires such interesting tactics. It feels like the most complete and wholly-designed game in the collection.

Warptank

I quit this one right before the final boss without knowing, oops! So getting gold was really quick after I returned to it. I felt inspired to play this game against after watching Spooty's run of it at AGDQ, he made the game look really fun and well, it is, though it's still not one of my faves. I started going back for the coffees and while I appreciate the flowers giving vague hints to where they might be I still had to use a map to find half of them because some of them are really nasty to find. Sometimes my brain just can't handle this game. I have like half the coffees now and getting the rest shouldn't be too bad. This game felt so long, but now that I've beaten it it doesn't seem that bad anymore. I still don't know how to get to this one level that's surrounded by walls, and there's a couple other levels somewhere out in the world that I just haven't found yet, which is mystifying.

Valbrace

I got really tired of Valbrace on my second play of it. Level 2 is just so big with a lot of dead ends - there's really only one linear way to get to the exit but figuring that out is really hard because you can go a long way only to get to a door that you need to open with a lever somewhere completely different and you'll probably just die before you make it there. Just a frustrating game. I'm not enjoying it despite the fact that the combat system is cool and the game should be cool in general. I find the random item drops weird in a game that's not a roguelike and where you retry floors and I hate that most of them are useless. It's hard to experiment with items, but especially with armor where I have so little feedback to which one is better! Valbrace is where I'm starting to get annoyed by UFO 50's philosophy of "figure it out for yourself" because the ability to experiment feels a bit limited since I either don't have feedback, or if I'm wrong I just lose and have to start the whole floor over. I've started cheating this one and just looking up maps/guides because I'm exhausted by it. It's too much.

Lords of Diskonia

I keep going back and forth on whether or not I'm having fun with this game. The AI is absurdly bullshit, making insane trick shots every turn - but if it didn't do that, the game would be too easy. The fact that it can make insane trick shots is why it's fun, right? So I should really be embracing that, right? I dunno! The fact that I'm at the point of the game where there's more units helps - early on in the game, I felt like it was way too repetitive, but now that it's not just coming down to knights and champions all the time it feels a lot less repeitive, so that's good. But yeah I got really frustrated with the 9th mission because I lost really late in it after the AI pulled some truly absurd bullshit and it took me a few attempts to finally beat it - I have not beaten mission 10 yet and I don't know what the cherry goal will be. Mission 10 sucks because of how random the start setup is, so I can get really screwed early on. Spiders still OP.

Combatants

This game still sucks.

Campanella 2

This game is really starting to frustrate me - it's just SO unforgiving where a brief lapse in concentration can ruin a whole run. I know I'll get the run eventually, but man, this game is just way harder than it looks.

So I initially wanted this topic to be a diary that I'd kinda fill out with my experiences as I played through each game, because I was just curious about the process of how long each game would take and how many sessions of play it would take to beat the whole game, but I kept falling behind and now it's no longer up to date, whoops! But just for my own sake I still really wanted to document everything I did in this game so what I'm going to do is just kinda list everything here but instead of doing my thoughts on the games as I go I'll just do them as a big block at the end here. So anyway here's what I did in the last few streams, so I can get caught back up for real:

STREAMS 27-33

Elfazar's Hat, Part 2 (Cherry!)
Pilot Quest, Part 3
Rakshasa, Part 4
Mini & Max, Part 2

Rakshasa, Part 5 (Cherry!)
Pilot Quest, Part 4
Mini & Max, Part 3 (Cherry!)

Valbrace, Part 2
Combatants, Part 2
Rail Heist, Part 6

Lords of Diskonia, Part 4
Divers, Part 5 (Cherry!)
Pilot Quest, Part 5
Quibble Race (Gold!)
Campanella 2, Part 4

Pilot Quest, Part 6 (Cherry!)
Bushido Ball, Part 2 (Cherry!)
Lords of Diskonia, Part 5
Rail Heist, Part 7
Campanella 2, Part 5

Lords of Diskonia, Part 6
Rail Heist, Part 8

Campanella 2, Part 6
Rail Heist, Part 9 (Cherry!)
Warptank, Part 7 (Gold!)

Okay let's talk about games

Elfazar's Hat

This game rules. Getting the cherry was unfortunately really, really easy once I got the gold - now that I know how the game works and I know the levels' layouts and all that, it was no problem at all. I don't think I died until the final boss or something like that. I found the bonus levels this time, finally, and didn't even need them. On the one hand, I appreciate that this game doesn't overstay its welcome, but I would love if it had just like, one more level to beef it up a bit. I can kind of see why so many UFO 50 games are harder than this one - they really want you to have to spend time with them getting to know the games and master them. I only had to play Elfazar's Hat for an hour to get the cherry. What a pleasant game though. It's definitely one of my favorites.

Rakshasa

Here's an example of a game forcing me to take the time to get to know it better, and I think it's better for it. Rakshasa wouldn't have been as fun if it wasn't committed to kicking my ass a little bit. I had to get to that last level with the asshole birds a few times before I was able to finally clear the game - I did make it to the final boss once and died before clearing it on the second go. Good game.

Mini & Max

This game seems to have a reputation as one of the best games in UFO 50 and it's deserved. I got pretty addicted to playing this one and despite being a relatively long game by UFO 50 standards I beat it in three sittings. I probably had more specific points to make about it that I don't remember now but oh well. The fact that most of the game's upgrades are just randomly scattered throughout the micro world is interesting and makes exploring everywhere feel worthwhile, especially since the upgrades are actually good. The "final dungeon" so to speak where you go inside the clockwork robot fucking rules, I wasn't expecting such an interesting, Mega Man-like action stage in this game and it really blew me away. Once I actually figured out how to get to the doorknob and understood how many glass shards I was going to need to gold/cherry the game, everything about the game made so much more sense - I felt like I was collecting the fragments kind of pointlessly but it turned out that you really do need to clear *most* of the game's quests to have enough to win! Which retroactively made some of the more pointless-feeling wandering that I did earlier feel more satisfying. I'm dumb because I didn't get the hint about the real seat of power being behind the throne and forgot I hadn't explored that sparkly so I got stuck for a bit. But yeah, great game. I theorized that the game was taking place at the same time as Party House and was so excited when I was right!

Divers

Well, thank goodness that one's over. I did have to grind a bit, up to level 12 I think, but the final boss wasn't actually that hard when I went there all geared up and ready to go. This game feels like it has really punishing encounters until you suddenly hit a power threshhold where they're not. Ultimately a pretty unfulfilling RPG imo but I do like the characters and the atmosphere of the game enough for it to not be a bottom tier game.

Quibble Race

New game! I decided that 30 cherries was enough to "unlock" Quibble Race, so I played it after beating Divers. Quibble Race is... fine? I like the premise of it being like, alien horse racing for total assholes. It's got a good hook and it's pretty easy to play. It feels like it's so reliant on rng though and there isn't really that much strategy you can really play to get ahead, or what strategy there is is VERY rudimentary. I was able to win after a few attempts but getting the cherry at 10000 feels like I just need to play pointlessly aggressively and hope to get lucky. Not looking forward to it. Game feels like it should be better than it is.

Pilot Quest

I hate Pilot Quest. The cherry goal of this game is just so asinine - I had to grind for quite a while, not using the idle mechanics, but rather just going around the map and getting a lot of coins so I could pump up my health enough to tank fighting the secret boss a whopping 6 times? I guess the idea is that you're supposed to play through the game multiple times to get the meta upgrades? Fuck that! Having to spend like 100 coins on health is really stupid though and I just can't believe that I feel like I'm sort of expected to do that. This game is awful and I'm glad I'm done with it, I really have nothing else to say about it.

Tactical Breach Wizards didn't have ANY nominations yet?

Slow

I think Switch 2 conveys pretty strongly "yeah you have to get the new one" but idk, I mean we just straight up don't live in a time where there's going to be generational transformation between consoles anymore

I think it's funny that people think the name Switch 2 is a disaster, when in my opinion it's the only name that could have possibly worked

10

A stunning achievement of puzzle game mastery by one of the gaming industry's premier dipshits. will continue to fascinate me for all time

I think I actually hate number-go-up games which is why I feel the same way about Balatro's success as I did about Vampire Survivors's - just making me go 'what the hell?' I like Balatro more than I like Vampire Survivors but still

Carole

colliding posted...

I don't get Balatro. It goes beyond just being "not my thing" to me actively wondering if there's something wrong with me. It seems like a pretty simple deck-builder to me and I win pretty easily 75% of the time. Played about 6 hours.

I can commiserate, I play a ton of games in the "roguelike deckbuilder" sphere and I fell off Balatro really quick, just didn't feel like it had that much to offer. I'm happy that something of its nature is receiving goty honors and the like but why it's this one, I can't really understand

5

I've really soured on it over time. Like... I was addicted to it for a little bit, while it was kind of the only game of its kind out there, but god the aesthetic is just *so* ugly and unpleasant that I can barely bear to look at the game anymore now that there's better options out there. Once I picked up Necrodancer I never looked back