What are you currently playing?

[meiam]

Well I'm playing Control since it's usually name-dropped when discussing 3D Metroidvanias. The definition of what the fuck is a Metroidvania is loosy goosy enough, and I don't know what it is about 3D that makes it even vaguer. Some people talk Arkham Asylum and Fallen Order like they're MV. I think the only 100% 3D MV I've ever played is Supraland, and people don't like that one because it's not very combat oriented.

It's hard to specify why but it feels like a very PS3 game so far. Moment to moment I'm reminded of inFAMOUS, minus the traversal. Something about character movement and speed. Also combat, insofar as it's based around clearing waves of spongey enemies and using powers that all boil down essentially to shooting. Contrasting with the perfunctory gameplay, the presentation's really intriguing, and I like the idea of an 'indoors open world' that manages to feel like an office building instead of the typical research facility/space station. Nice to hear James McCaffrey too.

I wouldn't say control is a 3D metroidvania, it has a little bit of backtracking/sideroom discovering, but very little and is mostly straightforward, there's also very little modification of your character movement ability.

iirc the game use adaptive difficulty that makes enemy more sponge the better you do/stronger you are (I remember messing around with the gear and it did almost nothing because the game would aggressively adjust the enemy stats).

Still its a pretty good game, world building is really strong, but the actual story is, I feel, the weakest story they could have told in that setting, so it felt like a big missed opportunity. I really like the artstyle cause I love brutalist design and its rarely used in game.

 

[BrawlMan]

Nice to hear James McCaffrey too.

Alan Wake II is his last role before passing. You'll get plenty of him in two different forms.

 

[gorfias]

I'm using "Wand", formally, "Wemod", $70 a year for something we used to do for free: use cheats. I never came close to beating "Dishonored" before and now I can.
Had a huge problem and couldn't play Steam games until about 3AM and my 1st test was to get back into Dishonored by I forgot to start up Wand. I just walked up and was passing an enemy, thinking I'm invisible and had G-d mode on. Nope. He starts shooting me. A number of other guys start shooting me. Another number of guys in these steam punk stilts start throwing bombs at me. I scrambled to shut the game down without saving! More soon.

 

[BrawlMan]

Ninja Gaiden Shadow Black - A mod of the Game Boy game that allows 5 lives at the start, and a slightly better frame rate. I consider Shadow to be the best of the 8 bit games, right next to Ninja Gaiden II (NES). While challenging, it's much forgiving with most of its checkpoints, has the best songs, and has the best eye catchers after beating a boss. There are only 5 levels, but they're all the perfect length and don't out stay their welcome. Natsume and Tecmo accomplished so much on this tiny cartridge, and the game is still fun and addicting to play. It's one of the best action platformers on the console, and is at least in my top #5 of GB games. I still have the original cartridge.

Final Fight (SNES) and Final Fight Guy (SNES) Arcade Colors Remix. These are mods that make the SNES game look more like Arcade and GBA version. Both games are still one player, but the game is still fun despite its shortcomings and missing a level. Though FFi SNES still has some terrible slowdown in certain spots that eats inputs, while FFiG fixes a majority of those, and adds in additional power ups that show up in the GBA version. You can only fight 3 enemies at a time, but they spawn in fast as soon as you kill the next guy to make up for it. Even on the hardest difficulty, enemies still die fast, so it doesn't feel like you're beating on them forever, but the same thing can happen to you, if you get careless. So there is fun to be had here, if you can stand missing a level or don't mind going solo only.

All of these games I played and hooked up onto the TV screen with my RG35-XXH.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

Finished Dispatch last night.

My girlfriend pushed me to choose Blonde Blazer, and honestly, still mad about it. Not because I hate Blazer, or have the hots for Invisigal, but having a relationship with Invisigal is so much more significant to the story than having like one date with Blazer. I mean, Blazer is your boss who you pretty much only encounter in cut scenes. Invisigal is one of the heroes you dispatch, you spend so much more time with her.

So yeah, definitely not a fan of this ending. Especially with how Invisigal's redemption is seemingly tied to you fucking her. In general, I really enjoyed the game. The world, the characters, hell even the dispatching gameplay. But it was just wayyyy too short for me to buy how close the Z-team became in the end. I don't know what the official timeline was, but it felt like they went from disorganized rogues to found family in like 4 days, ala Suicide Squad.

Definitely down for more of this, but I do hope the sucess of this first season means that future content has way more meat on it's bones which will hopefully result in a better story.

I'm planning on another playthrough to try Invisigal's path, but fuck the inability to skip dialogue and cutscenes sucks. Especially when I had to restart the game quite often due to bugs, which I find ridiculous in such a tiny game.

 

[Ezekiel]

I don't really like any of the Duckstation TV/CRT filters, nor how Final Fantasy VII looks without. "dolphinfx/crt/CRT-HYLLIAN" is in these screenshots.

Spoiler

That giant spider-scorpion boss on top of the mountain (last picture) was so powerful that I wandered elsewhere, thinking it was optional or I wasn't supposed to fight it yet, until I had nowhere else to go. I defeated it by keeping the health of my characters maxed out most of the time; his attacks take so much health at once. Makes me concerned about switching party members. I mean, it makes me wonder if I shouldn't just keep the same party till the end so that they keep upgrading. The story explanation is that they stay separated so that they won't be found.

Still don't love turn-based combat. If I have to take turns, I'd rather remove the time factor. Often takes too long for me to scroll down to an item I want to use. Also, the commands (spells, attacks, etc.) block the characters' health and magic statuses at inconvenient times.

Traversing all these strange landscapes, seeing all these towns, feels epic.

Find it odd that there is no flee command, although I saw a 10,000 gil (moneys) materia in a store that might be that.

 

[thebobmaster]

I think I might be done with Dispatch. Funnily enough, it's for the mechanic that SO many people praise, the dispatching. It's so fucking luck-based, in my experience. Sure, I can tilt it somewhat in my favor by making the right hero picks, but it's still left up to a percentage chance to succeed, and if you don't do well on earlier dispatches, you can't get the stats to keep up when the level of difficulty starts ramping up.

 

[Worgen]

Beat the first real boss in Persona 3. Fight was cool, nothing like the first one in 5 though. So far P3 really does feel like the beta for what would be done in P5. I know it came out like 15 years earlier, but I don't remember anything from P3 back in the day and recently beat 5 so its getting compared to 5. I am enjoying 3 so far, its still a good game, but certainly is lesser compared to 5. Not really far enough to be able to speak much about the overall story, but 5 had grabbed me more by this point then 3 has.... I think I'll stop now since right now its really feeling like this will just be saying 3 isn't as good as 5.

 

[Ezekiel]

Actually, it does look much better with the filter (that still isn't as good as a CRT TV) on, I found when turning it off after so many hours.

 

[bluegate]

Actually, it does look much better with the filter (that still isn't as good as a CRT TV) on, I found when turning it off after so many hours.

Personally I very much prefer the bottom image over the top one.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Well I'm playing Control since it's usually name-dropped when discussing 3D Metroidvanias....

Man, it would never even occur to me to call Control a metroidvania. I know that's kind of the point of how silly labels can be but still. Control is just a hella-cool action game IMO. I loved that game- the only Remedy game I ever got on with.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Dispatch

I surprised myself by even bothering with it because I have never had interest in Telltale or "interactive novel" type games. But the hype got to me, I found the trailer fun, and I was intrigued by the fact that the dispatching seemed more "game" than just dialogue options and QTE. So when I had a rainy day to myself I bought it.
After burning through the first couple of episodes, I got totally hooked and charmed by the setting, characters, and presentation, that I abandoned my desire to go out for a drink and meal at my local to stay home, order in, and play through the whole damn game. Season? Whatever. All to say- I absolutely adored this TV show which is technically a game.

The only thing I found a little odd is how there really is no fail state, which is why I'm disparagingly calling it a TV show more than a game. I don't think there's any consequences to failing anything? I dunno. Didn't bother me because I was there for the story but still, it's weird.

Spoiler: Here are the major choices and consequences I had while playing:

Cut from the team: Sonar, for the exact reason Robert says when you choose that option, that he's dumb enough to get captured by boob promises. And I just like shadow-y assassin types more.

Chose to add to the team: Waterboy, 'cause I thought it might be funier.

Chose to spend a date-like evening with: Visigal. The staying on for the movie vibe felt more interesting than just a boring dinner date.

I mostly then chose pro-Visigal things like leaning in to kiss but then backed off on a couple big ones, like defending her when Chase yelled at her at the housewarming party and most importantly I did agree to cut her from the team because I decided to prioritize my role as team leader. I know now this cut off the "happiest" ending where Visigal is redeemed but I'm fine with that because the ending was cool.

It did mean I got the achievement for not hooking up with anybody, hahah.

I don't really see myself replaying it as I can't imagine the differences are that big, and I though overall the story I got was satisfying.

 

[Worgen]

Personally I very much prefer the bottom image over the top one.

I think zeke has managed to find one of the few instances where I don't mind a crt filter since crisp 3d models look really out of place with low res backgrounds like that.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Man, it would never even occur to me to call Control a metroidvania. I know that's kind of the point of how silly labels can be but still. Control is just a hella-cool action game IMO. I loved that game- the only Remedy game I ever got on with.

Yeah I'm enjoying it a lot but for some reason r/metroidvania always fumbles the ball when identifying 3D metroidvanias. I guess because of the interconnected world/backtracking/new abilities but by that definition God of War 2018 is a metroidvania.

 

[Bedinsis]

Dispatch

[---]

The only thing I found a little odd is how there really is no fail state, which is why I'm disparagingly calling it a TV show more than a game. I don't think there's any consequences to failing anything? I dunno. Didn't bother me because I was there for the story but still, it's weird.

What happens if you don't dispatch anyone for any of the assignments in the map mode?

 

[BrawlMan]

Man, it would never even occur to me to call Control a metroidvania. I know that's kind of the point of how silly labels can be but still. Control is just a hella-cool action game IMO. I loved that game- the only Remedy game I ever got on with.

Yeah I'm enjoying it a lot but for some reason r/metroidvania always fumbles the ball when identifying 3D metroidvanias. I guess because of the interconnected world/backtracking/new abilities but by that definition God of War 2018 is a metroidvania.

Control is less of a MetroidVania, and more of an open hub world really. Though I can't blame, he will for getting confused.If they're not familiar enough. Though I swear it's the Souls like label all over again with these things.

I'm playing Fighting Force (PS1). For how much this game has aged poorly in certain areas.It's surprisingly still decent and fun. It is a difficult game though, but once you learn to spam certain attacks, it gets a lot easier. It's no Die Hard Arcade nor Dynamite Cop, though. Both of those games runs circles around Fighting Force. The music is still bad ass though.

 

[Worgen]

Yeah I'm enjoying it a lot but for some reason r/metroidvania always fumbles the ball when identifying 3D metroidvanias. I guess because of the interconnected world/backtracking/new abilities but by that definition God of War 2018 is a metroidvania.

I really do prefer metroidvania for 2d games rather then 3d since 3d really muddles the water. With 2d mertoidvania really separates itself from platformers/shooters by being much more exploration focused. 3d games feel like they fall into the actionadventure category much cleaner.

 

[thebobmaster]

What happens if you don't dispatch anyone for any of the assignments in the map mode?

Presumably, the same thing that happens if you completely bomb the assignments. You still move on, without any real consequences that you don't put on yourself.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I really do prefer metroidvania for 2d games rather then 3d since 3d really muddles the water. With 2d mertoidvania really separates itself from platformers/shooters by being much more exploration focused. 3d games feel like they fall into the actionadventure category much cleaner.

Metroidvania really being a sub-genre of action adventure is what muddles the waters for me. To me it's nestled between Zelda and DSouls, and once we go 3D what could be technically construed as a Metroidvania in 2D ends up having more in common with Zelda or with DSouls.

Like Arkham Asylum is usually presented as a Metroidvania in r/metroidvania (for lack of a better reference to a community) and so is Tunic, but both are debatable and never in a million years would I think to compare Tunic to Arkham Asylum anyway.

 

[Worgen]

Metroidvania really being a sub-genre of action adventure is what muddles the waters for me. To me it's nestled between Zelda and DSouls, and once we go 3D what could be technically construed as a Metroidvania in 2D ends up having more in common with Zelda or with DSouls.

Like Arkham Asylum is usually presented as a Metroidvania in r/metroidvania (for lack of a better reference to a community) and so is Tunic, but both are debatable and never in a million years would I think to compare Tunic to Arkham Asylum anyway.

I wouldn't consider Tunic or Arkham metroidvanias. For me Metroidvania has a pretty specific definition and 2d side scrolling is a must. Even top down like the original Legend of Zelda I wouldn't put there. I would just clump that into adventure.