What are you currently playing?

[BrawlMan]

Just been playing various games on the Miyoo Mini+. I think I am over stimulated right now. I tried the Rushing Beat brawlers again, and jeez do they feel average. More so the first game, but below that. RB Ran is so much better. RB Shurya is considered the best of trilogy, and is the easiest. Though for some reason I prefer Ran more and the like the characters there. Played some Undercover Cops and Battletoads & Double Dragon.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

I'm 90% certain there's something wrong with the parry timing of Mad Max. Either that, or they severely fucked up controller support (which is possible, because occasionally the game forces me to look straight into sky out of nowhere when using a controller).

 

[BrawlMan]

I played through RE5 again earlier this week as Sheva this time. It's fun and different going through her unique sections of the levels and maps Chris can't access. I honestly find melee options a bit more fun, despite her attacks being slightly weaker than Chris. I get why, but do find a dumb design decision where you can't choose your character on a first run and it has to be Chris, and can only unlock Sheva after beating the game. The same method applies to both DLCs as well.

 

[BrawlMan]

After finishing Rushing Beat Ran. What I consider a 7/10 brawler is now a 6. The game has good mechanics, but more or less wells out its welcome by the fourth and final stage. Enemies are way too cheap or have inescapable grabs. Enemy variety is limited and the last new enemy type is on the 3rd stage. The last two levels are pretty lengthy, thus repetition starts to set in. Weapons are weak aside from the rifles and one time throwables. I am seeing why Rushing Beat Shurya is considered the best of the trilogy. Ran has good combat mechanics, but they only some times work depending on who you're fighting. Sometimes enemies can punch out of your regular attacks or super attacks. That's bullshit. It was fun playing again, but I am not heading back to it for a long while. It's bigger improvement from the first game. This franchise got nothing on Final Fight nor Streets of Rage especially.

 

[Piscian]

Finished Life is Strange



Little perturbed. I played the regular version and the graphics are pretty rough. I assume they didn't have a huge budget and were beholden to the engine, but it has a lot of minor giraffe neck and where are you looking glitches. The only unforgivable glitch is at near the very end theres a pretty important scene and on ps5 your lips don't move. Annoyed me so much I looked away during the conversation.

Apparently theres a remastered version that looks much prettier would have preferred to play that, but I didn't know it existed and I was just playing whatever was in the catalog.

Aside from that 10/10. Definitely threw my heart for loop. The midgame twist, even though you could kinda see it coming, weve all seen butterfly effect, still ruined my whole day. Crazy sad game but that's how you getm I suppose.

On next sale Im definitely gonna pick up the remastered version and replay it and the prequel.

For now I already downloaded Life is Strange 2. Stupid Playstation subscription is finally paying me back, bit by bit.

 

[BrawlMan]

I decided to play Undercover Cops (SNES) on the Miyoo Mini+. The port is decent, but it lacks the co-op and there's some slow down issues. I don't see it as a big deal, because you can get the arcade version on emulation easily, and at least all three characters have their entire move sets. The gameplay still holds up, and none of the levels are missing. The other advantages the SNES version has over the arcade version are the super moves are easier to perform, and the bosses are much easier compared to their arcade counterparts. My personal favorite character is Zan, as he has a biatch slap as a grab attack and perform an Izuna Drop. Rosa has the best super desperation as it will hit everything at least twice. Matt is the most unique of the bunch, because he's an ex-football player that's the slow grappler of group. He can actually run, instead of dashing unlike the others, making him not that slow of a Mighty Glacier.

 

[BrawlMan]

Battletoads & Double Dragon (NES) - Ironic that the Nintendo version is usually considered the best version of the game followed by the Sega Genesis version. While the SNES version is considered the worst version of the game, despite having better graphics. It takes my place as second best Battletoads game. It's basically the first game, but much easier yet still challenging in certain areas. There are some sections that tend to drag though. You only get three continues. The good news is that there are two cheat codes and they're easy to perform at the character select. One of the cheat codes can take you to the final stage. I had to use it one so I could properly continue the fifth stage.

 

[Piscian]

Ubisofts game design just makes me sad. Im not really a genre specific player. I like Final Fantasy as much as I like Far Cry as much I like Siberia (the game).

I realized last night that assassin's creed Black Flag was on playstation plus and got excited because I heard such good things about it.

Coming off persona 3R then, Life is Strange, Id been craving an action game.

The intro with the ship battle was cool as hell, but then you're on an island and you gotta kill a guy for reasons that aren't made clear.

Then theres a giant map with a little clusterfuck of bullshit scavenging icons in that typical hamster wheel padding design with no explanation of what any of it means.

Fine whatever exploration is still cool. So you get off the island and "Hey buddy this is all sim, you're at work isn't that great!?". Awesome, so Im supposed to get invested in a story that is just a sim? Why not just make the pirate game "the game"?.

I know the smoldering I'll get on reddit when I crosspost this. "WWAAAH WTH ARE YOU PLAYING JUST THIS GAME?? Animus is the game, why you not know all the AC bullshit?"

idk? Why can't I? I can play FFVII without playing other final fantasy's? I can play RE4 without playing all of them?

I can't get behind supporting these kind of marketing design tactics being pushed in all their games. Everything has to have a greater narrative miming the cinematic universe shit everything has to include checkbox mechanics.

You can rant and rail about the other publishers doing slimy shit, but god Ubisoft is the king of hamster wheel game design.

I'm sure AC: Black Flag is a great game, but it's in spite of these things Ubisoft has to shovel into every game, not because of it.

 

[BrawlMan]

Ubisofts game design just makes me sad. Im not really a genre specific player. I like Final Fantasy as much as I like Far Cry as much I like Siberia (the game).

I realized last night that assassin's creed Black Flag was on playstation plus and got excited because I heard such good things about it.

Coming off persona 3R then, Life is Strange, Id been craving an action game.

The intro with the ship battle was cool as hell, but then you're on an island and you gotta kill a guy for reasons that aren't made clear.

Then theres a giant map with a little clusterfuck of bullshit scavenging icons in that typical hamster wheel padding design with no explanation of what any of it means.

Fine whatever exploration is still cool. So you get off the island and "Hey buddy this is all sim, you're at work isn't that great!?". Awesome, so Im supposed to get invested in a story that is just a sim? Why not just make the pirate game "the game"?.

I know the smoldering I'll get on reddit when I crosspost this. "WWAAAH WTH ARE YOU PLAYING JUST THIS GAME?? Animus is the game, why you not know all the AC bullshit?"

idk? Why can't I? I can play FFVII without playing other final fantasy's? I can play RE4 without playing all of them?

I can't get behind supporting these kind of marketing design tactics being pushed in all their games. Everything has to have a greater narrative miming the cinematic universe shit everything has to include checkbox mechanics.

You can rant and rail about the other publishers doing slimy shit, but god Ubisoft is the king of hamster wheel game design.

I'm sure AC: Black Flag is a great game, but it's in spite of these things Ubisoft has to shovel into every game, not because of it.

You're free to like or dislike whatever you want. Ignore the idiots on reddit. The majority of them don't amount of much to anything other than satisfying their own pathetic egos.

I finished Battletoads and Double Dragon. Game is fun, but it definitely has some cheap spots late in the game. There's only seven levels but you got harsh checkpoints. If you lose all your lives, you only get three continues. The final boss called me out for using cheat codes, but the Dark Queen and whoever designed the game at Rare, both can go fuck themselves for that statement. I can already tell you little kid me wouldn't have gave a crap either. Most of the bosses boil down to either hit or run tactics, or waiting for them to show up so you can hit them then back off. It explains why they get so much health and I hate damage sponges. If you have two players, you might be able to ping pong most of the bosses just right. Assuming both you can get that far in the seven stages. I still considered as the second best BT game. The first place winner being the arcade game.

 

[BrawlMan]

Ninja Warriors Again (SFC/SNES) - This is the Japanese SNES version and playing it on the Miyoo Mini+. This is the perfect single plane brawler to play on the go! I have two copies of the modern remake to the 1994 remake. Ninja is the best character of the three almost makes the game a cake walk.

 

[Bartholen]

More Lies of P. I'm going to start repeating myself somewhat, because I keep getting more and more impressed. I thought I was at a point where I might have been entering the final third, but by amount of bosses defeated I'm seemingly barely at the halfway point. I'm finally tuning in with all the systems, and the atmosphere's just great. It's somewhere between Bioshock and Bloodborne, with the air of a twisted fairytale, appropriately enough. I also have a feeling that for once there's proper incentive to play through NG+. When you enter a boss arena, they make noises and subtitles appear in an incomprehensible pictographic script. But turns out that script and dialogue is actually translated in NG+, which will probably give whole new insight into the story. I haven't even really begun experimenting with the weapons, but the system is just genius, and another incentive to play through NG+. It allows for some truly outlandish combinations, like sticking an axe blade on a dagger handle, ending up with a stabbing axe.

So far the two negatives are the enemy variety and one particularly tough boss fight. The enemy variety isn't that much of an issue, and so far there's enough bigger brute enemies and different dynamics (like the suicide bomber dolls) at play to keep it from being repetitive. The bigger one was the King of Puppets boss fight, which just felt unfair without summoning a phantom to aid. It's a two-stage boss fight where the two phases have entirely different movesets and dynamics, so it's more like fighting two bosses back to back. The problem was that the second phase has several incredibly highly damaging moves that you pretty much have to parry perfectly. The boss moves too fast to try to dodge them, and blocking isn't really viable with the amount of damage it deals. At half health it also does like a 7-hit, seemingly undodgeable combo where 3 hits are enough to kill you. I'm hoping it's not a sign of things to come.

Edit: It's also worth noting that this game may have been patched to quite a different state from where it initially was. The weapon degradation element, for example, has been barely worth registering. I've got probably like 15 hours in this thing, yet the times it's come up I can still count with one hand. The game's also definitely been on the easier side of the genre for me, whereas I saw quite a few people saying it's one of the harder soulslike games.

 

[XsjadoBlayde]

Dragons dogma 2 all well and good, but already the quest-specific NPCs tasked with escorting me to first city visit have gone totally AWOL after I decided to do a quick bit of platforming to get a chest on a small cliff edge and 2 of my pawns died by clumsy bumbling into the water trying to follow. It looked like the quest NPCs were stood waiting for my return at first, but were gone upon return, not to be found anywhere nearby or the quest starting area. With no witnesses, can't tell if glitched or they dead for good, or they dead but can be retrieved or just hiding elsehere. Is an uncompromising bugbear with obtuse design: is only as fine as the systems are polished to work as intended, otherwise the potential to be chasing bugged-out ghostie geese for hours instead of making any progress is a creeping anxiety difficult to shake off. Other than that though am now remembering what the first game did to stand out: the atmospheric nighttime horror-esque exploration, thankfully kept in for this version!

 

[meiam]

Dragons dogma 2 all well and good, but already the quest-specific NPCs tasked with escorting me to first city visit have gone totally AWOL after I decided to do a quick bit of platforming to get a chest on a small cliff edge and 2 of my pawns died by clumsy bumbling into the water trying to follow. It looked like the quest NPCs were stood waiting for my return at first, but were gone upon return, not to be found anywhere nearby or the quest starting area. With no witnesses, can't tell if glitched or they dead for good, or they dead but can be retrieved or just hiding elsehere. Is an uncompromising bugbear with obtuse design: is only as fine as the systems are polished to work as intended, otherwise the potential to be chasing bugged-out ghostie geese for hours instead of making any progress is a creeping anxiety difficult to shake off. Other than that though am now remembering what the first game did to stand out: the atmospheric nighttime horror-esque exploration, thankfully kept in for this version!

If NPC die their body will be brought to the morgue and you can resurect them.

Otherwise, best thing to do for escort is to just carry them yourself.

 

[XsjadoBlayde]

If NPC die their body will be brought to the morgue and you can resurect them.

Otherwise, best thing to do for escort is to just carry them yourself.

Ooh cool thanks, wasn't aware of that morgue function! Neat little sly immersions am playing more careful to discover from now on, take in the world's quirks at a slower place.

Aparently my NPC has yet to die though, according to quest page detail who's status of mortal coil has yet to set to "shuffled off" - another detail I'd only just learnt after reading a few comments on this (also helpful) video;
(tried to Google answers without recalling the name initially, to no avail. Was hoping it'd fill in the dementia gap along the way, lol)





🫡The search, the welfare check for Gregor begins, and hopefully ends tonight.🫡

 

[BrawlMan]

Rushing Beat Shura - I take back what I said. Shura is better than Ran, but there are still some weird design decisions. You only get one life, but with 30 continues, and you only get two super moves per life. Ran has the better overall cast. The game does have the most replay value with its multiple paths and multiple endings.

 

[BrawlMan]

Sonic Advance - Fun, vintage, early 2000s Sonic. I love it.

I finished Rushing Beat Shura. A good game, but you can't skip the dialogue. I appreciate the story, but I have no idea what's going, because it's in Japanese. All I can tell you is that I somehow got the best ending.

I am playing Sonic Blastman II later.

 

[Dalisclock]

Finally finished Live a Live.

Near Future Chapter-Basically a bunch of silly anime tropes like giant robots, psychic powers and the main character is named AKIRA for gods sake. The downside is that Akira isn't a great combat character, he's a support, but you still have to fight a lot of battles with him. Which is great until it totally isn't, like how Akira's psychic powers work great on mooks until they don't. But the endgame battles where you blow up tanks and planes with a giant Babylonian robot(I didn't know the ancient Babylonians had giant robots but sure whatever) is pretty cool.

Middle Ages Chapter- This chapter doesn't appear until you finish the first 7 chapters but the remake flat out tells you it exists so unlike the original it's not a secret/surprise. The first half of the chapter is a bog standard JRPG about a knight named Orestead saving a princess from a Dark Lord and it's boring as shit. What makes this chapter work so well is that about 50% through that entire thing starts getting deconstructed. Your allies begin dropping like flies, you slay the dark lord but the princess is nowhere to be found so you have to go home empty handed. To make things worse, you get tricked into killing the King(and of course, someone walks in on you holding a bloody sword standing over the King's body right after you do it) and the entire Kingdom turns against you. To top it off, once you redo the final dungeon to figure out just what happened, you find one of your friends who you thought had died in the dark lords fortress was not only still alive, but hates you for hogging all the glory and forces you into a fight to the death. Kill him and the princess shows up, sees the friend you just killed and declares she loved him because HE came for her, not you, before killing herself right in front of you. Which is the last step towards breaking your Knight character, who decides that since he's lost everything, he'll give into hatred and become the new Dark Lord.

Which all leads into the DOMAIN of HATE, which is basically the middle ages map again but this time with all of the 7 original characters are pulled through time and space to that place. You pick one of the 7 and then travel around the map recruiting the others to form a team, fighting monsters from the previous chapters as you travel the map. Sadly the Doman of Hate isn't super interesting because it's the same map you just did a couple times in the middle ages chapter and there are no people to interact with(though the fact the signs are covered in blood probably explains why). It's mostly an excuse to recruit a team of 4 from the 7 characters, level them up to prepare to face the final boss and do the optional but recommended dungeons to get each characters ultimate weapons. Or don't, but it makes the final boss earlier.

The final boss encounter(s) arguably do work well, especially if you recruit everyone and do a certain action at the end which opens up the ending to the TRUE final boss, where you eventually get to use all 7 characters in the final battle and it feels nice to be able to open up with everything you have and deliver a full ass kicking. Also you can redeem Orested, kind of, which is somewhat satisfying.

 

[meiam]

Finally finished Live a Live.

Near Future Chapter-Basically a bunch of silly anime tropes like giant robots, psychic powers and the main character is named AKIRA for gods sake. The downside is that Akira isn't a great combat character, he's a support, but you still have to fight a lot of battles with him. Which is great until it totally isn't, like how Akira's psychic powers work great on mooks until they don't. But the endgame battles where you blow up tanks and planes with a giant Babylonian robot(I didn't know the ancient Babylonians had giant robots but sure whatever) is pretty cool.

Middle Ages Chapter- This chapter doesn't appear until you finish the first 7 chapters but the remake flat out tells you it exists so unlike the original it's not a secret/surprise. The first half of the chapter is a bog standard JRPG about a knight named Orestead saving a princess from a Dark Lord and it's boring as shit. What makes this chapter work so well is that about 50% through that entire thing starts getting deconstructed. Your allies begin dropping like flies, you slay the dark lord but the princess is nowhere to be found so you have to go home empty handed. To make things worse, you get tricked into killing the King(and of course, someone walks in on you holding a bloody sword standing over the King's body right after you do it) and the entire Kingdom turns against you. To top it off, once you redo the final dungeon to figure out just what happened, you find one of your friends who you thought had died in the dark lords fortress was not only still alive, but hates you for hogging all the glory and forces you into a fight to the death. Kill him and the princess shows up, sees the friend you just killed and declares she loved him because HE came for her, not you, before killing herself right in front of you. Which is the last step towards breaking your Knight character, who decides that since he's lost everything, he'll give into hatred and become the new Dark Lord.

Which all leads into the DOMAIN of HATE, which is basically the middle ages map again but this time with all of the 7 original characters are pulled through time and space to that place. You pick one of the 7 and then travel around the map recruiting the others to form a team, fighting monsters from the previous chapters as you travel the map. Sadly the Doman of Hate isn't super interesting because it's the same map you just did a couple times in the middle ages chapter and there are no people to interact with(though the fact the signs are covered in blood probably explains why). It's mostly an excuse to recruit a team of 4 from the 7 characters, level them up to prepare to face the final boss and do the optional but recommended dungeons to get each characters ultimate weapons. Or don't, but it makes the final boss earlier.

The final boss encounter(s) arguably do work well, especially if you recruit everyone and do a certain action at the end which opens up the ending to the TRUE final boss, where you eventually get to use all 7 characters in the final battle and it feels nice to be able to open up with everything you have and deliver a full ass kicking. Also you can redeem Orested, kind of, which is somewhat satisfying.

I always liked the medieval chapter because it takes advantages of the short story format and tell a story that you couldn't do in a regular game.

 

[CastletonSnob]

Started Pokemon Ruby and got the first 2 Badges. Here’s my team so far:

Marshtomp
Beautifly
Ralts
Nuzleaf
Whismur
Zigzagoon

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

I checked out the Stellar Blade demo.

Well basically it's a reminder of how Elden Ring ruined such action combat games. Wait for the parry... wait for it.. wait... messed it up.
I've ranted about this bullshit already but, you know, here it is again, like Lies of P and whatever, where the only way to git gud is to get your ass kicked, then memorize not just the move sets but the exact timing of each move, and meta-game the counters with these parries, so that it doesn't feel like fighting it feels like many little QTEs.
And I know this always gets compared to Sekiro but Sekiro is actually good and fun and feels awesome, while Elden Ring was so popular and not as cool to fight as and now everyone does this crap.

Plus, the art style and graphics are both hyper-detailed but also dark, at least in the demo part where you're in a ruined street, so some of it was hard to see. I didn't mess with the settings too much, after all it was just a short demo.
Also it strangely feels heavy- like you're playing this girl but she feels slow and muddy to move around in? The boss fight at the end has one move where he's zapping the ground and of course you have to dodge but dodging feels slow so you can't spam it but the many attacks invites a spam. I mean I could feel the animations happening instead of it being responsive or something. And I don't think you can cancel attacks unless I missed that.

However, landing combos and counters does feel good and the special moves that charge are fantastic. And the difficulty is mitigated by generous checkpoints, health potions, and there are difficulty settings.

Enemy designs are neat, reminds me a bit of Devil May Cry. Graphically really impressive- I mean maybe even too much graphics at the expensive of gameplay and accessibility.

And, I suppose I should say something about the sexbot design that chuds on the net are on about... *sigh*
Well, yes, it's absurd of course. Not just the soft-porn of it all, but it just doesn't seem to make any sense. So, I guess like Nier: Automata? But also the outfit is so silly- ok sure spandex pants can make sense for movement, but then the long hair and loose sleeves do not, but then also frilly collar and freaking necktie lol wut. At first I thought she was designed by a 14 yr old boy, but it's more like she was designed by 3 different 14 yr old boys.

So it seems a mish-mash of Bloodborne Pinocchio, Nier, Bayonetta May Cry, and Wo Long: Fallen Potential. Could be some good dumb fun but after a steep discount in the future.