I hope everyone had a wonderful and relaxing weekend. I finished Borderlands 3, and i have to say that I found it mostly tolerable, which is a massive step up from BL2 (which i hated). I have also been playing minecraft for the first time since before COVID
Reinstalled Subnautica with a bunch of mods.
So I have this really severe phobia of baleen whales, have all my life. I turn into a crying snotty mess, it’s bad. It’s even happened a few times scrolling on this site! (People post funny memes that my lizard brain takes as a threat).
My bf was surprised to see me installing this. Had to explain that it’s only regular underwater scary, and that nothing in the game could be nearly as bad as a a typical “inspirational” image of our irl sea monsters.
I’ve been playing through Wild Arms lately. It feels pretty antiquated compared to basically any of SquareSoft’s PS1 JRPG output, being essentially a standard tile-based top-down 16-bit RPG with 3D only being made use of in battles. It predated FF7 and playing it helps appreciate just how huge of a technical milestone that game was. Compared to games that looked like this
FF7’s cinematic camera angles, 3D character models and FMV cutscenes FF7 must’ve felt like it was from another universe. Even the 3D battles aren’t that impressive looking:
Though I will say that the battles do at least feature models with fully texture-mapped polygons as opposed to the flat shading FF7 mostly used.
Wild Arms feels and looks kind of basic and the storytelling and characterisation fall short even when compared to Square games from the previous generation, but the game has a quick, breezy pace to it that’s kept me weirdly hooked. You move from town to dungeon to boss and back again very quickly and there’s basically no annoying minigames or cryptic side content to slow you down. I actually played Wild Arms as a kid but I remember it much less clearly than Square’s PS1 JRPGs. Playing it now I realise I must’ve made it at least a decent ways in but I have no memories of specific plot beats, boss fights and events, which can probably be blamed on the basic presentation.
My main memory of the game was of its FMV intro animation and the incredible song that accompanies it
The vibe of the intro might make you think the game has a heavy spaghetti Western influence but aside from a few Western flourishes in the soundtrack, there being guns and one character wearing a duster and another being named Calamity Jane that’s not really the case- everything is fairly standard JRPG fantasy fare which feels like a missed opportunity.
I might check out Wild Arms 2 when I’m done with this
I always wanted to play WA when I saw the opening anime intro on a preview disc that came with my preorder of FFVII. Although seeing footage of it years later on YT is like you said, rather basic.
The intro animation is easily the most memorable and well-made part of the entire game but it does set up expectations that the actual game just can’t live up to. The game’s beady-eyed chubby-looking little chibi sprites and the cutesy world they inhabit just don’t match the atmosphere and mood of the intro.
The studio behind the game, Media.Vision, had only made two games prior to Wild Arms, Crime Crackers and Gunners Heaven/Rapid Reload, both of which were early PS1 games. When I say early PS1, I mean early. Crime Crackers came out in 1994 and looked like this:
(It’s incredible how different stuff from the early years of the PS1 is from the later games I grew up with. It barely feels like it’s the same console- I recently flipped through a PS1 mag from 1996 and recognised basically none of the games being shown)
With that pedigree it makes sense Wild Arms didn’t quite measure up to RPGs from Square. I looked up what Media.Vision is up to these days and discovered they’ve been active ever since and actually worked on the Valkyria Chronicles series which I recently made a post about. Not the VC game I played but still, small world
Yeah it’s crazy how some very very early PS1 games look so similar to 16bit outings. I swear some of the games used the super famicom soundfont too.
Yeah it’s crazy how some very very early PS1 games look so similar to 16bit outings.
Worse, many of them look like 3DO games. Actually, 2D games on the PS1 do typically look a lot better than SNES and Genesis games. Pretty sure Rayman would look and sound much worse on either
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I am getting stoned 2 da bone and raising a gay army in mount and blade
Satisfactory only baby
Still haven’t actually connected this bridge, but once I’m done I’ll have quartz being turned into goodies.
SAME I am obsessed I love this game
Who would win: one fully grown adult with decades of gaming experience actually studying the MvC 2 move sets and ideal team builds, or one elementary-aged kid button mashing with Cable?
Cable Kid wins every time
Played Frostpunk 2 this weekend. Not as good as Frostpunk 1, and uninstalled it after finishing my first playthrough.
I’ve been playing the first one and is it stressful. I just can’t get used to the fact that people have to go out there in -60 weather. I’m assuming it gets colder, still, right, and that we never go back to nice easy safe -20? I wasn’t prepared for -60, and I don’t have enough steel to build more Steam Hubs in every workplace, so I kinda quit for the time being before the frostbite killed everyone, lol.
Yeah, things get worse until the end of the game, and then you beat the game so it’s over.
It took me a few runs before I understood the mechanics well enough to make sure how to keep people warm enough. Figuring out the right balance of resources is critical, as is making sure you keep up with research.
yeah totally, knowing it won’t warm up again helps - you really need that steam level research then, it’s pretty cool, i just get some weirdness around the numbers like “-60? I’d be dead, it doesn’t matter what I’m wearing…”
Just finished disco elysium. That game was as good as everyone says it is, if not better. I loved the ending. The political quests were all good too.
Definitely not playing the new zelda now. I would never play something before its official release date
If I were to do something so heinous, I would probably say the furniture assembly puzzles are interesting, but I’m worried they’re going to get repetitive. I was worried the combat would be terrible, and so far it’s just meh
Back on my Baldur’s Gate bullshit. Massively cleaned up my modlist, since there was still a bunch of kludgy bullshit from pre-patch 2 in there, and relishing this gunslinger mod I found. Like, I’m the thembo at the table who constantly drafts arcane cowboys for the pathfinding and dungeoneering; so getting to introduce proper revolvers to faerun is scratching such a heavy weird west itch right now.
Continuing Crosscode! Lovely game
Getting a New Vegas urge once again…
Playing Final Fantasy 16 following its PC release.
It’s a fucking mess. For some ungodly reason the dash is mapped to pushing down the control stick. There is no option to change it from a hold to a toggle. That’s not even getting into the entire rest of the game.
All I know about FF16 is that there’s a quest to help some dudes named Caulk and Bawls.
Yeah I did that sidequest recently. Unfortunately it is yet another ‘fetch 10 bear asses’ fetch quest. These make up 55% of the side content (40% is ‘go here, talk to this person’).
Started Dragon Quest for the GBC, the remake of 1+2. So far it’s great, classic JRPG goodness. Also started playing Romancing SaGa 1 for the super famicom, the fan translation. I’m only about an hour into it but so far it’s neat. A non-linear JRPG is always cool to see.
I swear I’ll play something that isn’t Wayhaven Chronicles soon…
I played dnd with some friends :)
I got to play a new character because my normal character is the subject of a rescue mission rn. I played a lvl 8 chronurgy wizard owlin named Thalos Starseer who is stuck in multiple intersecting time loops that occasionally drag him through universes and timelines. The only person he knows of with a fix is one of our bbegs
been playing the leaked Echoes of Wisdom ROM, it’s on fitgirl (deffo turn off v-sync if you’re using ryujinx, ctrl-u turns off the fps cap for suyu too if you’re using that)
it’s okay, i appreciate them trying to do a more puzzle-focused zelda game. so far as of the first dungeon the puzzles are definitely more of a sandbox finish the room your way kinda deal vs more in-depth and constrained puzzles. it is pretty funny summoning a bunch of bats and running around spamming dodge as they murder your opponent, that and setting things on fire solves 80% of combat situations. dunno if i’ll finish it, but i see a leaked game i gotta play it y’know
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