What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[Stevens]

I find Outrun 2SP's improved drifting mechanics where you effectively grind past vehicles when drifting makes it even better than Outrun 2. Outrun 2 has a drift-specific collision that loses about 100 km/h from top speed, whereas Outrun 2SP allows the drift to function as an anti-collision defense.

The hell you say? I was not aware of this at all. To be fair I only really played SP when I had online arcade (If it even functions the same way in that game). I tend to play (PC version) the OutRun 2 mode and alternate between both sets of tracks. When I play it again I'll check it out.

Is it really that bad that the maps can't be memorized? For what it's worth, Outrunners had a couple of abrupt turns you have to plan for at the end of the second level in both routes (San Francisco/Grand Canyon) that were meant to basically cause a crash if you were unprepared for them. Outrun 2 and 2SP are largely free of issues as turns can be reacted to with good drifting, with the only truly memorizer course being Milky Way due to the nature of the chicanes in the course.

Now that I'm less annoyed? It admittedly most likely can be memorized. I think what ticked me off more than anything else was with how much effort went into the rest of the game skimping on signs seems lazy.

Ahh. Milky Way. Tough tough course.

Question if I may - when you play OutRun 2 what do you play it on, controller preference, and car(s) of choise?

I have it on a few different things - OROA on the 360, I have Coast 2 Coast on the PS 2 and I have 2 on the OG Xbox. Recently through dubious means I got the PC version. Honestly though I've bought it so many times I don't care. I use a regular pad. I know it isn't optimal but it is good enough. As for cars (I think there are really only like 4) I like the OR class Dino and the GTO.

I will play normal mode, but most of time I'm doing time trials. Dig racing ghosts.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

The hell you say? I was not aware of this at all. To be fair I only really played SP when I had online arcade (If it even functions the same way in that game).

I was used to Outrun 2006, which uses Outrun 2SP's drifting updates, as I'd never played the original release of Outrun 2. My first chance to play Outrun 2 was at a friend's on an arcade cabinet where he'd put it in a Crazy Taxy cabinet. I was thrown off when I found mid-drift collisions were unsafe and didn't result in simply sliding off the other vehicle; it adds a fair bit of challenge where you have to really control yourself. I now own the original Xbox port of Outrun 2 which I've played a bit for the bonus tracks. It has some minor stuttering when run on an Xbox 360 console, but nothing completely unplayable.

Outrun 2006 uses Outrun 2SP's updated drifting in both the arcade mode and the exclusive challenge modes, where touching another vehicle mid-drift just kinda grazes them and you slide off with negligible speed loss, allowing you to focus on racing as fast as possible with traffic as a minor obstacle. As far as I know, all of the releases that include Outrun 2SP's course selection (Outrun 2006, Outrun Online Arcade) use Outrun 2SP's drifting changes.

Question if I may - when you play OutRun 2 what do you play it on, controller preference, and car(s) of choise?

My usual way of playing Outrun 2SP/Outrun 2006 is with an Xbox 360/One controller. The PC release has exceptionally good support for game pads and is ideal. It's also surprisingly playable with just the keyboard. Steering wheels have an unacceptably massive deadzone though, an issue specific to the PC version and to the Chinese bootleg Outrun 2016, which I had the misfortune to run into in the wild at an arcade. Steering wheel support is fixed in the fan-made patch, Outrun2FXT, which adds numerous quality of life improvements to the PC release.

As an aside, Outrun 2016 is a shitty bootlegged version of the PC release with all the songs changed, such as Splash Wave being Gagnam Style or something awful, and hacked for use in an arcade and to accept coin inputs as well as only allow you into the Outrun 2SP mode. I played it on a converted Initial D cab, whereas I've also seen the bootleg installed in another type of cab. The one I played it on must've been on a terrible PC as it was unplayably stuttery/laggy and frankly an embarrassment to the arcade that they allowed it to go out on the floor like that. I saw numerous people try the machine and have no idea what was going on and why it played so badly. Truly a disgraceful way for people to have their first experience with an Outrun game.

If I'm playing the Outrun 2006 specific content, I'm fond of the Dino's Outrun class variant, as well as the 328 GTS (was the car in Rad Racer) and the 512 BB (visually similar to the 328 GTS but more powerful). The F40 is also colourful.

[null1024]

Was playing City Connection [NES] and was getting annoyed by that cat.
Also, F-1 Race [FC]. I've mentioned this before when BIL brought it up, but I never knew this game didn't come out in the US. I played a bunch of it on a famiclone when I was younger. Entertaining.
Flicky [Genesis] remains entertaining. I really hate that lizard.

[also I'm too lazy to post in the shmup thread but I've been playing Twinbee [FC] and I keep getting really greedy with bells and dying for it ]

[Cannonballs]

@ Stevens - I thought you were talking about the 90s Capcom race game and it finally got a port. Nope. Oh well. https://www.arcade-history.com/?n=slips ... il&id=2473 (This is the Slipstream I was thinking of).

[Stevens]

Wow. I had no idea that even existed.

Yeah I had put in a for a refund before I read Roo's comment about memorizing, which I agreed with. Thought I may have a been a bit hasty. Went to my library, but they had in fact already given me my money back.

Then I played OutRun 2 for an hour. Was trying to get my times down on the Jungle stage with the f40, but realized the GTO is a slightly better choice for that stage. At least for me.

[To Far Away Times]

I love Outrun 2. I have it on two platforms. It's so good.

If you like Outrun you might like Super Hang On. According to my 3DS I've dropped about 25 hours into it. No branching paths in that one, but it scratches the same itch and it's a checkpoint based racing game with a tremendous soundtrack and a high skill ceiling.

Nobody made driving games like Sega. Crazy Taxi, Super Hang-On, the Outrun series, Sega Rally... just incredible.

[BrianC]

Super Hang On was also included on PS3 and Xbox 360 (the latter packaged with Alex Kidd SMS and Revenge of Shinobi) and even has support for 3D.

[Mischief Maker]

Iratus: Lord of the Dead is exactly the game I needed right now.

Darkest Dungeon was a game I desperately wanted to like, but as wonderful as the music and the visuals were, the gameplay was an unbalanced, poorly-paced mess where they had to release a special difficulty mode just to shave down the grind a little.

Iratus basically takes all the mechanics from DD, from the base-building, to the mixing and matching of replaceable heroes into synergistic parties, to the formation-dependent blobber combat, and arranges them into a cohesive whole that I find insanely addicting. Plus you get to use the sanity mechanics from DD against your enemies and drive them insane for random permanent debuffs (but also risk them triggering a virtue).

Plus it's a game where you're playing a bad guy that isn't a wacky comedy or one where your antihero unintentionally saves the world by virtue of being the lesser evil. You are a force of destruction who literally carves up the people you kill for their organs, then frankensteins those organs into horrific undead minions. Also you're voiced by the guy from "Blood."

My main two complaints so far are the unlock cancer, and the fact that the titular Necromancer looks like Glenn Danzig.

[null1024]

I love Outrun 2. I have it on two platforms. It's so good.

If you like Outrun you might like Super Hang On. According to my 3DS I've dropped about 25 hours into it. No branching paths in that one, but it scratches the same itch and it's a checkpoint based racing game with a tremendous soundtrack and a high skill ceiling.

Nobody made driving games like Sega. Crazy Taxi, Super Hang-On, the Outrun series, Sega Rally... just incredible.

For several months, Super Hang-On was basically the only thing I played on my 3DS. I love these ports.
The 3D effect looks amazing too. The Super Scaler releases were the only real time I was wowed by the 3DS's stereoscopy.

[BrianC]

Just got Bust-A-Move 2 for Saturn. Odd sound mix in stereo (mono is fine), but it has some nice exclusive modes and it's a nice port otherwise. Terrible US box art (though Acclaim somehow managed to make even worse box art for the game that released as Super Bust A Move in the US), but game itself is intact. One interesting feature is that there are special attract demos for holidays.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Streets of Rage Remake v5.1: went back and accomplished a few more things, figured I can't let my namesake game go rusty. Got a couple of clears showing I've definitely improved:

Streets of Rage Remake v5.1: Mania 1cc/no continue clear with Roo, no Police Specials, default lives

Never thought I'd get through some stuff like the Stage 7 elevator fight on SoRR Mania without using Police Specials to gun everything down, but aside from a few mistakes I managed to have enough resources to get a shot at the clear. I was worried because I lost a few lives early on that I thought I would need. The fight against Shiva was a mess, I pressed the wrong button instead of back attacking him immediately as he jumped in and spent the final battle in a minor panic trying not to botch the clear.

---
Streets of Rage Remake v5.1 - Survival Mode with Roo, Round 1 S-RANK

Ygh, this took literally years, it's heavily RNG dependent to hit the 100,000 score needed to S-Rank as if the game randomly gives you like 3 Jets at once or never drops any Big-Bens for health items, you're toast, not to mention it being extremely hard as it is with a constantly massive crowd. The whip ladies are a high priority target as their attack distance messes with my usual back attack spam for the bosses.

[BulletMagnet]

The Zodiac Age continues:

- Well, this was unexpected: despite me just now playing this game several years after it released, just the other day it got an update to bring it in line with revisions on other systems. It mainly added two new features: the ability to set up to three Gambit sets per character (which at the moment seems slightly more trouble than it's worth, but may be handy later), and the ability to reset your license boards. And just like that, one of my main worries about the game is gone, since I can not only respec if I hit a wall but can undo a handful of decisions I made before I was more aware of how the board worked. A most pleasant surprise.

- Finally progressed the story a little, after loads of farting around; I must be a good 10 levels and 2 equipment tiers above where I'm supposed to be, which was a good thing because the next boss I faced was a HUGE pain. He absorbed physical attacks and constantly cast "reflect" on himself, which meant that the entire battle consisted of casting Dispel, getting a few magic attacks in (many of which were the random "Shades of Black" ability which would half the time be either ineffective or counter-productive, since my mages ran out of MP casting Dispel so frequently), and repeating; thank heavens he couldn't hurt me much as I chipped away at him, else this battle would have been in rage-quit territory, though I get the feeling there's some stupid "trick" to him that I didn't figure out. EDIT: Hmm, maybe the old "cast reflect on yourself" trick was called for here? Though I would have had to use a load of potions to make up for the lack of Cure spells...

- On that note, I've mentioned before that I do like how the game doesn't explain the nuance of everything upfront and leaves you to feel your way through a good amount of stuff, but at times I do wish the game was a bit less coy; the license board was one such niggle until the aforementioned update added some leeway, though I'm still in the dark as to exactly how the Bazaar works, and I'm wondering if there's a particular way I should be departing with my loot to make new stuff appear, especially the seemingly unique items I get as rewards for hunts. At this point I've got plenty of money and can afford to hang onto the stuff for awhile before selling it, but I can only wonder what I've missed out on so far...

- Minor pet peeve: if you finish/escape a battle and head over to a treasure chest, if you hit the "confirm" button just as your character does the "put weapons away" animation you won't be able to open the chest, and will call up the main battle menu instead. Not exactly game breaking, but it's happened to me more than enough times to make me groan.

- Speaking of treasure chests, I recently got an item whose description says it allows you to "reach into the deepest recesses of chests, etc." so I figure, cool, it gets me better loot from all those jars and things I find. At least so far, the only "bonus" items I've found have been nearly worthless, to the point that I've unequipped it, as I'm worried that it'll turn something I might actually find useful into crap; another case of "I feel like I'm missing something, I wish I had a hint as to how it works", it honestly bring back bad memories of FF9 (yeah, I'm one of the exceptions for that entry). And yeah, I could just look up an FAQ or something, but I try to avoid that when possible; as I've said before, if a game is too hard for me to understand it's either overly obtuse or I'm overly thick, and either way I should be playing something else.

[Immryr]

i started playing fell seal arbiter's mark based on mischief maker's recommendation today. it's great! it really is just like a follow up to the original final fantasy tactics. i played it for something like five hours straight today and i even then i had to pretty much force myself to stop playing.

[Mischief Maker]

i started playing fell seal arbiter's mark based on mischief maker's recommendation today. it's great! it really is just like a follow up to the original final fantasy tactics. i played it for something like five hours straight today and i even then i had to pretty much force myself to stop playing.

I'm glad you like it. You wouldn't know based on the title or the cover art that it's a FF:T game, I only discovered it myself because GOG gave it a special sale promo.


Myself, right now I'm getting seriously hooked on "The Last Federation." The second-best selling game from Arcen, of "AI War" fame. It's like Crusader Kings in space, but you're not one of the kings, more of a Merlin the Magician figure using your powers to manipulate the warring factions of the solar system into forming a lasting peaceful union. They're playing a fully-fledged and super complex 4X, you're popping in here and there to lend assistance or cause sabotage to prevent any of them from becoming a dominant power and wiping the rest out. I love how each of the factions really does have its own different personality and way of doing business with you politically. It generates lots of "stories" like a good 4X game.

Of particular interest to shmups fans is Last Federation's weird combat system. It's a turn-based arena shmup. You move by dragging a path in front of your ship that it will traverse over the next 5 seconds, then selecting what weapon will fire and what aiming priority. Rinse and repeat in 5 second increments. The twist is while your ship uses direct-aim weaponry, enemy ships fire in various danmaku patterns, from fountain sprays to X-shapes to L-curves and so on, forcing the player to maneuver through kaleidoscopic madness to keep yourself in firing range of your target without colliding with the thickest parts of the patterns and stripping your shields in moments. However you do have a limited-ammo supply of special powers from a super beam to launching fighters to causing enemy patterns to do friendly fire damage, and activating them also causes a local bullet-cancelling explosion like a shmup bomb. It's surprisingly fun once you get the hang of it.

And once you're done with playing peacemaker, the DLCs add alternate victory methods, including one where you create your own faction and have the goal of wiping the rest out.

EDIT: Also:

https://youtu.be/JNuDlpOrU8s

https://youtu.be/qZ_NdBZsmqY

[Steamflogger Boss]

Judgment

This is a top tier Yakuza game.

[CStarFlare]

Every 5 years or so I get the urge to do a Phantom Brave runthrough. I love the broken nature of it and how fast it escalates - you can go all the way through the end of the postgame in ~20 hours, vs something like Disgaea which took me over a hundred when I was devoting that kind of time to superbosses. PB never gets old though. The main disappointment is that even the added extra bosses when it got ported don't require you to powerlevel to anywhere near the limits of the game's broken systems.

Anyway, I'm doing it again. Might abandon my current playthrough now that I've got my legs under me and start over and see how fast I can do a Pringer XXX run.

[Blinge]

Judgment

This is a top tier Yakuza game.

Good to know.
So.. I've only played Kiwami

..and i've got myself in this ridiculous situation where I don't wanna touch another Yakuza until I've played Shenmue 2, but i don't wanna start something like Shenmue 2 until I finish my blind playthrough of RDR2, which is taking a bloody long time because it's not holding my attention waaaa

[Steamflogger Boss]

Judgment

This is a top tier Yakuza game.

Good to know.
So.. I've only played Kiwami

..and i've got myself in this ridiculous situation where I don't wanna touch another Yakuza until I've played Shenmue 2, but i don't wanna start something like Shenmue 2 until I finish my blind playthrough of RDR2, which is taking a bloody long time because it's not holding my attention waaaa

Lol wtf m8.

Shenmue is ass, just skip that.

[Mero]

I just cleared the postgame of Labyrinth of Refain, after abandoning it for a while I returned to it about 2 weeks ago.

Turned out the main story final boss had to be weakened with a unique spell otherwise it was nearly impossible, same story with the post game boss.

I did have to do a bit of grinding but it wasn't that bad, especially with the game's stockpile exp mechanic. Probably took about another 30 hours to get my party up to scratch, clear the main game then the postgame dungeon.

After the final credits rolled I got the platinum, which is the first (and probably last) time I've ever platinumed any game.

[Stevens]

until I finish my blind playthrough of RDR2, which is taking a bloody long time because it's not holding my attention waaaa

We bought the PS 4 when RDR2 was released. My wife is on her 2nd play through, I played it for a bit and quit about halfway.

Rockstar makes beautiful games and tells pretty good stories, the problem is the game play of said games has evolved minimally since GTA 3. I mean are the missions in GTA V (Mrs. played it) that different than III?

By GTA IV (which I loved) I was done. I liked RDR enough to finish it, but yeah generally speaking I'm just done with them.

On the flip lots of people love what they do. So..

[Blinge]

Two great examples of RDR2 missions were

Arthur has to sneak into the offices at some oil fields, batter the manager, and steal a document.
A pretty low key mission, obviously that's not enough so someone else has to set a derrick alight and you escape by shooting your way through hapless oil-field workers and riding off while they chase you shooting.

Arthur pretends to be some business tycoon and cheats somebody out of his money and expensive watch in a pokergame on a river boat. As his man takes you to the safe to give you the watch, you rob the rest of the safe.
.. obviously that's not enough so someone has to discover you and you escape by shooting your way out.

Man, I don't need a big long gun fight in every sodding mission.

[Stevens]

Two great examples of RDR2 missions were

Arthur has to sneak into the offices at some oil fields, batter the manager, and steal a document.
A pretty low key mission, obviously that's not enough so someone else has to set a derrick alight and you escape by shooting your way through hapless oil-field workers and riding off while they chase you shooting.

Arthur pretends to be some business tycoon and cheats somebody out of his money and expensive watch in a pokergame on a river boat. As his man takes you to the safe to give you the watch, you rob the rest of the safe.
.. obviously that's not enough so someone has to discover you and you escape by shooting your way out.

Man, I don't need a big long gun fight in every sodding mission.

There are two moments that have stuck with me after playing -

Early mission with Arthur and Lenny. The one where they

Spoiler

go out and get shitfaced. That is some top tier shit.

. No guns needed. I was crying the first time I played it. I thought it was that funny.

Think it is in chapter 3 -

Spoiler

Where they go to rescue Jack Marston

. Sadly the game peaked for me there.

Don't get me wrong - I would never call it a bad game or discourage people from playing it. It just isn't for me.

[Blinge]

Ahaha yeah i absolutely loved that Arthur and Lenny Mission.

The whole gang marching as a line up to Braithwaite manor was fucking epic as well.

I'm still in St Denis atm tho so we'll how this pans out.

[m.sniffles.esq]

I just cleared the postgame of Labyrinth of Refain, after abandoning it for a while I returned to it about 2 weeks ago.

This was my "commuter" game, that I put aside because I was no longer commuting.
But a few days ago, I found myself missing it, and came back.

I'm a little nervous about the end-game, however, as a friend reported to me he needed to grind an additional 20 hours in order to beat the final boss. I mean, I've been doing some grinding naturally due to getting lost pretty often. But, I'm unsure if I've been doing that much grinding.

[Immryr]

i really enjoy first person dungeon crawlers, but i've never finished a single one of them. i generally get quite far in them, maybe spend 40 or so hours playing them, then i will either just get distracted and play something else and never come back to it (or start again from the start at a much later date), or i'll hit a wall and just lose motivation.

[XERO]

all the UNCHARTED games

[Mero]

I just cleared the postgame of Labyrinth of Refain, after abandoning it for a while I returned to it about 2 weeks ago.

This was my "commuter" game, that I put aside because I was no longer commuting.
But a few days ago, I found myself missing it, and came back.

I'm a little nervous about the end-game, however, as a friend reported to me he needed to grind an additional 20 hours in order to beat the final boss. I mean, I've been doing some grinding naturally due to getting lost pretty often. But, I'm unsure if I've been doing that much grinding.

It's doable, just don't ignore the soul transfer mechanic like I did for too long, doing it at level 99 adds 19 soul clarity to them and lets you transfer 8 skills, including the 2 innate skills (this can only be done at 99). Higher clarity = higher stats. All my characters ranged from 39 to 50 (most at 39) and that was sufficient enough.

The best grinding spot is in the postgame dungeon but in the final story dungeon (Tanis) there's a good spot in the lower section of one of maps (can't remember which), you have to use the same stairs twice to find it. Enemies are called something Vixen, Damned Heads and some crows. Mobs there give it least 8.5k exp and the best mob gives 15k, by triggering successive battles (2 in a row) as often as I could for even more multiplier, in about 45 minutes I could build a stockpile of 1.5m to 1.8m depending on how well it went. As soon as I exceeded the mana density I cashed it in and got the hell out of there.

The pact that you need with the spell to weaken the final boss is in a chest on the bottom floor of the first dungeon, the key that you need to get another key to unlock that chest is a request reward so keep up with clearing them when you can. If you want to trigger the post game you'll need to beat the six superbosses, one of those is triggered by a request reward as well.

[m.sniffles.esq]

Thank you so much!!!

The only thing the guy who had to grind for 20 hours said was he didn't do enough requests. So I've been pulling my hair out over this goddamn pair of Pumpkin Panties I accidently sold (it's the reward from one request used to clear another later down the line).

[third_strike]

Did a level 8 ALL clear in Street Fighter 3rd Strike (Q fight in the package):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pF9ZxDHEX3A

And got the Sunset Riders 2-ALL clear no miss:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZW60Pc1Ih80

Too got a clear in fatal fury any days ago, but I got only Jin Chonchu. I need improve in this game. This is a very hard game.

No sure what i will play now.

[BIL]

Congrats on the Sunset Riders 2-ALL! I messed around with a few credits this week and was immediately hooked. Feels like an arcade Contra with the NES/SNES games' perfected controls, plus Rolling Thunder's tactical tier-switching.

Have you played Saigo no Nindou / Ninja Spirit, third_strike? Saigo, its Japanese release, is probably the better version. Ninja Spirit changes some things to be easier (more checkpoints), but also buffs up enemy HP, which sounds annoying to me.

It's one of my favourite sidescrollers, though I see why its heavy RNG annoys some. It's also got an infamously horrible final memoriser sequence, which I wrote a guide just for. It really is that bad. Definitely use it, if you decide to play - it's a shameless coin stealer, while the game's other 99% is quality. It's a cruel and unpredictable challenge, but there are very clear "rules" you can master to survive any situation it throws you into.

Argus no Senshi / Rygar is excellent too, I've not cleared it yet but I'm having a blast with it. Simple and super-agile sidescroller, plays like a NES game on arcade steroids.



There's also Sunset Riders' spiritual sequel, Mystic Warriors. I've never tried it, but it's well-loved by lots of veterans around here. Always looked rad.