What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Anything from run & guns to modern RPGs, what else do you play?
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BryanM
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Re: no high hat given

Post by BryanM »

Slowly putting time into Harvest Moon: Sunshine Islands.

The system it has for leveling up tools seems to give it just a little more longevity than the one or two cycles most Harvest Moon games can last.
Marc wrote:I appreciate that some would say that Sonic isn't 'just' about going fast, my opinion is that when it isn't, it's not a particularly stand-out platformer.
Note how in the Mario platformers, the focus isn't on new cosplay suits that can throw fireballs or whatever. It's always mobility that the games put front and center: the raccoon suit, the cape, the catsuit, etc. It's fun to move. It's not fun to stand still and wait.

That Sonic Fan Demo always seemed more appealing than anything else SEGA has done with the franchise in 3d.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by bottino »

Some games are meant to be like mountain climbing - where you can find accomplishment beyond the hardships you overcome - while others are more akin to hiking - where you destination can be reached rather comfortably while you're having an easy, fun time.

Sanic obviously fits in the latter category and there's nothing really wrong with that; it's good to have both options available.

edit (couldn't open the link before):
BryanM wrote:That Sonic Fan Demo always seemed more appealing than anything else SEGA has done with the franchise in 3d.
Indeed, that looks pretty interesting, thanks for bringing it up Bryan; I had no idea such project existed.

Unfortunately, the 'market' side of things speaks much louder louder than the creativity one in regards to popular franchises like Sonic, and likewise for pretty much everything in our society.
Last edited by bottino on Thu Feb 21, 2019 5:26 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Vexorg »

Picked up Dead Cells again after the 1.1 update reached the Switch version, liking it much better than I did on 1.0. There's still the problem of uneven and heavily RNG-dependent difficulty (it looks like the speedrunners have all basically moved to custom runs that start with their "ideal" loadout of Ice Shards and Assault Shield) but at least now it feels like you can make decent progress with unlocks over time (still grindy, but that's par for the course in most modern Roguelites.) Basically, the base (0 boss cell) difficulty is easier to complete now, but everything above that is harder. Don't know how much I'd play this on PC, but it makes a pretty good "play it on the bus" game in portable form.

Of course, just three days after the 1.1 update reached consoles the first alpha of version 1.2 is up on Steam, which adds a 5 Boss Cell difficulty, some new weapons and unlockable player skins.
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Re: miles per hour power

Post by null1024 »

Ronyn wrote:Sonic 2 is the only title where I loose my detachment. I cannot produce a sentence, sans a paragraph, without bitching about it.
I found it soothing to learn that the team producing it wasn't the "Sonic Team", but some outfit from SEGA of America who thought the idea of the original was to, wait for it, gotta go fast! In any event, xx years later I played Sonic CD and, granted, it feels like a wacky Sonic 1.5. to me, but somehow I found it relatable to the first. Fair enough for me.
CD is a lot like a Sonic 1.5. Even many of the stage themes feel like variants on S1 stages. I think that game is rough as shit, particularly because it outright cannot flow for any amount of time due to the time travel mechanic -- stages are outright designed to stop you dead in your tracks so it doesn't trigger. It looks cool, it plays like ass. It's a shame too, since Sonic's control is a bit tighter [no roll-jump control lock] and the camera adjusting so you can see more was nice [something that doesn't get adopted again in 2D Sonic until Advance 2].
The exploration idea is neat... but the levels don't really feel well put together. Stardust Speedway is something I'd describe as one of the worst stages in 2D Sonic from a layout perspective, it's just a horrid mess of tubes. Wacky Workbench is obnoxious, but remarkably less awful than I keep hearing people say lately.

Sonic 2 is almost too focused on speed. I like the game a lot, but it's lacking something. A lot of somethings. Still fun. It'd be loads better with a time attack mode, since the levels are all designed around time attack. I've mentioned this before, but S1 has a nice, easy level select code, so you can go run which ever stages you want and run against the clock. S2 and S3 didn't. CD has one, but its stages aren't designed for it, they're short and loop inwards on themselves and you only really get to really experience them when looking for the machines.

as an aside, although S2 was developed in the US with STI, it was still populated with members of Sonic Team brought over from Japan when Naka got fed up with Sega
In particular, Hirokazu Yasuhara worked on stage design.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by BrianC »

I'm in the minority that actually likes Labyrinth Zone and Marble Zone. Mainly because of the obstacle dodging. The former would be better with David Bowie, Jennifer Connelly, and some elaborate Muppets, though.
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Squire Grooktook
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Squire Grooktook »

All Sonic is terrible.

>Gotta go fast!
>Non-interactive loop-de-loop faux-cutscenes!
>Run into a wall or pit because you can't react to shit at that speed of screen scrolling!

"But Grooktook!" You might say (if you're dumb) "Just memorize the stages! It's like scorerunning a shmup!"

And my response would be of course, that the difference is that when I am playing a shmup, even if I haven't fully memorized the game yet, I can still have a good time completing a relatively challenging and exciting game. Whereas in Sonic, I am stuck grinding through the most tedious, easy, overlong, clumsy, mind-numbing hop and bop imaginable that doesn't even do what it purports to do until that speedrun route is memorized.

No thanks.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Durandal »

Spoiler
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Mischief Maker »

X-Morph: Defense.

Terrible name, GREATEST TOWER DEFENSE EVER!

I get a real "Raiden IV" vibe from the enemy design and explosion effects.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Blinge »

Squire Grooktook wrote:All Sonic is terrible.
M-Mania's pretty good though. :|
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Vanguard »

I'm about 47 hours into Etrian Odyssey X and am currently in the 11th labyrinth. It's pretty good!

It's supposed to be a sort of crossover between the classes/dungeons/etc from the previous games, so there's a lot of asset reuse. Most of the enemies are from earlier games and the dungeons are almost all based on previous dungeons and so forth. The dungeons feel more puzzle-heavy than they were in previous games. I like FOE-based puzzle design where if you can't or don't want to solve the puzzle you can just fight your way through. One of the early dungeons is a near exact copy of its incarnation in EO4, which is a very bad sign, but everything since then has been unique. Seems like they kind of thing you'd see towards the end of a game rather than the beginning. I think the intent may have been to lull you into thinking the end of the dungeon would also be the same as it was in EO4, so you'd be surprised when it plays out differently. The subclassing system from Etrian 4 is back, where you can only raise subclass skills to half of their maximum level.

The super moves in this game are a modified version of the force skills from EO2. Each class has a force meter that starts out at 100%. You can expend your force meter for a 3 turn force boost, which provides a class-dependent benefit. Once the boost ends your force meter goes down to 0% and has to refill before it can be reused. The force meter has a second function, called force break, which can be used during force boost. Force breaks are class-dependent super moves, usually powerful attacks, which break the user's force meter, rendering that character's force abilities unusable until they return to town. It's a good system, the only serious problem is that force breaks are excessively good get-out-of-jail-free cards against random encounters.

I started with a party of Hero Protector Ronin / Sovereign Zodiac but I've retired the protector and zodiac for a gunner and survivalist. Protectors don't seem bad at all, but my party was already defensive enough and I wanted to free up a front row slot for my hero's afterimages. Zodiacs are disappointingly weak. Here's my reviews of the classes so far:

Hero - Solid all-rounder, like you'd expect. They have strong attacks, protector-like defensive skills, and they passively heal your team by a small amount every turn. Heroes only use swords, but they have attacks that do fire, ice, and lightning damage, and one attack is stronger against enemies who resist cut damage, so you pretty much never run into anything they can't hurt. Their gimmick is that they can create afterimages, which repeat the last skill the hero used, and then disappear. Afterimages use a party slot so a hero probably shouldn't be in the same party as a ninja with the clone ability. As for whether afterimages are better than a ninja clone, I'm not sure. Anyway, I think the best thing about them is how they compress multiple roles as one character.

Sovereign - Powerful buffbot. They're the prince/princess class from 3, but the translators of these games love changing names for no reason, so they're sovereigns now. Anyway, they're really good at what they do, they've got attack buffs, defense buffs, max hp buffs, multiple types of passive healing, and ailment/bind prevention among others. They don't heal as well as a medic, but they do it well enough that you can skip medics if you have a sovereign. Their force boost causes their buffs to target the whole party instead of one row, which is great, especially at the beginning of a boss fight. Every team should have one.

Protector - Defense class. Their low level skills are mostly damage reduction skills like the protector in EO1 and 2 and the hoplite from 3. Later on they learn tanking skills similar to the fortress from 4. They're very good at keeping your party alive, especially against burst damage, but are weak at attacking. Shield flare might have solid offensive potential but I haven't messed with it. Their force boost improves the damage reduction of their shield skills, and their force break is one turn of invincibility. We'll see if it turns out like earlier games where they become necessary in the end.

Ronin - Glass cannon. The ronin's gimmick is based on the use of stances. There are three stances they can learn, upper stance which increase damage, clear stance which inflicts conditions and increases defense, and swift stance which improves speed, accuracy, and evasion. At the start of a fight, a ronin will automatically assume whichever stance they've spent the most skill points on. Nearly all of a ronin's skills benefit from stances, and a few require them. When using an attack skill with the correct stance, the attack becomes a critical hit for +50% damage. Most of the time they just spam their most damaging attack, but they're good at it.

Zodiac - Elemental damage dealer. They're pretty disappointing. EO3's zodiacs were for the most part middling damage dealers, but they could do monstrous damage with limit skills and dark ether was an incredible TP management skill. EOX didn't fix zodiacs' fundamental damage problems, but it did mess up their support role. Dark ether got nerfed into the ground and the force system does them considerably less good than limits did in 3. What really kills them is that singularity's damage boost is only +20% damage now. It was +50% back in 3. Probably they wanted to avoid making zodiac as good of a subclass as it was in 3, but they overdid it. There is very little reason to use a zodiac when you could bring a gunner instead.

Gunner - Ranged attacker. They're really good. They've got great damage output and some of the most reliable binds in the game. Ricochet is something like the EO4 sniper's squall volley - a super powerful attack with horrible accuracy. If you can work around the accuracy, it's almost as strong as an imperial's drive attacks (all of which have long cooldowns). They've got a variety of charged shots, which are also nearly as strong as drive attacks. The downside to charged shots is that they're very slow and the gunner takes double damage while charging. Gunners have bad defenses and taking a hit while charging is usually an instant kill. To work around that, gunners have a skill called "act quick" which greatly increases the speed of their next skill, so you can safely get off a charged shot in two turns. They can also pair with another class like a survivalist or protector to keep them safe while they charge. Or you can just use the charged shot and hope you don't die. Anyway they pretty much only do damage but they do it really well.

Survivalist - Supporting attacker. They're like weaker gunners who come with a nice set of non-combat skills. They let you carry more items, gather more materials, avoid ambushes, and other useful things like that. They've got some extremely powerful attacks, but generally they come with an extra condition of some kind. Sagittarius shot is about as strong as a gunner's charged shot, but the enemy doesn't take the damage until two turns later. Drop shot is even stronger, but only against back row enemies. Hazy arrow is one of the most brutal attacks in the game, but it can only be used immediately after dodging an attack. Because of these limitations, their damage output has high highs and low lows.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Ajora »

I'm playing They Hunger for Half-Life. It's pretty good. Some neat touches and fun set pieces. The pistol seems to be a bit overpowered, and most of the other weapons seem a bit underpowered. Sometimes I'll just explode for no reason. One of the zombie voices reminds me of Hans Moleman.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Leandro »

Ajora wrote:I'm playing They Hunger for Half-Life. It's pretty good. Some neat touches and fun set pieces. The pistol seems to be a bit overpowered, and most of the other weapons seem a bit underpowered. Sometimes I'll just explode for no reason. One of the zombie voices reminds me of Hans Moleman.
This takes me back, I played this one with my old PC using Win98
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BryanM
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by BryanM »

Vanguard wrote:Zodiac - Elemental damage dealer.
Their balance guy really hates mages for some reason. They have lots of MP! But their skill costs are jacked through the roof to compensate. The net result is they require more mana potions to do the same amount of damage on a turn. I don't get it.

Especially considering how much work they put into making all the other classes good in these games. The AI has a targeting bias to characters with higher HP, which makes tank units better than they'd otherwise be. Middling classes like Farmer and Survivalist had the most important skill in the game - the ability to turn off random encounters.

Maybe they're just angry at how overpowered mages have been in JRPGs - able to do almost everything.

If it was me designing these things, I'd have given the Astrologers some kind of "constellation" mechanic, where they can chain together spells over turns to build up to an enormous effect.
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Vanguard
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Vanguard »

BryanM wrote:Their balance guy really hates mages for some reason. They have lots of MP! But their skill costs are jacked through the roof to compensate. The net result is they require more mana potions to do the same amount of damage on a turn. I don't get it.
Yeah. Runemasters in 4 are superb and warlocks in 5 are pretty good and so I thought they'd stopped doing that, but EOX zodiacs might well be the worst class in the game, combining the offensive power of a protector with the toughness and utility of a ronin. A gunner gives you like twice as much damage for at least as much utility while being more durable and paying half as much TP. In EOX the old TEC stat has been split into INT and WIS, and zodiacs have mediocre WIS, so they can't even pull double duty by subclassing into medic. Mediocre WIS also means their magic resistance isn't especially good, which is a problem for the class with the worst HP in the game.
BryanM wrote:If it was me designing these things, I'd have given the Astrologers some kind of "constellation" mechanic, where they can chain together spells over turns to build up to an enormous effect.
They have something similar to that - etheric boon increases the power of a spell based on how much TP they spent the previous turn. Their most expensive spell is a level 10 meteor for 45 TP, so if they keep chaining that into itself they get a 45% damage bonus. But a better bet is to cast etheric charge every other turn so your attacks do 3x damage. Warlocks in 5 had abilities that would be an even better fit. Common magic lets them increase their damage by 50% by chaining their spells with other characters' magic attacks used on the same turn. Altar is a powerful attack that takes 3 turns to charge up and gets stronger every time the enemy is hit by something they're elementally weak to.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Blinge »

Ah Jeez.
I'm back into Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate now. I basically lost a day to it yesterday.

I'm a hunting horn main but I took up ol' faithful the Greatsword and did the hardest solo quest - Master's Test. Finally managed it eee.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by BulletMagnet »

So, while I can't call Nier a personal favorite, it did get me interested in the better-received sequel; lo and behold, its GotY edition comes out this week, so I plan to snag it before long. In the meantime, I had a go at a couple of palate cleansers:

Finished a run through Tearaway Unfolded for PS4 - if anyone remembers my thoughts on Puppeteer for the PS3 from a few months back, basically take that and make it 3D. Gorgeous presentation, middling-at-best gameplay, worth a trip to see everything but not strong enough fundamentals-wise to play much beyond that.

Also went out on a limb a bit and tried Mystik Belle on the PC - apparently this is based on a handful of old British computer games I'm not familiar with that basically blend a Metroidvania-esque platforming framework (which I generally like) with the "collect items and figure out what the heck to do with them" core of point-and-click adventures (which I generally don't). I haven't finished yet, but I've managed to get a good two-thirds through without consulting a walkthrough, though I admit having stumbled onto one or two solutions as opposed to actually figuring them out. The platforming and combat is more about charging into enemy attacks with your face than dodging them, but on the bright side the controls feel fine, the spritework is lovely and the humor suits the mood, so hopefully I won't get so stuck that I either give up or head to Google in shame.

Spent a bit more time with Yo-Kai Watch 3 as well; I usually settle in and play portable stuff pretty much the same way I play console stuff, so the slow pace I mentioned can really drag then, but on the flipside it can admittedly work well if you actually play portables for portability, since you can just fart around for a bit, grab some items, see if any new critters pop up, and stop on a dime when real life reasserts itself. One thing that might be an issue down the road is that, while some Yo-Kai apparently "evolve" if you level them up enough, apart from that they never learn any new skills so there doesn't seem to be much reason to bother with anyone that doesn't seem very useful from the get-go, since if they don't evolve they never really change. That said the game does seem to hint at some sort of "fusion" system appearing later on, so that might shift the mood a bit, but at the moment I feel like I'm building up a roster of mostly rejects, amusing as some of them might be.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Marc »

Picked up Dragon's Crown Pro on sale for £11.50. Character design's are obviously a matter of personal taste but the backdrops and soundtrack are lush. It lacks the punch of the best Capcom brawlers from what I've played so far, and the graphics can get a bit muddled when there are a lot of characters on screen, but seems solid enough.

Up to the boat house fight with mutated Jack on Resi 7 VR, and seem to have hit a bug. Finished the fight, he picked me up, shouted at me a bit, and I died without ever having been given control. Assumed I'd switched off for a moment and missed something, so went through the entire thing again, same result. Checking online, it appears that there's supposed to be some sort of button prompt to inject him with the serum once you've won the fight, but it's flat-out not showing up. At that point I simply couldn't be bothered to reload the thing in normal mode, do the fight, then reload in VR.

Got Crackdown 3 ready to have a blast at tonight. I know it's gotten very mixed reviews, but it simply sounds like more of the same to me, given the fun I had with the original I can't see how that can possibly be a bad thing.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by kaicooper »

i dont wanna make new recommend thread..so i'll ask here

im just into racing games lately..so what im looking for is challenging campaign or career mod (offline only plz)
not rally but great racing games like Grid 1 or Shift but much more realistic in assessted way lol..i call it sim-cade
cus im gonna play it with a gamepad so no im not looking for full sim game

i just got Wreckfest i donno if its good but some of my friends suggested it..i'l give it a shot
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Obiwanshinobi »

kaicooper wrote:im just into racing games lately..so what im looking for is challenging campaign or career mod (offline only plz)
not rally but great racing games like Grid 1 or Shift but much more realistic in assessted way lol..i call it sim-cade
cus im gonna play it with a gamepad so no im not looking for full sim game
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Sumez »

Glad I missed out on the Metroid talk here... So much hate on one of the most ground breaking examples of ingenious video game design.
Of course, if you want to play it like a run'n'gun, I can see why you wouldn't like it.
soprano1 wrote:Mega Man 11 (PC)
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Squire Grooktook wrote:All Sonic is terrible.

>Gotta go fast!
>Non-interactive loop-de-loop faux-cutscenes!
>Run into a wall or pit because you can't react to shit at that speed of screen scrolling!

"But Grooktook!" You might say (if you're dumb) "Just memorize the stages! It's like scorerunning a shmup!"

And my response would be of course, that the difference is that when I am playing a shmup, even if I haven't fully memorized the game yet, I can still have a good time completing a relatively challenging and exciting game. Whereas in Sonic, I am stuck grinding through the most tedious, easy, overlong, clumsy, mind-numbing hop and bop imaginable that doesn't even do what it purports to do until that speedrun route is memorized.

No thanks.
This is exactly why I don't get the hubbub about Sonic Mania. It ticks all these boxes.
Meanwhile I still find Sonic 3 enjoyable completely independently of any knowledge or memories I might have of the game. It's just bright, cheerful and fun. It doesn't require you to know everything that's coming up in order to enjoy it, but it does reward it.

That said, the best game in the series is Sonic Generations. Fight me.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Stevens »

Oh man I am glad it isn't just me. Never could get into Sonic either.

Still at Wasteland 2, although I have been sneaking in credits of Ketsui and Zero Ranger (when I can be bothered to dig my laptop out.

I've really been digging my time in the waste as the game has totally lived up to what I thought it would be. I may be a bit too trigger happy at times, but many of the situations that can be solved with diplomacy involve NPC's that are (based on my choices) assholes.

For instance:
Spoiler
I wiped out God's Militia, but only after choosing a dialogue path that made them attack me. I wasn't being an asshole in said path, just answered "No" when they asked me to do something. The three leaders want you to dig up dirt on the other two so they can assume control. If you say "No" they wind up attacking you.
That is just one example - The Mannerites were no better, but when I play this again (probably in the fall prior to the release of 3) I will be less trigger happy and see where it goes, even if shooting first is what feels right.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Ghegs »

kaicooper wrote:i dont wanna make new recommend thread..so i'll ask here

im just into racing games lately..so what im looking for is challenging campaign or career mod (offline only plz)
not rally but great racing games like Grid 1 or Shift but much more realistic in assessted way lol..i call it sim-cade
cus im gonna play it with a gamepad so no im not looking for full sim game

i just got Wreckfest i donno if its good but some of my friends suggested it..i'l give it a shot
PC games only, then? If you like Wreckfest, than the earlier games from the same devs, namely FlatOut 2 and FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage are great picks.

Though you excluded rally, I have to say V-Rally 4 is quite excellent.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by TransatlanticFoe »

kaicooper wrote:i dont wanna make new recommend thread..so i'll ask here

im just into racing games lately..so what im looking for is challenging campaign or career mod (offline only plz)
not rally but great racing games like Grid 1 or Shift but much more realistic in assessted way lol..i call it sim-cade
cus im gonna play it with a gamepad so no im not looking for full sim game

i just got Wreckfest i donno if its good but some of my friends suggested it..i'l give it a shot
Project Cars has a great career mode. You can customise driving aids, damage and opposition AI for a much less sim-focused experience. The default control settings are awful for a pad but a swift Google finds some good settings people have tried and tested.

It lets you start out in karts and work your way up to F1 and Le Mans prototypes. Real life circuits. Full length championships with practice and qualifying... which you can skip if you want that arcadey "start from the back, race to the front" feel. There are a lot of fairly silly mixed class invitation events you get race in as well, which you can skip if you want to or join in for a change of pace.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by null1024 »

Sumez wrote:
Squire Grooktook wrote:All Sonic is terrible.

>Gotta go fast!
>Non-interactive loop-de-loop faux-cutscenes!
>Run into a wall or pit because you can't react to shit at that speed of screen scrolling!

"But Grooktook!" You might say (if you're dumb) "Just memorize the stages! It's like scorerunning a shmup!"

And my response would be of course, that the difference is that when I am playing a shmup, even if I haven't fully memorized the game yet, I can still have a good time completing a relatively challenging and exciting game. Whereas in Sonic, I am stuck grinding through the most tedious, easy, overlong, clumsy, mind-numbing hop and bop imaginable that doesn't even do what it purports to do until that speedrun route is memorized.

No thanks.
This is exactly why I don't get the hubbub about Sonic Mania. It ticks all these boxes.
Meanwhile I still find Sonic 3 enjoyable completely independently of any knowledge or memories I might have of the game. It's just bright, cheerful and fun. It doesn't require you to know everything that's coming up in order to enjoy it, but it does reward it.

That said, the best game in the series is Sonic Generations. Fight me.
I kinda have zero idea where you're coming from with this post to be honest.
Mania has like two pits in the whole game and has very few "do this or get hit" bits. There's a fair bit of sedate pace platforming, similarly to what's in Sonic 3.
As much as I like Sonic 3, it's also [more than the S&K half] full of "hey, did you remember this lol? get hit", especially Marble Garden.

Hell, the Sonic game that best fits what's being described is Advance 2, which literally a "do this or die" bit at the end of almost every stage and is extremely automated the entire way with dash panels and rails, and it's on the microscopic GBA screen. It pans a bit when you're going super-fast, but just a bit because there's just not enough screen.
Mania is practically the straight opposite of that, especially with stages like Oil Ocean and Titanic Monarch.

As an aside, Generations is fun. Shame the "classic" stages control like ass. The longer I play them, the more I think they're just bad. The modern Sonic bits are nice... but when it comes down to it, none of the stages in the game are as fun as playing through the ported stages in Unleashed Project mod. Like, none. Really kinda annoys me that Sega keeps tacking on assorted bullshit when they get something right [Adventure 2 is the other bit culprit -- Sonic stages are a bit iffy, but fun, most of the rest of the game ranges from mediocre to fuck off].
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Sumez
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Sumez »

Adventure 2 is mostly garbage through and through. I guess the Sonic stages could be fun if they weren't ridiculously buggy and controlled like feces. It's one of the worst games I have played. Sonic '06 is better.

And I agree, modern stages are actually the best part of Generations, to my surprise.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Squire Grooktook »

Sonic/Shadow's stages in Adventure 2 might be one of the least execrable parts of the franchise for me ("least" being the qualifier here). Certainly not great, but I never had issue controlling them (at least, compared to the average 3d platformer of the day) and they actually do some relatively interesting things from time to time.

It's not comparable to 06 at all, which is borderline unplayable even at its peaks.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Ajora »

I don't think I've ever encountered a bigger bullet sponge in all of video gaming than the final boss of They Hunger (on hard mode, anyway). I was good at conserving my ammo and was very careful to aim squarely for his head. Eventually, I completely exhausted my ammo supply, so it was either cheat or go back a fair bit. After everything I pumped into his skull before cheating, he still wasn't anywhere close to being dead. I think this is probably the first first-person shooter I've ever beaten by resorting to cheats. The guy who wrote the gamefaqs guide couldn't beat him, either.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Marc »

Hmm I was right about Crackdown 3. It's the original turned up to 11. There's a slight concession to modern gaming in that the maps is now littered with icons denoting places of interest, which will help to weaken the areas stronghold if taken down first, but otherwise it's the same big, dumb, explosive fun. Now I'm not here to defend it as the pinnacle of gaming, but to me it did always seem to be the one open-world game that understood that anyone playing them was doing so primarily to cause as much carnage as possible; and based the entire game around providing concentrated bursts of that, instead of filling things out with unnecessary padding. In short if you had fun with Crackdown 1, there's nothing not to like here. It's interesting to read the number of reviews that have suggested the original is now almost archaic, and that gaming (of this type) has moved on since then. I'd argue quite the opposite.

Also managed to get half an hour on Grip. It's basically Rollcage from what I remember of that. Cars are pleasingly heavy and controllable, and track design is really inventive. It's got an endearingly rugged feel to it, which is sadly undone by a crappy frame rate. I doubt that will ever get sorted, if it did I'd be picking this up for sure.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Stevens »

I've yet to meet a single NPC in WL 2 in a position of power that doesn't deserve to be killed.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Vanguard »

Sumez wrote:That said, the best game in the series is Sonic Generations. Fight me.
Agreed. The 2d stages and minigames are a complete waste of time, but modern Sonic has some genuinely fun speed-based score attack stages. Note that this does not contradict my earlier post as (the good part of) Sonic Generations is a hold-forward-simulator.
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