What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Anything from run & guns to modern RPGs, what else do you play?
Naruto_g
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Naruto_g »

Naruto and dota2 and im planning to return to wow community
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Blinge
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Blinge »

Lol Sumez don't ever touch Persona 2 then.

Meanwhile In Hollowknight. One more boss rush eludes me, the massive one. I made it through the bullshit that is Markoth with janky platforms and no floor..
Only to face Grey Prince Zote with 4 health and lose to him.
I'd practiced him last night until i thought he was no longer an issue, too.

I fucking hate this boss. He can just throw out underlings at random, including exploding mines, then teleport on top of you and hit you with shockwaves, or the most deadly of all: when he simply runs forward. All options covered and no way to avoid a hit without the reactions of a 12 year old korean.
I'm compulsively playing the game for hours with 0 enjoyment. :D
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Steamflogger Boss
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Steamflogger Boss »

That's just something you have to deal with when you play menu driven turn based jrpgs. If you don't care about the original experience you can play on an emulator and fast forward to save some time right?

That said FFVII is the worst one so why play it anyway. KEKW
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Marc
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Marc »

Steamflogger Boss wrote:That's just something you have to deal with when you play menu driven turn based jrpgs. If you don't care about the original experience you can play on an emulator and fast forward to save some time right?

That said FFVII is the worst one so why play it anyway. KEKW
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Stevens
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Stevens »

More point and click? Has the world gone mad?

Don't answer that.

I'm not trading pnc for r2rkmf permanently, but I've rather enjoyed the last few games I've played along with my usual rotation of twitch stuff.

First was Red Strings Club, gave my thoughts on it on the last page. I will absolutely play it again at some point. It is rather short clocking in at about four hours.

The I played Technobabylon, finished it yesterday. It was like playing a 12 hour mini series. Had a pretty good story, the puzzles were generally well thought out and logical. I looked up a few solutions after getting stuck.

Last night I started Whispers of a Machine. After an hour with it I can say I may have saved the best one for last.

Also been playing Zero Ranger cause it's fucking awesome. Yes I know it's ot here.
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XoPachi
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by XoPachi »

Playing Sonic Rush 2 and grinding out some levels in Time Attack. This game is...insane. All the small possible optimizations for most levels is great. The brilliance of the simple trick system adding another layer to routing and resource management for the boost meter is great. I miss my backflip from the Advance games, but I guess it's not necessary.
Rush 1 did feel a bit better though. Tricks finishes came out instantly and you could jump off rails so things were just a bit more fluid.
(Rails are weird in Sonic; every game does something slightly different with them that makes a huge deal throughout...) But it had inferior levels mainly because of those dumb, unavoidable combat situations that halted the pacing like a wall of iron bricks. I'm gonna dig into Colors DS as well because that games is kind of ridiculous too at a higher level.

I got all three of these great games recently because I wanted something for my New 2DS and I can't stand the 3DS library save for like...3 games. Trying to rebuild my DS collection I lost a decade ago. Manage to snag these for cheap with their cases and manuals (Also got Echoes of Time which they said was used, but came flat out sealed so that was dope).

God, I really just said "a decade ago". That's so scary. :(
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by null1024 »

GTA Vice City Stories [PSP].
I remembered I had a Vita, and it's no longer rebooting on me randomly with a "the memory card was ejected" error now.
naturally, like 90% of what I end up playing on the Vita is PSP stuff :lol:

The Boomshine Blowout mission really, really blows. I really forgot how bad it was, I think the last time I played through this game was like 10 years ago. Fucking forklift.
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XoPachi wrote:Playing Sonic Rush 2 and grinding out some levels in Time Attack. This game is...insane. All the small possible optimizations for most levels is great. The brilliance of the simple trick system adding another layer to routing and resource management for the boost meter is great. I miss my backflip from the Advance games, but I guess it's not necessary.
Rush 1 did feel a bit better though. Tricks finishes came out instantly and you could jump off rails so things were just a bit more fluid.
(Rails are weird in Sonic; every game does something slightly different with them that makes a huge deal throughout...) But it had inferior levels mainly because of those dumb, unavoidable combat situations that halted the pacing like a wall of iron bricks. I'm gonna dig into Colors DS as well because that games is kind of ridiculous too at a higher level.

I got all three of these great games recently because I wanted something for my New 2DS and I can't stand the 3DS library save for like...3 games. Trying to rebuild my DS collection I lost a decade ago. Manage to snag these for cheap with their cases and manuals (Also got Echoes of Time which they said was used, but came flat out sealed so that was dope).

God, I really just said "a decade ago". That's so scary. :(
I should actually go through Colors DS. It had a few changes that felt really weird when I started playing it ages ago, so I never gave it a full on playthrough.

Spent the most time with Rush 1 of the lot here, and yeah, apart from a few terribad stage design decisions here and there [those sealed rooms are bad, but I've learned to live with them after 15 years :lol: ], I love that game.
Should fire up Rush Adventure again too. I remember thinking it was really cool, except for the sailing jazz you needed to do between levels.
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rapoon
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by rapoon »

Picked up StarCrawlers today and Judgement arrived in the mail. Thanks to Bareknuckle and Steamflogger respectively for introducing me to these games.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Steamflogger Boss »

rapoon wrote:Picked up StarCrawlers today and Judgement arrived in the mail. Thanks to Bareknuckle and Steamflogger respectively for introducing me to these games.
I hope you enjoy them both. I had a great time with Judgement.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Herr Schatten »

Ax Battler - A Legend of Golden Axe

I never had a Game Gear back in the day, but I've always been interested in this spin-off. Now that the GG adaptor for the Mega SG is out, I can finally play some of the games that had eluded me so far, and on a big screen to boot. Consequently Ax Battler was one of the first carts I picked up. I've always liked the other GA spin-off (Golden Axe Warrior for the Master System), which is a cute-looking and fairly competent clone of the first Legend of Zelda. Ax Battler, on the other hand, draws its inspiration from Zelda II, mostly.

There's an overworld where you can walk around with your little warrior sprite, with typical top-down graphics. There are random encounters with enemies. These encounters play out as one-on-one duels in a side view with nice and huge sprites, not too dissimilar to regular GA, but without z-axis movement. Dotted around the map are towns and special places. The towns have the same top-down graphics as the overworld. Here you can talk to people to get 'useful' information, rest at an inn to restore your health, get a password to save your progress, or go to a training hall to learn new moves. The special places are the dungeons of the game and they play in a similar side view as the random encounters, but you have to do some additional platforming, and the enemies in these stages are much weaker than the random encounters.

This all sounds very nice in theory, but none of the games individual parts are very good, unfortunately. The platforming stages and the duels suffer from clunky controls. Additionally, duels always end as soon as you get hit only once, which makes learning how to counter the enemies' moves all the more annoying. The exploration element in the overworld is completely nullified by the fact that a) there are no bonus areas to be found (every special place is important for progress) and b) at any time in the game there's literally only one place you can go next:

Go to dungeon to pick up item that enables access to the next town --> Go to town to learn move that enables you to get past the enemies in the next dungeon --> repeat.

There's no experience-based leveling, so no grinding either. The only character development is the acquisition of new moves in the training halls. All you get from random encounters are magic vases that serve as the game's currency, but the only places where you can spend them are the inns. You can also use them to unleash GA-style magic attacks in the sideview parts, but you never need this. In the end, the overworld parts (including the random encounters) only serve to add fluff between the sidescrolling dungeons, as those are the only parts of the game that really matter. Bizarrely, the game ends without a final boss fight after the last dungeon (Death Adder's castle), but Death Adder appears frequently as a random enemy in overworld encounters. In fact, in the latter parts of the game, it's not uncommon to fight several Death Adders in a row.

On the plus side, there's some nice visuals and very catchy music. The stages and enemies are rendered well. It's also nice how they included some GA lore in the form of the Turtle Village and Giant Eagle stages.

Ax Battler is certainly not a game I can wholeheartedly recommend, but it's an interesting curio. Despite none of the individual parts being very good, I had quite some fun for the two hours it took me to play through the game. (It's obviously meant to be played in short bursts on the go rather than in a longer session.)
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Obiwanshinobi »

null1024 wrote:Fucking forklift.
Fair enough, but I can't get enough of real-life forklifts in my current day job. If these have ever looked "arcade" to you, that's very much the way they are indeed! Except there's always a risk of real-life damage to driving the things...
For real, though, when after MONTHS (if not YEARS) of neglecting my games, I found myself as proficient in the first Super Monkey Ball as I'd ever been before, I realised that the job fulfills my arcade gaming needs to such an extent that I don't need to "prove myself" badly anymore, and I can just keep living the rest of my lifetime 'till it lasts. One of those so-ever-few small mercies of nearing the shadow-line.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by BulletMagnet »

Seems Zodiac Age got me in a "try out the Final Fantasy games you never got to" mood, as I'm now a ways into FFXV, which I tried briefly awhile ago but didn't stick with - not that the series hasn't had more than its share of weirdness over the years, but this is easily one of the most surreal titles I've played in quite some time. Even knowing that this thing had its origins in the famously troubled "Fabula Nova Crystalis" initiative, it's still a disarmingly weird, disparate hodgepodge of gameplay, aesthetic and thematic styles whose greatest single strength is to act like everything's perfectly normal, what you see is what any reasonable person might expect, why do you ask? I can see some people wanting to burn Square's headquarters to the ground after playing this, but seeing as I have a high tolerance for goofy nonsense I'm currently sticking with it despite its considerable shortcomings.
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ACSeraph
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by ACSeraph »

^I didn't like XV that much at first, but it eventually grew on me and I was completely hooked. Once you start to understand the strategy of the battle system it will stop feeling like button mashy chaos and start feeling satisfying and incredibly unique.

I also highly recommend playing around with the character switching during battle, because the playstyles are varied and different characters are best suited to different mobs.

I only have two really serious criticisms of FFXV, and that is the magic system and the way healing items work in battle. General magic crafting yields so few spells that if you like using magic you will find yourself constantly pausing the game to craft more. It's horrible and completely ruins the flow of the game.

As for items, there is no cool down so you can just spam heals constantly, which trivializes the difficulty despite having a challenging battle system at a basic level. In fact this is probably why so few people appreciate (figure out at all?) the deeper combat mechanics. Most players are probably just mashing and spamming heals.

Anyhow don't expect XII quality, but taken on its own terms there is a lot of good here. I actually ended up getting the platinum in FFXV, which is pretty rare for me. Also VII Remake's awesome battle system definitely wouldn't be what it is without XV's growing pains and willingness to take risks. It's not perfect (not even close) but it deserves more respect.

Side note: If you want a really unique and incredible obscure FF, I highly recommend Lightning Returns. I'd call it the most criminally underrated game in the whole series.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Steamflogger Boss »

Is that the one that is basically Valkyrie Profile type gameplay? I had a friend tell me one of the XIII games was but I forget which. I've been meaning to give them an honest go anyway.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by WelshMegalodon »

Lightning Returns is still pretty well-known. I was under the impression that Crystal Chronicles was the only real underdog of the franchise. Maybe Dimensions, too, though I can't say I see that one even mentioned very often.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Blinge »

WelshMegalodon wrote: Crystal Chronicles
Cool game wish i could play it.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by BulletMagnet »

ACSeraph wrote:Side note: If you want a really unique and incredible obscure FF, I highly recommend Lightning Returns. I'd call it the most criminally underrated game in the whole series.
Funnily enough, LR is one of the very few games I've gotten the Platinum on; was on my fourth playthrough before finally moving to something else. In similar fashion to XV it has a decided "see what sticks to the wall" feel to it, but for lack of a better phrase it feels like everyone involved was honestly committed to having some fun with it, warts and all, and that did a lot to get me over its hurdles.
Cool game wish i could play it.
Aren't they doing a remake/remaster of Crystal Chronicles, or am I thinking of something else?
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by TransatlanticFoe »

XV isn't awful by any stretch but it's really uneven in its story, characterisation and gameplay. The combat basically requires you to hold the dodge button, because otherwise you'll get hit by a lot of off-camera stuff, which is odd and (in conjuction with Dying Light using the same button for parkour) destroyed my right bumper. But it's decent enough when you get used to it and a lot of the optional dungeons are fun. Likewise the road trip feel is pretty cool, until you realise its backdrop is your home and family have been destroyed but hey let's go look for some frogs. Everything takes a nosedive once the road trip portion is over, it's overly linear (and over quickly) and a certain character is a massive arsehole towards you considering what just happened in the main plot.
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okay Gladiolus, Ignis is now blind but as well as your home and family, your girlfriend was just killed but sure, get angry at the grieving character. Even though you buggered off halfway through for no reason (an obvious "insert DLC here" cutaway).
The thing I REALLY hated though, was the levelling system was so biased in favour of inns that camping out was a massive hinderance, completely sidelining recipe crafting.

I'll second Lightning Returns too. Really enjoyed it, even if the plot had totally gone off the rails by that point the combat was flexible and enjoyable. Tying levelling to sidequests was a good move too, encourages you to engage with the world to level up if you get stuck, instead of finding a corner of the map to grind in. I was worried about the timer mechanic but you have an ability which makes the ticking clock a complete non-issue.
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Blinge
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Blinge »

Hollow Knight:

Just beat the big boy boss rush: Pantheon of Hallownest.
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Ajora
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Ajora »

Started playing Diablo 3 for the first time. I'm impressed with just how massive and polished this game feels, which it damn well should considering how long it's been in active development for. This is pretty much everything I could've hoped for in a sequel, and I think I actually prefer it over Diablo 2.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by vol.2 »

Ajora wrote:I think I actually prefer it over Diablo 2.
For as much fun as the first two games are, there are incredibly boring to look at. Just endless seas of greyish brown and brownish grey with brownish greyish reds for accents.

At least 3 has a tiny bit of color, even if it still is very dark.
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Ajora
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Ajora »

vol.2 wrote:
Ajora wrote:I think I actually prefer it over Diablo 2.
For as much fun as the first two games are, there are incredibly boring to look at. Just endless seas of greyish brown and brownish grey with brownish greyish reds for accents.

At least 3 has a tiny bit of color, even if it still is very dark.
I like the art direction of the first two games just fine, but I think Diablo 3 is easily the best looking game in the franchise, aesthetically speaking. Never understood people's complaints about it being "too cartoony". Diablo 4's visuals on the other hand look utterly drab to me.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Sumez »

o_O


Diablo 1 and 2 both look amazing. There are some issues with the graphics clashing in D1, but it makes up for it in moody atmosphere. Diablo 2 is IMO one of the best looking prerendered games (which isn't saying much I guess, but I really do like how it looks).

Diablo 3 just looks like hot garbage. Best looking game of the franchise what :o
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Sumez »

Nebs 'n Debs is a fantastic little homebrew NES game that I think deserves a ton more attention.

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It's a fast paced platformer, and the pure concentrated form of the type of game design I think this forum really appreciates. You start with 3 lives, and there are no continues, so you'll be starting over from the start a lot. But every time you play through a stage you'll improve your skills with it, and once you get it under your skin you can blaze through each of them in a manner of seconds, quickly reaching the point where you last got stuck and get a little better at the game on the way. There are only 12 short stages in the game, and the speedrun world record is under five minutes, but beating it for the first time takes quite a while (though it's easily doable in a dedicated afternoon).

Beating the game once, however, unlocks the true challenge, which is beating the game with no extra lives to find, and much fewer crystals to gather on the way. The crystals you find (spread out like Mario coins) are essentially fuel for a continually downticking timer which even on the normal mode (which gives you a massive surplus of them) encourages incredibly reckless play, which really is a ton of fun.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Steamflogger Boss »

Hmm, Sumez confirming he has good taste sometimes hmmmm.

Yeah that's a nice little NES game, I highly recommend it to fellow platform heads.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Blinge »

Blinge wrote:Hollow Knight:

Just beat the big boy boss rush: Pantheon of Hallownest.
I'm the frickin king, you can all suck my bugdic
Did it again and recorded this time!

https://youtu.be/BEQLA5_uDdU
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

Sumez wrote:Nebs 'n Debs
colour_thief brought this over a while back, it's definitely a really neat homebrew platformer! The dash mechanic is really well thought-out.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by vol.2 »

Stumbled into this one and found it to be addictive. So weird. I don't think it really has much of a plot, but it fits in perfectly with mid-90's Japanese sci-fi fighting genre. Kind of like a Jojo's Bizarre Adventure type of thing but much less developed story-wise.

Gurume Sentai Barayarō

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

Post by Sumez »

Been wanting to play that one for a while, but it's very expensive... or a Piko repro, which is arguably worse.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Steamflogger Boss »

Sumez wrote:Been wanting to play that one for a while, but it's very expensive... or a Piko repro, which is arguably worse.
Get a rom?

Apparently the US cart is officially licensed oddly enough. So weird to be getting essentially official repros.
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