What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[Marc]

My friend re: Guacamelee 1

"there's a difference between a challenge and a game that's just hard to be annoying/for the sake of it "

But he's a total pussy, so to me that's a great recommendation

Oh even the first got demanding toward the end, no question. My only reservation about the sequel, is that I'm sure there are some bits where the devs have essentially gone along with the mindset of 'there's a checkpoint last screen, that'll fly'. There's a lot to take in - colour coded enemies, gates, two forms (so far) to switch between, to dimensions to switch on the fly that changes hazards, platforms etc....
I don't really think you could make game harder fairly, so I'm hoping that hard simply spaces out checkpoints further.

[BulletMagnet]

I've finished both Guacamelees, which officially certifies them as Trained Chimp Could Do It material.

[Licorice]

I'll admit SS3's gameplay prevents it from transcending the level of "immensely entertaining kusoge"

Can someone explain this to me? I'm far from being even a competent fighter player, but SS3 feels fine for casual play, and watching vs play videos by what I presume are decent to great players online, I can't see anything very kusogeish. I understand the boss character that's not meant to be human playable has an infinite. Is that the reason people complain about the gameplay? If so, that's a strange complaint cause AFAICT even short combos can end the round in both this game and other SamShos.

[Sengoku Strider]

The first Guacamelee is only really challenging if you never played 8 or 16-bit games. Otherwise, it's like "oh, this game wants me to know my moves and make it through some tough but fair jump puzzles." It'll likely take a few tries to get through certain areas, but that was always par for the course back in the day, when games had like 25 minutes of actual content that they needed to stretch out long enough to justify a $50-60 purchase.

That said, by the end of the game I'd had my fill. Haven't felt motivated to give the second one a spin.

[Sengoku Strider]

I'll admit SS3's gameplay prevents it from transcending the level of "immensely entertaining kusoge"

Can someone explain this to me? I'm far from being even a competent fighter player, but SS3 feels fine for casual play, and watching vs play videos by what I presume are decent to great players online, I can't see anything very kusogeish. I understand the boss character that's not meant to be human playable has an infinite. Is that the reason people complain about the gameplay? If so, that's a strange complaint cause AFAICT even short combos can end the round in both this game and other SamShos.

The damage is extra out of whack in SamSho 3, and you only need to know a couple of moves for certain characters to dominate it. The game's more in line with Bushido Blade than Street Fighter. Somebody did put out a fix that brings things down to Earth a bit, supposedly it's great.

But anyway that's why IV is remembered as a much more playable version of that engine, and the best in the series after II. I forget why people don't like V or V Special.

[Kino]

Can someone explain this to me? I'm far from being even a competent fighter player, but SS3 feels fine for casual play, and watching vs play videos by what I presume are decent to great players online, I can't see anything very kusogeish.

Well, for starters...

Nearly every character has an infinite, some of which are so brainless that the only fathomable way you'd drop the combo is by falling asleep. So even at the lowest levels it's busted.

The hitboxes on some of the normals are just baffling (Is it humanly possible for Amakusa's close standing B to actually hit something?)

Gameplay aside, there's many telltale signs that the game was rushed to meet a deadline. Kuroko being a mirror match rather than a distinct character (not to mention having a post-match win quote despite only being playable via hacking,) the lack of story sequences compared to SS1&2, only one character's audio track plays during match intros, characters randomly freeze after the match ends.... I can only assume they were given 10 minutes to playtest before shipping it out.

I still consider it a close second to SS2, in spite of all this.

The damage is extra out of whack in SamSho 3

Find me one SS3 clip where this happens. Best I ever managed was a two-hit KO, when using Upper Grade and getting 2 counterhits in a row. Not sure why the damage in SS3 gets singled out, it's pretty on par for the series (let alone '95-era SNK; how was the damage in that year's installment of KOF? )

[Licorice]

Nearly every character has an infinite, some of which are so brainless that the only fathomable way you'd drop the combo is by falling asleep. So even at the lowest levels it's busted.

Interesting, I looked up a list, and then quickly tried out Genjuro's back hit + projectile + back hit stun loop combo. There's a bit of a rhythm to it but yeah it is quite mindless. From the list I'm looking at, it seems most of the infinites come from back hits.

Find me one SS3 clip where this happens. Best I ever managed was a two-hit KO, when using Upper Grade and getting 2 counterhits in a row. Not sure why the damage in SS3 gets singled out, it's pretty on par for the series (let alone '95-era SNK; how was the damage in that year's installment of KOF? )

Exactly. The way I see it there's no difference between infinites and other ToD non-infinite combos or even single hits like in that video.

[BulletMagnet]

Had another "I refuse to sleep until I beat this" incident in Phoenotopia...I need to finish this thing before I start needing to use sick days at work. It's also out on GoG now, which was a nice surprise.

[Sengoku Strider]

Find me one SS3 clip where this happens.

Well hey, like I said, I know serious fans of the series don't like V either. I do own V Special on ACA, but I've only logged a couple of hours on it, not enough to make informed comments.

(let alone '95-era SNK; how was the damage in that year's installment of KOF? )

Totally out of whack too. I loved KoF '95 in its time and played it tons - but mainly because it was the only KoF home release us Western plebs without Neo Geos were ever given until the Dreamcast.

To this day I remember playing against some guy in the arcade, down to the last round, my Kyo vs. his Choi. I was getting carved to pieces, he was at a 60% v 10% life advantage. I just couldn't keep up with him. I started spamming supers from a lack of any better ideas. The timing on his jump for the final blow should have been perfect. But at the very end of my super animation some tiny flicker of the flame at the top hit him - well, at least the collision box did, not the actual sprite. He died instantly, that little flicker took off all ~60%.

I just looked over at him and said "Sorry."

[Kino]

Well hey, like I said, I know serious fans of the series don't like V either. I do own V Special on ACA, but I've only logged a couple of hours on it, not enough to make informed comments

That was V Spec in the vid, which is at least as beloved as SS4. Unless popular consensus changed drastically over the past several years?

On average, SS3's damage ratio might have all the others beat, but that's mainly due to them introducing counter-hit damage whilst forgetting to take into account how high damage already is in SamSho (shall I remind everyone that a fully-raged Genjuro in SS2 can 2-hit KO certain characters with back-to-back standing ABs?)

Vanilla V does seem to be universally despised, though. I've forgotten most of the reasons why over the years... I definitely remember some goofy stuff like Yoshitora having an infinite with cr. B into Nadeshiko, and Gaoh theoretically being the most broken SNK boss ever due to his rage explosion making him invincible for the rest of a round (pretty sure it was extremely rare for the CPU to exploit that, thankfully.) Plus SSVsp kinda renders V obsolete, much like SS2 did to SS1.

Totally out of whack too. I loved KoF '95 in its time and played it tons - but mainly because it was the only KoF home release us Western plebs without Neo Geos were ever given until the Dreamcast.

IDK, I still consider '95 a top 3 KOF, grime and all. Since everyone in the game has broken shit, it becomes balanced by way of absolute unbalance. Also, allowing ranbu supers to be done mid-air was definitely a decision.

[WelshMegalodon]

While I haven't been doing too much gaming this month, I am happy to have finally netted a no-potion 1CC of Super Wonder Boy Monster World. Frankly, I'm surprised I even made it this far without needing the thing, because I somehow forgot to skip one of the shield upgrades and ended up not having enough gold to afford the Armor of Legend. The sense of closure is quite satisfying.

[BrianC]

Nice! Mark III version? Is that on a TV with shadow mask? I have been playing games on a 15 kHz Sony TV using component lately.

[WelshMegalodon]

Haha, I wish! This is just MAME with HLSL enabled. I'm still not sure whether I prefer this look or the crt-geom-deluxe shader.

I still have my old Trinitron, but only one console - a PlayStation that someone passed off to me during a move - and no games. Emulation for the stuff I play is good enough that I haven't felt the need to go out of my way for real hardware, but I suppose it might be worth it for something I play regularly.

[null1024]

Found out that Dr. Slump [PS1] got a translation, so I'm playing it now.

The graphics are very cute and look nice [helps that I'm running at several times internal resolution and downsampling, but the only major downgrade when I switch back to DuckStation's more accurate software renderer is that you can't quite make out all the detail on the textures, and the textures are very good in the game, so it's a real shame]. The characters are funny and Arale is cute. It's all very, very charming.
However, the camera is awful. You can't move it or adjust it, and most of the time it tries to orbit around a single point. Otherwise, it generally just keeps a relatively fixed position and moves alongside Arale. It's really, really bad.

Large parts of the game are just walking around town, finding out what to do to advance the story. Eventually, you'll do some platforming or need to attack some enemies. During the platforming stages, you really can't see anything to the side of you, so shit like falling rocks will just whack you out of nowhere. I can kinda understand why they didn't want to zoom the camera out [the framerate would certainly crater, there are a lot of little spots across the game where the framerate goes to die], but it's still bad.

I also kinda wish they didn't have the signpost-based menu system for going between locations -- it's easy to hit the wrong item in the list, and almost all of the locations feel like they were designed for you to just walk from place to place anyway instead of needing to select from the menu. At one point, the game is just like "yeah, don't walk down that road, use the signpost!" which showcases how dumb it is.
Your moveset is kinda screwy from what I've seen -- your normal punch is terrible and you really should just slide attack everything.You really want to run everywhere, but the camera is too zoomed in for that to be a good idea if you're in danger. Your jump from a normal walking pace is awful and takes a moment, while your jump while dashing is great and feels great.
Some ledges prevent you from just walking off of them, some don't. It's a bit odd.

There's a way to unlock a few extra gadgets via filling up the bar at the top of the screen, but they're pretty useless as far as I've seen, which is probably the joke. You can get a PLANET CRACKING punch, but I haven't seen it actually do anything to anything -- not even smashing the bricks that Suppaman tried [and failed] to break. It also takes hilariously long to charge, so it's probably also just a gag ability. Probably -- I'm not done with the game, and it would be entirely likely for it to be actually needed at some point.

Still, from what I've played, the game is really a bit of a mess. A fun, charming mess, but still kind of a mess.
Haven't seen or read much of Dr. Slump, but if this game is any indication, it's probably actually funny.

[Marc]

Started GRID last night. Handling is simcade but not quite on par with Forza Horizon / Driveclub, but entertaining enough. AI on hard is pretty aggressive, they think nothing of shoving you off the track at every given opportunity. Good uncomplicated fun.

Played the first chapter of Ashura's Wrath. It's..... interesting?

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I've been replaying some of the GTA games. The open world sandboxy nature of them is pretty fun. I'm currently messing with San Andreas and the question is, which version do I play?

• The PS2 version is generally very well regarded as having the best visuals. I've got a copy of it, but loading times and object pop-in is an issue unless emulating it or playing it off a PS2 hard drive (which I don't have). It seems to emulate decently though I'd need to mess with controls to make them less twitchy.

• The original Xbox version on an Xbox 360 has less "orange" visuals and redesigned controls using the shoulder buttons, but otherwise has all the elements of the original. I've got a disc, but you can't install it to the hard drive, so it's plagued with some very significant loading/popin when going fast (models won't load until you're right next to them leading to running into stuff that's invisible, one wall along the shore when going on the extreme southeast highway in Los Santos is prone to doing this). Sometimes the loading seems even worse than I remember on the PS2 version. I also missed the chance to buy the digital copy which may have solved that, but it's since been replaced by the awful 360 version which is a port of the Android port as the only digital download version, and the mobile port is generally not well regarded for many reasons.

• PC version apparently requires a ton of modding to actually get working properly and re-implement the multiplayer features that were removed as well as fix lots of bugs and restore the music from the soundtrack that was removed from newer versions such as the one on Steam which is apparently not considered worth playing without modding.

PC version when modded sounds like it'd be best... but it's a bit daunting to get started on it as it's a lot of mods you need to install and ensure work correctly.

[Marc]

I've been replaying some of the GTA games. The open world sandboxy nature of them is pretty fun. I'm currently messing with San Andreas and the question is, which version do I play?

• The PS2 version is generally very well regarded as having the best visuals. I've got a copy of it, but loading times and object pop-in is an issue unless emulating it or playing it off a PS2 hard drive (which I don't have). It seems to emulate decently though I'd need to mess with controls to make them less twitchy.

• The original Xbox version on an Xbox 360 has less "orange" visuals and redesigned controls using the shoulder buttons, but otherwise has all the elements of the original. I've got a disc, but you can't install it to the hard drive, so it's plagued with some very significant loading/popin when going fast (models won't load until you're right next to them leading to running into stuff that's invisible, one wall along the shore when going on the extreme southeast highway in Los Santos is prone to doing this). Sometimes the loading seems even worse than I remember on the PS2 version. I also missed the chance to buy the digital copy which may have solved that, but it's since been replaced by the awful 360 version which is a port of the Android port as the only digital download version, and the mobile port is generally not well regarded for many reasons.

• PC version apparently requires a ton of modding to actually get working properly and re-implement the multiplayer features that were removed as well as fix lots of bugs and restore the music from the soundtrack that was removed from newer versions such as the one on Steam which is apparently not considered worth playing without modding.

PC version when modded sounds like it'd be best... but it's a bit daunting to get started on it as it's a lot of mods you need to install and ensure work correctly.

Honestly, I'd kill for a remake of Vice City. Same soundtrack, just update the controls and visuals.
They've gotten way too sprawling now, I think SA was where that trend started. First two, I knew every corner of the map, which cars would spawn in which areas...... Two of the most fun experiences I've ever had. It's been pretty much diminishing returns since then. I picked up the Liberty City double-pack a few weeks ago, because I remember reading at the time that the Gay Tony campaign had shed some of the bloat, but can't muster up the enthusiasm to put any serious time into it.

[vol.2]

Hey, Ultima Underworld 1 and 2 are free on GOG rn.


https://www.gog.com/game/ultima_underworld_1_2


Also some of the Syndicate games https://www.gog.com/game/syndicate

[BulletMagnet]

Finished Phoenotopia Awakening earlier this week; finally managed to put together a review if anyone's interested in additional thoughts on it.

[Sumez]

I promised I'd give people a heads-up when this is happening, so here it is. This Saturday we'll be hosting a 1CC marathon all day at a local private arcade, and I'll be playing Wonderboy in Monster Land alongside a bunch of other games.

It's going down at https://www.twitch.tv/the_shed_arcade
and here's the schedule:


Don't expect a superplay or anything of DeathSmiles, or even revenge bullets lol. I just went with that one as it's the one Cave game in the arcade that I know I can easily beat without having to practice it first, hah.
I'm a little nervous about Rainbow Islands because that one is so easy to mess up, and I know for a fact I won't be able to GM TGM1 on demand at the tail end of a long and exhausting day, but we'll see what happens....
Every run I've had of Monster Land recently has been a 1CC, but I feel like I lucked out at least a few areas in every single run, hah. So I'm expecting my luck to finally turn on me when the pressure is on...

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Looking forward to Liquid Kids. :V

[Mischief Maker]

Finished Phoenotopia Awakening earlier this week; finally managed to put together a review if anyone's interested in additional thoughts on it.

I'm curious if you played Fortune Summoners, another metroidvania with brutal stamina-limited platformer combat from the word "go," and how this game compares.

[BulletMagnet]

It is actually lurking in the depths of my backlog, though I have not played it enough to pass judgment on it, unfortunately.

[Blinge]

Looking forward to Liquid Kids. :V

I find that game really hard

altho part of the problem is i still use shmupmame4.1 or whatever and the sprites go nuts

[Sumez]

Got a one life clear on Liquid Kids last night while practicing it. It's really easy if you know where to go, so if you watch the run I'm sure you'll be able to replicate it too. In this run I'm skipping what probably amounts to more than half the game thanks to warps, so it's the scrub clear XD

Unfortunately it's not really worth playing other routes/more stages for more points, because the scoring system is already broken thanks to infinitely respawning enemies. But for your own satisfaction, the vast amount of routes through the game is pretty satisfying.

[Blinge]

Ah nah, I'll watch it once but i think i'm gonna upload my own clear whenever I can be bothered to work on it.. wouldn't feel right if I cribbed someone elses strats entirely.

[Sumez]

You kinda need to know where the warps are (the locations are really obscure like in TNZS), but I guess clearing the game without warps is more honest anyway. We just threw this in as a really quick 20 minute clear because I didn't feel like doing PC-10 Contra would be interesting to anyone.

I tried looking up some clears on YouTube, and pretty much all the ones I could find use the same route, which is weird to me. I'm guessing they stole it from eachother, but it involves some tedious approaches to the last two stages I don't see as necessary.

[Marc]

Picked up the Master Chief collection. Not played a Halo in years, but whatever anyone says, I really enjoyed the original. Installed the disc, installed the campaign for Halo CE and.... it won't work. Tells me I need to install the content, kicks me to the installation screen which has a check box filled in and states 'installed'. I'm confused.

[Ghegs]

Just finished Skyward Sword HD. I had the Wii original back in the day but didn't finish it, so when I saw a local shop giving a nice discount for pre-orders, I decided to grab it for a second go.

After beating the game I went and looked at some FAQs to see what I missed and, other than some items and NPCs, I was surprised to find I actually missed some boss attacks for the last two bosses. Like there were instructions on how to deal with specific attacks, yet I never even saw them and I beat both of the bosses on my first try. I wonder if I just got lucky or if the HD version is different there. Still, I did have a suitably epic last boss fight, with my shield breaking halfway through the battle, leaving me to just dodge and making stabs and slashes where I could.

[TransatlanticFoe]

Picked up the Master Chief collection. Not played a Halo in years, but whatever anyone says, I really enjoyed the original. Installed the disc, installed the campaign for Halo CE and.... it won't work. Tells me I need to install the content, kicks me to the installation screen which has a check box filled in and states 'installed'. I'm confused.

This might help with xbox madness. If I have trouble with anything, I always install offline first and get the game running unpatched, then let it update. If you install while online sometimes it tries to install a tiny amount from disc and get the rest online, I'm never wholly convinced this works properly and said download is always more than it is to patch it afterwards - I think it just works out it's quicker. Anyway as with other Microsoft-based update mechanisms, it doesn't always seem to behave. So go offline, and let any problem be between you, your xbox and your disc!

If you're on an xbox one of some kind, try this:
Delete the whole install
Reboot
Set your xbox to offline mode
Put disc in
Install everything
Play game

If you're on Series X it should work the same except that you need to fool it into only downloading the compatibility file. I did this for the Mass Effect remaster and I'm pretty sure when you put the disc in while offline it'll prompt you to go online. Do it, it should download the compatibility file and then prompt you to update (biiiiig update). Cancel and do not install the update. Go offline again and it should now launch.

Once you've got it working offline, you can exit back to the dashboard and go online again. Don't launch the game, go to thw main games/apps page and wait for it to show the updates. Update it from there and leave it to do its business.

Offline achievements don't work properly, which is why I've said to take the update. If you just want to play the game, you can leave your xbox offline and not download the 70 GB or whatever crap they've piled onto the Master Chief Collection since launch!