What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[Durandal]

Well, I was playing Bayonetta, and I'm to the Epilogue, but I really don't know that I'm going to bother finishing it.

You want me to play 10 minutes of dumb motorcycle minigames before seeing the last boss's patterns every time? Nope, fuck off with that
*snip*

I played with no healing items or continues

Yep definitely the game's fault, forcing you to repeat the bike part.

Spoiler

and before you lay into me calling me a fanboy or w/e, no I don't particularly care about Bayo

In all honesty, if you're going for a Pure Platinum for that section you have to do the whole motorcycle ride, run halfway up the statue then run back to get to the Alfheim (as Alfheims are mandatory for getting a Pure Platinum award at the chapter end) which might be one of the toughest Alfheims in the game, and there's no checkpoints inbetween the Alfheim and bike ride. Meaning if you get hit just once in the Alfheim or don't meet the combo point requirement, you have to ride the bike all over again.

Continuing in Bayonetta also docks points off your final chapter score which usually prevents you from getting any of the better awards. You can restart from checkpoints if you don't intend to redo the chapter, by going back to the main menu and reloading your save, as Bayo lacked the faster 'restart from previous checkpoint' function later Platinum games had.

[NYN]

You can restart from checkpoints if you don't intend to redo the chapter, by going back to the main menu and reloading your save, as Bayo lacked the faster 'restart from previous checkpoint' function later Platinum games had.

I remember Squire calling it similar to unsportsmanlike, wich in a strict, impressive Makaimura sense I can validate.
For me, it does not take the fun out and I certainly used it to improve. Who is beyond that shall not make use of it, since it doesn't get in the way of one's self-imposed challenge/s. Or does it?

[Obscura]

I'm not going for pure plat, so I can skip the Alfheim, but continuing absolutely trashes your end-of-level score, and the way the game taunts you for each continue with by adding another skull-and-crossbones at every continue screen makes it pretty clear that they intended you to do each level in one go.

Or at least I thought it made it clear, but then again, given the number of climax attacks (read: thinly veiled unskippable cutscenes) and "press X to not die" at the ends of chapters that force you to cheaply replay the whole damn thing, maybe they don't really know how the hell they want you to play it (wouldn't surprise me, this being a Kamiya game and all).

[Durandal]

I'm not going for pure plat, so I can skip the Alfheim, but continuing absolutely trashes your end-of-level score, and the way the game taunts you for each continue with by adding another skull-and-crossbones at every continue screen makes it pretty clear that they intended you to do each level in one go.

Or at least I thought it made it clear, but then again, given the number of climax attacks (read: thinly veiled unskippable cutscenes) and "press X to not die" at the ends of chapters that force you to cheaply replay the whole damn thing, maybe they don't really know how the hell they want you to play it (wouldn't surprise me, this being a Kamiya game and all).

Metal Gear Rising on Revengeance difficulty does something similar by having time for ranked encounters keep ticking and deny you a No Damage bonus at all if you decide to continue after death, but not many are willing to entertain that crap so most people slap on some Nanopaste which lets them survive a OHKO and restart the checkpoint if they get hit which doesn't incur you any continuing penalties. Bottom line being that I've seen almost nobody going for a 1lc for each chapter because Bayo or any Platinum game for that matter doesn't really lend itself well to that kind of stuff unless you allow yourself to take damage, but the main means of scoring in the game revolves around getting Pure Platinum medals rather than not using continues, the latter being somewhat easily circumvented if you reload the game each time. It's confusing, but since it only affects chapter clear scores I found myself rather focusing on how I performed per verse rather than admire my obligatory Stone Award. Sometimes I just restarted a chapter because I liked the game and wanted to git gud, but after a certain point the difficulty started to ramp beyond what I could keep up with and I just creditfed instead.

[Obscura]

I guess disagreeing on the difficulty ramp is a part of this -- in the part of the game I played (which, again, was everything other than the final boss), I didn't see a single checkpoint segment that was difficult enough to justify the game giving you a full lifebar for it, other than maybe Jeanne in Mission 14 (but the game gives you a green butterfly at the end of Space Harrier anyways, so you'll get that full lifebar either way; the only difference between continuing and not there is how much you're willing to put up with the awful Space Harrier bit eroding at your sanity).

I had heard rumblings of there being some exploit to retry checkpoints without continuing, but I didn't know the exact mechanics of it, nor did I know that they hinted at it being semi-intended by re-using it in Revengeance. That's utterly bizarre. Why penalize people for continues but then make a "go through three menus" option that removes that penalty? I thought that "continues are the intended way to play" made some sense in Revengeance -- more than it does in Bayo -- because everything in Revengeance hits like a truck and most of your HP total is actually your number of healing items (which means there's still a consequence to sucking too hard at a particular checkpoint -- you won't have those healing items in the future), but then they add this nonsense to it... GAH.

[Blinge]

My point is quite simple: you're ranting about a self imposed challenge like it's the games fault.

It's your first playthrough you bellend, just continue.
And definitely don't complain about not being able to learn patterns when the option to do so is right there >_<
Or continue to be frustrated because such things are 'below you' or whatever. Your choice.

[Obscura]

Given that Bayo shames you harder for continuing than any arcade game ever (mocking you for each continue a total of three times -- once at the continue screen itself, and twice at the chapter score screen), it's really strange for someone on a forum dedicated to an arcade genre to refer to no-continues as some arcane self-imposed challenge.

EDIT: To put it in perspective, I didn't set out to play the game without continues. The first time I died in chapter 2, the game shamed me for it hard at after selecting continue, and I said "oh wow, they really don't want me continuing even more than DMC 4 didn't". Then when Space Harrier finally broke me in Chapter 14 and forced continues out of me (I wasn't about to touch that part of the game ever again), I was really surprised at how hard it slammed me for it on the Chapter Score screen. The game makes it REALLY CLEAR that it doesn't want you to continue, but then puts loads of time-waster minigames and "press X to not die" surprises all over the place... it's just a horrible design.

[Blinge]

It's not an arcade game..

I don't know what to suggest other than growing a thicker skin.
It's just a screen saying you could've done better, not a crowd of people laughing at your dong

Come chill in Stone Award club, keep your pants on tho.

[Obscura]

I don't know what to suggest other than growing a thicker skin.
It's just a screen saying you could've done better, not a crowd of people laughing at your dong .

Not my dong, but Stone is Platinum (which is close enough to a crowd of people) laughing at you for being fat and clumsy, and Bronze is them laughing at you for being a small child...

Even Silver tars you as "slightly buffoonish"!

[Mischief Maker]

Playing (and loving) Hollow Knight.

Thanks for the recommendation! When this first came out I took one glance at the art style and dismissed this as yet another boring Limbo clone.

[EmperorIng]

I am worried that it looked too empty and easy as a Metroidvania. I take it that that's not the case?

[null1024]

Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity [PS2].
It's better than the first game, but it's got some really unintuitive handling, ala Sonic R [if not quite as annoying]. Course design is kind of meh. Graphics are nice.
I was doing ridiculously well at one point and then slammed into a wall and got stuck backwards and basically lost a race I had a 16 second lead in.
and then I was done, fuck that shit
Gravity collision boosts are weird as shit, and you have to start gravity drifts ages in advance.

I forgot it has progressive scan, I should go see how much nicer that looks since I'm plugged in over component, the interlacing was pissing me off earlier.

[kaicooper]

I am worried that it looked too empty and easy as a Metroidvania. I take it that that's not the case?

if u mean Hollow Knight ..no sir
its one of the best ever made..its like playing metroid and dark souls in castlevania way..perfect
btw its very very hard

[Mischief Maker]

I am worried that it looked too empty and easy as a Metroidvania. I take it that that's not the case?

if u mean Hollow Knight ..no sir
its one of the best ever made..its like playing metroid and dark souls in castlevania way..perfect
btw its very very hard

Argh! I just lost over $4,000 in a masochism platformer-esque segment in the crystal caverns when my ghost failed to manifest in a safe zone but instead was floating above the spinning spike platforms! Why don't they have banker branches all over the map?!

I'm seriously doubtful that I'll be able to recover my soul now.

It ain't easy, believe me.

[Immryr]

I've been playing king's field(us). dunno why it's taken me so long to get round to playing this. i'm loving it. I've just rescued the kid from the termite nest and I've just started figuring out what items like the star gate and crystal flasks do. I think so far I've only found one item which restored MP so I mostly haven't been using magic, i'm guessing they become more abundant later on.

one thing that surprised me is how fast the game is. I had always read that it was very slow, but you move around at a pretty snappy pace.

[Blinge]

Yee =]

Yeah I totally missed a good source of MP refills in earlyish-mid game iirc. It's been a while now so the areas are messed up chronologically.

I'd still recommend giving KF(jp) a go if you're planning on moving onto III. The context of the trilogy made the 3rd game much more epic for me. There's a decent translation patch for the rom out there.

Which reminds me I should get around to Shadow Tower soon.

[Zaarock]

NieR Automata [PS4]
Been messing around with the new DLC, finally beat the Bloody Palace -like level on veryhard yesterday.
I think the other stuff in the DLC isn't too good for the entry price (15$) but the bloody palace challenge is easily the most fun part of the game for me. So recommended if you enjoyed the combat. It's really challenging, expects you to use all your abilities and goes through most enemy types and bosses. I can see myself coming back to it every now and then and doing runs with different weapons & restrictions.

[Stevens]

Just no missed Shock Troopers to stage 5 with Loki.

The difficulty spike at the stage 5 boss is significant though, could take a while. Might be easier if I go back to a team.

[Obscura]

Just finished Prey last night.

Probable GOTY for me. If you like the Looking Glass/Arkane style of games such as Ultima Underworld, System Shock 1 and 2, Arx Fatalis, or Dishonored, it's a must-play. It's more like "Arx Fatalis with guns in space" than a System Shock sequel, but I don't consider that a bad thing.

[Obscura]

Which reminds me I should get around to Shadow Tower soon.

Dunno about the first Shadow Tower, but Shadow Tower: Abyss is From's best game, IMO.

[kaicooper]

back to Nostalgia baby..

beated Sonic 1,2..3 & Knuckles
now gonna beat Sonic CD then Sonic before and after the Sequels

preparing myself for Sonic Mania

Sonic & Kunckles still the best ever made

[Vludi]

Got a no miss in Knights of Valour 2 on my first clear somehow. This is a pretty fun game for those who like beat 'em ups, basically a better balanced Shadow over Mystara.

[Mischief Maker]

I was really looking forward to "Strafe," promising to wed 90s Quake-style gameplay to procedural level generation. Unfortunately it's an unholy frankenstein of 90s speed with console shooter tropes (like artificial bullet spread) and some bonehead decisions I'm shocked made it through playtesting (hitting the reload button with a partially full clip THROWS OUT all the leftover ammo in your old clip).

Unless some heroic patches come out, I say avoid.

[Zaxdar]

Ive been playing Golden Sun: The Lost Age for GBA

the sheer size of the world map caught me very off guard the first time playing

[Mischief Maker]

Maybe I spoke too soon about Strafe. I think their marketing shot itself in the foot by emphasizing 90s throwback so much that everyone was expecting Quake. It's not Quake, it's its own beast, but the more I play the more the design decisions that were off-putting at first start to make sense.

The entire game is built around circle strafing. The room templates, the weapon mechanics, the enemy behavior, the hazards, even the ammo system.

[Immryr]

still king's field. i THINK i'm done with the big mine now and for the first time i don't have a clue where i need to go next. up until now there has always been a couple of places in the back of my mind i need to go, either cause a place scared me and i decided i'd come back to it later, or because i'd come to an area where i needed some item to get past, or there had been a fork in the road and i knew i needed to return. but now.... i don't have a clue!

[Blinge]

Aha, any minecart insta-deaths?
Also have you found a way to restore MP yet

[Immryr]

only two mine cart related deaths. one where i just randomly pressed x, not knowing it would take me out of the cart and one from an archer.

yep, i'm long past the point of not having mana, i can spam spells freely now.

Spoiler

i've restored the healing fountain and i realised that i got unlucky when i placed my first dragon stone in there. obviously i didn't know that one of them would be a mana restoring fountain at the time, but that is definitely useful for future playthroughs.

i dunno how much of the game is left but so far i've done:

Spoiler

small mine
termite nest
found 3 little village areas
pirates cave
behind the waterfall
harvine's castle
the spooky area near east village
big squid cave
big mine, fire, ice, dark, poison, dinosaur and elf caves

i haven't yet figured out what to do with the shrine key or the elf key, or how to open the other sealed doors which look like fountain doors. not sure if i've missed an important path somewhere - i probably have as like i said, i can't think of which direction to go in now. i'll have to do another search around.

[kaicooper]

just beated Sonic CD again after loooooong time ..too short but amazing
its 3rd in my top 5 games
now its Sonic Generations time before i get ready for Sonic Mania

[Khan]

Been playing Yakuza 0 and enjoying it so far, only thing I wish it had was more voicing for npc chars instead of the odd sound effect and text.