What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[Mischief Maker]

Unreal Tournament 3: Black bot matches.

Dug up my old disk on a whim and wow does this game continue to deliver! I even think the then-awful graphics turned out to be accidentally ahead of their time what with all the games nowadays with heavily stylized graphics. True, the campaign where you play No-Neck McScowls on his quest to get revenge against that BIIIIIITCH is 90s cringe at its worst (even more embarrassing coming out in 2007; weren't these guys in their 40s by then?), but Instant Action is where it's at anyway so you can safely ignore the campaign.

Runs without a hitch on Win 10, even with the community map patch that adds king of the hill matches.

And I can't go back to UT 2004. The vehicle handling, the weapon balance, the movement, it's all so much better in III. As ugly as the proto-Gears-of-War character designs are mostly, the robots legit look great. Definitely better than previous games.

I've played all these throwback games to the pre-CoD FPS like Dusk, but they don't hold a candle to the fantastic gameplay of UT3; and the presence of AAA art assets doesn't hurt either. Plus you've got those unreal bots which were always a cut above the competition. I could sit atop Facing Worlds and shepherd my bot teammates to victory again and again.

9/10.

[To Far Away Times]

Facing worlds is the GOAT multiplayer map. Its like the R-Type's Dobkeratops (stage 1 boss) of FPS maps.

[Sumez]

Dude. Quake's DM6.

[Limbrooke]

Since I picked up the Namco Museum Archives Volume 1 on Steam I've been playing and enjoying Pac Man Championship Edition, Famicom style version. It took a long time to get released but it was well worth it. Never played the original Pac Man CE so I have no frame of reference but the game style is still pretty good.

[BrianC]

The amazing thing about the Namco Archives version is that it's an actual NES/FC version. There was a Pac-Man Champion Edition NES shown on youtube from a Japanese programmer, but it has been since taken down. The M2 one is similar, but adds the extra mode and gives it a huge music overhaul (version shown on youtube reused sounds from NES Pac-Mania).

[XoPachi]

I've been buying up DS games that I can afford. I made the mistake of selling all of mine long before the 3DS was released and recently I realized how much I just don't like the 3DS library. So I'm getting as many of my old favorites (with the case and manuals) that I can afford. Sonic was my first order of business and man have I been fiending on Sonic Rush 2 something fierce since I got it. This game is so much fun. I love spamming tricks and trying to do every tiny little optimization possible to get S ranks and good times. 54 seconds in Plant Kingdom Act 2.
I've been play Rush 1 and Colors in between, but Rush 2 is just addicting.

[vol.2]

I've been buying up DS games

my first line of business there would be all castlevania titles. immediately. i also enjoyed those early DS remakes of FF games, but i remember them having an online component which i'm not sure would work out these days.

[Limbrooke]

The amazing thing about the Namco Archives version is that it's an actual NES/FC version. There was a Pac-Man Champion Edition NES shown on youtube from a Japanese programmer, but it has been since taken down. The M2 one is similar, but adds the extra mode and gives it a huge music overhaul (version shown on youtube reused sounds from NES Pac-Mania).

The video is still up, just not from Coke774 anymore (supposedly the original developer).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZ9mAacWxdY&t=128s
Suffice to say I've been waiting the 10 years since it was originally shown to play and it was worth the wait. I realize it may also be a Famicom/NES binary running in emulation but its stored within the Namco Archives data files and even if I could extract it and play on an NES with a ROM cart, I don't want or need to really.

I wonder how it came to be Bandai Namco decided to update (or have M2 and the original programmer do so) and release it. It has changed a bit from that video but its still damn good.

[Steamflogger Boss]

I've been buying up DS games

my first line of business there would be all castlevania titles. immediately. i also enjoyed those early DS remakes of FF games, but i remember them having an online component which i'm not sure would work out these days.

Unfortunately those are pretty expensive now. Not nearly as bad as what is happening to a large number of PS1 games but all of them are over original retail at this point. They are great games, and were slam dunk recs when you could buy all three for like $50 max but it sounds like XoPachi is pretty budget conscious.

[Blinge]

I will become the Jump King

[Stevens]

The Red Strings Club

A narrative point and click? What the fuck?

Sometimes playing something you normally don't is fun. It was $7 and took me between three and four hours. Cheaper than a movie ticket and totally worth it.

[Blinge]

Gonna continue Hollow Knight ramblings here as Sumez has banished it from the From thread

Damn man, those Godmaster boss rushes are kinda tough, but I managed to beat the Artist nailmaster and Grandmaster Sly on the first attempt!
Fucking Zote still ended my run a couple of times.
Zote. ZOOOOTE! fuck that guy!

I had a look at the optional "radiant" versions of every boss... 1 hit and you die? No thanks. Better things to do with my life currently.

[Sumez]

Same. Really didn't feel like there was any worthwhile experience to gain from beating those.

[m.sniffles.esq]

So, I've mostly used the Steam sale to grab some old odds and ends ($1.19 for Nights into Dreams? Yes sir, I'll take all you got)

I did get one new title in that I decided to drink the Hades kool-aid (only $5 off, but that puts it in my "I won't spend over $20 for early access" rule).

It does nothing that 18 other action roguelikes already do, the difference is it does it really, really well. I especially like the graphical style that makes it seem like you're playing a silver-age comic. Also noteworthy, it plays better using an arcade stick. I can't remember the last time I said that about a new title.

But with all that said, I sorta wish it was just a straightforward Diablo clone... Maybe I'm just burning out on the whole 'rogue' thing.

[vol.2]

I finally got around to replaying QG1 in EGA with MT32 music. I haven't played it through for a long, long time. It was super fun. Playing it here over an Ikegami RGB monitor. It was just the perfect balance between nostalgia and crisp.

Spoiler

Spoiler

[FinalBaton]

Wow! really nice seeing some EGA in action. Ikegami monitors always strike me as having these deep, rich colours. and the grain is beautiful.

With MT32 sound! truly 1337 late '80s setup

[CIT]

Metroid: Samus Returns (3DS)
Really enjoying this for the most part, but I have to say the Metroid-Miniboss battles are pretty lame. Or am I just missing something?

[vol.2]

Metroid: Samus Returns (3DS)
Really enjoying this for the most part, but I have to say the Metroid-Miniboss battles are pretty lame. Or am I just missing something?

Haven't played that one yet (as I never got a 3DS). It's the first game from the Spanish Dev team. I find it interesting that non-japanese development teams have been responsible for keeping the metroid franchise alive. The day they release MP4 (as long as it doesn't royally suck) is the day my arm is twisted into buying a switch.

[Blinge]

Same. Really didn't feel like there was any worthwhile experience to gain from beating those.

The one thing stopping me from beating the last pantheon right now is fucking Markoth. of all bosses.

I'm trying to practice on his ascended form. Can't do it, not even once.
my piss is boiling right now.

Edit: update: that boss is alright in the pantheon of hallownest cause it deals 1 dmg per hit and you can spam spells at its second form.

...then grey prince zote finished me off. fuck.
I really hate 2D bosses that just leap/run around at random doing contact damage.

[WelshMegalodon]

Metroid: Samus Returns (3DS)
Really enjoying this for the most part, but I have to say the Metroid-Miniboss battles are pretty lame. Or am I just missing something?

No, they really aren't all that great. Granted, the Metroid battles in the original weren't exactly amazing to begin with, but I'd really like to know whose brilliant idea it was to have even Alpha Metroids take 15 missiles to kill instead of the original 5.

[Vanguard]

I've been playing Touhou Genso Wanderer. It's a mystery dungeon clone with Touhou characters. I haven't played any mystery dungeons past the original Shiren the Wanderer, but this is a big step down from that. The core of what makes Shiren good is still here. Most of Shiren's enemy types have counterparts here, and the various interactions between enemies, items, and traps are still intact. The biggest problem is Genso Wanderer's roguelite elements. Most of the dungeons let you bring items inherited from previous runs and some aren't beatable without them. There's an elaborate crafting system where you can combine items together to make equipment that's way stronger than anything you could obtain in a single run. A dungeon designed around an optimal weapon - that is to say, a weapon made by gluing every other weapon you've found over 20+ hours of gameplay together into one hellish abomination - will not be remotely doable when playing without inheritance. Shiren optionally let you carry items between runs in the main dungeon, but not in any postgame dungeons, and it was never a requirement.

There are tons of different dungeons, each with their own rules. Sometimes everything is identified right from the start, sometimes you have to figure it all out as you explore. Sometimes you're allowed to bring an AI partner. You can give them basic orders and they're not too bad at staying out of trouble, but overall the game plays better without them. I don't think long-term party members have ever really been done well in a roguelike. There are a few dungeons, called "skin diving" dungeons, where you get the proper roguelike experience with no inheritance allowed. Would have liked it if those were the norm instead of just a handful of super duper endgame challenge dungeons.

Some dungeons have bosses at the end, and they can be shockingly bad. They tend to be huge difficulty spikes, often requiring item inheritance even if you can make it through the rest of the dungeon just fine without. Sometimes they expect you to bring specific items if you want to win without severely overleveled equipment, but the only way to find out what you need is to get to the boss at the end of the dungeon, die, and then replay the whole thing, this time bringing along the correct equipment. A lot of them expect you to just soak up a ton of damage so you'd better hope you have plenty of healing items.

There are a bunch of different playable characters and allies to choose from, all with different abilities, but for most of the main story you're stuck as Reimu. The playable and ally versions of the same character are different. Playable Reimu is really straightforward with nothing special about her, ally Reimu has the unique ability to use musou tensei in a crisis to become an unstoppable killing machine. Some of the DLC characters are conspicuously stronger than the defaults. Like Tojiko has permanent levitation, which means she will never activate a trap, can take shortcuts others can't, and enjoys bonuses to attack and evasion. Or Kasen who has straight up double the HP growth of anyone else.

It's alright. Can't really recommend it unless you've already played tons of Shiren and are hungry for more content with similar mechanics.

Speaking of Shiren, any of you have much experience with the mystery dungeon series? Do any of the later ones stand up to the original Shiren?

[CStarFlare]

As of tonight I've done Ascension 20 heart kills for the original three characters in Slay the Spire. I remember beating A20 and thinking that the heart wasn't worth going for. But I didn't want to stop playing, so here we are. Now there is literally nothing else to do (Watcher excepted) and I still don't feel any less interest in playing StS - it really does rival Binding of Isaac as Game of the 2010s for me. I WANT to stop and tick things off my backlog, but if you told me I'd still be playing it in three years I don't think I'd doubt you. If the iOS port weren't so poorly optimised I'd probably be spending a lot of time doing it all again there.

I've also stuck myself into King's Field (II JP). It's something I think I need to have an extended period to work at, because I can't play it for 20 minutes and quit OR play it for more than an hour without doing something else. Once I found the second save point the game has seemed much less of a slog (I'm not sure why that was such a hurdle), and now I'm simply enjoying exploring. I didn't want to resort to savestating, but after I jumped through a hole only to find out I couldn't get out without using an item I didn't have (which cost MP which I also didn't have) I relented on that rule.

It really does feel like a worthwhile game, and I'm not sure if I would feel the same way about a modern version. So much of its charm for me does rely on the fact that it's so unfriendly in ways I think I simply wouldn't accept in a game released in 2020 (or 2005, frankly) - maybe that's for the best, because I do expect I will be ready for it to be over around the time I get to the end.

[Blinge]

I think I know the hole you mean... there must be a secret wall that lets you out of there, surely.

the ost in that place.. Passage For a Monk. absolute banger.

[CStarFlare]

I think I know the hole you mean... there must be a secret wall that lets you out of there, surely.

the ost in that place.. Passage For a Monk. absolute banger.

Never found one. Browsing early 2000s forums I did find out there are apparently hidden invisible weapons on the ground in some areas so who knows if they built in some sort of weird hidden way out. But FAQs tended to tell me to use the Stargate, which I apparently declined to pick up on my file. Oh well. Now I know where to get water magic when I have MP to use.

[Marc]

Nearing the end of FFVIIRE. I'd forgotten about that shitty bit where you have to protect the team in the three-wheeled truck.... here it looks ten times flashier, plays just as poorly, and lasts about three times longer. I used to think it was the coolest thing ever when the original had the little action interludes. Now I'd prefer they were a cutscene. Ugh.

[WelshMegalodon]

After some four or five attempts to get into FFVII, I've concluded that it is a decent game with a decent story that would be much better if it weren't so bogged down by loading times, summon animations, and pointless diversions like the aforementioned bike sequence. Did they really have to make an entire farm, cutscenes, and multiple varieties of greens just to get your party a chocobo?

[Blinge]

Loading times? Grim... you playing on original hardware, i don't remember loading times being an issue and that was playing the ps1 discs on a ps2.

Nah the farm, multiple varieties etc is for the chocobo breeding side-stuff whicwh you probably don't want to get into now, and i don't think you even can get into now?

[Sumez]

FF7 doesn't really have lengthy loading times, but coming from the earlier games, all the constant short waiting really threw me off when it came out.
Every screen transition does a fade and waits a short while before it fades back in, the menus do the same, and of course every combat encounter takes quite a few seconds before you can perform any actions. It's all short periods, but it adds up a lot, and it's one of my biggest peeves in modern video gaming. Much more so than long winded loading screens, honestly. It's similar to the wait times added to the PS1 version of Chrono Trigger, which is generally considered a massively inferior version for that reason alone.
FF7 was the first game in the series where I really felt that random encounters wasted my time. And it's not because of the combat, but because of all the downtime between the combat and the exploration.

If I ever get a feeling from a game that I need to pile up "enough stuff to do" in a menu before bothering to open it, or pick the shortest route to a destination based on how few screen transitions I need to move through, that's something that could have been better. That's not just a FF7 thing, but pretty much a convention nowadays.

[Obiwanshinobi]

All the more reason to cherish TrackMania (at least Wii one, but I see no reason why all versions wouldn't be this way) and Midnight Club II (at least PS2 one, but... etc.) - where loading times take so little of your time spent with the game that it's an utter non-issue. Those prove that 3D gaming can be practically as "no-filler" as any golden are arcade classic.
Heck, the - otherwise glitchy as nightmare - first Gothic game had game-stopping loadings at, I think, only three spots in all of it: as you enter the whole overworld, then the mines, and the endgame dungeon. Not to mention much more lauded, muscularly funded titles, from Jak & Daxter to Dragon's Dogma.

[Marc]

I enjoyed Trackmania on PS4, but gave up after a while as the buggies controlled like shit.