What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[m.sniffles.esq]

I also tried to check out the 'nu' No Man's Sky, only to discover this update causes the game to have absolutely no audio. It also seems to run at about 14 fps, with every 4th or 5th frame dropped.

Alas...

The only reason I care at all is that every one of these update are 5-8gb a pop, which are starting to add up

[ryu]

The new Curse of the Moon isn't doing it for me. Super disappointing because I really like the first one. I don't mind a challenge but this one's just frustrating.

[BulletMagnet]

Thaaaaat's IT! I've come up with some nyuuuu commentereeeehh!

- Enemies with instant death abilities continue to be responsible for 9 of every 10 Game Overs I get (most of the rest are "several large baddies + tight spaces = camera fun times!" situations); a single screw-up is all it takes to turn a fight you'd been winning handily into a loss by default. I noticed that "samurai" type enemies (which can also instant kill, though they haven't given me as much grief as most of their ilk) can drop a "Safety Bit" accessory, which if memory serves protects against instant death in other FF games, and naturally the better part of a hundred hours in not a single one has dropped. If I ever do get one I am going to staple the damn thing to Noctis's forehead.

- I have to both criticize and haltingly praise the devs for daring to put stuff into the game that the engine really wasn't built for; whether it's

Spoiler

stealth segments, platforming challenges, or my personal favorite, monster truck racing

, as janky as they are I do have to admire the sheer chutzpah of including them; it's like they not only carried over the scraps of FF Versus XIII but several similarly-ill-fated spinoffs.

- Despite some occasional pop-in and other nuisances I think the game still looks quite nice several years on, all things considered; that said, perhaps the attention to detail I appreciate most of all is that you're prevented from zooming in on any of the female characters in the model viewer. Frankly, I don't know why they bothered; easily the most sinful part of the entire presentation, which never fails to have me thinking scandalously improper thoughts, is the food porn. Smoked Behemoth is best girl.

- In similar fashion to FF12 I'm regularly discovering things that the game never tells you outright

Spoiler

the "dash recharge" sticks out the most offhand

, which in some cases is pretty darn cool, though on occasion (albeit less so than its predecessor, at least so far) I wish they'd given just a little bit more of a hint in the right direction someplace (much as I enjoy fishing, wasting time with every lure in your tackle box trying to get some unknown specimen to bite - and sometimes nothing you have will work - is a real drag).

- I'm also not so sure about the decision to make almost every pickup in the game a small, frequently easy-to-miss shiny blip; a lot of the stuff is nothing terribly important, but there are also one-of-a-kind weapons and other stuff that can be effortlessly overlooked if you don't unleash your inner OCD. 12 did something similar, putting pretty much everything, including unique and important items, into random-spawning jars, making it considerably difficult to keep track of where you've been and what you've collected than leaving an old-fashioned empty chest in your wake. I guess you could argue something like that wouldn't fit in aesthetically here, but come on, I'm driving a muscle car past herds of Cactuars on my way to a magic volcano with patches of fresh ginger and a campsite inside it.

[Sumez]

So. What game are you talking about?

[BrianC]

Final Fight

[BulletMagnet]

[null1024]

Ridge Racer 2 [PSP].

Having put this off for years, I finally decided to just go through all the tours myself instead of saying screw it and downloading an all-clear save so I could IMMEDIATELY GO FAST with the proper fastest Class 6 car.
The lower speed classes just aren't as much fun in this game. Classes 5 and 6 feel amazing, but having to do classes 1, 2, and 3 before are a bit of a chore, especially since the big draw of DYN type cars, the fact that they enter a drift without releasing the gas, doesn't kick in when you want/need it to because you aren't going fast enough. Huge portions of the game are painfully slow and easy.
Gets a bit trickier later on, even if you're still able to just go fast enough to have massive 10+ second gaps between you and the 2nd place CPU even into class 6.

Avoiding cars is a bit annoying when you're doing like 320km/h in a drift around a corner and someone ahead doing a little over half that appears from around the corner and you hit because you're in a drift and you have extremely limited control over where along the road you are.
Hell, even if you weren't in a drift, it's tricky, because your turning radius is like a mile wide. It's almost safer to just try and slam into the wall, since you'll lose less speed, you won't push the other car to go faster, and you'll probably be positioned better to overtake. Really silly.

Unlocking the first round of special cars is fairly fun, even if the strategy is basically "build up 3 bars of boost, wait for the last lap to pass them since they'll just rubberband past you otherwise, and then [almost] NEVER STOP BOOSTING". That last bit is very fun, nothing like trying your hardest to hit 400km/h around the course for extended periods of time.
Kinda really annoyed that the EX tour goes back down several speed classes at the start. It's not even particularly much harder than before, and the only time I lost a race was because I ran into the back of another car near the end.

Despite the main campaign being a little bit of a chore, I still love the game. Great sense of speed, satisfying and entertaining [if entirely nonsensical] handling, nice graphics. Kinda wish the visuals were a little less de-saturated, especially the RR1 and RRR tracks. The music is kind of a mixed bag. The remixes aren't that great. The songs made for the game are decent, and the classic tracks that weren't remixed [except for the RRV soundtrack lol -- god, that game is a musical travesty] are great.

I've always liked how the boost system is purely offensive. The game remembers how fast you were going before you entered a boost, so you can't just fire one off to recover, you'll just slow back down to that at the end. It also means that you can't just use boost to ignore the effects of hills after the fact -- again, it remembers the speed you entered the boost in, so you get slowed down a bunch [and even if you did start it before, your car is still under the gravity induced slowdown going up the hill].

Dunno if I ever mentioned this before, but drifting is really goofy -- like, it's mechanically a lot like classic Ridge Racer drifting, but a lot easier to maintain since the car doesn't ever just snap back to grip. Being a lot like classic Ridge Racer drifting, your car perfectly slides along with the course regardless of which direction it's facing. Older games would hide this fact by snapping you back into grip if you spent more than a little bit of time drifting the wrong way, but RR2PSP here will allow you to consistently save yourself from ramming into a wall by just entering a drift. You lose a fair bit of speed, but you can be angled at like 130 degrees away from forward and still be doing kinda okay.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

My introduction to Ridge Racer was the N64 version and it's magical "360 degree drifting all day long" where you could spin around and around magically gripping the middle of the road as long as your speed was high enough. I remember I never 100% completion'd it though, there was one challenge involving a car that constantly speeds up until it's outright faster than you and it seems you have to keep the car blocked on your bumper the whole time? I was young and might be misremembering the details but I remember it was hard enough that I wasn't able to get through it even after a dozen tries.

but RR2PSP here will allow you to consistently save yourself from ramming into a wall by just entering a drift.

It reminds me of Outrun 2006; one of the changes from Outrun 2 is that drifting now acts as a "shield" of sorts, and hitting traffic during a drift will not result in a special drifting-specific collision. It means if you're about to hit another car, you can instantly go into a drift and grind past them with negligible speed losses, whereas in Outrun 2 you have to be much more cautious about drifting when there's traffic as mid-drift collisions cause a very substantial speed loss.


Currently Playing: Tales of Phantasia [SNES & PS1]

The PS1 of Tales of Phantasia hit nearly all the good elements we now take for granted in a modern "Tales of" game, having gotten over its growing pains from its earlier SNES version. You've got tons of voicing, skits in the overworld, a competent fan-translation patch by Absolute Zero that also hacks in subtitles for many voice-only lines, and multiplayer (when the 2p/3p/4p characters are equipped with the Channeler Rings, something fortunately later dropped in favour of always available multiplayer that doesn't eat accessory slots). You can also now control and play whoever you want mid-battle, with Chester being more interesting thanks to actually getting skills rather than just firing a basic, but extremely effective shot repeatedly. Combat skills also don't use the weird Short/Long distinction that unfortunately Star Ocean kept as a staple, where certain skills can only be used at specific ranges on the SNES, can't be swapped mid-battle, and where it's difficult to actually properly move to Long range at times if you want to use one of those specific skills. It feels a lot better to control all around, and you now have a dedicated Run button to move around quickly out of combat without needing to have Jet Boots equipped to someone, a nice added convenience.

The SNES version is still interesting to play, mind you. The graphics are gorgeous, particularly the detail in some of the environments and the background vistas you see, and the music is exceptionally good. The only downside is the only real English translation available is the infamous DeJap translation that takes significant stylistic liberties with the translation (outright embellishing the translation with explicit sexual language and profanity that are not accurate to the original read ing's style). There's also some outright mistranslations, such as a block of tofu in a food shop being labelled as a "Twinkie", along with a joke about the BHT content, despite looking nothing like a Twinkie and the shop being in a medieval fantasy environment.

The combat in the SNES version is also... clunky to say the least. In addition to the Short / Long skill restrictions where the exact skill you can use depends on range from the enemy (which can be difficult to control on fast enemies), there's also some formation control clunkiness. You can adjust if you're to the right or left of your party with the L and R buttons, but they don't reform in the same order if you move to the left. Let's say you're in this order, with 1 as the player: 4 3 2 1 - If you're ambushed and enemies are on the left and you use the L button to reposition, the formation then becomes 1 4 3 2, and not 1 2 3 4. It doesn't reposition characters so swapping formation directions always maintains the same order, which is unusual. It also seems to screw up formations if your player character is killed and gets revived. The main problem with this is your mages will happily run to the frontlines if your fighter gets killed, thereby putting them in danger of the stuff that just killed you. The first spellcasting boss you meet tosses wide-area spells can 2 shot the party effortlessly so it's important your party is spread out widely (or just keep the boss stunlocked and denied from casting via Akisazame spam).

The PSX version is much better about formation control, with a button that specifically orders the team to stay in place as need be, so you can run forward to attack the enemy without your entire team necessarily shifting their position. Item use and ordering spells to be used is also a lot more user friendly. In the SNES version, you cannot use an item or make other orders if a spell is animating, whereas you can give the order in the PSX and they'll use it at their next opportunity, as opposed to constantly pausing and trying to find an opening between enemy spells to use an item.

You also can't change AI settings midbattle for what spells they'll use in the SNES version. You can only toggle what spells the AI should use out of combat, so you're left with casting spells manually if you've accidentally brought the AI in with spells set to auto use that are ineffective.


Tales of Destiny R - Director's Cut (PS2)

Replaying this again. It's still one of the best if not the best Tales of combat systems in the entire series, which makes it a damn shame it has no official translation available. There's a couple of decent guides, but annoyingly the puzzles you have to solve are just written as "here's the solution" in the translation guides. There's no translation of the actual puzzles themselves, so no opportunity for a player to see them translated and get to solve them. Very unfortunate.

I wonder if it's worth playing the PS1 version. I doubt it; the PS2 version is so incredibly polished that it's basically the definitive release now.

[Steamflogger Boss]

I enjoyed the original but I don't have the PS2 version to compare it to.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I would highly recommend the PS2 version as a must-play action RPG. It is, as far as I know, playable in an emulator if need be with some special toggle settings to avoid an early cutscene crashing, unlike Tales of Rebirth, another great RPG which unfortunately is currently unplayable in an emulator due to repeated crashing during cutscenes preventing progress beyond the very beginning of the game. I am very, very fortunate to own the Japanese exclusive "Tales of" games and a PS2 that has a modchip installed for that very reason.

[null1024]

My introduction to Ridge Racer was the N64 version and it's magical "360 degree drifting all day long" where you could spin around and around magically gripping the middle of the road as long as your speed was high enough. I remember I never 100% completion'd it though, there was one challenge involving a car that constantly speeds up until it's outright faster than you and it seems you have to keep the car blocked on your bumper the whole time? I was young and might be misremembering the details but I remember it was hard enough that I wasn't able to get through it even after a dozen tries.

Yeah, car blocking is a very traditional Ridge Racer challenge. Still need to unlock the White Angel in Ridge Racer Revolution on PS1, I beat the other two supercar challenges.
Also, I need to unlock the 13th Racing in the first game on PS1, and it's a lot harder since you don't have a rear-view camera.

Haven't spent much time with RR64. I think I fired it up like once?

Tales of Destiny R - Director's Cut (PS2)[/b]

Replaying this again. It's still one of the best if not the best Tales of combat systems in the entire series, which makes it a damn shame it has no official translation available. There's a couple of decent guides, but annoyingly the puzzles you have to solve are just written as "here's the solution" in the translation guides. There's no translation of the actual puzzles themselves, so no opportunity for a player to see them translated and get to solve them. Very unfortunate.

I wonder if it's worth playing the PS1 version. I doubt it; the PS2 version is so incredibly polished that it's basically the definitive release now.

PS1 version of ToD is a lot like Tales of Phantasia on PS1, so if you're enjoying that, you might have a good time with ToD PS1.
I still like the game [it was my first Tales of game that I bothered putting any actual time into playing], but it has some really dumb things here and there. IIRC, there's a puzzle where the hints are just outright mistranslated, so you just have to guess/look the answer up.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Yeah, car blocking is a very traditional Ridge Racer challenge.

Is there any particular trick or exploit to get around them?

[Steamflogger Boss]

I would highly recommend the PS2 version as a must-play action RPG. It is, as far as I know, playable in an emulator if need be with some special toggle settings to avoid an early cutscene crashing, unlike Tales of Rebirth, another great RPG which unfortunately is currently unplayable in an emulator due to repeated crashing during cutscenes preventing progress beyond the very beginning of the game. I am very, very fortunate to own the Japanese exclusive "Tales of" games and a PS2 that has a modchip installed for that very reason.

Shouldn't be a problem. I could do opl or burn off a disc to play on original hardware. I've got a lot lined up to chew through already though, still on FFIX. Hopefully I will wrap that up this week.

[To Far Away Times]

It’s amazing that Doom Eternal even exists.

Doom Eternal is the best character action game I've ever played. Its so intense and stressful (in a fun way) and demands a lot from the player for a AAA game.

I don't know if I like it better than Doom 2016 though. Sometimes in Doom Eternal it feels like the gameplay is more about spinning plates and managing cooldowns than the actual shooting. Its a cool design but its mentally exhausting and I think Doom 2016 feels a little better to play because of its relative simplicity. Doom 2016 still has thoughtful cooldown management and resource decisions, but Eternal pushes so far into that realm that it almost doesnt feel like an FPS anymore.

I do like it overall, and I'll probably double dip on it whenever the Switch port finally comes out.
.

[null1024]

Yeah, car blocking is a very traditional Ridge Racer challenge.

Is there any particular trick or exploit to get around them?

For classic Ridge Racer [in this case, I'll talk about Revolution, the game I've played the most] if the enemy car passes you, it'll stop after the beginning of the next lap and wait for you. After a successful block, the enemy car will be off your tail for a bit.
In addition, in RRR, the enemy car seems to not catch up as fast while it's not in your rear view mirror, so drive the best damn lap you can while it's off screen. When it does get close, bodily block it. The mirror makes this not the hardest task, but you might actually need to slow down if it's getting close and you need to position yourself to not be in the middle of a drift when it catches up and just goes around you.
In RR1/Turbo, you can use the external view to get a liiiitle bit more viewing area, but it's just kinda hard. I think the opponent AI might follow a fairly fixed line too, so you might want to look into that. There's a lot of variation that gets in the way, and again, it's hard to keep track of where the opponent car is since it's rarely on screen. Either it's behind you, gaining fast, and possibly entirely invisible since you can't look behind you, or it's ahead of you, zipping into the distance, doing like twice your speed.
The supercars are absolutely busted with how fast they are.

I mostly drive the Yellow Solvalou in RR1/Turbo/RRR. The Blue is faster, but if you screw up, it has much worse acceleration.
Also, drive in manual -- you want that bit of extra top speed. If you don't screw up much, you rarely need to shift in RR anyway, so it's not too hard to pick up.
Dunno how much of this applies to 64, but it might still help.

[m.sniffles.esq]

So, No Man's Sky updated again and now the audio works (although the frame rate is still terrible while flying)

Anyway, within a couple minutes I found a building where all these monsters burrowed out of the ground and attacked me. Never saw that before!
But then, I just jet-packed to the roof of the building where they couldn't touch me and killed the lot of them. Y'know, like you do with everything that attacks you...

Someone really needs to inform HG that new stuff in of itself doesn't add anything. People need new stuff to do. Otherwise it's just skins.

[Mischief Maker]

No Man's Sky's new patch lets me actually play the game, but holy shit the tutorial SUUUUUUUUUCKS and takes FOREVERRRRRRRR and it's still unskippable!

Then again it's nice to have a game clearly vindicate my recent CPU upgrade, made way more of a difference than my GPU upgrade last winter.

[Blinge]

So I started Dragon Quest XI

.. these cockneys trigger me. how dare they appropriate the culture of my people..



ANG ABAAT M8

[BIL]

U WOT (■｀W´■)

I OUGHTA GRAB ME SHOOTA, POP ROUND THAT REGGIE GAFFA'S PLACE, AND SHOVE ME MEAT N' TWO VEG ROIGHT DAHN HE MAHF

At the footie unfortunately (｀ω´メ) BIG PLUMS UNITED just equalised our DONKEY BOTHERERS F.C., faaack

[Blinge]

down iz maaf.*
if yer ganna do it mayte bettah do it wite

confession I have said ang abaat a few times IRL, genuinely without affect or irony.

[Steamflogger Boss]

Is that English?

[vol.2]

@bil/blinge

What's the deal with people using "governor" to refer to people who clearly aren't governors? Is that just an old-timey thing that isn't observed anymore, or is there some basis?

[o.pwuaioc]

@bil/blinge

What's the deal with people using "governor" to refer to people who clearly aren't governors? Is that just an old-timey thing that isn't observed anymore, or is there some basis?

https://www.etymonline.com/word/governo ... ne_v_29947

It's like saying 'boss.'

"Whatever you say, boss."

"What are we doing today, chief?"

[Blinge]

Is that English?

you probably understand but for the clarity's sake

and abaat = hang about = hold on = wait

boy those are some layers.

Obviously using different regional accents is fine for a game, using existing variants to suggest rural/urban and class divide. But an NPC said "u avin a giraffe? "
( you having a laugh? )
Why would rhyming slang literally from London exist in Heliodor in a fictional game. ¬_¬
That's a step too far, that's not just words sounding different, that's a different word!

I wonder if some non brits read the giraffe line and didn't understand it

[o.pwuaioc]

Is that English?

you probably understand but for the clarity's sake

and abaat = hang about = hold on = wait

boy those are some layers.

Obviously using different regional accents is fine for a game, using existing variants to suggest rural/urban and class divide. But an NPC said "u avin a giraffe? "
( you having a laugh? )
Why would rhyming slang literally from London exist in Heliodor in a fictional game. ¬_¬
That's a step too far, that's not just words sounding different, that's a different word!

I wonder if some non brits read the giraffe line and didn't understand it

I thought cockney rhyming slang didn't use the rhymed word as slang. So famously raspberry is from raspberry tart, rhymined with fart. But they don't say "blow a tart", it's always raspberry.

Or as Wiki puts it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhyming_s ... ream_usage

"The construction of rhyming slang involves replacing a common word with a phrase of two or more words, the last of which rhymes with the original word; then, in almost all cases, omitting, from the end of the phrase, the secondary rhyming word (which is thereafter implied), making the origin and meaning of the phrase elusive to listeners not in the know. The form is made clear with the following example. The rhyming phrase "apples and pears" was used to mean "stairs". Following the pattern of omission, "and pears" is dropped, thus the spoken phrase "I'm going up the apples" means "I'm going up the stairs"."

Using that chart, they should have said "u avin a Turk[ish]?"

[Blinge]

Nice of you to get so scientific but as with any slang there arent strict rules. Sometimes it's as you say, sometimes it isn't.
Either way my giraffe point still stands.

By the by I just remembered at my last job I asked the manager something and he said " ain't got a scooby, mate. "
Translate that one.

[Sumez]

Why would rhyming slang literally from London exist in Heliodor in a fictional game. ¬_¬

By the same logic as the characters speaking English in the first place I guess?
Fantasy settings have always been derivative, of other works as well as real life culture obviously, so using accents isn't really worse than cultural idioms and stuff IMO.

The DQ localizations have been doing this since DQ8, and honestly I love it. It's been very consistent and very expertly handled IMO. Even different monster types have held up consistent unique ways of speaking throughout the years.
Some of the regional accents might come across a little derogatory, or even borderline racist, but I think they are generally handled in such a loving way that they get away with it. It adds a lot of personality to the game. The haiku speech patterns in Hotto might get a little obnoxious (on the other hand, the rhyming mermaid queen is brilliant), though even the game itself makes fun of that when one of the kids of the town decides he just can't be bothered with it.

[Steamflogger Boss]

Is that English?

you probably understand but for the clarity's sake

and abaat = hang about = hold on = wait

boy those are some layers.

Obviously using different regional accents is fine for a game, using existing variants to suggest rural/urban and class divide. But an NPC said "u avin a giraffe? "
( you having a laugh? )
Why would rhyming slang literally from London exist in Heliodor in a fictional game. ¬_¬
That's a step too far, that's not just words sounding different, that's a different word!

I wonder if some non brits read the giraffe line and didn't understand it

Giraffe is a bit of an odd one. I had heard of it before, or I would not have known.

After talking to Scottish people you can figure out basically anything, imo. Like fucking amirite m8?

[Blinge]

By the same logic as the characters speaking English in the first place I guess?
Fantasy settings have always been derivative, of other works as well as real life culture obviously, so using accents isn't really worse than cultural idioms and stuff IMO.

You miss the point, I'm not taking issue in my post with the accent, it's more when the words themselves change and we're now in dialect territory.

It's a nitpick, more " man shit's whack " than " this is a bad thing in muh videogame. " mkay?

A further example (that i just made up) could actually confuse the player - If you use Yorkshire parlance for a locale, and an NPC tells you to look for something "top o' brow"
Whatchu gonna do?

English isn't even that bad with regional dialects, I shudder to think what they'd do in an Italian localisation

[Blinge]

After talking to Scottish people you can figure out basically anything, imo. Like fucking amirite m8?

Absolutely.