What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[WelshMegalodon]

The Ninja Warriors Again plays surprisingly well with a stick.

[Stevens]

I think three has my favorite tracks. Sampa Run..oh yeah

The graphics is the newer ones though..

I'll make it there eventually. I'm one of those that has to play things in order... most of the time.

Hope things are chill in brooklyn. Lived there for some years, miss it now and again.

Yeah things here are OK. My parents grew up here (I did not though) and I found my way back after I started working for the city. Lived in Bay Ridge for 13 years now.

There really is no place quite like it.

All this Wipeout talk has me jonesing a little.

[Ajora]

I'm presently trying to get better at both Guilty Gear XX: Accent Core Plus R and Starcraft and feeling a bit overwhelmed by it all. 

[Sengoku Strider]

I have the Japanese Saturn version of the first Wipeout coming in my next shipment. Should be...interesting, lol. It's cheap AF, while XL is pricey.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Words fail me to express how ridiculously insane this video is of someone taking on the superboss of Bayonetta and getting a Pure Platinum rank a) without using the shielding accessory, b) while using the accessory that keeps enemies permanently enraged, c) while using the weapons that can't Wicked Weave, and most importantly of all d) while never touching the ground during the entire fight. I hereby give you literally the best Bayonetta fight I've seen ever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhBS9oYAAII

[Steamflogger Boss]

Did we really need to split this from off topic? Thought I was losing my mind...

Anyway...

Playing Devil Summoner PS2. Great game.

[vol.2]

Did we really need to split this from off topic? Thought I was losing my mind...

Oh holy nuts. I didn't even realize it until you just mentioned. I sort by my posts, so I wouldn't generally see it.

[BIL]

Words fail me to express how ridiculously insane this video is of someone taking on the superboss of Bayonetta and getting a Pure Platinum rank a) without using the shielding accessory, b) while using the accessory that keeps enemies permanently enraged, c) while using the weapons that can't Wicked Weave, and most importantly of all d) while never touching the ground during the entire fight. I hereby give you literally the best Bayonetta fight I've seen ever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhBS9oYAAII

Dude needs more subs, that was like one of them newfangled sooper hero movies, only good.

[gbaplayer]

Started Trails of Cold Steel IV recently...like 50 more hours to put into it. Wohooo.

[Mischief Maker]

"The Falconeer" was a dud.

I was hoping for a game with the flight physics from Saints Row Gat out of Hell.

Instead of a sense of gravity and momentum, diving fills up a boost bar that can be spent on moving fast or dodge rolls. The game doesn't even seem to have stalling. The result is incredibly stiff and unsatisfying.

The weapons are slow and have zero sense of impact. Plus it's an absolute pain-in-the-ass to precision aim using an analog pad.

Had it been cheaper I wouldn't have done it, but I got a refund.

If you want a good console-style dogfighting game, try the ace combat clone "Sky Rogue."

[Marc]

If you want a good console-style dogfighting game, try the ace combat clone "Sky Rogue."

Tried the demo of that on Switch, was quite good fun. Just taken the shrink wrap off Ace Combat 7 though, I'll give that a whirl before I pick up anything else.

Given up on Judgement. While the plot was probably up there with the best Yakuza games, I'm just tired of the format now. Kept convincing myself to plod on as I was on chapter 8, but the random encounters, and the way the game keeps spewing those boss-type characters over the map was starting to become a massive grind, and life's too short. Also, I avoid my mobile IRL, I don't need folk pestering me on an in-game phone

[XoPachi]

Playing Sonic Rush Adventure again
48 seconds in Plant Kingdom Act 2.

[Sengoku Strider]

Sega Rally Championship Plus has elbowed its way to the front of the rotation. What a great game, if I were reviewing this in 1995 I would absolutely give it a 10. These arcadey physics are Heaven-sent and still hold up today as super fun, those drifts around muddy corners are a sublime a moment up there with gaming's best. The track design is wonderfully demanding as well, but when you hit that miracle racing line it all comes together beautifully. It almost makes me miss the days when 2 cars & 3 tracks was enough, when it let them focus & put an obsessive level of care into the design.

[Stevens]

I went on a PS 4 binge last night.

Played a whole bunch of shit, badly.

A few stages of Huntdown. A game many here have been neglecting:) After being able to essentially run through the game on hard I had a hard time getting used to the controls after a few months. Might go back to this again. WHO IS THA MASTA?!

Played Bloodborne for maybe 30 minutes. Was outside Ludwig. Got him AND the two hunters that follow him on my initial supply of blood vials. Haven't quite lost my touch there.

Wipeout Omega. Was like Cyber Sled and Pong had a baby with all the bouncing off of shit. Beautiful game but man the earlier soundtracks were stronger.

Played some Dogo too. Made third area. I swear though..LS-30 games play best with an actual LS-30.

[rapoon]

A few stages of Huntdown. A game many here have been neglecting:) After being able to essentially run through the game on hard I had a hard time getting used to the controls after a few months. Might go back to this again. WHO IS THA MASTA?!

Been on my steam wishlist for ages, but I lost interest when they went the epic store exclusive route. till you posted this, had no idea it was on ps4.

[Stevens]

Been on my steam wishlist for ages, but I lost interest when they went the epic store exclusive route. till you posted this, had no idea it was on ps4.

Can't say I blame you there. I didn't know if existed till a few weeks after it was released. Naturally I couldn't find it on Steam, so for a minute I considered getting the Epic store. Then I found it on PS 4.

Poor business decisions aside it's a really good game.

[solidus]

Been playing quite a bit of Enter The Gungeon lately. Absolutely love that game. Also a bunch of Duke Nukem 3D

I have finally given up on trying to force myself to enjoy certain types of modern games. I have tried Witcher 3 so many times, and keep quitting. I just cannot get into games that feel less like games and more like interactive stories. Maybe it's because I grew up with arcades and Sega Genesis. I just love games that are pure game. Not constant walking, looting, cutscenes, etc. Luckily indie developers seem to keep delivering the sort of games I love, since the big guys seem to more or less have given it up. Give me an old school FPS, shmup or run n gun and I'm happy Too many games seem to be focused on endless content and hours, and forget to create a fun gameplay loop it seems.

The arcades kept you feeding quarters through difficult gameplay and wanting to get better and beat a game. So many games now seem to keep you addicted through fear of missing out and grinding. I just can't get into it.

[WelshMegalodon]

Grinding has been a staple of gaming since the 80s, and cutscene-driven gameplay since the early 90s. All the arcade-style action is still around, too - it's just that it's in multiplayer so studios can make more money, or in indie games and re-releases.

[solidus]

Grinding has been a staple of gaming since the 80s, and cutscene-driven gameplay since the early 90s. All the arcade-style action is still around, too - it's just that it's in multiplayer so studios can make more money, or in indie games and re-releases.

Cutscenes stuff for sure, especially on JRPGs. But was grinding as a game mechanic really that widespread back then? I'm thinking more of games like Destiny where the gameplay itself is not a challenge and you don't actually have to get better at the game. You don't play longer to get better at the game. You play longer to get more stuff, so you can get further, and get more stuff, and repeat. I feel like arcade grinding was more about the game being super hard, so grinding was really just practicing to get better.

[Sengoku Strider]

Grinding has been a staple of gaming since the 80s, and cutscene-driven gameplay since the early 90s. All the arcade-style action is still around, too - it's just that it's in multiplayer so studios can make more money, or in indie games and re-releases.

Cutscenes stuff for sure, especially on JRPGs. But was grinding as a game mechanic really that widespread back then? I'm thinking more of games like Destiny where the gameplay itself is not a challenge and you don't actually have to get better at the game. You don't play longer to get better at the game. You play longer to get more stuff, so you can get further, and get more stuff, and repeat. I feel like arcade grinding was more about the game being super hard, so grinding was really just practicing to get better.

Old school rpgs like Wizardry were literally just grinding and drawing maps on graph paper. Dragon Quest would have been about 25 minutes long with out all the grinding. Almost the whole game was walking back & forth getting in fights until you're strong enough to cross the invisible line on the map where the monsters are suddenly different & can slap the gold out of you.

One thing I will say for Destiny's patrol zones is they do offer the bonus of giving you endless target practice to get used to a new weapon or loadout.

[Mortificator]

Old school rpgs like Wizardry were literally just grinding and drawing maps on graph paper. Dragon Quest would have been about 25 minutes long with out all the grinding. Almost the whole game was walking back & forth getting in fights until you're strong enough to cross the invisible line on the map where the monsters are suddenly different & can slap the gold out of you.

That's just RPGs (and not all of those... Ultima and Rouge aren't grindathons). Action games of earlier decades didn't have the player farming experience points, you did better by gaining actual experience. The XP systems of tun-based RPGs are of course an abstraction of the process of learning and improving. It made sense in that genre. RPGs are a spin-off of wargames, with the player managing fighters instead of directly engaging in combat with their own reflexes and motor skills. You're going to want to model how your fighters would develop, and character levels also work as a dynamic difficulty mechanic when combat options are robust enough to support tactics beyond attack / heal / repeat.

The problem's when RPG elements are pasted onto everything. I understand why it's become common; designing an action game with a skill ceiling high enough to require hours to reach is really hard, so developers take the easy way out by having numbers go up. This asks less of players as well. Improvement through real experience isn't a sure thing, it requires thought and self-examination (observe the people who drive everyday and are still fucking terrible at it). With grinding, you can leave your brain off, repeat low-effort acts, and you're guaranteed to improve anyway. Substantial games haven't ceased coming out, but there's more incentive to pour money into shallow time sinks. An example of how market forces don't select for game quality, I guess.

[solidus]

Old school rpgs like Wizardry were literally just grinding and drawing maps on graph paper. Dragon Quest would have been about 25 minutes long with out all the grinding. Almost the whole game was walking back & forth getting in fights until you're strong enough to cross the invisible line on the map where the monsters are suddenly different & can slap the gold out of you.

That's just RPGs (and not all of those... Ultima and Rouge aren't grindathons). Action games of earlier decades didn't have the player farming experience points, you did better by gaining actual experience. The XP systems of tun-based RPGs are of course an abstraction of the process of learning and improving. It made sense in that genre. RPGs are a spin-off of wargames, with the player managing fighters instead of directly engaging in combat with their own reflexes and motor skills. You're going to want to model how your fighters would develop, and character levels also work as a dynamic difficulty mechanic when combat options are robust enough to support tactics beyond attack / heal / repeat.

The problem's when RPG elements are pasted onto everything. I understand why it's become common; designing an action game with a skill ceiling high enough to require hours to reach is really hard, so developers take the easy way out by having numbers go up. This asks less of players as well. Improvement through real experience isn't a sure thing, it requires thought and self-examination (observe the people who drive everyday and are still fucking terrible at it). With grinding, you can leave your brain off, repeat low-effort acts, and you're guaranteed to improve anyway. Substantial games haven't ceased coming out, but there's more incentive to pour money into shallow time sinks. An example of how market forces don't select for game quality, I guess.

This is exactly what I am talking about. I get that RPGs were and are grindy.. but thats sort of the point I guess? You are simulating a character getting stronger and becoming a better fighter via stats instead of actual difficulty. Thats the whole meaning of playing a 'role' in RPGs. Im thinking more of games with very numb action. Witcher 3 is a great example for me. The whole game is based on you being a monster killer, yet the combat is so damn dull. You have all these fancy swords, bombs, spells, etc... but really you just need to learn how to dodge and hit. And maybe use the shield spell. Then there are the loads of looter/shooters that are really just a grind. I dont see how you can actually get better at a game like Borderlands/Destiny/Warframe. The whole gimmick is to make you feel underpowered compared to your friends, so it makes you want to either cough up cash or grind until you get the cool stuff.

A recent game I played that was plagued with RPG elements where they werent needed was RDR2. So much monotony for no reason. You can level up your horse, gather herbs, cook 1000 different medicines, cut individual notches into bullets to make split points, create 10000 different outfits with 1000 different types of animals, etc. Its just so overloaded with content.. but I feel like it forgot to be fun. The shooting and horse riding is just so dead and dull.. in a game about THE OLD WEST!!! It feels more like a old west daily life sim than it does anything else. The story was really cool, and the characters were awesome. But I feel like it forgot to be a game...

Another large group of games like this are the modern action/adventure games. Batman, Assasins Creed, Far Cry, etc. They just get so damn repetitive, and so much of the combat is mashing buttions until something dies.

Trust me I totally get that arcade games still exist. But in the early days, big names like Konami were making them. These days, the largest games being pushed by Rockstar, Ubisoft, EA, etc are mainly of the above type. This is not meant to sound like an old man complaining Nintendo may be one one gigantic company that still makes games that I find genuinely fun and engaging.. and that actually feel like games. Its just that I get the feeling that modern 'popular' games are really less 'game' and more 'interactive story/open world wandering'. Those '100 hour games' are mostly spent walking around or repeating a task for the 1000th time. Small studios are killing it in the platformer/roguelike/shmup genre... but it would also be cool to see a larger budget game venture into these genres again I guess.

The only place where big devs actually create a high skill ceiling is in the online multiplayer genre. DOTA, LoL, CounterStrike, Rainbow Six Siege, etc are all extremely difficult to get good at. But to be fair I feel like its way easier to create difficulty in games like this... since the difficulty is coming from the skill of the other person. Its really akin to why sports or chess have a high skill ceiling... its because the other player is getting really good. I just want to see more of that in a single player experience I guess.

[Blinge]

Agree with everything you said about RDR2 but i also thought the story was arse! Biggest problems were in pacing.

because the padded out gameplay.. got in the way of them telling the story, while the story got in the way of the gameplay.

[solidus]

Agree with everything you said about RDR2 but i also thought the story was arse! Biggest problems were in pacing.

because the padded out gameplay.. got in the way of them telling the story, while the story got in the way of the gameplay.

The first 2 chapters of that game are possibly the biggest slog in gaming that I have ever experienced... and this is coming from someone who loved JRPGs as a kid Wagon rides that take 20 minutes, conversations on horseback while riding to the mission start, etc. Did they really need to animate every damn time you cooked up a potion or cut a notch into a shotgun shell? I mean.. it feels like a situation where they were doing things just because the modern tech allows it. We get it Rockstar, your game engine is super detailed!! But they seem to have forgotten that games need to be fun.

[Blinge]

Ahaah, ahh man, I was still on board at the beginning.
It was more just really weird fucked pacing like, oh! now we're on an island in the Caribbean, that's cool! a new locat- nope... nope it's just endless shooting galleries and now we're back in USA,... do we have to scrape the gang back together and find them again?
- nope already got' em back... aand it's back to a new hideout and hiding from the law again like nothing happened.

I think you could cut a third out of that game, add nothing, and it would be better.

10/10 best storytelling experience in video game history.
..like what the fuck.

(Yeah i agree the crafting animations were just.... ehhh. They could've at least added a skip option, or way to turn them off)

[Stevens]

Snip

My friend - I would strongly suggest looking into indie devs as they seem to be the last stronghold of arcade style romps.

Games you might enjoy from my Steam library:

Katana Zero
Hotline Miami maybe the sequel too if you really dig the first.
Streets of Rage 4
Blazing Chrome
Volgar the Viking (Rastan with a viking)
Black Future 88' (I can play this one in small doses if I'm hankering)
Akane - Bought this yesterday and played it for FOUR hours. Also it only costs a fiver and is on the Switch too. This might be your ticket. Wrote my initial thoughts up on the most recent page of the r2r thread.
Huntdown - Great cyberpunk aesthetic run n' gun/platformer with a pretty good cover mechanic. Only on Switch, PS 4 and Epic though. Not on Steam till May.

Of what I listed - Blazing Chrome, Akane, Huntdown I would suggest checking out first.

[Stevens]

Ahaah, ahh man, I was still on board at the beginning.
It was more just really weird fucked pacing like, oh! now we're on an island in the Caribbean,

That was the point I quit. I was just fucking done.

[solidus]

Snip

My friend - I would strongly suggest looking into indie devs as they seem to be the last stronghold of arcade style romps.

Games you might enjoy from my Steam library:

Katana Zero
Hotline Miami maybe the sequel too if you really dig the first.
Streets of Rage 4
Blazing Chrome
Volgar the Viking (Rastan with a viking)
Black Future 88' (I can play this one in small doses if I'm hankering)
Akane - Bought this yesterday and played it for FOUR hours. Also it only costs a fiver and is on the Switch too. This might be your ticket. Wrote my initial thoughts up on the most recent page of the r2r thread.
Huntdown - Great cyberpunk aesthetic run n' gun/platformer with a pretty good cover mechanic. Only on Switch, PS 4 and Epic though. Not on Steam till May.

Of what I listed - Blazing Chrome, Akane, Huntdown I would suggest checking out first.

Only one I have played on that list is Hotline Miami.. and I really loved it. The music and atmosphere were just so damn cool. I did mess with Blazing Chrome for a bit but got distracted and stopped... mean to pick it up again soon.

Ill definitely check out your recommendations.

[Mischief Maker]

Well if we're recommending arcadey indies:

Dead Cells: I don't know why shmupsfarm turned its collective nose up at this excellent smooth and speedy platformer, but if Black Future '88 makes the list there is no excuse not to include Dead Cells.

Galak-Z: The Void: Transforming robot/starfighter combat in neutonian physics with fighting game concepts like perfect blocking and input buffering. Nails the Saturday Morning Cartoon aesthetic.

Nex Machina: The best Robotron game since the original, doesn't hurt that Eugene Jarvis was involved.

Scourgebringer: Monolith meets Noitu Love 2, with just a dash of Devil May Cry. You can turn on autofire for basic attacks in the accessibility options.

Assault Android Cactus: Neck-and-neck with Nex Machina for best twin-stick shooter, this one has more of a horde-shooter feel to it.

Fight'n Rage: Neck-and-neck with Streets of Rage 4, this has more of a Capcom feel to the combat compared to SOR's dance-a-thon. The air juggle options are insane!

X-Morph Defense: A difficult game to describe, laying somewhere between Herzog Zwei, Raiden, and Tower Defense. It has the most gorgeous city-demolition engine I've ever seen.

Cuphead: Contra meets god-tier animation quailty.

Furi: A little bit twin stick shooter, a little bit Mike Tyson's Punchout.

[Steamflogger Boss]

I dropped Dead Cells pretty quick. Just boring for me, didn't know the site in general felt that way though.

Cuphead rules.