What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[jabrams]

Recently, I've been diving into some older titles and stumbled upon a game that gave me a 'mythic carry' vibe in terms of its challenging gameplay and immersive storyline. Reading through this thread, I'm intrigued by the diverse range of games everyone's playing. Has anyone else felt that certain games, despite not being in the 'mythic' genre, give off that intense, carry-you-through-an-epic-journey feel?

[null1024]

Still cracking away at Sound Voltex. I'm doing lv 15's now [the scale is 1-20].
It feels very good. I thought it'd take much longer for me to get to this point. I've heard that things start really ramping up after this, but I haven't really played any 16s yet to know if that's true or not. I probably could clear a 16 in the arcade [probably not at home though], even if I wouldn't be clearing most of them that I try like I am with 15s right now.
I definitely need to upgrade my home setup from my cheap cardboard box controller since I keep knocking it around during play, and the controls are definitely not arcade-spec [it's literally just some fightstick buttons and a pair of absurdly cheap knobs], but I absolutely do not feel like spending $200+ on a controller for one game.
I also really need a bigger [and higher refreshrate] monitor, I know for certain that there are a lot of patterns that I'm taking longer to read at home than I would in the arcade on the big, 120hz screen.

I'm also playing Beatmania IIDX and like, that game is still kicking my ass, I can barely do lv 4s [the scale is 1-12]. Some are just really hard within a difficulty level too.
I'm slowly getting better, but my hand positioning sucks since my fingers absolutely do not want to stay in a tight, fixed position with all the keys accessible, and my hands are too small for me to try and scratch without moving from the keys.
I finally feel comfortable with the game though despite everything; I finally feel more like I need to get better rather than feeling like I need to actually learn the controls.

Man, even if Sound Voltex is a fairly intimidating machine, it's certainly a lot more approachable and "intuitive" than IIDX. You naturally just end up adopting a four-finger, two-thumb playstyle in SDVX, while in IIDX, people tend to try and hunt-and-peck the keys starting out, and the turntable distance is terribly far.
I've seen a lot of people walk up to the IIDX cab, muddle around and get nowhere, and then I'll never see them on it again.
...but at the same time, I don't see random people walking up to Sound Voltex, it's pretty much always regulars on the cab. Bit of a shame.

[m.sniffles.esq]

Played through Cocoon over the past few days (from one of the Limbo/Inside people. NOT about break-dancing senior citizens), and while it's very much a single-button puzzler, it is also a SUPER FUCKING COOL single-button puzzler

On Game Pass (and everything else)

[Lemnear]

Beating 5 of my personal records out of 6 in the last TOUR MAX "Deus" in Ridge Racer 2 (PSP).
There is one "exploitable" point at least in every race, excluding the 1° and the 3° races, where those "exploit" are lesser.

Track 1-3

Race 1: second turn, there is a little jump that can push you on the left wall, avoid it for a slight advantage.

Race 2: Is necessary to hit the right wall after the U turn at the end of the first gallery, if you dont, you will jump and hit the external wall frontally while flying, totally stopping your car. CPU's opponents will ALWAYS hit that wall instead.

Race 3: this is probably the hardest, because there are NO exploitable points here.

Track 4-5

Race 4: There is a U left turn just after a jump, not so visible, turn your car way before you see the turn, or you will crash on the extarnal corner, CPU's always miss this, attention, is ESSENTIAL avoiding any collision with other cars, or your only exploitable point in the race will be nullified.

Race 5: there is a near impossible S turn just after a jump, the best you can do is to "bounce" trying to lose less velocity possible, is the only case where is better to take it frontally than on the side of your car. Reaching the port section, there are several curves, not impegnative, CPU's usually runs very bad in that track portion.

Track 6

Race 6: in the left turn just before the uphill, opponents will always miss that and hit the external wall, stay on the left side to avoid an amass of enemy cars.

Nobody rules the streets like me (thank you Dior)

[Steven]

I got 9th Sentinel Sisters. I am not sure what to think of it. It might even count as an STG, but I don't know.

At times I think it's not as well designed as it should be and it has some stupid shit that I never would have put in the game, like not being able to control when you shoot. Yes, a shooting game where you can't control when you shoot, and your standard shot and some of the subweapons are rather weak and the reload times are quite long, so you end up being pretty helpless quite frequently. Not sure what Live Wire's goal with this was, but for 499 yen in early access, it could have been a lot worse.

[m.sniffles.esq]

I checked out The Lamplighters League via Gamepass, as the Doc Savage + XCOM promise intrigued me. And while it's certainly not a bad game, or anything. It just doesn't do a whole hell of a lot to live up to it's promise.

I mean, in just looking at it's surface qualities, they choose to set the action in this 1930s pulp adventure universe, yet all the art/character models look like an ultra-generic Pixar movie. This sort of announces from the get-go what you're in for.

If they attempt to add one twist to the formula, it's that conceptually all the stages can be played via real-time stealth, turn-based combat, or a combination. But you don't even make it through the tutorial before discovering this system has A LOT of quirks (to put it nicely). The biggest bummer being, if it weren't for the real-time action, it would be a pretty enjoyable Game Pass game to play on your phone.

[To Far Away Times]

Played through Cocoon over the past few days (from one of the Limbo/Inside people. NOT about break-dancing senior citizens), and while it's very much a single-button puzzler, it is also a SUPER FUCKING COOL single-button puzzler

On Game Pass (and everything else)

I'm a big fan of Limbo, so I'll add this one to the list.

[m.sniffles.esq]

I'm a big fan of Limbo, so I'll add this one to the list.

It's very. very, very good.

[Steven]

I got... *looks up title for the fourth time* Helle's Undersea City Project ~ Bringing Air to The Garden ~

What even is this game, and how do I play it? I have no idea. I like it, though. I think.

[ryu]

I got... *looks up title for the fourth time* Helle's Undersea City Project ~ Bringing Air to The Garden ~

What even is this game, and how do I play it? I have no idea. I like it, though. I think.

Never heard of it. The look of the title screams visual novel to me. But the semantics say simulation game. I'm not sure what it's trying to sell. Is any of my guesses even close....?

[Steven]

I got... *looks up title for the fourth time* Helle's Undersea City Project ~ Bringing Air to The Garden ~

What even is this game, and how do I play it? I have no idea. I like it, though. I think.

Never heard of it. The look of the title screams visual novel to me. But the semantics say simulation game. I'm not sure what it's trying to sell. Is any of my guesses even close....?

Definitely SLG; it's there in the Japanese title.

The tutorial is not very good, unfortunately; it's just a 3-minute prerendered video. The Japanese one didn't help much, so I switched the language to English and found that it was not translated very well and that it ended up helping less than the Japanese one lol.

It's one of those games where you play it to relax and stuff, so once you figure it out it's actually pretty simple and pleasant to play.

[BurlyHeart]

Just payed through Metal Slug 4 for the first time....quite the disappointment!

Also credit fed through of Metal Slug 5 and it was awesome!

[XoPachi]

I'm finding myself addicted to Coded Arms lately for some reason. Being on PSP, this is not the best feeling FPS at all especially as someone staunchly KB/M for the genre. But I have to play it, even in emulator, with some forgiveness of both the time period and the hardware. I'm appreciating how pure this game is.
There's no dialogue, no cutscenes, or in game no cut-in chatter. There's no really deep RPG elements beyond weapon typing advantages. There's no squad mates or extrinsic things you need to worry about before diving into the net. It's a very atmospheric, humble mystery dungeon game. You jump in, find new equipment, beat up stuff, pick up upgrades, and clear levels. It's monotonous but satisfying in it's simplicity.

It really tries it's best to make good use of the hardware while making mostly sensible environments. The city used to perplex me as a kid because it looked nothing like a typical city. But then last night I stopped to look at my environment and noticed a sign that said "Kowloon" and it made total sense. The ruins are a neat place to traverse for a somewhat military themed FPS. And the base of course makes sense being claustrophobic and closed off.

Another thing that sticks out to me more today as modern games absolutely bore me in this regard is the UI and sfx are really appealing. The fonts and imagery really drive the point home that you're in a simulation. Even switching weapons sounds cool. The music is fantastic when it actually plays. When you're not in a non pause menu or in battle, there's a soft whirring. But the music that does play doesn't even sound like something I'd hear in an FPS with the peak banger being the stage completion music. Guns sound surprisingly very powerful and are modeled really well.
God I love the PSP.

[ryu]

The tutorial is not very good, unfortunately; it's just a 3-minute prerendered video. The Japanese one didn't help much, so I switched the language to English and found that it was not translated very well and that it ended up helping less than the Japanese one lol.

Translations are weird. My japanese is far from great and I still often spot translation errors that I feel really shouldn't happen to a professional translater. I wouldn't be surprised if half the translation industry was made of hacks that have no real knowledge and only put text into online translaters to patch up the output.

It's one of those games where you play it to relax and stuff, so once you figure it out it's actually pretty simple and pleasant to play.

Visually it looks like a game the devs put a lot of heart into. I'd check it out of I cared much for simulation games.

[Lander]

Started up Dino Crisis 2 yesterday, and did the same thing I always do - blast through to the first save, sense that there's more to the combat that I must be missing, and then put the game down.

I don't know why this keeps happening, since I have a specific interest in action-focused tank control games, and it's seemingly the most actiony of the classic resi-adjacent Capcom stuff.

So not this time! Going to pick it back up and give it a real and proper college try this evening.

Also, it's really odd that the dodge button is something you have to turn on in the options menu. Charming, in a medium-finding-its-feet kind of way, but odd.

[BrianC]

The tutorial is not very good, unfortunately; it's just a 3-minute prerendered video. The Japanese one didn't help much, so I switched the language to English and found that it was not translated very well and that it ended up helping less than the Japanese one lol.

Translations are weird. My japanese is far from great and I still often spot translation errors that I feel really shouldn't happen to a professional translater. I wouldn't be surprised if half the translation industry was made of hacks that have no real knowledge and only put text into online translaters to patch up the output.

I watched the US Mazinger Z DVDs. I don't know much Japanese, but there were a couple spots that seemed questionable. In the intro, I clearly heard the word Tekken when the subtitles said, "fists of steel". Tekken means "Iron Fist".

[Lander]

Finished up Dino Crisis 2. That was a fun, well-paced run and gun adventure that didn't outstay its welcome. Clocked in somewhere around 5 hours - a little on the easy side, but that just means a hard mode playthrough is on the cards at some point.

Combat's good, deeper than I gave it credit for once the combo extender and a few good weapons show up in the shop.
Very fundamental; lots of bait-and-punish evasion, backed by don't-get-hit kill chaining to give you a reason to play well beyond survival, and nicely abusable input model - faster gun-raise while running, auto-aim that happens when you neutral the movement control, and a primitive form of DMC shotgun twitching.
Set-pieces are really good too, with the underwater sequence a standout thanks to its gear-shift down to a more survival horror pace, and extra twist of jumping and verticality. Shame they didn't take that idea and run with it; there's plenty potential in fixed-camera tank control action yet if that's anything to go by.

But, it also falls a little below its potential as RE's actiony cousin. The helplessness factor is still present by way of lengthy mashable knockdown recoveries, yet feels out of place next to the faster pace and relentless enemy pressure.
An ukemi tech-out would have fixed that nicely, along with something resembling RE3's action dodge as a last-ditch solution to moments where the gameplay model can't help but sucker punch you on wakeup.
The balance is also kind of wonky; resources are ridiculously plentiful after the first couple of hours, and freely-upgradeable ammo capacity breaks the weapon choice proposition, giving the player few reasons to vary up their arsenal once the good guns show up.

Nonetheless, it's a fine game that can be knocked out in an evening if you're decently familiar with the genre. The story will leave you cold should you have any love for the series, given how things worked out, but the journey is enjoyable.
Capcom really need to stop forcing Resi to be action and let Dino Crisis pick up the slack already. Have Regina be the one to tote a massive leg-shattering portable railgun instead of Jill, that kind of goofy OTT nonsense is dead on for her series.

In closing, contemplate this cheerful quote barely-hidden in the character mugshot on the status screen:

LET US PLAY BASKET
SOCCER ITALY

Indeed, Dino Crisis 2. Indeed

[Steven]

Last Train Home demo is good. Historically inaccurate, but the gameplay is good and it's supposed to be fiction anyway, so I suppose I can forgive it. Performance is not especially great, though. Hopefully they improve performance before launch day, but even if they don't, I'll be there on day 1.

Translations are weird. My japanese is far from great and I still often spot translation errors that I feel really shouldn't happen to a professional translater. I wouldn't be surprised if half the translation industry was made of hacks that have no real knowledge and only put text into online translaters to patch up the output.

Sometimes you just have to make stuff up because it simply doesn't exist in English, or if you translate it "properly" it ends up being ridiculous anyway. Bad translations, though, are just bad.

In the case of this game, it was translated by a human for sure, and I can guarantee it was a Japanese person because it has all of the typical grammatical and word choice mistakes Japanese people make when writing in English if their knowledge/proficiency is around Eiken pre-2 level, give or take a level. It's not bad and is perfectly understandable, but it has weird/awkward/unnatural grammar and/or word choice in places.

[Marc]

Finished up Luigi's Mansion 3. Bar a couple of unusually clunky boss fights, you'd barely know it wasn't developed in-house. An absolute delight.

Started Lumo. A game that not only plays like the old Ultimate Speccy isometric stuff, but went to the trouble of sticking in "David "Whistlin' Rick" Wilson's "Hold My Hand Very Tightly (Very Tightly)".
You Legends

I've also been playing the odd session of Vice City, and maybe it's just nostalgia talking, but it still feels by far the most fun of them all.

[Sima Tuna]

Vice City is the most fun of the GTA games, unless you want to count Vice City Stories. Vice City Stories is/was incredibly ambitious for a portable game and expanded on all of the 3d era mechanics with some impressive gang building systems. They added swimming too, finally fixing one of the cardinal "mistakes" of 3d era GTA, aka cheap water deaths from weird collision.

Vice City Stories is a game I'd rank at the very pinnacle of the Open World Crimes genre, right up there with Saints Row 2. LCS is great as well (it's GTA 3 with a minimap, finally) but it lacks that atmosphere and sense of place that Vice City nails.

[AGermanArtist]

Kirby and the Forgotten Land is a lot of fun in short bursts of maybe 1-2 levels at a time.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Vice City is the most fun of the GTA games, unless you want to count Vice City Stories.

What do you find made it better than San Andreas out of curiosity? I think San Andreas is the one I've had the most fun with, but I can't speak to the series as a whole as I've spent orders of magnitude more time with GTA:SA than any of the others, so I'm definitely biased.

[Marc]

Personally, not only does the setting of SA click for me, but the map is the first one I thought too big. In VC, I'm never more than a minute or two from the next mission.

[null1024]

I really need to sit down and play San Andreas. It's been installed on my computer for years now and I've never touched it, lmao.

VCS is great [fuck that stupid forklift mission with the exploding booze though -- it was bad over a decade ago, and it was bad a decade later when I replayed the game lmao]. It isn't just ambitious for a PSP title, it's a full-ass GTA game. First time I played it was on PS2 though.
Part of me wants to say that OG VC is better, but I suspect on a replay that my feelings would change.

[To Far Away Times]

I liked each GTA more than the last, at least for the PS2 trilogy.

I never really clicked with the PSP games.

[garrz32]

Been a while since I've posted and played games, nice to actually have the time to do both.

Splatterhouse PCB: Yep, it's that time of year to bring this baby out again and try to 1CC.

Alien Isolation: Playstation 4, can't believe I never gave it a chance when it was released, great thing about Playstation Plus is playing games I normally wouldn't look at.

Fobia-St Dinfna Hotel:Playstation4, played about an two hours in, jesus what a grind. Not for me

[Steven]

Now that more Metal Gear is on PC and not region locked like it is on GOG and in some cases on Steam (MG Rising is region locked. Good thing I bought it before I came here!), it's time to play Metal Gear, now permanently freed from the hellish prison of consoles! Finally get to play them all in Japanese for the first time (aside from Peace Walker, which I got the Japanese version of at Japanese launch like a year before the international launch), too!

At least, that was the plan, but M2 did the emulation for MGS1 and you know what that means: broken audio. Why is it that it seems like every other M2 release launches with audio problems? I know they'll fix it eventually, but how long will it take? Hopefully they fix (and by that I mean permanently get rid of) the awful bilinear filter they put on it, too. I guess I could just go to Akiba tomorrow and buy an original copy and play it on my PS2, but it's still disappointing. This really should have been or included the PC version, too, but it's absent, of course. That's on GOG, and region locked, of course.

This whole collection is a mess, too. You buy your region's version of the collection, which comes only with your region's version of the games and if you want to play any of the other versions, you have to download those separately instead of those versions just being present by default. I guess it helps save disk space, but it's still awkward and unnecessary. Great fucking job, Konmai.

[m.sniffles.esq]

So I did a leap-of-faith buy of Hellboy Web of Wyrd (no colon), because after 30 goddamn years of Hellboy... stuff, it's the only thing to actually make an attempt to look like the comics (y'know, the entire reason the character got popular in the first place). And it sure picked a interesting week to release (lucky they bought ad space on the xbox launch screen, or I would have totally forgotten about it)

And while I'm happy to report that it very much indeed seems like you're playing the comic, the mechanics of that comic are... rough. I mean, I realize that most games release as betas nowadays (if not tech previews), so maybe things will improve. But, absolutely everything about it--except the look--has the feeling of needing more time in the oven.

[Marc]

Just attempted to start Hollow Knight. Unimpressed. Drab and directionless.

[Sima Tuna]

Just attempted to start Hollow Knight. Unimpressed. Drab and directionless.

Do you like metroidvanias generally? I could see plenty of people on this forum buying Hollow Knight based on the hype surrounding the game/Silksong, then realizing they dislike console game design and metroidvanias in particular.

HK has souls-inspired resource gathering and boss design, but is generally more pure metroidvania (imo) than soulslike. I think HK is for its generation was Super Metroid was for us boomers.

I'm currently playing Haak and I think it's very enjoyable. The game has a really unique atmosphere, gripping story and excellent quality-of-life features. Movement feels just right too. Very intuitive run speed, jump height and dash distance. The game gives you the good toys early so you can play with hookshotting and air dashing from the very tutorial.