What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[XoPachi]

This entire sequence is unnerving as fuck. If I were 8, this game would have traumatized me until like...now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mum_HUA_Cq8

[BareKnuckleRoo]

snip

Look Outside is an amazing indie horror game by a French Canadian dev, only became aware of it recently. The pixel art is top notch, and its use of RPG mechanics in a horror game makes it feel like a really slickly executed modern successor to something like Sweet Home.

Some really disturbing stuff in here like the teeth family.

However I also think it does a great job of being an RPG were you truly get to decide what you want to do. A lot of situations are presented where there's moral ambiguity; do you mercy kill something that's suffering, do you put yourself in harm's way, etc. There's several situations where you don't have to necessarily resort to killing, and where it's not necessarily a choice between good or bad, getting a reward or not. It's just entirely up to the player how they'd like to behave, with different choices having differing consequences.

It's a much more interesting game for that sort of thing than say, Undertale, which initially presents you a few different "choices" of actions but at the end reveals it's a false choice, the premise of the game and the interface have both been a lie to the player, and using the Fight command is always Bad and Wrong. Non-violent pacifism is explicitly stated to be the only acceptable choice in the game's context and you're condemned even for what would be self-defense. But if you want the most interesting fight from a mechanical standpoint in the game and one of the best songs in the game, you have to behave like a genocidal maniac and get told off by the game for it. Its brand of moral absolutism is kinda childish.

[XoPachi]

Look Outside is an amazing indie horror game by a French Canadian dev, only became aware of it recently. The pixel art is top notch, and its use of RPG mechanics in a horror game makes it feel like a really slickly executed modern successor to something like Sweet Home.

Some really disturbing stuff in here like the teeth family.

However I also think it does a great job of being an RPG were you truly get to decide what you want to do. A lot of situations are presented where there's moral ambiguity; do you mercy kill something that's suffering, do you put yourself in harm's way, etc. There's several situations where you don't have to necessarily resort to killing, and where it's not necessarily a choice between good or bad, getting a reward or not. It's just entirely up to the player how they'd like to behave, with different choices having differing consequences.

It's a much more interesting game for that sort of thing than say, Undertale, which initially presents you a few different "choices" of actions but at the end reveals it's a false choice, the premise of the game and the interface have both been a lie to the player, and using the Fight command is always Bad and Wrong. Non-violent pacifism is explicitly stated to be the only acceptable choice in the game's context and you're condemned even for what would be self-defense. But if you want the most interesting fight from a mechanical standpoint in the game and one of the best songs in the game, you have to behave like a genocidal maniac and get told off by the game for it. Its brand of moral absolutism is kinda childish.

Literally my exact thoughts right down to the Undertale comparison. I was very surprised how much of a better RPG it is compared to contemporaries. There's so much in the way of commitment and lasting consequence for making a real choice. The rat baby is a very clear example of this. Kill it and lose access to a potential party member or make a sacrifice to spare it's life and permanently lose access to an entire suite of abilities?

It even goes the FallOut 1 route of timing your entire adventure, forcing you to make steady progress. And things change as the days go by.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I still resent how much the internet collectively decided Undertale was the gaming equivalent of the literal second coming of Jesus, devoting article after article unpacking its "deep" philosophy and "complex" morals. On top of it being very black and white in terms of what the game rewards you and punishes you for doing, the super happy true ending is one of the worst examples of RPG writing ever in that it can't be bothered

Spoiler

to give actual closure to literally the most important character in the entire game.

"Hug me then go away so I can go crazy or die alone." Uhhh, excuse me? I can't even get the choice to tell his parents (or anyone else for that matter), "hey your kid's alive, maybe we should try to help him or something"? Yeah, let's spend the entirety of the ultra pacifist ending talking about how great it was you could save everyone in the whole wide world except for THIS ONE GUY who you don't even get to TRY and save, let alone ask anyone else for help saving, sorry buddy! "Don't tell anyone I'm alive or anything, it might make them sad". Fuck off, I should get to make the choice, you shouldn't have to wallow in misery alone, this is supposed to be the best ending in the game where everyone's happy, what the fuck's with the mood whiplash? I'm supposedly an all powerful savior child up until the point the game derails its own premise and decides I'm not? Sorry buddy, I guess all you get is a hug, then you get to go fuck yourself and be miserable and flowery and shit for all eternity.

God, what an awful ending.

I at least preferred the Genocide ending because if I'm going to have a game give me a miserably bad ending I should at least have some player involved agency in it and get to pretend it was meant to be a horror game about a psychopathic kid all along rather than pretending the shitty twist in the supposed Ultra Mega Happy Ending is tolerable.

[Sumez]

I can understand why Undertale's fanbase makes it off-putting, and a really easy target for any sort of criticism. But it's a fun game and really clever with its writing, with a style of humor that relies on humanity rather than stupid slapstick.
Is it deep and meaningful? Of course not. But it's not really trying to, either.

Look Outside looks cool too, though. But alas, seems to be stuck on PC.

[Steven]

Never played Undertale and never will, but that sounds even worse than Shin Megami Tensei V's alignment system where being nice = Law and being mean for no reason = Chaos despite neither of those things having anything to do with either of those alignments. That's also the same game where the already nearly non-existent main characters

Spoiler

disappear halfway through the game for no reason and then suddenly reappear in the literal final 30~60 minutes of the game to try to murder you for poorly-conveyed nonsense reasons and then die without saying anything

, so it's best not to expect too much from it. Still want to finish replaying Vengeance and get the other ending that I didn't get last time after changing my mind at the very last possible moment due to that game's own terrible writing, but I played it for about 5 minutes the other day and promptly decided to play something else/better instead.

[Sumez]

Jsut to clarify. Undertale doesn't have an alignment system.

Undertale has a "did you leave everyone alive or murder everything you found" system. It's not trying to be subtle.

[Steven]

I mean like the writing itself sounds terrible, in a similar fashion to how the SMT V writers seem to have no idea how to write properly for Law/Chaos. Then again most Metal Gears go out of their way to punish the player for killing people and those games are fun, but at least in those cases tranquilizing or knocking people out makes the games harder than just shooting everyone with a suppressed lethal weapon, even if only slightly.

[Sumez]

Ok but the writing is great

[Steven]

It can be as good as it wants to be, but turn-based RPGs that aren't strategy RPGs or don't have press turn put me to sleep very quickly.

[MOSQUITO FIGHTER]

Still trying to get the hang of Fatal Fury City of The Wolves. Really tough game to play properly. It requires a lot of good execution. Just trying to cancel moves is driving me up a wall. You really have to be able to whip out long combos effortlessly to be successful.

It's reminding me of Tekken where if I whiff a move and then I sit there while getting popped by a 24 hit combo that has no escape.

By far the most brutal and casual unfriendly of the new fighting games that I've tried. Doubt I'll ever be able to hang in this game playing in my spare time on weekends after being exhausted at work.

[Blinge]

Monster Hunter World

and Monster Hunter 1 (japan) your item box has one page and there's no auto-sort WTF
the netplay has been brought back online with a fan server.

and Atelier Rorona DX: The Alchemist of Arland.
I'm a disgrace to all and sundry

[Sumez]

It can be as good as it wants to be, but turn-based RPGs that aren't strategy RPGs or don't have press turn put me to sleep very quickly.

It's perfectly valid to criticize Undertale for a lot of things, but at least maybe stick to doing so after having actually played it.

The combat system in Undertale is based entirely around avoiding violence, so it's really more of a dialogue tree puzzle kind of thing, with an interspersed projective dodging minigame which is actually quite fun as long as you don't try to draw pointless comparisons to STG gameplay

[XoPachi]

I've just kind of been jumping headlong into beat em ups. Spent most of the day jumping around Sengoku 3, Denjin Makai 2, Metamorphic Force, Gaiapolis, and...I kinda hesitate to call it a beat em up, but Bucky O'Hare as well.

[Sima Tuna]

I'm playing Samurai Bringer.

It's very charming. I think the charm is what keeps me playing. It has a beautiful art style and a great set-up for a roguelike. You are Susano'o and you need to kill Orochi. But you suck and so Orochi kills you instead. Amaterasu saves you and tells you they can send you through time to fight various Samurai heroes. You can beat them up, learn their abilities, take their armor and become strong enough to kill Orochi. That's the game.

Every time you kill a named (famous) Samurai, like Date Masamune, he becomes part of the shrine of statues back at your home base (between runs.) If your character is high enough "level," you can talk to the statue and swap your skills, abilities and appearance with his. So you can "become" all these famous samurai.

But the game also uses a totally free and open move editor which allows you to replicate any moveset or create an original one. The samurai movesets are better than susano'o's default moveset, but worse than what you can build yourself. And every run, you still want to collect a lot of armor pieces that have skills and abilities on them, so you are strong enough to defeat bosses. I have yet to kill any bosses because they are annoying as shit to fight. It's very easy for a named samurai or boss to stunlock half your health away or more in a single combo. The game uses a stamina system but bosses and named samurai get way too much hp and stamina compared to you. At least at the start.

So the game feels kinda janky to play, but it is still a lot of fun. The best comparison I can make is Cladun 2 or Cladun Sengoku. It's that kind of game. Make your own character, build your own moveset and fight against randomized challenges. If you like Cladun at all then you should pick this up because it's more fully-featured than Cladun imo.

I also fooled around a little bit in an indie board game video game called Miyamoto S. I bought it for two dollars and that's about what it is worth. If the game had a two-player mode then it could be fun. As it stands, the game is too unbalanced. I have literally been first-turn OHKO by the cpu opponent. Imagine if you could lose your king on the first pawn opening of Chess. The concept is good and I love the aesthetic, but there's no balance here. Your player "king" has 5 hp but it's fairly common to face opponent "kings" with 20 or 40 hp. Enjoy.

[XoPachi]

I don't know how this is possible but Sengoku 3 is simultaneously slow and fast at the same time.
"Damn nice combo I got. Fucked that enemy right up. Really getting faster on my execution, killed those two guys immediately. Why have I been on the same screen for 3 minutes?"

It's great. Fantastic really. I can see it being my favorite in the genre because I love beat em ups with a little more than a handful of punches. But it's like this weird time paradox. Denjin Makai 2 on the other hand is a bit similar in it's action but you FLY through that game. I am not at all getting a 1cc any time soon but I was really blazing through it while still actively trying to figure out Jinrei. I want to smash the thick pink haired girls. And that game swarms you a lot more with enemies. Real bastards too. Those fucking walker robots that take a billion hits but don't feel like they take long at all.

I dunno. Can't put my finger on it with Sengoku. But it's not stopping my enjoyment at all. This game's great.

[ryu]

F-Zero GX
I was stuck on master class emerald cup for weeks and got to a point where I was losing interest since my last couple of attempts all failed because NPCs kept kicking me off course. Finally managed to clear it by switching to Rainbow Phoenix. Still can't believe how much of a difference that made.

Astrobot
Got this one for my birthday last year. Played it once and thought it was mostly boring. Forced myself to keep playing yesterday and got to a point where it started to be enjoyable (the challenge bonus levels lol). I noticed this game auto corrects your movement a bit to help you not fall off too easily and I can't say I'm a huge fan of it. We're not far off from a button to let an AI take over entirely...

[Sumez]

I noticed this game auto corrects your movement a bit to help you not fall off too easily and I can't say I'm a huge fan of it

This sums up Astrobot extremely well.

It's such a well made and likable game, and it's honestly just "letting the player actually control the game" from being a true 10/10 game for me, rather than "only" an 8.
Even Mario games, typically being extremely easy, still actually let you play every segment (but with Mario Wonder it seems those days are over, too)

[Sumez]

For some reason I ended up playing Afterimage after all.

And I'm actually really liking it.
A lot of the information posted about the game in this thread has been wildly misleading. If there's a spectrum of metroidvanias - ranging from the open ended routing-focused design of the original Metroid, and the largely much more adapted (and easier to implement) completion-focused RPG-lite design of Symphony of the Night, then Afterimage is as far into the SOTN end as it can possibly get. It's been pushed as an R2RKMF style game on this forum previously - don't let that deceive you, it's about as far from that style of design as you can get, outside of a couple of pretty enjoyable boss fights.

In fact, in terms of the pure design elements Afterimage is built from, it feels like the most archetypical modern indie metroidvania game ever made. However, as far as those go, I'd say it's also pretty much a gold standard. Combat is fine, and exploration is extremely enjoyable. Often exploring a nook or cranny here or there will inadvertently open up a massive new area that you had no idea existed, often tossing you into the gigantic open world of the game with a tons of lose ends left to explore that you constantly need to keep in the back of your head, even with your map full of markers (which feel like an absolute must to utilize).
The whole game is super open ended. While many paths are closed to you, often requiring some sort of key or traversal skill, just as many are surprisingly open, allowing you to tackle areas that seem way outside of your skill level. The game is nice enough to mark enemies above your level, but will do nothing to stop you - in fact exploring such areas is some of the most fun I had in the game so far. After a while you'll be able to go around the map in so many ways that you'll likely go through some places "backwards", but the game also accomodates this well. I guess there's actually a snippet of Metroid in there in that sense.

One of the things that makes exploration the most enjoyable however, is how distinct each area feels! Despite the incredible size of the game, there's a very distinct visual style to every location, which is reflected in both the graphics and level design. Even within one "map zone", you can quickly tell which part of it you're in, so no location ever ends up feeling repetitive, and finding new places keeps feeling rewarding.


There's a lot more to the game that I can't really speak about yet. The plot feels very annoying, and littered with waaaay more exposition than it needs, but it's also easy to ignore.
You keep finding a ton of materials and key items all over the place, most of which I've figured are central to some sort of quests or unlocks, but you find so much that I haven't really put any research into what they are used for. You don't really need any of it, at least not so far from what I can tell. But I guess it does help the game feeling a lot more expansive, not unlike all the crazy items you'll find all throughout SOTN.

[XoPachi]

F-Zero GX
I was stuck on master class emerald cup for weeks and got to a point where I was losing interest since my last couple of attempts all failed because NPCs kept kicking me off course. Finally managed to clear it by switching to Rainbow Phoenix. Still can't believe how much of a difference that made. :roll:

Quick tip to help if you're not already familiar... Release the gas at around the peak of your boosts. Among other uses, the most important bit is that you will maintain and stack boost speed for far longer than if you just hold A through all of them. Just make sure when you boost again, you repress the gas momentarily. You do need a feel and rhythm for it but it's not hard to do once you understand how it works. Not all ships are efficient with this, but about half of the roster can make varying use of it.

[Sumez]

God, I can't stop playing Afterimage, it's casual comfort food, but great at it. The sense of discovery is really special - you can't turn a corner without accidentally finding massive new locations you didn't imagine existed.
I've been playing for many hours now, and still have a lot left to see. And it doesn't feel padded at all - there is little to no repetition, with every new location feeling completely new. It's just fucking big.

[Starfighter]

Just played through Snufkin: Melody Of Moominvalley. Cute little game!

Edit: I think I'm gonna hook up my PS3 this weekend and play the three Resistance games on there again. Feeling nostalgic!

[guigui]

God, I can't stop playing Afterimage, it's casual comfort food, but great at it. The sense of discovery is really special - you can't turn a corner without accidentally finding massive new locations you didn't imagine existed.
I've been playing for many hours now, and still have a lot left to see. And it doesn't feel padded at all - there is little to no repetition, with every new location feeling completely new. It's just fucking big.

Definitely that Afterimage is big and new each time you find something you did not expect. One of the best Metroidvania out there. Only complain is that the Switch version has a lot of stutters, but I could get used to it.

[Vanguard]

It's a much more interesting game for that sort of thing than say, Undertale, which initially presents you a few different "choices" of actions but at the end reveals it's a false choice, the premise of the game and the interface have both been a lie to the player, and using the Fight command is always Bad and Wrong. Non-violent pacifism is explicitly stated to be the only acceptable choice in the game's context and you're condemned even for what would be self-defense. But if you want the most interesting fight from a mechanical standpoint in the game and one of the best songs in the game, you have to behave like a genocidal maniac and get told off by the game for it. Its brand of moral absolutism is kinda childish.

This. I also picked up Look Outside the other day and it seems cool

[Sumez]

Definitely that Afterimage is big and new each time you find something you did not expect. One of the best Metroidvania out there. Only complain is that the Switch version has a lot of stutters, but I could get used to it.

I installed the patch for Afterimage after playing for a while, because I'd seen somewhere that it reduces the absurd loading times.

It does not. However it does change *A LOT* about the game, completely retooling almost everything. It makes the game a little easier too (even on the "advanced" difficulty added after the same patch - seems the save I'd already started was upgraded to that), and also adds a lot of treasures throughout, that would suddenly show up in areas I'd already explored.
It also removed some features I liked - before the patch you could tell what items dropped on the ground before picking them up, and maps would only get updated when resting at a tree (probably annoying in the long run, but it makes early exploration cool, so maybe that should have been added as an afterimage "badge" instead)

Unfortunately this makes the game a "physical release is really just a digital download code" game, because I would never recommend other people starting unpatched. Having done that introduced a lot of weird bugs. I'd get interactions meant to show up much earlier, and returning to the game's starting area I'd suddenly see most of the scenes I'd already seen, including the intro boss fight which kills you and transprorts you to a new area after finishing it.
More annoyingly, it doesn't track any treasures I'd picked up before the patch, so now I can never get every treasure in the first two areas to unlock the full maps (and I think I must have picked up one in Resting Path as well).

Anyway, the bigger point I wanted to get to is, that Afterimage actually ran completely smooth on Switch before I patched it. After the patch it would suddenly stutter a lot like you said, something that's especially egregious while actively moving through areas (so fortunately it doesn't affect boss fights much).
It's probably something they added to fix another pre-patch issue (I imagine they are processing more objects far away on your map now), or maybe it's just some on-the-fly loading added in an attempt to fix the loading times. Either way, it's really annoying and I'd recommend everyone else to play on anything other than Switch.

[Lemnear]

I decided to try out the F2Ps on the PSN Store one by one, obviously I've already tried the most famous ones so I went straight to the latest ones, and yesterday I tried FragPunk.

FragPunk is a 5v5 Hero Shooter in the wake of Overwatch and Valorant, except that this one seems more "Arcane" than Valorant itself .
The game does not do anything new except using Cards at the beginning of the round, these cards are 3 randomly drawn from the collective deck of the members of each team, and are essentially collective modifiers, bonuses or penalties to your team or the enemy team (big heads, inability to duck, blocked primary weapon, life-drain, passive healing, zombie re-animation, bullets destructible with other bullets etc. etc., in short there is everything). The cards must be voted on at the beginning of each round with points that can be obtained by playing and spent to vote, you can also activate ALL 3 cards. The enemy cards chosen and drawn are secret until the start of the match.
I found it really unusual and fascinating that the effects are asymmetric and affect only one team, yours with bonuses, and the enemy team with penalties.
There are no limitations on weapons, each character (or Lancer as the game calls them) can use any weapon.
The game is visually very good and in "Graphics Priority" mode (MAX), it runs around 180fps (this on PS5), and the game weighs only 25GB, now that's optimization!
Nothing sensational in terms of gameplay, nothing strange or unusual but the modifiers for each match make it less boring than Valorant and it seems more "For Fun" oriented than eSport, which is almost a good thing.
Sometimes if all the available cards are used the result can be hilarious.
The only real flaw is the lack of verticality of the maps.

In case of draws in matches there is a sort of duel playoff, a bit like in soccer penalties, the team members choose an order, and it goes 1v1 and whoever wins continues, the team that eliminates the entire opposing team first wins.

[guigui]

Definitely that Afterimage is big and new each time you find something you did not expect. One of the best Metroidvania out there. Only complain is that the Switch version has a lot of stutters, but I could get used to it.

I installed the patch for Afterimage after playing for a while, because I'd seen somewhere that it reduces the absurd loading times.
...

Either way, it's really annoying and I'd recommend everyone else to play on anything other than Switch.

Oh thank you for the explanations. I did play patched on the go as I read the unpatched game is kind of too easy, and the patch adds the harder difficulty. So this is why it stutters a lot, bad trade. And it has been so long since last patch now, that it seems it will never get fixed.


As for my playing right now, I'm still lost in the infinite level packs of NeoLemmix, the Lemmings game ported for free and very faithfully to modern PC.
I cleared about 300 (tough !) levels out of the ... 3000-ish levels I have downloaded until now ? More available out there. I'll never get out of this pit, help me ! Or join me if you love Lemmings.

[XoPachi]

I decided to try out the F2Ps on the PSN Store one by one, obviously I've already tried the most famous ones so I went straight to the latest ones, and yesterday I tried FragPunk.

FragPunk is unfortunate because it plays very well and the mutator cards make for funny rounds. It has my favorite sudden death I've seen where your teams do a sort of crew battle in miniature versions of the map. That's awesome.
But while like you said, it seems like something more laid back, they still try to push the game as an eSport even if it would be better suited to just not be. It's also got the usual overdone storefront slop. Probably among the worst I've seen.
(I also find it's art style eye searing at times. The zoomer neon street punk shit is obnoxious to me and kind of overdone. Most of the characters don't even match that vibe).

And yes, I will second that optimization. I was stunned at the game size despite the graphics being incredible. Very very good on that developer's part.

If you want a GREAT F2P shooter, try SplitGate 2. I don't know if it's available on console, but if it is, it's extremely worth your time. Fast Halo with portals. Ton of fun and is all about getting you into games rapid fire. Wastes very little time getting started.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I got to try Obscure with actual co-op with a friend this weekend. It's still a fun horror game, pretty well balanced on the various difficulty modes too, even if the plot is obviously cheesy. It helps if you don't take it too seriously like early RE fare.

I'm used to playing solo or with a CPU partner (which you mercifully can ditch at points they can't handle, they're more capable than in RE 0 at least!) so playing with someone else was a new experience getting a handle on the camera. It works quite well actually, though because the other player can block movement at times, it helps to just stand your ground and fight it out rather than run in certain tight areas. Very sensibly there's no friendly fire, either, which wouldn't work with some of the camera angles.

[Lemnear]

I decided to try out the F2Ps on the PSN Store one by one, obviously I've already tried the most famous ones so I went straight to the latest ones, and yesterday I tried FragPunk.

FragPunk is unfortunate because it plays very well and the mutator cards make for funny rounds. It has my favorite sudden death I've seen where your teams do a sort of crew battle in miniature versions of the map. That's awesome.
But while like you said, it seems like something more laid back, they still try to push the game as an eSport even if it would be better suited to just not be. It's also got the usual overdone storefront slop. Probably among the worst I've seen.
(I also find it's art style eye searing at times. The zoomer neon street punk shit is obnoxious to me and kind of overdone. Most of the characters don't even match that vibe).

And yes, I will second that optimization. I was stunned at the game size despite the graphics being incredible. Very very good on that developer's part.

If you want a GREAT F2P shooter, try SplitGate 2. I don't know if it's available on console, but if it is, it's extremely worth your time. Fast Halo with portals. Ton of fun and is all about getting you into games rapid fire. Wastes very little time getting started.

Splitgate 2 is the next one I would like to try!!! however FragPunk is not very eSport by nature, some Cards/Mutators can really alter the matches [have you ever tried the one that allows you to walk on walls or ceilings? haha]...in fact it seemed very "relaxed" on that front, furthermore I don't understand why everyone wants the "super-pro-player-hardcore-competitive" game at all costs...I also like that if you play it strategically, you can win a game even if you are behind.
while The Finals (which is the other one I'm alternating) is VERY competitive, just like mentality and setting. In fact I'm appreciating it a little less, maybe because I don't use a "competitive loadout" but more of a fun one.. [main weapon Granade Launcher ]
Too bad because "Titanfall mobility + Battlefield destructibility" was something I always wanted, but it has a huge eSports derivation just like game logic...It's a bit like Rocket League, a fun game destroyed by "pro players".

Anyway yes the "DUEL" in FragPunk in case of a draw is really cool, then the rounds last only 120 seconds, it's really fast and there being no respawn, it forces you to be tactical. Also even though it's aesthetically derivative, I prefer it, it's much more "Riot" than Riot games themselves

I got to try Obscure with actual co-op with a friend this weekend. It's still a fun horror game, pretty well balanced on the various difficulty modes too, even if the plot is obviously cheesy. It helps if you don't take it too seriously like early RE fare.

I was little, but the first time I played it I finished it entirely in co-op how beautiful that was! I also played Army of Two 1 and 2, and RE5 entirely co-op blind run...the last one was Diablo I (PS1) with two players a couple of summers ago...great experience!