What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[BareKnuckleRoo]

RE5 I think plays a lot better in coop than not, it's a fantastic splitscreen game, glad you got to experience it that way!

[XoPachi]

I meant to come in and say this but Lem's Fragpunk post caught my eye. But I got addicted to StarFox Zero this week.

[AGermanArtist]

I'm playing this game called Black Ops 6 as Ana de Armas (my main movie squeeze) in a cocktail dress, a Terminator Skeleton/Arnold, a Metal loving Satan with his head on fire and super camp COD mascot Archie Atom.
I loved COD4 MW and MW2 to a lesser extent, and quit playing a few months into MW3's release, because I figured it had become a victim of its own success, attracting people new to online games who really shouldn't be playing online games, Normies essentially - the very same people who would've made fun of you for doing so, only 18 months previously.
It just got to the point where it seemed every doorway had some sad cocksucker lurking, and sniping in FFA or camping became the norm when it was once a frowned upon source of shame. And Nuketown, a map that once received groans in the lobbies on its rotation was now a 'fan favourite' among the newcomers. And broken spawns.
12 years later and these problems still exist, but I've seemingly learned to deal with them.
I tried it on Xbox Series S with a month Gamepass over Xmas and got addicted again, so I bought it on PS5 and now have 400+ hours on it, and haven't started its campaign - preferring MP and WZ. I really enjoy this new version of the COD engine (which kind of makes iD Tech feel somehwhat antiquated - I found myself wanting to slide while playing Doom The Dark Ages), and I'm oddly enjoying playing this again. Maybe it was the break, I don't know, but one of my motivations for playing this is punishing people. There's something strangely satisfying about dunking a camper with a petrol bomb/Molotov.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-c3Kk_gsDM

[Marc]

Mario Wonder: which is bloody great. I mean, in fairness, it’s hard for these things to genuinely surprise after 35+ years of play, but this does the best job in a long while. The Wonder Seeds throw an incredible number of gameplay alterations at you, it’s crazy how many ideas they use once and just throw away. Controls are tight, it looks great, and the whole thing just makes me smile.



System Shock Remake: wow, this is old-school. I mean there are no quest markers, no pointers, the map so far is both large and confusing, the combat is nothing special, but I love it. It all still hangs together incredibly well and is a but of a change coming off the back of the Robocop game, which, fun as it was, was pretty superficial. You can definitely see the roots of the immersive sim here even now.

[Lemnear]

I tried Splitgate 2, the gunplay is really Bungie-like, the design is nice too (Warframe x Wipeout) ...but the main mechanic of the game, the portals, is totally superfluous, there is no real way to use them if not as a sort of teleport (and it wouldn't even be a novelty), the jumps you can do through portals are few, the fact that you can't shoot them everywhere like in Portal is absolutely limiting...too bad, I'll try it again but I thought it had "something more"...

[ryu]

Just saw the state of play. Pragmata looks like it could be just one my thing. If it's not going to be a movie game. Please don't be a movie game.

Silent Hill f also looks like it might deliver.

[ryu]

Got to check out F-Zero GX on my brother's Switch 2. Seems to run at 120hz and looks great, but was nigh unplayable with the wireless Gamecube controller they released with the console. Not sure if the problem is because of the controller or the game (probably) running at 120hz (I did not test the game with the console set to 60hz), but I wasn't able to do steer sensitively and kept bumping around uncontrollably.

Mario Kart World was decent. Not as bad as I was afraid it might be but also didn't really hit me the way MK8 did in the few races I played.

[XoPachi]

Playing Phantom Spark. It's basically Trackmania but with a very zen focus and better art style. Granted, not something meant for mods, but that's never been a thing that bothered me for a game. I've been in a mood for navigating circuits following all this Mario Kart buzz so I grabbed this. Seems to have been a great purchase. Having a lot of fun. I like the consistent theme of ardent self improvement the demigod characters push on you.

I tried Splitgate 2, the gunplay is really Bungie-like, the design is nice too (Warframe x Wipeout) ...but the main mechanic of the game, the portals, is totally superfluous, there is no real way to use them if not as a sort of teleport (and it wouldn't even be a novelty), the jumps you can do through portals are few, the fact that you can't shoot them everywhere like in Portal is absolutely limiting...too bad, I'll try it again but I thought it had "something more"... :(

I disagree with this highly. You can use portals to get jumps on people in a lot of crafty ways and they can be used to maintain speed. But you really have to learn maps intensely. Requiring a surface is limiting but in a good way that makes you pick battles smarter and keeps the game from feeling totally random and impossible.
If you could just place portals literally anywhere, it'd be a complete nightmare as you can't exactly account for someone just placing them in some wildly obscure position and just sniping you in a manner you legit could never anticipate or know how to be wary of in the future. They'd have to put some other bullshit limit on the portals that would just kill the pacing I feel. That or the maps would have to be constrained in really unfun ways. I think having clearly defined surfaces in specific locations is the smarter compromise for this sort of game. I'd rather the game also not overemphasize them as the only way to outsmart opponents but something supplementary to expand your skill and map knowledge.

Mario Kart World was decent. Not as bad as I was afraid it might be but also didn't really hit me the way MK8 did in the few races I played.

Yeah, the game's ok. The open world is not terribly exciting as expected but other than Mirror Mode and frivolous costume unlocks, it's nice you are not forced into it and can seamlessly just get to racing. But I wish the circuits were more involved. Grinding, wall rides, and charge jumps hardly ever see any significant use. Trying to be all free form, stringing it all together is always strictly worse than taking the lower, simpler, boring main path. A lot of super wide drift turns and a LOT of long straights. Air time wildly slows you down and you build no kind of momentum if you manage to do a lot of sick shit. You don't even stack boosts from multi tricking. It's only to adjust your aerial trajectory which is kind of not necessary. And water sucks. It's better than the really passive floatiness water areas were in 7 and 8, but it for some reason slows you down and again, stringing cool shit is just outright slower. There's actually some neat water physics going on, but it's not optimal to interact with it at all.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

There's actually some neat water physics going on, but it's not optimal to interact with it at all.

Speaking of which, I'm surprised they haven't done a Mario Kart style Wave Race entry. Wave Race 64 had some really fun water physics to play with, maybe they see it as too high of a skill ceiling for a casual audience though...

[Sima Tuna]

Wave Race 64 was the goat. We need more racing games that were willing to model interesting wave physics.

[Marc]

Wave Race 64 was the goat. We need more racing games that were willing to model interesting wave physics.

I've literally just picked up the Switch N64 pad to play this and 1080 again - they simply don't feel right on a standard controller.

[Daytime Waitress]

Speaking of which, I'm surprised they haven't done a Mario Kart style Wave Race entry. Wave Race 64 had some really fun water physics to play with, maybe they see it as too high of a skill ceiling for a casual audience though...

Which is wild, because whilst I'd argue that it definitely takes a while to learn how to finesse the jetski, Wave Race 64 is pretty much exactly what comes to mind when I think "immediately accessible racing game". Maybe it's the bright colours and sheer novelty of not being in a car or hovercraft or whatever traditional vehicle? Nintendo (near enough to) launch title pretty much screams "casual appeal" at any rate.

[XoPachi]

Wave Race 64 is wonderful if pretty sparse in content. The music is among my favorite Nintendo soundtracks. So much heart and soul.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I think for an early/launch title it's totally fine. You have a great selection of polished tracks with some neat elements like the tide changing depending on the lap, and the physics feel really satisfying. I never owned a Gamecube though, so I never had the chance to play the GC sequel. I assume it's good too, though I haven't heard much talk about it.

[Sima Tuna]

The limited amount of content is also somewhat compensated for by the depth of the mechanics. I remember spending a very long time tooling around in the training area, getting used to how the waves work. Learning the courses with the waves provides added complexity too.

[stellar_light]

I love Wave Race 64 but the Gamecube sequel doesn't feel quite as good to me--it's hard to properly articulate it but doing simple turns that would've been easy in 64 feels much more sluggish and punishing in Blue Storm, especially on Expert where the buoy placements are extremely tight and missing a single turn can boot you out of 1st and all the way into 8th.

[Marc]

Yeah, I also struggle to articulate it, but Blue Storm feels just tiny bit.... stiff? Less fluid?

It's still light-years ahead of any other water-based racer at the time but something's just not quite right compared to 64.

[XoPachi]

This song makes me homesick.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8_is9Dfss

[Lemnear]

How I wish I had a new Wave Racer, or anything water racing that isn't from so many years ago.... why don't good things exist anymore?

[guigui]

How I wish I had a new Wave Racer, or anything water racing that isn't from so many years ago.... why don't good things exist anymore?

Riptide GP Renegade on the Nintendo Switch is pretty good when it comes to waves racing.

Also Sonic and All Star Sega Racing Transformed on PS3 has some interesting water racing parts, and the rest of it is very good too ! Wish we get a Sonic All Star PS3 racing compilation some day, the last entry Sonic Team Racing was honestly not good.

[Marc]

I second Riptide Renegade - had a LOT of fun with that - it's Hydro Thunder on Jetski's and bloody awesome.

[guigui]

Playing two free games, oh so different these days :

NeoLemmix : port of the classic Lemmings game on modern PC. Free, works flawlessly, true to the original (honestly cant tell the difference) can play all older Lemmings game, and games created by the community, all the QOL improvement things you may have hoped for if you played the games on their native platform are here. If you love Lemmings puzzle, you owe yourslef to try this.
Beware though, there is so much quality user created content that you can loose your hair.
https://www.neolemmix.com/?page=index


Asphalt Legends Unite This game has 2 things :

* F2P / P2W system, sure. If you manage to tell your mind that you dont need to play all events right now, unlock all cars right now, grind all cash right now, and so on, the F2P/P2W system can be manageable. You can actually play the game for very long sessions with the freebies they give you. I played for more than 30 hours in abot 2 weeks without buying anything, and think I can go on like that for a long time. Just dont take it seriously and dont try to play optimally and you'll keep the fun going. The most annoying part I honestly found from this system for now is that you have to be online to play.

* Good and satisfying gameplay, sure too. It has many things I love from racing games : manage drifting and boosting, go fast, find better routes depending on your situation/car, aggressive but risky driving rewarded ! Each race is just pure adrenaline shots where you need to keep constant top speed by all means possible, tickles the right part of my brain.

[Daytime Waitress]

Was surprised by how many demos I bothered to download, let alone how many I actually enjoyed, in the recent GabeFest. Even more surprising that the two standouts were packed with RNG and/or procedural generation. A cursory look at the GabeSoft storefront will tell you that "roguelike/lite" has shot well past losing all meaning and is now firmly entrenched with Unity asset flips as shorthand for "we couldn't be fucked designing anything, maybe these variables will keep you amused for longer than the two hour refund window?". But there are still evidently talented folks weilding these numbers, as Gimmiko demonstrated.

Truth is, I nearly shot past the game, because the GabeStore description is an amalgam of goofy tag descriptors, but the aesthetic drew me in enough to give it a shake: imagine Kiki KaiKai's yokai-packed world filtered through a lens equal parts Parappa and Wario Ware. Big, brash characters that do something whenever the player interacts with them either on the battlefield or through the in-game stores: charming animation that brings across the personality of each. The shiba-inu that works at the local convenience store will eat your mouse cursor if you try to pet it, but will gladly take the headpats if you pop something in its tip jar. A Sadako-style enemy crawls out of its TV and chases you about on all fours in its pajamas, allowing you to pick up the Trinitron and huck it at other foes. Everybody is voiced with that Animal Crossing/Starfox-style gibberish, but all the phonemes are cut up and played at weird pitches - the main character sounds like she's speaking backwards breakbeat Korean.

But back to huckin' Trinitrons.
With an elevated side-on view and the player attempting to survive wave after wave of enemies, first glance might unfortunately put Gimmiko in the braindead Vampire Survivor clone bucket.
But it's actually closer to a twinstick beat 'em up, and if that sounds awkward af then that's because it is.
Your primary method of attack is hurling dice: pick 'em up with LT, aim with the right stick, and roll 'em clean through enemy packs.
This would be both cumbersome and boring if you couldn't attach the titular gimmicks to your dice, though, so you apply stickers to each individual die face and when that face is rolled, the effect is triggered.

Simple bullet patterns;(a lot of variations on) homing missiles; support characters that basically roam about and deal melee damage; bombs that trigger immediately; bombs that wander about before exploding; tiny cars that shoot out of the die and run enemies over; damage-over-time (DOT) effects that stay on the field until you pick the die up again; environmental hazards; effects that compound other effects...
There are over one hundred of these gimmicks.
And you can have multiple dice.

So, dependent upon what the RNG gods stock on the between-round shelves, you might try and build one great big fuck-off melee die that is packed with DOTs, and pair it with another that does nothing but spew support characters (my favourite run so far was spamming OG Dorf Fort levels of cats against the boss and having it take an ungodly amount of chip damage while I concentrated on avoiding all attacks).

It's messy and chaotic and loud and has that timeless beat 'em up quality borne of being unable to clearly read enemies on a lower plane than you.

But most importantly above all else, it nails its central random generation mechanic: complete garbage abilities will carry your kit-bashed heroine through wave after wave; whilst a random low-level mook will inexplicably ice your run early after you got overconfident when you found that one single OP gimmick and over-relied on it.

tl;dr: the customisation, fluctuating variables and RNG are core tenets that the devs have built outward from, rather than tacking them on to whatever their game originally was because they were the lucrative buzzwords of this fiscal quarter.

The only knock against the game is that everything's made of paper.
Whilst that does give everything a very charming Paper Mario vibe, it also makes it exasperatingly hard to judge when you're on top of an enemy while airborne, so you'll likely spend the first couple of hours mashing jump in the *hope* that you'll score a double jump, rather than precisely nailing it.
The line between bunnyhopping on a succession of Goombas and straight up eating shit feels, like your hitbox itself, only a pixel or two wide.
And this is in turn compounded by the default controls on an Xbone controller, because the headbounce mechanic calls for rapid, precise digital stabs rather than analouge triggers (RT) with any amount of "give" in them.
It feels a little too close to trying to play a beat 'em up with smaller sprites - River City Ransom, perhaps - but controls are looser, enemy pathfinding is way less predictable, everyone can move in 16 directions, and everything is three times as fast as it ought to be.
The rest of the game is enjoyable enough that you can play around this aspect - the Sonic-style mid-air dive feels like a good evasion tactic in particular - but initially head-bouncing feels jank enough to maybe not just be something that will evaporate with enough experience...

Plus it's a pretty damn gorgeous game, and you can summon the Snow Bros. to help you beat to death a snake with a body made entirely out of dinner plates.

[BulletMagnet]

Even more surprising that the two standouts were packed with RNG and/or procedural generation.

Thanks for mentioning Gimmiko, I tried the demo and it's just the sort of craziness that's destined for my wishlist (and one of the few games with a dedicated "flip the bird" button). Out of curiosity, what was standout # 2?

[Daytime Waitress]

Even more surprising that the two standouts were packed with RNG and/or procedural generation.

Thanks for mentioning Gimmiko, I tried the demo and it's just the sort of craziness that's destined for my wishlist (and one of the few games with a dedicated "flip the bird" button). Out of curiosity, what was standout # 2?

Cheating a bit because it's been out for forever, but I only got around to the demo of Nightmare Reaper during this GabeFest. A buddy actually gave the demo a playthrough, and I enjoyed watching along enough to do likewise. Which was odd, because I'd passed the game up back when its first demo and eventual full release rolled around during the earlier years of the (sigh) boomer shooter renaissance. I'd watched gameplay vids and both of Civvie's reviews before deciding that there was way too much going on for my aging synapses to both with. But something about being a passive viewer (who'd sunk a few tinnies), watching their mate try to decide whether to keep a shiny new double-barrel shotty despite its recoil, or retain their autofire combat knife? I instantly found the "emergent narratives" and increasingly ridiculous events very endearing.

Cracking on with the demo myself, that feeling held true. There's a *mostly* smooth flow to the combat, especially considering the stupid amount of variables the game is throwing at itself. Despite the vast array of weapons, it thankfully boils down to only juggling three kinds of ammo (regular, explosive and mana) and the Rule of Cool until you snag something with a ridiculously powerful modifier that you can't possibly pass up. It initially feels a little clunky that you have to bash tab and read every mod, but the menu for it is instantaneous and, honestly, it's preferable to the devs aiming to "at a glance" it and just flooding the HUD and menus with icons that you have to learn and memorise.

Combat itself is mostly silky, although some earlier, more claustrophobic sections can encourage door-camping as you attempt to deal with multiple packs of what are ostensibly hit-scanners. That is definitely amplified by there being very little feedback for taking damage; which is in turn compounded by there being so so much visual noise that whatever feedback does exist rapidly gets lost. Gunfire, explosions, gore, enemies themselves, pickups, explosions, magic particle effects, environmental particle effects, explosions and event particle effects are all topped by Mars Matrix-tier treasure vomiting absolutely everywhere all the time. "The fuck is going on?" is your default mode, though in the best and most exhilarating sense - hold down the fire button until you're the only thing moving seems to always be a safe bet. And... it's not something that I was conscious of until I started to write this paragraph, but: I have never been so thankful for enemies to just poof out of existence instead of leaving corpses.

More in the unfortunate category is the way the enemy sprites feel more Wolfenstein 3D than Doom, if that makes sense: they feel flatter. Visually it's great - it's a very cohesive aesthetic - and in terms of performance I can understand why they have as few frames of animation and rotation as they do (i.e.: there are always a metric fucktonne on screen at any one time). But everything being a cardboard cut-out definitely makes it difficult to judge how much space things are taking up, and therefore how to line shots up; and combining both of these factors with the aforementioned visual noise mid-firefight can make some battles more frustrating than exciting.

In a similar vein: the lack of level design is (at least in the 1st chapter demo) dogshit. I can see what the devs wanted to achieve with it: infinitely procgen'd levels would perfectly compliment the vast array of weaponry to which is affixed an equally infinite supply of random attributes. You can't beat infinite content, right? The reality is that you're crawling through maze-like, tile-based arenas, navigating almost exclusively via minimap, and seeing certain elements repeat on top of themselves within the span of only a couple of levels. In early stages, the claustrophobia and confusion definitely evoke OG Doom and suit the "dark recesses of a tortured mind" aesthetic, and things do open up into wider, more practical arenas as you progress and the enemy count grows (at least with the demo; not sure how it scales beyond that).

And as someone who has published a grand total of three levels for OG Doom (deathmatch) and agonised over a lot more, I totally understand how difficult it is to Get It Right, let alone for PvE and with this insane number of variables ticking over. But coming from that perspective and experience, I also feel that slapping down lines... isn't actually that onerous. And I know I'd gladly play someone's least best attempt at a level any day over a randomly generated agglomeration of tiles stuffed full of repetition.

I dunno.

It's something where the gunplay is frenetic enough, the constantly fluctuating variables are consistently novel enough and the enemies/their roles distinct enough that the arena design is compensated for. But by the same token, I don't think the randomness adds anything to the game, and definitely robs it from having a sense of place (although that latter aspect is admittedly thematically fitting).

I feel like this writeup has been overly nitpicky, and that's definitely doing a disservice to what the game achieves in a very generous first chapter demo, so: the central gimmick of picking up random weapons with equally random attributes and only being able to carry one of those (initially) over to the next round plays out genuinely brilliantly. The sheer novelty of this approach and the "wackiness" of some attribute combos (auto-fire swords, grenade launchers that spew random projectiles, sniper rifles that freeze enemies on contact) is in and of itself joyous. I especially appreciate the way in which RNG appears weighted in favour of the player, and in favour of fun. There will be times when your round-starting weapon isn't ideal (ask a sniper rifle fan why that is...), and definitely more instances where you'll have two rad weapons of the same ammo type and desperately need a third in a completely different ammo category just to make up for the rapid depletion. But RNGsus rarely screws you so bad where you're given a whole heap of non-buffed or primarily debuffed weapons and a whole platoon of enemies to plow through.

Sound design also helps magnify that feeling of reveling in carnage and overcoming the hordes: despite everything looking like it's made of of cardboard, the weapon sounds add a magnificent solidity to everything. Every shot on an enemy makes a very welcome impact and helps embed you in this chaotic nightmare world.

I'll probably wait for a sale, but I'm definitely looking forward to seeing how everything scales up beyond what I've seen so far.

[Marc]

System Shock RE:

Well, my enthusiasm for this lasted exactly five hours. I then got tired of the cut & paste identical corridors (yes, I know there’s an explanation, but it does not make the game any more fun), the lack of feedback from shooting, the horrible UI, and the respawning enemies combined with limited resources. Hit my limit when I decided I wanted to go back from the second deck to the starting deck, and couldn’t find the elevator after 45 minutes searching. Decided that I simply don’t have time for this kind of aimless trudging about within my gaming time, and deleted the game and save. If I’m going to replay old stuff, I’ve got things like Deus Ex, Half-Life 2, Tron 2.0 in the queue, as well as…..


Quake:

Not much to say really. I couldn’t have imagined it looking so sharp and smooth back in the day, the level design is still amazing, and overall, nostalgia goggles off, it’s much more fun than Doom.


Mario Wonder:

Finished this one off, and not much to say other than I enjoyed every single moment, other than Special World. Which was….. fun in a not very fun way

I’ve a lot of Mario stuff queued at the moment – Mario World on the SNES & CRT is next, then I’ve still New Super 2 and Land on the 3DS, World on Switch, Galaxy 2 on Wii, and a bunch of the RPG’s.


Super R-Type:

Yes, it slows down, yes it flickers, but it’s easily on par with R-Type II otherwise, and the redesigned stages are far better – the battleship in particular. And that soundtrack….. I’m just not sure what Irem were thinking with the lack of checkpoints, it single-handedly ruins the game.


N64:

For some reason, I’d convinced myself that of all the consoles I’ve owned, this was probably the worst, or certainly the least significant. Picked up the controller for Switch this week, gave a few titles a spin, and am happy to report that I’m dead wrong. Texturing aside, it’s quite impressive just how much we’d already advanced from PS1 by this point. The visuals look far more ‘solid’ without the warping effect that machine had, and some of the games – 1080 and Wave Race in particular – still play just as well as their later GC successors. It’s a matter of time before I cave and pick up the original machine….. despite telling myself it looks far sharper via Switch and HDMI.


Cyberpunk 2077:

After abandoning System Shock, I’m making my third, and final, attempt to get into this. World is just so well realised that I'm desperate to click with the game.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Been playing a lot of Crossfire lately, a freeware, open source mmorpg that's basically what you'd get if you mixed Gauntlet with a dash of Nethack, and Ultima's early dialogue systems. Ploughing through hordes of enemies with melee, evading traps, blasting comets down on dragons, dodging spells and breath attacks, figuring out puzzles on player-made quest maps, it's a pretty fun time! There's a new Windows client that just got released that's really slick, it's still fun to play and I'm glad it's still around given it's like 20 years old.

There's some mild jank in some quests as you'd expect from player made maps at time, some that haven't gotten as much attention as others can be tricky to locate keys or find a keyword, but you can eventually get teleport spells that often let you solve things in different ways than perhaps intended. :3

I still prefer the older Metalforge server I think (it's locked at an older version, can't receive updates without breaking existing player save files due to changes in how they were saved later), the new in-development server Invidious is trying to rebalance melee away from being as fast as it is, but I think they went way too hard in the wrong direction and it's a lot slower and weaker than spells are nowadays. Metalforge is really fast paced and more my cup of tea, though with a lot of investment in melee or just ignoring it and focusing on spells Invidious plays well too with a lot of quality of life improvements.

Quake:

Not much to say really. I couldn’t have imagined it looking so sharp and smooth back in the day, the level design is still amazing, and overall, nostalgia goggles off, it’s much more fun than Doom.

The level design is just so damn clever. It really feels like one of the best things ID Software ever released, and the soundtrack and audio design to go with it are exceptional. Even back in the day when I was first playing it at 320 x 240 it looked great. This and Descent 2 I think are among the best MS-DOS first person shooters. Descent 1 is great up until it throws hitscan enemies at you that are rather obnoxious and spoil how the game feels, whereas Descent 2 gives you more tools like guided missiles and the energy -> shield converter, and true hitscan enemies like the gauss cannon enemies feel a lot rarer and more manageable as a result.

Doom 64 I think does try to give Quake a run for its money in terms of design and aesthetics though, huge kudos to it even if it's not quite Quake tier.

N64:
Texturing aside, it’s quite impressive just how much we’d already advanced from PS1 by this point. The visuals look far more ‘solid’ without the warping effect that machine had, and some of the games – 1080 and Wave Race in particular – still play just as well as their later GC successors.

Depending on the game style, even the low poly models were really aesthetically quite good, it was all down to how they made use of it. Tons of great games on the platform, I remember Excitebike 64 also being exceptional. I played a lot of Cruis'n USA too but I'm not sure it's held up, trying it again did not give me the same vibes as before.

Rad Racer NES on the other hand is one I can pick up and vibe with any day.

[AGermanArtist]

Hunt Showdown 1896 PS5
This is brilliant
Get in, get a contract done, kill your rival hunters, steal their loot and get the fuck out on your stagecoach. It's such a vibe. It's tense, it's grim, it's a bit like RE4 set in a plague infected Deep South where the inhabitants have risen from the dead and some have evolved into various types of monsters. I've had such a good time with this, this afternoon.
I can't recommend it enough 10/10

[vol.2]

Almost finished with Xanadu Next. It's been extremely fun right up to the end where it feels unfinished.

There isn't a class system in XN per se, but there is a point system that essentially lets you concentrate on either magic or physical, and some interesting end game items that let you play with that in some small ways. The real issue with it is that your character will not be high enough in level to start specializing at the end of the game.

In order to use the best equipment in the game (and you will need to use the best equipment available to you at any given time), there is a very prescriptive route for point allocation up to about level 20 or so, which is where you will be at the end boss. Because of that, you won't really have a chance to specialize your character until about level 22-30 (30 is the max), and that can only be done through an extra dungeon that was added into the game via a patch after it came out.

Not that you stop leveling up without the special end game dungeon, but it would be practically impossible to actually achieve much past level 22-23 because monsters only award 1-2 experience points when your level gets much higher than theirs, so you would have to kill like 10,000 of them to go up the next level. In the special dungeon, the level of the monsters goes up the longer you stay in the dungeon; it was very obviously designed to let you continue to level.

Additionally, you will have to level all the way down to 1 again at the end of the game and then rebuild your character with bonus points awarded with an ability you gain at the very end of the game.

One can beat the game right away without doing this, but it feels pretty clear that the dev team designed the game to have specialization, but were unable to implement it in the base game (probably due to money and time), and then bodged it in at the end with the bonus points/special dungeon.

[it290]

I've been getting back into Wildermyth. This is a really neat indie that combines TRPG combat with a generational storytelling system that sees your characters forge relationships, get old, and mentor the next generation of heroes. It's very well-written and just super cool to be able to influence your character's story in so many ways.