What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[it290]

The Oracles games are some of the best in the franchise, IMO. The data-sharing feature between games was very cool too.

[LordHypnos]

The Oracles games are some of the best in the franchise, IMO. The data-sharing feature between games was very cool too.

Sadly I don't have anyone to do data sharing with

I actually do have one friend who I might be able to convince to, but it would probably be complicated since neither of us has a GBC, and I don't think a 3DS VC inject would support linking. Could technically do it on emulator on PC, but that would be harder to convince my friend to do, since they prefer playing on a handheld (I do to, but I am tech savvy enough to move save files around).

In any case, I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only person who was impressed by OoS.

EDIT: OoS not OaS

[it290]

Ah yeah, you can share rings with other users, but what I was referring to was the ability to transfer them between games!

[Sweatlord_STG]

I made a video to spark someone's interest in Doom, because this WAD I found is so damn cool. Might as well leave it here:

https://youtu.be/9PmhREeqLdY

[Axelay]

Thanks for that rundown, v2. I dunno about Xanadu Next, but your post definitely reminded me that I've got to get back to Faxanadu at the next earliest opportunity: I remember enjoying my brief rental of it back as a wee waitress, but it absolutely flummoxed kid me and I want to see if I can appreciate it better three decades later.


As for me, I've been spending a silly amount of time with ballisticNG lately.

I got a hold of a PSX sometime around the death of the Dreamcast, so way late; and while I never spent a long time on the OG Wipeouts, Messij is branded right on my brain as the quintessential EDM/techno/whatever (because I'm garbage when it comes to musical taxonomy). However it's classified, it and Wipeout's aesthetics are what come to mind whenever anyone mentions the 32-bit era. Postcard perfect, "this is how rad this period in time was". So... may as well be starting bng afresh, despite having already formed both an image and an affection for its spiritual predecessors.

There are a bewildering amount of variables at play in this game, and while that definitely makes it difficult to acclimate to initially, it is 100% the game's greatest strength. Right from the outset, you have your vehicle and track selection, like every other racing game in existence. As your knowledge of each track improves, you'll obviously be in a better position to exploit the strengths or account for the weaknesses of your ship (higher acceleration, less responsive cornering, etc., etc.) and the relative differences of your opponents.

There's also a significant risk/reward system whereby your afterburner (turbo) is also tied to your shield/ship health - you *can* squeeze every last drop out of it, but that leaves you vulnerable to a race-ending crash if you smash into the trackside walls, or to be picked off by the rival crafts' weapons. The weapons, from my limited knowledge, appear to be a kitchen sink of everything that appeared in the OG PSX Wipeouts: rapid-fire cannons that deal chip damage and can slightly slow enemy craft; targeted missiles with nearby lock-on capabilities that can be frustrating to make use of through twisting chicanes at 700kmph; and "blue shell" drones that jump to the front of the queue and ruin the leader's day, among others.

Compounding all that, however, is the "pitch" or vertical handling: almost all tracks will have some subtle (and not so subtle) elevation changes that can drastically slow you down if you don't angle the nose of your craft up or down accordingly. Sometimes it'll be a series of motorcross-style humps; sometimes it'll be the grade of a downward-sloping curve that stretches across a significant portion of the circuit; sometimes it'll straight up be a futuristic, anti-gravity pothole, because fuck you.

And that's just the foundational stuff - tying it together is the events themselves. Every tournament starts with a nice, shallow two lap introduction to the course at the lowest class (think Mario Kart's 50cc/100cc/150cc progression). But then the next event might have you performing a time trial with a mandated ship; or an elimination race where last place in each lap spontaneously combusts; or a combat scenario where dealing damage is the only priority and your afterburner is replaced by a hilariously improbable instant 180-degree turn. Or perhaps it'll be the logical endpoint of time trials, Survival: a mode where your ship accelerates exponentially and you simply complete laps until your meatbrain can't keep up with the necessary reaction times required to make formerly basic turns (also, all textures have been turned off to give the track/backdrop a wireframe look, and all billboards have been replaced by graphic equalisers to accentuate the banging choons). Or maybe it'll be a variation on Survival where the goal is to hit turbo chevrons dotted around the circuit, and convert the accumulated engine power to turbo boosts that simultaneously drop an energy-draining barrier on track.

This is just a sample of the kind of events you'll face, and the best thing about ballisticNG is that it not just encourages you to engage with it, but mandates it through the campaign mode. These different types of races/challenges are not shunted off to a submenu at the title screen - they're each part of mastering as much of one vehicle, or as many vehicles as you possibly can. Some ships are going to excel at the combat side of gameplay, and can happily sit at the back of the pack and just pick opponents off; but come "pure" races with no weapon pick-up pads, they just might be shit out of luck. Do you switch to another ship and become a jack of all trades, or try and brute force it with your favourite-looking craft?

There is a colossal amount of moving parts here, and while the racing can be very pinball-like initially (careening off of walls until you explode), that just means there is a huge amount of system mastery to acclimatise to: something that does indeed feel very zen when it all clicks. Until you reach the higher classes, which require genuine fighter pilot reaction speeds - fucking nightmare fuel bad game 2/10 kill yourselves devs.

I haven't even touched on the 5 hours of original dnb/EDM produced for the soundtrack, nor the loving homages/rip-offs of the aesthetics and physics models from across Wipeout's history, nor the fact that the game and its DLC are dirt cheap and it's still receiving significant updates many years after release.

Wipeout may not be everyone's bag - they might prefer the racer-based personalities of F-Zero, or they might not like the floaty feel of anti-grav racers in general. But there's so much to unpack with ballisticNG that it's hard not to recommend to people that like going fast in general.

Reading about your experience is like receiving a postcard from a thrilling adventure—each detail paints a vivid snapshot of the game, from the intense races to the music and track design. Just like a postcard captures a moment to remember, mastering each track in ballisticNG lets you collect these moments of speed and skill to revisit again and again.

[Lemnear]

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.

I tried Splitgate 2 again and... no, I stand by my impressions. It feels like the entire portal mechanic is an extra layer slapped onto Halo and not a fully integrated mechanic into the gameplay/gunplay. It needs a good single-player campaign to let the core mechanics shine (and it could very well have one, and be stellar).
The Finals is currently the best modern FPS I've played since Titanfall 2, where every game mechanic is integral to the gameplay and not an extra, and it has all the tactical depth of a Battlefield (after all, they're Ex-Dice).
Now if only Epic Games had completed UT4 instead of focusing on the store and Fortnite, maybe...it's also true that the list of FPS games I've played competitively is very bizarre... UT, UT3, TF2, Lost Planet 2 which was really underrated, Crysis 2, BF3, BFBC, BF1943 which in its simplicity was exceptional, the first Destiny, then the void... up to Titanfall 2 and then The Finals.

[XoPachi]

Played Deadlock for the first time. I won't be good at it just because I will not be sitting here doing 4 and 5 games in a row. Ran two bot games today and that was nearly 2 hours. That's 1/3 of my free time on weekdays. No.
I'll keep around. The game's fun, but I cannot justify that kind of time a session.
That said, I like Seven.

[Steven]

So I've been super busy with various things recently and have had almost no time to do anything other than work and sleep, but I'm now at Death Stranding's halfway-ish point. Going back to it, I realize that Death Stranding 2 is better as a game; that is, the video game parts are better in DS2, but DS1 is the better game. Does that make sense? Everything seems so very deliberate and carefully designed in DS1 while DS2 plays more like a simplified and strangely deformed hybrid of DS1 + MGSV that attempts to do both simultaneously but only kind of does what both of those do well. Eh... okay, I guess. Perhaps Kojima should just stay away from open world games from now on.

BTW, speaking of Metal Gear, is anyone planning on getting MGS Triangle?

Aside from DS1,

That reminds me that I chose Jude as the protagonist when I played Xillia... I forgot so much about the game that I'm still probably going to choose Jude again if the game gets rereleased like that supposed leak from a while ago suggested. I hope it does, as I'd like to revisit it and actually finish it this time.

Hopefully they'll put out a nice PC version soon

Well. Shouldn't be too surprised since this was leaked over a year ago, but here it is. I hope it turns out as good as Graces f did. It's interesting that PS4 is getting skipped this time; the PS4 is ancient, so it's not surprising that eventually it would stop getting games, but it's still weird to me because I still see the PS4 as "modern" due to its resilience to death and the PS5's general irrelevance due to the PS4's continued support and existence.

[bbbhltz]

Just finished Terra Nil. Definitely a good idea for a game and worth it if on sale. If it is on your wishlist, be sure to keep track of updates because this one tends to crash on different systems, the devs have added DLCs and patches so perhaps they will iron out the bugs someday.

[Sweatlord_STG]

Playing this Quake themed WAD for Doom right now. It is super fucking amazing. I can't believe it.

[ryu]

So, I ended up going to Gamescom and checking out some games.

Pragmata
Was more fun than I expected, but I only got to play for 15, 20mins maybe. Not sure how the gameplay holds up in the long run because it's quite gimmicky. It's a third person shooter where you take breaks from the action in between enemy attacks to play a little puzzle mini game. The pressure to finish the puzzles as fast as possible makes it more fun than it sounds. But again, don't know how well it will hold up in the long run. I'd also have to play Vanquish or Gears of War to determine if toning down the action for this gimmick is worth it in the first place. The girl was less obnoxious than I thought she'd be.

Ninja Gaiden 4
Never played a game in the series before. I thought it was awkward that pressing a few buttons quickly results in various auto combos, but maybe I was mashing buttons more than I was aware of. The games doesn't play itself quite as automatically as it may seem though. The first boss quickly punished button mashing and requires precise knowledge of the game's mechanics. Definitely looking forward to the full release now.

Interestingly the demo ran on an XDK (series x development kit). It looks like a piece of professional AV hardware and I got to say I wish the actual current gen consoles looked like that.

Sonic Racing CrossWorlds
Didn't play as well as I had hoped, but also not as bad I was fearing. From my first impressions I'd say it's better than Mario Kart World. Track layouts are decent and there's less distraction from the race due to fewer items going off at any time. Unfortunately it got softened up like MKW, so driving into curved walls won't really slow you down as much causing the game to feel a bit like it plays itself. The CrossWorlds mechanics felt like a silly gimmick to me.

Also the game has a whole bunch of speed modes. The demo only had the first three available for selection and I got to say the middle one felt slower than Mario Kart at 50cc. Hopefully the higher levels are unlocked from the start in the full release.

Would have liked to check out Metroid Prime 4 too, but didn't feel like standing 3 hours in a queue.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Final Fantasy 1 (NES)

A classic comfort game, I replay it every now and then. It's fun due to the number of class choices. I'm currently going through an all Black Wizard team and it's ended up being one of the easiest, and most hilariously fun runs I've had. I've never gone as heavy on the squishy wizards before and it turns out that getting all the useful attack spells very early allows you to level up rather rapidly. You get way more charges, and get the good spells like Fir3, Lit3, and Ice3 long before a Red Wizard can even think about seeing them, and you can basically nuke your way through the game. Your physical weakness is a non issue once you beat the early game and Silver Bracelets appear as those massively bump up your defenses where you can actually take a few hits.

They also make the Ice Cave, usually a massive terror, rather painless. Lit3 from the back row has a chance of rolling high enough to kill the Mages in there outright as the rest of the team runs, Stun can immediately lock down the Eye and Frost Dragons and keep them from killing you, and Fir2/Fir3 clobbers all the undead. Lit3 is also an option against large Wizard teams in a pinch that ambush you. You also get Ice3 before class change, which happens to be the best anti-Sorcerer spell available for the first time you go through the Castle of Ordeals, making it a great thing for the two back row characters to cast since running from those slots has a low success rate.

The only problem I anticipate is the last dungeon, where magic resistance is high on all the bosses, and you need to level up a lot to avoid getting wiped by Lich's Nuke spell which can theoretically roll 300-400 if you're unlucky. The final boss also loves powerful non elemental spells and has lots of magic resistance, so damage racing him is tough without a true physical character to buff up or without healing support. Black Wizards make the rest of the game exceptionally easy and only have the last dungeon to really fear. WW WW BW BW might be my fave team now. >w>

[XoPachi]

Sonic Racing CrossWorlds
Didn't play as well as I had hoped, but also not as bad I was fearing. From my first impressions I'd say it's better than Mario Kart World. Track layouts are decent and there's less distraction from the race due to fewer items going off at any time. Unfortunately it got softened up like MKW, so driving into curved walls won't really slow you down as much causing the game to feel a bit like it plays itself. The CrossWorlds mechanics felt like a silly gimmick to me.

Also the game has a whole bunch of speed modes. The demo only had the first three available for selection and I got to say the middle one felt slower than Mario Kart at 50cc. Hopefully the higher levels are unlocked from the start in the full release.

If you want to try this again, there's a playtest coming this weekend on all but Nintendo platforms that will offer much fuller look into the systems and gameplay. There's an easy hack that lets you play it (offline) now if you preload the game but you can only play on 1 of the 3 cups planned for this beta.

I put a few hours onto it. When it comes to running into walls, you are not instantly punished as harshly, but you do lose rings for literally any of the lightest collisions including against other players. In the long run that kills your speed and you'll have to prioritize grabbing rings because the speed loss is subtle but significant (at least against computers).

I don't like the existence of "builds" in these sort of racing games, but the gadgets system undeniably opens up things you can do. Chiefly, for now, the quick charge abilities that let you eek out a lot more little boosts around big bends or straight-aways and letting you go crazy on water. I think it makes the game a lot more active. Playing on Sonic Speed with specific loadouts, you can get a lot more out of the game. It's just a shame they didn't bring back risk boosting from Sonic Transformed for the flying sections because that mechanic was brilliant. Unless it's a gadget we can't unlock in this sample, which would be annoying, it doesn't appear to be in the game in any capacity. Not having that or some kind of equivalent makes you wholly reliant on gimmicks floating in the air which makes flight the weakest part of what little I've played between both play tests.

[guigui]

If you want to try this again, there's a playtest coming this weekend on all but Nintendo platforms that will offer much fuller look into the systems and gameplay. There's an easy hack that lets you play it (offline) now if you preload the game but you can only play on 1 of the 3 cups planned for this beta.

Looks like it is on Nintendo Switch as well. I could DL the data today, expecting the playtest to be available this friday.

[vol.2]

I am playing Ultima Underworld. I got to play this game back when it came out because my friend had a copy and let me use it when he was done. My family didn't have a 486 until a bit later, so it ran really slow on our 386 machine. I didn't get too far in the game back then, only to the third level, but it was more than enough to get the feel of it and understand how new and awesome the game was.

Sooner or later, I picked up a copy of it, always intending to play through, but I just never did. I created a character to play about 28 years ago, and made a save game after picking up all the stuff in the beginning area like the bag of runes and whatnot, and then I just ignored it.

Well, that time is over. I have finally started up my 28 year old save file, and I'm killing Gobs and (awkwardly) jumping across chasms. I'm on the second level, so still not past where teenage me left off, but I'm having a lot of fun.

My character is a Druid, which I guess kind of sucks, but it's not the worst choice. I get both magic and strength, but not dexterity. Dexterity is an important modifier for rolls, but not as important as strength, and the skills that dexterity governs are all useless and suck. This is not a perfect game from an RPG perspective at all. They spent most of their time on the environment and kind of dropped the ball on skill progression and full utilization of skill sets. I can tell they planned to make things more useful, but they simply didn't fully flesh out things like doors or chests with pickable locks and environmental obstacles that could be overcome with specific skills. Because the magic users and fighters can just cast their way or bash their way through the game, those paths are by far the most viable. The shepherd is the most glaring manifestation of this in the game. The class was clearly designed to be the all skill build, but they just suck. It's still totally possible to win the game, even with a weak character, but it's just a lot more tedious because fights take much longer. Because the fighting is real-time, all you have to do is move backwards and forwards as you strike in order to beat your opponent, and that basic pattern doesn't change at all, regardless of your build. The only thing that changes is how quickly you take damage and how quickly your opponent does. Which brings up the other weak point of the game, ranged weaponry. There are bows and slings in the game, but attacking from a distance doesn't really give you much of an advantage. Ammo for bows is pretty rare, so you are going to be spending a lot of time retrieving arrows, and the process is tedious af. Even if you decide to put up with that, you have to contend with the extreme short draw distance of the screen, and when you get in range of something you can hit with a bow, they are probably going to be on top of you before you can change back to a hand weapon. Couple all that with the fact that you have to dump skill points into specific weapons to make them useful, and it makes ranged weapons stupid to develop.

Anyway, the early quasi 3D environment is amazing and ahead of its time. It's obviously a lot more advanced than EOB and LOL, but it has some serious interface disadvantages over those games as well.

The story is very fun and silly. I like the Gobs and the Dwarves so far. I remember getting to the Lizardmen the first time I played it, but haven't seen them yet. Looking forward to finding more loot and improving my guy.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

There are bows and slings in the game, but attacking from a distance doesn't really give you much of an advantage. Ammo for bows is pretty rare, so you are going to be spending a lot of time retrieving arrows, and the process is tedious af.

Ultima is one of those series that always struggled with balancing ranged weapons. In Ultima I it's amazingly useful as your ranged attacks hit 3 tiles ahead, have infinite ammo, and are amazing in general. These were totally nerfed in Ultima II where all attacks are touch range and you have to deal with enemies running from you. Then in III and IV where ranged attacks are really quite good again (and in IV's NES version where ranged attacks with a bow are super OP, wildly better than meleeing tends to be).

It's also kinda useful in Akalabeth but not remotely essential. Akalabeth is borderline unplayable due to how any meaningful character growth by morphing into a lizardman relies on an RNG roll that can backfire and set stats to 3, except on the Apple II version where the fixed RNG can be predicted and manipulated (enter a dungeon, attack the empty space in front of you X number of times then use the amulet and you get the same result, RNG table is always reset when leaving dungeon). Akalabeth mechanically sucks and runs horribly at default Apple II system speeds compared to the later Ultima games. Basically a kusoge, regardless of how influential it may or may not have been.

This is not a perfect game from an RPG perspective at all.

My understanding is they tried to jam in the series' class and stat system in to a game that honestly probably would have been fine or even better without it. Or make class determine a set of starting items.

The shepherd is the most glaring manifestation of this in the game. The class was clearly designed to be the all skill build, but they just suck.

Sounds authentic! In the original games that introduced shepherd, they're actually meant to be the "no skills" class who can only really be useful late game when Mystic Armor and Mystic Swords (univerally available to all as the best armor and weapon) make them useful for frontlining, but that's literally it.

[vol.2]

Ultima is one of those series that always struggled with balancing ranged weapons.

Yes, they entirely failed with ranged in UU. The small viewport window and incredibly short draw distance make them impossibly useless. The only time in the game they make sense is when you want to kill a monster that lives in the water, as you cannot draw a sword while swimming, so the most reliable way to kill them is from the shore with a sling or bow. The downside to this is that the ammo disappears into the void when firing into the water. Also, you don't actually have to kill the water creatures at all, you can just outrun them.

They also give monsters ranged weapons, but they are of course flawless in their execution, which makes the whole thing that much more annoying. If a monster has a sling, your best bet is to run up close and spam them, because they are going to connect if you let them.

Sounds authentic! In the original games that introduced shepherd, they're actually meant to be the "no skills" class who can only really be useful late game when Mystic Armor and Mystic Swords (univerally available to all as the best armor and weapon) make them useful for frontlining, but that's literally it.

I did have the notion that they might have been added as a "hard mode," however there is some evidence to the contrary. Shepherds can choose from a much wider range of skills than any other class on creation, and they are given much higher base stat bonus rolls on creation. They are capped at 56 total base points instead of 60 though. During the course of the game, they also reported have better RNG when obtaining bonus points from Shrines. They can also learn some magic, which is fairly uncommon in Ultima.

So they are harder to play, but not impossible, and they would have had some major advantages over all the other classes if the non-combat skills were actually useful for anything at all. I think they just realized that they didn't have the time or space for the level of complexity that they originally had planned for the game.

[AGermanArtist]

COD Warzone is a joy in Quads if you have a squad who know what they're doing and understand the game's core mechanics. There is no other video-game that provides this level of tension. It's so much fun to split into 2 teams, take a helicopter each and carry out Recon contracts to find the last zone, and meet up again there to finish off the other squads as they come to you to escape the gas. When it all comes together it's like an action movie.

[Lemnear]

I tried the demo of Lost Soul Aside and... if it hadn't been for €70, I would have bought it, but it's not worth that price. After all, it's an AA game with pretty good graphics (much better than Nier), but it has no facial animations, the plot sucks, and the characters are flat, not that they're particularly important for the genre.
But...but...the combat system is magnificent. Strange game, it doesn't even have any real reviews out there.
Have you tried it? Opinions?