What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[Sumez]

Freedom Planet is indeed *way* better than it has any right to be

[XoPachi]

Ridge Racer 3D which is a lot better than I thought it'd be. I've been playing the hell out of it.
I'm so glad this has my favorite Ridge Racer song.

[Sima Tuna]

Is there a good thread for discussion of rail shooters, light gun games or cabal-likes? Or an active subreddit or something? I've been thinking about diving deeper into Wild Guns Reloaded, but I can't find all that much tech discussion on these games. YouTube offers a pitifully meager selection. Wild Guns Reloaded is a super fun game, but I don't think I have the skills to get very far without absorbing some strategies. Internet consensus on the game seems to be that it's much harder than the SNES version, thanks to 16:9 aspect ratio allowing enemies to overwhelm the player easier.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Is there a good thread for discussion of rail shooters, light gun games or cabal-likes? Or an active subreddit or something?

Discussion of it came up in the R2R / Scrolling Action thread after discussion of Natsume's other games came up, hopefully some of this is helpful:

viewtopic.php?p=1410752#p1410752

I've got a no miss run of the games under my belt as Annie linked in that thread too. Annie's the best character to use in the SNES version as she's got both a higher jump and a shorter roll distance. These are both useful advantages over Clint's shorter jump and longer roll. The jump doesn't have i-frames so moving higher is safer, and the roll moving you too far can put you in danger, particularly during the final boss if you roll and you go in front of a turret!

Internet consensus on the game seems to be that it's much harder than the SNES version, thanks to 16:9 aspect ratio allowing enemies to overwhelm the player easier.

It's harder because there's more to pay attention to... but I don't think it's actually that much harder, at least not in the classic stages based on the SNES version. You can still generally kill most enemy spawns before they cause too much grief if you know what you're doing, there's just more screen area to watch. The reason I'd say the game is definitely harder than the SNES though is there's two new bosses that are quite tricky to learn in both the new level with the darkness gimmick that shows up in the Normal and Hard route, and the Hard exclusive flying levels. The boss in the darkened level is particularly tricky for Bullet, who basically needs to lasso it to score hits. The levels themselves aren't too bad but I honestly find the Hard route's flying stage to be easier overall than the stupid darkness gimmick level.

Bullet is fairly easy to play in Reloaded but struggles against one of the new bosses that moves so fast that his auto-aiming doesn't keep up with it which makes it unusual to deal with.

Doris is absurdly powerful if you know how to use her. Her jumping attack doubles as melee and clears bullets, and she can slide around while charging up bombs. She fires three lassos for the price of one. The only thing she doesn't get is an i-frame roll; the slide is very quick though and she really doesn't need i-frames during the slide.

The general rule of thumb to getting good with the game is to get a handle on movement and aiming. A lot of the time you can dodge stuff by simply moving left or right, then adjust your aim by shooting and moving the cursor back to where you want it. The dodge roll should be a last resort, generally speaking. Jumping is also very powerful; you have a double jump, and you can control landing position by jumping left or right, then doing a neutral vertical jump or jumping back in the opposite direction.

Bombs don't just clear the screen; they can also be used to instantly escape enemy lasso grabs without risking failing to mash out in time. I generally recommend you hang onto a couple for these as there's a few bosses that are aggressive with lasso use, and bombing when grabbed will save you risk-free.

Your own lasso is a really useful way to grab certain evasive enemies, the lasso also has a massive hitbox for clearing enemy bullets and building the Vulcan meter up, and you also generous i-frames after the throw animation ends which means the throw animation can actually be used to dodge attacks.

Any time you can use a melee attack on an enemy, absolutely do it. You get i-frames after the animation, just like using the lasso throw, and they're super generous, like 10 frames worth or so, so there's zero risk you'll get shot after using the melee as you can safely move, dodge roll, do whatever afterwards. There's a couple bosses with a gimmick where they hop into the foreground to attack you with a limited window to melee them, and it deals a ton of damage if you smack them.

[Sima Tuna]

Thanks muchly for the explanation, Roo. I've definitely noticed an increase in my consistency after focusing on jumping or walking to avoid shots, rather than dodge rolling. I'm planning to use Annie because I like her character design.

[TransatlanticFoe]

Terminator Resistance - Series X

Mulled over this for a while, critics savaged it but seemed highly rated by anyone who played it. With no significant price drop and all the extras stuck with Sony, I was nearly ready to leave it but it finally made it to Series X last month.

Yep, it looks like a mid-gen 360 game - not sure what the next gen enhancements are but fuck, this must have looked rough on xbone. Variable voice acting and stiff, low-detail faces. Angular environments fare little better. However it actually plays really well so far, mixing up vaguely open hub areas with linear missions - which range from tense sneaking to full on classic Call of Duty balls out action set pieces. It's all very 2009 but is that a bad thing? It nails the atmosphere, at least this early on - T-800s are essentially invulnerable until you get your hands on plasma weapons, but even then they're a real threat and will cut you to pieces rapidly. There's some fun little callbacks too like Dr. Silberman's notes on Sarah Connor, and the chance to name a dog Max or Wolfie.

The same studio did the new Robocop game and, by all accounts, they nailed the atmosphere there too - but with a bigger budget (Peter Weller on board FFS). Good to know there's still a market for this stuff, in an FPS world dominated by live service loot grinders and battle royale bandwagon chasers.

[Lander]

Wait, they actually managed to get Peter Weller to come back for Rogue City?
That's rad; I assumed they'd gone for the likeness + soundalike approach across the board.

[ryu]

Zone of the Enders 2: MARS.

Magnificent. The last time I had this much fun with an action game was probably when I played Bayonetta.

[m.sniffles.esq]

Wait, they actually managed to get Peter Weller to come back for Rogue City?

Yeah, it's Weller. And whatever they had to pay him (I'm assuming it was a lot) was worth it.
Some people have voices that sound a note, while others a chord. Weller is one of the latter. You can get someone with a deep voice, slather it with plate reverb, and it will certainly sound robotic. But only one person on the planet sounds like Robocop.

[Lander]

Damn, that's even more impressive for a small studio. The interviews knocking around make him sound well worth the expense - immediately back in character, intimate knowledge of what Robocop would and wouldn't say, how he'd say it, and so on. Everything you'd expect from a certified class act.

Watch and learn, young man.

Zone of the Enders 2: MARS.

Magnificent. The last time I had this much fun with an action game was probably when I played Bayonetta.

One of the best not many games can measure up in terms of sheer precision pacing.

Kojima may only have been producing rather than directing, but it's got that X factor the best Metal Gear titles have; a distinct marriage between plot and gameplay that makes the entire campaign into a continuous and cohesive situation, rather than one dragging the other along for the ride.

Nice gameplay too, swift and satisfying. Freeing up subweapon switching in the remaster was a well-considered tweak.
Shame we never got the planned threequel that threw out the Robot part in favour of literal Anubis and Jehuty slugging it out god-to-god; would have been great to see them refine the systems even further.

Though I maintain that whoever suggested porting HIGH SPEED ROBOT ACTION to the vection nightmare of current VR is a complete lunatic. A noble one, but as cracked as they come.
I barely made it to Taper, let alone far enough to find out if they'd gone full Summer Lesson for the section where Ardjet is out of commission

[Steven]

Time for Tales of Vesperia. Again. I played it first on PS3, where I made it to the part where the battle music changes for the first time and dropped it. I then bought a 360 and had no games and knew that it runs and looks slightly better on 360 than on PS3, so I tried it again there and lasted for about 5 hours before I dropped it. Bought it again on Switch and made it to slightly after the battle music changes for the first time and dropped it.

Bought it on PC last year and never played it until 3 days ago or so and now I'm like 6 hours in. I wonder how far will I make it this time.

[ryu]

Time for Tales of Vesperia. Again. I played it first on PS3, where I made it to the part where the battle music changes for the first time and dropped it. I then bought a 360 and had no games and knew that it runs and looks slightly better on 360 than on PS3, so I tried it again there and lasted for about 5 hours before I dropped it. Bought it again on Switch and made it to slightly after the battle music changes for the first time and dropped it.

Bought it on PC last year and never played it until 3 days ago or so and now I'm like 6 hours in. I wonder how far will I make it this time.

... but why keep purchasing the game?

[Lander]

Fresh Copy Smell is a powerful motivator

I never got the hype for Vesperia; played the demo back on 360, and it seems disproportionately well-loved for what seems like a late runner Abyss-like TP System game.
Perhaps it's a case of simply being a very-well-realised incarnation of its era, like Tales of Eternia was for PS1?

That said, I don't think I'm in the target audience for Tales anymore. Spent years fiending for that ill-fated Tales of Destiny PS2 translation, only to be left kind of nonplussed (sweet combat notwithstanding) when it finally became a tangible playable thing.
Then they started namby-pambying around with lispy gods and MMO world design, and it was all over.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

The 2D games for the PS2 are the best and we're still missing translations of two of them. It's frustrating.

Vesperia was hype because it was the first (and only?) "Tales of" for the XB360, but the discovery that it was released in a half-finished state with evidence that other playable characters were intended but not implemented, and getting a rerelease later with the complete version, was pretty frustrating.

The game itself? It's one of the weaker entries in terms of combat and plot. The plot is driven in large part not by any clever scheming but rather by the fact that key players refuse to communicate things that would have prevented people from dying unnecessarily. There's some good scenes with Yuri being a badass or snarkier more than the average Tales of protagonist, but overall the story just isn't as well put-together as Abyss's is. I'm still not even clear on what Estelle's standing in the kingdom is. She's a princess, but who's her father? Where are the actual royals in charge? And so on.

The combat also is way too heavily stacked on the use of the Overlimit mechanic as a game-breaker and for combos. Instead of a small bonus buff with a finisher as in Abyss, Overlimit is insanely powerful and you can potentially keep it active for large portions of fights with Yuri's combo skills that auto-trigger it.

I find the combat takes longer to feel you've unlocked a sufficient portion of the "core" skills for it to feel fun. You also have to discover that Estelle, the girl with all the series classic healing spells, is actually the worst healer in the game. Her AI is lackluster, her movement speed is atrocious, and her melee is straight up worse than most other healers (Reala, Harold, Tear, Natalia, heck even Raine/Refill's staff hits are speedy compared to Estelle 's sword swinging). Enemies also move and attack much faster than Symphonia or Abyss do, and Raven gets Love Shot, an instant use healing move that's spammable, hits 3 members, intelligently switches targets when members are at full health. It's way, way better to use Raven as a primary healer, generally speaking, as he won't get interrupted. Once Karol gets his really good healing spells (available in the last 80% of the game from one specific weapon, or in New Game+) he also serves well as a healer for frontline AOE instant heals.

[ryu]

I thought the game was really good all in all. For me the characters and their story arcs made up for the lackluster main plot and the sluggish gameplay.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Yeah, that's one staple of the series, even in the ones where the overarching plot isn't necessarily the most memorable, the characterization is still enjoyable and strong. The skits add a lot of flavor to the party members, something which is absent in RPGs where the characters only interact in mandatory scenes or easily missable side scenes.

Skits were a thing as early as the PS1 games too, it's pretty incredible how ahead of their time they were when you think about it. Games like FFX are lauded for their presentation, but there really isn't much interaction within the party between characters. It's mostly Tidus interacting with whoever else is in the scene; there's many RPGs like that where the focus in scenes is about only showing the main character's interactions to the detriment of development of the rest of the cast. Tales of's skits really help eliminate that feeling.

I don't think Vesperia's a bad game. It's fine, and even the XB360 version is fleshed out enough to be good (the final boss fight having unique dialogue and scenes for EVERY party member depending who's in slot 1 is a nice extra tidbit for instance), it's just not as good or as memorable as other Tales of games I've played. The final villain's appearance and his motivations felt pretty weak, and I felt there were several other games in the series where the battle systems felt better earlier on, and you didn't feel like you were still waiting for mechanics to unlock to feel more fleshed out.

[Steven]

Time for Tales of Vesperia. Again. I played it first on PS3, where I made it to the part where the battle music changes for the first time and dropped it. I then bought a 360 and had no games and knew that it runs and looks slightly better on 360 than on PS3, so I tried it again there and lasted for about 5 hours before I dropped it. Bought it again on Switch and made it to slightly after the battle music changes for the first time and dropped it.

Bought it on PC last year and never played it until 3 days ago or so and now I'm like 6 hours in. I wonder how far will I make it this time.

... but why keep purchasing the game?

I'll let you know when I figure it out myself... the PC version was extremely cheap, though.

The 2D games were definitely a lot better; Destiny Director's Cut is still the best game in the series. I really need to rescue my save file from my PS3, as I don't trust it to not die and take my save file with it, but I think I left my PS2/PS3 memory card converter thing in the USA and they are very expensive now.

Spent years fiending for that ill-fated Tales of Destiny PS2 translation, only to be left kind of nonplussed (sweet combat notwithstanding) when it finally became a tangible playable thing.

I was waiting for that at one time, but it took them so long to do that that I learned Japanese and played the entire game in Japanese and understood everything perfectly before they finished it.

[Marc]

I don't know what Nintendo do, but I've just fired up 1080 on Switch, and it still looks and plays fucking amazingly.

[Lander]

Did anyone else suffer through the three-hour Videogames Are Dead Dude Awards the other night?

Pretty uneventful all things considered - no stage crashers or dragged-out speeches. Sam Lake's ultra-camp Alan Wake 2 broadway number was probably the highlight for silly stuff, along with that crazy flautist from the house orchestra.

But then comes SEGA, rocking up with a huge sack of classic franchise teasers to save the show; Shinobi, Golden Axe, Streets of Rage, Jet Set Radio, and Crazy Taxi. Hell yeah brother, I'm ready for resurrections of all of those so long as they're good Fingers crossed!
Streets and Golden Axe in particular look very interesting; full 3D perspective. The former looks like it might be Streets 5, since it's got Hobo Axel from 4:



Who knows, perhaps they'll even remember OutRun one of these days, show all of this Forza and Gran Turismo nonsense what for with a bit of real durifto!

Oh yes, and Capcom finally, at long fucking last, commits to the proper Monster Hunter World sequel that we should have gotten instead of Rise.
Weird presentation though; the first 2/3rds look straight out of the grey green 'n' brown dark ages of the PS360 era; obviously an intentional subversion of expectations to make the vibrant world pop after the sandstorm sequence, but why footgun yourself with a trailer that's 70% drab?

[m.sniffles.esq]

Who knows, perhaps they'll even remember OutRun one of these days, show all of this Forza and Gran Turismo nonsense what for with a bit of real durifto!

According to the stockholders 'this is what's happening' powerpoint, OutRun is on the menu

[Volteccer_Jack]

Oh yes, and Capcom finally, at long fucking last, commits to the proper Monster Hunter World sequel that we should have gotten instead of Rise.

Rise was made by the "portable" MH team, World was made by the "main" team. They stagger releases, the portable team also made Generations, and the main team has probably been working on Wilds since before Rise came out.

[vol.2]

I'm replaying the first Blood game for the first time in like 15 years and I forgot just how unforgiving it is. If you get cornered by a single cultist with a machine gun, they can deplete all of your health in like 10 seconds, and body armor doesn't do much. I think it cuts your damage by some amount, but it doesn't take it off the top.

Great game though. I think I actually like Blood better than Duke 3D

[Udderdude]

The cultists are ridiculously deadly, but ducking can help (surprisingly).

[BryanM]

Who knows, perhaps they'll even remember OutRun one of these days, show all of this Forza and Gran Turismo nonsense what for with a bit of real durifto!

Outrun? Isn't that a waifu in the latest Yoko Taro game - 404: GAME ALREADY SHUT DOWN???!

Spoiler

... she was blonde at least.

... I think that game was a tube shooter like Thunderblade.

[vol.2]

The cultists are ridiculously deadly, but ducking can help (surprisingly).

that makes a lot of sense considering how ducking makes them invulnerable. I never considered it

[Lander]

Man, I'll have to whip the NeGcon (feat. custom Arduino USB adapter because nobody understands deadzones) back out if they really end up doing OutRun justice. Pureblood arcade racing has been relegated to the indie scene for too long.

... she was blonde at least.

Nothing is sacred but of course, we already knew that...

Rise was made by the "portable" MH team, World was made by the "main" team. They stagger releases, the portable team also made Generations, and the main team has probably been working on Wilds since before Rise came out.

I know - they're not quite equivalent still, having a steady-goer series like MH break big in AAA console land isn't something that happens every day.
Naturally handheld is a hot platform to target in recent years, but I expected them to double down - or at least acknowledge - a bit quicker.

I'm replaying the first Blood game for the first time in like 15 years and I forgot just how unforgiving it is. If you get cornered by a single cultist with a machine gun, they can deplete all of your health in like 10 seconds, and body armor doesn't do much. I think it cuts your damage by some amount, but it doesn't take it off the top.

Great game though. I think I actually like Blood better than Duke 3D

DN3D is great in its own right, but Blood is the creme de la creme of BUILD games - an unequaled fine balance of harsh punishment and cackling power fantasy.
The armor system's a bit convoluted iirc; memories of elemental damage types, and situations where you need stacks that you don't have.

Still, nothing that can't be solved with a few well-bounced bundles of TNT ...Unless it's one or more machine gun cultists submerged in water; if that happens, you're on your own.
Weird that it's the only shooter ever to make ducking a usable combat dodge, instead of merely a cover and vent-traversal tool, but nice.

The Death Wish megamod is absolutely brilliant too, if you end up hungry for more good Blood. One explosive engine-defying setpiece in every map, or your money back.

[Marc]

I think Sega needs to understand that nobody gives a fuck about Ferarri licences - just replace the car models from 2/C2C, HD it up to modern standards, job done.
AND INCLUDE OUTRUNNERS AS AN INLOCKABLE FFS.

[sunnshiner]

I think Sega needs to understand that nobody gives a fuck about Ferarri licences - just replace the car models from 2/C2C, HD it up to modern standards, job done.

Oh, so much this. See also: the aircraft in Afterburner Climax (athough that does run well in Xenia and RPCS3).

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I think Sega needs to understand that nobody gives a fuck about Ferarri licences - just replace the car models from 2/C2C, HD it up to modern standards, job done.
AND INCLUDE OUTRUNNERS AS AN INLOCKABLE FFS.

Yeah, I can't think of a single person who said that Outrunners sucked because of the lack of the Ferrari license. It's literally unimportant to the driving experience. It's the same thing with Rad Racer/Highway Star; make it a sporty-looking car and it'd still feel the same. Look at all the Ridge Racer games that invent car names based on past Namco games, Sega could easily do something like that and it'd be just as cool.

[BIL]

Look at all the Ridge Racer games that invent car names based on past Namco games, Sega could easily do something like that and it'd be just as cool.

Christ, that would be rad.

DO IT SEGA YOU CUNTS (■｀w´■) Pls? :3