What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[Chaos Phoenixma]

Was playing some Contraption Maker earlier. I don't generally play puzzle games though. This one is pretty good so far.


I didn't bother finishing the full tutorial and skipped most of those after a while to go to the main game(may go back to boost level count cleared though). I'm currently at 97 Official Puzzles cleared, and the highest achievement for it requires 220 Official Puzzles(not sure how many are in the game).


I'm pretty much at the medium difficulty puzzles now though, and I've already had trouble with a few. I have one more left in this set, but I may mess around some with the next one first. I'll definitely try to figure them out on my own though, but if I can't figure out some solution for them, I'll look up a guide for it.


Also, some of the puzzles I've seen have had some ridiculously cheesy solutions. Pretty much the first thing I do when I get to a new puzzle is see if I can cheese it somehow, while some are barely different than the official solutions you can see after clearing the puzzle, and some seem to require the official solution.

[Square_Air]

Binding Blade is okay, IIRC most of the flak it gets is because:

-rng is sometimes unbalanced and can lead to your guys dying from random enemy critical hits. IIRC they rebalanced how rng and crits work in general after this one.
-Roy is one of the weakest lords in the series and is basically a walking escort mission.
-The story isn't as involved or good as its prequel, Blazing Sword (aka 7), so English players who played 7 first and enjoyed the (surprisingly good) story will be a bit disappointed by 6.

Otherwise it's still good ol FE, and therefore fun.

I was planning on playing 6 next, but after hearing this i'm more inclined to try one of the non GBA titles. I've had both FE4 and FE9 recommended to me. Which FE would you say is your favourite and what do you think I should tackle after 7?

I've always been a fan of FF Tactics, so maybe I should finally get around to Ogre Battle, particularly LUCT.

Don Caballero II is quite possibly my favorite album, thinking about my life as a whole. I still make a point of listening to it a few times a year even though these days I listen more to experimental electronic stuff & field recordings.

Sounds like my bag, except recently i've been more busy listening to Psychedelic and Free Jazz. Although, I have been playing Mundus Subterraneus by Lightwave almost constantly over the last 6 months, it's really up there for me in terms of high quality avant-garde electronic music.

[Squire Grooktook]

^^^I'm not as experienced with the console FE's, sadly. Path of Radiance is the best in my estimation, but it's been a while.

30 minutes into FE: IF/Fates now. I already fucking love combat butlers.

Stiff upper lip.

Hmph, quite irksome.

[professor ganson]

Sounds like my bag, except recently i've been more busy listening to Psychedelic and Free Jazz. Although, I have been playing Mundus Subterraneus by Lightwave almost constantly over the last 6 months, it's really up there for me in terms of high quality avant-garde electronic music.

Cool, I hadn't heard Lightwave before and just checked them out. Interesting stuff. I also like psychedelic stuff and experimental jazz, but haven't been listening to much recently.

Back on topic:

Fire Emblem Awakenings - I was highly skeptical when I first heard about casual mode, as I'm a fan of permadeath, but playing maniac difficulty with casual mode is really a pleasure so far (just about 10 chapters in). This is what I should have started with instead of trying to do maniac-classic mode on my first playthrough. That was rewarding in its own way, but I would get stuck and put the game aside for months at a time.

Path of Radiance is really nice; unfortunately, the US version is lacking the hardest difficulty level which is available in the Japanese version. I imported the Japanese version, but I haven't gotten around to playing it.

[lilmanjs]

Little Acorns Deluxe

Cute graphics aside, this is a hard platformer. Love the style and very well done. I love how each year ends in a race against a boss.

[Chaos Phoenixma]

Got the good ending of Gurumin on Crazy Mode now. Started using the outfit from that to try to S-rank the remaining levels, but it's still frustrating because 75% damage reduction still isn't enough to avoid getting one shotted by some of this stuff. And I can't even necessarily use it for all levels anyway due to stuff like water or certain traps.

I've also put a few attempts in to Crazy Boss Rush because that would pretty much trivialize S-ranking the game if I cleared it since the outfit unlocked makes it so you take 1 damage from everything(except IIRC water damage despite said outfit being a swimsuit). I've made it up to the final story boss in the Crazy Boss Rush, but there's still the superboss to deal with after that as well . I wasn't able to beat the boss though because I took way too many hits losing too much power and items on the earlier bosses. I'm not even sure if I can beat Black Bean on this difficulty either, and it'd be even tougher to do so after every other boss in the game.

I should probably do some runs of Oblivion Abyss to see how well I can handle the Black bean fight on Crazy because the difficulty jump between Happy and Crazy difficulties is huge, especially on the boss fights.

[Blinge]

La Mulana: I found the 'backside' warping software and grenades, pretty much came in my pants.

[Leandro]

After finishing Resident Evil 5, playing the Mercenaries mini game and unlocking all characters, I appreciate the game a lot more.

Started Resident Evil 6 a week ago, after the prologue the game prompted me to choose different campaigns, I chose Ada's. Just finished it some hours ago. Friend told me to not play her campaign first but I went and finished it, lol. Started to get annoying toward the end

[Square_Air]

Sinking a bit more time into Metal Slug 2 again, going for the 1cc. I've had the first 5 stages down for for years, but that last stage ramps the difficulty up so much. Always loved the beautiful sprite work in this series.

[Hagane]

Play X instead. It's better in every aspect.

[Square_Air]

Play X instead. It's better in every aspect.

I've played X multiple times and consider it pretty close to 2 in quality, never understood the argument that it was completely superior. Care to elucidate?

[Sir Ilpalazzo]

You don't think 2's slowdown is game-breakingly bad?

I can understand the argument that 2 is aesthetically superior - X kind of feels slapdash in some spots - but the slowdown in 2 is so bad that it's hard for me to imagine someone considering it superior or equal to X.

[lilmanjs]

Command & Conquer: Red Alert
Having too much fun with this game. I've never beaten it, but lately been really into playing it.

[Square_Air]

You don't think 2's slowdown is game-breakingly bad?

I can understand the argument that 2 is aesthetically superior - X kind of feels slapdash in some spots - but the slowdown in 2 is so bad that it's hard for me to imagine someone considering it superior or equal to X.

I prefer it because of nostalgia mainly (which I understand isn't a valid criticism), but in my eyes the aesthetic makes up for the slowdown. Yeah the slowdown can suck at certain points of the game, but it's not game breaking like Super R-Type for me. Playing them side by side again, I guess I can see the argument for X being technically superior, but it certainly doesn't render 2 obsolete.

[Hagane]

Play X instead. It's better in every aspect.

I've played X multiple times and consider it pretty close to 2 in quality, never understood the argument that it was completely superior. Care to elucidate?

The most evident is not playing in slow-mo for most of the game as in 2, but overall X improves on stage design, variety, balance, etc. From an older post of mine

Stage design is vastly better all around, but particularly from stage four and onwards. Whereas in 2 stage 4 is a boring monotonous drag, X offers much more variety in obstacles, enemies and situations. In 4 you shoot for several seconds at inanimate obstacles like wooden ships and mobile artillery that do nothing except being in the way and slowing things down, while in X you have the fun and decently challenging rocket and UFO sections.

Stage 5 forces you to play most of the level on foot and a handgun, with few enemies, while on X you have the tank and have to face constant harassment from soldiers. The train section in 2 is equally boring, and you are stuck with the tank for the monster and boss sections. X gives you the more appropiate robot for those parts, turning the boss from a chore to a fun battle since it's much easier to actually shoot at it.

Stage 6 in MS2 suffers from the lack of X's new weapons, making the bridge section particularly cumbersome. The alien section is much more interesting in X also, both because it's more intense and you have better weaponry at your disposal. The final boss is equally silly on both games though.

X is overall a much faster and fun game, even if you don't factor MS2's hideous slowdown. The new weapons appear exactly where you need them and are evidently designed to deal with those particular spots, like the Iron Looser for stage 2 and the bridge at stage 6, or the bouncing shot for stage 3's snipers. Also you generally have much more ammo, so this translates into heavier firepower for speedkilling and less frustration from having to deal with resilient enemies with a handgun, or the monotony of having to use the Heavy Machinegun as you main weapon for most of the game.
These changes enable you to play very aggressively, and once you are familiar with the game you rarely have to stop moving forward at all, which makes for a more interesting experience than MS2's stilted pacing.

The new enemies also contribute to the improved design and add more variety in situations compared to MS2's monotonous arrangements of enemies. There's simply absolutely no reason at all to like 2 over X; the former is clearly a rushed beta of the real game. I really can't understand this nonsense about MS2 somehow magically being a better game since everything it does is improved on X.

The optimization doesn't only affect slowdown, you can see how X manages to put many more enemies on screen at once, too. To me the biggest improvement are the weapons. Not only there's more variety (always a good thing), there's also much more ammo and weapons in general do more damage. This might not sound like a big deal at first, but it makes a huge difference in pacing since you have much more firepower at your disposal whereas in 2 you are oftentimes underpowered, which slows things down with no benefits.

The extra enemies, better placement, and higher numbers of them greatly improve most of the game too, especially from stage 4 and onwards. X is a huge overhaul compared to 2, I can't find a single balance change that is worse in X.

[Square_Air]

Thanks for the informative post. It has been years since i've given X a full playthrough and I plan on doing a side by side comparison as you have done, since I remember coming to the decision 10 years ago that 2 was superior to X.

X is a huge overhaul compared to 2, I can't find a single balance change that is worse in X.

I just quickly ran through stage 1 of X and have immediately found a balance issue, so I can only assume you are a bit of a victim of bias like myself. I have a family visit to attend to so my analysis will have to wait. I'm quite interested in seeing how these games hold up objectively after a decade. While we're on the topic of Metal Slug, what are your opinions on the rest of the series? I've always held 1, 2, 3, and X in high regard. Personally, I don't really think 4,5, and 6 bring much new to the table, but my play time on them isn't very much. The pre-rendered background on 6 have always felt sub-par to me. I have never been interested in the 3D games.

[Hagane]

I think 1 is great except for difficulty balance. It's very easy up to the last stage (only had some trouble on the platforming section of stage 3 before that), which is decently challenging, and then the last boss is a pushover. The bosses, except for the last, can all be nuked by point blank grenades or cannons/shotguns before they can do anything. With a few balance fixes to make the difficulty curve better it could be the best in the saga.

As you can guess I don't like 2 much, particularly with X there solving most of its issues and overall spicing things up all around. I don't like 3 either; I feel it's really bloated, sluggish, and sometimes outright boring (particularly stage 6). Bosses take too much to die, the pacing isn't as fluid as in 1 and X, the levels aren't as tightly designed because they diluted the game with too many alternate paths... it feels quite console-y in that it seems as if it was trying to artificially extend playtime like many console exclusive arcade-style games do.

Other than those I only really played 5, which seemed correct but completely unremarkable. I haven't played 6 much, but I like how it brings variety to the characters, something the saga sorely needed. Why have 4 characters that play exactly the same? Dunno why it took them so much to implement such a basic thing.

[Icarus]

Revisiting a lot of the old classic PC city-building and management simulations on-stream and offline, many of which I rate very highly and love dearly.

Current mainstay is Maxis classic SimCity 2000 (PC), which I consider to be the best balanced of all the city-builders. Just this evening, I finally managed to get to the arcology limit (120k citizens) within a week's worth of play, and without flattening the terrain at all, basically a self-imposed restriction to not touch any of the randomly generated mountains, lakes and rivers unless absolutely necessary. Now that arcologies are available, the next step is to see just how many people I can pack into one map.

Also having fun revisiting Bullfrog classics Theme Park (PC) - finding some interesting bugs along the way - and Theme Hospital (PC) - with interesting bugs finding my patients along the way. :V
And now that I have it set up in a stream-friendly format, I'll be messing around with Sid Meier's Civilization 2 (PC) again, too. Good times.

[Squire Grooktook]

I don't like 3 either; I feel it's really bloated, sluggish, and sometimes outright boring (particularly stage 6). Bosses take too much to die, the pacing isn't as fluid as in 1 and X, the levels aren't as tightly designed because they diluted the game with too many alternate paths... it feels quite console-y in that it seems as if it was trying to artificially extend playtime like many console exclusive arcade-style games do.

I agree with a lot of this, but when you have a route and know some of the tricks, the bosses (and many sections) go down a lot quicker. IE for the stage 2 boss, you can instant nuke the cyclops aliens with zombie vomit (it kills almost all of them in one hit, then you can just return to human form and grenade the rest really quickly). Stage 3 boss you can reach with a mech + a lot of grenades and weapons which makes the fight feel a lot better, etc.

3's best quality to me is that it's a very strict, planning based game that still has a few random elements to keep you dodging on the seat of your pants. Sadly, the horrific stage 6 really eclipses a lot of it for me. If it weren't for that shmup section, I could see past its faults, but that one area just kills it for me.

[Ruldra]

Revisiting a lot of the old classic PC city-building and management simulations on-stream and offline, many of which I rate very highly and love dearly.

Since you have Civ2 on your list, consider giving Master of Orion (the original 1993 one, not the recent remake) a try as well. Been playing it recently and having a blast.

[Mischief Maker]

Revisiting a lot of the old classic PC city-building and management simulations on-stream and offline, many of which I rate very highly and love dearly.

Two unusual selections that I'd suggest are the original Majesty (the sequel completely dropped the ball) and Startopia (the true Dungeon Keeper 3, in spirit if not in setting.)

[Icarus]

Since you have Civ2 on your list, consider giving Master of Orion (the original 1993 one, not the recent remake) a try as well. Been playing it recently and having a blast.

I remember this, it's pretty boss. I'll have to add this to the list.

Two unusual selections that I'd suggest are the original Majesty (the sequel completely dropped the ball) and Startopia (the true Dungeon Keeper 3, in spirit if not in setting.)

I've played Startopia but not Majesty (but have heard of it), so thanks for the recommendations.
Speaking of Dungeon Keeper, I have both of those too. Nothing is more fun than slapping imps to death.

[Enzo03]

Anyone remember Descent?

At risk of sounding like an advertisement... there's a game I'm backing on Kickstarter called Overload. It's a 6DoF game by the guys who made the original Descent games from the 90s. They released a free demo ("playable teaser" they call it) available on their website and on Steam. Has a few test levels and an endless challenge mode. None of the other 6DoF games out there seem to capture the feel of the original game so closely as this one, though since it's by the same guys, that might be expected.

The good news is, they'll still make it (albeit less-featured) if the KS fails. The bad news is... it looks like it'll fail.

[Obiwanshinobi]

A thread about Descent(-alikes) got lively for a moment not so long ago.

[soprano1]

Shantae and the Pirate's Curse (PC version from GOG), at least until i can find Bravely Second, can't find a copy anywhere.

[Immryr]

continuing my catch up of ps3 games I've been playing 3d dot game heroes and having a pretty good time with it. however, the game has just crashed on me, losing quite a bit of progress, for the second time. first time it crashed was the first time I played the game. I played till I had beat the second temple and the game crashed as I was returning to the over world map, this almost put me off from restarting but not quite. after this I was saving really frequently, and especially before and after each temple but it didn't crash again and I was lulled into a false sense of security. just now I played through the whole of the fire temple, which was pretty great - the best temple so far, then did some side questy stuff while searching for the fire sage and all of a sudden *POOF* the game crashes. arrgghh.

much as I was enjoying the game I might have to just leave it there for now.

[M.Knight]

Following its mention on the Milestone thread, I fired up some Sanvein.
While the controls are a bit slippery, which makes some boss battles harder than they should if you try to speed-kill them, the game's fast-paced nature is defintely enjoyable. There is also an element of strategy in the order in which you clear the rooms which is interesting and not too restrictive.
One thing I really like is the aesthetics. The interface and text seem straight out of a 90s' futuristic anime. Despite being a budget title, Sanvein's developers really nailed the visual aspect.

[Square_Air]

I think 1 is great except for difficulty balance. It's very easy up to the last stage (only had some trouble on the platforming section of stage 3 before that), which is decently challenging, and then the last boss is a pushover. The bosses, except for the last, can all be nuked by point blank grenades or cannons/shotguns before they can do anything. With a few balance fixes to make the difficulty curve better it could be the best in the saga.

I think that's a pretty fair assessment of Metal Slug 1. I think it needs a bit more than that to become the best in the series though, there are a few too many generic soldier enemies and tank bosses for my liking; I appreciate the creativity of the later games.

I don't like 3 either; I feel it's really bloated, sluggish, and sometimes outright boring (particularly stage 6). Bosses take too much to die, the pacing isn't as fluid as in 1 and X, the levels aren't as tightly designed because they diluted the game with too many alternate paths... it feels quite console-y in that it seems as if it was trying to artificially extend playtime like many console exclusive arcade-style games do.

I agree with a lot of this, but when you have a route and know some of the tricks, the bosses (and many sections) go down a lot quicker. IE for the stage 2 boss, you can instant nuke the cyclops aliens with zombie vomit (it kills almost all of them in one hit, then you can just return to human form and grenade the rest really quickly). Stage 3 boss you can reach with a mech + a lot of grenades and weapons which makes the fight feel a lot better, etc.

3's best quality to me is that it's a very strict, planning based game that still has a few random elements to keep you dodging on the seat of your pants. Sadly, the horrific stage 6 really eclipses a lot of it for me. If it weren't for that shmup section, I could see past its faults, but that one area just kills it for me.

The shmup section of MS3 is bad. I don't feel the need to explain this to anyone on this forum. I agree with most of what you say, Hagane, but just to a lesser degree. I think it's only somewhat bloated and sluggish, with the bosses only being a bit too long (some of the bosses I find to be great besides their length) and as Squire Grooktook said, there are more efficient methods to dispose of them and help fix this issue. Stage 6 was too lengthy. I don't have any problem with the concept of the branching paths, just the fact that some of them are nearly painful to push through like the stage 2 ice cave. What keeps me coming back to 3 is the insane amount of variety and creativity, I don't think there's a title in the franchise with more content packed in it than 3, it's like 2 Metal Slug games smashed together. If you ignore the shmup section it's still quite a fun experience, even if it doesn't hold up to the titles it directly followed.

Also, I've been playing X and 2 side by side and I've got a lot to say. I'm in the process of finishing my analysis of X.

Spoiler

I went into X with an open mind, and it is continually disappointing me. Stage 4 is a nice improvement though, you're spot on about this point. I also came to the realization that my favourite version of 2 removes most of the slowdown. It makes me wonder if the hatred of 2 comes from most of the versions running at a snail's pace.

[Blinge]

Some things about ms3 infuriate me to no end, the more memo based challenges such as:

The exploding red alien/bot things.
Sol Dae Rokker.
Final boss.
The zombie clones chasing you on st6.

These stand out to me, and honestly it puts me off the series a bit. Is the rest of the series suffuse with similar gameplay or is it a bit more lenient?

[trap15]

Eh? The final boss and the zombie clone bit aren't memo at all, they're just really intense (and imo a whole lot of fun). Sol Dae Rokker isn't memo either, just very tough.

None of the other games in the series have anything like those anyways, iirc.