What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[Steven]

Yeah, you'd have to look into that one. I'm not sure of the technical details, and it's been a while since I played it (because it's not fun with that performance lol).

[Marc]

My opinion of Jedi Survivor has risen dramatically. There's some fantastic level design, combat is immensely fun, and it irons out a bunch of niggles from the original. Hardcore From fans would probably ip the difficulty, but it's a really cohesive and enjoyable package.

[NYN]

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown Demo Version. A Metroido with fluid 2D combat. Not sure if there is focus in the full game on much platforming. Surprised to see this new form after no iteration for quite a decade, as it seems to offer different difficulties, so that classic action set or modern, er, lazy exploration can be chosen. Bit worried PoP flunks again with the sweaty masses. Considering picking this up. Still no 'cess of Persia to play, even as a spin-off.

[Lander]

I have low hopes for Prince of L.A. Ubisoft hasn't shown so much as a wink of that Sands of Time-era artistry in yonks, why start now?

The combat looks decent, though I fear big combo is the wrong path for a series that started off as earnest Arabian Nights fare.

[Sumez]

Curious about new Prince of Persia, but having to create an online account just to play the demo really ticks me off

[ryu]

Curious about new Prince of Persia, but having to create an online account just to play the demo really ticks me off

Dude, just get used to not owning your games anymore.

[Ghegs]

Curious about new Prince of Persia, but having to create an online account just to play the demo really ticks me off

At least the Switch demo doesn't requires it. It asks you to, but you can back out of the process and then a selection changes to "Maybe later".

I played through the demo and thought it was pretty slick, but I'm kind of tired of Metroidvanias for now. However, if The Lost Crown has the original '89 PoP (or some port of it) hidden inside it somewhere (wouldn't be the first, or even the second time) I'll buy it for that alone. Heck, I bought the Wii-exclusive The Forgotten Sands just for that.

I know the original can easily be played on PCs, but I think it's a fantastic title that needs to be available on modern consoles. For the historical value, and for being a great game.

[Sumez]

Dude, just get used to not owning your games anymore.

Hmm no.

At least the Switch demo doesn't requires it. It asks you to, but you can back out of the process and then a selection changes to "Maybe later".

Weird, I tried on switch and I couldn't find such a choice.

[Sima Tuna]

I refuse to buy any game that requires me to sign up to some other bullshit account in order to play it. I learned the hard way with Games For Windows Live what happens when you do that. I'd buy original prince of persia if it was released for ACA. For that matter, Hamster should go into the "Home Computer Archives" market. Back up all those old DOS games and give them spiffy new ports for systems like the switch. Ah, but that'd be a nice dream. Imagine playing Dark Sun: Shattered Lands on my Switch...

[NYN]

Will confirm Ghegs on backing out of creating an Ubi account: IT WORKS!. If it wouldn't I couldn't bother.

Gave the Mechner PoP port that comes with Sands of Time PS2 a replay recently. 0h, seems more of a memory-building as pick-up-and-fun-play. Not to take from it, yet I can't say that it's influence on what followed is strongly apperant. I can't find any platform retro hommage that quotes it in full. Not in the sense of Metroid or Zelda. Am I wrong?

[Ghegs]

Weird, I tried on switch and I couldn't find such a choice.

If memory serves you have to start the process, but it's enough to just go to the first page of it or something, and then back out. You never need to enter any of your info. It is weird that the option is hidden like this.

[Sumez]

Tried that and it works. Really odd! Thanks a lot.

[AyeYoYoYO]

Super Mario Bros Wonder

[XoPachi]

I'm not playing it but a game hit my feed just now I had never heard of called GunValkyrie and this looks like a ton of fun. I wish I had an original XBox as a kid because there's a number of games I always wanted to play on it. This is the kind of game I used to love seeing on demo kiosks in 2003 at EB Games.

[null1024]

Playing Groove Coaster Wai Wai Party on Switch again.

I'm increasingly tempted to say that Gekitsui Murasa on Master is just not doable without a proper arcade setup just because of how fast you need to hit some of this, but at the same time, I'm a bit spotty on clearing 14s and 15s in general. I did clear Conflict on Master though [once -- I'm trying to do it right now and I am physically too tired to do it lmao], but it's just so much busier of a song.

Also, speaking of arcade setups, GC in the arcade is finally at EOS. Live service arcade games were a mistake, let me save my scores/profile info to USB, lmao.

[BryanM]

Ah yeah, GunValkyrie. I remember that's a thing that existed. Along with stuff like Panzer Dragoon Orta, it made the XBox feel kinda like the successor to Sega consoles.

It's was a bit surprising to learn XBox emulation was much more difficult than "it's just a PC in a box!" led us to believe. There's a lot of games somewhat lost to time now, like Megami Tensei: NINE and the like.

[null1024]

I think I tried to play GunValkyrie in Xemu and it crashed on me, but this was a couple of months ago. I should probably check again, since they do update somewhat frequently.
I'm really glad that Xbox emulation is finally really making progress these days.

[Sumez]

Wow, GunValkyrie was pretty hyped up at the time. Has it truly entered "games I've never heard of" territory now?

[BryanM]

Eh, it was only ever talked about by arcade nerds like us. Never got into the mainstream and fell down the memory hole; it doesn't exactly generate clicks like something everyone already knows about does. XBox Ninja Gaiden is like the only game the console is remembered for... the Playstation 2 really kicked its ass, in many many ways..

I think that's kind of the fate of everything Sega-ish post Genesis. Burning Rangers doesn't come up much, either. I guess that's the reward you get for trying to make new games, instead of regurgitating the cashcows.

.... are there even any exclusive games on the latest XBox console these days? Not just a couple timed exclusives?

[Lander]

I'm not playing it but a game hit my feed just now I had never heard of called GunValkyrie and this looks like a ton of fun. I wish I had an original XBox as a kid because there's a number of games I always wanted to play on it. This is the kind of game I used to love seeing on demo kiosks in 2003 at EB Games.

Gunvalkyrie is super sick once you get past the roughshod presentation and do some thumb-pushups (or just remap) to guard your tendons against the L3 boost input.

It's one of those games that feels pretty bad until the movement mechanics click, and then you're box-strafe flying around stages playing floor-is-lava and whooping like an adrenaline junkie.

Though I wouldn't recommend playing Heavy Weapons Dude on a first run. He's kind of weird and bonus-y; less boost-heavy, doesn't get upgrades, and isn't really involved in what little story is there.

It's got some interesting horror touches as well; Starship Troopers meets industrialism with a bit of Kafka. One of the stages is a poison swamp of sorts where you have to climb a big organic structure in the center, and the area boss can be heard throughout, waiting at the top rambling incoherently about creepy transhuman stuff. Cool atmosphere.

.... are there even any exclusive games on the latest XBox console these days? Not just a couple timed exclusives?

Still primarily a NG: Black / NG2 machine if you have a PC as best I can tell, so long as MS care about back-compat and Team Ninja care about snubbing Itagaki.

[dummy]

Finally the work I was busy with got dealt with and now i can get back to some games.

I'm going to do my blind Assassin's Creed series playthrough, playing the mainline games from 1 till 4: Black Flag. And as I mentioned in my previous post, I'm going to do some experiments with these games and try to see if its possible to play them in a particularly unique way.

Anyway, here's some general challenge ideas I had planned for the series as a whole (I.e. I'll try doing these challenges for all the games):

1- see if its possible to actually win sword fights using only fists and dodging skillz

2- try to kill all the "bosses" directly through combat rather than through stealth (if it is possible to kill sword wielding enemies with fists, then I'll try to fight the bosses using my fists, but if it wasn't possible i'll just have to use the sword)

3- if possible, never rely on stealth, even if I'm supposed to infiltrate a Fortress or enemy HQ, I must do it by the direct approach: fight every soldier and make a road of corpses.

I've seen debates about how reliant or non-reliant these games are on stealth, which is why I made challenges no 2 and 3, and I had heard the series has extremely easy combat, which is why I came up with challenge no 1.

I'm obviously starting with Assassin's Creed 1 released in 2007, playing it and all the other games on an Xbox 360.

And I had heard that the only unique thing that AC 1 has going for it, that is, the one and only thing that only AC 1 has and the other games don't, is a "praying" mechanic in which Altair, the protag, pretends to be a monk and makes a praying gesture so long as you hold the A button (or X in Sony consoles). This is supposedly the only unique trait of AC 1, and alongside this mechanic, AC 1 has one type of hiding place that the other games don't: monks. That is, a group of muslims that are going around from location A to location B and are praying through the whole process, that is to say, they are unique in that they're a mobile hiding place, rather than a stationary one like hay or benches and whatnot, and you can walk together with these monk guy to infiltrate locations that are heavily guarded.

.....so, naturally I have a 4th challenge meant specifically for AC 1:

4- never, ever, use the "praying" mechanic, and never use those prayer guys/monks as a hiding places, use anything but them to hide

Let's see if the one unique trait of AC 1 is something that I will be eventually forced to use or not.

And related to that, is the fact that AC 1 has only two types of side quests, one in which you save some old man from a bunch of guards bullying him (them), and another type in which you save a woman from a group of guards bullying her (them). You save both by killing all the guards. The only difference of the two types of side quests, aside from who the victim is (old man vs young lady) is the reward: saving the old men will spawn monks next to the location of the old men, and saving the ladies will spawn a group of guys whom may be her brothers or something, and they will hold off guards if guards are chasing after you as a thank you for having saved the lady.

So, just for AC 1, I will have this fifth and final challenge/experiment:

5- never do any of the side quests

Okay so...

Assassin's Creed 1

The game has a forced tutorial section right at the start, and one of the tutorials is for the praying/pretending to be a monk mechanic, and the game won't let you proceed unless you do it, so I did it. Eh, it was just the tutorial, I feel like that shouldn't count as my having broken challenge no 4 (never using the praying mechanic).

Anyway, this game opens like this:

You have a prologue chapter, and then you have chapters 1 till the final chapter.

In the prologue chapter (chapter 0 if you will), Altair is an assassin of the highest possible rank, which means that story-wise/lore-wise, the only person he's ever required to obey is the grandmaster of the Arabian branch of Assassins: Al Mualim, and gameplay-wise, he has max health and he has access to all his tools and abilities.

But immediately, he breaks all 3 important rules of the assassin order right at the start, and his rule-breaking causes a lot of trouble for the Assassins' HQ in the city of Masyaf. As punishment, Al Mualim strips him of his rank, which means that starting with chapter 1, story-wise, he now has to obey not just Al Mualim, but lots of other guys too. And gameplay-wise, his health has been reduced to just 5 points, and he has to slowly regain his weaponry.

Anyway, in the prologue chapter, we're not required to infiltrate any places or assassinate anyone, and there are no side quests in Masyaf, the only available city as of the prologue chapter. However, when Masyaf gets attacked by Templars, we get the chance to try out the combat, so challenge no 1 is the only challenge that can be tested out in the prologue chapter, and the results were a success. I managed to kill all the enemies using only my fists. Granted I took a looot of damage too, so Altair having max health in the prologue chapter certainly helped, alongside the fact that as I would soon come to learn, the enemies in the prologue chapter have a different AI than the ones later in the game....

To be continued.

[dummy]

Okay, let's continue AC 1.

Okay, so first in regards to the combat.

Remember that challenge #1 is "use only fists and DODGING against sword-wielding enemies"?

Remember how I said I managed to kill all the enemies in the prologue chapter using only Altair's fists?

Well, about that....first of all, as of now, Altair has no dodging ability. You can move around during combat, but its a very slow walk-like movement. Alongside not being able to dodge, Altair also can't as of now use a counter-attack. The game has a counterattack mechanic, but we're not allowed to use the mechanic yet.

Anyway, so Altair couldn't dodge in the prologue chapter and he still can't dodge in chapter 1. And as you may already know, you can't block swords using your arms. So, forcing myself to use fists at all times despite not having access to a dodge mechanic and also being unable to block sharp objects such as swords, has some repercussions to say the least, as I will find out.

After Al Mualim gives a simple test to Altair, and after passing the test, finally the main plot begins: in order to redeem himself, Altair will have to kill 9 people, should he do that, he can get back his rank and glory and whatever.

In order to prepare Altair for this quest, Al Mualim gives Altair all his tools back wirh the exception of the throwing knives (which I haven't tried yet and will probs never try).

Mind you, a big word like "all" may make you mistakenly believe that Altair has lots of gadgets and devices at his disposal. He doesn't. He only has four "tools":

1- his fists
2- a sword
3- a hidden blade (the stealth kill tool)
4- throwing knives

Although originally it was planned for him to have a fifth tool as well, a crossbow, which he actually has and even uses in the opening cinematic, but in the actual game itself there are no crossbows according to the manual.

Because of the challenges I have planned (avoiding stealth as much as possible), I may never use the hidden blade and the throwing knives (although, just like how the tutorial forced me to use the praying mechanic once, the tutorial also forces you to use the hidden blade once or it won't let you proceed, and in the beginning of the prologue chapter there's a guard you're required to kill with the hidden blade, and I'm being very literal with the word "required", because pressing the sword button won't cause Altair to even unsheath his sword, much less swinging it, and similarly you can't choose to switch to fists, and there's an invisible wall that prevents you from entering the guard's line of vision [and therefore from proceeding further down the way you're supposed to proceed], so the game literally forced me to use the hidden blade.)

So basically,

Times I have been forced to use the praying mechanic: 1 (only in the tutorial)

Times I have been forced to use the hidden blade and/or stealth: 2 (only in the tutorial and the prologue chapter, and both times I was literally forced to use it rather than because the game was too difficult without using it)

Anyway, Al Mualim chooses the first of the nine people he wishes to see dead, and sends us on our merry way. We're supposed to go to Damascus, that's where our target is. Exiting Masyaf won't immediately teleport us to Damascus, but it will instead take us to a hub location called "kingdom" that connects all the locations of the game. Right in the starting road of kingdom, I just randomly pressed the Eagle vision button, which showed all the guards except for one with the color blue (meaning that they're allies), that one guard on the other hand was color coded red (meaning he's a templar). And indeed, next to him was a corpse, which meant that he's a templar disguised as an assassin.

I have a rule to never rely on stealth, so approaching him from behind and sneakily killing him with the hidden blade is out of the question. Only direct approaches are allowed.

"And only fists are allowed".
Is what I would say....except its impossible to kill this guy using just the fists, because all the other guards will come to help him and fight you, and they're pretty aggressive too. I tried for about 15 minutes and died lots of times (I think I may have died about 30 times). Turns out using only my fists is a very bad idea and the only reason it was even feasible in the prologue chapter was because of the combination of three reasons:

1- Altair having max health, allowing him to tank lots of damage

2- the enemies in the prologue chapter having a relatively docile AI

3- I either had to fight just one enemy or two enemies at the same time in the prologue chapter

But we've passed the prologue chapter. Now we're officially in chapter 1, and;

1- Altair has extremely low health, 4 or 5 hits and he's dead, so no tanking damage strats are feasible.

2- the enemies' AI is now very aggressive and savage, they have no mercy.

3- when I started punching that templar-in-disguise guy, I was being fought by 5 templars at the same time, and Altair can neither dodge nor can he block sword slashes with his poor fleshy arms.

Yeah....so challenge #1 (using only fists) is a failure in AC 1. Its not possible to deal with the sword-wielding enemies of AC 1 using only the fists. The fists are specifically meant for when you have to beat the answers out of another bare-handed enemy.

Supposedly, the hand-to-hand combat gets a huge upgrade starting with AC 2 (I've heard that you can even disarm enemies bare-handed in AC 2 and onward), so I'll try this challenge/experiment again when I get to AC 2.

So, I said that it's impossible to kill that guy using only fists. But it's not entirely possible to kill him using the sword either. Because Altair can't counterattack yet, and the enemies in this kingdom area dodge a lot. So it seems the only way I can currently kill the templar guy is by stealthily killing him from behind with the hidden blade, and then getting on the horse and running away from the other guards. But my "never use stealth/only use direct combat approach" challenge prevents me from doing that, the only apprach i'm allowed to use is to directly kill him in combat, and then kill all the other guards (rather than running away from them and hiding), so I'll just wait for now until I learn the counterattack mechanic and my health bar is a little bigger.

Anyway I'm in Damascus now, and I've talked to the boss guy in this city (Altair has multiple bosses now because of his lower rank), and that's about it for today. Tomorrow I'll play the game until the mission where I can kill the first enemy boss of the game. Maybe I'll even do the second boss too if it won't take too long.

Oh, and just like how the tutorial literally forced me to use the hidden blade and the praying mechanic, when you enter Damascus for the first time, the game forces you to do an "old man gets bullied" side quest, because there are invisible walls (actually, they're visible, they're the blue colored virtual walls of the Animus computer thingy) that prevent you from reaching even the city's gate, much less inside the city itself, unless you do the side quest. So I saved the old man and killed all the guards, which caused a group of monks to be spawned. Now, you could use those monks to enter the city (the guards at the gates won't normally let you in), but since one of the challenges is that I'm required to never use the praying mechanic and/or the monks, I didn't rely on the help of the monks and entered the city through parkour.

I can certainly see what this user meant when he advised against doing self-imposed challenges:

When I do finally get some free time, I'll probs start playing the Assassin's Creed games for the first time. I only plan on playing 1, 2, bro, rev, 3 and 4. Have no interest in any of the games after 4 (Unity and onward). Though i might play Rogue since its similar to 4. Although.....I plan on playing these games in a rather unusual way because of how easy they supposedly are (assuming it's even possible to play them the way I intend to). I'll post thoughts on it once I start my playthrough.

So, as much as I'm a fan of Assassin's Creed, the reason the series is mostly very easy is because the game mechanics don't hold up under stress and the devs are aware of this. The simple act of controlling your character is convoluted and messy, in large part because AC1 was designed to be a sim rather than a sharp action game. In addition to the controls there is a lot of general jank in both stealth and combat. So doing some self-imposed challenge is likely to just frustrate and annoy you. Unity heavily revamped the mechanics and is the most solid game in the series (also the one with the best difficulty) but even Unity has a lot of annoyances that will make a high-level player tear their hair out.

AC1 in particular was designed to be played with no HUD and no map markers, and I recommend playing it that way as much as possible for the best experience.

[Volteccer_Jack]

And I had heard that the only unique thing that AC 1 has going for it, that is, the one and only thing that only AC 1 has and the other games don't, is a "praying" mechanic in which Altair, the protag, pretends to be a monk and makes a praying gesture so long as you hold the A button (or X in Sony consoles). This is supposedly the only unique trait of AC 1, and alongside this mechanic, AC 1 has one type of hiding place that the other games don't: monks.

It kinda depends on what we mean by "unique". The mechanic of pretending to be a monk was replaced in AC2 by blending--you can hide in any group of 3+ civilians, with no need for special gestures. Some later games like Valhalla do have groups of monks for you to hide in. I think every mechanic from AC1 has appeared in at least one other AC game, although every other AC game removes at least one or two mechanics that were present in AC1. For example Unity doesn't let you fight with the hidden blade as your weapon in open combat, and AC2 doesn't have the parkour "vaulting" ability from AC1.

Fists-only

You get the dodge and counter abilities at certain points in the story. I feel confident that it's possible to do fists-only before that, but it probably is something really dumb like "punch once, sprint away, repeat". Or maybe spamming the grab ability, like piss off the guards, lead them to a roof, throw them off it.

[Sima Tuna]

I'm currently playing Gothic 1. It's fun. I played Risen a year or two ago and really enjoyed that one. This is the more jank ancestor. Combat feels way worse but I do like the Weed Camp. I went with Old Boys Club for the story, but I'll definitely take the Toker's Paradise next time. Once I finished with Gothic 1, I'm already looking forward to Gothic 2. Based on what I've heard about it from word of mouth, and what I've seen in gameplay clips.

It's so fucking odd, but the only games I can get excited about anymore are old games. It's not a matter of nostalgia because I never played these when I was young. Old game design just has something that the new games mostly lack.

[sunnshiner]

Ah yeah, GunValkyrie. I remember that's a thing that existed. Along with stuff like Panzer Dragoon Orta, it made the XBox feel kinda like the successor to Sega consoles.

It's was a bit surprising to learn XBox emulation was much more difficult than "it's just a PC in a box!" led us to believe. There's a lot of games somewhat lost to time now, like Megami Tensei: NINE and the like.

They're all playable in Xemu if that's a thing you're interested in-

https://xemu.app/titles/41540002/#Shin- ... ensei-Nine

https://xemu.app/titles/49470017/#Gunvalkyrie

https://xemu.app/titles/4947002b/#Panzer-Dragoon-Orta

[XoPachi]

Playing a couple games in Xemu. Sadly the MAIN thing I wanted to play, Quantum RedShift, has horrible graphical and audio issues. What I was able to stomach felt good as fuck, but I'm not putting up with those issues.

[Gamer707b]

Just finished Ape Escape 1 on PS1 last night. Always wanted to play this one. Good game, but not great. Felt a bit repetitive after a while. Level design wasn't that interesting either. I'm still curious about the other two games. Now I'll go back to HOPEFULLY finishing Zelda Oracle of Ages.

[Sima Tuna]

Ape Escape 3 is great. Really excellent 3d platformer from the golden era.

[To Far Away Times]

Been playing Nioh a bit. I like it a lot.

When I tried Lies of P it felt like a solid game, but everything it did was just too similar to From's games, and generally not quite as good. To make something really good you either have to do it first or do it best.

Nioh, while very obviously built upon From's Souls games, goes in it's own direction as well, making it feel more like a game in the "genre" versus a clone.

[Gamer707b]

Ape Escape 3 is great. Really excellent 3d platformer from the golden era.

Yea I heard 2 and 3 are even better than the first one.