Whatcha Been Playing?

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Magical_Isopod
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Magical_Isopod »

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... p=drivesdk

This is incomprehensibly lazy but... Can someone tell me what to play next? I am utterly unable to choose. This is a list of my current backlog with HLTB estimates. Preferably something under 20 hours.
"Why to heck you don't played that one yet!?" recommendations strongly encouraged. I wanna play the best of the best.
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KSubzero1000
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Magical_Isopod wrote: April 17th, 2019, 1:37 am https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... p=drivesdk

This is incomprehensibly lazy but... Can someone tell me what to play next? I am utterly unable to choose. This is a list of my current backlog with HLTB estimates. Preferably something under 20 hours.
"Why to heck you don't played that one yet!?" recommendations strongly encouraged. I wanna play the best of the best.
Of those under 20 hours, Sin and Punishment: Star Successor, Fatal Frame II, Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption immediately jump out to me. I also want to mention Devil May Cry 4, but I know that classic DMC isn't in your wheelhouse.

If you're willing to go one step further, you obviously can't go wrong with OG GBA goodness like Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, and Yakuza 0 is widely considered to be an excellent entry point as well as the highlight of the series.

Have fun! :)


PS: "Lacrimosa of Danish" sounds like a very salty pastry.
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Stanshall
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Stanshall »

KSubzero1000 wrote: April 17th, 2019, 7:07 am
Magical_Isopod wrote: April 17th, 2019, 1:37 am PS: "Lacrimosa of Danish" sounds like a very salty pastry.
:D

I'd also recommend MP3 over anything else on the list.
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Magical_Isopod
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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I remember playing the demo for DMC4 back in.... 2008? And I enjoyed it. I think part of the reason I bounced on DMC3 is because it relies so heavily on flashy visuals that... Just have not aged well. Like, at all. Everything is undersaturated and lifeless. And this the the HD remaster I'm talking about. I'm willing to give DMC4 at least a chance, but it's probable the DmC was simply the only game I'll like in the series - for the same reasons the most irritating portion of the fanbase reviles. (The easier difficulty, the industrial music/aesthetic, the unapologetic angst of it all).
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Suits
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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I finished Yoshi’s:Crafted World a week or so ago now and each night have been setting out to clear an area of all of its collectibles.

It’s a fun little challenge and is giving a rather nice quench to my gaming thirst while I wait for my next game (probably Steam World Quest).

There’s 20 areas in the original story, with additional areas unlocked once you complete the story.

I’ve left that aside for now and will go to that once I’ve done the collect-athon.

It’s pretty hefty, a little too much perhaps but it’s a good podcast game in this factor helped by the fact that the soundtrack to the game is sadly pretty lacking.

Each area is taking me about 2/3 hours to clear with multiple level re-runs needed to collect everything at times.

I’m currently 8/20 done and enjoying for the moment. I’d like to get this done and would consider it quite an achievement - personally.
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Magical_Isopod
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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clippa wrote: April 17th, 2019, 12:37 pm
Magical_Isopod wrote: April 17th, 2019, 1:37 amCan someone tell me what to play next?
ZeroRanger was the only one that caught my eye.
Dooo it! Cha, cha, cha! Dooo it! Cha, cha, cha!

Actually 3D mario did as well, but I thought it was cat mario, turned out to be the 3ds one instead.
Cat Mario is my second favourite Mario. Actually, along with SMW, it's the only Mario game I've really liked. The rest I've played have just been kinda... Forgettable.
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Chopper
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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I've been playing Salt, "an open-world exploration game where you sail from island to island looking for loot and new discoveries!" which was on my radar a few years ago and popped up on Steam yesterday for EUR 3.75.

It's meant to be gentle and relaxing, but it has 22 minute day cycles, which means it has 22 min night cycles where you can see absolutely nothing and you don't have the power to sleep through them at the start of the game. :x I also sailed my starter raft well up the first beach I came to, so it wouldn't drift away while I explored, and now I can't get it off. Pretty frustrating for such a gentle game.

I moved on to State of Decay 2, which has some big problems. It's basically a game about building a base and filling meters - food, meds, materials, ammo - so you can expand and your followers stay healthy. Your followers never stop nagging you about needing more food, meds, materials, ammo; meanwhile there are constant radio messages from other survivors looking to be rescued, to trade, to help them with a quest. There are also sporadic zombie attacks on your base, and what it all adds up to is an immense amount of busywork in order to keep all the plates spinning. Oh, and it also has a long day/night cycle, which is just great. I'll persevere, but I am very disappointed so far.
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KSubzero1000
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Chopper wrote: April 17th, 2019, 5:54 pm It's meant to be gentle and relaxing, but it has 22 minute day cycles, which means it has 22 min night cycles where you can see absolutely nothing and you don't have the power to sleep through them at the start of the game. :x
You know what might be pretty cool? If one of those open world survival games were to tie their difficulty settings to specific seasons. Summer would be Easy, with long days, short nights and plentiful natural resources. Spring and Autumn would be two different types of Normal, with equal day/night cycles but different resources and win conditions. And Winter would obviously be Hard, with short days, long nights, scarce resources and harsh environmental factors being an additional resource drain.

I'm sure it exists in some form or another already, but it's interesting to think about.
Spoiler: show
Hit the casuals with the mandatory Global Warming DLC once they've settled in.
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Magical_Isopod
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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clippa wrote: April 17th, 2019, 8:47 pm
Magical_Isopod wrote: April 17th, 2019, 3:00 pmCat Mario is my second favourite Mario. Actually, along with SMW, it's the only Mario game I've really liked.
I'm all over mario 2. So good, the light and dark world, throwing turnips at idiots. Chucking that key about and having the evil smiley sun thing chase you. Those slot machines in between the levels. Floating around as the princess and holding down as toady to jump higher and get to secret places. Beating that bird to death with it's own eggs. So good, so different.
My mam bought that for me in fenwicks for christmas and i remember I was there with her and it cost £49.99! In 1989, that was a fortune!
My friend had a copy of snake, rattle n roll that we'd play to death when I was round and I don't know where the hell he got it because none of the shops had even heard of it.
My poor mam was all around the town one year asking if anyone had it in the pouring rain.
Yeah, you know what? I think I've sort of mentally compartmentalized SMB2 as "Doki Doki Panic". Because I've known that about the game since... God, the early 00s? My brother and I had Mario All Stars, and definitely, SMB2 got the most play time of the batch. Mario 3 got some play, but I think my brother liked that one more than I did. But I did have a ton of fun with SMB2, probably my third favourite Mario game if it comes down to brass tacks.
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Chopper
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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KSubzero1000 wrote: April 17th, 2019, 6:11 pm You know what might be pretty cool? If one of those open world survival games were to tie their difficulty settings to specific seasons. Summer would be Easy, with long days, short nights and plentiful natural resources. Spring and Autumn would be two different types of Normal, with equal day/night cycles but different resources and win conditions. And Winter would obviously be Hard, with short days, long nights, scarce resources and harsh environmental factors being an additional resource drain.
Well, we have Winter in its cruellest form in The Long Dark - brutal. :)

I think you see this to some extent in City Builders & TBSes - Endless Legend has increasingly long winters that you need to prepare for and survive:
Spoiler: show
In ancient times, Auriga suffered from a series of dreadful cataclysms which almost destroyed it. The world recovered but is now showing signs of aftershocks, hinting at another oncoming cataclysm. These aftershocks are manifested in the form of radical seasonal changes, the entire planet shifting suddenly from Summer to Winter, with the Winters - also referred to as the Dark Season - becoming progressively longer, harsher, and more frequent as the years go by. It is this change and impending doom that drives the main questlines for most of the Major Factions, with the goal being to find a way to survive inevitable unending winter, one way or another.

When winter arrives, life becomes more difficult, gets even more difficult for each successive winter after, as the summers progressively grow shorter as the winters get longer. The first winter of every game will always have the same effects (with some variations depending on Winter Difficulty), but each winter after that will randomly add another effect, so if the first winter has 3 effects, the second will have 4, the third will have 5, and so on. These effects are almost always negative, though some are neutral, or can even be advantageous in the right situation.
Edit: Edited for clarity
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Magical_Isopod
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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clippa wrote: April 17th, 2019, 12:37 pm
Magical_Isopod wrote: April 17th, 2019, 1:37 amCan someone tell me what to play next?
ZeroRanger was the only one that caught my eye.
Dooo it! Cha, cha, cha! Dooo it! Cha, cha, cha!

Actually 3D mario did as well, but I thought it was cat mario, turned out to be the 3ds one instead.
So uh... Do you have any idea how to even play this game? I boot it, it launches into the smallest window I've ever seen, asks if I want to play full screen... I select yes, and it does nothing. If I select no, it keeps playing on this impossibly small screen. It's like the devs didn't even test this piece of shit before ramming it out the door. I can't even close it in task manager because it's completely hijacked control of my PC.
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Stanshall
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Stanshall »

I've not played it myself but not heard of any common problems or complaints with ZeroRanger at all. I did some searching and it seems that turning VSync on in the options will resolve the black screen issue. Good luck!
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Stanshall wrote: April 18th, 2019, 12:33 pm I've not played it myself but not heard of any common problems or complaints with ZeroRanger at all. I did some searching and it seems that turning VSync on in the options will resolve the black screen issue. Good luck!
Whatever version they're putting out nowadays doesn't work at all. Like. I don't even get a black screen, it's just... No screen. Nothing happens. It just seizes all control of my PC and does nothing. I can't believe they're actually asking money for something so clearly non-functional.
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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clippa wrote: April 18th, 2019, 12:44 pm Can you try selecting "no" for fullscreen and then changing the vsync option while playing in windowed mode and then starting again and choosing fullscreen?
Now it doesn't even give me a choice. It just... Does nothing when I start it. And when I could open the tiny window (which I can barely see, it's that small), going to the menu only asked if I wanted full screen or not. I've never seen this sort of thing happen before.
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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clippa wrote: April 18th, 2019, 12:53 pm Here, I'll start the game on my computer right and make sure I've got vsync set to on and then I can upload it and you can replace your file with it, hopefully that'll let you get in and start playing. Give me a minute.
I appreciate your help, but I figured out the problem. For whatever reason, this game *has no idea* what to do on a 4k display. I turned my resolution down to 1080p, and now it actually works. For a game released in 2018... That's kinda pathetic. But it seems to be working now, so I thank you for your help. <3
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Isopod is now morally obligated to finish the game after all this
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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:lol:
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Magical_Isopod
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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The game's certainly not shy about where it's inspiration comes from. Got very blatant nods to R-Type, Gradius, Raiden, Cotton, Touhou and a few other "maybes" in there, in either the art assets or music. Needs more Thunder Force tho.

I got to... Inside Skeleton Jim? And now it's just kinda too hard, and I gotta go to bed.

In general... I dunno. It's okay. The limited colour palette is a drag because I'm having difficulty seeing where my ship is most of the time. It's got a big problem with screen real estate too - they take an already narrow aspect ratio and frequently have you in tight spaces, with lots of bullets that either move slowly or just eat a massive space on your screen until they disappear. The music is *fantastic*, and the game design is tight... But it's kinda of ugly to look at, and the limited colour pallet makes it really hard to distinguish background from foreground; what can kill you by touching you, and what can't.

Overall, it gets a few things right, but I'm not terribly impressed. It makes some really weird decisions that fundamentally hurt it's potential.
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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It made it onto the shmups forum's top 25 games of all time this year, so I guess it's doing OK. The lazy shorthand is that it's 'the Undertale of shmups'. I'm looking forward to it coming to Switch, definitely.
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Stanshall wrote: April 18th, 2019, 2:32 pm It made it onto the shmups forum's top 25 games of all time this year, so I guess it's doing OK. The lazy shorthand is that it's 'the Undertale of shmups'. I'm looking forward to it coming to Switch, definitely.
I'm picky at the best of times. I didn't especially like Ikaruga, Tatsujin, Thunder Force III or UN Squadron, all of which are acclaimed. They're not bad games, probably... I just don't like them. My Top SHMUPs are probably like... Einhander, Thunder Force IV, R-Type 3, Raiden II, Raiden Fighters (all of them), and some mix of Hellfire, Darius Gaiden, Air Buster, Wings of Wor and Shienryu tacked on the end. Is there a common thread between them all? Probably not. My likes are sporadic.
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