obligatory "What vidcons are you playing????" thread

Ive been playing Dark Cloud for ps2. Its been a game Ive been wanting to try for years. I saw it for 3$ at my local game shop (btw someome bought it out just before they shut their doors and reopened it, yay), and picked it up.

The game is super fun. Its a dungeon crawler. The game revolves around going to towns that have been trapped into magic spheres to protect them from destruction, and collecting the town piece by piece and rebuilding them by exploring the dungeons.

I like the idea. Though the game plays in real time, over a turn based system youd see in rouge-like games. The battles can feel clunky at first. It also took me a bit to realize that circle locked onto enemies. But if you stick with it, you get a feel for the battles eventually.

I really enjoy designing the towns however I want, too. And every town has its own theme, your first town is a rural, pioneer town like youd see in tge early american west. The second town is more of a tribal forest town, with homes built in the trees. So it feels fun to finish a town, and seeing what the next one will look like.

The game starts off pretty hard, you really have to learn how to upgrade your weapon to make any progress. Your weapon gains exp and lvls up, and you also collect gems that upgrade it. Once you upgrade your dagger for the first time, youll be able to move down a few floors and find better weapons, which make the game easier.

My biggest complaint about the game is the allies you have. Sometimes the game forces you to play as one of them. And theres one playable character thats very badly designed. His basic attack includes a jump, which causes the attack to take an extra second before actually striking your opponent. Even when you are facing your opponent, he often misses his attack. Hes extremely slow, and dies quickly. I feel like the game comes to a halt when forced to play as him. But outside that the game is fun. I find myself feeling excited about the next time I get a chance to play it :p
 
All I remember about that game is me going to Mona's house and we put that game into the PS2 and the first thing we said was like, "does that genie have a tiny Hitler in his hand...!?"

#friendshipgoals
 
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Battle Unit Zeoth is a 1990 GB side-scrolling action game by Jacelo where you play as the titular mech out to destroy self-replicating alien robots or something. It’s an early Gameboi game so there’s nothing ressembling a plot.

The game is split into two type of stages: odd-numbered stages basically are a horizontal shmups with a vertically-scrolling field, albeit you aim in all four cardinal directions and you control Zeoth’s ascend by feathering the A button, like a jetpack. Even-numbered stages are more conventional sidescrollers where you climb up (or down) the level. You have generous allotment of 8 hitpoints (somewhat offset by the extremely short mercy invincibility period) and you can collect power-ups to change your shot type or regain health.

It’s pretty decent: it’s not deep but stages are decently paced and the quick and frequent enemies keep you on your toes. The relative freedom of movement helps to give it an identity.

Definitely the best thing about BUE is the aesthetics: the sprites and backgrounds are all very nice looking and detailled. the bosses in particular look fantastic, being suitabling mean and gritty. The soundtrack, though quite simple, is also decently catchy. Unlike a few other games, it looks great without being riddled with slowdowns or skimping on the framerate

It’s a good thing too because Battle Unit Zeoth is short. The game lasts about 10 minutes (both of the sidescrolling levels last less than a minute each) and while the bosses can be decently challenging, their limited and unchanging attack patterns mean it won’t last too long before you eventually learn them well enough to clear the game on a first life, and if that’s you just don’t say “fuck it” and exploit the fact continuing returns you on the stage you died on with a filled lifebar. The game has no difficulty selection and though pressing select on the credit screen restarts the game with a different weapon, it does not seem the levels or difficulty change in any noticeable way. But while it lasts, Battle Unit Zeoth is pretty cool.
 
Glowsquid said:
View attachment 10032

Battle Unit Zeoth is a 1990 GB side-scrolling action game by Jacelo where you play as the titular mech out to destroy self-replicating alien robots or something. It’s an early Gameboi game so there’s nothing ressembling a plot.

The game is split into two type of stages: odd-numbered stages basically are a horizontal shmups with a vertically-scrolling field, albeit you aim in all four cardinal directions and you control Zeoth’s ascend by feathering the A button, like a jetpack. Even-numbered stages are more conventional sidescrollers where you climb up (or down) the level. You have generous allotment of 8 hitpoints (somewhat offset by the extremely short mercy invincibility period) and you can collect power-ups to change your shot type or regain health.

It’s pretty decent: it’s not deep but stages are decently paced and the quick and frequent enemies keep you on your toes. The relative freedom of movement helps to give it an identity.

Definitely the best thing about BUE is the aesthetics: the sprites and backgrounds are all very nice looking and detailled. the bosses in particular look fantastic, being suitabling mean and gritty. The soundtrack, though quite simple, is also decently catchy. Unlike a few other games, it looks great without being riddled with slowdowns or skimping on the framerate

It’s a good thing too because Battle Unit Zeoth is short. The game lasts about 10 minutes (both of the sidescrolling levels last less than a minute each) and while the bosses can be decently challenging, their limited and unchanging attack patterns mean it won’t last too long before you eventually learn them well enough to clear the game on a first life, and if that’s you just don’t say “fuck it” and exploit the fact continuing returns you on the stage you died on with a filled lifebar. The game has no difficulty selection and though pressing select on the credit screen restarts the game with a different weapon, it does not seem the levels or difficulty change in any noticeable way. But while it lasts, Battle Unit Zeoth is pretty cool.
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Out of curiosity, how much time do you spend on games like these? I saw that you wrote that it took around ten minutes to beat, do you feel motivated to play through the game more than once? Am wondering about how much someone can get out of games like these in comparision with the amount they spend on them :p
 
MonaWare said:
Out of curiosity, how much time do you spend on games like these? I saw that you wrote that it took around ten minutes to beat, do you feel motivated to play through the game more than once? Am wondering about how much someone can get out of games like these in comparision with the amount they spend on them :p
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I played the game in 10-minutes burst at work. I wanna say it took around 1 hour before being able to one-life clear it so I got my $15's worth
 
Don't pay any mind to Mona, Glowie. She doesn't possess the comprehensive thinking, intense eye-hand coordination, and fast reaction time required to appreciate the rush of the High-Score.
 
Crescent-Moon Villager said:
Don't pay any mind to Mona, Glowie. She doesn't possess the comprehensive thinking, intense eye-hand coordination, and fast reaction time required to appreciate the rush of the High-Score.
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Well, tbf its kinda about gameboy games in general, though yeah I dont think Id do well with shump games either yeah :p
 
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Frontlines: Fuel of War is a 2008 FPS developed by Kaos Studio, a team formed by the core people behind the very popular Battlefield 1942 mod Desert Combat, and who actually assisted DICE on the development of Battlefield 2. As such, the game obviously mirrors Battlefield in a lot of ways and its main attraction was the multiplayer which, with the GameSpy shutdown, is no longer available on PC without LAN tunneling. But there’s still a single player campaign and to my surprise, I really enjoyed it!

The flat shooting mechanics, average (for the time) production values and cliché story about a fuel war between NATO and a Sino-Russian coalition won’t win awards, but what made Frontlines for me is the mission structure: basically you have a big open map with multiple objectives (usually taking over command posts or planting explosives on something), which you can approach any way you’d like, and you can get in or out of vehicles as you please. You can switch between the four character classes with their own weapon loadout and exploring is rewarded with extra gear like airstrike markers and drones (which are actually real fun and useful to use). There are some interesting set pieces in there (my favourite is the pitched tank battle after a nuclear detonation) and though the AI isn’t that clever, it does a good job at making you feel like you’re part of a big battle. It’s a clever way to make the single player train you in the skills and mechanics needed for the multiplayer without just being a series of bot matches.

Plus it ends with a cheesy sung theme song! We need more western games with those



There’s some jank (explosive barrels don’t kill shit, the helipcoter controls are WOEFUL) but Kaos studio was onto something potentially special here. So of course their next (and last) game was a poopy call of duty clone groan
 
I beat the first Super Mario Land at work today. It was pretty good: retrospectives of the game point to the different environements and enemies to lament how safe the NSMB series is, but beyond just providing a thematic shakeup, stuff like bill blasters coming out of pipes and the exploding koopas make for some pretty interesting new challenges. The superball is a great powerup and while I wouldn't buy the shmup sections as a standalone game, they work as a fleeting moment of total rampage.

It's not as tight as the NES games though. Mario has bad midair control and doesn't build up momentum as quickly as you'd like so I had some pretty frustrating deaths. You have some janky stuff like colidding with a boulder that just spawned midair during your jump. And you can tell they were running fumes near the end with how midway through World 3, all underground bonus rooms start having the same layout. That's pretty weird.
 
I'm going through Shifting World for the 3DS at the mo, and it's really good!
The black and white art style is nice, and the dialouge can be pretty funny!
It's a puzzle-platformer with one primary gimmick - shifting.
After you shift (I KNOW THIS WILL MAKE ME SOUND CRAZY):
Black becomes White
White becomes Black
Up becomes Down
Down becomes Up
Left becomes Right
Right becomes Left
Space becomes Matter
Matter becomes Space

I found my 'gut' figured out shifting before I did, so I couldn't figure out how I beat earlier levels.
I'm about a quarter of the way through, it's fun!I'
When I was a little kid, my Dad had the demo for this game and I thought it looked cool.
Long after the demo was gone, I remembered it as 'the shifty game'.
Many, many years later I saw it in a game shop and said to myself quietly:
"The shifty game. I found it."
 
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Secret Service: Ultimate Sacrifice is a 2008 FPS by the reliable jank masters at Cauldron and published by Activision's budget game label. You play as an US secret service agent who tries to protect the president from an South American militia and then is embroilled in a conspiracy threatening the government.

Secret Services makes an OK enough first impression. The production values aren't too bad for a 2008 budget release, the controls make sense (with analog leaning, a feature all too rare on console shooters) and the weapons actually have a nice kick to them, which is worth mentioning when most budget FPS of the time have super flat shooting mechanics. The writing isn't anything transcendent but the barbs from your overly flippant sidekick can be smirk-worthy.

Secret Service is fun enough when it sticks to being a dumb linear cinematic shooter, but it's bogged down in many frustrating mechanics. The worst of these are the "hacking minigame" you have to do pretty every time you have to interact with an object, which consist of tile puzzles (kinda like the pipe minigame in Bioshock, but even worse). They're blatant padding and you're given not enough time to do them properly (and they're randomly picked from a pool so just can't memorize them). Another dumb mechanic is when you have to fight other service agents and you're forbidden from killing them (even when they're shooting at the president), forcing you to use a cumberslow slow firing taser to knock them out.

It could've been a decent popcorn rental but there's a lot of frustration in there.
 
Lately I’ve been playing the latest installment in everyone’s favourite grognard vertical tank sim, Mechwarrior 5!

and it’s pretty good . It’s not the big-budget masterpiece mechwarrior fans expected after 20 years of inactivity but things blow up nice, it looks pretty and there’s a lot of content. The heavy emphasis on procgen content can make it feel rather repetitive and the negotation/fund management layer is neat at first but has a lot of annoying limitations and missed opportunities. but GOG tells me I’ve been playing it for nearly 20 hours and games rarely hold my attention that much these days so it’s doing something right

however one really neat thing it does and that I want to talk about is how it ties into its source material.

mechwarrior is based off the Battletech setting, a tabletop game that’s been running since the mid 80’s and has amassed a ridiculous (and often quite interesting) quantity of lore. the premise of mechwarrior 5 is that you’re a mercenary eeking out a living and going on a Personal Quest For Revenge at the tail end of the third succession war, a series of conflicts between the degenerate feudal houses of the inner sphere. the game runs on a some 40-years timeline that runs in the background, ending in 3049 right before the clan invasion storyline all of the other mechwarrior games are set during or after. it doesn’t affect your ability to take on contracts and complete the hand-crafted questline but it leads to a lot of neat stuff.

-as the timeline progresses, enemies progessively get better and meaner equipments as new chassis and weapons are introduced. “lost tech” becomes more widely available as supply caches are discovered and means of productions are rediscovered.

-where equipment is found and fought more or less loosely adheres to the lore of the battletop. the crab (a mech that’s stated in the fluff to be very rare because its factory was immediately bombed into oblivion) is, well, rare. as you get closer to the galactic core of terra, you’ll find more rare goods and advanced equipment.

-there’s a series of new reports that hints at new developments in opportunities. one report may state that a cache of lost tech was found in X region, hinting that you’ll be able to purchase good loot at that location’s black market. in the mid 3025-'s, you get a report that a “mysterious bird mech” has been sighted at a particular border. the mech in question, the raven, then has a low chance of appearing as an enemy in contracts for that region and it gets to the procgen pool for the other conflict zones as it officially goes in production

-battlelines are redrawn as alliances are made and broken.

basically it’s all quite neat and elavates the game. I wish more licensed games played with their source material like that. the one other game I can think of having a timeline gimmick like that is gundam crossfire, but none of it fed into the gameplay (thank you for coming to my TED talk)
 
Usually I play two or three games regularly at one time, I think, but currently I'm playing seven! :o Rayman 3 (on GameCube), Dewy's Adventure, Spanky's Quest (on Switch Online), Asterix & Obelix XXL (on GBA), Re-Volt (on N64), Yoshi's Woolly World and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
 
607 said:
Usually I play two or three games regularly at one time, I think, but currently I'm playing seven! :eek: Rayman 3 (on GameCube), Dewy's Adventure, Spanky's Quest (on Switch Online), Asterix & Obelix XXL (on GBA), Re-Volt (on N64), Yoshi's Woolly World and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
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Wow... How do you keep up with playing so many games at once? I can hardly play two games at once, or else my muscle memory will get messed up.
 
Just a Wario Fan said:
Wow... How do you keep up with playing so many games at once? I can hardly play two games at once, or else my muscle memory will get messed up.
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I only have such issues if I play games that look similar. So I won't play multiple of Super Mario Maker, Super Mario Bros., The Lost Levels and Super Mario Bros. 35 together. Probably not Wario Land II and 3 at the same time either, but SML3 and any of the Wario Lands would be fine.
Edit: I do also play Re-Volt on PC, and I do so using an N64 controller, because my laptop keyboard has bad rollover. That does confuse me when I'm also playing the N64 port of Re-Volt. :P (I use different controls on both because in the N64 port you have to use the analog stick (and it's only reasonable to do so, as the framerate is very low), but in general most people including myself play better by tapping digital controls, so I use the d-pad on pc)
 
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