toxicitizen

Are you playing it on PC or XO? Given that it was originally designed and balanced to be played with a controller exclusively, I'm really curious about whether it becomes laughably easier once you add in m/kb controls.

So, this is the appropriate thread to post OPs we're obsessing over, right? Because it's been 2 days since I finished Fate/Zero and I still can't stop rewatching this one. I didn't instantly love it like the first OP but it grew on me so much as I watched the second half of the show. The hook at 0:55 is just so strong that it ended up really sticking with me. To the point where I'm starting to wish I still had more episodes to watch. I mean, technically I still have Fate/Stay Night but it sounds like that's good but not as great. Plus, the cast being high school kids makes me kinda doubtful that there'll be anyone as interesting as Kiritsugu. I just loved how he was the closest to being the actual protagonist yet was probably the most ruthless out of everyone.

Just tried Salt & Sanctuary. Alternate title: 2D Dark Souls Rip-Off. Like, you know how Rogue Legacy is kinda like 2D Dark Souls? Yeah, Salt & Sanctuary is exactly like Dark Souls, but in 2D. I knew that going in but I honestly didn't expect it to be so 100% identical. Virtually everything so far is lifted straight from the Souls series, right down to the font they use to display area names on screen as you enter them. Even the combat is the same kind of weighty sword and shield kinda deal complete with a dodge roll. My first hour of play basically went: tutorial level -> (presumably) unbeatable tutorial boss -> wake up at first bonfire sanctuary -> first real area -> die at first boss like 20 fucking times -> victory at last -> new area -> die to regular enemy mob -> come back but die again and lose my souls salt -> rage quit. I think I'm going to love this game but right now I kinda hate it. So yeah, they pretty much got the Souls experience down perfectly! So far the only major difference is the leveling up. Works mostly the same way (spend salt to level up at sanctuaries) but instead of distributing attribute points there's an FFX-like tree you progress through. So I couldn't just dump my points directly in strength, I had to find a branch with nodes I actually wanted and start making my way towards them. So my first few levels went in wisdom despite me playing a melee character. Not sure how that'll work out yet.

I unexpectedly got some Steam funds as a present last night, so I suddenly have a sale budget! Well, had. And I totally went over it but just a little bit... I was originally going to get SteamWorld Heist and some others as well but I ended up going with God Eater, which is the most expensive by far (it does come with God Eater 1 for "free", though!). So, I had to remove some stuff. I was hesitant about Va-11 Hall-A because it's been slightly cheaper on Steam before but it's the one I actually want to play the most out of the bunch, so fuck it.

Not sure what you're asking here but I have a spare code for the intro pack if you want it. I'm an idiot and bought S-E's holiday mystery bundle despite there being a 99% chance I would already own everything in it. Spoiler: I did.

Pony Island. a.k.a. What the shit did I just play? Pony Island is runner game in which you play a pony jumping over fences. To say anything beyond that would be doing the game a disservice but that's also seriously underselling it. It's one of those "rabbit hole" kinda game in the vein of Frog Fractions where there's more going on than you see on the surface and the appeal comes from discovering just how far it goes. It lasted me a little over two hours and currently costs less than 2 dollars on Steam. Just go buy it. Trust me on this.

Oh and forgot to mention it earlier but I'm a little surprised that

Grabbed this last night along with a few other cheap games. Finally went back and finished the story mode of Disgaea this week, so it's finally time to play this. From what I understand, it's quite different from Disgaea. So, that should be interesting. Just gotta make sure I don't take another full year to finish this one because Disgaea 2 is coming at the end of January! I really shouldn't be buying anything else, though. Stuff that's still expensive like God Eater and Dishonored 2 is easier to resist but there's a handful in the 10-15$ range that are so fucking tempting.

I've never actually been there so I can't really say but it sounds like it is.

Akiba's Trip is a weird and flawed game but also really cool. Their recreation of Akihabara feels super authentic, so if you're even just a little bit into otaku culture it's pretty great to just walk around and take it all in. It's probably going to feel dated now but there are actually billboards that play trailers for Disgaea 4 and Trails of Cold Steel 1. For the longest time, I was wondering where the hell I had heard the Cold Steel main theme before lol. If you don't mind janky combat and think running around Akihabara and hitting people over the head with a laptop sounds like a good time, you should have fun with it. I've been meaning to double dip but I'm having a hard time pulling the trigger at 15 bucks since I've played the Vita version. At this point I'm really starting to wonder if it'll ever go below a 50% discount.

I don't know if I want to watch the finale of JoJo, guys. I don't think I'm ready for it to be over... edit: We had a fucking blackout in the middle of the episode! Was only able to watch the last 5mins just now. Anyway, that was a pretty satisfying finale. You were right, Jack. Now that it's over, I can agree that the second half of Diamond elevates it above even Stardust. Hell, I think the last few episodes were even better than the showdown against DIO. Oh and I just fucking love how appropriate it was that I knew what was going to happen the second I realized where he was, but that particular detail didn't hit me until it actually happened. Anyway, so, does Vento Aureo start next week?! ... please tell me it starts next week.

I thought about using the Steam Controller's gyro but that's the one feature I never really messed around with, so I usually just don't bother. I can't imagine using it for the spin attack would be better than the shoulder button I'm currently using, though. Could be fun for the surf mini game but I have no idea if it'll come up again.

Yeah, that's Hitman in a nutshell. You can totally play it as a stealth/action game (and I kinda do during the experimentation phase), but once you've got your plan figured out it's so much more satisfying to start over and play it all out flawlessly like clockwork. Some of the escalation missions have time limit objectives added on in the final levels and they're usually ridiculously short (like clear the entire mission in 1m30s) but by then you've had so much practice that you pretty much have it down to a science. It sounds like the kind of arbitrary objectives that would be annoying but clearing it with a few seconds to spare is just so insanely satisfying. Well, looks like I need to replay that one!

Demo's finally live on Steam. Well, maybe not "live" since nobody seems to be able to download it just yet. Gonna give it a whirl as soon as they fix that.

Rise of the Tomb Raider. Well, that certainly scratched that Uncharted itch I've had from being unable to play U4. Pretty great game overall. It's been too long since I played the first one to really compare the two but I do have a couple of nitpicks. First, the story. I remember really enjoying the whole "group stranded on weird island trying to survive" thing but in this one it took a while for me to get into it. I played the first 6 hours or so in short bursts and then went a few days without touching the game at all. I was enjoying it while I was playing but once I was outside the game there was basically no urge to play whatsoever. I only really got into it once I started ignoring the story and just went exploring for collectibles and clearing optional tombs. The gameplay is really where this game shines the most. The story eventually picked up but it almost felt like a shittier retelling of Uncharted 2's plot. It wasn't bad but I was a little disappointed by it. The other issue I have is about the level design. I could be wrong here. Like I said, it's been a while since I played the first one. But I feel like this one cut back on the metroidvania aspect a bit. There were a handful of open areas that almost felt like mini open-worlds with little nooks and crannies that were locked behind traversal items but the map felt more linear and less interconnected overall. This makes me slightly worried that the next one will go full open-world. I'm so fucking sick of series going open-world for no goddamn reason. Open-worlds aren't inherently better, damn it! Anyway, glad to have finally played it. Looking forward to an eventual sequel regardless but hopefully I'm wrong about the direction it'll take. -------------------- Lara Croft Go. Finished this one like a week ago but I figured I might as well hold off and post it along with RotTR. There isn't a lot to say about it, if you liked Hitman Go, you'll like this one as well. I liked how they went for a more "cinematic" presentation and made it feel like more of an adventure game. That definitely felt like a better fit for Tomb Raider. The puzzle design wasn't as good as in Hitman, though. I can count on one hand the number of puzzles that weren't painfully obvious. The levels themselves also had less replay value since there weren't any optional challenges like in Hitman Go that encouraged different playstyles. The only reason to replay any level was if you missed some of the collectibles. That was a little disappointing but it's hard to complain too much at that price. Definitely down for Deus Ex Go now. Hopefully it won't take forever to release on Steam. I was initially planning to make this a triple entry along with Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light but I played the first level and... yeah, I don't think that one's for me. It wasn't terrible or anything, so I might give it another shot at some point. But right now I just had no desire whatsoever to continue playing it. Not exactly a great impression for a first level to make.

I got curious about this because Ethan made an interesting point about the pixel ratio. So, I fired up Senran Kagura SV and tried downsampling it from different resolutions. I'm assuming Gedosato uses a solid algorithm (it was made by Durante after all, that guy knows his stuff) because 1440p looked a little better than 1080p but still showed some noticeable aliasing. Downsampling from 4K looks unarguably better, even at 1080p. I took screenshots but imgur's being a butt again. I'll edit them in later if I can manage to host them. I also tried downsampling from 8K for shits and giggles and it actually ran mostly fine. I think something weird happened because the overlay message that indicates successful downsampling showed an extra step. Like, instead of showing 8K -> 1080p it said 8K -> 4K -> 1080p. Not sure what that was about. I did start noticing some frame drops, though. It was still playable, so definitely above 30. But I can't know the exact number because at that resolution my FPS display was so ridiculously small it was unreadable by human eyes lol.

I'll keep that in mind. I updated to the most recent release of Dolphin and the internal resolutions are labelled more explicitly in it. 3x native res is for 1080p and 4x is for 1440p. You can change those on the fly while the game is running, so it's pretty easy to compare and see that beyond 3x it starts to not make much of a difference at 1080p. For now, Galaxy looks good enough for me with 3x internal res and some minimal AA without any need for downsampling. My GPU is kinda weak (GTX 960), so downsampling is rarely a viable option. The only game I can't play without downsampling is Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus because it has no AA whatsoever, for some fucking reason. So even at 1080p it looks pretty rough. It was originally a Vita exclusive, though, so it runs fine even on a potato. I downsample it from 4K because why the hell not and I could probably go even higher.

Hahaha, sorry. I was able to find the game pretty quickly, so I wanted to try it right away. I use a similar setup for the Steam controller and yeah, it works well enough. Having the trackpad for the pointer is great. It's one of those rare, specific use cases that really makes me appreciate the Steam controller. Also, it's back to running normally now. What the shit? I think I know what happened but there's definitely some weird behavior going on. I have DSR enabled in my driver settings because it's easier to use than Gedosato for downsampling, so sometimes I can set games to resolutions up to 4K even though my monitor stops at 1080p. Pretty sure the slowdown started happening after I tried setting Dolphin's display resolution to 4K for shits and giggles. Of course, that's the first thing I turned down once I saw it ran like shit. I can only guess something got stuck somehow and rebooting my PC finally reset it. It's the only explanation I can think of. Either that or I was so sleep deprived last night that the slowdown was in my brain the entire time... Oh and I'm pretty sure it didn't go all low res on me like in your video when I played that level. I definitely would've noticed that and it would've bugged the hell out of me.

Cool, thanks. And if I can find a way to use the Steam Controller with it (should be as simple as adding the emulator's executable as a non-Steam game, I think), then the right trackpad and the gyro would probably work even better than what you're suggesting. Also, just had a look at my emulation folder and turns out I already have Dolphin installed. Guess I just need to find a copy of Galaxy now. edit: Well, I'm happy to report that Operation Space Pirate™ is a resounding success! The game runs at a solid 60fps at 1080p (with an internal resolution of four times the native res) with 4x AA and AF. Also, am I just sleep deprived or is this game supposed to be super disorienting at first? I was getting kinda dizzy chasing those rabbits around that small planet... edit2: Well, shit. Not sure what happened but it's now running like complete shit and I'm pretty sure I didn't change anything. Either the settings I mentioned above weren't actually activated (doubtful) or... yeah, I have no idea.

Yeah, I meant because of the motion controls. No idea how much Galaxy relies on them.

Yeah, games with simple visuals/art style like the Mario series clean up really nicely at higher resolution. Wind Waker has also aged really well for the same reason. I really should look into setting up Dolphin on my PC. I could never be bothered to mess around with any emulators that require more than just loading up a rom but, if the controls aren't too much of a hassle to set up, it could be fun to finally see why people think so highly of Mario Galaxy. I've been wanting to play more Mario ever since I played 3D Land earlier this year.

That was a joke at the expense of UWP.

That's debatable.

Their ports' quality range from passable to absolute dog shit but the main problem is that they never bother fixing them. Those I've played (Dragon Quest Heroes and Attack on Titan) were good enough for me, but some remain completely broken to this day. As far as I'm aware, the graphical options of One Piece Pirate Warriors 3 still don't work. I mean, that's about as broken as you can possibly get.

So, following the news from a couple weeks ago that the most recent Atelier game is coming to Steam in the future, Koei Tecmo have just announced that the previous game, Atelier Sophie, is coming to Steam on Feb 7 2017 (along with some other game I've never heard of). From what I understand, this one is the starting point of the current sub-series. So, if you're like me and have never played an Atelier game, it seems like the game to jump in with. Now all that remains is to hope for a quality port. I'm not sure if Gust are doing it in-house or what but they are owned by Koei Tecmo. So, there's definitely cause to worry here. Of course, Durante happens to be a massive Atelier fan so, should the port turn out to be awful, he'll most likely have a fix out within seconds lol.