toxicitizen

Damn, I'm way above the min but still a bit below the recommended. If games are going to regularly start wanting 16GB of RAM I'll have to add another 8GB in the near future. Just cleared some space on my Steam HDD, though, so I'm good on that front.

And my axe... or something.

They announced it late last year and didn't really show anything until E3. Not exactly a high profile title but I really loved the first game. I'm curious about that one since it's coming to Steam along with the first one. I tried a demo for Monster Hunter on PSP years ago and didn't really get it. Any chance I might feel differently about God Eater? From what I've heard, it does a much better job of explaining what the hell you're supposed to be doing and is overall a better entry into the genre. Is that true?

Castle of Illusion. Was bored the other night and going through my Steam library looking for something to play. Nothing was really catching my eye and I ended up firing this up almost out of desperation. It's way too much on the easy side but it's actually pretty fun. Took about 4 hours to beat and it was an easy 100% achievements-wise. I think I had already tried it a while back and hadn't really cared for it but I'm glad I gave it another shot. I'll probably never touch it again but I ended up really enjoying it. It also made for a nice change of pace after all the hard shit I've been playing lately. ---------------------- DuckTales Remastered. I wanted more after Castle of Illusion and this seemed similar enough. It was on sale for five bucks over on GamersGate, so I figured what the hell. I was interested in it ever since it first came out, I just never got around to buying it. This one turned out to be pretty hard, though. Took me over an hour to even beat the first level. The rest of the game wasn't too bad once I got the basics down, though. But then I got to the last level, beat the final boss and... lost all my lives on the stupidest most fucking bullshit platforming section. I think I actually spent two hours tonight just replaying the final level and refighting the final boss because I kept losing all my lives on that fucking section. Like, it shouldn't be possible to lose all your progress and have to replay the entire level AFTER you've beaten the final boss. Never before have the last 5mins of a game soured me on the entire experience like this. Whoever came up with that one has no business ever being involved in designing a video game ever again. Whoever you are, fuck you! I want you to know that you single-handedly ruined this game! For most of my time with the game, I was a little bummed out because the game is a few years old at this point so it's unlikely that Wayforward is going to remake DuckTales 2 or even some of the other Capcom/Disney NES games like Darkwing Duck or Chip 'n Dale. But now that I've beaten the game and suffered through that last section? Meh.

3DS: Dragon Quest VII and VIII, Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse Vita: Trails of Cold Steel II PC: Deus Ex, Dishonored 2, South Park, the Styx sequel, Xanadu Next (but knowing XSEED, the complete radio silence might indicate a delay). Also the Attack on Titan and Berserk games if their ports aren't dog shit. Oh and Dragon Quest Builders, assuming the existence of an unannounced PC port like they did with Dragon Quest Heroes. I think that's about it.

Oh, right. Completely forgot about TLG.

Yeah, FFXV is huge for September, it's just not one I'm personally anticipating all that much. What's the other 10 years game, though? Only other thing that comes to mind is Dragon Quest VII and that's only ~3 years old.

Goddamnit, I'm getting increasingly tempted to buy this game. The exploration aspect looks like something I'd really enjoy and it kinda feels like close to launch will be the best time to experience the game, unless you want to only run into already discovered planets and stuff. But I have no income right now and there's no way in hell I'm not buying Deus Ex in two weeks, so I really shouldn't just drop 60 bucks on a whim like that. Also, lol Pretty sure that's a GAF poster quoting a reddit user quoting a GAF poster. Sometimes the whole GAF -> Internet -> GAF thing blows my mind.

Now that you mention it, I remember hearing about that mod a little while ago. But nah, I don't really see the point in playing it like that. At least, not on a first playthrough.

Not a Hero. Gave it a shot out of curiosity after beating Deadbolt and turns out it's actually super fucking fun. I sunk like 11 hours into it over the course of just 2-3 days and I was pretty surprised once I saw that playtime. It doesn't really have a whole lot in common with Deadbolt beyond the whole pixel art 2D shooter thing, though. Not a Hero is way faster. much less serious and more button mashy with its shooting (as opposed to Deadbolt's mouse aiming, which I wasn't crazy about). I was only mildly interested in it, mainly because it's from the OlliOlli dev, but now I kinda regret waiting so long to play it. Definitely gonna have to grab the DLC at some point.

It's the early unlock of the current Humble Monthly Bundle. I've been subbing on and off the past few months, mostly whenever the early unlock is of interest to me. I'll be getting like 5 or 6 other games in a month but so far there's never really been anything mind blowing beyond the early unlock so I'm not holding my breath. I've been waiting for a deal on SOMA for a while now and this one was good enough for me, whatever else I end up getting is just a bonus. Really looking forward to playing it, though. I was going to get it at launch but I really wanted to get around to playing the two Amnesia games first, and that never happened. So, the purchase got postponed indefinitely and at this point I sorta don't give a shit anymore. Besides, this one looks way more interesting. I've been hearing pretty high praise about how strong of a sci-fi story it actually is. Like, to the point where the horror game part actually gets in the way of the sci-fi story part a little bit. edit: Just beat the main game and it was pretty great. Checked to see if the DLC had ever been on sale and turns out it only came out about a month ago. Since I'm pretty sure I got the base game through some Humble Bundle, I figured what the hell, I'll throw some money at the devs. Actually bought the upgrade to the Global Megalord Edition, which includes the DLC plus a bunch of other stuff, but there's no store page/pic for it.

Deadbolt. And I think that was the last unfinished/unplayed of the indies I bought at launch since 2016 started. Not sure why I stopped this one because I was already a little over a third of the way through the campaign and it's pretty good. Nothing mind blowing, I mean, it's a 2D stealth-ish shooter made in GameMaker. But it's pretty fun for what it is. The visuals reminded me of Gunpoint a lot so it's hard not to compare the two but Deadbolt lacks that unique mechanic that made Gunpoint special. I kept wanting to jump up and hang from the ceiling to hide in the shadows and stuff like that but there's nothing of the sort here. It's all about moving from room to room unseen and planning your entry so that when you breach you don't get blasted to pieces instantly. There's a decent choice of weapons but I ended up relying on the same dual handguns for the most part. That's pretty much all there is to say about this one. It's pretty simple for the most part. Now I'm curious to try Not a Hero, though. It's the same kind of 2D shooter so I wonder how it compares to Deadbolt.

Mega Man Legacy Collection. So, that's Mega Man 1 through 6 beat. About time I got around to playing these classics. It was pretty enjoyable for the most part but after MM2 you're essentially replaying the same game over and over again. Oh and MM1 is way too fucking hard. Like, I abused the shit out of save states and I don't even feel bad about it. There's even a boss fight that's borderline impossible without using a glitch. Just ridiculous. I still used save states in the rest of them but I didn't have to reply on them anywhere near as much. Mostly, it was to avoid having to replay entire levels because of some bullshit platforming/falling sections. These games love those, for some reason. I kinda want to say MM2 was the best one but like I said, MM2 to MM6 are basically identical. At the very least, MM2 has some of the best goddamn video game music of all time: So good. Also, I mentioned it recently but this collection is weird in that it aims to preserve not the games themselves but rather the experience of playing them on NES hardware. So, that means any and all glitches, slowdown, etc. are all still present here. I spent a lot of time thinking about it while I was playing and I've come to the conclusion that I don't get it. I mean, preserving glitches or whatever is fine, I guess. I don't expect anyone to dig into the code and fix them. But why preserve the slowdown? The NES clearly couldn't handle these games because some enemies will slow the game down to a fucking crawl the second they do anything, even if there's only one of them on screen. I really don't get what the benefit is here. Nostalgia? For me it's all about the games, not how (poorly) they ran on the NES. There's also the fact that they stopped at MM6, which means this collection is missing almost half the series. That's due to this project being so focused on the NES experience because, from what I understand, the collection is running on a custom NES emulation engine made by the devs. MM7 and MM8 originally being on SNES and PS1 respectively, I get why including them might not have been possible (or worth the trouble) from a technical standpoint. But honestly, all that does is make me even more annoyed that they were so adamant on replicating the NES experience. Why not make a definitive Mega Man Collection that includes MM1 through 10 instead? That would've been so much better! The closest we have to that is the Anniversary Collection but that came out before MM9 and 10 were made. I'm pretty sure I have an old PS2 copy of that lying around somewhere, so I can look for it to play MM7 and 8, at least. I think I also have the Mega Man X Anniversary Collection but I don't really feel like digging into that just yet. Also, since this wasn't made internally at Capcom, I think the custom emulator the games run on might actually belong to the devs that made it. If that's the case, it might be cool to see more NES collections from them in the future. I'd be down for a Castlevania Legacy Collection or something along those lines. Anyway, the past few weeks have been fun but I think I've had my fill of retro gaming for a while. Time for something different. Not entirely sure what, though...

Well then maybe you should leave Kotaku alone! ...oh my god, it all makes sense now! Hulk Hogan is a No Man's Sky fan!

Hot Heart being rude? What a shocker!! Dean should just create a board games subforum and lock him alone in there. That would instantly eliminate like 99% of all forum drama.

I didn't say exclusively! I mean, come on. I realize there are people other than Cowboy that are interested in the game.

Is that really a surprise? Those retards attacked Kotaku/Jason Schreier because he reported on a rumor (that turned out to be true) that the game would be delayed from its initial June release date. I mean, I'm not even sure how to process that level of stupidity. I don't know what it is about this game but it seems to attract the biggest morons gaming communities have to offer.

Quadrilateral Cowboy. This one was a really long time coming but it was worth the wait, I think. It's definitely Blendo's longest and most amtibitious game yet, for whatever that's worth. Thirty Flights of Loving was like 20 mins long (if even that) but this one took me about 6 and a half hours to complete. So, the 20$ price point feels justified in that regard. It wasn't quite how I expected, though. It's a hacking/heist game but without much in the way of real stealth. The levels don't actually have anyone in them, so it mostly boils down to not triggering alarms and it takes a fairly simplistic approach in that regard. You mostly do basic stuff like turn off lasers and open and close doors but sometimes once you grab your loot you'll need to get to the extraction point within a specific time frame (usually 10 seconds, before an alarm goes off), so you also need to consider your escape route. Because of that, it's actually more like a puzzle game. Each mission takes place in a small map and you need to figure out how to grab whatever it is you're after. Once you do, the actual execution usually takes no more than a couple minutes. As for the hacking part, it's also very simplistic. You don't need to know anything. A door will have a label that says "Door 9" so you open up your deck, type "door9.open()" and the door opens. Most of them trigger an alarm if they stay open for more than 3 seconds, though, so the most complicated "hacking" you'll be doing is when you need to enter multiple commands at once and execute them with the right timing. So, you'll end up typing something like: "door1.open(3); wait(2); door2.open(3); wait(2); door1.open(3)" You'll activate the command, door1 opens, you go through. Door2 opens just as you get to it, you walk in, grab your loot, walk back out and door1 reopens so you can get out. It can get a little tricky on some levels but figuring out how to get everything just right is the most fun aspect of it. You also eventually get some really neat gadgets to work with, like a little dog robot you can send through small openings and a turret suitcase you can use to hit switches from a distance. Honestly, I kinda wish the game had been a little more complex and deep but since it's pretty much a one man effort I'm willing to cut it some slack. As it is, it's a really cool puzzle game with some interesting ideas. The only reason why I'm a little disappointed by the simplicity and scale is because I enjoyed it so much and wish there had been more to it.

Do you mean the occasional slowdown when there's a lot going on on-screen (i.e. the kind you would see on an actual NES) or does it have problems beyond that? I'm playing on PC, so I can't say for sure about 3DS, but I'm also getting slowdown and at first I thought that was kind of insane but then I noticed my framerate remained at a rock-solid 60 regardless. So, I looked into it and found out that it's actually intentional. The aim of the collection was to perfectly emulate the way the games ran on the NES, for better and for worse. So, that means slowdown in all the same place, the same glitches, sprites flickering, etc. Personally, I would've preferred making the games run as well as possible but I can at least respect the intention here.

Yep, that's the main reason why I refuse to play P3P. That and the removal of several anime and in-game cutscenes. The compromises made on presentation are a complete deal breaker for me. I'd recommend playing the PS2 FES version of the game instead but in that one you have no control over your party members during combat. It fucking sucks but it's pretty much a pick your poison situation. P3 is in dire need a Golden-like remaster. Take the FES version and add the few actual improvements from P3P without any of the drawbacks.

I think you're missing the point. Yeah, it's not likely to get AAA ports from EA, Activision and other big publishers. No one's going to be buying the thing to play the latest Call of Duty. But it'll most certainly get the third-party support that Nintendo handhelds typically get. Think of it more as a powerful handheld that you can hook up to your TV. And if it does turn out to be more powerful than the Wii U (and actually sells) then I think it'll definitely get at least some extra third-party support you wouldn't typically get on a handheld. I don't know, the more I think about it the more interesting it sounds to me. Even if ultimately all it provides is the usual Nintendo handheld experience at a higher graphical fidelity and on a bigger screen, that still sounds pretty good to me.

Third-party support hasn't really been an issue on their handhelds, though. Only in the main console/AAA space. That's why the hybrid approach could very well pay off for them. Especially if the rumors of the low price point are true.

I'd been eyeing it since launch but figured Mighty No. 9 might be a more interesting modern alternative. Lol, so much for that. Anyway, my current retro binge made me look it up again a couple days ago and it was on sale on GMG. Grabbed it just in time, too, because the very next day it was still on sale but at a much smaller discount. I'm still kinda confused as to why they didn't include all the original games up to Mega Man 10, though. Seems like a massive wasted opportunity. :/

If this leak is accurate, it kinda sounds like that's going to be the case. Nintendo getting out of home consoles entirely would be weird as hell, especially if they're going all-in on a handheld that sounds like it's going to be inferior to their current dual-screen setup. The possibility of this leak being real is seriously bringing my excitement for the NX down. :/

Volgarr the Viking. And that's one more scratched off the backlog. Don't know why I waited so long to play this one considering I was pretty much guaranteed to love it. I love me some retro games and I love me some hard games, so yeah... Turns out Volgarr isn't actually that hard, though. The first couple worlds will absolutely kick your ass, that's for sure. But even though each world introduces a completely new set of enemies, after a while you just end up getting good at it. The patterns you need to deal with change but the basics remain the same. I died way less on the later worlds than I did on the earlier ones. I realize it's a completely trite comparison to make at this point but I think it's actually spot on here: Volgarr is a lot like Dark Souls. What I mean by that is that it's all about being slow and careful. It's always clear what you did wrong when you die and if you rush you're gonna have a bad time. Enemies act in completely predictable ways and a lot of the levels are designed to absolutely fuck you over if you play like an idiot. If you try to rush without knowing what you're doing, the game will usually punish you almost instantly. Which means, like Dark Souls, if you don't rush and do know what you're doing, it's very manageable. Alright, so I ended up getting ending C, which is only one of three possible endings. Basically, the game starts you at the very beginning every single time but you can skip worlds that you've already beaten. Ending C means I played through the game over the course of a few days using world skipping the entire way through. I was going to explain that getting the other two sounds impossible but then I looked them up to make sure and turns out ending B is only slightly harder than C. So, I saved my post and relaunched the game. An hour and a half later, ending B is accomplished! So, here's how it works. Basically, each world starting at world 2 has an alternate path you can unlock by playing the previous world near flawlessly. Ending B only requires you to clear the alternate path of the very last world. So, you skip to world 5, play it without fucking up and then beat the alternate path of world 6. Ending A requires that you play the entire game through the alternate paths. That means no world skipping and you must do the whole thing in a single sitting. I think it's definitely doable but man, that might be beyond my gaming skills (and patience). edit: 3 days of borderline obsessive playing later, I have come to an undeniable conclusion: I AM A GAMING GOD! Holy shit, what a game! I actually made it all the way to the end at like 6AM last night but ended up dying to the secret final boss (you have a limited number of lives on the alternate path that you need to clear for ending A). Feel good to have this one completed 100%!