Trying the last of Take Two’s FMV games, Black Dahlia, and this feels so weird after Ripper because it feels like a real, respectable, big budget (for the time) point and click adventure game and not a weird mess created by nerds with no sense who can’t stop re-reading Neuromancer.
It’s a game all about wacky nazi conspiracies and also two real world murder cases from the 30s/40s because serial killer fiction was all the rage in the 90s. It actually has good looking graphics, more sensible use of character actors and only a bit of splurging (mainly for Dennis Hopper, who was in their first FMV game, Hell: A Cyberpunk Thriller), nice music, and a general sense of competency. I hear the puzzles are bastards so I will be using a guide.
Also playing Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3, the first game of its series! It’s very meta, you see. You play as the protag of a Resident Evil-like franchise finding out they live in not only a video game, but an unfinished one. It’s very funny, lots of great existential dark comedy, fun match-3 mechanics with some fun twists on certain encounters, and a neat progression system where you can revisit past areas to not only make different choices, but gain personality traits over time that unlock new options.
Anyways here’s the funniest moment I’ve found so far
Found a fun free coin pusher simulator. Uses PS2 era graphics (and I mean ACTUAL PS2 quality graphics) and they got to use the music of an indie artist who mainly makes dance tracks about the 90s, Resident Evil 2, and the joys of cat ownership. The levels are actually based on his songs, which was really funny to realize.
I’ve been putting a lot of time (65 hours so far) into Mon Bazou, one of those My Summer Car-likes where you’re in a vaguely real location (in this case rural Quebec) and earn money by making maple syrup and growing weed so you can build your legally distinct BMW to do illegal street races with.
I’ve mostly been playing it because the game I’m working on is inspired by these kinds of games, not as much in tone but in terms of having this little world to drive around in. It’s very rough around the edges, especially graphically, but there’s something oddly compelling about these kinds of free-form job/life sims, and unlike MSC it’s not brutally difficult, so been taking lots of notes.
Lately I’ve been playing a lot of Space Station 14, which is a free and open source remake of Space Staton 13, a game that has existed since 2003.
It’s a pretty complicated multiplayer roleplaying game (and apparently somewhat simplified compared to SS13). It’s probably not something I would be able to get into under normal circumstances. However, I was invited amd encouraged to participate in a new whitelist only server called Quantum Blue, which helped a ton in me being able to get into the game as I could be confident that every other player would be chill and willing to help out a newbie if needed.
I’ve currently not really explored the game beyond that walled garden, but I wanted to throw it out there that the place is still growing and new players are very welcome.
There is currently not a link to the Discord server on the website which you need to join in order to get whitelisted so just PM here or in The Underscore discord if you’re interested and I’ll link it to you. I know you all are chill so I can vouch for yall.
I played through walk last weekend and had a really good time! It’s very short (20-30min) and cheap (less than a cup of coffee) and reminds me a lot of old Flash games.
Here is my playthrough of it while my cat had his head rested on my mouse-hand the entire time:
Messing around in Dragon Age Origins because I still have a CRPG itch and remembered oh yeah, I have the entire Dragon Age series and haven’t even finished the first game (but I got close, my PC just couldn’t handle the finale at the time)
Messing around with all the origins and the only one I have yet to experience so far is dwarf commoner, so I’ll do that later. Doing dwarf noble right now and I’m genuinely really impressed. Human noble felt pretty generic, but the dwarf version does a great job of selling the skullduggery of nobles and how they play their games, and how easy it is to make an enemy in that world. I also do like that it is very possible to end up getting nearly 40 gold by the end of the origin, which helps with the early game a lot.
Unsure it will top the mage origin for me, I love all the unique stuff with the fade mages get, and getting an first row seat to the dramedy that is the plight of Jowan, the Kind Hearted Blood Mage Who Keeps Fucking Up Helping People. I like the city elf origin for role playing purposes (especially romancing Leliana since she canonically saved your mom in her prequel DLC) but yeah they definitely dialed up the evil with the human nobles way too high and it does leave a bad taste in the mouth. That is not a great way to handle that subject matter. It does make killing some slavers in the late game waaaaaaaay more satisfying, though.
I’ll need to replay the Dalelish elf origin again since it was the first one I experienced so I barely remember anything but it does have a nice melancholy feel to it.
I’m glad UFO 50 exists but also wow, it’s frustrating to play these game without modern chea- i mean conveniences like save states and a rewind button.
No matter, i’m having fun getting better every day at Overbold and Magic Garden.
Fields of Mistria releases today so I’m gonna be having fun with that! Also I actually started Palworld and even though I’m not usually the target audience? I’ve been having a lot of fun with it! I start to get engrossed in the base building and transferring equipment but MAN do I wish you could send pals to deliver stuff base to base.
I still haven’t finished any game I started the last couple months
I also just started Monster Hunter Dos on the ps2, using a fan translation that is also a hack to change the controls to the button layout instead of using analog to attack. Yes, yes, I know. But the ps2 monhuns already throw enough bullshit my way
Since the new World Championship DLC came out I’ve been playing Football, Tactics And Glory, one of the best games you never heard of.
It’s football as a turn-based squad tactics game. With cute animated players. It doesn’t have real teams, leagues or players, though there are plenty of mods.
I’m trying to get the team I’ve created, Komodo Hitum Air, to the very top of Indonesian football and then hopefully get the Indonesia job.
Fields of Mistria was worth the wait AND RESTORY CAME OUT!!! Both games are so worth it if you want cozy! Cozy farming and cozy retro electronics repair!
For me it’s SHOGUN: Total War. Considering I mainly cover, spotlight and talk about CRPGs and Strategy games on my channel - when it comes to games per se - the Total War series was never something I had gotten around to.
It happens with lots of “classics” of different formats, sometimes they just aren’t in your orbit, or aren’t in your orbit at the right time for you to engage with them. I always wanted to play SHOGUN cause I have liked the “pop” version of Japanese culture - not the IRL racism and xenophobia - since childhood.
What made me start to play it now is that I needed extra footage of various (grand) strategy games, to help edit my video on how YouTube is the worst grand strategy game ever and since I was playing it AND more importantly LEARNING to play it, I like to do that on stream so I started streaming it. Wasn’t planning to do more than a couple of streams, while I was working on the video, but putting it up on various polls on the community tab after the video going live, it proved to be quite popular with the voters so I decided to continue playing it, up until last week I decided to make it my consistent Saturday evening stream game, alongside Friday evening’s Wizardry 8. So I get to cover both my main interests via weekly streams. Should be noted, I do not play the games AT ALL in between the streams, so anyone who has been following since the beginning, or has been dipping in and out, can see the increase of my knowledge and skill from the first parts to now.
Just finished a replay of Dark Souls 3 - been a very rough summer and I needed something challenging to keep me from thinking. It was much easier than I remembered: on my first playthrough a couple of years back it was my first souls game, but having now played more and got to grips with the mechanics and rhythm of them I found it pretty straightforward for the most part (with the exception of Friede, who can fuck all the way off).
Will share more thoughts on the bosses at some stage, as they really are fantastic for the most part and I’d quite like the excuse to reflect.
Black Dahlia is going well. I really like this more compared to Ripper because it’s clearly made by a team that now understands what they’re doing and also spent money on costumes and quality character actors. The actual story is also pretty fun, mixing hokey early 1900s Americana with some light noir and a lot of wacky nazi mysticism (the nightmare sequences are genuinely very well handled). Some obnoxious puzzles, but that’s just the era for adventure games in general.
Also picked back up Super Robot Wars Y since the anniversary extension released. It will be awhile before I get to that expansion, though, since it’s a separate campaign, and I first want to wrap up my current campaign with the other released DLC and expansions. I think that first expansion is also a great example of how good the SRW devs are at making lemonade from lemons, with probably the strongest story elements coming from Cross Ange and the Eureka Seven Hi-Evolution films, both of which are terrible anime, but their concepts and characters are well used in the context of this story.
I’ve been playing through a heavily modded GTA San Andreas, mostly to again do some research for the Aruba game. Getting a lot of good thought contributions about scale and detail density and stuff. As a game it’s of course still extremely clunky, basically unplayable without god mode, but still easily the best GTA out of all of them, and an incredible technical accomplishment for the PS2 era.
