Topic: What (Non-PS4) game are you playing??

@KratosMD I totally get what you mean about PQ. Personally I love the Etrian Odyssey games and like a good challenge in my RPGs but it was plain to see that it was gonna be a frustrating game for a lot of people.

Well I have spent most of my gaming time this weekend on Metroid Fusion on GBA and I had my first rage quit moment of the year (which was nice). There is a spider boss that can easily grab you and take 1/3rd of your health and when it does, it instantly grabs you again. Made some progress but boy oh boy was I terrible at this boss. Dreading going back to it.

@KratosMD Phew - glad it wasn't just me! Feels out of keeping with most Metroid bosses which are normally all about weakness discovery. I can keep out of his way for a couple of rounds then always foul it up! Grrrrrr.

Tried Rise of the Tomb Raider’s Extreme Survivor mode that makes you only save at campfires. Unfortunately the beginning of the game features several insta-kill set pieces before any sort of checkpoint. Suffice to say after losing 30 minutes of progress after a rock landing on my head, I restarted the entire game on a lower difficulty.

@nessisonett Had you played before starting on the Extreme mode? 😲

@KratosMD Braid looks really nice! I'll remember to recommend it to my mate at work with Game Pass.

I've continued the Uncharted play through and finished a run through Golden Abyss tonight.

I'd forgotten a lot of the game having only been through it once on release.
It does hold up as a rilliant handheld Uncharted experience, the atmosphere, story, script and performances all hit the right marks. Gameplay does suffer a little for being on Vita; the generally imprecise nature of Uncharted games carries over to the handheld and there are several moments of frustration along the way - but it is thoroughly Uncharted.

On to Uncharted 4 next 😁

@KALofKRYPTON I’d just finished the first rebooted Tomb Raider and I like a challenge so the Extreme Survivor mode was tempting. It’s really badly implemented though, the campfires are quite unevenly spread out.

@KratosMD Lucky's Tale isn't difficult to play :')

Although, if you're playing the Xbox version, I heard that sucks compared to the Switch version in terms of controls and camera.

Great game I thought, love the music too.

Been playing some Eastern Mind: The Lost Souls of Tong-Nou. It's reeeeally weird since it's the same guy that did LSD, one of my favourite games and one that I probably should have submitted for that box-art poll. Anyway, here's some 2007 footage that sums up Eastern Mind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyDwfeYaDIM

I always called it Florist and Chocolatier Appreciation Day.

@Th3solution Celebration of People Getting Massacred Day

Or

Everything is Less Then Half Price the Next Day Day

@RogerRoger I loved Yoshi's Wooly World to bits, but Crafted World... I tried the demo, and it feels WAY too basic for me. It feels like a game made for small children. Not nearly enough actual challenge or platforming for my tastes.

Of course, the depth in Yoshi games typically comes from level design and exploring to find hidden collectibles. They're left-to-right platforms, so you're not going to get super deep mechanics there. YI and YWW excel at being simple but addictive and charming platformers, though.

I doubt that'd be a huge issue for me. Lactose-intolerant people should be easy enough to accommodate at restaurants, and flowers are overrated.

@Ralizah @RogerRoger @JohnnyShoulder How the retail business has convinced us all to buy our significant others useless and disposable temporary items like flowers and cards is beyond me. Gifting a game or even a dinner or some treats is a much better idea. But that’s the pragmatic part of me speaking. I’ve rationalized out any romantic aspect of my personality. 😜

I've been playing on the Mega Drive mini with my stepson to introduce him to some classic games. We beat Streets of Rage 1 (somehow mine has more games 😉) and we're going to move onto 2 and 3 soon and a bit of Sensible Soccer. When he's not around I've been playing Link's Awakening and Monster Boy on Switch

I'm playing Baldur's Gate again, which I feel strange going back to after completing Planescape Torment last year. The combat is as annoying as always, with characters flailing their swords at thin air until they hit the bloody kobold or die trying. I don't remember being quite this bad at the game but I might have picked a stupid party (I'm still using Imoen so clearly something's not right). I beat the mines though and that's the real first brick wall you can hit so I'll try muddling through and slowly build up my party to not be annihilated in 5 seconds.

The game looked pretty good on my TV, so I was shocked when DF reported that the game hangs out around 576p when docked, and even lower in handheld mode. I guess the aggressive depth of field effect helps in this regard.

I think the problem with Crafted World is that it sacrificed level challenge and design complexity in favor of this weird gimmick where you interact with background and foreground elements in levels. It slows the game down to a crawl and takes away a big part of what makes 2D sidescrolling platformers... well... fun. Also, having to manually aim at stuff with a reticule sucks. I miss just eyeballing a throw with one of my eggs. It's snappier and rewards skill.

Also, unlike older games, which are still designed according to classic 2D level motifs (Yoshi games had more exploration than, say, Mario platformers, but they still emphasized a continual progression from left to right, and designed the game to be fun to just progress through), Crafted World seems to have gone a full collect-a-thon route and makes the player poke around these cute little dioramic environments where there's really no risk of falling to your death and the focus is on observation and experimentation as opposed to skill challenges.

That's the impression I get, at least. I do hear that later worlds and the special stages become more challenging, but the bits I play just felt boring.

Also, the OST is... sedate. I miss the energy from Wooly World's OST:

I don't have the time in my life for a man.

@RogerRoger There's a huge amount of variety to the OST, and most of the stages have their own themes, and they're mostly quite good. Looking online, the complete OST for YCW is a little over an hour long, whereas Woolly World's OST is around 4 hours. And when you factor in how YCW's themes all sound similar and painfully childish... jesus. Downgrade is right.

This should give you a sense of how much more quickly you can throw eggs in previous games.

The level design in YWW was solid, too, spanning labyrinthine fortresses, ordinary platforming levels, auto-scrollers, levels with unique gimmicks (one level, for example, was essentially a series of separate escape room puzzles; one level made it where you had to lead an aggressive chain chomp through to the end), etc.

The baffling thing is that these two games have the same developer. They KNOW how to make a really good Yoshi game.

Well, I look forward to hearing if your time with the game grows more positive.

It's weird how Yoshi games vary so wildly in quality. A strong argument can be made, for example, that the original Yoshi's Island is the best 16-bit platformer ever made. YWW isn't quite there, but it's still a strong return to form.

But then you get mediocre Yoshi games with soundtracks that sounds like this:

@Ralizah It’s incredible how awful a couple of tracks are in Yoshi’s New Island because the main theme is one of the best themes of any Ninty game in recent years. I could never really get into any of the games other than the original and DS. They’re really really easy and kinda boring which puts me off.

@RogerRoger @Ralizah I raise you Resident Evil Dual Shock’s basement music 😂😂

I am technically playing Luigi's Mansion 3 but I haven't played it for a week or two because I decided I was going to play all of the Dark Souls games. I was meant to be starting Fire Emblem Whatever on Switch too, but now I can't because it's too close to Final Fantasy VII and Persona 5 Royal so I guess I'll get onto it by Christmas.

Decided to fire up Gran Turismo 3 as part of my efforts to ‘complete’/get the credits in every GT game. The licenses are evil but the games are fun.