We chat about videogames and videogame accessories.

Finding the right angle is what makes so many good game comics, but obviously most of such comedy is a mere recontextualization with no further introspection *monocle adjust*

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Spoiler“Skyrim is a game about eating things off the floor.”—Katie Tiedrich

mannnnn
I dunno you fight a mob boss who's a platypus and it's basically a magical girl anime but instead of a magic high school uniform you have a magic tank that looks like your face and you shoot yourself out of cannons and fuse things in a wisecracking pot and throw enemies on a train so you can build gold statues that make them like you and

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Spoiler you unite with your rival and pull some ttgl shit where your tank turns into god and you fight satan

and I'm really not finding any angle that shows symbolic threads in here
maybe the message is that non-newtonian liquids are fucking cool
I can get behind that

edit subscript 1: this was directed at BRP

edit subscript 2: @Superfrequency
a. Rocket Slime is great for a lot of reasons, but mostly because it perfectly marries these two distinct styles of gameplay, one where you beat everything up and steal it and clear levels and one where you do tank battles, and they're both extremely cute and extremely clever. The tank battle system would sound almost stupid if I described it but I swear it's pure brilliance. Shooting yourself out of a cannon on purpose is something that should have become gold standard for the mecha genre long ago. The sheer mechanical simplicity combined with excellence is something I've rarely seen. It was a game I felt very good about 100%ing.

b. Other than Rocket Slime I'd highly recommend SMT: Strange Journey
it's quite long and grindy and I haven't finished it but it's very... unique
I've never felt good before about an rpg being hard, complicated and grindy, and now I do and I think that's significant

I'm getting more of a handle on why Rocket Slime is awesome
last fanboy post I swear

It's something about the moment-to-moment charmingness that fills not just art and writing, but also the mechanics of stretching yourself out, floating, stacking things on your head, and using them for whatever you can come up with. All kinds of nostalgia glasses going on, of course, but it evokes a more innocent world, one where you can legitimately feel sorry for and empathize with your enemies. Actually defeating anything feels like a tragic waste by the end.
It has a great rhythm of meditative casual play vs brief intensity, and definitely wants you to explore at your own pace, given all the peaceful backgrounds and side content. But as I said there's rhythm, and the tank battles are a crazy adrenaline rush where you're given a lot of viable options and have to think and play fast. It's hard to describe, but the tank fights include a lot of freedom to either follow the strategies you planned and set up or ignore them and yolo hard through just a handful of decisions, but there's simultaneously a lot of pressure on to do it correctly. (The one thing that was a bit disappointing is that the unlockable tanks are only used for the side tank tournaments, not the main plot. It would have been awesome to play through the story as my lizard mecha waifu Argonaut.) The designers did a great job of structuring the plot such that you always seem to be advancing to stronger opponents despite the rising odds.
The tank battles are really the most special part, I suppose. It's like Rocket Slime is a quirky, innovative and solid top-down adventure game, but then it turns out the whole game you thought you were playing is just a support system for an even better tank-fighting game, and the truly amazing part is that you never notice the seams between the two games. The only other game that's ever made me feel this way about hybrid gameplay is XCOM: Enemy Unknown, which was also amazing, so there you have it.
If I had to sum up what I love about Rocket Slime in one sentence, I would say this: It manages to be completely absurd and divorced from reality while still making perfect sense relative to itself.

I haven't played it yet, but Meteos? Does one of the Meteos fans want to recommend Meteos?

e: If you're at all interested in rhythm games, how about Rhythm Heaven or Elite Beat Agents?

Rhythm Heaven is very cute and quirky and fun and gets a whole lot out of very simple elements. I especially love how well everything ties back to the music, and how much of the great music comes from the actual game sounds.

The first thing I remember about Elite Beat Agents is playing a demo of the first level on Normal in the store, and thinking "this is impossible, how am I ever going to be able to beat this." I thought the same thing at the start of the second stage, and at the third, and so on for over a dozen songs, and again at each stage on the harder difficulty, and again at each stage on the hardest difficulty. The game was that great at bringing me back.

(Actually I just remembered that I've had an extra unopened copy of Rhythm Heaven lying around for years and if you want I'd love to give it away)[/size]

meteos is okay i guess

High quality, non-obvious DS recs, anyone? Exclusives only.

Looking through my collection, games I really enjoyed but haven't been mentioned yet include Contra 4, Order of Ecclesia, Phantom Hourglass, Spirit Tracks, and Advance Wars: Days of Ruin.

Also Picross DS and 3D Picross but I don't know if those are your bag.

Edit: Also Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan and Moero! Nekketsu Rhythm Damashii: Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan 2

I saw rocket slime previewed in a magazine and was pretty excited, and then its eu release got delayed for ages and I never bought it, maybe I should now that I have been reminded about it

Oh yeah
while we're on the subject of game recs I have a question
I really like Monster Hunter, and I'm thinking of maybe going after a 3ds.
Has anyone played the 3ds Monster Hunter, and if so: a. did you like it? b. does it "work" with handheld controls?

Have you looked specifically at Days of Ruin? It tried a lot harder in the art, I think, than any of the previous titles.

I played days of ruin and I'm pretty sure that while it wasn't just one tileset there definitely weren't a large number of them
I don't think they even tried harder in the art, it just used a more "realistic" style than the previous ones which meant remaking half of the graphics (rather than reusing the old ones as they did in every other title)

while i understand your frustration at handholding, order of ecclesia was the first castlevania in a while where i felt like i actually had to try to avoid getting my ass handed to me (while at the same time not employing the old school bullshit standards that earlier castlevanias made use of), so that was its appeal, at least for me

also, one of the few games where the male douchebag is not the main character, hurrhurr

Did anyone play Hotel Dusk? Is that any good?

I quite enjoyed hotel dusk tbh, it suffers the usual puzzle/point and click adventure issue of 'oh gods what the hell do I do now' and the dialogue can go on a little long, but I liked it anyways.

One of the puzzle solutions annoyed me more than I can say, till I solved it in a moment of 'this cannot possibly work', which when it did was deeply gratifying. Nothing ground breaking now, but at the time I thought the solution was the coolest thing :P

Taking your comments into consideration, SF, have you looked at Knights in the Nightmare? It was a little too wonkish for me but that seems to be exactly what you like.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cyaninc/obduction

So the creators of Myst and Riven are making another game and I forgot to talk about it here

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Spoiler

The art for this looks gorgeous. Apparently dude's been working on it for years.

I did actually enjoy Exile (the third game in the Myst series) quite a bit - it and Riven are my two favorites. Revelations is excellent when it comes to visual quality, but...Serenia.

[hissing intensifies]

(The less said about the fifth game, the better. They...tried.)

I actually got ahold of a copy of Myst Online: Uru Live a little while back. The community is extremely tiny, which makes for a very interesting experience - you can go for hours without seeing a single person, then all of a sudden you'll pass each another person in the corridor without being able to think of anything to say. It clearly wasn't intended to be played like that, but I think it works out better than it would if everything was crowded.

The controls are, regrettably, garbage, and some puzzles need multiple people to clear - which is defendable because it's a multiplayer game, but annoying because of the sheer lack of people. I ended up having to run a second copy and double team some levels with myself.

Some of the puzzles are a lot harder and lengthier, and I am not exaggerating in the slightest. One of them requires you to cook chemicals (which takes about six hours) and then drop them down a hole, while another player sits at the bottom and relays the results to you. Brilliant in concept, frustrating on the player's end in execution.

Putting aside some of the ones that are difficult purely because of the multiplayer aspect, there are a lot of absolutely brilliant puzzles in there. It's difficult to give examples without giving away the solutions, but one of the puzzles requires you, as the player, to adjust what you see as the boundaries of the world not once, but multiple times. The sense of satisfaction from figuring them out is immense.

What about Uru?

For everyone who complained about megaevolutions on principle (rather than the execution)

my venusaur is basically a magical girl now and no amount of even legit criticism is gonna make me not love this :L

Am I the only one who liked Big Top Turnabout or w/e

I liked it too. Don't worry, you aren't alone.

West Clownadelphia, born and raised

I guess I have to take another look at the other two DSvanias. Handholding is a serious dealbreaker for me though because it can completely demolish any sense of fun throughout the entire game by constantly yanking the player's metaphorical leash.

hey I liked okami, don't bang on it just because it was easy

I really think a lot of you just look at a game too hard while you're playing it. just choose whether you like it or not after you've played it without intending to analyze it.

the way you talk about games it almost feels like you're imitating yahtzee's level of exasperation with literally everything super

not to say this is a bad thing by any means but it just always sounds like so many of you buy a game and then immediately regret the decision no matter what it was

hell, if it weren't for the occasional game that EVERYone agrees is good I'd think some of you played video games to punish yourselves for something


then again my idea of fun is still grinding an arena in fire emblem 7 for 3 hours and then resetting and doing it all again because That One Cavalier died so I'm not sure if I should talk

nah it's not so much I see it as hatred as its all that we see most of the time

from everyone
a lot of what we talk about is either "hey this game is terrible and here's a thousand reasons why" or "hey this game is good k ON TO THINGS THAT ARENT"
*shrug*

[Ace Attorney 2 typos]

Oh, did you manage to see the bad end at any point? It is a sight to behold.

nah it's not so much I see it as hatred as its all that we see most of the time

from everyone
a lot of what we talk about is either "hey this game is terrible and here's a thousand reasons why" or "hey this game is good k ON TO THINGS THAT ARENT"
*shrug*

I take pains to do the exact opposite of this.