Coelacanth
@Coelacanth@feddit.nu
- Comment on Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week? 7 hours ago:
I’m going against my usual behaviour and playing multiple games at once this week. I’ve almost finished Ninja Gaiden 2 Black (White), and this will probably be my go-to way to experience NG2 going forward. It’s not quite the full ridiculousness of the original (and the added girl chapters from Sigma do kind of ruin the pacing and flow) but it just looks so good and plays so smooth at 120 FPS. With the fixes and additions from the White mod it comes close enough to a “best of both worlds” version to satisfy me, and I have enjoyed some of the Sigma inclusions like the Enma’s Fang greatsword weapon and the removal of the tunnel worm boss.
Having finally received my package I also started on Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword that I’m playing on my N3DS. It was also Itagaki-designed and released between NGB and NG2. It’s a really interesting game, using the DS held in portrait mode like a book and the stylus as the only control input. It looks absolutely fantastic for a DS game, and the gameplay is surprisingly well translated from the mainline titles. It looks and feels just like a proper Ninja Gaiden title, with familiar animations and enemies and fast combat. It also has a fantastic Ninpo system where you draw the sign of the Ninpo you’re casting with the stylus, which is very fun so far. The only issue I’m having with it is constantly worrying that I’ll scratch the touchscreen from all the stylus use.
- Comment on Psychonauts, 3D platformer with a big heart 1 day ago:
This was one of those old critics’ darlings that I never got around to playing. Should probably add it to my backlog list.
- Comment on Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Tops 4.4 million sales - IGN 1 day ago:
Lune was by far my favourite to use mechanically, the stains system just made for such fun planning of rotations. There is a lot of fun with various weapon combos too, like the Potierim support build that applies Greater Slow. I personally used her as AP and buff battery with Typhoon giving everyone max AP and refreshing greater versions of all buffs every turn. And then I used Braselim with Storm Caller and Lightning Dance to farm a tier 3 Gradient every turn.
The Genesis build is AP efficient but once you have 9 every turn it gets outdamaged by Lightning Dance (single target) and Hell (AoE). Though you wouldn’t guess so going by the astronomically poor and unclear skill descriptions.
I didn’t get Medalum either but honestly you don’t need it. The one shot builds only need it pre Cheater to start in Virtuoso, after that you can just Last Chance anyway.
- Comment on Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Tops 4.4 million sales - IGN 2 days ago:
I couldn’t beat it “fairly” either, but approaching it as a puzzle fight where you’re trying to figure out how to deal with its bullshit is also kind of fun. I ended up stunlocking it, which in itself you can do in several different ways. The game has a lot of fun things you can do with builds.
Or just Stendhal.
- Comment on Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Tops 4.4 million sales - IGN 2 days ago:
What difficulty setting were you playing on? I think Story mode post nerfs should be manageable even if you get hit a lot - at least as far as main story goes.
If you invest in HP and Defense, bring a healer and build Maelle as a tank with Egide you can also give yourself a lot of margins and sort of grind out encounters safely. There aren’t many DPS checks - if any.
Late game you can stack so much damage on Maelle that she one-shots everything, if you like.
- Comment on New moderator for this community! 4 days ago:
Make sure you play the Mankind Divided DLCs after! A Criminal Past in particular is probably the best “new Deus Ex” content they ever put out.
Also, congrats on being made a mod! I literally cannot think of a better person for the role.
- Comment on Virtual Boy: Nintendo Classics - Announcement Trailer 5 days ago:
If the recent pathetic patent filings were not enough to finally wake you up to what an awful company Nintendo are I don’t know what to tell you.
- Comment on Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week? 6 days ago:
The exploration and level design too! Nothing gives you quite the same rush of dopamine as unlocking shortcuts in Dark Souls. The first time you kick that ladder? Priceless.
- Comment on Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week? 6 days ago:
Cyberpunk modding scene is incredible, the only sad thing is that while 2.0 was an incredible patch it did break a lot of old and amazing mods. Scissors was an absolute GOAT and stuff like Vehicle Combat, Breach Takedown and Drone Companions were just incredible.
- Comment on Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week? 1 week ago:
I finished Samurai Jack: Battle Through Time and had a good time with it. Short, old-school feeling chill action game. Probably a must-play if you’re a fan of the show, otherwise keep an eye out for Epic giveaways or just pirate it if you think it looks cool. It’s not that long, probably 8 hours or so with some cool looking levels and the combat gets pretty fun once you start unlocking skills.
Being unable to resist my recent hyperfixation I went back and started playing through Ninja Gaiden 2 Black with the White mod installed. Still playing on Warrior to have an apples-to-apples comparison. 6 Chapters in now and it feels like a halfway point between vanilla NG2B and OG NG2 so far. Apart from a handful of fights actually being harder in this version it mostly is easier and less dense in fights. There are still places that are empty where there should be fights, I still turn the corner sometimes expecting a fight I remember and being met with silence instead. Having said that, not every omission is negative - the jellyfish bombs in Venice for example I didn’t really miss.
Also - and I can’t understate this - the game is fucking beautiful. Not only is it visually stunning with the lighting and the blood physics and textures and raytracing and 120 FPS - it is also impressive from an art direction standpoint. It feels just like the original, only sharper. It looks like what the original looked like in my head when I thought back on it. Sometimes remasters or remakes lose the original identity, but here they absolutely nailed it.
So far I’m having a blast with it, even though it doesn’t quite deliver that “playable cocaine” vibe that the original was constantly feeding you.
- Comment on Amid Palworld Lawsuit, Nintendo Patents a System for Summoning a Character 1 week ago:
Let’s hope so, because this sounds like it could be pretty disastrous doesn’t it? But who’s gonna afford challenging Nintendo?
- Comment on All 54 lost clickwheel iPod games have now been preserved for posterity 1 week ago:
I’ll have to look into that!
- Comment on All 54 lost clickwheel iPod games have now been preserved for posterity 1 week ago:
That reminds me I need to refresh my backups and prepare for the day the HDD gives out.
- Comment on All 54 lost clickwheel iPod games have now been preserved for posterity 1 week ago:
Anyone else still use their old clickwheel iPod or just me?
- Comment on Hollow Knight: Silksong Sparks Debate About Difficulty and Boss Runbacks 1 week ago:
I imagine a non-insignificant portion of Silksong players never played HK and just jumped on the hype bandwagon. Which makes sense considering it was built up like it would literally pay off your mortgage and reunite you with your high school sweetheart.
- Comment on Hollow Knight: Silksong Sparks Debate About Difficulty and Boss Runbacks 1 week ago:
To be fair Ninja Gaiden Black* did also have boss runbacks. It’s one of a handful of small complaints I have about what is otherwise a very close to perfect game (Chapter 9 in the military base being one of the others).
But NG2 did have boss checkpoints, yes, and was much better for it. Even the notoriously player-challenging Itagaki realised after one game that boss runbacks sucked, and this was in 2008 - Demon Souls wasn’t even out.
- Comment on Hollow Knight: Silksong Sparks Debate About Difficulty and Boss Runbacks 1 week ago:
To each their own, I always think of difficulty and challenge as proportional and relative to the individual. You can just as easily turn the question around the other way: how can you feel any satisfaction beating a Souls game using magic and summons and level ups and items when there are people who have beat it at Level 1 hitless and using a dance pad instead of controller? What’s “appropriately challenging” is way too individual for the bluntness of a single difficulty setting.
And coming up with solutions isn’t even that hard. Add some sliders to adjust the length of parry windows and i-frames on dodge rolls and whatnot and you’re probably a good part of the way there. Gameplay intact, people still go through the same motions they just have a chance now even if they don’t have the reflexes or timing for frame-perfect inputs.
- Comment on Hollow Knight: Silksong Sparks Debate About Difficulty and Boss Runbacks 1 week ago:
Yes indeed, when arcade games were the norm devs specifically designed for absurd difficulty ramp ups and cheap deaths to finagle another quarter out of you.
- Comment on Hollow Knight: Silksong Sparks Debate About Difficulty and Boss Runbacks 1 week ago:
Mandragora had the exact same difficulty system, you could adjust enemy HP, Damage and even Stamina cost at every bonfire. Great accessibility feature.
- Comment on Massive Gaming Crossover: Among Us Teams Up with Popular RPG 1 week ago:
Damn they sold out huh.
- Comment on Hollow Knight: Silksong Sparks Debate About Difficulty and Boss Runbacks 1 week ago:
Not everything that makes the game harder or more challenging to play is good game design though, and a game shouldn’t get a free pass just because its developers stated “well the game being hard is part of our artistic vision”. It’s fine to criticise things, even - or actually maybe especially - things we like. We don’t have to be binary about things, we can like something while still recognising its flaws.
Excessive runbacks for example is something that is primarily concerned with disrespecting your time as a player and even FromSoft seem to have realised that they’re not a good addition or a fun way of increasing difficulty seeing as they introduced Stakes of Marika in Elden Ring.
- Comment on Hollow Knight: Silksong Sparks Debate About Difficulty and Boss Runbacks 1 week ago:
I have no idea what people were expecting to be honest. Hollow Knight was already known for being an extremely difficult game with punishing anti-fun elements like runbacks and corpse runs. Which people had everyone played that got them so hyped for Silksong?
There’s a reason I stayed away from HK, and I will be staying away from Silksong too. Game looks great but I won’t be able to beat it and I won’t have any fun failing to do so.
- Comment on Scary games. . ? 1 week ago:
I’m thirding Alien: Isolation, one of the best horror games ever made and a really loving tribute to the movies as well. On console they even had a feature where the alien listened in on you through the microphone and would hear if you made a noise. Not sure how it played out in practice as I didn’t play it on console but sounds rad.
The Outlast games are also frequently brought up as great horror games. I haven’t played them myself but have seen them played by others. Look pretty good, though a little more jumpscare heavy. Still atmospheric though.
- Comment on 1 week ago:
What niche does this community fill that the other four to six general purpose gaming communities fail to? Stricter moderation? Only OC posts? No news article posts? What differentiates this from !letstalkaboutgames@feddit.uk for example?
- Comment on Hollow Knight: Silksong is out now on Steam - and it broke Steam servers for 15 minutes and counting now 1 week ago:
Well, I was merely speaking in general, I didn’t actually buy Silksong! 😅 The combination of being prohibitively difficult and having tons of tricky platforming (I hate platforming) means I’m just doing like with Hollow Knight and staying away to save myself the frustration.
- Comment on Hollow Knight: Silksong is out now on Steam - and it broke Steam servers for 15 minutes and counting now 1 week ago:
To each their own, but when I played through Blasphemous just recently it felt like the game had tons of design elements intended to either piss you off or deliberately waste your time or both.
- Comment on Hollow Knight: Silksong is out now on Steam - and it broke Steam servers for 15 minutes and counting now 1 week ago:
The 2D sidescroller base that’s at the foundation of Metroidvanias is quite a bit older than that, though, so I think it’s fair to call it an older genre. Even though it is fairly evergreen.
- Comment on Hollow Knight: Silksong is out now on Steam - and it broke Steam servers for 15 minutes and counting now 1 week ago:
Buying on GOG is always the play whenever the option is available.
- Comment on Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week? 1 week ago:
If you can stomach it it’s still for sale on Epic I’m pretty sure. Otherwise yeah, Ms Fitgirl provides, and I did use her services this time.
- Comment on Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week? 2 weeks ago:
I think 2 is almost equally or more of a masterpiece as 3 when considering how extremely rare truly branching path story games are.