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faeiri-tft · 6 months

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PLEASE do the toontown online rant i want it so badly

this post kinda got away from me, and by "got away from me" i mean this 3000 word toontown rant is Part One. there will be a Part Two to this later in which i actually talk about the fanservers i wanted to talk about. anyway let's go

toontown online (tto) was a children's mostly-turn-based subscription MMO released in 2003. after a few years of obviously being on life support, disney gave a one-month notice that tto (and several other games) would be closing on september 19th, 2013. on the same day the game closed, the fan-run server toontown rewritten (ttr) was announced (with multiple other fanservers/fangames/reimaginings being established since), and is a few months away from outliving the original game

see, one thing about tto that allowed fanservers to crop up so quickly and easily was that it had, um, interesting choices. very interesting choices. like, "kids could use a code injector to turn their backyards into giant mashed-together nightmarescapes"-level choices

youtube

(loose video description: a rabbit toon running around a chaotic mismash of rooms, obstacles, and npcs that Should Not Be There. audio caption: Evanescence's "Bring Me To Life".)

but ok let's talk about the actual game first.

toontown online (tto)

the game starts with you creating your player character - you can pick from eventually-9 species, a couple body types, and 2 dozen preset colors. the gender code is a spaghetti nightmare but you won't learn this until the fanservers come about so don't worry about it. you're then taken to the Toontorial, which explains maybe 20% of the game's mechanics before setting you loose into the main game

the toontorial also gives you the basic "plot", such as it is: Toontown is suddenly* under attack by a bunch of boring businessrobots called the Cogs. their goal is to turn toontown into a dreary gray featureless corporate hell; their business activities are so boring that they're physically painful to be around. luckily, they can't take a joke, so the toons have figured out how to defeat them: by playing pranks on them until they laugh so hard they Explode

*originally, the game installer had a little animation giving a backstory for the Cogs' creation. this was never referenced in game, removed pretty quickly, and i think even the devs kinda forgot it existed

that's...pretty much the whole story! in that context, your toon progresses through all of toontown, helping some mostly-pretty-interchangeable shopkeepers, reclaiming buildings from the cogs, eating ice cream, etc. occasionally, the cogs would Come Up With New Tricks (read: major content update) and the toons would Find A Way To Fight Back (read: same major content update). that was the closest thing to Plot, unless you count "the devs scheduled a bunch of invasions of high-tier cogs right before the game's closure". but...i doubt most the kids really expected a Plot. mickey mouse was there

the gameplay:

the Free Account

there were two...pretty different approaches to playing toontown online. when the game launched, there was a 3-day free trial to the entire game, after which you got kicked entirely until you subscribed. at some point, this was changed so that the first area, Toontown Central (TTC), was Always Free - you could do all of that area's quests/"taskline" and limited activities, indefinitely, and in theory this would make you beg your parents for the rest of the game

i have no idea if this actually got more subscriptions or not. from what i can tell it just spawned more warrior cats

(source)

there were. a Lot of warrior cats. there were some other social activities, too, such as Fashion Shows (with your limited range of clothes) and Begging Subscribed Players To Summon Cog Buildings To TTC and Getting Chat Banned. ...however, as one of the subscription kids i didn't really interact with this side of the game, so i'm not the best person to talk about it

2. the Paid Account

mmm look at those crisp clear graphics. hell yes

a subscription account gave you access to this whole map, along with all these areas' tasklines. to progress through the game, you must complete a variety of "ToonTasks" for the Toon Resistance (it's called that. their catchphrase is "Toons of the World, Unite!". you were giving disney money for this). these reward you by increasing your max health (your "Laff Points"), slowly unlocking more combat options, and sending you to different, higher-difficulty areas of toontown

some of these tasks were...longer than others. generally, though, they all boiled down to: "just go fight some cogs"

combat:

(source)

toontown battles are turn-based: the players use their attacks ("gags") first, and then any surviving cogs attack you with, usually, office equipment and puns thereof (unless the cog is e.g. a Loan Shark, in which case they can just fucking bite you). if you defeat a cog, it explodes; if the cog defeats you, you "go sad" and are sent back to the safety of the playground, lose your gag inventory, and can't leave until you heal.

early on, most your battles are 1v1, but later on almost everything is a multiplayer 4-ish-v-4.

an...interesting feature here in the game's early days was that you could only Type Your Own Words to someone who shared their "friend code" with you IRL. otherwise, you had to use this thing:

(source)

you had a set list of phrases you could string together, which generally covered most the things you wanted to say. but it could get frustrating when you wanted to have a real conversation with your toontown friends! so...as the source above mentions, people obviously found ways around the system. turns out that if you let players move objects around their houses, they will use that to Draw Letters and pass their friend code along regardless

eventually - before the warrior cats, of course - disney presumably realized this system was pretty goofy (🥁) , so the game got a real chat, albeit one that functioned on a very strict whitelist. my favorite is that it didn't let you type numbers, however you could just say won too tree for hive etc. like. disney i really don't know what to tell you. anyway

(isn't he charming)

cogs come in levels 1-12, with levels displayed above their heads, and as you'd expect their damage output and HP increase with their level. however, the game doesn't...actually show you cog HP? instead they have a little colored light on their chest that fades from green to red until they explode. you see numbers on all the damage you do, and you see your own HP/laff, but never the cogs'. also lategame cogs are Too Tall For You To See Their Level once they line up for battle (which isn't actually that bad but it's funny). there's a formula for HP per level, but it's never mentioned in-game. i guess someone can teach it to you but then you have to watch them type "a level tin cog has won tree too health" and is that really worth it

(as you can tell i just…don't get this. "my kid is practicing arithmetic with toontown!" - marketing angle expressly denied by god. the stealth edutainment was right there)

anyway! in theory, you have seven base combat options ("gag tracks"), which combine in a variety of ways:

toon-up, which restores your teammates' health;

trap, which does guaranteed high damage but only if someone uses lure;

lure, which stuns the cogs for a few turns and is the only way to make trap work

sound, which does low damage to every cog;

throw, which does medium-high-ish damage to one cog; multiple throws combined give percentage combo damage, and hitting a lured cog will also add percentage "knockback damage";

squirt, which is exactly like throw but less damage;

and drop, which does high damage but cannot hit lured cogs, and has low accuracy unless you hit the cog with something else first

each gag track has 6 levels, which you unlock by using that gag track a bunch. you can't carry as many of the high levels with you - i mean, putting one piano in your backpack makes perfect sense, but two is just silly, right

a few years into the game's lifespan, level 7s were added - these were huge AOE that you could regain with every 500 track EXP. there was also something called "organic gags" to promote the please-log-in-every-day gardening system

every player starts with throw and squirt, and throughout the game you slowly unlock four more gag tracks. your choices are permanent: once you have your six tracks, you're locked out of the seventh forever.

in theory, all of this opens up a huge variety of combat options!

in practice, the battle strategy looks something like this:

use sound

as mentioned, almost all of lategame will be 4v4 battles, which means sound will almost always outdamage everything on earth. you don't even need four foghorns (the highest normal sound gag) to break 200 AOE damage, and the highest health a cog EVER has is 200*. and two of the boss battles can reward you with gag restocks and heals that you can use mid-battle with no consequences (other than having to grind for those rewards a bunch). and failing THAT, you can just...ration your foghorns and take 2 turns to clear a set of cogs, interspersed with healing.

(*okay there was something called "v2.0 cogs" but they were...strange, and we just used sound anyway)

sure, once level 7s were added you could use those occasionally. and you could fall back on lure+throw if you didn't want to use your sound restocks. but even then, for most of tto's existence there was something called the "knockback bug" which. well. just look at it

(link for transcript. it's tvtropes sorry)

if you are a target-audience eight-year-old this translates to "lure + throw will only do enough damage if the cogs Feel like it." like it's really just insult to injury at this point. this was the result of One misplaced variable and was not fixed until the game closed

in the tto era, if you didn't have sound, you were kinda doomed to be kicked out of every fight forever

(bonus fun fact: there were Four entire battle themes and they were 40-second midi loops. let me out)

the bosses:

each of the four cog departments has a Boss Cog. to face off against them, you have to assemble a cog disguise and collect enough merits/stock options/whatever to be allowed into the boss's office.

(pictured: your convincing disguise)

when you enter, your disguise pops off due to Reasons, and you have to fight through...a bunch of waves of normal cogs. it's basically a really long normal battle. once the minions are dealt with, you have to, inexplicably, do a live-action battle against the boss themself:

youtube

(loose video description: four toons defeating the CFO by using magnet cranes to hit him in the face with safes for 32 seconds.)

the live-action rounds aren't supposed to go this quickly, but it's still...kinda strange? certain reoccurring game areas require Parkour, but there are no battles like this outside of the Four bosses. the CFO's room is the only place you see these cranes and they have A Lot Going On. the other 3 bosses have their own unique weird mechanics. before the first boss was added we neither had nor needed the ability to Jump. it's just weird

once you've defeated the boss, you're given a reward of varying usefulness (the best/most unbalanced reward type is Unites, which are a free heal or gag restock you can do inside or outside of battle. essentially lategame toons can simply choose not to die. riv2u etc.)

and, um. then you get some more merits/stock options/whatever and do it again. and again. and again. and again. and agai

the grind:

so the thing is that tto was a subscription mmo. every addition to the game had to be measured, above all, in terms of "how can we best get kids to beg their parents to give us money." this especially shows in the suit grind:

(source/source)

you have to defeat each boss 78 times in order to get all their laff points - and as you proceed, you have to defeat an increasing amount of cogs to even be allowed into the boss (although once you max you get in for free).

by far the easiest way is to run through the designated HQ facilities - basically, cog fights interspersed with some platforming or minigames. you only collect your merits/whatever at the Very End of the facility. the only way to increase what a facility gives you is if your last battle ends during an "invasion" - a timed period where One Specific Cog replaces all street cogs, usually summoned with boss rewards.

the sellbot HQ grind isn't so bad. bossbot HQ - the endest-game HQ - frequently requires you to do an hour-long facility and on six separate occasions you have to do seven of them. if the invasion ends before your final battle, you have to sit around until someone summons another. if you lose your internet connection because it's 2008, or if your parents make you come to dinner, or if hacking or the game's general bugginess cause a server reset because you're probably in the busiest district for the invasion bonus, you have spent that Entire Hour On Nothing. the CEO (bossbot cog boss) probably also takes an hour because you and your fellow players are 10

this shit, combined with laff points locked behind gardening (time-gated), racing and golfing (multiplayer minigames with absurd requirements), and fishing (RNG-based with some fish being absurdly rare. i watched my mom fish for one every day for a month), meant that maxing a toon took Years, if you managed it ever.

it wasn't, um. it wasn't good

ok so what else is wrong with this game:

i had "aged out of the game" (lol) by the early '10s, so i'm not the best person to do a writeup of the hacking/scripting situation of those days. that said, what i'm going to do is give you a few examples, and i want you to just...look at them

(source)

(source). early '10s youtube was funny i'm trying to decide if i miss it

(source). fun thing to note here is that other players had collision, so a swarm of t-posing toons could just barricade the gag shop if they wanted to

youtube

(video description: toon who has Replaced His Head Model With An Anime Logo throwing thousands of jellybeans at everyone) (cw mild flashing just in case? and also the feather headband accessory)

i should note that the Bring Me To Life vid i started with was client-side, meaning only the player could see their technicolor hellscape. this guy's face was server-side. i do Not Think you should be able to do that

youtube

(video description: a player demonstrating use of a bot to get into the nutty river district, followed by other players using it to go to different game areas)

the above video was posted on august 17th, 2013. if you don't want to watch an Unregistered Hypercam 3 recording at about 5 frames per second, what's going on here is:

the player goes to a specific location and says a specific speedchat phrase.

a bot toon teleports to their location and provides some prompts on how to use it

the player tells the bot, via speedchat, to teleport to the (currently closed from the outside) busiest district so the player can follow

these "taxi toons" were server-sided, persisted across server resets, were made by a future fanserver dev, had younger kids referring to them as a "glitch" as if this were something that could Accidentally Happen, and stayed functional until the game closed

like...a lot of the "hacking" was just baby's first script download. this one - afaict also created by the laughing man head guy - is like...the fact that after years of no substantial game updates, someone effectively programmed their own "QOL feature" (note: not actually good for the poor mid-00s server being turned into a clown car) into a silly disney MMO and it just fucking sat there for a year is just. it's just.

i don't know what this is. this is not Playing The Game Toontown Online. this is nothing. this is everything. there are comments from 2013 on some of these videos saying stuff like "hackers killed toontown", but your game cannot have this happen if it is not already dying

and, like...it was. i'm not sure how many moderators there were by this point, but at the very end of tto, the number of active devs was One. the original devteam recently brought this up at the 20th anniversary celebration: devs just...slowly started getting pulled from the game, one at a time. there were a few updates after bossbot HQ - Field Offices, which i've basically never heard anything good about in their tto form ever; the Silly Meter, a yearly event...thing whose main function was to add unskippable dancing-inanimate-object cutscenes to your street battles; Parties, which...yknow parties were okay actually. i accept parties. but they weren't exactly a Major Game Update like the ones that had come before. in 2011 we gained the ability to Wear Hats. in 2012 the test server got some actual QOL updates that never made it to the main game; the final test server update was some maintenance in february, and then nothing for 18 months. disney was not providing enough resources to address the scripting because disney was not providing enough resources to address toontown. imagine being the last dev standing on an MMO that was older than some of its players, was losing its business model to mobile gaming, and spent most of its life falling apart at the seams. just imagine it, for a second

it couldn't have kept going, not like this.

on august 20, 2013, the closing announcement came: we had a month left of toontown online. the test server shut immediately; subscription refunds went out, and the game became actually F2P for the month; the part of the announcement that went like "we're shifting our focus to other games!" made a bunch of twelve-year-olds hate club penguin as if club penguin wouldn't also close in a few years; all the holiday events went off at once; and...

there wasn't a "thanks for playing!" popup. everyone online just got kicked, all at once. it was finally over

hey wait.

#toontown #toontown online #tto #tft talks #tft stuff #<- this goes in that tag i think #this was like. enrichment. thank you

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aerithium · 2 months

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FFVII: Rebirth Review!

This review does contain spoilers!

★ Score: 11/10 ★ Date Finished: March 15th, 2024 ★ Final Thoughts: This game is a beautiful remake and reimagining of my favorite portions of the original FFVII. The purists probably hate it because its not the exact remake they might have wanted but this game might be the best game I have ever played. The story in this game feels brand new, despite being fairly the same as the original. I was constantly filled with wonder and excitement to play even though I technically knew everything that would happen, a feat that is rather impressive when creating a remake. The devs blew it out of the water with the character and party interactions, making them even better than before. Each character not only feels important to Cloud but also other party members such as Red XIII and Aerith having a close friendship, Aerith and Tifa having fun with one another like teenage girls, Tifa and Yuffie acting like siblings to one another, and Barrett and Yuffie having an adorable father/daughter like bond. It makes the course of the story even more impacting and sometimes gut-wrenching as you realize that not only you as the player adore these characters, but they also adore one another. Cloud's characterization in this game is also phenomenal and his personality constantly shifting as he slow loses his identity over the course of the game was chilling to watch. I could ramble forever about the characters in this game, as I find that each one of them holds a deep place in my heart. The gameplay of this game is also phenomenal for many reasons. The open world is extremely expansive and can be rather rewarding, though occasionally overwhelming. It was hard to balance story and exploration but once I figured out the best way to do things, I found both rather enjoyable and they balanced out well. I ended with about 84 hours on the game and still have a lot of content to explore. A new mechanic is also introduced so that the player can track their bond with each party member, something that I enjoyed as I was attempting for a specific character for the dates. The side quests in this game are also really fun for the most part, I didn't love all of them but there were plenty that made me laugh, smile, and sometimes tear up. Finally for gameplay, the combat is much like remake's but it only gets better as each character unlocks new abilities and can be played in many different ways thus having the potential to make characters very strong! The music is also crazy, hearing my favorite tracks from the original game be remade was such an enjoyable experience but the new music in the game is also really nice and I am eagerly waiting for the OST to drop online. Overall this game is a gem among modern day games and the devs did a perfect job both remaking and reimagining all of the segments of the game, if it tells you anything, I cried about 16 times while playing through this game. Many of these being at the endings as the devs created such a beautiful, heart-wrenching, unique yet familiar ending to this installment of the trilogy. I found myself reaching moments that I had looked forward to seeing in the game and whispering to myself "No no no I don't want to do it" I was terrified and I loved it. There are things in this game that I could nitpick if I wanted to but it doesn't feel worth it because the overarching final impression is that it is truly perfection, while I wasn't happy with everything it was all so minute that its not worth trying to remember and mention. I'm probably bias about this game but I think I just witnessed perfection.

#final fantasy vii #final fantasy 7 #final fantasy vii rebirth #final fantasy 7 rebirth #ff7 rebirth #ffvii rebirth #rebirth spoilers #aerith gainsborough #cloud strife #tifa lockhart #yuffie kisaragi #game review #spoilers #i cried a lot

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simillionaire · 5 months

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ts4 savefile open call ˗ˏˋ looking for talented & passionate simmers ´ˎ˗

You may have heard about our savefile already, but if not, I'd like to introduce you to one of the coolest savefiles already in the works. Our values for this playing experience are diversity, accessibility, aesthetics, and detailed storytelling. We have a creator team of 8 already and are looking to grow even more. If you are curious, read this post to learn more. Below, you can find brief descriptions of the kinds of roles we are looking to fill on our team. Everyone is volunteering a small amount of time to work on this save throughout the week, especially our admin team who has gone above and beyond to create a beautiful system that ensures the process is simple and stress-free. If you ever wanted to create a savefile but found yourself feeling overwhelmed, this is the perfect opportunity to achieve that otherwise daunting goal! We hope to make an impact in the ts4 community and gift its players with something any and everyone can join. - - - directors - requires a portfolio submission and/or past experience depending on the responsibilities

ꕥ graphic designer(s) - people or someone who can help us design graphics for save-related content. ideal for someone who loves creating cute graphics and visual storytelling. examples of past work is required but no professional design experience is necessary.

ꕥ director of partnerships - someone who can help us establish mutually beneficial partnerships with groups and people inside the ts4 content creation world. also responsible for validating that credits are correct and that no creator's terms and conditions are being violated. ideally, someone who likes engaging with influencers and players within the ts4 community.

ꕥ director of photography - someone who can capture still and motion visuals directly from the game. must have a gaming computer and the ability to use g-shades. perfect for someone who loves capturing content and visual storytelling. examples of past work required.

ꕥ build director - someone who can make magic happen in build with limited access to in-game content. will partner with storytellers to bring community lots to life in a way that is playable, accessible, and interesting. perfect for someone who can build a castle, spaceship, motel, etc from just base game content alone. example of past work required. ꕥ add-on director - someone who can reimagine pack features such as holidays, clubs, eco-systems, etc... to execute a more detailed world. will partner with the story team to create meaningful gameplay features that complement to narrative of the world. perfect for someone who is detail-oriented and loves creating clubs/holidays. no portfolio is required, just lots of passion and commitment.

specialists - contribute to the save via the gallery and work at your own pace ꕥ build specialists - partners with the storytellers to spice up and customize gallery builds to reflect the story and lifestyles of created sims and families. great for those who love interior decorating and build mode.

ꕥ CAS specialists - partners with the storytellers to dress up and refine created sims in CAS Mode to make sure each outfit and tiny detail reflects their unique character. great for those who love CAS.

ꕥ story specialists - creates households and family histories in live mode. great for those who love storytelling and gameplay. must be prepared to partner with others across teams as they collaborate on bringing your vision to life. - - -

any questions? message me any time and I'll be sure to answer. interested in applying for any of our openings? message me here or request to join our private fb group and message an admin with your desired role. interested in following the development of this save, but not necessarily interested in joining as a creator? you are also welcome to join our fb group! we post weekly updates there and would love to keep you in the loop. lastly, know a simmer who may fit any of these roles really well? please send this post to them! we're excited to grow our small but mighty family into something epic.

#reblog to show support please!#maxis match #ts4 simblr #simblr #the sims 4 #ts4 gameplay #ts4 legacy #ts4 save file #savefile #sims save file #ts4 save #ts4 #the sims community #sims community #DiverseCity Save

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free-chozo-hrt · 1 year

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The Metroid game most badly in need of a remake:

Bear with me here. I've got some Ideas about this game.

Metroid Prime Hunters is, for sure, one of the black sheep of the Metroid series. Its premise and game structure are pretty different from every other game, since it puts a large focus on multiplayer in a series defined by isolated single player experiences. It's hard to get a hold of, and it's not as fondly remembered as the rest of the Prime games. But why?

Admittedly I haven't personally seen all that the game has to offer, so don't consider this a full review. However, I have a copy on DS, and I've played enough to develop some insights about the game:

Hunters must be driven primarily by its multiplayer gameplay. Though I never got to experience it, I've heard good things about the pvp combat from those who have.

The game does have a pretty significant singleplayer campaign, but it feels very half-baked. Maps are supposedly borrowed straight from multiplayer arenas, making the layout of some parts of the game a bit unintuitive and confusing to navigate. Upgrades are also borrowed from multiplayer, and come in the form of alternate arm cannon weapons... and not much else. The adventure on each planet you visit is pretty repetitive. It didn't offer enough original material to keep me engaged until the end of the game, so I never finished.

The game is severely held back by its original hardware. For a full 3D adventure game where it's important to recognize details in your environment, the low resolution of the DS screen makes that task difficult. The aiming system using the touch pad is creative, but holding your DS in that position can be hard on the hands for long play sessions.

The game has plenty of shortcomings, so what good do I see in it? Well, Metroid Prime Hunters attempted some really unique ideas, and I'm intrigued by what would happen if they were executed better.

For starters, like I mentioned, the game's competitive multiplayer is well remembered. This isn't the only time the Metroid series has attempted multiplayer experiences, either pvp or co-op, but none of them are particularly well received by fans. That's understandable given the nature of Metroid games, and what we come to expect from them. But I'm fascinated by the possibility of a full-featured Metroid competitive shooter with a lot of effort put into it.

That brings me to my next point: the characters. Any good competitive shooter needs a diverse cast of player characters to choose from. And oh boy, the characters introduced by Metroid Prime Hunters are probably my favorite part of the game. It's the first game to put forth the idea that Samus shares the galaxy with other bounty hunters like her, and it gives us a whole gallery of freaky aliens for the roles, all with unique backstories and abilities. And then they never get used for anything outside this game! Wasted potential! I want to know more about them!

Let me lay out my ideas for a dream reimagining of Metroid Prime Hunters:

It needs to have fantastic online pvp. I'm no expert on the genre myself, but something in the same team shooter vein as Splatoon, TF2, or Overwatch is what I'm envisioning. You need to be able to start matchmaking and get right into a fun, well-balanced match whenever you want.

The characters need a wide range of abilities with very different playstyles to suit everyone's tastes. In fact, it wouldn't hurt to give them some personality too: voice lines would be welcome. Samus, of course, would take her place among the playable cast.

Because I want to have my cake and eat it too, this game should have a great singleplayer campaign. It doesn't have to be too long or complicated, but it should at least be creative and dynamic the whole way. It would star Samus, of course, but imagine the story potential if the other hunters were allowed to be more than just boss encounters, and actually contribute to the narrative in their own way.

So, what do you think? Do you think the ideas behind Metroid Prime Hunters have a lot of potential? Do you want to see how they could be executed on modern hardware, with a bit more care and ambition? Do you think Metroid is the right choice for Nintendo to branch out into the more mature competitive shooter genre? (Can you tell this idea excites me?)

#metroid #metroid prime hunters

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amunisence-art · 3 months

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Okay so I know amnesia the dark descent got a VR mod and the chances of bunker and any game before it getting a VR version are not great...

But what if a new VR game was made? One that took iconic moments from previous games and have them reimagined in VR maybe kinda mini game format (I'm looking at you, "paint the man. cut the lines")

Moments I'd potentially like to be included in VR:

Paint the man cut the lines do i even need to list this

I always loved interacting with the machinery in AMFP so doing stuff like that in VR could be cool

Interacting with the pigmen perhaps?

the tank from Rebirth idc if it was short sequence

MAYBE WE COULD PLAY AS ALEXANDER BEFORE HE GOT BANISHED idk that just popped into my head

Maybe some scenes from Daniel's childhood like Henry Bedloe, reading Hazel a story, that nyctophobic moment he had as a child. dunno if there would even be any gameplay here but I'm just throwing it out there

Agrippa and Weyer stuff ofc

I wanna use the orb I wanna use the orb

Bunker but more like the beginning part in the trenches

Mayhaps we could play as Justine setting up the Cabinet of Perturbation? Or playing through certain segments? Or playing through her time with the suitors? Idk but I just think it would be a lot of fun to play as her again.

Other Frictional moments that AREN'T amnesia specific:

Clarence messing with Philip's brain in Penumbra Black Plague. I just think that would be so cool

Maybe the worm chase sequence in Overture? Ya know with the pickaxe (I feel like it would be cool to use the tools in VR at the very least)? I'd mention spiders but idk if anyone could handle the giant spiders in VR

As for SOMA, we could get our brains scanned in VR and watch our dopplegangers go through an existential crisis :)

Sound off on any other Amnesia or plain Frictional moments that NEED to be in here that I missed. If some of the ideas sound dumb, I'm up past my bedtime but I NEEDED to get this all down.

Yes I finished watching a playthrough of Help Wanted 2 if you can't tell

#penumbra #penumbra Overture #SOMA #penumbra black plague #amnesia the dark descent #amnesia rebirth #frictional games #amnesia the bunker #amnesia a machine for pigs #The SOMA one was a JOKE bc I can't remember SOMA very well rn #I was really trying to think of things that wouldn't be blatent help wanted knockoffs but I'm tired

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autolenaphilia · 4 months

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Shadow Warrior (1997)

Shadow Warrior is a 1997 first-person shooter developed by 3D Realms. It’s essentially their immediate follow-up to their previous game, Duke Nukem 3D released the previous year. It’s very similar to their previous game in many ways, it’s another first-person shooter using the Build engine. A lot of what I said about Duke Nukem 3D applies to this game.

What is more distinct about Shadow Warrior is that the developers at 3D Realms were more familiar with the Build engine and thus able to push its limits even further. The faking of room-over-room is more sophisticated in this game. For example, water surfaces are now transparent, hiding the teleports going from the surface to below water even better. And Shadow Warrior might be the first FPS to feature sections where you could drive vehicles and use gun turrets. Keep in mind, this was four years before Halo. And weapons feature alternate fire modes that you could use by right-clicking, another innovation that would become standard in the years to come. Another minor innovation that would become ubiquitous is that there are useable ladders.

There isn’t much else to say, it’s similar solid boomer shooter action compared to 3D Realms’ previous game. If you liked Duke Nukem 3D, you’ll probably enjoy Shadow Warrior.

And liking Duke Nukem 3D might also mean you are able to stomach some painful 90s cis white dude humor, which kinda is a prerequisite for enjoying Shadow Warrior too.

It’s honestly quite a bit worse, mostly because this game ends orientalist/racist humor to the mix. If Duke Nukem is a parody of 80s action movies, Shadow Warrior is a parody of kung-fu movies, and also pop culture ninjas and anime. If that mix sounds like a weird mash-up of Chinese and Japanese culture, that’s becauseit literally is. This game stars Lo Wang, a horny old chinese man who seems right out of a Hong Kong martials arts movie, but actually he is a ninja who lives and works in Japan. He even has a katana and shurikens as weapons. He is voiced by a white man* doing a stereotypical chinese accent. It’s just as stereotypical and offensive as you might think, and popular white American impressions of Chinese and Japanese pop culture are mixed together into an one big “Asian” joke. Lo Wang’s name is basically just one recurring dick joke. The sexy naked women from Duke Nukem return, but this time the sprites are drawn in an anime-style.

(*The white man in question was the late voice actor John Galt. It turns out the real answer to “Who is John Galt?” is “the voice of Lo Wang in Shadow Warrior” although Galt was born before Atlas Shrugged was written.)

It’s no surprise that Duke Nukem has endured as a character, being memed about to this day, and people like Clint LGR or Gianni Matragrano have great fun doing their Jon St. John as Duke Nukem impression in youtube videos, while Lo Wang is kinda forgotten. If a gaming youtuber did a Lo Wang impression today it would be a scandal, and rightly so. This is despite Shadow Warrior unlike Duke Nukem having a succesful reboot series starting in 2013, with the third game in the reboot series released as recently in 2022. But the 2013 reboot reimagined Lo Wang pretty much beyond all recognition, precisely because of all the racial stereotyping in the original.

The original game does have some solid action gameplay though. And I do appreciate some of the gunplay in this game. You get a missile launcher, basically the standard FPS RPG weapon, except one of its alternate firemode is literally a tactical nuke. You can easily kill yourself with it, and the only viable method of using it is firing it and hiding behind a corner to avoid getting hurt by the blast. It’s amazing. I can’t fully condemn an FPS game that allows you to carry and use nukes. To quote Lo Wang himself when he picks a nuke up. “I like nuclear weapons” (in games).

The original Shadow Warrior is now available free of charge on GOG. And you can use dosbox to emulate MS-DOS, but a better alternative is the sourceport VoidSW which is based on and is included with downloads of the Duke Nukem 3D sourceport eduke32.

#shadow warrior #my writings #shadow warrior 1997 #game review

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notmuchtoconceal · 4 months

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i liked shattered memories on the wii a lot when it came out.

the other western silent games didn't look interesting, cause they seemed to be trying to fill in lore details to appease a rational, linear sensibility, and i feel the intrigues upon intrigues and deep immersion in the esoteric which marks the storytelling of the original four is far more interesting for the ways it forces you to study and think for yourself.

i never liked things that spoon-fed me easy answers, like it was a cute lil bedtime story to make me stop asking questions and go to sleep.

the other western silent hill games looked like they only had a superficial understanding of what silent hill was about, y'know -- rust, grime, busty nurse monsters, adversarial platonic solids, and akira yamaoka oscillating between bouncy seductive vocal rock tracks and hard dissonant industrial soundscapes of infinitely unfurling pain.

shattered memories came out in a time before the reboot cycle had fully cemented itself as the norm and the phrase "reimagining" did not yet have to be sectioned off by the latent treachery of a scary airquote.

think at the time i still predominately assessed the worth of a story by how well it was fully explicable to the conscious.

i'm not sure why i arbitrarily decided this is what made for a good story. think young men just know they need to set standards for themselves to trick themselves into upholding their own values, but then wise young men become unwise by lacking understanding of their own motives and thinking their games need to extend to other people.

since that's how i felt about stories, and silent hill's story was about capturing the emotional experience of being a traumatized girl with a split psyche extensively gaslit and tortured by her overbearing witchcraft-practicing religious mother -- but like... you're experiencing it from her adopted dad's perspective who is a rational writer who very heartfeltly and passionately wanders around in a fog of obscurity being confused and lied-to and strung along ... it was too deep, bro.

there is a narrative here, and because it is fundamentally about the occult, you cannot engage with its mechanics directly, and so there are layers and layers of subjective emotional entanglement piled on-top, and to parse the structure you must parse the character, for the whole will only be revealed in the simultaneous mastery of its component parts.

so, at the time, the idea of telling a different story using the original silent hill's setting and characters, but with a different gameplay style and aesthetic ... something more in-keeping with the rational, conscious, therapeutic. that seemed more interesting to begin with, for it would seem to almost promise something more original, and ultimately it does.

truth is, i don't care what -- if any -- relation shattered memories might have to the original. metatextually, it makes perfect sense. cheryl is a woman now on her third life, her father is dead.

throw her in another backwards world. "the real world".

why is her therapist the kauffman character? why is the sleezy doc who got alessa's nurse hooked on dope now her shrink? why is he browbeating her so hard to listen to him at the end? throwing his drink and insisting she listen, insisting her mother isn't a monster?

is this capturing something of how cheryl's past medical experiences were all marked by manipulation and deceit to keep her shackled to her abuser? is this another man in another time who only shares a name earnestly pleading with a self-destructive girl to come out of her cocoon?

if the two share no relation whatsoever, what is implied, and what do we suggest, by the incidental feature of them sharing a name and face? we read forward into this, but should we also read this backward?

how can we not, when it posits itself as an "official" entry?

You know for yourself the world of a narrative is an imprinting of the mind of its maker. If there's a reality beyond the template which pressed it, those are secrets which inform what has been made and are mere tendrils of probability. When you are in the world of the narrative, you are bringing things to it, making it more real to you as you imprint on it.

What a corporation says doesn't mean anything.

It'll effect things like house style, how they regularize flavor text, what details they prioritize going forward -- until they find something better.

Why would a current property holder know more than the original maker? Why do you think it makes sense to normalize living in an alternate world where the foundational work of inspiration is now merely pseudo-canonical. To whom are you pledging your loyalty?

Does it please you to think of the status-quo as some splendid garden?

A decapitation there, an uprooting here.

We're all invested in the fun little violence of keeping things the same.

Sit there and think about how you can do violence ~

simply by choosing to do nothing at all!

#silent hill #shattered memories #wii #metatextuality #cheryl?#sweetie?#*continues to stare into the toilet*

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melien · 5 months

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Hi love bug,

New follower - just wondering if you could give me a rundown on the fletcher family

🩷🩷

Hey dear, thank you for the ask, it means a lot to me to hear your interest in my sims! I love rambling about them, hopefully it won't be too confusing because I can talk a lot sometimes and overexplain lol.

So the Fletchers were my very first ts3 legacy back in 2015-17, and I played with them for 10 generations. I especially got attached to what was initially generations 5-8, and when this happens I adopt them as my OCs and they transcend the legacy (I consider the legacy a first draft of their story if it makes sense, and then try to make them into something bigger and more detailed). So I ended up developing these guys further, expanding their universe with more characters, worldbuilding, and writing side stories, drabbles and even attempted novels about them. This is why I have decided to once again do a gameplay with them, starting from this point in time where Keith is a teenager (I thought of starting from the teenage years of Logan, Carrie, Eileen and Lara, but still haven't had everything figured out there and was more inspired for Keith. But someday I could maybe do a little side thingy about their youth).

This gameplay is like reimagining them once again, basically a simplified version of their current canon stories combined with some spontaneous sims chaos and seeing what it offers me. The legacy is almost 8 years old and a lot has changed in these years, even some characters, their spouses and family members (and I feel like they really grew together with me and continue growing), but it still contains some interesting ideas about them that would be nice to revisit and reuse. I just love cosy little gameplays when I'm already attached to the characters and they're close to my heart, nothing quite beats it. And I figure this is the best way to share all these years of character development and reignite my inspiration without it being a big ambitious project, where I'd likely burn out.

I would link a family tree but it's still a WIP because some side characters/stories/pairings are still undecided. I might think about creating a character page and will share it when it's ready. But I honestly love this process and how there's always something to add and expand on.

#there were also earlier generations of the fletchers that were also quite fun #but right now I'm thinking what to do with them #because in the character verse I kind of compressed 10 generations into just 3-4 relevant ones #and tried to adjust them tentatively to the realistic timeline (so logan and carrie are 60-70s keith is 80-90s and so on)#this is also because I wanted to make references to pop culture #so I guess if anyone from the earlier guys pops up they'd be distant relatives or it would be an AU or idek yet

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affable-square · 9 months

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Spirit Tracks is one of those Zelda games that I would love to see reworked into an indie game. The groundwork is solid, but the details are thin. The story and concept is so damn charming*, but the gameplay is subpar at best (the Snow Temple was the best of the bunch, with proper boomerang tutorials and reinforcement puzzles), but the controls were miserable due to excessive touch screen and microphone usage. The side quests were a mixed lot - I liked carrying passengers and supplies in the train - stamp and rabbit collecting feel like standard Zelda fare (although hiding new sword moves behind them feels like they couldn't quite figure out how to match story and gameplay) - the treasure system and train upgrade system felt very out of place and the inflated cost of the items is the same way. There is an implied focus on treasure collecting (signs in every town for the treasure raffle, treasures as one of the main rewards for mini-games and optional puzzles, treasures for sale in every shop), but which treasure you get is random, and they are only used to upgrade your base train's health (and aesthetics). Once you buy one complete set, the only thing left to do with them is sell the remainder. No NPCs collect or even mention the treasures. More than half of the side quests are only unlocked after the third dungeon, which is narratively an awkward place, as more of the stakes are revealed at the same time. The dungeon bosses have no lore or build up, and the final boss suffers from the kind of design creep that make Twilight Princess' final boss rush look reasonable. The connection between Link and Zelda is well done - probably the best in the series - and it's absolutely carrying the positive feeling that this game left me with, but mechanically it just isn't good. I want them to reimagine this one as a full game and give it the love it needs. It deserved it.

Also I really liked it.

*The non-charming part is the implication that the Hylians from the Great Sea took over the land that had existing races and just... did some imperialism. Whoopsie. I know it's a handwave moment, and they just need to set up the big bad in a quick and easy to understand way, but.... Yikes. Unfortunate.

#the legend of zelda #spirit tracks #Loz #Review from some kind of little guy #legend of zelda spirit tracks

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zaptap · 9 months

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i absolutely think we're due for unova remakes very soon, likely as the next game, but idk if they'll announce them before sv dlc is out of the way. seems like more of a pokemon day "this is what we're throwing out there this year" thing

seen people clinging to the idea that they do remakes every other gen but, so far, ALL first-time remakes (i.e. not lgpe) have happened 2 hardware generations after the originals

gb (rgby) to gba (frlg)

gbc (gsc) to ds (hgss)

gba (rse) to 3ds (oras)

ds (dpp and bwbw2) to switch (bdsp.... and _b_w?)

the ds was just when they started cramming 2 pokemon gens into one hardware gen so now that we're getting into ds remakes they'll probably happen every pokemon gen now

and if they continue having ilca or whoever churn out unambitious remakes then maybe game freak will keep putting legends games out around the same time.

arceus felt to me like it had pieces of what we've come to expect from pokemon remakes--the new stuff--so i think of it as being in a remake-adjacent category i'm calling a "reimagining." meanwhile bdsp avoided having much new stuff and instead provided an overly faithful recreation of the original games with graphical upgrades and gameplay modernizations and little else

are they going to do another ilca remake paired with a legends game? maybe. since legends was kind of an experiment, and succeeded, maybe they could try to work some elements into the actual remake this time. also after how glitchy bdsp was (more specifically, all the weird stuff they had to do with home compatibility to stop those Evil Cheaters) maybe they won't trust ilca with that again. or maybe they'll give them another chance, since game freak started out with a glitch-filled game too and maybe they've learned? idk

and what about bw2? so far they've been able to put things into the remakes to reflect things from the third versions (though bdsp really could've had a lot more from platinum) but how do you do an entire extra story with different protagonists and a 2 year time skip? they can't get away with just giving us bw2 outfits. $60 absolutely should cover both bw and bw2 in one, but i kind of doubt they'll do it. dlc maybe i guess? though that was a popular theory for platinum in bdsp that went nowhere, so who knows

alternatively i suppose they could release a bw remake as a single game and bw2 as another (remember how bdsp was found to be the same rom, just with a marker that determined the version? it would kind of make sense to do) but also that's kind of insane because you've never been expected to buy both games before, but in this scenario you'd have to to get the full experience. evil. too evil for tpci i think, but i suppose they could always get worse. i guess in that sense having a dual release of b+b2/w+w2 seems a bit more likely, dlc or not? if they don't almost entirely ignore bw2, that is

either way, i'm expecting unova soon. one week before black friday 2024 if tpci keeps insisting on their blatantly money-hungry release schedule they've been sticking pretty closely to for almost a decade now. would prefer they take more time, but i don't expect them to

........wait. i forgot. it actually might be johto's turn next. hgss is older than gen v, after all. whether that's going to be something with pokemon go elements mixed in again (isn't that game kind of on a decline now? idk) or something different, they might do something

so i guess 2024 johto, 2025 unova? wow idk. who give a shit tbh. point is both are probably somewhere on the horizon (though, unova is more certain i'd say since lgpe is just one game so we have no idea what kind of pattern those second-round remakes might take. maybe it was just a one-off)

anyway i've been wanting to replay gen v more and more for the past couple years but i haven't been able to make time for it yet. odds are i won't until at least when the remakes are coming. i replayed platinum shortly before bdsp released (actually started a couple months before it was announced...) and that was a mistake. bdsp was ok (though bad by pokemon standards) but it felt like playing the same game back to back except worse (very different from when i played ruby before oras, and yellow before lgpe). don't want to do that again so i guess i'll wait at this point

#pokemon #unova #pokemon presents #bwbw2

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colossal-idiot · 2 years

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I finished replaying Pokemon Alpha Sapphire recently and I just have to say that I wholeheartedly believe that this is one of if not the best Pokemon game. Period. The only one I feel comes close is Pokemon Legends Arceus, but if you discount it because it's not in line with the gameplay of other Pokemon games, then ORAS is definitely the best. The Hoenn Pokemon are some of the best designs in my opinion, they have just the right mix of animal and fantasy creature to the point where it feels like a functional ecosystem while also being interesting and fantastical. The idea of different versions having different antagonists is a very underutilized idea in Pokemon that hasn't been utilized in any other region. The Hoenn games are very thematically sound, always keeping an emphasis on the ecosystem and making Pokemon feel like animals. In comparison to other remakes which tend to be the previous games remade, ORAS reimagines Hoenn by adding so much extra to it in a very refreshing way, playing RSE versus playing ORAS is notably different. I appreciate how they included Mega Evolution in a way that sat soundly in the lore rather than locking it behind the post game like a lot of other remakes would. I also really appreciate the way that they redesigned a lot of the characters, which in my opinion does well to modernize the games and does better to keep them fresh. It also does well to connect the world of Pokemon together in a very organic way, with to mentions to Sinnoh, Unova, and Kalos. Then there's the Delta Episode. Game Freak did not have to add a fleshed out post game to the Hoenn remakes, they had no need to flesh out the lore so well both to tie the new and old aspects together and to expand on the lore of Hoenn as a region and it's legendaries. Pokemon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire are stellar pokemon games that go above and beyond to not only retell, but reinvent the story of the originals, and have much more content, much more lore, and much more interesting events than more recent games.

#pokemon #pokemon oras #long post

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44gamez · 4 months

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Best of 2023: PlayStation Horror Games

From big-name franchise revivals to small-scale indie productions, horror gaming on PlayStation was in good well being in 2023. PlayStation LifeStyle selects 14 of the 12 months’s finest horror video games on PlayStation consoles.

Resident Evil 4 Remake (Capcom)

Few remakes would include such expectations as Resident Evil 4, and but Capcom managed to exceed them. Resident Evil 4 Remake takes every part gamers cherished concerning the 2005 basic and integrates a flurry of recent touches to make it really feel like a pure evolution of the unique.

Lifeless Area (EA Motive)

Whereas Resident Evil 4’s remake reimagined the unique, EA Motive’s Lifeless Area largely caught to the script with a smattering of enhancements the place they have been wanted. The spirit of the unique is saved intact, however a PS5 sheen made each Necromorph encounter and gore-splattered final result a grisly deal with. However the true star of the brand new present is the Ishimura, which now not appears like a collection of interconnected rooms masquerading as a spaceship however extra like an precise place.

No One Lives Below the Lighthouse (Marevo Collective)

Lastly getting a console launch, Marevo Collective’s atmospheric PSX-style horror is a pleasant slow-burner that makes probably the most of its minimalist construction. The anomaly of the story retains gamers on edge, and when chase scenes kick in, the attitude shift provides one other layer to the unsettling environment.

Amnesia The Bunker (Frictional Video games)

Frictional Video games’ skill to rewrite the rulesets of its story-led horror video games is admirable and with Amnesia: The Bunker, it does its largest edit but. Amnesia: The Bunker is a self-contained sandbox set in a wartime bunker the place the participant has to seek out the means to flee while evading a lethal monstrosity. Consider it as small-scale Alien Isolation meets Immersive Sim.

The Strolling Lifeless: Saints and Sinners 2 (Skydance Interactive)

PSVR2 had loads of horror goodies in 2023. The Strolling Lifeless: Saints and Sinners 2 was my private decide from the brand-new bunch. Why? Properly, its immersive, intense gameplay interprets so a lot better to the PSVR2 than the unique sport did with PSVR. The dread of getting cornered by the undead is offset by improvised weapons. Throw in a seemingly unstoppable behemoth out for blood and Saints and Sinners 2 can have you working up a sweat.

Killer Frequency (Crew 17)

Killer Frequency stands out for me as a result of it’s clearly doing one thing fairly totally different within the horror house. Enjoying the a part of a washed-up DJ who finds themselves having to assist save locals from a returning legendary serial killer. Killer Frequency limits you to the radio station as to the extent of your assist, however inside that station is loads of exploration and alternative. Not solely can you discover issues to information potential victims away from their destiny, however you get the prospect to play as a DJ, placing on information, advertisements, and, in fact, taking calls. Killer Frequency does every part attainable to immerse you within the function.

Oxenfree II: Misplaced Indicators (Night time Faculty Studios)

Oxenfree’s dialogue system stays one of the vital refreshing and ingenious of its form, so a return to that with Oxenfree II would all the time be welcome. That system is extra refined now, nevertheless it’s Oxenfree II’s story is the place it excels. After the teen-centric story of the unique, Oxenfree II shifts issues to an grownup perspective and, in doing so, offers us a splendidly melancholy flipside to the primary sport.

Homebody (Sport Grumps)

Homebody places a contemporary spin on basic survival horror, with loads of homages to Clock Tower, particularly on present. A younger girl and her associates are caught in a time loop that retains them inside an odd outdated home. She should clear up the various puzzles of the home with a view to break the loop, however each time the loop begins, the specter of a masked killer arrives with it.

Trepang2 (Trepang Studios)

If you happen to miss the frenetic supernatural shooter motion of F.E.A.R. then Trepang2 has your early 2000s wants lined. A labor of affection that remodeled right into a full sport, Trepang2 is a beautiful reminder that shooters can merely be massive, loud, bloody slabs of nonsense. The slo-mo skill turns large-scale chaos right into a ballet of bullets and blood, however really the artwork of Trepang2 is available in chaining collectively kills at full pace, using the assorted different superpowers at your disposal.

Alan Wake 2 (Treatment Leisure)

13 years after Treatment Leisure’s Alan Wake, a sequel lastly arrived, and it’s the quintessential distillation of every part the developer has accomplished up till this level. It’s a bizarre, meta story that blends mediums in an impressively seamless manner. The shift between Alan’s and Saga’s sides of the story offers us two distinct flavors of horror that intertwine at key moments.

Keep Out of the Home (Puppet Combo)

It was fairly outstanding that Amnesia: The Bunker condensed a horror immersive sim into such a small house, however Puppet Combo’s Keep Out of the Home manages to pack that into an excellent smaller house. You must escape the home of The Butcher by using no matter yow will discover. Get caught, and it’s again in your cage. Every run offers you the chance to find extra about how the home works and the backstory behind The Butcher. After an unlucky licensing drama with Friday the thirteenth, Gun Media clearly wasn’t deterred from bringing beloved horror franchises to life in online game kind, and we must be glad as a result of it gave us The Texas Chain Noticed Bloodbath. Taking the asymmetrical multiplayer mannequin of video games like its Friday the thirteenth sport and Lifeless by Daylight, Gun, and Sumo change issues up by pitting a crew of three members of the family towards 4 unfortunate potential victims. The change makes for an intense cat-and-mouse dynamic distinct to this sport.

Lifeless Island 2 (Dambuster Studios)

Given the rocky historical past of Lifeless Island 2’s path to launch and the emergence of rival franchise Dying Gentle by unique Lifeless Island builders Techland within the years since it could have been comprehensible if Lifeless Island 2 turned out to be a little bit of a stinker. But, because of Dambuster Studios, it turned out to be not solely good, gory enjoyable however one of the best Lifeless Island sport by far. Its tongue-in-cheek humor, detailed zombie degradation system, and basic blood-splattered fight mix to make for a wonderful multiplayer hoot.

Dredge (Black Salt Video games)

Fishing has been a staple of sport actions for a while now, however few outdoors precise sims make that the premise for a whole sport. Black Salt Video games thought it was value a go, and Dredge was the unholy consequence. This open-world fishing sim has an more and more darkish undertone that faucets into the core of Lovecraftian horror. The murmured warnings to not stray too far at night time, the tousled fish you sometimes haul in, and the unusual, ambiguous manner locals speak about issues. When the horrors of the deep do lastly present themselves, your little fishing boat by no means felt extra susceptible. Source link Read the full article

#Games #horror #PlayStation

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spidersonicbatl0 · 7 months

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Debunked Tyrranux deviantart post “these jackasses actually copied the will u”

I’m a PlayStation fan, so when I find this post. I was speechless. This is so dumb it make the humans in helluva boss, look like dr doom. For context this is a response to PlayStation may 2023 state of play. Btw here a link to the post https://www.deviantart.com/tyrranux/journal/These-jackasses-actually-copied-the-Wii-U-964209907 (note: do not harass this person please)

Ok let begin

“One minute in and they're already sucking their own dicks. They really are the video game equivalent of Elon Musk.....” so making a flashing intro is sucking one dick. By that logic e3 show have flashing intro or reveal is sucking dick.

“Define irony, a video game all about eating the rich published by a company notorious for being comparable to Elon Musk as far as inflated ego, bitterness towards competition and general market share value....” even tho I never saw the show. The boys from what hear make funny/criticize consumerism, big company’s and company being diverse to get a quick dollar. And you know who own the boys tv series……Amazon.

“They fucking would if they could. Lord knows they did the same with FF7 and SF5....” to explain what she talking about. The YouTuber who is react to this say “yes chat this gta6”. But the thing is final fantasy 7 came out on the ps1, so making it a PlayStation exclusive for a time make sense. Same with the crash n sane trilogy. Also mega man start as Nintendo exclusive series, But capcom later made mega man x4 came out on the sega Saturn and PlayStation 1

“Soooooooo they aren't gonna shy away from the heavy dosage of anti fascist society themes that defines Starship Troopers as a story?” Detroit: become human: am I a joke to you

“Dammit that's a really good name for a game dev studio XDXDXDXDXDXDXDXD9:40 - I was about to say this looked familiar..........so it's also gonna be on Xbox then?” You know Nintendo have show third party game in Nintendo direct before right?

“By the by this is also slated for Xbox and Nintendo Switch, I checked. And I only bring it up because, well, I didn't compare Sony to Elon Musk for nothin'.” 👆 say response as above

“Either that or their own Fortnite with black jack and hookers, that way they don't have to pay Epic Games to feature Final Fantasy or Kingdom Hearts characters in a competing title.” 🤦 epic games would actually have to pay money to square to use final fantasy. Heck square only own half of kingdom hearts, the other half is own by Disney.

“Because we're talking about a company so creatively bankrupt that they actually made a "remake" to Final Fantasy 7.” Re2 remake change the gameplay and story beats. But capcom call it a remake when it more of a reimagining of re2.

“Also how nice of Square to just hand Sony their own version of Splatoon on a silver platter so that Sony didn't have to make one themselves. Cue all the Sony ponies decrying Splatoon as dead and there being nothing to play on Nintendo.” 😟 not every PlayStation fan is a toxic fan. The same go for Xbox fans and Nintendo fans. Toxic fans like that are mock by non toxic fans. Like you Tyrranux

“Oh look it's that one game that's already overshadowed by FF7 Rebirth, setting it up for a descent into the pit of irrelevance. And it seems this is also a Playstation exclusive so it's double dead on arrival, if it was also on Xbox it might have stood a chance....” they a lot PlayStation exclusive ip that people remember fondly ape escape, jak and daxter, sly cooper, infamous, resistance, kill zone, ratchet and clank, twisted metal, midevil, little big planet and god of war. Also imagine being such toxic Xbox/Nintendo fangirl, you think that any ps exclusive is going to fail. It not like god of war 2018 is a considered the best game of all of time and won 2018 game of the year

“And I'm glad I'm not seeing yet even more Breath of the Wild but now more heavily sci fi. Wait isn't that just Horizon Zero Dawn? Yep XD” breath of the wild have gameplay different to horizon. Here they Wikipedia pages and at the gameplay section https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Zelda:_Breath_of_the_Wild

“Dude, this is Sony we're talking about, the bigger shock would be that it doesn't end on something stupid like that.”

“Oh my God these morons really are just copying the Wii U! And lemme guess, this is gonna cost up to 500 dollars as well?! Jackasses.....” 1 the Wii U gimmick is that the game pad is use to do stuff on the tv. This doesn’t have that feature. 2 sega in the 90s made the game gear, it literally just an sega gameboy and Disney infinity and Lego dimensions are skylanders games, but with pre existing ip’s. 3 the Kinect

“Ah yes, the game I'm not even allowed to play because Sony, the selfish fucks, would rather continue testing the patience of Disney than finally part with the Spider Man movie licence. Skip.” Marvel approach Xbox on making a marvel game, but xbox say no. Marvel so when to sony pitch a marvel game, sony say yes and let insomniac games decide what character the game will be about. They pick spider man because the studio loves the character. If insomniac wanted to make a game based on daredevil it would ps4 exclusive. Plus Disney have a deal to use spider man in the mcu, so they no reason to buy the rights.

That was bad. Anyway I going to have rest now. Oh Tyrranux if you say I’m am Sony fanboy

Here a picture of my Nintendo switch with my games

#playstation #marvel spiderman #god of war #sony interactive entertainment #ratchet and clank #toxic behavior #Nintendo fanboys #final fantasy series #horizon zero dawn #zelda breath of the wild #tyrranux

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nicholaskqut · 8 months

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Week 7: Racing Game Elevator Pitch

Introduction Racing games nowadays have expanded from what they started as. While 3D pathfinding games with high resolution and sometimes chaotic gameplay are common, a simple top-down, 2D car dodge game calls back to the roots of the genre. I believe there is a certain charm in the straightforward nature of a car dodge racing game. It possesses simple mechanics that have a huge potential for additional mechanics to enhance its gameplay. In the pitch below, I have reimagined the top-down car dodge game with some new mechanics. Pitch: "TurboBlitz is a car dodge racing game where reflexes rule the road, in which players race through an obstacle-filled track collecting coins for points and grabbing fuel canisters to keep their engine roaring. Power-ups provide strategic advantages as players dodge and weave through challenges that slowly increase in difficulty. Can you conquer the road?" Elaboration: My design process, as always, was primarily guided by these 5 questions below: 1. What is the goal for the player?

2. How does the player win or lose?

3. What are the conflicts in the game?

4. What is unique about this?

5. Is this game feasible to make? A lot of Tracy Fullerton's tips for brainstorming ideas in Game Design Workshop immediately came to my mind. First of all, I used a stream of consciousness style brainstorm where I wrote down all the ideas for extra mechanics I would like to see in this game. As Fullerton described in Chapter 6, it did not matter if they bad or impossible, as long as I had them listed. After concluding this short process, I refined the ideas to a handful of mechanics and performed some research on both the game style, its core mechanics and the mechanics I wanted to include to understand if they could blend. This included visualising the objects, their properties and relationships to each other until, ultimately, I was able to think of a basic formal system structure for my prototype.

Core Mechanics: To fully grasp a player-centric mindset, I played a game similar to the genre and, combined with my research efforts, created a list of core mechanics required for the core gameplay loop.

Steering

Timer (In the form of a fuel bar)

Obstacle Dodging

Powerups

Collectibles (Coins, Fuel Re-Filler)

Increasing Difficulty

Audience: The audience for this game has been, in my opinion, the most broad among the games so far. Concluding online research I did by analysing games sharing this style, along with my own experience from playing similar games, I found the target audience to be casual gamers among all ages. However, if I was to specify an audience - one that that Fullerton listed - within this demographic, I would likely be targeting The Competitor and The Joker. This is because the style of this game contains elements that appeal to both groups, from a game with simple and relaxing rules and mechanics to high scores and a difficulty progression that can challenge two players against each other.

Control Diagram: The controls are designed for simplicity and accessibility to cater to a broad audience. Players primarily use the side arrow keys to steer their car left or right. The up arrow allows the player to accelerate while the down arrow acts as the brake. This is the controls between the player and system physically. In the game though, the use of a timer, represented as remaining fuel, adds some dramatic intensity to the game. I learnt and included this feature when it was explained in Week 7 of the workshops, as I want the game to be slightly stressful, particularly in situations requiring quick manoeuvring or reflexes to access fuel re-fillers. Collectibles, in the form of coins and re-fillers and powerups, provide motivation for players to make risky movements through the obstacles to access them.

What is the goal for the player? As done with the Asteroids game, the goal for this game is to simply manoeuvre around the cars and obstacles, ranging from oil spills and traffic cones to fallen trees, to collect coins for as long as they can survive.

How does the player win or lose? The player is simply aiming to improve their skills, beat their previous score and/or just enjoy the gameplay while avoiding the obstacles and challenges as they come, as listed beforehand, to survive for as long as possible.

What are the conflicts in the game? The conflicts primarily consist of the track the player is racing on and, specifically, the obstacles that block their way. These obstacles have different effects on the player but, ultimately, negatively impact them.

What is unique about this? This game includes 3 mechanics in this unique to its genre: 4.1. Players can collect powerups to help them navigate and survive the obstacles easier. The powerups consist of temporary assists such as: faster steering and movement speed, invincibility and fuel saver, which stops the fuel bar from being depleted. 4.2. Instead of passing vehicles to earn points, the player must collect small collectibles that slowly trail down the screen on different lanes of the road to earn points. 4.3. The game progressively gets harder as the game goes along, causing objects - and more difficult ones - to spawn faster, thus making it harder for the player to navigate around them to access fuel re-fillers or points to beat their score easily.

Is this game feasible to make? It is. My experience with GDevelop has greatly improved over the course of the recent weeks, in which I believe I am able to design and implement functions and solutions into the prototype to resolve issues that arise in prototyping and playtesting.

I will be working on creating a prototype for this pitch and look forward to sharing the outcome of the prototype, along with the feedback and ways I implement them into my game. Until next time! Concept Art:

References Cars top view realistic composition with traffic lanes barrier and colourful cars with ambulance and truck illustration. (n.d.). Retrieved from freepik: https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/cars-top-view-realistic-composition-with-traffic-lanes-barrier-colourful-cars-with-ambulance-truck-illustration_15331793.htm#query=top%20down%20car%20on%20road&position=9&from_view=keyword&track=ais Fullerton, T. (2018). Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games. ProQuest Ebook. Retrieved from: https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/qut/reader.action?docID=5477698 Koren, C. (2023). Week 7 - Challenge, Rewards and Multiplayer. (n.d.). Queensland University of Technology. Retrieved from: https://canvas.qut.edu.au/courses/14645/pages/week-7-challenge-rewards-and-multiplayer-2?module_item_id=1452652

#racing game elevator pitch

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transgirl-gaming-thoughts · 1 year

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My Thoughts On: Sonic Generations

Wow, I've kinda been lacking in my original posts.

I've been on a bit of a Sonic the Hedgehog trip recently. It was clogging up my main account so much that I actually decided to make a Sonic sideblog (@sonics-chilidog-supplier if you're interested). Because of this, I've been buying and playing lots of Sonic games, with Sonic Generations being the most recent.

Generations was made to celebrate the blue hedgehog's 20th anniversary! As such, the game revolves around Modern Sonic meeting Classic Sonic (from the 16-bit era) as they race through reimagined versions of famous Sonic stages. Really cool concept! And while I did enjoy this game quite a lot, it's not perfect.

First of all, the story is very lacking. I know this has been a thing with Sonic games as of late, but Generations feels like an earlier victim. The whole story is basically just "Time and space are converging! Look, old levels! ... Stop Eggman!" Like, yeah, stopping Eggman is the plot of most Sonic games, but there's absolutely no storytelling through the game or the levels other than a pure nostalgia trip.

Speaking of nostalgia! I was really excited because level one is Green Hill Zone, played through Act 1 as Classic Sonic in 2D platforming, and again in Act 2 as Modern Sonic with some incredible boost gameplay. I love Green Hill Zone Act 2, it's easily one the best stages in any Sonic game ever! The boost formula of gameplay was utilized to its fullest capacity, and it makes for such a great experience.

On the other hand, Act 1... every stage has two acts, and Act 1 is always 2D as Classic Sonic. This leads to some neat designs where 3D levels were remade in 2D (and vice-versa), but Classic Sonic controls horribly. It feels like I'm running on actual butter the whole game, and I didn't enjoy any of the 2D segments. As someone who loves the original 16-bit games, I was really disappointed with the 2D gameplay here.

Continuing that train of thought, I'm not a fan of most of the level designs, namely City Escape from Sonic Adventure 2 and Seaside Hill from Sonic Heroes. As someone who played both of those games and loved both of those stages, I was hugely disappointed with their Generations remakes. City Escape just felt really... I don't even know how to describe it, unnecessary? I feel like the original version of the level was fine as it was, and it would have been thrilling enough just to see it in HD. That's the 20th anniversary nostalgia I wanted: all my favorite stages in one place! Instead, they added a few segments to it, presumably to make it longer, and it all just felt drawn-out and unnecessary to me.

Seaside Hill as well is from a game that really relied on its team mechanic, and while Sonic Team deserve some props for adapting that to a singular Sonic experience, I feel like it again would have been better to leave the level like it was and feature Tails and Knuckles as the stage gimmick. Plenty of other stages feature gimmick abilities, like the Light Speed Dash only appearing in the Adventure remake stages when you need it, so it doesn't seem all that strange for them to have used the team gameplay for the Heroes stage.

Ignoring the stages themselves, this game was pretty short. Only 9 stages (two acts each) and four boss fights. To be fair, one of them was really cool [spoilers!! they remade Perfect Chaos from Adventure spoiler ending!] but the others were more annoying than fun, especially the first one played as Classic Sonic. The main mechanics of this game are Rival Battles and Boss Keys. First off, once you beat every act in an area containing three stages, the Challenge Gates appear, and once you beat three challenges you get a boss key. Get the boss key from each stage's hub area and you can face the next boss. This is a neat concept, but it requires you to basically place the same stage over and over again, but each challenge redesigns the stage a bit, and really takes out the element of game knowledge that usually allows you to be good at beating stages well and beating them fast.

The much cooler half of this mechanic is the Rival Fights! There's three rivals in total, one in each area, and Sonic has to face off against one of his signature rivals from over the years to earn a Chaos Emerald! The first is versus Metal Sonic, playing as Classic Sonic, and this is like the Metal Sonic race from Sonic CD except they removed all the fun parts. Yeah, not a fan of this one... however! The other two are very cool! The second is an epic race against Shadow the Hedgehog in the style of the final fight from Sonic Adventure 2's hero story, but they do it so well and it's one of my favorite Sonic fights ever! The third rival is Silver the Hedgehog, fought while racing down an old highway overpass in Crisis City. These later two rival fights are SO COOL I couldn't get over it while playing! Without giving any spoilers for the final bosses of Generations, they really pale in comparison and are actually sort of a letdown...

I know it may sound like I'm ragging a bit on Sonic Generations... and I kind of am, but don't let that make you think poorly of this game! There's a lot of value here in revisiting old stages, there's a lot of great boost gameplay, and most of the soundtrack is remixes of famous Sonic tracks! Plus, if you play the PS3 version like me then you get to unlock the original SEGA Mega Drive Sonic the Hedgehog to play within the game! All in all, a fun, if not short, Sonic experience that's a fun little nostalgia trip for longtime fans, but just don't expect a huge Sonic adventure.

Thanks for reading! I love Sonic a lot, so expect a few more of these in the near future as I finish more games! Thanks for checking out my blog, and be sure to ask questions and recommend games or post ideas in my ask box! Stay safe, stay hydrated, and God bless!

~Alex

#assorted gaming thoughts #sonic the hedgehog #sonic #sega #sonic generations #game review

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