What game are you wasting time on?

[Semiurge]

I finished Call of the Machine on Nightmare. It's considerably easier than Ground Zero because the designers were timid about throwing some more powerful enemies at you with the mook mobs. It had some creative and fun ideas like the secret levels being skirmish trials that reward you with powerups, and the overall style was very cinematic, like the way the music tracks change based on triggers. The strange thing about the secret levels was that the hardest - The Casali Effect, was situated in a middle mission instead of being the last. Some repetition was perceivable, such as the bosses getting reinforcements at certain HP levels and the way those goddamn mutants were used. I fucking hate them and their tiny hitboxes. The last mission - The Darkest Depths, was the laziest and obviously rushed, as was the final level. Both had suitably Lovecraftian endings, and the references to Quake 1 will not go to waste...

Now, back to Quake 1 Remastered (2021) and its Dimension of the Past, then Dimension of the Machine.

 

[Ezekiel]

Muttered at my screen "This is so FUCKING boring" and other obscenities as I waited for some slow lifts to get me back to where I was in Hi-Fi Rush, after prolonged frustration with the hard-to-nail beat parry system against robot samurai enemies who attack from outside of the picture. Almost all modern combat systems are basically glue, their creators having become so reliant on either dodges or timed parries and auto-targeting (the player turned towards enemies, a HARD turn) because they don't remember what it's like to move freely in better action games like Streets of Rage 2 or are too pathetic to learn and appreciate the slower pace. There, enemies don't move so quickly all over the place that your eyes and brain can barely follow, and they wouldn't have to even if the idea was faithfully brought into three dimensions, because it's more about positioning, taking advantage of where they are, shoving one into the next for example, or using weapons to keep them at a distance. The environmental traversal in this is trash. The heroic trio is bland, ALL of them. Protagonist is just the butt of a joke, pathetic, always bumbling, uncool. Have no idea why Robbie Daymond gets so much work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbie_Daymond

This list makes no sense. He speaks as if so aware that he's in a booth, unable to let anything out naturally, certainly never really yelling.

All this game has is the fighting, which isn't even good. I'm sick of glue. I'll keep at it to be able to say I beat it and to see what's next, but I'm already thinking 2/5 like the only other game I beat this year, Soulstice (also glue). Feel like people are so desperate for unique studio games that they shower praise on games that, deep down, they know really aren't that good.

 

[soutaiseiriron]

I found beat parries something I just got used to with time. You can just dodge until you're eventually forced to learn. I thought it was a great game. There was only really one boss fight I didn't like too much, all the others were good, and I eventually improved from a terrible 50% beat accuracy to 75-90% at the end which was satisfying.

 

[Starwars]

Replaying Heaven's Vault, which is one of my favorite modern games. Sort of an interesting take on an adventure game in a way. But it's hard to classify it.

Relaxing, charming, a simple but fun gameplay hook (the translation minigame) and a sort of non-linearity that feels quite natural and comfortable. It feels simple, yet there's a fair amount of depth to it. A bit woke but the writing is generally good and thoughtful enough that it doesn't put me off that much. It's also very charming. Six is a great sidekick.

It's clunky though, the controls are quite bad and it really feels extremely low-budget in many ways. But the story, mystery (and uncovering it), atmosphere and relaxing just makes it such a pleasant game to play.