What are you playing? (Modern Gaming Edition)

Video Games
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Metroid: Federation Force
Given how fast things move these days, and Nintendo’s shift toward bigger and bigger titles for its most established IP, this game honestly feels like it belongs in the retro version of this thread…but I digress!

Picked this up for very cheap (about the equivalent of $5 here in Europe) and started playing in co-op with one other person. It wasn’t difficult to predict that the largely negative reception to the game was never wholly justified from its quality (or supposed lack of) alone, but I am happy that it is indeed a good cooperative shooter.

I’ve only done four missions so far, and while the first mission was eye-rollingly boring, predictable and easy, subsequent missions have really upped the ante in both level design and difficulty. The second mission has you shoot these small orbs to guide them to pedestals, opening up new passageways, the third mission featured a very inventive boss fight which would periodically flood the room with poisonous goop, forcing you to seek high ground, the fourth mission asks your team to lead dangerous ice titans to timed-lock cages.

Honestly, I wasn’t expecting my team to have been wiped out twice by this point, and the scoring system leaves little time for messing about. I’m hoping it stays as unpredictable in level design as it has been, since the story and lore are laughably forced. Despite the chibi art-style the game takes itself far too seriously as well, I can see why people expecting a stereotypical Metroid game would be disappointed.

Touhou Spell Bubble
Taito brought back competitive Puzzle Bobble this year, but as a Touhou fan game. Junya Outa, creator of Touhou, used to work for Taito, so it’s almost like it’s gone full circle seeing them pay tribute to what he created after working for them.

I’ve been really impressed with this game, it’s basically competitive Puzzle Bobble but with rhythm elements and Touhou characters and music. What surprised me was how difficult the game is - Challenge mode feels like an arcade puzzle game, starting off manageable but quickly becoming extremely difficult. There’s only twenty stages, yet it’s been taking me an hour of attempts to beat some of these. Story mode serves as a tutorial for the first hour or so, but also quickly becomes challenging. The less is more approach is much appreciated here, since modern puzzle games have become these grindy campaigns featuring hundreds of identikit levels in the name of Content.

Burnout Paradise Remastered (Switch port)
Good port! Practically an unflinching 60fps, and despite aggressive dynamic resolution switching it still looks crisp most of the time in handheld mode. Load times are fast, and due to the lack of games of its ilk on the Switch its the rare Switch port to feel like a novelty still.

262

Witch Sisters’ Sugary Dreams (Windows, macOS, and Linux)

This popped up on my twitter thanks to WarpDoor and I bookmarked it to play later.

It’s an amazing little game with a whole bunch of depth. Reminiscent of the classic Taito/MTJ style, with enough charm of its own. A beauty!

I’m campaigning to get it on Switch.

Trailer

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Lol! What a horrifying sound :stuck_out_tongue:

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Looks like the kind of indie ‘retro’ game I can get behind - something not possible back in the day and not wholly derivative!

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I’m excited to play more.

Some notes:

  • trap multiple enemies for more candy
  • avoid enemies landing and exploding
  • you can speed up movement of your spell in various ways
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Been playing Triforce Heroes in co-op. I wish it weren’t region locked so we could get some RGB games going because to my surprise it is a blast a play!

There seem to be two kinds of co-op games: there’s the games with mindless content you play while conversing with friends, and those games’ fun is weighted more heavily toward the social aspect than what they demand from you. Then there’s the co-op games which really demand you to focus, focus quickly and coordinate constantly, while also offering plenty of opportunity for mischief and unexpected outcomes to unfold.

Triforce Heroes falls into the latter camp, at least based on the first four worlds and I can’t wait to play more. It’s the way the game’s items, totem system and environmental layouts always encourage you to work together in different ways, while introducing a layer of unpredictability and risk that you rarely encounter when playing on your own. Stuff like how your magic hammers can crack ice that other players are standing on (and you all share the same few hearts), or how you have to think very carefully about where to aim your Gust jar since failing to do so often brings its own unfortunate (and sometimes hilarious) consequences.

I was worried it was going to be more frustrating than difficult, with puzzles boiling down to figuring out a precise method of doing things, but the amount of danger and enemies the game throws at you makes it a lot more dynamic and challenging, which is great.

267

Further extended play and it’s lost a bit of shine for two reasons.

  1. Diagonal movement is faster than up/down/left/right, which is trigonometry 101 so rather disappointing.

  2. It seems random, rather than deterministic (rule based) so the busier things get the more frustrating it gets as there are no patterns to learn or read. I learned that in game development you should stop and think if you really want to use the “random” function.

268

I just finished Super Mario Odyssey yesterday night. Which by the way was my first 3D mario game. Man that game is fun!

1 Like
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Lots of Modern Warfare lately, both Warzone and Multiplayer. It really is a technical marvel of a game. It can be a little bugged at times, but the play space they created is gorgeous, functional, and the least videogamey feeling world you can visit atm imo.

270

Slowly making my way through that now. I managed to whip my way through the story mode pretty quickly, but running around and getting all those extra little moons and stuff has been challenging. I don’t think I’m up to the challenge of the final moon level though.

Anybody else here playing Shadow of War? Looking at my save file, I’m up to 150 hours which has got to be a record for me. That’s over 2 years I think… certainly feel like I’ve gotten my value for money out of that game.

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Yeah I just went to the dark side of the moon post game and feeling a bit burned out from collecting moons. Now the hard part is figuring out what to play next!

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You should check out Super Mario Galaxy if you have the means. It’s simply awesome.

I think it’s even better than Odyssey.

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273

We’re playing Ring Fit Adventure at our house. My girls (5 and 7) love it and my wife finally tried a real session last night. It’s made me sweat! We are pretty into it and I’ll continue to use it. I have a pretty intense night class happening right now, though, and it’s cutting into my evening game time.

Otherwise, I am nearly finished with Celeste. I am about 2/3 of the way through the final main level, The Summit. Man … that game is SO good. The difficulty/reward curve is just so outstanding.

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Always happy to see Ring Fit Adventure love, great game that you rarely see talked about compared with other first party releases. I’m still playing after finishing Adventure Mode, was surprised by how versatile “custom” mode is. You can slot in almost anything from the game into your own custom session, including the new rhythm game levels!

Otherwise I’ve also been playing a lot of Trails of Cold Steel III, an outcome I didn’t expect when I received the game. It has a lot of problems - namely an excess of almost everything, presumably due to adhering rigidly to expectation from long time players of the series - but that aside it’s just a pleasant RPG to play with engrossing environments to explore and a strategic battle system. The Switch port is a superb effort too considering the few cuts that have been made to the detailed presentation.

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Not sure if it counts as a pure game but I’ve been sinking most of my free time into Rocksmith 2014 Remastered.

It’s a great tool to learn/practice playing guitar and I’m kicking myself for not trying it earlier (bought it a long time ago on PS3 and never touched it until getting the newer version on Steam).

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the search for Galaxy feels was what actually made me go for Odyssey. I loved the gravity thing that Galaxy had. First Mario game I ever finished and I jumped on Galaxy 2, which was more like a 1.5, but since I enjoyed that too, I didn’t care.
I normally really suck at Mario games (and I sucked at Galaxy too, but it was fun!)

277

I started playing Xenoblade 2, and there’s some really REALLY cool stuff to like here, but man… it’s such an unfocused mess at the same time. The different systems in the first game came together in this incredibly harmonious and complicated way. But the next two games just don’t have that magic for me. I’m only 5-7 or so hours in, so I may keep going, but deep down, I kinda want to go ahead and play an old school NES RPG again.

I like the simplicity of them.

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I wonder how I’d feel if I didn’t play Xenoblade 2 before launch - was lucky to receive it four(!) days early in the post.

Coming from the ambitious Xenoblade X I was let down by what felt like a simpler yet messier and more convoluted game. Open world exploration was pared back but like you pointed out, it lacks focus. I remember there being dozens of different systems to keep an eye out for but few of them really amounted to anything of substance. The roadblocks on the world map were probably the worst offender. The game really could have done with some much needed editing.

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I thought X lacked gameplay focus too. There was just so much to keep track of. It was ambitious but I don’t know if I ever really enjoyed the 70 or so hours I spent with that one before quitting.

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You’re right. Maybe the freedom it gave you in exploration is what made it more compelling than the bloat Xenoblade 2 often throws at you along its railroaded story path.

If you can ignore the bloat in 2 and focus strictly on the story objectives you could probably get through it in thirty hours - but I couldn’t really do that, there’s too much nagging at you such that focusing solely on the plot feels like you’re playing it wrong!