Post a Game Worth Talking About

[Spore]

There's a lot of cool stuff happening in games these days. Say something about some of the games the last few posters mentioned and bring up one you think should get some discussion.

A couple weeks ago I played through Lisa: The Painful RPG and it's hung with me since I've finished it. It takes place in a unique post apocalyptic world where all the world's women disappeared and society subsequently devolved into roving bands of perverts focused on satisfying their basic needs. In terms of humor it was kind of like the surreal wackiness of Earthbound, except instead of making you nostalgic for your younger life when things seemed grand and magical, it makes you fearful that your older life will be cold and full of sacrifice. So I play through this dirty 10 hour RPG with super basic gameplay because it has some of the funniest characters and scenarios I've seen in a game, and then pulls me into the sadder world behind the scenes with family abuse, not being comfortable sharing feelings, religious fast food fanaticism, and biological weapons. It's a world that I have never seen in a video game or anything else really.

It also has a kickass song almost entirely made from drums and a single grunting sound effect. Overall it honestly had the best game soundtrack of 2014 and it followed suit with the game being like nothing I'd ever heard.

Check out the trailer.


If anybody else actually played it please let me know. There has to be somebody else out there. Anyway, what have you been playing or what is coming up that you just have to talk about?

[Kong Wen]

Spore, I had flagged that game as one to check out, but then I forgot about it until you mentioned it again in the chat. I've since wishlisted it, and I'll be sure to give it a play-through as soon as I have some spare time. It looked intriguing to me, but I didn't know the concept behind the game. Glad to hear it has somewhat more depth than it first appeared via screens and the initial trailer I watched!

I haven't had a chance to fully play it yet, but Actual Sunlight is a game I think has a lot of potential for discussion. It's currently available on Steam, and it's coming to Vita this Tuesday, 11 August. It's not a long game, and the price reflects that (it's only about $5 on Steam).

It's an emotional game about love, depression, and the realities of unhappy adult life. It should appeal to visual novel fans, and as such I think it'll be right at home on Vita, where those kinds of games seem to have found a niche.



The developer recently provided us with a press code for the Vita version, so I hope to have a more substantial article to write about it soon.

[VictorViper]

Happy to learn Actual Sunlight is coming to Vita. Our Mac is really starting to suffer and I will definitely want to give this a play through. As I understand it, the game is linear and rife with forced decisions, so I'm particularly interested in seeing whether that was done for simple narrative purposes or if it was conceptual, intended to play into the subject matter.

Galak-Z dropped this week and I've been surprised and thrilled with what it offers. On the surface it appears to be little more than a 2D space dog fighting game, but it's so much more. It's a roguelike space shooter, with all the procedural generation and permadeath that entails, there is a robust upgrade system that rewards exploration, and the sting of inevitable loss of those upgrades is softened by a few well considered systems upon restart. Controls are complicated enough to offer a ton of depth to your movement and firing options, but not unwieldy - getting the hang of piloting well does take time, but it's never because your fingers are in a knot. Strategy plays a big role as well, in terms of when, how and even IF an enemy should be engaged, and there is a highly intuitive visual indicator for your thrusters' noise output to aide in sneaking past outposts and raid parties best left alone. Every encounter is intense and tension in general is really the big selling point here. It's a game that offers tremendous power and maneuverability yet always demands respect for your ultimate fragility. Piloting options double once the first "season" is complete and your varitech-style transformation unlocks.

This game is crazy fun and always exciting, and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes more from their old-school shooters, especially those who enjoy active piloting. PC folks will see this in the fall.

[pdSlooper]

Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru is a 1992 Game Boy game, developed by R&D1 / Intelligent Systems. It's English patch name is For the Frog the Bell Tolls. It has a lot of similarities to the Game Boy/Color Zeldas. You start the game exploring the world in a bird's-eye-view/top down mode, walking around to villages, dungeons, or into enemies. However, there are also side-scrolling sections which involve a number of puzzle elements based on your eventual ability to transform into different creatures.

Battles are different from Zelda. Bumping into an enemy starts a mostly-automatic sequence where you and the enemy deal damage back and forth based on your stats (which can be increased by finding health, buying armor, or getting new weapons). You can interrupt battle to choose to use an item (such as a health potion) or to run away.

If you played Warioland 4 for GBA, the Dr. Arewo Stein who appears in the puzzle rooms is from this game. There's a sticker of Prince Sable (the protagonist) in SSB Brawl and an assist trophy of the same in SSB for 3DS/Wii U.

I'm playing through this right now, and it's a lot of fun for an old Game Boy game. I'm surprised we never got a port of it. Certainly, the plot is what you'd expect from the era, platform, and publisher --You are a prince, you are rescuing a princess-- but it holds its own in the gameplay department. Of course, I wouldn't recommend it to someone who doesn't have a fondness for the genre or platform.

[Jordan]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtcwW_BEXY8

Eiyusenki is an old game that has been newly localized in the West by Fruitbat Factory. Most people will never have heard of this game, but that's really too bad. It's probably the only conquest SLG game (that I know of) which has been officially translated and released in North America and Europe.

This is a game for history fetishists. Historical heroes from all around the world have been genderbent and mercilessly lampooned. The game keeps a lot of the good old anime tropes fresh by also being a satire of history. Characters with archetypes that would not normally stand out appear a lot fresher (at least to me) because these archetypes are based on actual historical or mythical allusions. There are a lot of obscure and clever references in here for people who really like world history. I've even learned a few things here and there.

For the few people who know what Sengoku Rance is, this game is exactly like that. The difference is that this is not a porn game and is a bit more user friendly. At only $40.00, it's pretty cheap for a brand new PS3 game. The game offers dozens of hours of playtime with a fun RPG/strategy battle system as well as the satisfaction of conquering the world!

[Jordan]

I've been playing an old game called Dragon Force for Sega Saturn. It's really an amazing game. It's kinda similar to other Conquest SLGs but the battle system is really its own unique thing.

The game features multiple different playable kingdoms. Each one has certain strengths and weaknesses in terms of unit types. Additionally, each has a slightly different story and geographical disposition, as well as slightly different unique characters. I found the highland kingdom kinda boring, but they're supposed to be the main protags. Right now I'm heavily enjoying a playthrough of Bozack, a nation of beastmen led by a short, silly king named Gongos.

[Kiwi the Tortoise]

I've been playing an old game called Dragon Force for Sega Saturn. It's really an amazing game. It's kinda similar to other Conquest SLGs but the battle system is really its own unique thing.

The game features multiple different playable kingdoms. Each one has certain strengths and weaknesses in terms of unit types. Additionally, each has a slightly different story and geographical disposition, as well as slightly different unique characters. I found the highland kingdom kinda boring, but they're supposed to be the main protags. Right now I'm heavily enjoying a playthrough of Bozack, a nation of beastmen led by a short, silly king named Gongos.

That game and it's sequel have been on my radar like... forever.
It's one of the few games that almost made me buy a Saturn back in it's days... but just almost.

[Kong Wen]

I have a copy of Dragon Force! I should really pop it in someday, but my Saturn has been collecting dust.

I was actually tempted to go back to an old favourite Sega CD game, Dark Wizard, a couple days ago when me and some of the Destiny crew were chatting about it. I haven't seen that game's battle system adequately recreated.

[Jordan]

I started playing Dragon Force 2 a little bit today.

IMO, it has so many good ideas about how to balance the original, but then fucks it all up with some horrible design decisions. I can think of about a dozen quality of life improvements:

-You can now command two different unit types at once and give orders to them as separate squads. This is a really cool idea in theory.
-Archers and mages no longer have infinite range.
-The game tells you very clearly if your troops have an advantage against enemy troops.
-You can now explore dungeons for items, then forge those materials into equipment.
-Emoticon icons now tell you at a glance which of your officers are loyal or unhappy.
-You can save on the world map.
-If you abandon a fortress, the number of troops remains the same. You can theoretically leave all your fortresses empty and no longer need to have at least one officer in each one for it to be considered part of your territory.
-There are now more commands to use on the battlefield for more precise control over your troops.
-There are new skills as well.
-Every location on the map is given a name when you highlight it, including ordinary waypoint villages.
-The introduction to the faction you are playing (or at least the one I saw) is a lot longer, more detailed and overall superior.
-There is now a lot more voice acting rather than it existing only in cheesy cutscenes.

These changes sound great on paper, but they are offset by some terrible design decisions. For example...

-They rebalanced the troop types but then I guess decided that this was too good, so they buffed the hell out of officers. This makes the game very stupid since a single officer can much more easily destroy an entire platoon of troops on their own and not even take nearly as much damage as they would in the original. Officers can sometimes kill two troops at once and there are even skills to make them even more OP. One skill, for instance, lets them attack twice as fast.

-In the original game, if you ran out of time in a fight, it was considered a draw. Both officers were then expelled from further participation in the battle. This was a good system that made logical use of the time limit. In this game, however, two officers who end a fight in a draw can now continue participating in battle. This is extremely stupid and renders the time limit completely moot. Furthermore, combined with the above issue, it makes it so the best way to deal with enemy officers is to take ranged troops and cheese them. Unfortunately, this is extremely tedious and boring.

-The camera in this game is horrendous compared to the original.

-There is a lot more slowdown in this game compared to the original and the graphics look a lot worse. The tried to have slightly more 3D looking sprites, which was a disastrous idea.

The result is a battle system which honestly feels a lot less fun than the original. It doesn't feel more balanced in particular and some things just outright seem deliberately worse.