Playing Cyberpunk 2077, it’s sometimes a little unintuitive. You’re thrown into a world that doesn’t explain anything about what’s going on and is filled with so much stuff, but in general a really good game.
I just bought Brotato on Steam. Shits fun af. It’s like a roguelike but with no learning curve and literally anybody can play, but the higher levels are still difficult.
It feels especially relevant to this community because I’m picking it up again after a hiatus of over five years. I tried back then but got hard stuck on a puzzle that I just didn’t get, and I refused to look up the answer and spoil the joy of discovery for myself.
Anyway, playing it is 2024, after walking around for 30 minutes to refresh myself, I was able to solve almost instantly 😅 so now I’m back into the game and loving it!
It’s a quintessential patient game, with its slow pace (including the walking pace - glacial when compared to action games), and puzzles that you can puzz over in between sessions (even for years like in my case).
I told this story to a friend, and they asked “so did this puzzle take you 30 minutes to solve, or 6 years?” Which is a thought!
Started playing FFXIV again after not playing since 2013. Decided to delete my character and start fresh as I don’t remember the story etc. and am just going to take my time enjoying everything over again.
Does the Wii U do a worse job with those through emulation?
I do have a Wii, but even with a component cable the looks are not enough for me in a modern TV, that is why I thought having the Wii U HDMI port would make things look better.
Neither the Wii nor the Wii U use emulation. Both have the hardware to play GC games natively.
But keep in mind that the Wii U’s upscale of SD content is not that great. It wont necessarily look better than using a Wii over component cables.
You could get an upscaler, but you know, 480p or 480i is never gonna look good on a 1080p or 4k display. You have the choice between very blurry, kinda blurry, or really sharp and pixelated. Most prefer the latter, but none look truly great I’d say.
I‘ve recently finished Fallen Order, Unravel, and En Garde.
Fallen Order was a nice game although I always felt like the game valued celebrating its animations over how in control I felt. It felt kind of sluggish to fight and the frequent traversal stutters were also a bit meh. It sounds like I didn‘t like it but I‘d give it a 7/10. There‘s also no fasttravel at all. It‘s absolutely worth picking up on sale if you‘re into soulslikes.
Unravel is a really old game, but it‘s a 2D platformer and through its realistic style stood the test of time thus far: It‘s great to look at even today. The story‘s somewhat emotional but if you don‘t like it, you can ignore it since it plays out wordlessly in the background. Puzzles and platforming sections weren’t frustrating and just fun. I think I looked up a solution like twice and it usually turned out there was an object I could interact with that I wasn‘t aware of. Fantastic music. The game‘s cheap and great, I‘d give it an 8/10. If it crashes on start up, you need to download and install the basic version of K-Lite Codec Pack, the game uses an old codec for videos that you might not have.
En Garde is a cheesy indie Zorro game with Sekiro mechanics and lots of environmental interactions. It‘s on sale on Steam right now for 10 bucks and absolutely worth it. Great music, combat feels snappy, the game does its thing and then it’s over, no fluff. It‘s also tough at nails to do no hit runs and pretty hard even on normal runs (it ramps up in chapters 3 and 4). However, it has „accessibility“ options which are basically just cheats (infinite health, auto parry, etc.), so tune to your liking. I‘ve beaten a lot of soulslikes and found normal difficulty enjoyable. 8/10.
Played and beat Final Fantasy 8 for the first time. Bit of an unpopular opinion, but I enjoyed everything about it more than FF7 (which i also played for the first time a few months ago). As a long time JRPG player, the mechanics were really interesting and fresh. I liked the majority of characters more as well. Maybe it’s just the fact that I’m coming to these games 20+ years later and don’t have the nostalgia for them - I’m not sure. I can definitely see why people loved FF7, though I’m not one of them.
I’d love anybodies thoughts on this and their opinions on the two games!
FF7 came out at the perfect time and it really redefined RPGs in the USA. I know it exposed me to this kind of gameplay and genre that I had never experienced before. Unless you count some of the NES RPGs. Those never captivated attention like FF7 did.
I played 8 then 9 and later 7 and didn‘t like it. But it probably also didn‘t help that it was hard to not get spoilered if you hadn‘t played it already. I already knew some twists so I didn‘t get surprised and played through the whole thing while expecting it.
I loved 8 back then but 9 was just so fucking good I liked it even more. 8 blew me away with its story back then, but 9‘s gameplay resonated more with me and the graphics weren‘t as hard to look at (probably thanks to its comic-y style).
So personally I go 9 > 8 > 7.
On a sidenote, FF pretty much lost me after 10. I did play through all of 15 and I thought it was mediocre at best. The plot holes (you have everyone‘s fucking number but not your fiancees?!) were annoying, the gameplay hardly felt like a FF, the story in general didn‘t do anything (positive) for me. In retrospective I probably would advice myself to not buy it.
(Sick atm so apologies if this is just some confusing rambling)
I’m looking forward to trying out FF9 next. Gonna take a bit of a break, as 45 hours of a FF game are enough for me for the next month or two. I’ve been going through all the mainline Zelda games as well, just reached Ocarina of Time. So I’ll be continuing that until I feel a hankering to go back to FF.
While I didn’t play FF8 yet I can see why that would be the case.
I finished FF7 last year and while I did enjoy my time with it it’s clear how much of a prototype, for lack of a better word, it is as far as 3D JRPGs are concerned. There’s a lot of ambition there but also a feeling they weren’t able (or ready) to pull all of it off at the time.
It didn’t end up among my favorites and titles I tend to replay semi-regularly but I’m glad I got to play it in its original form.
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