Tetris 99 is a singular creation of evil, time-devouring genius
Games Features What Are You Playing This Weekend?
Every Friday, A.V. Club staffers kick off our weekly open thread for the discussion of gaming plans and recent gaming glories, but of course, the real action is down in the comments, where we invite you to answer our eternal question: What Are You Playing This Weekend?
Hey, here’s a fun joke for you: I meant to write about Tetris 99 for What Are You Playing This Weekend last weekend, when it was originally released. But I was too busy playing Tetris 99.
Also, I’m losing my goddamned mind.
Tetris addiction is one of the oldest bugbears to ever plague electronic gaming. Anyone whose mom suddenly started hoarding their NES circa 1989—when that weird, black, unlicensed Tengen cart of the original game first arrived on home systems—knows the terrible, controller-hogging power of those pretty falling blocks. Still, if you’ve been in the puzzle game trenches for long enough—surviving a tidal wave of Dr. Marios, Wetrises, and Wario’s Woodses in abundance—you might think the Tetris phrase of your life was well and truly over.
Sure, you dallied with the shockingly good DS port back in 2006. (Bring back Push Mode, Nintendo!) And of course, sometimes you’ll bust out Puyo Puyo Tetris for friends. Tetris Effect? What a trippy, fun novelty, one you can put down whenever you want! But obviously, as a mature adult, your days of staying up until 2 in the morning, desperately trying to eke out a few more brightly colored lines while your eyes steadily rot out of your skull are behind you.
(One second, a new match just loaded up… Fuck! How did I crap out at 19th place, again?!)
I don’t know who first decided to marry Tetris’ ever-compelling multiplayer action to the recent battle royale craze, but I hope they were wearing a cape. It would flap dramatically behind them as they hatched this plot of divinely inspired distraction, merging addictive puzzle gameplay with that “me vs. the world” feeling that’s become all the rage in modern multiplaying game. And when they decided to make this little poison pill free for anybody with Nintendo Switch Online to access? I hope the sky exploded behind them, lightning and rain crashing down as they turned their heads upward and cackled madly at god, gleeful at the evil they had wrought.
(Shitting hell, 40th?! How am I getting worse?)
It’s the kind of idea that’s terrifying in concept, and even worse when it actually arrives in your hands, tossing you into the arena with 98 other block-dropping maniacs, all trying to bury each other in screen-obstructing trash. At least PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and Fortnite give players a few moments to breathe before the action kicks off at the start of every match. Apex Legends sticks a few blessed loading screens between you and throwing yourself immediately back into the fray, letting you recover after a Jesus, really, 75th, what is wrong with me, finish.
Tetris 99 has no such mercy. Finish one match? Start another. And another. And another. It’s like some sort of perfectly adaptable parasite, absorbing the most compulsive elements of modern gaming, cutting out the weaknesses, and devouring your time in teensy, five-minute bites. (Heck, there’s even a version of PUBG’s “scavenge what you kill” system, as you collect badges from K.O.’d opponents that cause you to send higher and higher mountains of garbage at your remaining foes.) After all, you might not have time for a 20-minute Fortnite game. You always have time for Tetris 99.
You just might not end up having time for anything else.
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What Have You Finished This Week?I finished a couple of games that I have already talked about at length elsewhere, so I’ll keep it brief here:Mass Effect: Andromeda. What can I say, I really enjoyed this game. Still has the spirit of Mass Effect despite some significant missteps (mostly relating to the open-world aspect bloating the game without adding much of interest, but also the menu systems and unnecessary crafting crap etc. are pretty rage-inducing). Core missions and loyalty missions were mostly pretty fun, there was a (nearly) Citadel-worthy movie night with the crew, combat was exciting, romance arc was sweet. Recommended. (So there.)Sam and Max Hit the Road. Hilarious game, but as far as the actual gameplay, it felt like it was unintentionally tripping me up rather than challenging me. I’m glad I played it, since this is known as a classic, but I’m also glad the whole point-and-click genre has generally moved beyond this level of wacky incomprehensibility for its own sake.What about everyone else? What have you finished this week?
There’s a whole class of LucasArts adventure games that skate by on massive amounts of charm despite not being objectively well-designed puzzlers, and Sam And Max is probably the most blatant of the bunch.
(This is also where I fall on Thumbleweed Park.)
I actually liked Thimbleweed Park pretty well— it didn’t seem as nasty with the puzzle design as Sam and Max or (in my opinion) Day of the Tentacle. There was only one puzzle that really got me mad (involving the real estate guy and the phone). Of course, I was totally willing to ignore the whole issue of how the different characters read each other’s thoughts to collaborate on puzzles, which I guess some people found pretty annoying.
Of the three LucasArts remasters I played with a friend, Day of the Tentacle was the biggest perpetrator of gibberish logic. Grim Fandango and Full Throttle were much easier were, the few times we had to look something up, we went “ooohh yeah, of course”. While Day of the Tentacle was more “jeesh, glad I didn’t waste an hour on that”.
Yeah, the location of the hole punch in Grim Fandango was the one that got me on both of my playthroughs (10 years apart), so that was totally logical, just somehow missed. As for Day of the Tentacle, the horse dentures thing that SAM mentioned was the beginning of the end for me… I think a few things involving Betsy Ross’s flag and/or other George Washington crap ended up being so ridiculous that I just dropped the game and haven’t returned to it.
The worst puzzle in Day of the Tentacle, in my opinion is the one where you have to make it rain.
Yeah, if memory serves, only 2 puzzles in Thimbleweed Park stymied my progression for an extended period. The clown trampoline ALMOST got me until I noticed there was an extra screen above those trailers. BUT… along those lines… the relic/book store DID get me because I didn’t realize the bookshelf ladder went up more than one additional area. Spent 20 minutes running around trying to find some other way to chant that spell. And secondly, I needed to reset my Moon Logic detector to realize, “oh yeah, sure. Use radioactive waste to track footprints through a Mario Loop maze. Of course. Because radiation poisoning isn’t a concern.”Nothing too egregious compared to some of the nuttier elements of Day of the Tentacle, if memory serves. The mechanical woes of having to intuit to swap Dead Cousin Ted with Dr. Fred and give him similar “red tape.” Moving the bed mattress around for the cat’s mouse toy or maneuvering the chattering teeth to the open grate. Learning you need to wash the carriage in the past to make it rain by having Bernard analyze the car in the present (should that old adage not be 2nd nature). And the one that always slips me up when I replay: remembering you need to read the physics book to the inexplicably talking horse so he’ll get tired and put his dentures into his nearby glass so you can steal them and use them to win the tentacle pet beauty contest in the future. How foolish of me! So obvious! :PStill love that game, but it has some exceedingly wacky logic hurdles embedded throughout. Indiana Jones & the Fate of Atlantis is much more my jam. I believe the wackiest puzzle there is using a rib cage with a sausage to make a rudimentary crab trap. No problem, Indy! ^^
Man, I want to like adventure games, but getting stuck because a puzzle’s stupidly obtuse is way too frustrating. Your description of the horse puzzle sounds like a nightmare, especially in the days before guides were common.Silent Hill’s about as close as I’ll get (and even then, the canned juice in 2 threw me for a loop).
Oh yeah, those two were a bit tricky in Thimbleweed Park, but for some reason the one with the obscene phone call to the real estate agent (I think?) was the one that caught me. Didn’t even occur to me. But that one was solved by accident when I was browsing a review and the reviewer just so happened to mention that puzzle in a spoilery way.
I think I played maybe the first two Indiana Jones games from LucasArts (and liked them a lot— good if limited use of action elements too), but then I kind of ditched the series. I’ll have to go back and check out some of the other ones, like Fate of Atlantis. Thanks for the reminder!
Thimbleweed Park was maybe my favorite game last year. Loved it. I was on a huge point and click bender for a while there.
I feel like most LucasArts games had hints for the nuttier puzzles, even if they were embedded in unrelated conversations halfway across the game world. At least LucasArts games didn’t have walking dead scenarios like Sierra games did. Leisure Suit Larry 2 is just a giant, tangled maze of deaths predicated on items you didn’t pick up (or didn’t get rid of) and/or actions you didn’t take three locations ago. Having started on those and then moved to LucasArts later, I can accept occasionally rubbing all of my objects together/onto every background object until something happens. As long as I don’t have to reload from the start.The worst dumb moon logic offender I’ve ever played was Randal’s Monday, which I bought it for its ties to Clerks, but found both the puzzles and the dialog terrible. Doubly disappointing. All the side conversations were about how character A was ugly, character B is a thoughtless jerk who allegedly still manages to be charming enough to work as a protagonist (he doesn’t), and characters B, C, D, E, and F drink a lot.At least when I got stuck in Sam & Max, I could entertain myself by trying the same two unrelated items together until I broke Sam’s spirit.
I think you’re right that there was typically some kind of hint for each puzzle, though sometimes in obscure places… but the thing is that at some point, there are just too many illogical random “facts” like that to keep track of, especially if you encounter the hint before you get to the relevant puzzle. Like, if some random guy tells me in the middle of a bunch of chit-chat about his time at Snuckey University that he got top marks in his Pickle Jar Opening class, how likely am I to remember that 2 hours of gameplay later, especially if I have no other reason to return to that location and hear that conversation again? Multiply that by a bunch of similar situations and it doesn’t really feel fair or well-designed.
Yeah, it’s a feature of point-and-clicks that perhaps hasn’t aged well. I used to enjoy bumbling back through every location to see if I’d simply forgotten about an earlier hint, and when I found it, there would be a gigantic, “THIS IS IT! THIS IS IT!” moment of euphoria. I loved that a point-and-click could take me weeks because of design choices like that. Now I largely give puzzles 10-15 minutes before consulting a walkthrough. Whether that’s because I was a more patient person in middle and high school and could appreciate a slow-burn point-and-click or because I refuse to put up with bullshit that wastes my time as an adult might be purely a matter of framing.
Well on the subject of point-and-clicks, I finished The Secret of Monkey Island(TM) Special Edition. Which was good fun, though I’ll be honest I relied pretty heavily on in-game hints to get through it.
The original Monkey Island was my whole introduction to the genre and I loved it (my senior quote in my high school yearbook was “How appropriate, you fight like a cow”), but I’ve hesitated to go back to it after my less than stellar experiences with Day of the Tentacle and Sam and Max Hit the Road. Maybe my brain just doesn’t work well with stupid adventure game logic any more… On the other hand, I loved Grim Fandango just as much the second time as the first, so there’s hope.
Monkey Island (the first one, at least) isn’t too bad for the moon logic stuff. There’s just enough warped logic that most of them make sense.
The original Monkey Island really holds up on a replay, or at least it did for me. A lot of it is decently logical, and it’s gag-solutions are usually pretty obvious too. I think there were only two parts I got kinda stuck, but thankfully it wasn’t long.
I finished Horizon Zero Dawn last weekend. Very satisfying conclusion to one of the best current-gen games.
I’ve been incessantly banging this drum, but I thought Andromeda was a perfectly enjoyable game, where you can see a lot of the seams from rushing through it. Combat was great, there were some phenomenal character moments, and I appreciated the focus on intrepid discovery, as opposed to just fighting the Geth. I’m really sad that we’ll never see a proper sequel, and that Anthem just looks like prettier ME:A
Agreed. “Very good game with a few too many seams showing” is a good way to sum it up. I’m not completely writing off the idea of an Andromeda sequel yet, as various BioWare people were saying in that recent Polygon article that the franchise as a whole is definitely “very much alive”, though also very much on the back burner for the moment.
It’s hard to imagine a sequel considering how utterly pilloried the game was by both the press and general gaming public. For many good reasons, it has a lot of weak points! But getting it for ~$10 made it an absolute STEAL
Don’t trample my dreams of a sequel, dammit!
Beat Kingdom Hearts 3, it was more emotional starting than finishing but I still had a really good time with it. And am very excited as to where things are going next after the secret movie.
I think that’s the best condensation of KH3 I’ve seen so far: “it was more emotional starting than finishing.” So much love for that series, such a sprawling …everything really. It was gonna be hard to live up to the expectations. Yeah, it might have some dumb stuff and failings here and there but it tried, it seems.
I loved Sam & Max and all the LucasArts games that coast by on charm rather than logic. I can literally no longer recall how many times I’ve played through the first two Monkey Island games.
also, for my fellow Point & Click fans who (like me) haven’t played it, Thimbleweed Park is currently free on the EpicGames store. (It’s downloading at home right this very second)
Thimbleweed Park is being discussed in other branches of this thread. Personally, I loved it. I’ve binged on a lot more classic and not-so-classic adventure games since then, so maybe I would not love it as much if I were playing it for the first time now, but I feel like it threaded the needle pretty effectively as far as retro vibe but without clinging unnecessarily to the more irritating elements of the past (like that moon logic that always comes up in discussing this genre). I hope you’ll enjoy it– keep us up to date!
This week I finished playing YIIK. I didn’t beat the game or anything, I just… finished playing it. I crapped out at pretty much the same point the reviewer at Silicon Era did. I was actually really into it despite (because of?) its many glaring flaws and was determined to beat it. Shoulda listened to the reviews because I don’t think I’ve ever been angrier at a video game.
It doesn’t happen often, but yeah, I’ve had a few cases of “didn’t finish the game but I’m damn well finished playing”. Most recent one was Beholder… I had high Papers Please-like expectations for it but it just didn’t function that well as a game. Sometimes you just have to bail.
This weekend I will probably be continuing to mess around (and slowly progress) in Heat Signature. I just got back into it after several months off, so the first few missions I took were ones I was sure I could handle, but I’m starting to get back to where I dare to take missions that are kind of scary. I finished off last night’s session with a bang by completing the climactic “personal mission” for a character who has been around for a while and was just waiting to get hold of the right gear for the job. I succeeded in saving my daughter from the Glitchers, but not without a couple of scary moments. Trying to snag a key from an armored and shielded guard, I fumbled a weapon just long enough to be knocked out and kicked off the ship while the clock was ticking, requiring me to hurry back on board and rush through a long section of the ship with multiple key cloners and teleporters more aggressively than I wanted to, just so I could get to the bridge quickly and turn off the alarm before the whole mission went down the tubes. It worked, but then I was a bit short on supplies for the remainder of the mission. Fortunately, I chanced upon a very useful trick by leaving a body right in front of a door with four shielded guards behind it, so when I set a crash trap (= stationary shield-breaking trap thing) in front of the door and then opened it, they all saw the body, rushed to investigate and run through the trap. Now they had no shields, so my concussion gun and armor-piercing shortblade could do their work… and a few seconds later I tugged the key to my daughter’s cell out of the pile of bodies, disabled the sentry gun on the corridor to the cell, and neatly stabbed the final panicked guard who was twitching in fear inside the cell. The fastest way out was through the window, so I smashed it and brought my remote-controlled escape pod over to pick us up in 2 seconds flat. Mission accomplished.Another fun thing that I’ll count as “this weekend” even though it happened yesterday: My kids are off school this week, so I surprised them by driving them to a place called Robot City Games a couple of cities over— supposedly the biggest arcade in the state. Just check out this list of games! They must reset the high scores every day or every week or something, because they looked really low— I promptly landed the top spot in Time Pilot, Ms. Pac-Man, Robotron 2084, Gyruss, and even Centipede. Didn’t have quite so much success with Sinistar (which I had played about twice before, back in the late 80s or so), Rampage, Crystal Castles, Gauntlet, The Simpsons or Smash TV, but they were all pretty fun (well, maybe not Crystal Castles, and Gauntlet is way too hard as ever). I forgot how incredibly fast-paced some of these games were, especially the dual-stick games. Here’s Robotron:Centipede is a pretty bizarre concept as well. Note for those who don’t know the game: instead of a joystick, this one uses a cue-ball-sized trackball controller, set into the deck of the arcade cabinet, that can spin in any direction. And also, you don’t get to shoot whenever you want— basically, you hold down the fire button and you only get a new bullet when the previous one hits something.All in all, a really great retro experience taking me back to days of my youth at Chuck E. Cheese eating those recycled pizzas (eyeroll). My kids loved it too, although my daughter wants to go back with her own friends rather than her dumb old brother. Fun way to start the weekend.Happy weekend and happy gaming, everyone!
I love Heat Signature so much; there’s something beautiful about a game where there aren’t really glitches or exploits so much as “intended breaks of the system.” I haven’t played much since Tom added in the super-guards (they scare me), but I tend to revisit it every few months.
Yeah, the various super-guards are tough. I just screwed up a “daily challenge” mission because one of the Jammers shut down all gadgets in the first area, and of course my whole strategy was about gadgets.Talking about intentionally breaking the system: There’s an achievement for completing an assassination mission without ever entering the ship. I’m finally to the point where I can understand how that could happen, but wow. I’ve read about Tom Francis’s obsession with recovering from terrible situations in games, and Heat Signature is really the epitome of that.
That Arcade holy hell…We have a Barcade here in my hometown that decommissioned their copy of Defender a few years back and there’s been an empty hole in my heart ever since. Such a good game, but it’s no fun to play in a browser or on a console. You gotta be standing with your face 2 feet from a big ol’ honkin CRT cabinet. Truly amazing selection they have there (tho a tad light on fighters imo)
It was so good! (I am not so much of a fighter aficionado so I didn’t feel their absence so much.) I was super-disappointed when my daughter dragged us out of there after only 90 minutes— I will have to arrange to go back there with her fellow 12-year-olds so she will be in more of a long-term hangout mood and I can really spend some time.A few of the games were showing their age— you know that out-of-focus look that older arcade games get? And I mean, some of these games were seriously old— they had fucking Tank from fucking 1974 (and yes it looked distinctly geriatric, with a twitchy display and all). But almost all of the ones I really cared about were in fine shape. God, that look and sound of the dark room with over 100 games going at once, and that feeling of a plastic cup with 100 tokens in it and a free afternoon to kill. I swear I am going to crack eventually and buy an arcade cabinet of some sort for home (or, knowing me, buy a kit to build the cabinet and innards myself, then never actually get around to it). EDIT: Defender would have been pretty fun too, if they had had it. Although actually I associate that game (and Space Invaders, which this unbelievably great arcade does have— I will have to try it next time) more with the Atari home unit at my aunt’s house on the lake back in the mid ‘80s than with the whole arcade experience. But yeah, they both require some kind of retro controller setup. Playing it on more modern gear just totally harshes the vibe.
Great post about classic arcade games (and thanks for reminding me to get back into Heat Signature). But I cannot allow your insult to Crystal Castles stand.Pistols at dawn or swords at dusk – your choice!
Ha, I know that was a pretty popular game and (therefore) I’m sure it was a favorite for lots of people. I just couldn’t get the hang of the trackball controller, I guess, so its “3D Pac-Man” vibe just never clicked for me.
I just couldn’t get the hang of the trackball controller Nobody could. It was just an odd game, which explains why some people dismiss it, and some people have a weird affinity/nostalgia for it.What’s your take on Deadly Towers?
Picked up a few games at a Vintage Stock sale. The first one I’m delving into is The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. I was hemming on this one for a while, waiting to find it cheap, but ha ha, you fool, Nintendo games are never cheap.Anyway, this one probably has the least-good reputation of the main Zelda series- one where they went a little overboard on the tutorials and explanations, and yeah, Fi, the game’s version of Navi, is a bit on the wordy side. I’m fairly sure it’s quicker to start than Twilight Princess, mind you. It’s fun, though. I actually rather enjoy the motion control swordfighting, there’s a bit of jank but on the whole it’s still an immersive thing. The camera could be better, though, it’s too zoomed-in when things get busy. I really like the painterly art style and while some of the story is super cornball, it’s got a certain charm, and there’s clearly an influence from Wind Waker. It’s also interesting to see a few elements that ended up in Breath of the Wild- this is the first Zelda game with a stamina meter, the ability to choose conversation options, there are a few other things. Also, man, that first dungeon boss, eh? Took me three tries, which isn’t something you can say about Gohma or whatever that thing was on Dragon Roost Island. On the whole, so far, it’s very much a game in a formula, and I can see how it felt a little stagnant at the time and how Breath of the Wild was a necessary overhaul. But it’s a pretty good execution of said formula. Not sure where it’ll end up in my rankings. I’m actually dipping into a few games that have less-than-stellar reputations, I picked up Starfox Zero, and the PS4 Godzilla game is slowly making its way in my direction. These may end up being bad decisions. We shall see.
“Vintage stock” “Skyward Sword”Fuck man >__
In my opinion, Starfox Zero doesn’t deserve it’s bad reputation. Yes it takes slightly longer to get used to the controls than it normally would. But I consider the gameplay design in it to be great. It created new, novel missions for Fox to do and had quite a few memorable moments. Once you get over that initial hurdle (which, again, is not as bad as critics made it out to be), it really is a stellar Fox game.
Gotta know where to look, man. I got Twilight Princess for $6 at my local reuse store.
Aww, I always liked Skyward Sword. I didn’t mind the motion control and thought it was fun to stand up for the swordplay, especially when you’re mowing through hordes at the end. (rolling bombs sucked, though) The impressionist backgrounds were incredibly pretty for an SD game, and gave it more of a heightened/surreal quality than Twilight. The bosses and temples can be genuinely challenging, and the first fight with the imprisoned is overwhelming. The use of the time stones is ingeniously melancholy, and sailing out on the dead lake for the first time is one of my favorite gaming moments ever. Backtracking through the same realms is a little tedious, but I found Twilight to be a lot of pointless empty space so I didn’t mind re-imagining Hyrule as Metroidvania. If anything it needed some of the weird personality and humor of Majora’s Mask or Link’s Awakening, because the origin story was pretty one-note (one of the reasons I appreciated Zelda’s resentment in BotW flashbacks). Also I kept waiting for Goose to turn into Gannon.Between this and BotW, I really want to play something set in ancient Hyrule.
Breath of the Wild easily has the best characterization of Zelda.
Salutations~!Well, I decided to take a little breather from gaming this past week (for the most part), and just watched some old Columbo episodes. Tons of fun were had, marveling at the time capsule nature of ~1971-1977 aesthetics on display, on top of enjoying Peter Falk’s always exemplary performance. I also checked out some early clips for the 20th Anniversary Edition of Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers. Decided not to purchase it though. Not because it looked deficient in quality or anything. Just that every other line reading I was mouthing off the pacing and cadence I remember instinctively from the original version, word for word. “The Narrator didn’t have a pause like she normally would when describing these tweezers. That feels weird to me.” And in the end, I realized, “What can you tell me about… vooodooooo?” just doesn’t feel right to me unless Tim Curry’s saying it. So I replayed the first two original Gabriel Knight games instead. As is my usual volition every 1-2 years. Still a magnificent experience. Not sure what I’ll do this weekend, but plenty of options are avail….Final Fantasy Record Keeper: HEY, Shinigami! KHIII Collaboration!Nah, no thanks, DeNA. That sounds like fun, but I’m not that into KH. FFRK: How about TWO free 40x relic pulls with 2 guaranteed 6* relics a piece?!? Burst Relic level or HIGHER in the pool! Shinigami: …two free 40x pulls? Yeah but the RNG on those can be pretty fickle, I don’t know…FFRK: 500 gem Ultra Soul Break relic SELECT draw! Get that specific, rare USB you’ve always wanted!!!OK, DeNA. BUT ONLY TO SEE if I get enough firepower to finally pierce 5* Magicite. I’m not gonna get carried away or anything. And I’m not going to Clown College. Pffft! FFRK: Muhahahahahaha~!Various Video Game News About Which Shinigami Obsesses:Deltarune: Chapter 1 launches February 28th for Switch/PS4 FREE!https://gematsu.com/2019/02/deltarune-chapter-1-for-ps4-launches-february-28Yaaaaaaaaaaaaay!Untitled Goose Game (Metal Goose Solid) Delayed to Later in 2019:(I CAN’T WAIT TO STEAL THIS GUY’S GLASSES! I’LL STEAL ALLLL THE GLASSES EVERYWHERE! NO OPTICAL LENSES WILL BE SPARED FROM MY WRATH! NONE!!!)https://gematsu.com/2019/02/untitled-goose-game-delayed-to-later-in-2019
Nooooooooooooooooooooo~!!! Why do you taunt me, beloved Goose game?Catherine: Full Body set for September 3rd, 2019 Global Release:https://gematsu.com/2019/02/catherine-full-body-launches-september-3-in-the-americas-and-europeTroy Baker and Laura Bailey confirmed for voicing new dialogue? Awesome! Not sure if I’m in the mood for more Catherine gameplay. Like Bloodborne, the perpetual tension and anxiety it produces is not something I’m always 100% down for. Very well executed in both cases. But I have to be in the right mind frame to best enjoy it. Let’s see… anything else? Columbo: “Right, just one more thing…”I played RE2 Remake’s Ghost Survivors. It was okay!Wish it had some story beats to it and actual voice acting. That would’ve been nice. I did enjoy all the mechanical additions (vending machines and mobs with a few new tricks implemented). Plus funny head accessories. It was decent for free DLC. Fair enough, Capcom. /salute Once you see the G Head, you can’t UN-SEE it. Take care and have a fantastic weekend. Be warm and safe, all. G Face: NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM~!
UGG being delayed is obviously a meta gameplay aspect of the game itself. They should have just released a video of the goose moving the game further down the delivery calendar. Also I just realized it’s only available for Switch and PC, so I guess I will just have to finally buy a Switch OH DARN.
Well, the good news is, if UGG is on Switch, there’s always the possibility the protagonist Goose ends up in Smash Ultimate! “Goose doesn’t actually attack you, it just inconveniences everyone and uses all your items so you have to endure it until it goes away.” I’d so play as Goose in Smash. Every time.
A group of friends and I had a few single-screen 7-person brawls a couple of weekends ago (only 1 of us had ever played any Smash at all before (wasn’t me)) where every single one of us played as Wii Fit Trainer and it was absolute hilarious madness every time.(edit: the point is that Goose would be even better, agreed)
Intrigued by Deltarune, totally fucking psyched for Metal Goose Solid (UGG). The latter looks like Donut County only even more aggressively irritating. I’ve had my eye on this since you first flagged it however many months ago. Love.
When Untitled Goose Game does finally arrive, we will have to recalculate how time is archived and perceived. Before Goose and After Goose. Here’s to the start of 1 AG! 😛 Seriously though, I can’t wait to play this thing. I hope it lives up to the hype.
Capcom always towing the line between fan service and bodyhorror so well. Truly commendable.
Haven’t played anything new this week.
I played a little bit of God Of War, finishing the first go through Muspelheim. Valkyrie defeated. After that, I did another round of exploration around the Lake of Nine. And I gotta say, I think the Lake of Nine is one of the best central “hub”areas I’ve ever experienced. There’s a lot of stuff on those shores and none of them take more than 2 minutes to get there. I lit all the braziers, closed some realm tears (took me way too long to realize it’s “teir” and not “teer”) and fought a troll (I knew that statue looked off). At this point, God Of War is firmly in my all-time favourite list, only second to The Last Of Us (Ellie > Atreus). It remains a joy to explore and play. It’s cohesive and there’s so many big and little things that astonish and surprise me.
Thinking back to the previous big game I played, Red Dead Redemption 2, I compared the two and while both are amazing achievements, God Of War is the better game. RDR2 is the kind of lyrical experience I’ve experienced in books and movies. The story of Arthur and the world he inhabits is beautiful but the game is great despite it’s game-elements not because of it.
God Of War is just so cohesive and well-executed, not even considering the 180 they managed to pull after those previous games. Of course, Apex Legends got some play time too. Going back to Fortnite for a couple games was rough. “oh yeah, fall damage”, “oh yeah, no respawn”. I’ll be back when the new season starts but for now, Apex is the favourite place to hang out for me and my friends.
The decision to turn travel time into ‘Lore Dump’ time on the Lake of Nine was such a simple but ingenious time. So many times I’d just wait to land in the canoe because I wanted to hear the end of Mimir’s story.
Mimir is one of so many great parts of the game. A talking head that does nothing but tell stories? Amazing, yes please, more.
If that line about “the dwarves taking measurements”, he’s gonna get an artificial body, I hope he still tags along on the next journey (to Asgard???). Almost finished the game, spent the weekend clearing Muspelheim and Niflheim. Only got Sigrun left, wish me luck.
“[S]taying up until 2 in the morning, desperately trying to eke out a few more brightly colored lines while your eyes steadily rot out of your skull …”Brings back memories, that does. Except with me, it’s finishing one last turn with my empire intact, my cities humming productively along, I’m in my flivver and all’s right with the world, and now I can finally go to b — wait, what you do mean the Japanese just bombed my Navy base at Pearl Harbor? And they’re attacking all my other holdings in Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies at the same goddam time? Forget bedtime, I have a Pacific-wide blitzkrieg to fight off!I played my Civilization III disk so often I think I actually managed to rub some key data off of it. I’ve got Civ IV but I haven’t played it yet, because (a) the gameplay looks very different from what I’m used to, (b) the game itself seems too Internet-heavy for my taste, and (c) I’m afraid that when I emerge from my Civ-mediated daydream of Wakanda Ascendant into the real(?) life world of Brexit, Trump, Duterte, climate change and a whole host of other idiocies I could fix with a couple of keystokes in Wakanda Ascendant — I may wind up using my computer, Wakanda Ascendant and all, to smash my TV to smithereens and Wakanda Ascendant with it.Real life often sucks. But it sucks worst when it bloody doesn’t HAVE TO.
Yep, me too, ‘cept it’s Civ II for me. Subsequent Civs look wrong to my eyes.
Yeah, CIV II cost me so many sleepless nights. Still my favorite game in the series.
As well as the “just one more turn oh shit it’s half two already” aspect of it, my other problem is that after playing it in the evening I go to bed with my mind buzzing and any sleep is plagued by weird dreams about tile improvements.
There was a mini-sale on the Nintendo Shop two weeks back, and it helped getting closer to the plan I had made for my Switch when I bought it last Christmas: transforming it into the most convenient way to play my library of beloved indie games from the last years. I still have a somewhat uneasy feeling when I’m paying basically 5-10 times more than what I paid when I got the games the first time around on Steam or Kickstarter. On the other hand, it’s all games that have given me so much joy that paying the developers more than breadcrumbs is not all that bad.In the meager time that I had for playing in the last two weeks, I made some progress in Cave Story — which still holds up as one of the most delightful games ever made — and I tried a bit of Into The Breach, even though it hasn’t won me over completely yet. I spent most of the time playing The Binding of Isaac, though. I’m still pretty competent — I make it past It Lives/Mom’s Heart in most runs —, but I’m not sure how I feel about the compulsive urge to Try One More Time. Fun fact: it’s the only game I ever got a Platinum trophy for, and it’s one of three games that I had deleted from my Steam library via customer support. (The other two are FTL and Nuclear Throne. I guess you could say that I have a minor rogue-like problem.) So I guess I’ll play something more… endless on the week-end. Katamary Reroll, most likely.
I’m behind the times. Not to the point where I can be charmingly retro, though. I also love to play hard games. That being said, I’m gonna be banging my head against a wall to the tune of Bionic Commando: Rearmed for the PS3. Pray for me, folks.
This week I am mostly playing Metal Gear Solid. I’ve never played it before, despite its reputation among game-players as the holiest of holies.Unpopular opinion time:It’s fine I guess, once I got used to the janky controls and top-down perspective. I got killed about a dozen times making my way out of the cargo dock at the very beginning, but it’s been reasonably straightforward since then. I am, in all honestly, still struggling a bit with how cheesy it all is though.
The best way to enjoy the cheesiness of MGS is to recognize it for what it is, a glorious blended concoction of Tom Clancy, 90s Cyber-punk Anime and a Freshman Philosophy 101 term paper. Obviously in the world of twin stick manuevering it feels awkward but stick with it and it begins to feel natural. That was one of those games on PS1 that I beat so many times I could knock it off in one night just by skipping all cutscenes and having fun.
I said this earlier in the week at Kotaku, but Tetris 99 is a strong contender for my personal GOTY, especially if those rumored datamined updates come through. A TEAM TETRIS BATTLE ROYALE??? I might never leave my house again. At this point, the only thing I can see challenging it will be Mario Maker 2, which has basically every feature and then some I could ever want.Anyway, my weekend will be spend playing Tetris 99, Overwatch, and Nier: Automata. A friend of mine and I are documenting a parallel playthrough of Nier, and I’m interested to see where it goes. We haven’t published anything, but he’s deeply invested in the more philosophical elements, and I’m trying to focus on the actual gameplay stuff. It’s my first time doing this, so I’m anxious to get more practice in.
I got my son Super Smash Bros. Ultimate for his birthday. So we will play that if we can wrestle the Switch away from his mother, who has been taken hostage by Tetris 99.
I have reached 100% addiction levels with Apex Legends. When I’m not playing the game (after my wife and son go to bed) I’m thinking about it, or I’m watching videos about which guns are best by YouTubers with names like “Drift0r” and “JackFrags”. There’s an itch in everyone of our monkey brains that I think mutliplayer shooters scratch with the fight or flight reflex but then the added mental math it takes to do a good BR (internalizing calculations like “should I carry this gun or this gun” will that house over there contain helpful loot or enemies in waiting, etc) has got me hooked.The only hangup is I am still pretty shite at the game. I’ve gotten better but I just don’t have the trigger reaction reflexes I used to and find myself losing a lot of embarassing one on one firefights. Back in the halcyon days of 2010 when I was Junior in College, I was an absolute beast at Battlefield Bad Company 2, generally finishing in the top 3 scorers every round and getting irrationally upset if I didn’t, but I don’t know if having kids or time or too long outside of the shooter world has softened me but moving a joystick on a controller to pinpoint the location of someone you want to shoot just isn’t natural to me anymore.But you know what!?! The game still freaking rips! I love it! I’m thinking about playing it right now. It’s great and I haven’t even mentioned that I haven’t spent a dime on the game yet. Should I? Am I not rewarding the hard working devs of Respawn for their labor which I am consuming? What would Slavoj Zizek or Karl Marx have to say about Free to Play Microtransactions? Those are the YouTube videos I should be watching…
If you want to support Respawn, get the battle pas when it releases. I’m definitely getting it because I do like the drip of cosmetics here and there. Especially weapon skins add a nice touch.I like how most weapons are actually viable and there’s not a definite meta-game yet like in Fortnite. It’s always a struggle to decide between the Prowler (I might find that select fire later…), R301, R33, Hemlock,Flatline,..
So far, my personal favorite is the combo of R301 and Hemlock. Heavy ammo rips and I like how the R301 feels with some add-ons on it. Barrel stabilizer makes that gun amazing.I added you on PS by the way last week. Don’t know if you saw the invite?
What I’ve been playing this week can be boiled down to 2 words: Elite Dangerous. And I didn’t play very much of that. Did some light trading and galaxy hopping. I currently have a cargo bay full of Soontil Relics and Atmospheric Processors, and am orbiting Khun 5. More experienced players will realize this means that I’m trying to visit the Engineer Elvira Martauk at Long Sight Base. Unfortunately due to what has rapidly become my gaming bete noire lately, my potato of a laptop, every time I try to drop out of orbital cruise, my connection drops and the game crashes due to a graphics bug. It’s frustrating because I have done planetary landings before, but this crash is utterly preventing me from doing so anymore. I may try to supercruise to another body in the system, then try and supercruise back to within 7.5km of Long Sight Base without entering orbit and attempt an auto-dock. Failing that, I’ll leave the game on hold for 8 months while I buy and assemble my new gaming rig.The Nintendo Direct last week that revealed the Switch version of Link’s Awakening got me in a Zelda mood, so I’ve found my RetroPie again, got it hooked up on Wednesday night and was all set to play the original Legend of Zelda on it. Unfortunately, I ended up having to take lost_wifey to the ER (she’s fine) and didn’t get to play.I’m also seriously contemplating getting a cheap 3DS/2DS now it’s basically at the end of its life-cycle and just buying all the Zelda games available on it, since finishing all of them (aside from the multi-player 4 swords ones) is a gaming bucket list item, and I don’t think I’ve actually ever finished one. Oh, and in mobile gaming, I’m still playing Pokemon GO! and have managed to grind my way up to Level 36 (of 40) but the XP curve on that game is ridiculous so I’ll probably hit 37 some time in 2020.
Is there still a significant online community playing Elite Dangerous, or is it now pretty much any player alone in the depths of space?
There’s still a pretty big player base, but the game itself still feels very, very empty.
As I’ve never been all that particularly keen on multiplayer games, I really don’t have a problem with that.I really should get around to E:D, as I enjoyed Elite and Frontier so much as a kid. Just so limited for time.
You can also play in Solo mode, where you only see the occasional other NPC pilots. You still have to be online though.
Kingdom Hearts III is off my plate for now, that was a really fun ride. For me personally it lived up to the enormous hype it had on it well enough and I’m looking forward to KH: Verum Rex or whatever spinoff / sequel is coming next (it’d be nice if we just straight up got Kingdom Hearts IV next instead of 5 spinoffs).I got Anthem preordered and downloaded (why can’t I preload big day 1 patches too game developers??), I know it’s getting bad impressions and everything but I want my Bionicle simulator so hopefully I have a good time with it. I enjoyed the closed alpha at least…I’m also replaying / trying to finish some other Bioware games, playing through Mass Effect 1 again and Andromeda, the latter I never got very far in. I’m starting over with a Ryder that I put more effort into looking better so that seems to help.
Quick correction, the game you reference above as “Wetris” is actually “Wetrix.” I had that game for N64 and loved it. Googling, it looks like there is a “Wetris,” but it’s a puzzle game app, not a falling pieces type game as far as I can tell.
I started a new go-through of Borderlands 2 with my son this week (at his request). Last year, once I determined he was old enough, we played through the whole game, all of the DLC, and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel. Since then I’ve been looking for another game that’s couch co-op and as much fun on the PS4 and have found nothing. We’ve played a few of the Lego games when he was a bit younger, but he doesn’t find those as fun anymore. Battlefront is too limited. Same with Battleborn, just not enough story there. I have tried, but can’t get into Minecraft and that’s passé with the kids these days anyway. Why aren’t there more split-screen couch co-op games like Borderlands out there? Why can’t we play Destiny 2 together? Or Just Cause 3? Sigh.A family that snipes Spiderants together, stays together.
I have continued my play through of Kingdom Hearts 3, and I’m very near the end. I just beat the Pirates World and Big Hero 6 world, so there’s only one world left as far as I’m aware. I’m currently grinding some crafting goals and photo missions so that I can get the ultimate weapons in the game for Sora, Donald and Goofy. Soon as I get that, I’m ready to start the end game.
This weekend I will be visiting my alma mater, so any gaming I do will either be switch-based or board games! I’m bringing down Dominion, because when you have this many expansions you just have to use them or lose them. (I have Seaside, Hinterlands and Empires, by no means a vast collection.) The jury is still out on me bringing my switch, but I’ll think it over. I basically only have Towerfall and Overcooked on it, but now that I have 4 joycons it might be worth it to bring it down.
Everyone have a good weekend!
I’m really getting into Tetris 99. It’s kind of eating up the time I would be spending getting good at Smash or progressing in Final Fantasy 9, but I do like murdering people with blocks so it’s not all bad.Going to a couple of Smash tournaments this weekend by the way. Yes I main Link and no I don’t care if that sucks! 🙂
Props for sticking with Link. Of all the mediocre characters I love to play in Smash, I usually stick with Mega Man, because at least he’s adorable. His little chibi face and sound effects are a consolation when K. Rool or Piranha Plant knocks me silly again.
Megaman and Link are both high tiers, brother! K. Rool and Plant are the weak ones.
I’m not great no matter who I’m playing as, so I’ll take your word for it! I’ve seen tier lists from numerous sources that put different characters all over the place, I just know I see a lot of those two beating me when I play online.
I feel like the new characters for this game were all pretty strong … except for Ridley, anyway. I’m glad to see pretty much everyone agrees he’s hard to use well, and it’s not just my poor playing (though I’m sure it’s still a huge part).
Yeah. The game differs a lot on and offline to be honest, so tier lists aren’t best geared for that kind of play, which is higher in lag and thus promotes larger and projectile based characters, as well as some wildcards like Jigglypuff and Plant. There’s always room to get better at Smash though. Online can be really difficult because of the lag though. :/
Getting into the top 10 in Tetris 99 makes me feel like I’m seeing the code of the Matrix.
I also feel like there are more advanced mechanics of the game I’m not grasping yet. I guess I better keep playing until I see the Tetris blocks when my eyes are closed!
Metro: Exodus has me hooked. I just got to the desert area and I haven’t encountered too many bugs yet. I don’t know what it is about these games but the gunplay and survival stuff feels great. There are a ton of mechanics that feel passive and really are only shown through how the player character reacts. Like when you start gasping for air, it usually means to put your mask on, change your filter, or repair your mask. There’s no meters or warning symbols on screen. It feels real without being too much of a challenge
Still playing through the first Kingdom Hearts. I’m at the point just before the final boss rush. I’m only at level 51, so it might be a good idea to revisit past worlds and grind a bit, but I’m totally ready for the game to just be over.Also made some progress in Yakuza Kiwami 2. I’ve discovered that the best way to shut down gunners and knife-throwers is just to lob bricks at their faces. There’s a solution for everything!
No mention of Tetris Attack here?! That’s the urtext destroy-your-friends-no-fucking-mercy couch battle game that is impossible to stop playing. I’d argue it’s also the platonic ideal blueprint for every match-drop-and-combo mobile game that’s come out in the last decade.
And finally, it’s the most glaring omission from the SNES Classic. Let’s hope Switch Online players will soon be able to swap blocks and drop junk onto Mario-themed foes in short order. I’m getting tired of playing Pokemon puzzle league in d-imterlaced 720p on my Wii.
I’m excited by the fact that in the “stats” screen there is a “Tetris 99″ tab, and an “All” tab leading me to believe it will be updated with extra modes eventually. Even if I have to pay for them, I’d be willing to expand this game for a few bucks a mode.
I’m planning on finishing off my Steam copy of Okami over the weekend. I hadn’t played the game since its original PS2 release, and I’m finding that I don’t have as much patience for Issun talking about boobs and getting upset at being called a bug as I did when I was in my early 20s. I’m kinda disappointed by how much mileage I’m getting out of the option to skip cut scenes. The exploration, combat, and visual style are more than enough to make up for the lengthy, grating dialog, though. I think I should easily clear the third act of the game before it’s time to head back to work on Monday.
I’ll be giving Witcher 3 another shot. I started playing it last week due to a friend’s recommendation, but coming off of AC:Odyssey*, everything about Witcher 3 seems clumsy and unintuitive: the movement, the combat (stuff like selecting/acquiring a target from further than 5 feet away), or just looting a corpse or plant without being directly on top of it, and then having to double loot once you do**. Oh, and the baffling and completely unnecessary two sword system… You know what, I’m gonna just play some Dead Cells.*Which, despite a few idiosyncrasies, had very smooth movement and combat, and a clean inventory UI.**Yes, I’m sure there are mods out there that can simplify a lot of those issues. I also think developers shouldn’t count on their suckers customers to make a final QA pass to make their game playable.
Picked up The Messenger (Steam) where I had left it. It took me a while to figure out how things work in the Metroidvania section of the game. The layout is more convoluted than I expected but once I keyed into it I had a lot of fun and blew through a chunk of the game.
I also played the first seven or eight levels of A Boy and His Blob (Steam). It’s a super pleasant game, great to unwind to. The hug button is the best thing that ever existed.
I beat the first two dungeons of The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening DX (3DS Virtual Console). I played the original game years ago and and started this on a whim and got hooked for a couple of days. I may finish the game in preparation for the new remake.
And we had some friends over at my place on Saturday night and played Street Fighter II on SNES. It’s still such a tight and fun game and we had a blast.
I told myself I was going to play Okami over the weekend to wrap up my playthrough, but I had to scroll past Half Minute Hero to get to the O section of my Steam library, and HMH is just so constantly rewarding that I had to make a pit stop. I never made it back to the O section, and I still have at least 20 levels left of the main campaign in HMH, so I might just be switching gears for a bit.
There is something very satisfying about figuring out how to get all the ranks, all the equipment, all the paths, all the partners, all the endings, all the rare monsters, all the food. The levels go by so quickly, but they’re so packed with things to do that I think nothing of going through them half a dozen times, experimenting with different ideas of how I might earn a rank called “Frantic.” I went through this entire game and got everything in like 2011, but retreading through all of it is still a fresh experience, AND I have a sequel to go through afterward. No regrets. Okami’s third act can wait.