Posts made by Chocobop

Let's Play Fantasy Quest ep 6! Expect statues to not be very talkative, walking through a cryptography challenge, and we decide against taking the pants off a dead guy. Featuring a powerhouse enemy that we simply throw ourselves against.

Enjoy Shiren the Wanderer music in this one. I think this is my favorite episode actually, owing to the sequence of realizations that occur. I can appreciate that for other viewers, though, this episode does have less visual variety.

Let's Play Fantasy Quest episode 6, Map Drawing and Getting Lost in the 3D Maze
Youtube Video

Let's talk about World Builder software using the context of the game so far...

Here's a link for the instruction manual for world builder, if you want to thumb through what using this software was like.

The way World Builder works, the only "entities" in the game are characters (player, monsters) and objects (things you find on the ground and which generally go into your inventory when clicked). All graphics come from these entities together with the background painting for the current room. The background is completely fixed, so to get any kind of animation -- like at 15:45 for the Elven Plate armor chest rising out of the ground -- you have to add and remove dummy objects to the scene using code. Objects like these are marked as immovable and non-interactable by the player, so they don't wind up in the player's inventory.

On the title screen (the first image of the thread), even the little dot that shows your menu selection is an inventory object. I think it is actually two separate objects, because the dot can move between two possible menu selections and I'm pretty sure an object's graphic doesn't have an (x,y) position. (Such a simple menu screen is actually very advanced for World Builder.)

If a game wants an object to be oriented or "posed" differently when you find it laying on the ground and then later, say, stick the object somewhere special as a puzzle solution, it has to create multiple versions of that object and juggle them around properly. It's also probably why objects we find in chests/coffins/etc. aren't visible, but you can drop most of them once they are in your inventory.

I'd speculate the 3D maze was accomplished by making the background a painting of just the floor and ceiling, essentially a blank canvas, and then creating a dozen or so objects for every possible "rasterization" of a wall section or scenery object. Then the code would have to place/hide the right combination of wall objects depending on what each room is supposed to look like from the direction you entered.

Let's Play Fantasy Quest ep 5! Expect a string of successful puzzle intuitions, our bloodlust to be stoked by clearly ignorable enemies, and reaching the most intimidating area of the game.

Fantasy Quest LP episode 5, Dragon Deals, Elven Armor, and Finding the Underground 3D Maze
Youtube Video

BTW, since I was discussing world builder software in the last episode: here's a page on mac garden to scroll through and see what other world builder games looked like.

@sazime said in Let's Play Fantasy Quest: old school puzzle adventure on the Apple Macintosh:

I've been enjoying it! I haven't played a game like this in a looooong time. It's neat to see one I haven't played being poked and prodded.

Nice to hear :) By "game like this", do you mean an old/retro adventure game or just any adventure game more generally?

My main problem with our final list is that there aren't 50 games better than Dark Souls 2, much less from the 2010s.

Let's Play Fantasy Quest ep 4! Expect our insurance policy to kick in, musings about world builder code, and recalling the culture of user-created adventures.

Fantasy Quest LP episode 4, Village, Mountain Cliff Spelunking, Navigating the Mines
Youtube Video

Bethesda basically only makes first person games, so it somehow feels fitting to be on Xbox.

It's weird though that MS is double stacking their IP portfolio with similar/competing games. They now own Elder Scrolls and Fallout, but they already own Avowed and Outer Worlds (and Fable). They now own Doom, Rage, Quake and Wolfenstein, but they already own Halo and Gears.

@ffff0 said in The EZA Forums Top 50 Games of the 2010s!:

Of course not. And I have no problem not seeing an appeal of a game that hits some players. But when so many people (it seems like almost everyone) praise game's narrative, it should work in a very wide way. So unless I'm a unique person that doesn't have some life experience that everyone else has, it should work on me too. I don't think I'm that unique, that why it's so puzzling to me.

First off: you definitely could be unique, yo. :) We all are. Second: It's quite possible that the crowd of people that praise the game's narrative aren't representative of you/your peer group, much less gamers as a whole (sometimes people who think something is just "okay" don't want to speak up when it is still new... what's the balance of opinion going to be when it is 5 years old?). One obvious thought is that the group of GoW fans you hear from over-represents players that are parents (or at the age where their peers are all parents), and if you don't feel part of that group it would be an easy reason why the appeal isn't there. Although I don't think it has to be this specific either.

@ffff0 I haven't played GoW 2018, but from random cutscenes clips I gather it is a very dramatic story (life and death, father and son, emotional scenes). Does anyone really expect every dramatic experience to work for them personally? (Even in the sense of "at least slightly working for me/not feeling one-note" ?) I would also go further and say that GoW's emotionally affecting narrative seems to me to be why opinion on it tends to be so superlative, even if that isn't always connected to what is said about the game.

I like to remind myself that when I observe a lot of people championing a new game or praise an old one as one of the best in its class, that this doesn't mean I'm more likely to feel the same, or even find a baseline enjoyment. It means something like... if you like the game, there's an increased chance you'll like it a lot.

Put another way, I think the way general gaming community operates (referring here to word of mouth, conversations, etc.) makes it hard to judge where a game's "enjoyment floor" is. You more naturally get a sense of the "ceiling" or perhaps the average.

Top thought: I feel Dark Souls is the Resident Evil 4 of the previous decade. I'm not sure what that fully means, but that's what entered into my head fully formed when thinking about our list.

Miscellaneous thought: I'm glad Dark Souls is a game I played that I formed an attachment too. It's a game I want to continue to revisit every number of years, layering on more memories and experiences and solidifying that familiarity each time. This is something very different from a game being highly polished, critically accepted, or otherwise being obviously better than its contemporaries.

One of the faint disappointments I often have is I will play and love a new game in a genre where I have an old favorite game, but the new game doesn't end up with forming any kind of attachment and replay cycles like the older ones. Usually I only can tell when enough time has passed, allowing myself to see the difference in how I think about engaging with it again compared to something else in the same genre or category. Like, after a number of years I will think "at this point in the game's life I would have replayed it by now".

It occurs to me now, after having finished the LP, that I'm probably not pronouncing "Incompeta" correctly and I didn't ever stop to look at that word more carefully to notice. :) Also, I thought it was easily understood that the kingdom name was a joke on the word "incompetent" -- as in, referring to the drunken drawbridge and the horsey knights and all -- but now I think this is just what felt obvious to me in my own head.

Let's Play Fantasy Quest ep 3! Expect an ancient riddle, mastering highly specific spells, a repeating cycle of memories, and getting too many precious stones.

Let's Play Fantasy Quest episode 3, the Ancient Tree's Riddle and the Swamp Witch Quest
Youtube Video

This episode is a bit longer than normal. Next week's episodes will be uploaded on a MWF schedule.

Let's Play Fantasy Quest ep 2! Expect our first tricky parser puzzle, retrieving the best sword in the game, and feeling fondness for the sound effects library.

Let's Play Fantasy Quest episode 2, Fire Wand, Graveyard Shrine, Golden Sword
Youtube Video

I tend to like channels that make reviews of older gen games. If you haven't dived into these kinds of channels, what is cool about them is that they are invariably interested in games beyond just the biggest and most well remembered. Snesdrunk, DariaPlaysRPGs, and AboveUp are a few that I've been subscribed to for a while. Salokin is a new channel that I've subscribed recently.

Snesdrunk is rather well known and has loads of SNES videos. He likes making his videos short, to the point, aiming to deliver good information and a sense of if it is worth your time compared to other similar games. He also does videos on other retro systems, including Sega Genesis, Arcade, and NES.

Daria focuses on on 8 and 16 bit RPGs, which sometimes just broadly includes games with fantasy/medieval aesthetics and box art. Much more of a focus on Sega Genesis and NES though. She seems to enjoy making videos on unpopular games and obscure titles that otherwise fit the channel aesthetic.

AboveUp tends to cover Japanese games, with no specific system or era although he seems to like series from the PS1, PS2, and Falcom games.

Salokin does PC games, usually ones involving shooting like FPSes, TPSes, or vehicle/mech games. Lots of early 2000s games, although it isn't limited to a specific era.

I find analysis/essay/topic channels interesting to dip into but disappointing to subscribe and put into my feed. Here's a few though:

Matthewmatosis' channel is very well known, but should be highly recommended by someone here.

Psych of play (aka Daryl Talks Games) has a very clear focus: psychology research and concepts applied to the player and game design. I'm guessing he is a relatively young psychology graduate. The video presentation often has an overt interest in catching an internet audience, but the subject can be interesting on its own.

Gamedenker does analysis/topics videos. There is a unique approach to this channel, which roughly can be described as starting from art, philosophy, and books and then trying to tie a discussion there to games. A video where Nassim Taleb or Plato is the framing device for a topic video would be an example. The videos don't come out often and have lovely production values to them. It's clearly more of a passion channel for the two women doing it.

Welcome to Let's Play Fantasy Quest: a puzzle adventure game released in 1990 for vintage Macintosh computers!

It's been 30 years since this game came out, and this is the first time I'm going to successfully complete it! (that 30 year gap has got to be some kind of lifetime record, but who's bragging :p) Fantasy Quest is, unsurprisingly, a game that I have maintained fondness for largely because I originally struggled against it at a very young age. For whatever reason, it has stuck with me as I've grown older. There were many other obscure Mac games from the early 90s which didn't create that kind of connection, and the Mac library as a whole is something that I've very rarely revisited. But I look back upon that era of gaming with warm memories of the friends I used to have at the time, and we would play Mac games together like any other video games we owned.

The game is in black and white (4 color grayscale). Look at those gorgeous dithering patterns! In reality, Macs had gone to color displays by the 90s, and these kind of graphics were more representative of the previous era of "System 6 Macs". My head canon is that Fantasy Quest was a swan song for other similarly produced games (having come out so late and looking so good). An expert could explain whether I'm talking out of my butt here, but Fantasy Quest feels heads and shoulders above its peers running on the same engine.

Oh yeah, the game is one of many adventure games created using the "World Builder engine". World Builder was Mac software for ordinary users to create games with. And by "ordinary user" I mean even kids could make something using straightforward GUI interactions. I remember creating simple games using it! No harder to use than Mario Paint or Sim City, and it didn't require coding to get something playable (although coding allowed more advanced things to happen). And no command lines or weird tools like making custom Doom wads.

World Builder came with a small library of stock sound effects (which are quite good; A+ work). Most games used these same sounds, and they all have the same style of user interface windows, giving these games a common feel. The "custom Doom wad" is actually a useful point of reference, because every World Builder game plays like a mod of the same game... The differences are confined to different room layouts, different artwork, and different items. The actual "game systems" can't be customized.

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In this first episode I spend a good 8 minutes before the actual game stats. That is not proper Let's Play form (it's disgusting, really), but what I talk about felt valuable to me and why I bothered playing this game in 2020 at all. This introduction covers the background of Fantasy Quest/World Builder, and much more on my personal connection to this game. Fantasy Quest is like my white whale from this era, and after all the ups and downs I'm finally going to close the book on it.

ALRIGHT WHAT AM I IN FOR?
-> This is a 12 episode video LP, recorded in advance.
-> The main game consists of 8 episodes. The LP continues in a 4 episode bonus quest for tackling the "random game scenario".
-> I will be uploading 3 episodes per week, which seems like the right frequency for an average episode that is 25-30 minutes long.

I hope you enjoy watching.

Let's Play Fantasy Quest: old school puzzle adventure on the Apple Macintosh
Youtube Video

@oscillator said in That's News!:

Betcha Galaxy 2 will eventually come to Switch or Switch 2 in a Switch Online/Virtual Console scenario along with other Gamecube games.

First chance is next year, being the 20th anniversary of GameCube.

(image of increasingly dusty skeleton:) "Any day now, they'll start making Gamecube games available again through VC/eShop."

A thread for examining the new games of September! Share your personal picks, interesting curios, and not quite there possibles...

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Did you discover some small game that not everyone knows about?
Share that and let us know what it is about!

Already know a thing or two that interests you?
Make a list of your interests and/or possibles!

Don't know what's so great about an upcoming game you keep hearing about?
Ask here!

Don't follow gaming news that closely and just want to passively see what BigGames™ people care about?
This is the place!

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Thread concept:

The basic idea is to list new games that you are interested in, as well as games you are potentially curious about or want to give wider attention to. You can briefly describe them or ask other people to help fill you in. The hope is that regular threads like these can act as a collective filter/discovery mechanism to help people decide what is worth checking out.

"New games" means any new title that is being released or ported this month in any capacity (not "backlogs/what you are playing this month"). The angle here is sharing your anticipation and promoting game discovery (as opposed to sharing comments about a first playthrough in progress - that belongs elsewhere).

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• If you want a handy list that covers most of the major upcoming games of the month, here's a couple text lists of upcoming games:
  • Giant Bomb
  • Game Informer
  • Wikipedia

Feel free to post other lists or list videos of upcoming releases that you find useful.

• Final request: If you are the first person to mention a game please provide (at minimum) a short sentence description. (If it is a very big AAA release though, then don't worry about it.) This is a good convention that makes the thread more useful as a discovery mechanism, and especially helps out anyone who doesn't follow the news as closely as you.

Blazing Chrome is a run 'n gun game with themes and inspiration from the Contra series. Really good looking 16 bit pixel art and visual effects. First playthrough isn't too difficult but far from easy, and there's a new difficulty once you beat that. A delight to play, and now I'm in the mood for Huntdown -- funny that you mentioned that one right off the bat, @JDINCINERATOR .

I'm pretty sure any listener can email on any topic that they think the panel might want to talk about on the show. It's just an open call for emails, not a list of topics or games.

As for "What Frame Trap is", yeah you've understood it correctly. The main part of the podcast is 3 people talking about what they've been playing recently, or in an uncommon episode a TV show or film might also be on the docket. It's basically a long gaming discussion podcast that doesn't explicitly try to cover "weekly news/events", although the so called "HOTAKE" segment will discuss one general topic per episode and sometimes that topic will be news-y (even then, it is usually more "after the initial dust has settled").