Posts made by Ringedwithtile

Metal Arms: Gitch in the System

One of the most 6th gen games I've ever played. Very derivative. It's taking primarily from Halo, with medium to large sized areas and vehicles that shoot laser beams and fragile infantry that throw their arms in the air and run away screaming if you hit them a few times. It's also probably taking a bit from Ratchet and Clank, with its third person camera, cart-wheeling double jump, and irreverent, cartoony presentation, but there's only a year separating these games, so perhaps not.

In execution, it's pretty shaky. character movement can be cumbersome and shooting feels weightless. While enemies can have their limbs/weapons damaged and blown off, there's little strategic value in doing it, and even if you wanted to, none of the guns feel accurate enough to do so. Enemies are bullet sponges, and it's just a better idea to shoot center-mass with whatever powerful weapon you have ammo for.

There's some variety (driving sequences, espionage, etc.), but it only seems to be there to elongate the experience, and the game doesn't feel very confident straying from arena and vehicle combat. If it played better and was more concise, it could be a cult classic worth embracing.

@dipset I really liked the new Tsai Ming-Liang film 'Days', but I think you have to go into it understanding how ascetic and personal his films are. I also dug Spike Lee's latest Da 5 Bloods.

From what I've seen on your list, Martin Eden is my favourite, though I saw it in 2019. Really bizarre and beautiful stuff.

January:
-Metal Arms: Glitch in the System
-Siren
-Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions

Total: 3

More of a type of movie: the 'so bad it's good' movie. The kind of movie that people put on to laugh at because it's inept or campy, but watch from a position of condescension and faux-disbelief that someone could have made something so bad. Most of the time, they're just bad movies. They're boring and derivative. When they do have something interesting about them, or when they are actually quite good, they never get meaningfully interacted with. Just the same, ironic 'lol isn't this stupid' reaction from whoever is watching.

Dropped 3 games and replaced them. Ended up with 9/12 complete.

I don't know if I'm going to carry on with this next year, because basically everything I play is from my backlog. I play new games very rarely, so it's more about what 12 games I pick to finish rather than just finishing 12 games from my backlog in general---because I do that every year. It's nice to have ones with my eye on them, but generally speaking games like Nier and Xenogears weren't going to fit into this year, as big, conceptual JRPGs are something that I need to be in the right space to fully appreciate.

1. Fatal Frame
2. Doshin the Giant
3. Shadow of Memories
4. Megaman Legends
5. Mischief Makers
6. Ace Combat 2
7. Gradius Gaiden
8. Into the Breach
9. Skygunner
10. Psychic Killer Toromaru

Something like that.

I order mine by year, and play them in that order too. I don't exclusively play old games though, I intersperse the older stuff with newer games or ones that interest me. I spend about 1/3 of my time playing games focused on backlog.

NBA 2K15 cast pros as themselves in a story mode for the game:

Youtube Video

I wasn't aware lines could be read this badly.

Quake and Melee

Youtube Video

I don't know if there are any? I'm not sure what I could have gained from playing any game earlier. Later might be a different story though.

Probably Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

Oh, in terms of presentation, Alone in the Dark is definitely the greater influence, but tone, concept, narrative design, and a lot of cool details are straight from the Famicom game.

@dipset said in Ludoarcheology - My favourite oldies:

Thanks for sharing. I didn’t know AitD was so clearly Resident Evil before Resident Evil. It almost takes the game down a peg for me because I’ve always seen it as such an original game.

So now where is AitD get its ideas from.....?

Sweet Home. RE was initially a remake of Sweet Home---it's a more fundamental influence on that game than Alone in the Dark is. There's almost certainly no relationship between AitD and Sweet Home though.

I should give Grave of the Fireflies another look. I really liked some things about it, but its design as a grim weepie turned me off. I really like some of Takahata's other films though, especially Only Yesterday and The Story of Yanagawa's Canals.

I didn't take part in this project, but I appreciated following it quietly. I haven't played a ton of games from the last 10 years, and the ones I have I haven't been too crazy about. Of the 50 games, I've only played 19 of them. Some I like very much (Obra Dinn, Portal 2, Bloodborne), some are decent (Journey, RDR, Last of Us, Dark Souls), and the rest I think are mediocre to bad (God of War, Mass Effect 2, Arkham City, Skyrim, Uncharted 4, GTA V, Shovel Knight, RE2, Smash Ultimate, The Witness, DOOM, Life is Strange).

Nonetheless, it's been nice following it, and it has reminded me of some of the games I should prioritize checking out when I have the chance.

GTA V is the game that made me stop buying new games. Everything about it is like a bad joke that someone keeps telling you over and over. There's no escape.

I don't read as much as I'd like to, and I've found it difficult to do so during the whole quarantine thing. But I like mostly older stuff, early to mid 20th century English language and Japanese literature; and 19th century French and Russian lit. Been meaning to get into some Germanic or South American stuff. Favourite authors are Faulkner, Kawabata, and Dostoevsky.

I've been reading a bit of Hemingway recently and it's almost ridiculous how much better he is at writing short stories than he is at writing novels. I get that this is a popular sentiment in some circles, but his novels are so canonical that I was expecting a lot more out of the couple I read.

Bizarre to me that PS4 beat the first Playstation and is running it close with the PS2. I really don't get the fuss over that console.

I think his stuff is pretty indulgent and derivative, but I like some of his films. Jackie Brown rocks, and a couple of his others I have a lot of appreciation for, but his latter work is a little too cute and self-aware in its handling of genre and history. He was a director I liked when I was 13 or so for his 'coolness', and I guess I've outgrown them, or at least can't appreciate them for that reason any more.

Arkanoid vs. Space Invaders

A phone game. I don't play many of these, but I like the classic games that inspired this one and heard it was good. It's fine. It's definitely more Arkanoid than it is Space Invaders, with the goal being bouncing shots around to break blocks or hit the invaders. The primary gameplay conceits of Space Invaders aren't really here; you try to get hit by their attacks, there's no cover, and they don't march to the bottom of the screen inducing a failstate. The invaders basically just serve as moving blocks that provide attacks to deflect. As the game progresses, there are boss fights, and special blocks that to be switched in order to be destructible, and other complications. There are a host of characters with different powerups and everything, but the loop stays pretty similar throughout. Often times success feels more like luck or choosing the right character for the level rather than making choice shots or deflections. I'd like to say it's more than a phone game, but it isn't. It's a new coat of paint slapped on an uneven combination of a pair of thirty year old games.