(11-10-2023, 11:00 AM)truewitness Wrote: [ -> ]Does anyone else here play Tetris? There have been times when I've gotten into other games but that usually means playing obsessively for a couple days then promptly forgetting about them. Tetris, meanwhile, has been with me for over a decade. Sometimes I don't play for months, then I play for a few hours a day every day for weeks, or even all day for a couple days.
Here are my high-scores: ~750k on NES Tetris (level 18 start), 44.1s 40 line sprint on Jstris. I feel like I'm close to crossing the 800k barrier on NEStris.
My skills would be far better if I'd spent more time actually honing them and learning various techniques. Instead, I've spent most of my Tetris time playing half-consciously to kill time or while listening to something like a podcast or video.
I'm fond of Tetris. Never tracked my score but now and then I'll enjoy it for a while. I don't think I've ever gotten meaningfully better at it.
(11-10-2023, 11:00 AM)truewitness Wrote: [ -> ]Does anyone else here play Tetris? There have been times when I've gotten into other games but that usually means playing obsessively for a couple days then promptly forgetting about them. Tetris, meanwhile, has been with me for over a decade. Sometimes I don't play for months, then I play for a few hours a day every day for weeks, or even all day for a couple days.
Here are my high-scores: ~750k on NES Tetris (level 18 start), 44.1s 40 line sprint on Jstris. I feel like I'm close to crossing the 800k barrier on NEStris.
My skills would be far better if I'd spent more time actually honing them and learning various techniques. Instead, I've spent most of my Tetris time playing half-consciously to kill time or while listening to something like a podcast or video.
Tetris is good. I've never played on NES though, only on GameBoy emulator. Is the NES version superior?
(11-10-2023, 12:35 PM)JohnTrent Wrote: [ -> ]Tetris is good. I've never played on NES though, only on GameBoy emulator. Is the NES version superior?
I opt for NEStris when I'm in the mood for a classic experience because the GameBoy version has always felt off to me. From the height of the playfield being two cells shorter than basically every other version of the game in existence to the rotation system biasing the pieces to left (they're usually biased to the right, i.e. it's faster to move them to the right), there's a bunch of minor things that make it feel weird. I don't think there's anything wrong with the GB version if it's what you prefer.
P.S. I also play on emulator.
Marketing magic has struck again. Somehow, Star Ocean 2 has now become a darling child of the old JRPG roster. A game that was known for years as "play it if you've played everything else."
The appeal is too powerful. "If you play this, then you are cultured in the history of the medium." As degeneration saps pride it leaves a vacuum that can be filled easily like this with myriad products in myriad medias.
And of course it's "Japanese" in name, so you can safely say you are "not pozzed" for playing it despite the reality of the situation...Very grim stuff.
(11-10-2023, 11:00 AM)truewitness Wrote: [ -> ]Does anyone else here play Tetris? There have been times when I've gotten into other games but that usually means playing obsessively for a couple days then promptly forgetting about them. Tetris, meanwhile, has been with me for over a decade. Sometimes I don't play for months, then I play for a few hours a day every day for weeks, or even all day for a couple days.
Here are my high-scores: ~750k on NES Tetris (level 18 start), 44.1s 40 line sprint on Jstris. I feel like I'm close to crossing the 800k barrier on NEStris.
My skills would be far better if I'd spent more time actually honing them and learning various techniques. Instead, I've spent most of my Tetris time playing half-consciously to kill time or while listening to something like a podcast or video.
My favorite Tetris is the beautiful
Spectrum Holobyte version. This is the OG in the West, being the first implementation outside of the Iron Curtain. Each level is surrounded by a charming pixel-art background of a proud Russian cultural icon, such as the Red Palace or the Mir space station. The version I played on my parents' Macintosh was black & white, and if I'm not mistaken I remember it as having nice music during the levels. The famous
Korobeiniki of course but there were other songs as well.
If you hate yourself, Spectrum Holobyte also published the
Welltris variant. This is not a casual game whatsoever and will drive you into a deep madness if you attempt to make sense of it. I link it here only as a warning, do not track down a copy of this!
Sandtris is a fun twist. I believe it came out this year. The gimmick is that the blocks disintegrate upon landing, and you have to create lines by color. This one is also fun to idle with, it's a bit of a guilty pleasure but there are far more destructive ways to kill time.
(11-10-2023, 09:12 PM)Guest Wrote: [ -> ]Marketing magic has struck again. Somehow, Star Ocean 2 has now become a darling child of the old JRPG roster. A game that was known for years as "play it if you've played everything else."
The appeal is too powerful. "If you play this, then you are cultured in the history of the medium." As degeneration saps pride it leaves a vacuum that can be filled easily like this with myriad products in myriad medias.
And of course it's "Japanese" in name, so you can safely say you are "not pozzed" for playing it despite the reality of the situation...Very grim stuff.
I always see this cycle where a game becomes a cult classic on 4chan, who actually see what makes it good, then gets picked up by retarded Jewtubers who do it no justice and makes it popular to those trannies who only see art as a way to distinguish themselves from others via taste, and don’t actually enjoy the game itself. Not sure if Star Ocean 2 is a case of this, but this is a recent trend that really annoys me.
(11-11-2023, 04:10 AM)Guest Wrote: [ -> ] (11-10-2023, 09:12 PM)Guest Wrote: [ -> ]Marketing magic has struck again. Somehow, Star Ocean 2 has now become a darling child of the old JRPG roster. A game that was known for years as "play it if you've played everything else."
The appeal is too powerful. "If you play this, then you are cultured in the history of the medium." As degeneration saps pride it leaves a vacuum that can be filled easily like this with myriad products in myriad medias.
And of course it's "Japanese" in name, so you can safely say you are "not pozzed" for playing it despite the reality of the situation...Very grim stuff.
I always see this cycle where a game becomes a cult classic on 4chan, who actually see what makes it good, then gets picked up by retarded Jewtubers who do it no justice and makes it popular to those trannies who only see art as a way to distinguish themselves from others via taste, and don’t actually enjoy the game itself. Not sure if Star Ocean 2 is a case of this, but this is a recent trend that really annoys me.
Star Ocean is essentially a weaker Atelier/Tales with some Sci-Fi window dressing. It is good for character autists, because you choose your characters and how they will relate to each other etc. But in terms of art, music, story, gameplay, it is mediocre. It used to float around on the bottom of what RPG to play on PS1 lists for Westerners (due to the large publisher and marketing it received even back then.) To be fair, I only played the second one, but this was also the only one recommended and as years passed it was also supposed to be the best one according to those few who recommended it.
(11-11-2023, 04:10 AM)Guest Wrote: [ -> ]I always see this cycle where a game becomes a cult classic on 4chan, who actually see what makes it good, then gets picked up by retarded Jewtubers who do it no justice and makes it popular to those trannies who only see art as a way to distinguish themselves from others via taste, and don’t actually enjoy the game itself. Not sure if Star Ocean 2 is a case of this, but this is a recent trend that really annoys me.
4chan
is where these cycles start, you have that much right. But 4mex spouts just as much gibberish as normalfags and youtubers at this point, if not more. All of /v/'s attempts at grounding taste in some kind of sense or theory just leads to paranoid memes which become cargo cults. I'm not sure but I suspect 4mex may have started "character action game". I know it started "cuhrayzee". This is not an intelligent way to talk. This is not
seeing.
anthony Wrote:Hamamelis Wrote:I don't know if this has already been discussed here, but I have a love-hate relationship with what has been termed colony simulations, such as Rimworld, Kenshi, Banished etc.
Does anybody have a pet theory why these are so addictive to so many players like me? Often if not always, they are objectively bad: buggy, unfinished (full content only achieved with post-release patches, or never), ugly. Yet the gameplay somehow captures a love for micromanaging economies and characters in a way that satisfies some urge for control or whatever. Not sure. Open for suggestions.
t. started playing Kenshi even thought it might be the single worst-thought out game I have come across.
The Sims but it's built around doing stuff like removing the pool ladder.
Rimworld was a frustrating experience because I did enjoy it in the past but I think the overall design philosophy is wrong. An illustration of this is that having an uncontrolled fire burning makes it substantially more likely to rain; the game extends an immersion-breaking helping hand to maintain homeostasis. This is what it means when Tynan labels it a "story generator" and not a colony simulator. Savescumming breaks the illusion of the game depicting an independent world with its own objective existence totally, because then it becomes clear that the "AI Storyteller" just decided to pull a card out of its hat which arbitrarily manifests as raiders, disease, fire, etc. and not these things having their own independent mechanic that determines when they will occur. There are great strategy games that have e.g. random card drawing mechanics presented explicitly, but something about hiding it and pretending it's a simulation cheapens the experience.
I think it’s somewhat reductive to say 4chan is entirely a shithole now. A lot of the place is now filled with inhumanely retarded browns, but it still has the ability to find good games. Black Souls is a good example of this ability, and in the past, I quite enjoyed Coropata (recommended on 4chan to me) as well. There’s groups of dung-throwing subhumans with little thoughts not fed to them by retarded tastemakers in most threads, but you can often find intelligent discussion if you try to, regardless. Above all, the board has the ability to find interesting games. I think all of the shit you have to wade through while browsing is worth it for that, at least.
(11-12-2023, 02:46 AM)Guest Wrote: [ -> ]I think it’s somewhat reductive to say 4chan is entirely a shithole now. A lot of the place is now filled with inhumanely retarded browns, but it still has the ability to find good games. Black Souls is a good example of this ability, and in the past, I quite enjoyed Coropata (recommended on 4chan to me) as well. There’s groups of dung-throwing subhumans with little thoughts not fed to them by retarded tastemakers in most threads, but you can often find intelligent discussion if you try to, regardless. Above all, the board has the ability to find interesting games. I think all of the shit you have to wade through while browsing is worth it for that, at least.
The best thing I can say about /v/ is that certain interesting titles will emerge there. I found Fear & Hunger there (years before it emerged again and became a meme, somehow). But you won't find intelligent discussion. If you saw any intelligent posts they were made by me.
(11-12-2023, 01:56 AM)obscurefish Wrote: [ -> ]Rimworld was a frustrating experience because I did enjoy it in the past but I think the overall design philosophy is wrong. An illustration of this is that having an uncontrolled fire burning makes it substantially more likely to rain; the game extends an immersion-breaking helping hand to maintain homeostasis. This is what it means when Tynan labels it a "story generator" and not a colony simulator. Savescumming breaks the illusion of the game depicting an independent world with its own objective existence totally, because then it becomes clear that the "AI Storyteller" just decided to pull a card out of its hat which arbitrarily manifests as raiders, disease, fire, etc. and not these things having their own independent mechanic that determines when they will occur. There are great strategy games that have e.g. random card drawing mechanics presented explicitly, but something about hiding it and pretending it's a simulation cheapens the experience.
I generally don't mind what I'll call
simulated simulation in video games. But
generally it's something I associate with games that trying to deliver a particular experience and can on one hand only actually simulate so much, and on the other want a certain level of linearity in your experience. King of Dragon Pass, Atelier Marie, Koei stuff, games which are trying to create a certain crafted experience and using an appearance of openness and possibility to kind of sell it and make things more novel and exciting. I don't mind that.
I think Rimworld doesn't really deserve such a pass when you consider that outside of its
simulation there's nothing else. You've all probably heard me say before that I think of strategy games like ant farms, or fish tanks. I like to observe the moving parts and such. Rimworld strikes me as something inspired by such works, but bent towards a predictable experience which is also not a creator's vision. Not a narrative or a certain idea of how Rimworld is meant to play out. It's more like correction to keep things safe and boring and predictable. Trying to remember which Japanese game I had on my mind recently as an example of the good way to do this. I feel like I had a good one but lost it. Anyway point is that there are games which use elements of a simulated world to serve as backdrop, and games where the whole experience is just observing and playing with a simulated world. Gaps, forced results, and steering the experience I think make sense when it's a backdrop, you don't want it getting in the way of the
actual experience you're trying to convey. But for some ungodly reason westerners are obsessed with making fake simulations where nothing inside actually acts coherently on a mechanical level and the thing just becomes a broken VN with extra steps (every paradox game, as I've probably said before).
In Japan I think we get a lot of games with
elements of world simulation, but usually going on in the background behind something more interesting and focused. A work with a start, middle, and end. Generally I think this is where the best ideas come from. Serving a vision. Technicians creating piles of tools and parts rarely achieve much of interest. Julian Gollop wanted to make a linear game in the project that became X-Com. The globe simulation and UFO war were a framing. A backdrop. And as modders have shown, you can make this backdrop very robust and autonomous, or you can intervene to make it do very particular things. The best simulation elements also seem to be buried in games where it's not even the point.
Simulation in games is a subject which really deserves its own thread. Not talked about much. Sorry if this isn't too lucid yet, got stuck on a couple of half-remembered thoughts I had a while back that I couldn't quite revive.
Most of the bad things about Rimworld can be turned off, but it takes a while to figure out what those things are, and new stupid things seemed to get added at every update (I haven't played in a while). The Lone Gunman or whatever who always shows up to save your settlement is one example, the "story teller" is another. You also have to turn off bug invasions since they are designed to punish the player for building underground (??).
Kenshi is janky but it's still a better game than Rimworld. For instance: while it's true that you can cheese the Stealth stat by idling, you the player don't have to sit there and do nothing while your ninja cultivates in a closet. If you have more than one member in your party/faction, which you should, then you can go do something else with them. Kenshi's biggest problem imo is that the world is actually quite static, but that's a reasonable design tradeoff.
If you're using someone else's game engine you're making a mod. AAA games are just overpriced mods.
(11-27-2023, 02:42 AM)obscurefish Wrote: [ -> ]If you're using someone else's game engine you're making a mod. AAA games are just overpriced mods.
I like this as a novel approach to the issue. But plenty of mods have a far more justifiable existence than western AAA games. And plenty of Japanese games running on reused engines and such too.
The problem is the number of games which are pointless rearrangements and reiterations of each other. Something which engine reuse facilitates but is not essential for. Death Stranding is made on the Horizon Zero Dawn engine. Those Dutch faggots made a fantastic piece of technical work so that they could make a pointless Farcry3vanialikesim trying to be as much of a stock video game product as possible. With Death Stranding Hideo Kojima put it to a far more personal and interesting use. I was amazed when I first heard this because Horizon seems to do absolutely nothing of interest beyond maybe look slightly better than Unreal Engine garbage. (but then it's held back by the fact it's just doing the PLAYSTATION EXCLUSIVE aesthetic where the person dressed like Jak slowly walks through ferns into a clearing and the sun beams down and the SERIOUS PRESTIGE MEDIA musical swell kicks in. Someone on /v/ made a great compilation image of all the playstation game trailers where this happens side by side.
![[Image: bx7lgrfc2j401.jpg]](https://i.ibb.co/JBgChsy/bx7lgrfc2j401.jpg)
Here we go. Are these games all on the same engine? Originals in each case? Aside from Horizon I don't know. And does it matter when this is the result? They might as well be
mods of each other in every bad sense possible. That they're retarded tasteless clones built using shared parts.
“Every video game made in RPGmaker is a mod of… uh… the videogame RPGmaker…”
“Remember, when you write a program using another man’s programming language, it’s not software, it’s a modded version of the compiler.”
“To make a truly original video game, you must first create the universe.”
Guest Wrote:“Every video game made in RPGmaker is a mod of… uh… the videogame RPGmaker…”
“Remember, when you write a program using another man’s programming language, it’s not software, it’s a modded version of the compiler.”
“To make a truly original video game, you must first create the universe.”
All of these statements are true.
If they try to present themselves as the second coming of graphics, noting that they use an engine anyone else can use is completely on topic.
The phrasing itt obscures this but still seems to be striking at something about video games. Some great games require an entire unique architecture.
I like Command and Conquer!