Qazimod

A while ago we had a thread about dream genre crossovers, and I brought up the idea of a Mega Man game in a Metroid format. Just jam all of the robot master levels into one seamless open environment and use unlocked powers to reach new areas. It sounded great in my head, anyway.

It happens with a bunch of stuff I play. It's probably how they do the buffer for when you want to save the last 30 minutes of gameplay etc.

This is what's listed in the GOG library item:

My Exoprimal hype kind of disappeared after the beta, so I guess I'm just keen for more Pragmata news. That, or some completely random announcement that nobody knows about, like a Gargoyle's Quest remake or a "Capcom vs Capcom" fighter (Teppen doesn't count!)

The monthly Essential games can be claimed now: https://www.playstation.com/en-gb/ps-plus/whats-new/#monthly-games When you click the "Get this game" button for NBA 2K23, you'll need to scroll through the Editions a bit more to find the free download link.

I think Suda saved the last showcase - I found myself browsing other things in between trailers, and the wackiness feels much more routine now. I'm mostly looking forward to the fun new thing that I haven't heard about yet. Okay, and maybe more from Gunbrella and Pepper Grinder.

Capcom showcase next Monday https://www.capcom-games.com/showcase/en-us/

Another PSX arcade mode clear, this time as Sakura. Also holy crap Duckstation looks amazing when you run fullscreen with a HDMI cable going from the PC to your telly.

As usual I'll probably end up working or sleeping through a bunch of them and then skimming the archives after the fact. I'd like to see more Sea of Stars news, but that's just me.

I preordered at The Game Collection for £54.95 (& free standard delivery). I haven't used them before but I've heard them mentioned on here in the past, so we'll see. https://www.thegamecollection.net/final-fantasy-xvi-ps5

I feel like the exception here - the last thing I bought was a 2021 game in a Steam sale, and the only 2023 things I’ve bought this year have been P3P and Destiny 2 content. Things should change this month with FFXVI though.

They all said I was mad when I bought the PC game on disc in 2006.

I just went through the Wonderswan game's arcade mode. It's definitely not the best way to experience Pocket Fighter; I had no idea what gems I was collecting, the whole thing was a bit mashy, and even though they did their best with the animations the arcade/PS1 game looks so much better. I appreciate the attempt - it's got the easy combos, the gems and other staples from the bigger brother - but it's the kind of game whose handheld debut should have been on something like a PSP.

Uh oh.

Windswept is another charming pixel platformer by people who seem to be fans of Donkey Kong Country among other things - the campaign has already met its target and a demo is available on Steam. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/weatherfell/windswept https://store.steampowered.com/app/1660960/Windswept/

The love poured into all of the little references is great. I think Maximilian has looked at a few of the nods in one or two videos.

This was one of the last things we had in the family PC: I do appreciate how dumb old marketing material was, and how dumb I was as a child. Competing video cards on shelves in stores with nothing to really judge (as an ignorant kid) except for the cool render on the front of the box. And I feel like the designs were always knowingly edgy or serious - you’d never get a graphics card box with a nice tropical scene on the front. I think if you’re lucky you could still get a modern graphics card with some daft rendered character on the front of the driver disc or at the start of the installer, but it’s definitely a dying art.

I know this was an autocorrect accident, but I laughed. I think Kamiya coined "stylish hard action" in an interview about DMC1, which isn't much better but I imagine that one's probably a result of directly translating a simpler Japanese term.

Yep, I think cosy or "comfort" gaming is either that special kind of accessible low-stakes gameplay (Animal Crossing), or something you're particularly familiar with and can return to without too much stress. For me, Persona 4 Golden is a "cosy" experience even though a lot of its main bosses were brutal encounters when I played the original game on PS2. Destiny 2 (and other MMOs) can be cosy as well because maybe you don't want to attempt the high-level content today, so you can just jump into less stressful activities.

Soulslike. And not just by the people who slap it on to their products, but by the consumers who parrot the term when talking about anything that follows a broad pattern of design that's never really defined and only becomes looser with time. All it boils down to most of the time is that the enemies hit you very hard and you lose a lot of progress when you die, whether that's by being sent backwards a few hundred feet to the last checkpoint or having your pockets emptied of the virtual currency / experience you were carrying. I'm not even a massive fan of From's dark fantasy action RPGs (the actual term that's been used in their marketing tweets) so I'm not trying to be the elitist poser who makes fun of the pale imitations, but I feel like games are allowed to be their own things. We're allowed to have action RPGs that are a bit challenging, and they're allowed to be judged on their own merits rather than being pushed under an already-crowded umbrella term. It won't surprise you to know that Steam has a Soulslike tag for its store page, and whilst it's probably decent enough if you only focus on the bestsellers, people will be applying it to any old thing - basing that categorisation on anything from the gameplay to the aesthetic, or the writing, the setting, the premise, etc. I appreciate that "dark fantasy action RPG" is a bit of a mouthful, but as an alternative it works fine most of the time - establishing the broad genre and some sort of thematic context. Shit, I'd probably be perfectly happy with "action RPG" in itself, because in my mind that's what Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Elden Ring and (at a stretch) Sekiro are (I mean, you kind of level up things in Sekiro and build a character based on a skill tree so it's RPG-ish?) And besides all of that, I feel like the term "Soulslike" is a bit naff when applied to all of From's own games. I think I mentioned it when doing my GotY writeup, but I almost think that calling Elden Ring a Soulslike is doing that game a disservice because it invites a completely new mindset and a new way of thinking due to the way that game is designed, and calling the game another "Soulslike" indirectly suggests that FromSoftware are good at doing one thing and one thing only. "Calling them all action RPGs suggests the same thing too!" Well maybe, but the action RPG term is far less specific and has a lot more variety in it rather than being a breeding ground for corpse runs and stamina bars. So when Armored Core: Fires of Rubicon is closing in on its release date, why not browse around for some previews, hit CTRL-F, and see what happens when you enter the word "Souls". Or just read through the previews manually with a shot glass nearby and make a drinking game out of it. Because surely that's going to be the next one. Despite, you know, a lot of Armored Core gameplay tropes being established in a series that predates Demon's Souls by a couple of generations. A series that (I guess) already has its own genre label. It's okay for a game to have its own identity - even one developed by FromSoftware - and we should really welcome that instead of being a marketing mouthpiece.

Cleared with no continues, albeit on middling 4* difficulty. One thing I forgot is that the things occasionally flying overhead can be attacked for a bunch of gems and stuff. If you've got a good air attack or super jump it's worth taking a second to attack them.

Bobby Kotick Breaks His Silence: Embattled Activision CEO Addresses Toxic Workforce Claims as Microsoft Deal Hangs in Balance (Variety, May 31) It sounds a bit "Activision performed its own investigation into Activision practices and could find no evidence of Activision harassing its staff", but there's much more in the full thing. The comments are already calling the article out for "siding" with Bobby.

A lot of arcade modes in fighting games can be cleared in a few minutes. I generally gravitate towards the ones with lots of content and modes, like CvS2 or SF Alpha 3 Max. Alternatively, something like Puzzle Bobble has nice short rounds but plenty of them. I like the SNES game because you can note down passwords and pick up your progress later on.