#I love this game but some of the controls are so janky

[pichiicake]

#spoilers #totk spoilers #legend of zelda #tears of the kingdom #totk #comic #tulin #I'm not drawing a robot #I love this game but some of the controls are so janky

[taupewolfy]

jank games!

#bordering on straight up bad! #sorry i haven't been playing enough janky stuff lately xanadu next is close but it's not even that #it just has a weird control scheme on pc that's most likely a residue from being a game developed on the ngage and it's #not even too odd for a dungeon crawl kinda thing #(im just not used to moveing the character through the mouse entirely) #i've got a really chunky backlog of stuff i started streaming/playing and then forgot to finish because i was playing 14 #and i've been playing some pretty polished stuff lately so i want to bring down expectations again #and play some jank shit #< which i genuinely find fun to do i love playing messy frustrating stuff #i dont really but i kinda do? it's interesting to see where it falls short #also some jank stuff is suuuuuuuuper experimental and that makes it interesting enough to put up with it #idk i've got stupid amounts of patience with shit like that

[shima-draws]

OKAY I’ve been playing for a couple hours now and here are some thoughts

-I LOVE that they actually give you time to hang out with the starters and bond with them and see what their personalities are like before you get to pick one. That was really neat

-They were right! This game really do Open World RPG! I haven’t even gotten to the school yet I’ve been too busy running around the map for two hours

-Not sure how I feel about items in the field literally having a neon light showing where they are from a mile away. Kinda defeats the whole purpose of open world if the items are too easy to find. The novelty of “treasure hunting” is gone because of this

-MIRAIDON REALLY DO BE LIKE TOOTHLESS FOR REAL…

-I’m going to kick Arven’s ass if he even LOOKS at Miraidon the wrong way. “Oh this Pokemon is too hard for me to deal with so I’m abandoning it and shoving all of the responsibilities I had caring for it onto you” OH YEAH?? Alright asshole I’ll take it off your hands CLEARLY it was so difficult for you to take care of a living breathing creature that also happens the be the coolest looking motherfucker on this side of the continent. Your loss

-Ohhh the clipping is so bad! It’s so bad! If I rotate the camera too far in my own house I just get a black screen! Yikes 💖

-The concept of being in battle and still being able to see Pokemon doing their own thing in the background is REALLY neat? Like life just moves on around you while you’re duking it out with another trainer. I know we had a specific saying for this when I was in school for animation but I forget what it was exactly RIP anyway just the whole organic. Breathing life into the game kinda thing.

-APPARENTLY WE CAN’T GO INTO OTHER PEOPLE’S HOUSES ANYMORE???? Like that’s one of Pokemon’s staple features throughout ALL the generations, we’re allowed to barge into random people’s homes. At the very least the first town had all their doors locked so all the houses were off limits. I was VERY upset

-The graphics may be janky as all hell but the story is really intriguing so far!! I wanted to cry bc the scene of us rescuing Miraidon really gave me HTTYD vibes. This game is just HTTYD in disguise we are all Hiccup taming and training our Toothless

-Standing on the beach before battling Nemona just gave me a HUGE rush of nostalgia bc it had very very big PMD2 vibes

-The controls for Legends Arceus are ingrained in my brain so I keep pressing buttons and getting confused when they do something different. LMAO

-I’m sorry I don’t like that the Pokemon Centers are outside now;; it just feels Wrong. Like clearly this was some cool edgy thing they wanted to try but I in fact hate it :-/

-THE PLAYER CUSTOMIZATION THING IS SOOOO SICK. The fact we get to customize SO much and at the very beginning of the game is awesome. Props to Nintendo for this I’m really glad they included so many options and right at the start so we don’t have to actually UNLOCK customizing what we look like

-Nemona is just Ash Ketchum but Girl and I love her

-And, most importantly:

#Pokemon #Pokemon SV spoilers #Pokemon Scarlet and Violet #Shima speaks #Miraidon #Pokemon Violet #Long post

[insane-control-room]

Some things are meant to be remembered; for the right reasons.

i've posted this review on steam, but i think that i want to say it here, too.

Here is my review of the 'promotional' material (according to steam) Secrets of the Machine

What I liked: the art appeared to be a true return to form; the style had its original charm with updated lighting techniques and slightly better optimization than previous games in the Bendy series. The audio design was also nice, with good ambiance and nice composition.

And now, the jank.

The game handles reasonably well; but it is clearly slapdashed together and is missing important components. There is no starting menu. There are no loading screens; and it is very jarring. There are no options in the game menu - you cannot minimize the game, you cannot brighten the game, you cannot make the game run any better on your computer, and it is incredibly laggy. If you have a potato laptop? Nah, get out. No game for you. There are no subtitles that you can enable, and voices are very muffled. Additionally, the game is very dark, and as mentioned, you cannot adjust that in the settings of the game, nor in steam settings. You have to do so from your computer.

Controls are extremely janky, as you cannot run, you cannot jump, and there is no indication for interaction with any objects. There are no control settings for remapping, and you cannot even see which keys do what.

Puzzles are boring and confusing; with no guidance. There were no hints, no rhyme or reason. There was more puzzle in the BATIM chapter 1 demo release. This thing is very confusing, especially when you cannot see anything at all. You will spend a long time walking back and forth between two rooms, wondering how you can progress, because you've done everything you could: you smashed cutouts; you hit targets; you opened and closed hands; you found posters for future games, but nothing that could move forward the one you were playing at the time. If you look at the community page, you will see that most people simply spent their time clicking on the soup can dispenser to see how many cans they could get.

If you have epilepsy, nah get out. Oh? I didn't mention the flashing lights? Well the developers did not either. Not only did they not mention the flashing lights, not in the game nor in steam, but they included TWO car crashes without warning - one audio based, and another that was directed at players. This is not only rude, but it is dangerous. Warnings exist so that people can make educated choices whether or not to interact with content that may be sensitive to them. Warn people appropriately. This 'game' did not take any measure to protect its players. There are many instances of sudden loud noises, flashing lights, and jarring location switches (not to mention the car crashes).

The story was lacking, and has nothing to do with the puzzles that a player is faced with. It feels like three disjointed tracks, and none of them align, all of them crashing together in a discordant, unsatisfying, confusing mess. It brought in more new characters that had nothing to do with the original story nor interested players, and had content that went against previously established material. It was (as you can tell, from a writer's perspective) a bad story.

It was less of a demo, less of a playable trailer, more like a tech demo with a few morsels for fans to pick apart and wish there was more of, wish there was more effort put into, wish there was more love and care for them, the players who arguably were the foundation of this game. There were teasers for games that, honestly, lacked the soul that the very first game had, and here's a point to prove it: there was an easter egg that if you clicked something 414 times (very funny.) it would rise in the air and then fall down without further ado. In the game files, the name for that sound effect? Sting. Yeah. It did. Games are a collaborative work; between the creators and the players. Blatant disregard and flippancy towards half of the collaboration is not acceptable behavior. This is a development team that mocks those who once loved them most, those who poured over their coding and carefully crafted world to marvel at what they had made, and coaxed in others with the rich promise of a delightful story that anyone could engage with on any level. The spite the creators have shown for the individuals who, essentially, had given rise to their stature in the first place, is painful.

Finally, by the time that I got a chance to sit down and actually play the game- I personally could not. The developers, by constantly updating a clearly unfinished game, had made their final update - that of a wood board blocking the actual place where gameplay takes place. You cannot go to any of the places shown in the screenshots, because the game is locked on the opening area. I've seen many people complaining of it; hoping that they can play the game.

Now, in the fashion we've seen common of JDS, they have rescinded their terrible design choice - but without notifying players that it is now possible to play the game; without telling players that this was purposeful; without telling players anything aside from a big old screw you. It is entirely possible that the only reason they put the game back into a playable state was the torrent of negative reviews that spawned after their. interesting. choice. regardless, those who care about their playerbase would have informed those who complained that it was a temporary gesture for storytelling reasons. They, however, did not, and there are a multitude of reviews marking the game as unplayable.

No matter what, the bottom line is this: This is not okay.

I'm not sure how much more eloquently I can put the fact that I'm heartbroken. This game, unlike any other, shows how much scorn that a developer can have for their own fans and playerbase. I am glad that there are people who enjoyed it, but I wonder - what did you really like about it?

Is it the memories?

#control critique #secrets of the machine #bendy #batim #bendy secrets of the machine #bendy and the ink machine #bsotm #bsotm review #game review

[hollowtones]

I missed the stream last night how was picking on men?

I'm emulating it & using my partner's Xbox controller that I'm not used to, so I keep hitting the wrong buttons by accident & sending little guys to their doom because of it, & it makes me very sad. I can live with losing my buddies to my own tactical mishaps (it makes me a different kind of sad), but losing a bunch of boys because I hit the disband button at the end of a day instead of the map button makes me want to cry. LOL

Other than that... I'm so happy to be playing this game again. I adore it. The original "Pikmin" has such a special sense of atmosphere that none of the other games in the series ever really try to capture again. It's janky and rough around the edges and sometimes it feels weird to control. But to some extent I feel like that's the point. The gameplay weirdness is part of how it cultivates this sense of dread, of oppressive fear or maybe somberness, of being stranded somewhere unfamiliar that has glimmers of familiarity, but those glimpses that reminds you of home just serve to make the whole all the more overwhelming! It's like being stranded in an airport in another country where you don't really know the language and your flight home's been cancelled.

The way the game plays folds into how the game looks and sounds & how levels are laid out to establish this really strong feeling of overwhelmed anxiety (not overwhelmING! overwhelmED! you're exhausted and 20 things happen to you at once!) and melancholy that gives way to hope and a sense of routine as you come to grips with it. It's a very strong presentation and a very cool, tightly knit little game. I adore it. None of the other games capture this exact sort of feeling for me!! Which is fine. It doesn't mean they're worse. They're trying to do other things, & for the most part I say they do those other things very well. I love "Pikmin 2" and I'm excited to stream it some day. But man... the original is really something special, IMO.

[art-tea-chill]

"First game up! Mix 'n' Match!"

Finally finalized my design for my first Crashbox OC. Everyone, meet my child, Colora Contour.

Colora Contour is the host of Mix 'n' Match, a color guessing game where Colora has finished a craft and asks you three questions on what colors occur naturally in it (EX: If she has made a bouquet of roses, the answers would be red, pink, and white.)

On the first and third questions, the answer is simply a base color. On the second question, she doesn't have the color she needs and get two colors to mix and you have to guess what color the two make.

Her questions follow the two truths, one lie pattern where two are legitimate colors, but one is something goofy like ("What color naturally occurs in roses? Red? Blue? or Blood? If you said Red, you'd be correct! If you said blood, you'd also be correct! Blood is always certain shades of red. If you said Blue, don't sweat it! You'll get it next time.)

Trivia Time!

Colora is very positive, enthusiastic, supportive, encouraging, and friendly. She's also very goofy and chaotic. Colora also has very random mood swings and experiences them when she realizes she's missing the color she needs.

Hard extrovert.

Can be slightly unnerving because of her appearance.

Her hair is black curly yarn and has white glitter in it.

Is good friends with Jumpin Johnny Jumble, Dora Smarmy, Sketch Pad, and Professor Rocket.

Her segment takes place in her personal art studio

Colora is a marionette controlled by strings and has janky movement because of it.

Her face doesn't move, so she rapidly spins her head 360 to emote.

Doesn't let anything get her spirits down.

Does NOT like being around the Revolting Slob, not because she's repulsed by him or judgemental or anything like that. But because there was one time where he raided her art studio, drank the paint mistaking it for drinks, and somehow didn't get sick because of it. (This is just some weird headcannon I made up.)

Loves anything art related, but likes crafting and painting the most.

Her cartridge is loaded through the Train Game Loader and the Phone Game Loader.

The icon on her cartridge is similar to Sketch Pad, but with a paintbrush and a palette with colors on it. ( I forgot to draw this so I'll post it later.)

#crashbox #crashbox oc #my art #oc art #artists on tumblr #fan art #concept art #dora smarmy #jumpin johnny jumble #professor rocket #Sketch Pad #i love her

[the-moth-of-all-time]

Hi gravity rush bestieeeeee

Please convince me to continue playing GR2. I love Kat and the whole cast of characters, but some of the missions and (camera oh my god) are so frustrating me :(

I beat GR1 and I love it! Janky and annoying at parts but god damn it's just good! 2 feels like polished but for looks instead of feel :(

Okay tips for GR2, both to perform better and to have more fun: - Honestly just fuck around. Some of the best parts of the game are just enjoying traversal. Plus picking up gems will make a lot of challenges significantly easier because your gravity gauge and shifting speed can go up - The best way to enjoy Gravity Rush is to get in character. Walk around and chat with NPCs, enjoy the way people treat Kat more like the nice girl next door with superpowers than a superhero. Just Kinda Vibe! GR2 is like, the best cell-shaded game visually short of Guilty Gear. Explore! - The main upgrade in terms of playability has been changing the controls for stasis field and gravity slide. Give yourself time to get used to them working slightly differently, it's so much more convenient once you have a feel for it - There is a "recenter camera" button that aligns the camera with the horizon. I can't recall it off the top of my head right now but don't be afraid to take a sec to re-orient! (I think it might be the touchpad but don't quote me on that). Remember: no matter what direction gravity is, Kat's hair and scarf will always point downward! - As a heads up: The Raven's Choice DLC which takes place shortly after GR1 is free! You play as Raven and the plot really holds a light up to her whole character, it's great! - If you're struggling with combat, the easy way through it is fuck it, we Gravity Kick. Fuck it, we Gravity Kick. Fuck it, we Gravity Kick. until you're out of things to Gravity Kick. - If speed challenges are more of a concern, Gravity Slide is your friend! If you jump during a Gravity Slide and hit a wall, you'll automatically shift onto that wall and then you can slide more along the wall!

As for motivation to continue! - Raven and Kat are very gay in this game. They went from bitter rivals to friendly rivals by the end of GR1 but GR2 makes them so blatantly girlfriends. Raven cannot stand being apart from Kat and if the Overture animated shorts are to be believed (Look up Gravity Rush Overture if you haven't seen them) Raven moved into Kat's pipe-house between games. - the side quest stories are pretty good! One of the side-quests plays into the previous point - You learn So Much More about how the Gravity Rush world works - There are new gravity powers you unlock later in the story and they're AWESOME. I won't spoil them for you but they're really cool. - Look I know forced stealth sections are bad, we all know they're bad. But right after the mission in the military base you get to experience a cutscene that permanently changed my brain chemistry and Kat gets to wear a pretty red dress that you get to keep as an outfit - Syd has more character development than you think. No, more than that. Liiiittle more. Yeah that's about right. - Kat has cute lil emotes and you unlock more as you go. You can make her meow. Please send me additional asks if you need specific advice. Gravity Rush is taking up the space my highschool education used to be in my brain.

#gravity daze #gravity rush #gravity rush 2 #kat gravity rush #raven gravity rush #syd gravity rush

[ieatsmallorphansnamedtom]

Shane x farmer trying to team up in a video game? Either dating or still just flirting. Idk, I'm just thinking back fondly of the time my partner and I tried to do co-op portal 2 and kept accidentally, then purposefully killing each other.

Shane and the Farmer Having a Flirty Gaming Date

Ok so I have a few things to say.

1) yeah, so, hope you're not gone LMAO. i dont wanna go on a big 'im so sorry' spiel but yeah, i am sorry this took so long. this is from like 2022 i messed up bad 2) polls have rejuvenated me for a bit so hopefully i'll be back in business for a while

TW/CW: Swearing

I imagine you're playing some sort of modded version of an old game from your childhood or something. I don't imagine Pelican Town having a very wide selection of video games (if it has one at all), so you guys are pretty limited on what you've got. I also think Shane is more of an older console sort of guy. He prefers the 'classics.'

Still, this thing is modded/has a cheat code so it's a whole new game. It's also extremely buggy. Your characters are zipping around left right and centre with almost no way of controlling them. Safe to say this game held up a lot better in your memories.

Still, it's a fun experience! You two start to work out what ticks off the bugs and glitches and start triggering them while the other is in the middle of a puzzle to piss them off. It's starts with you doing it, but then Shane (who knows this game much better) starts making your life hell and nearly crashes the thing. He probably ends up soft-locking you somewhere (forgive me on my lack of knowledge on Gamer Terms).

Anyways, you do have to beat the game. That's why you came here, right? So, you two try your best to get through this (quite honestly) insufferable experience.

When you think of this game, think of the worst physics possible. Either gravity is at zero or one hundred (whatever's funnier for you) and each jump is like a deal with God. I cannot begin to explain to you how many times you had to redo this one level because of how much of a bitch it was being. It was funny at first, but eventually Marnie had to come in and tell you to shut up because Jas was trying to sleep.

However, with these janky physics comes some flirting! And by that, I mean we have the classic love-interest-takes-your-hand-to-guide-you trope. Yeah, I'm not creative enough for this (L). But believe me, whether you're dating or not Shane's heart is doing a loop-de-loop in that little cavern in his chest. I mean, when you're already dating it's a little tamer, but it's still there!

Anyways, yeah, Shane ends up doing all most of the work while you sit there looking pretty. Still, it's a grand ol' time! You two get to relive your childhoods while absolutely decimating each other on the Gaming Field. The two of you really enjoy the time together, and agree to do it again sometime soon.

"It's a date."

-~-~-

#ieatsmallorphansnamedtom #tbh not as flirty as i would have liked but im just getting back into this and i needed this done #again sorry this took so long #but it's here so!!! ;;'_' #sdv #stardew valley #sdv shane #stardew valley shane #sdv headcanons #stardew valley headcanons #sdv x reader #stardew valley x reader #sdv shane x reader #stardew valley shane x reader

[kavaeric]

The Forever War, from 2019.

Commentary below. This is a heavy piece, and my thoughts on it are long, so grab a coffee.

Around this time, while a lot of my political thoughts and worldviews began to crystallise, I started scrutinising the art that I enjoyed. One such piece was the Vilous worldbuilding project, by artists Kiki and Mick39, most famous for the creation of the sergal species.

Light Era at this time was mostly an aimless kitchen sink, and in it, lore was the Vilousians were in contact with the Terrans but were also fighting a war. Aesthetically, it was also a way for me to explore a kind of alternative tech aesthetic that feels more rugged and janky though also with an air of retro-tech:

I realise now that the war as I wrote it embodied something of my own criticism of Vilous as a worldbuilding project: while I doubt that Mick or Kiki are genuinely bigoted people (and they are queer, and do maintain a collab group of pretty queer folks), it's hard to not read some of the iffy colonial subtext that emerges in her work. The idea of "civilised" and "uncivilised" groups of sergals, the fact that Rain Silves is depicted as a genocidal war criminal while the text itself doesn't seem fussed as to whether to condone or condemn her—while I lament the fact that sergals have a reputation in the fandom for being associated with the worst elements of bigoted, racist, fascist furries, I can't ignore the fact that they did not arise out of nowhere. Simultaneously, Mick and Kiki started to show signs of being burnt out on working on Vilous, despite a fervent fanbase, and that has only grown more apparent over time.

My thoughts of Vilous hence are a complicated swirl of emotions, but I suppose if there was anything that was apparent it was this sense of futility and tragedy. Two artists who are Japanese persons of colour, like myself, and quite queer, making something fairly genuine; a something that is now associated with bigotry and some of the worst types of furries; and an association that was unfortunately the two artists' fault yet out of their control at the same time; sand something now they have been saddled with for nearly 15 years, and with no real exit. I can't help but feel the weight of tragedy and futility.

Kyrja is the character in the painting. I envisioned potential video game, where their story was similar to that of Cpl Upham's from Saving Private Ryan: someone who wants to do good but is a pacifist, being plunged into a war where it seems everyone is innocent and guilty at the same time. The player character might be some kind of typical leader archetype, and the game would progress leading the player into the typical sense of feeling like a big cool hero rallying the troops.

But the game would "end" prematurely after you "win" a certain battle. In that scene, Kyrja finds out their sibling was alive, but actually one of the captured soldiers, who was basically fighting on the side of the nationalist faction. The revelation is what breaks Kyrja's mind, and send them into a breakdown tantrum.

The player would be presented with a choice, video-game style: you can either restrain Kyrja and stop them from beating up their sibling, or let them have a go and do not intervene. If the morality of that choice seems deliberately vague, that's because it is.

I had attempted to translate that into a music comic, based on Soldier by Fleurie:

Eventually, though, I think the reality of the situation of Vilous began to defeat my interest in it. I didn't feel motivated to really commentate on it, and in the end I couldn't be interested in the concept of Vilous or sergals or anything like that anymore. The lore of Vilous was excised from that of Light Era; presently, the Terrans know no other spacefaring society than their own.

I don't really know how sergals fit into Light Era. I do have friends who would love to see themselves in LE, but the whole setting has so much...baggage. It feels impossible to find a way to do it neatly.

It feels so...futile. And forever.

#sergal #science fiction #futuristic #painting #artwork backlog #furry #desert #gun #firearm #artwork commentary #worldbuilding #artwork

[larnax]

outer worlds things i like so far

game does a very good job of the feeling of discovering something that is absolutely fucking terrifying. very clear feedback. im like hmm i wonder what happens if i do X and outer wilds IMMEDIATELY tells me that i have fucked up terribly and am now doomed to slowly asphyxiate in space

in general one of the best "games that initially seems very homey and comfortable and then rockets into horror" because it builds to it at a very natural speed. you get enough of timber hearth to get comfortable with the protagonist's home and then you lift off and probably discover a couple weird things but you're so preoccupied with everything being confusing that it doesn't hit you and by you i mean me that you're in a horror game until The Sun. and even when you ARE fully aware you're in a horror game and you know enough to get to the scary spots the comfortable world doesn't disappear. you can still find the other explorers on the world and have a comfortable place to rest. they always come back and you're constantly reminded that all these things exist in the same universe. which also makes it so much worse that you can't save them.

obv the environmental design is really good. the planets are big enough that you need to know where you're going but small enough that it feels like my fault i am literally always lost. i do wonder how the timber hollow people grow their food though. where are the sugar canes for the marshmallows....

same vein open world that's big enough to feel like there's a lot there but not so big that most of it's filler. big little world

clapping my hands like a fucking seal for the worldbuilding i love the nomai writing system it's so cool and the creative uses of the quantum crystals for architecture are so awesome. the foreshadowing in the museum is still my favorite though

the shuttle that just wastes your fucking time is really funny. i spent so long finding ways to kill myself trying to use it. very mean but i respect it

as a deep sea life fan i wanna be a hater so bad and say that anglerfish imagery is overplayed and them being the deep sea creature everyone and their mother uses for horror and how about you do some actual research and find a marine animal that has an interesting trait you can use for unique imagery..... but i must reluctantly admit. that the implementation. is extremely bad ass. and so i'm fine with it

things im not a huge fan of

i am on my fucking knees begging please just let me mark a spot where i am standing on my map. please. i know where the hanging city is i need to get to the specific spot in the hanging city where my thing is. would it be that gamebreaking for me to just be able to mark the location of the tiny entrance into the meltwater district. you don't even have to give me more than one.

not very robust accessibility stuff. the janky controls are intentional but an option for a slightly bigger margin of error for stuff like getting into/falling out of the elevators would really help for us shaky-handed bitches out there. also there are a lot of flashing lights including an unavoidable section every single time you die.

#c.paradisi #owlb #outer wilds spoilers #i guess

[charaznablescanontoyota]

“marn, i missed sgdq 2022! which runs should i watch?”

hello and welcome back to another rec list curated by me and my very subjective opinions. a couple weeks ago was summer games done quick, an annual speedrunning marathon raising money for doctors without borders and also a great way to get into watching speedrunning. a lot of their content is tailored towards being both clearly explained and fun to watch for an audience outside the speedrun community, so you can jump in with basically no knowledge besides “this person is gonna play a game really fast”. here are my personal highlights that i think you should check out!

kirby and the forgotten land: it’s always great to see a game that’s just been released in the past few months hit gdq!! this was my first time watching a forgotten land run and my takeaways were that: a) this game is beautiful and b) the runner was having a GREAT time sharing it with everyone.

spyro the dragon: spyro is one of those early games that has a lot of weird cool movement tech that is still being discovered to this day, and the fact that it shows up at gdq every couple years with some completely new strats to showcase is awesome, imo.

phasmophobia: if you are staring at this link wondering “how the hell do you speedrun the co-op ghost hunting game that relies entirely on randomization and luck”, just trust me and click it. the ghosts did NOT want to cooperate with these runners at ALL.

pokemon emerald randomizer (evolution chaos co-op): i am not usually a person who has the patience to sit for all 3 hours of a pokemon run, and i figured i would just tune into this one for like half an hour while i got some other stuff done, but i was immediately enraptured. it’s a modded randomizer where your pokemon evolves into something random Every Time it levels up, with 4 runners passing the controller around on every evolution. the game was not kind to these runners. it’s one of the funniest things i’ve ever seen at gdq.

donkey kong country: tropical freeze: spikevegeta’s tropical freeze run from gdqx a few years back is still The speedrun i love showing to people, but this one is an INCREDIBLY clean run that is just a joy to watch. spike is also a GREAT runner/commentator who you’ll notice pops up on a lot of gdq commentary couches, he loves to explain not only what’s going on in the game but little anecdotes and fun facts about the community around the game/speedrun.

banjo-tooie: i love duck and hagginator’s banjo-kazooie race from 2019 and have watched it multiple times since it happened and i am happy to see duck back at gdq running banjo-tooie. :) the community around the b-k games seems really nice and if i had to pick a game to get into running myself this might be in my top 5 choices.

mi scusi: you should watch everything from this early morning silly block, i shotgunned basically all the vods for it and loved them all, but this one was the standout. a speedrunner who woke up way too early in the morning plays a spectacularly broken, floppy physics game that was a student project that is about [checks notes] a guy dealing with the mafia, stealing the world cup, and going to space. if you like this one, watch the rest of the silly block, esp turnip boy commits tax evasion and jimmie johnson’s anything with an engine.

stepmania/noitg doubles showcase: what if dance dance revolution was evil and the only way to defeat it was a 45 minute synchronized dance routine

happy’s humble burger farm: stressed runner makes burgers as fast as he can while janky jumpscare horror game tries to give him the worst rng imaginable. i watched this one kind of on a whim because i like teddyras (the runner) a lot and his commentary is like. laugh-out-loud funny. if you have an hour or less to kill and want to watch one of these vods, this is the one. if you like this, you should check out teddyras’s run of gone golfing, a similar janky horror game set at a minigolf course (sort of).

control: this is an all bosses run and something about hearing the extremely sparse 6 am crowd politely golf clap after every boss fight just took me out. also this game has SO many cool out-of-bounds skips and sequence breaks that are SO fun to watch.

mario 64: m64 is basically a staple game at gdq at this point and because it’s basically the grandfather of speedrunning they often try to dress it up with new challenges like the runner being blindfolded, or the game being randomized, or it being a race. this is not that. this is a guy playing regular vanilla mario 64 very nearly on world record pace, pulling off tricks that have never been successfully completed on the gdq stage before, and casually showing the audience completely new movement tech and clips that have been discovered while the commentators lose their fucking minds in the background. also he never died a single time in this run.

mario maker 2 relay race: two teams of 3 highly skilled mario runners go head to head in a blind relay race of 9 extremely fucking difficult mario maker levels. it’s SO cool to watch them figure out routing and strats in real time, and the level designers shoutcasting the race have some really great insight into the design of the levels themselves.

#marn's guides #speedrunning #sgdq #sgdq2022 #games done quick #FINALLY I CAN POST THIS LOL

[elendsessor]

Whats ur fave monhun game and fave monster in the series? It can be based on the fight itself or aesthetics, whatever u want

for favorite game it’s mh4u hands down. it was technically my first monhun game but i quit playing it not long after i first got it lol. it was back in 2015 and little me couldn’t understand the controls and didn’t even want to try. quarantine made me try the rise demo and eventually buy rise, and while waiting for updates to come out for it since i got super into it, it reminded me that oh yeah i do recognize that series name, found my old copy of 4u, and fell in love. i wish i gave it a chance earlier than i did and want to strangle little me for not trying and getting mad over controls. old school monhun hits so different. absolutely nailed atmosphere and though i still really like where gen 5 took things, i feel like they’re proof that better graphics and models =/= automatically better experience. there’s a charm to older games that i don’t think will ever be captured and that just goes for where modern gaming has gone in general. 4u perfected the look while giving straight up some of the best locals in the series (i love heaven’s mount), the jank is never too, y’know, janky, generally the franchise has fantastic music but the use of wind instruments in 4u’s is mwah, i love the towns, i love the extra stuff, the story might not be the forefront but it’s really solid, the monsters are great, it’s such a damn fantastic game. (also being able to use items on the bottom screen is the best thing ever.) it’s dos 2 electric boogaloo. maybe the day i can finally get frontier to run properly on my pc since i know it’s hard to set up the private server stuff i’ll love it too since it’s also just more of dos and i think that’s a good sign.

favorite monster is so hard tho. elder dragons are inherently interesting and mostly well executed so it feels a lil cheap to say one’s my favorite but fuck it. it’s a three way tie.

while not an elder dragon exactly since it doesn’t have elder dragon status, i love chaotic gore magala. i love the magalas and their lore in general but chaotic amplifies all that. it’s not just the depressing nature of it but the concept of “hey what if this butterfly like monster doesn’t molt properly” is so interesting. sunbreak made it a lot cooler tho since wow it has an ecology intro finally and while the og fight is already one of the best fights it was improved a lot in sb. i don’t really like the sb version of its theme tho. og theme was fantastic the cover of it is pretty mid.

gogmazios is also fantastic. buildup is amazing. this really is the living embodiment of the industrial revolution’s consequences in my mind. lore wise yeah disturbingly cool. love the fight to death it’s perfect. also love the weapon designs especially for the greatsword. what else can i say it’s a big demon kaiju :)

and of course i love shantien. only issue is that i haven’t been able to properly fight him bc frontier technically no longer exists. i’d argue for most games you can get a near full experience from watching a playthrough, but for action games like monster hunter where there’s a lot of depth i don’t think watching gameplay footage gives it justice. (of course playing a game yourself provides the best experience possible in most situations too but especially nowadays it’s not that easy anymore. emulation isn’t as simple as i think people make it out to be either. it’s all based on preference but to me i like to play older console games on the consoles they were intended for whenever i possibly can.) basically i think that’s the only thing that holds him back from being my fave. if i ever get a private server to work and finally get the chance who knows he’ll probably beat out the rest of these guys. tbh it wouldn’t take much his design is amazing and his theme is god tier. those two things alone are why i love him.

honorable mention for this goober i just like because he’s super stupid

#sorry this was so long ;-; #shantien answers #monster hunter

[thewertsearch]

Asks Compilation 11/08

@elkian asked: You've happened upon a very interesting read of Tavros and AG's FLARP history there. I hadn't considered that she would be furious not to manage an unquestionable win over him, even if she 'wins' in most of the ways the game thinks matters. []

Vriska is a no items/Final Destination girl, and Tavros’s ‘escapes’ probably feel like getting killed by a janky stage hazard. People aren’t allowed to win against her - even if, by her standards, it doesn’t count as a real win.

Given what we now know about her home life, any kind of loss probably sets off alarm bells in her head. 

That’s actually a good point. We haven’t really talked about gender on Alternia - I’ve been saving it for later on, when we have more cultural context - but all of what I’d call the most dangerous trolls are girls. 

The only exception - sort of - is Sollux. But his destructive abilities seem to be a outlier - and the only time he’s used them is when Aradia’s own machinations required it. He doesn’t seem all that dangerous by nature.  

Or even my sprite. 

I’m picturing the tech-flavored Midnight Crew sitting in Gamer Chairs on Derse, scanning everything on my land for vulnerabilities. Jack hates it - it’s such an indirect way to attack someone, that he cringes when someone even calls it an attack. 

What if you just straight-up prototyped an AI? It would be interesting to see how the kernel’s ‘intelligence-boosting’ effect which we saw with Jaspers would work on an artificial mind. 

My intuition is that even the best contemporary AI models would result in an inert sprite, but I do wonder if this could turn something that’s almost an AGI into the real thing. 

Maybe the fireflies are actually related to Sollux’s computing bees, and they also interface with technology in some way. 

I like the idea that they could act as data relays, blinking to each other in binary code to transmit data wirelessly. It’d be a good ‘biotech’ answer to short-range communication technologies, like Bluetooth. 

@poipahcoinkel asked: Hey! I don’t know if the askbox is a cool place to send homestuck related memes, but I saw this one and I couldn’t resist

I love your liveblog so much and I can’t wait to see you react to [REDACTED] and even [REDACTED]

 Jade would do this. Look at all that pocket Space!

I have seen just enough of Sollux to know that.

He would be so mad if he had to dance the Carmelldansen.

He would do it. Not all the time, and not just for anyone, but he’d absolutely do it if one of his friends caught him in the right mood. You’d never know in advance how he was going to react, but if the stars aligned and you asked him to join in, he’d just stand up and start, albeit complaining the whole time. His dance choreography is perfect. 

Love it. That’s how I approach complex story ideas like this - just throw out all the ideas you have, and see how they gel with the evidence!

I’ll take it as a compliment. >:)

Nepeta is interesting to me, because, moreso than any other troll we’ve seen, she really acts like an early 2000s internet archetype. The fact that she actively roleplays suggests one of two things.

Alternia, despite the massive cultural differences between itself and Earth, has an online RP scene roughly analogous to ours. Do you think they roleplay as lusi? 

Alternatively, Nepeta invented roleplay. 

Could be either, could be both. The fact that a non-corpse kernelsprite is rare suggests that something is actively preventing it from happening, but I guess that could just be good old-fashioned predestination at work. 

Maybe the Harlequin's mischievousness is just how the ‘usually a corpse’ rule was enforced in this case, and other sprites were discouraged from breaking it in other ways. 

One Homestuck fanfic (in Russian) called "metatime" what you call "Pebble Theory". Traveling though time is predestined by metatime, but some entities with super powerful control over time can theoretically change the metatime itself, from a hypothetical previous iterations of events. [] - RM

‘Metatime’ is a good framework to understanding a lot of time-travel plots, I think. It’s a good example of how a simple change in perspective really can drastically aid your understanding of a concept. 

@typhoontroubadour asked: Something funny I noticed about your Raspberry Pi sprite is that is kinda has an animal/dog looking face to it to me! Here's an image hopefully pointing out what I see.

What do you know - turns out I’m joining the ‘animal sprite’ club after all!

Essentially, the difference is thus:

CT: I was born better than you, because I have blue blood.

Vriska: I was born better than you because I’m Vriska!!!!!!!!

As am I. It’s probably hard to guess the hypothetical Title of someone who’s not actually interreacting with those systems through playing Sburb. 

Granted, I don’t yet understand how, exactly, your Title relates to how you interact with the game...

That’s great, it’s got such an early 2000s vibe to it. I wish I’d been around in the early days, when your entire internet experience was customizable to that degree...

[ thank the anon who reminded me about this a few weeks ago xD - C ] 

I was very close to this happening naturally. I wasn’t sure, on the 8th, whether I was going to do asks or update the liveblog, but Cat was like “you have to liveblog today, I’ll tell you why later.”

Happy belated Vriska Day to all who celebrate!

I begrudgingly accept this, but might stick with Lusi, as it rolls off the tongue easier.

[ when you got to Vriska, @69420coolman​ posted: ] 

[ and also this, with this picture, lol: - C ]

askjlasjlksjdks

Lovin’ it! One thing I am looking forward to is, when I’m finished the comic, looking back on the original reactions and theories when the comic was posted live. It’ll be fun to compare my interpretations to other people’s. 

It’s another one I’m kind of happy I didn’t guess. It’s fun to be thrown for a loop in this comic, especially when it’s with a twist that makes total sense in hindsight!

I dunno, it just feels right to me? Maybe it’s my accent, or something, but I’m definitely parsing it as though there’s a ‘h’ in there. I’m notoriously kind of bad at pronouncing things, but I’ve arbitrarily decided that I’m going to die on this hill. 

#I think tumblr's issue with these comps is their length #so i'm gonna try and post smaller/more frequent ones #homestucksona #classpect #asks #full liveblog #act 5

[vilevexedvixen]

Ok, so... I like Hazbin Hotel buuuuuut I was very surprised that Heaven played as big of a role as it did in season 1.

Personally, that felt like the end game and once Charlie finally got to try and talk with them directly, then the goal post would shift as her naïve view (that divine judgement is just and so good people automatically get into heaven / people can move there if they change for the better) starts to change as she's seen many sinners improve and be refused, alongside characters such as Adam prove that questionable people and actions are permitted in Heaven. It would feel tragic and frustrating after seeing our cast grow and endure hardship to do so, only for their original goal to perhaps not be attainable in the way they once thought.

Instead, for season 1 at least (if not longer if possible), I feel a more Hell-centred narrative would be better. Showing how Hell normal opperates, the day to day struggles, the politics, and the aftermath of the exterminations disrupting it all. Though our care and focus will obviously be mostly on the main cast, I think it's important that we should care about sinners the way Charlie does (or at least understand why she sees them that way).

Instead of explaining the exterminations and Hell through a storybook monologue, I think a purely visual intro would set the stage better. Like a mix between the intro in the pilot and the openning scene from Arcane episode 1.

Have a relatively intact Hell be seen before the extermination. Oddly barren, with some stragglers who probably died in the last couple days so they wouldn't know about the extermination in time, along with sinners deliberately staying out in a desperate bid to leave the afterlife (maybe show a contract / chains dissipate between them an another sinner when they're killed in the extermination. Quick, but foreshadowing a. Soul contracts and b. How desperate a sinner might be to escape one, which c. Could also act as a hint to Angel's and Husk's mental state once their situation comes to light, or at least have us hope it doesn't come to that).

The extermination would be swift and cause so much destruction so quickly that the rubble would cloud the city like fog until after it's over. More like a bombing campaign (like with Adam's holy light) than an exorcist massacre alone. Then we see Pentagram city in ruins.

I also agree that having it known (especially by Charlie) that the exterminations are a means to control Hell's population from uprising against Heaven, rather than to limit Hell's OVER population makes the premise of Hazbin Hotel seem a bit redundant. Plus, having it questioned WHY so many people are ending up in Hell would be something I wished was actually brought up rather than only focussing on what it takes to get people who are already in Hell into Heaven. People stuck in Hell not sure exactly what they did wrong and leading relatively peaceful afterlives doing nothing to harm other sinners. Leading to a later revision of the more arbitrary rules in the Bible such as not wearing mixed fabrics, not being gay * (it's debated whether or not the bible actually says anything against being lbgt, however homophobia and transphobia are rampent enough in many Christian sects that it would be worth critiquing the ridiculous lengths to which Christians shun those who don't conform and twist the bible's text to suit whatever they currently believe), not eating certain foods, etc.

Those are my main points so far. Might get around to doing a fanfic-y re-writing of season 1.

Again, I love the show as is but man is it janky. I do love janky things - Pathologic and Sims my favourite games after all - but it's still fun to work with what's there and tweak it here and there.

#arcane league of legends #hazbin hotel #rewrite #fanfic #headcanon

[cats2019forthenintendoswitch]

So do you guys remember when netherrealm rebooted mortal kombat and they made a kinda weird competitive game with some pretty janky animation and they talked about how cool the story mode was but then it was sorta just recycled the story from the first three games with a couple of dumb twists? Most notably, THAT scene with no buildup? And how instead of the hero being the classic archetype it was his literal godly mentor and how stupid the way he defeated the main villain was? And also do you remember how they strived for realistic fatalities so they started the lovely custom of having the dev team look at car accidents?

Also remember how Mortal Kombat X had THE jankiest animations ever seen on a AAA game of its generation and a button used to turn your character with no gameplay effect? And how half the consequences of the first game were almost inmediately undone? And how there was a 20 year timeskip for no reason that introduced characters that no one liked because either they were already conceptually lame as hell (by that I specifically mean the four kombat kids) or the story mode made them unlikeable? With maybe the exception of the Mad Max ripoff duo because they do literally nothing. And how the story is about Johnny Fucking Cage and his selfie-obsessed zillenial daughter? And how much the game jacks off the US military industrial complex? And how many characters were cut for no apparent reason? And how the fatalities stopped being B-series-style gore and now it was just gross and no one was having fun anymore?

And remember how mortal kombat 11 was first of all A LIVE SERVICE GAME? Remember how you had to unlock Jax's fucking blue pants and red wristwratch and SPECIAL MOVES? Remember how the animations only slightly improved and you still have that dumbass useless turnaround button? And also remember how they took a bunch of potentially interesting storylines and retconned them all in-universe for THE most generic multiverse plot ever imaginable, in THE most abrupt and unsatisfying way possible? Remember how the plotlines that were hinted in MKX that weren't retconned or forgotten about had the impact of a dead fly on the empire state building (looking at you Jade)? Remember how even the multiverse time travel bullshit wasn't interesting in its own way, because they didn't even interact with the REAL original universe, and the interactions mostly didn't go any farther than "wow, I've got some wrinkles!" or whatever? Remember how there were like 3 gods that controlled causality and each was less interesting and had more nonsensical motives than the last? Remember how the DLC took an originally interesting character and commited character assassination in a way that made her boring and generic? Remember how the end of the DLC established that not only do consequences in the mortal kombat not matter but they will not ever matter again? Also remember how despite having a plot centered around multiverses and time travel they got rid of like all of the interesting characters from the OG other than like the two main ninjas? Also remember how the other legacy characters did nothing? Oh and remember how the fatalities STILL were traumatising the dev team?

So no I'm not hyped for Mortal Kombat 1

#i want to like this series #i wish i could #but like. jesus christ #my own posts #mortal kombat #mortal kombat 1

[felrend]

My thoughts on Stray so far

Please keep in mind I have played maybe an hour and a half of this game (maybe less) but so far I've really been enjoying it! And I hope I'm not giving too much away.

The game play itself is pretty simple but that's not a bad thing

Is it the best graphics? No, but it doesn't need to be HFW or Elden Ring. It's still a beautiful game for what it is

The controls and camera can be a little janky but I can forgive that as the game moves on

Love the adaptive triggers, it vibrates at the perfect time. I totally lost my mind when the controllers vibrated with the purrs of the cat and when you rub against something

The story is actually pretty interesting as you start exploring the city. Fun story! I got to one part where it was very quiet and as I moved forward I got an achievement and it scared the little fuck out of me LOL

Love the robots! They are all so cute and can't wait to share some pictures I was able to take of them. I do have one issue with a particular design of one of the robots but that'll come later

The amount of joy it gives me to knock things over is a little embarrassing lmao

Fuck them little leech spider things. Hate them. Can't wait to find a way to murder them all

It's kind of a creepy/eerie type of game but I love it? As you unravel the world around you, it's sort of bleak. But you're the little shining light in the game and that gives me all the warm fuzzy feelings I need right now

The puzzles are a lot of fun and like I said, this game is simple but in the best possible way

I wish there was a photo mode!!! GIVE ME PHOTO MODE FOR THE KITTY!

Speaking of, unfortunately taking screen shots is a little annoying. The game play doesn't pause when you're taking pictures and then you lose out on getting the moment you really want

Go lighter for the settings, I did the adjustment like it instructed but it's still pretty dark. I'll be fixing it when I get home

The music is also fantastic! Really helps set the mood

The amount of feelings I already have for this game is pretty profound haha I did not expect to be this invested but I am. And I highly recommend it to everyone. I actually wish I was streaming this game to capture my reactions to it lol

BTW thank @northofantastic and @carla-andtheartofbeing for being enablers asking me to write this haha LOVE Y'ALL

#stray #stray game #playstation 5 #playstation #ps5 #simba #my bby #video games #go get it #it's so good!