#Games I played

[tawnyfool]

Games I Played | 2023 & some fav quotes Games I Played | 2022

[a-wa-c]

Finished Half Life 2.

10/10 no notes, what the fuck happened to games man?

Like, hey here's an enemy that is annoying, now you get to use them as an army. HAVE FUN.

Hey, here's the Gravity Gun that you've had for basically the entire game, in the final act it can just straight up kill a bitch-ass-Combine soldier for the final chapter of the game. HAVE FUN.

We pit you against a Gunship or a Strider, but please have as many guided missiles as you like to kick the shit out of them. HAVE FUN.

Like seriously, if anyone has a better perspective on this than me, please tell me why I feel that games these days don't have section where you just have fun. The battle is the fun, not worrying about your ammo.

[happymeishappylife]

You can read my reviews of these here.

[thatoldstandby]

GAMES PLAYED: January 2K25

Based on my Steam Rewind from last year, I figured that if I'm going to spend *that* much time and money on games, I should at least keep notes for myself. So yeah, see below for a list of a bunch of games and some rambling thoughts I had about them.

January 2025

CARRYOVER GAMES

UFO 50: Podcast game; though I might have played as much as I feel is necessary? I’ve at least touched every game, and I’ve certainly played to completion a bunch of the ones that I cared most about. Cherries would be nice, but aren’t necessary. X/50 beaten, X/50 cherries.

Balatro: Hey it’s Balatro. I put more time in. It’s fun. It doesn’t immediately hook me, which I am forever glad about.

Halls of Torment: Things that do forever hook me are Vampy Survivy-alikes, and while I’ve 100% Vampy Survivy (more or less, I have a bunch of the secret Castlevania achievements to do), there’s still more. I think Halls may be my favorite in the genre, and the changes since the last time I played were good. It really nails that power scale and set up in a way that I like. It’s also super derivative of Diablo, in a way that I think helps the formula with the loot drops. It’s good, though the endgame is unsatisfying (but then, Vampire Survivors Ode to Castlevania may have had my favorite ending of a Video Game last year, so it’s an unfair comparison my mind is making).

Death Must Die: The Other Vampy Survivy alike I’ve put more time in. I’m not as huge a fan of this one. The basic loop is the same as Halls of Torment, in that it’s a bullet heaven survival-style game with an emphasis on gear collection and gear based builds, like Halls of Torment. What makes it different is the power set and the fact that you get those powers through a Hades-style god gifting. And calling it Hades-style is an understatement; it’s the most derivative of Hades UI and character designs that I’ve seen. If you told me it started as a Hades fangame that suddenly changed, I would not be surprised. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it rubs me the wrong way in an odd way. It’s fun though, and I don’t think I’ve figured out the puzzle that it presents, so I’ll probably keep poking at it for a while.

20 Minutes to Dawn: I don’t have a lot to add to this; another vampy survivy-like, continues to be good. Action is largely focused on the character’s ability and the weapon’s ability, of which you get one that you choose at the beginning of the run and have to reload. It’s fine, I mostly started going back to it to try to clear more, making regular process.

NEW(ER) GAMES (TO ME)

Arco: So, I technically started this last year, but I didn’t have enough time or hands on experience to really count it. It’s good! A small tactical turn-based game where actions are done in stopped time and then acted out in real time. It has a really frenetic feel, which is accentuated by the morality system the game has. Pretty frequently, you get to make a choice. Choose in a way that’s “bad,” and you may get additional items or power. But, you may also accrue guilt. Guilt manifests on the battlefield as Ghosts, enemies that inexorably move towards you as you’re planning out your turn that can throw a wrench in your plans. When you’ve only got one character, ghosts aren’t *too* big of an issue, but it really adds up when you’re rolling super deep in guilt or have multiple characters to plan out. It’s a neat wrinkle to add to the game. And the story’s neat; it’s a Mesoamerican styled world with a bunch of unique tribes who are running up against encroaching colonization and the pillaging that goes along with it. The characters are interesting and the story really clips along. I really like it; but I don’t love it, and I don’t know if I can really say why. I want to say it feels slight, but I don’t know that I can back that up in any real way. It’s a weird spot for me, but I’m glad it didn’t end up breaching my goty list, thus making that a lie and waste of time to put out.

Lorelei and the Laser Eyes: One of the biggest marks of shame for games I didn’t touch last year because that thing is laser targeting me. Arthouse style, logic-based puzzle game, open ended mystery and intentionally obtuse plot, and mixed media and referential bullshit? Yeah this game was made For Me. It’s really good too. The puzzles are fantastic, and solving some of the harder ones on my own with a pad of paper was an amazing feeling. Love that eureka moment. It doesn’t breach my top 5 though; i think the final puzzle was a little bit too hard for the rest of the game, and I had some minor annoyances with the rest of the game that didn’t help it. But, fantastic game, highly recommended, A++ gold star. Love this dev.

Sprawl: Retro-style movement based FPS with a cyberpunk theme. It’s a great game, but it’s also hard. Some of the levels and later challenges require a lot of you, and I barely made it. I am Getting Older now, but I don’t get a lot of repetitive motion pain (unless I’m in an arcade for an hour plus), but this was definitely getting to me. It also doesn’t have a whole lot else to it if you don’t like retro-style or movement based shooters. But what a trip.

Marvel Rivals: Marvel Overwatch, but the characters are allowed to be unique and kind of broken. I like Marvel, I like kind of broken characters, it’s a Good Game For Free.

Awaria (No trailer apparently? Have the OST): I picked it up unexpectedly; I liked the art, and for some reason didn’t immediately twig to it being by the Helltaker guy. But it is, only instead of demon girls in suits you get ghosts in sci-fi uniforms. Which is good and fun. And the game’s surprisingly tight. It’s a puzzle action game where you have to run around a small level and drop off items with some pretty strict time limits, and I was surprised by how satisfying everything was. The soundtrack’s great, the art’s fun, and the game plays really well. I played it through on Normal, put it down for like an hour, and then was like “...but what if I did it on hard?” So I bashed my head against Hard for 3 hours and beat it. It was great, love it, so far surprise of the year.

Kinki Spritual Affairs Bureau: It’s super jank, it’s short, it looks kind of ugly. It’s *perfect*. It’s hilarious, it’s doing Wild Shit, it has an anime girl flipping the bird at her boss through a drone, it has Important Facts About the Afterlife. 

Shitpost of the year, 2k24.

[ps1snake]

games i played 2024!

[shinysamurott9]

2024 Gametalk: Mega Man X5 Improvement Project

So I want to try making a thread or series of posts talking about all the games I play over this year. I'll start with this one, the Mega Man X5 Improvement Project

So I've played most of the main Megaman platformers via the Legacy Collections, haven't played BN completely, SF or Legends though. As anyone who has played the main platformers can tell you, quality can vary a lot, especially, especially with the X Series. Base X5 is definitely on the weaker end of the spectrum imo. It's not an awful game but it's a major step down from X4 and it has a lot of issues and poor execution. From what I've read a lot of that comes down to a significantly lower budget and little direction from Inafune beyond "Conclude the story".

I was aware of the improvement hack for a long while but I got curious about it a few days back and decided that I'd give it a shot, and frankly, I was extremely impressed. This game fixes, not every issue with X5, but a hell of a lot of them, along with a lot of miscellaneous changes. This includes, letting X use incomplete armours, Heart Tanks sharing between X and Zero, additional ways to get certain items, letting Zero get all Heart Tanks and all parts being obtainable with no worry about rank.

There's plenty of other notable changes like a proper retranslation to be more accurate to the original script and removal of RNG with the Shuttle, but the things mentioned above are the most important to me because let me tell you, they are absolute game changers when playing through. It allows you to be so much more flexible with the order you fight each boss, making the game so much more replayable, an essential element to Megaman games imo.

It really does feel like you can get a lot more out of the characters tool kits. The Gaea Armour is not just viable for X, but actually really good, because of some rebalancing, and the fact you're not locked out of using it until basically the end of the game. Many of the special weapons are given new functions. Like Dark Hold giving you Spike Immunity, F-Laser and Charged Tri Thunder being able to destroy the bomb in Duff Mcwhalen's stage, Zero's F Splasher being able to push Gaea Blocks and you can even re-enable the Fourth Armour’s Nova Strike if you want it.

There are some issues I have with the game though. Some of the original design decisions don't mesh well with the new changes, primarily the timer, which is made basically irrelevant by all the streamlining. It was never that big of a factor in a playthrough unless you wanted parts but now it's just kind of superfluous. A lot of the not great parts of the stages still aren't great. Duff Mcwhalen is still mostly an autoscroller, Volt Kraken still has the Bike Section, Zero Stage 1 is still a replica of Quick Man and the Shadow Devil still exists. The hack does what it can to remedy this like speeding up the autoscrollers, lowering the amount of energy items you need to get from the bike section to get the Falcon Armour Part and making it so you won't get caught on walls in Zero Stage 1. Shadow Devil still kinda suck though, especially as Zero.

I'm not gonna hold these issues against the hack or it's creators though as the ideal solution would be to completely rework or replace these elements with something better, which is definitely beyond the scope of a rom patch like this. What I will say though is while they did a lot to improve the Gaea Armour, in my playthroughs at least, the Falcon Armour felt really underutilised. It's entirely possible to get everything you would otherwise need Falcon for via other methods such as the more accessible parts, the updated Special Weapons, using Zero or some combination of these three factors. I literally never needed to use it on my second playthrough. This could be just down to my playstyle but in almost every situation, the Fourth or Gaea armours were strictly better in my opinion. I feel like if it had the ability to charge special weapons like X6 then it would at least be on par with the Fourth Armour. Maybe it would have more use in an X solo run but idk.

The complaints here are mostly minor. Overall, the hack is a fantastic piece of work, it improves on X5 in almost every aspect it can reasonably be expected to. I honestly think it brings X5 up to the same level as a lot of the better Megaman games. Maybe not as good as X1 , X2 or X4, but probably not far behind them. If you've ever played X5, like it or not, I'd heavily recommend this hack. I'd put it in A Tier easily.

Why did I rank it like it’s a tier list? Cause it is.

For the last year or so I've been progressively ranking all the games I've ever played. I thought it would be a neat way to look at everything. X5 Improvement ranks in A Tier between Pikmin 3 and Megaman ZX. I'll update it with each game i finish. Feel free to roast me for my taste in games.

[niceigloos]

gamez i played and beat this year

redoing this here bc twitter is too yucky now

in order of play :) cyberpunk 2077 (once at tha start of the year and again after the 2.0 update

shadows over loathing (multiple times)

west of loathing (also multiple times)

dragon quest XI

lunacid (pre 1.0)

disco elysium twice because it is the best game ever made

system shock 2 (no pics) (there wont be screenshots for all of these bc some of them i forgot to take any)

lisa the hopeful (no pics)

spider-man: miles morales (no pics)

lisa the painful definitive edition

lisa the joyful definitive edition

crypt underworld (my goty!! everyone should play this game!!!!) extra pictures bc i love it so much

bomb rush cyberfunk

baldurs gate 3

garten of banban 1 and 4

no one lives under the lighthouse

resident evil 2 remake (no pics) shadow of the colossus (2018)

spider-man 2

[amemenadiel]

Here I come back like some stars during Christmas or the New Year

Welcome back, this time I hope for longer in the new year 2024! What has changed during this time? A lot, but with this I want to start being active here for those who might get to know me. But before that, it would be good to show myself even better, so I have prepared small posts about what characterizes me, but not only that - I am going to write a few posts that are important to me and necessary to start that adventure with Tumblr. I hope that whoever comes here will spend a nice time ^^

[mysillycomics]

[spitblaze]

[guy who doesnt watch shows voice] yeah ive been meaning to watch that show

[tawnyfool]

Games I Played | 2024

+fav quotes

2023 | 2022

[eridan-ampora]

baby animals move like theyre playing a new video game & havent figured out the controls yet

[bookpdf]

there should be more hours between 6 and 10pm. like even just two more hours. for my assorted hobbies & activities

[qrowpilled]

hate when you find a character whose so infuriatingly Your Type that its embarrassing like yeahg no one is gonna be surprised when i announce this is my new Guy Of The Month

[tamquira]

I need to start posting more on here, so here's my annual Meet the artist! Or more like "recap of the last year" sort of thing. I've been doing this since 2018, don't really wanna repost the old ones, but they are all on my instagram, i guess.

Didn't play that many games this year, but I did manage to get P5 in HK and got all the achievements in Frostpunk! Both were quite the work.

[shinysamurott9]

2024 Games: Mega Man X6 Tweaks

After playing X5’s improvement project, I felt it was only fair that I give X6's a go as well. X6 Tweaks is a sort of like a custom tweaks patcher allowing you to alter several elements of the game to your liking, including how the characters play, certain specific elements of level design, elements of the game’s presentation and a lot of stuff being tracked under the hood.

Before going into that though I feel I should talk about my opinion on base X6.

I hate it.

I really do not like base X6. I have played a majority of the side scrolling Megaman games, not all of them but most of what could be considered main series games and I genuinely feel X6 is the worst Megaman game, of the one's I've played at least, I've heard many bad things about BN4. But with X6 itself I feel like there were a lot of good ideas and some genuinely fun things to mess around with, but between the massively inconsistent difficulty, poor executions of it's ideas like the Nightmare Effects, bad design decisions with things like the secret boss areas and all armour pieces being required to use an armour again and of course it's infamously bad level design. Any good or sensible idea X6 had, is ultimately either undermined, falls over itself or is lamented for being stuck in this game.

So what exactly does Tweaks do to fix these issues?

In short, quite a lot while also adding a number of miscellaneous additions for fun and QoL, but at the same time, not doing much to fix arguably X6's biggest issue.

With my playthroughs, for the overall important changes, I opted to disable the Nightmare Blindness, leaving the other nightmare effects on. Aside from that, I activated incomplete armours, made it so the Exit Stage button was always available, unlocked aerial moves like double jumps and dash, fixed the translation, added the custom mugshot graphics, and tweaked the damage tables to make a few things more tolerable, like the donuts.

These changes did do a lot to make X6 more tolerable which did allow it's better qualities to shine through. The game is a lot more open with your routing, probably at least in part because every stage needs to be revisited anyway. The armours are fantastic, I'd argue they're some of the best armours X ever got and with the updated script, I can at least appreciate what the story was attempting. The script does even have some stuff that is genuinely interesting or funny.

Nightmare Zero actually has lines that read like he is Wily, I genuinely did not know that til now.

MF actually pulled the "I got better" card,cannot believe this.

Zero canonically hates puzzle games lol

They even added unique dialogue for Zero in the intro stage and against Nightmare Zero should you use the cheat to unlock him from the start which is a fantastic touch.

Some other fun additions include letting you change the Ultimate Armour’s palette to any of the three from the PS1 Trilogy as well as a fixed version of the X6 colours to match the portrait and a colour palette for the Legacy Collection Ultimate Armour which I think was updated to make it look better.

Unfortunately, at it's core the game us still X6 and it's main issue, the level design is still very much a problem. Scaravich is still a random layout , leaving the armour, boss portal and heart tank up to RNG. Mijinion still has his really annoying secret area, and his main area still throws literally everything at you, and of course, Heatnix is still just donuts. Would you believe me if I said someone actually told me they thought this was not only fun, but better than an actual level? Course the Gate stages are still just as bad too, but hey you can actually beat them without parts now. Bringing Shadow Armour to Gate is actually a reasonable idea now, as one of the few changes the hack does make to level design is adding a platform to the infamous jump. An air dash for No Armour and Shadow Armour is also available.

Sadly, like X5 Improvement, the hack ultimately does very little to fix the overall level design and the more problematic sections. But to be clear, I can't really blame the hack creators for that as the only real solution would be to just completely scrap the existing levels and completely redesign them from scratch, something well beyond the scope of a rom patch. So overall while it is an improvement over X6, I'd really only recommend it to someone who's familiar with X6, the bullshit it throws at you and the ways you can cheese it.

I'd say it helps the stromg qualities of X6 stand out enough to get B tier, but a pretty low B if I'm honest