#i cried for like an hour my first replicant playthrough

[crocrubies]

NO ONE STOPS!!!

[doodleimprovement]

Got AHiT for Christmas. Just got the final time piece... why am I sad?

Well... you’re sad because it’s ending! 

Whether you spend an hour and thirty minutes in the theater 3 different times to watch the same film, spending 30 minutes every Tuesday night for years watching a particular television show, or perhaps just a few days with a new video game, our favorite things are things that we uniquely experience as ourselves, and every time they end, there’s a part of us that is sad, because we know that how we felt the first, or even second and third time cannot be replicated. 

You may never be able to recapture that feeling you got when you beat the Mafia Boss, or when you first creeped through Vanessa’s house, or that absolute triumph of beating Mu, and then getting to decide to help her or leave her. You may never laugh the same way at the jokes, or gasp in realization again when you read the story books that explain how these places became what they are before Hat Kid’s arrival .. and that’s okay! Your experience is ending, but that doesn’t mean that it has to be a sad occasion. 

I remember, when I first played my favorite game of all time, I cried when it ended. It had put 12-year-old me through the emotional wringer, and I knew that it would effect me for quite some time yet. 

But you know what I did? 

I deleted my save file, and got right back to playing it all over again from the very beginning. 

Because...Well, just because those feelings won’t be exactly the same doesn’t mean that they’ll be worse, or lesser. 

But it means that... that thing you love? It’s no longer this exciting, new thing. Returning to it will be like visiting an old friend. 

And frankly, I don’t think there’s a better feeling in the world. 

You’re sad because it’s ending. Let yourself be happy that you can always return again.

Don’t limit yourself to just one playthrough, anon. Give the game an opportunity to be an old friend. 

[pocket-infinity]

My personal top games of all time

Honestly this is just gonna be me talking about games and why I like them. There’s no particular order.

Minecraft by Mojang - This was the first video game I ever knew about. Not the first I played (if we count stuff on wii, but do we count that?), but I certainly knew about it before other things. Beyond that, it was also the first game I ever played seriously. I’ve spent hours upon hours in this game on servers with friends, alone just building stuff, and this game is probably a big part of the reason that I have any creativity at all. Even if I could know how many hours I’ve played this game, I wouldn’t want to. Gotta be in the multiple thousands, now, if not tens.

Heartbound by Pirate Software - This game is a... unique experience. A lot of folks would probably say that this is some sort of “undertale clone” or “new undertale” but honestly? They’re only similar in speaking terms, and this game is in early access and it does the whole “All of your choices matter” thing better than Undertale ever did, but here’s the neat part: it never announces it. Nothing is going to tell you that you can not put on your sweatshirt and/or not take the axe at the start of the game and make all fights harder. Nothing tells you that having the jacket vs not having it will give you different dialogue for characters. Nothing tells you about the achievements in the game; they’re all secrets, and some are incredibly well-hidden to the point where I (not being a super completionist) would never have had a chance to find them if I didn’t regularly attend the development streams. Oh yeah, by the way, they stream development on the game on weekdays & play video games on weekends at twitch.tv/gopiratesoftware. And, lastly, the music for this game fucking SLAPS.

Undertale by Toby Fox - Okay we all get the deal, it’s a good game, choices and lore and story and stuff, I’m gonna move on bc nobody wants to hear that and I don’t wanna have to write it again.

Team Fortress 2 by Valve - The first FPS I ever played! I have 894 hours on this game oh god when did that happen. But yeah this game invented a whole genre that nobody even tried to replicate until 2016. The music is great, it’s a weird game, and if you don’t take it too seriously, it’s fun.

The Stanley Parable by Galactic Cafe - This game is so much more than it lets on. It’s an insane, surreal, bizarre, comedic game about a dude who walks out of his office. Similar to Heartbound, there are innumerable choices to make, and the developers seem to have thought of more than everything a player could want to do. It’s also got some very meta storytelling, and it’s the game that first got me into that sort of thing.

OneShot by Future Cat LLC - Honestly, it’s just an interesting story. I’m not really sure what makes this one so fun, but I think it might be stuff like the characters being kind and adorable, the oddness and diversity of the adventure, the general setup and intro for the story and the absolute insanity of everything that happens during the Solstice playthrough.

Hollow Knight by Team Cherry - 100% the game that made me enjoy the difficulty of games. It’s a very, very long adventure packed to the brim with lore and hidden storytelling (which I love), and the gameplay is remarkably tight and engaging. The customization via the charm system is also incredibly and allows for an insane number of gameplay styles.

Hyper Light Drifter by Heart Machine - This game is just so damn wild to me. It’s not the craziest or most visually stunning or most difficult game in existence, but it’s got a charmingly simple art style, a metric ton of stuff to do, and engaging gameplay. The story, as well, is great, especially if you can figure out what’s actually going on in its entirety due to all the enigma surround the events. If you can’t, then the end is still an incredible experience. Panacea by Disasterpeace (a song from the ost) is absolute perfection.

Portal 2 by Valve - This game got me thinking with Portals.

Pathologic 2 by Ice-Pick Lodge & tinyBuild - Not gonna lie, I can’t finish this game. I know I just threw out all of my credentials there, but this game is just brutally punishing before you know what you’re doing, and I never knew what I was doing. However, it’s very atmospheric, and the story is rather engaging. I couldn’t get past Day 3, but I was super damn interested by then.

Destiny 2 by Bungie - I have more than 1k hours on this game if we include the time it was on Battle.net. The gunplay in the game, the moment-to-moment, is so god damn good. Every gun is satisfying, and it’s just a good experience there. The visuals are certainly beautiful at times, and the lore goes so many miles deep. So many. I find the grinding in this game to be acceptable to great, depending on the circumstance, so it’s a pretty neat experience. A decent chunk of the game is free to play, too, if you’re uncertain.

Ori and the Blind Forest by Moon Studios - First and foremost, this game is beautiful. Every single god damn frame is a piece of art unto itself, and putting them together makes an unimaginably magnificent experience as you jump, bash, and glide your way through Nibel. Unrelated thing, but Ori is so damn adorable. I love the little glowy baby. But the platforming is sublime, as well, and the combat isn’t terrible. The story, though... oh, the story. The characters aren’t that deep, and the narrative isn’t complex, but damn does it make you feel things. It is in no capacity weak in any area, especially not the visuals and music.

Ori and the Will of the Wisps by Moon Studios - Fun fact before we begin: this game came out on my birthday! Anyways, moving on, take everything that Ori and the Blind Forest was, and just make it better. That’s this game. The story packs even more of a punch. The visuals are even more incredible (assuming your computer/xbox can handle them). The music is even more beautiful. The platforming is even more engaging and enjoyable. And the combat is a drastic improvement over the previous game’s already acceptable stuff. This game... its story... again, not some deep, philosophical narrative, but that mother fucking story... I am not joking when I said I cried for a week about this game. It is a transcendent experience, and quite probably my favorite game of all time. I can’t imagine something better.

Real quick, let’s just do a rapid-fire round of games that made me cry:

Heartbound

Undertale

To The Moon (not on the list)

Minecraft

OneShot

Hyper Light Drifter

Ori and the Blind Forest (a lot)

Ori and the Will of the Wisps (profusely, for multiple days)

[silverneelsenmuseum]

Review: Lost in Random

The giant hand attack should collide with itself into a big clap attack that instant kills anything in the collision zone. Story’s great though.

 The first few hours in Lost in Random are the most excited I’ve ever been playing a completely blind playthrough of a game I just happened to pick out of my steam recommendations. The combat system is completely unique and the world is a joy just to explore. Every NPC is worth talking to, and every minute you want to just look around and gaze at the environment. But as I got further in, I just started to dread combat encounters and was a little picky with what side quests I actually pursued.

 LiR’s combat/card draw system is a fantastic concept. Every other implantation of real-time combat with deckbuilding rarely goes deeper into feeling like a card game than just having weapons and equipment represented as pieces of paper, that you might get randomly through some rouge-lite system. But in LiR you are firing at weak points and precision dodging attacks to actually draw a selection of cards from your customized deck. Then you toss your dice buddy to determine how many points you can actually spend on your cards. This first card draw and dice roll sets the tempo of the rest of the battle. You can play a weapon card that equips your character with brittle equipment that lets you directly attack enemies, or a hazard card that will let you place something on the field that will passively damage enemies for you. While the system of randomly drawing cards and having to manage your card’s costs are pleasant replications of table top TCG systems, what I found lacking was the actual amount of cards to experiment with, and synergies between cards. Most cards do have rewards for double-drawing them, weapons get a damage bonus and reset their durability, multiple bomb hazards in the field will set each other off, and buffs/debuffs have their timer extended. But there’s few real combo strategies to build, you wouldn’t be at much of a disadvantage for letting the game select your cards at random. The card pool also has “Cheat” cards that enable you to play higher cost cards more often but the more creative choices in this category are rendered irrelevant by the boring “0 cost draw 1″ and “1 cost, all other cards cost 1 less” staples you get very early in the game. The bombs and turrets are fun at first, but the reliable options of the higher cost weapons and high damage crystal-breaking debuff quickly become the best options at swiftly ending the repetitive combat encounters of  enemies that either slowly walk towards you or fire at you from a distance.  The feeling of progression suffers greatly as a symptom of the meager and unbalanced card pool, by the time I was halfway through the story I had perfected my deck and unlocked all the cards in the game for purchase, leaving the main quest and side stories only gameplay reward being duplicate cards or currency I wasn’t going to spend. For some side quests talking to the characters was it’s own reward, but when an NPC in the final town cried “Have you seen my missing book?” I kept following the main quest marker without hesitation.   The story itself and the performances of the voice actors is mostly worth fighting through the the repetitive combat encounters, but the final act was a bit too fast and predictable for me. I’ve purposefully given no details on the whole thing because I do think it’s worth seeing for yourself, but I have to get this off my chest: It was a bit shocking to me for a game that came out as recent as late 2021 would just have you beat the shit out a character you’re trying to call back from the dark side like you would any other boss. We’ve had enough RPGs about forgiveness and redemption where I shouldn’t be wailing on my sister with a hammer until her healthbar is depleted, immediately followed by a cutscene where she’s normal again. I don’t care if it’s derivative of other indie games I demand my ludonarritive to be harmonious instead of dissonant.