#I could talk about how they work gameplay wise cause I really really like that too | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

keibea · 11 months

Text

Get to Know Me - Sims Style

i was tagged by @amuhav because she loves me and knows i love doing these things

what's your favourite sims death?

ngl i dont actually have one, im terrified of any of my babies dying so they never do...but i guess old age maybe? because that means theyve lived a long life and ive played with them for a long time?

alpha cc or mm?

alpha HANDS DOWN...i dont hate mm by any means dont get me wrong, but ill always be an alpha girl at heart. its the alpha hairs, they always get me.

do you cheat your sims weight?

only if it fits their character i guess? not usually in gameplay.

do you move objects

i move objects every single day.

fave mod?

ooofff i mean out of necessity? nraas. but just the one i love? hands down pose player. mostly because i was so excited when i finally got it to work (i was like 13 or something and before then i could not figure out how to get mods to work) so a lot of happy memories from finally getting my sims to pose.

first expansion/game pack/stuff pack?

my first ever was sims 2 glamour life stuff pack when i was a kid. if we're talking sims 3, i believe the first pack i got was generations, which is still my favourite sims pack ever.

do you pronounce live mode like aLIVE or LIVing?

i pronounce it LIVE, always have as far as i know.

who's your favourite sim that you've made?

well, its gotta be elodie honestly. she and eli are the longest sims i have ever had and i love them both dearly. in the sims 4, its gotta be my girl pippa. before tumblr? i had this family called the moretti's, i miss them and i think about them way too often. i loved them all.

have you made a simself?

oh yeah. loads of times. i think ive shared my sims 3 and sims 4 variations on tumblr (but they look really weird tbh). i love making myself, cause then i can wear all these clothes i cant afford in real life.

favourite ea hair

im with aimee on this one.

im mostly joking, but usually sims 3 hairs are a no go for me, except for some store ones and the hairs that are pulled back into buns always look really nice. for sims 4, only the newer ones. the older ones are not for me.

favourite life stage?

young adult. i feel like you can always do more with young adult sims and you have so much more time (except in sims 1 i believe?and sims 2 only if u went to uni?? idk). 90% of my sims are forever young adults because i love that life stage so much.

are you a builder or are you in it for the gameplay?

mate ive been trying to build for donkeys years to no avail. so im almost always in it for the gameplay.

are you a cc creator?

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA BAHAHAHA HA once upon a time bro maybe. your girl tries to be, but uni is a pain in my bottom, and sims 3 loves making my life difficult.

do you have any simblr friends or a sim squad?

somehow i do?? more friends then irl anyway. the girl gang is @thesimperiuscurse , @lazysunjade & @amuhav these 3 have put up with me despite my crazy personality for an incredibly amount of time and i love them all dearly. but i have so many friends on here its crazy (more than 3 people its incredible!). obviously they havent seen my real personality yet. besties include: @catharsim , @plumbobem , @johziii , @rollo-rolls , @moonsonnet , oh gosh im forgetting people I AM SO SORRY I LOVE U ALL SO MUCH

do you have any sims merch?

bro i wish, but no money. spent it all on anno 1800. no regrets.

do you have a youtube for sims?

i believe formally i do, but i dont post anything. i do have some ideas if i ever wanted to, but my adhd brain couldnt cope being consistent so i probably never will.

how has your "sims style" changed throughout your years of playing?

as in sims or gameplay? idk ill talk about both. gameplay wise, not much, except im weirdly a lot more controlling then i was over my sims WHOOPS. but i still cant get passed gen 2 so that hasn't changed. but i still prefer family gameplay, probably always will. and challenges, always challenges. sims wise? a lot.

this is one of the earliest sims i have photo evidence of. this was in 2018 i believe?

whose your favourite cc creator?

the people that are the cause of most of my cc obsession are @kerriganhouse , @rollo-rolls , @johziii , @joojconverts & @martassimsbookcc and probably a few more but mind blank

how long have u had simblr?

since 2020. one of the longest things ive ever committed to.

how do you edit your pictures?

with my blood, sweat and tears. im not joking, a lot of sweat and tears goes on when im editing.

what expansion/gamepack is your faveourite?

of all time? generations, no doubt in my mind. i never had any sims 1 or sims 2 expansions, so i never got to experience those unfortunately. generations was perfection though. i mean, boarding school? lifesaver. also led to the best sims series of all time: lifesimmer's generations. for sims 4 though? probably get together, purely because of the world.

#nonsims #saviourhide #aboutkeibea #jessietalksaboutherselfagain #HELLO #GOODBYE

26 notes · View notes

voidendron · 1 year

Note

Hiya! I like seeing your own versions of the Exarchs of Zakuul, in fact thanks to you and swtorpadawan I’m starting to think of my own headcanons for them and the Dreadmasters. So I’m wondering, what order did you do each of the Star Fortresses in? Cause I have my own order but idk if it makes sense

Yessss join us!! >:D

So, gameplay-wise I don't remember the order I went in. I DO know, however, that Nar Shaddaa was the first one I ran - and that's because I was a new player at the time and couldn't out-damage Lesin's self-healing. That's actually why I put him as unofficial leader of the Exarchs, and why I had my Wrath and her girlfriend as the team to take down his Fortress, due to how goddamn difficult his fight can be.

Anyway! Story-wise I actually had all of the Fortresses attacked at once in a coordinated strike!

My Alliance anonymously got some inside info from someone they suspected was an engineer on the Fortresses, and it was enough info for them to go off for that strike because the EPHEMRISes were temporarily down at the time. (they later learned the info was actually from one of the Exarchs himself)

My Commander, Terrin (Grand Champion) took Torian with her to Bothawui because she didn't want that one to fire again and it was high priority to take it down even if it wasn't a Fortress you fight in-game.

Azan (Wrath) and her girlfriend, Max (bounty hunter) took on Nar Shaddaa because they're both absolute tanks and would have the best chance against Lesin. Their job was to make some noise, cause distraction and panic from the other Exarchs so they had a harder time defending their own Fortresses from the teams already well inside.

Xaerez (Cipher Nine) used a stealth generator to get through the Voss one on his own. He ended up coming face-to-face with Andur....only to find out he was the inside man who'd given the info. Andur proceeded to go rogue and protect Xaerez from the Knights and Skytroopers on board as he sliced into various systems to bring the place down. He was the first one to bring down the Fortress thanks to Andur.

Raphios (warrior) and Lana took on Tatooine. Tarso's Fortress was the most advanced because he was constantly working on upgrades and defensive/offensive systems since he was an engineer before he was an Exarch or even a Knight, so the Commander knew a team that could hand those defenses would be needed.

Alvihr ("consular") and Xandosc (warrior) went to Belsavis. In their case, it was because Forta was upgraded with not brute strength like most of the other Exarchs, but insane agility even by Force-user standards. So what better to combat her skills than two Force-sensitive Cathar?

Kidak (knight) and Feymark (consular) went to Hoth. Kidak, because he's really good with computers and could work quickly even as Jom sent forces after them, and Fey because of their skills from both their Padawan training, and living among the Warstalkers for most of their adult life.

Synnda (Barsen'thor) and Qizulth (Darth Nox) took on Alderaan because Terrin wanted a team she knew could handle one of the strongest Exarchs. They were the last team to take down their Fortress due to having been captured. They escaped, set the Fortress to explode, and were confronted by Zar Draya before they could get out of there. Synnda touched on the dark side to end the fight with Zar before it could even begin, crumbling the final fight arena from the flashpoint around her to partially crush her, before dropping it - and her - into the reactor below.

I'm sloooowwwly working on a multi-chapter fic for the strike, but not sure when it'll be done, but yeah! sorry for the ramble I just love talking about them ajdskljakld

#swtor #exarchs of zakuul #answered ask #jjjwhovian

9 notes · View notes

satoshi-mochida · 7 months

Text

Some thoughts and details on my last Gamefly rental, Detective Pikachu Returns.

Taking place two years after the first game, Tim Goodman, now in college, and Pikachu are continuing their detective work and still searching for Tim's missing father, Harry.

While at an event to start Pokemon Friendship Week in Ryme City, a Corviknight suddenly shows up to cause trouble. Initially thought to be under the influence of the chemical 'R' that drove Pokemon into a rage from two years ago, Pikachu notes it doesn't seem to be acting the same way those affected by it were.

It soon becomes clear after the first case that something else in going on behind the scenes and making the city's Pokemon act up.

Like in the first game, the main gameplay is having Tim talk to other people, having Pikachu talk to Pokemon, inspecting the areas for clues, and putting everything together to discover what really happened during each section of the game. If anyone has something new to say, they'll have a yellow speech bubble with an '!' above their head, otherwise, it'll be '...' .

There's a few parts where you'll need to press or mash A while Pikachu is doing something, like mashing A to climb up an Aloan Exeggutor's neck. These were in the first game, too.

New to this is Pikachu teaming up with some Pokemon to help investigations, such as having Luxray use it's x-ray vision to see through walls. These are fun changes to gameplay, though I wish there was more of it.

Also new is side cases called 'Local Concerns' not related to the main story that you can do. Characters who give side cases will have a blue speech bubble with an '!' instead of a yellow one. Some early ones are given automatically, but most have to be found by talking to people or Pokemon, depending on whether you're playing as Tim or Pikachu. After each chapter, Tim will get a newspaper delivered which will have more entries in it depending on the Local Concerns finished, showing some follow-up to them(and I think extra images are added to the credits, as well). Here's the full list of them to make sure you don't miss any.

At any time, you can press Left or Right on the D-Pad to have Pikachu give hints or give various comments, some being related to the current case(and some not, just being stuff like 'Detective Tips' and the like, which can be amusing). The latter can also be done when playing as just Pikachu at certain points, usually talking with whatever Pokemon is helping the investigation. If you like listening to these, check them often, as there'll be new ones based on the location, point in the story, etc.

There's a cute little reference to the Detective Pikachu movie early on, about how movies sometimes do their own thing, that was nice to see.

Since the first game released, we've had two new Pokemon generations, so new Pokemon appear in this game that weren't in the first game, though only up to Galar/Sword and Shield and previous generations.

There's a Story Jump option that appears in the main menu that'll let you jump to any point in the story. I played it all the way through without stopping, so I don't know if it appears before finishing the game or not.

The game is pretty easy, you still can't actually get any kind of Game Over, and is probably meant for younger players(maybe a bit too much at times, gameplay-wise), though I still enjoyed it. It's still charming to me, and I'm invested in the story and characters, and wanted to see where things continued from the previous game.

I wasn't going to get to this until later on, but after a really awful looking and titled video about it popped up on my feed, I decided to check the game out myself earlier, and it's nothing like the video's title suggested in my opinion. I'll admit there's some areas it could have been improved or ironed out, like some writing and investigation parts, but overall, it felt like a satisfying conclusion to the two games' story to me, with a possible small hint of more to come.

I think that if you enjoyed the previous game's story and gameplay, you'll probably like this one, as well. Maybe get it on a sale if the price is a bit too high right now(Black Friday is coming up, so maybe then?).

Next game being sent is: OPUS Collection. I may not get to it right away; I want to try and clear the backlog a bit.

#Detective Pikachu Returns #Detective Pikachu #Pokemon #Thoughts on my rentals

4 notes · View notes

skyehigh15 · 2 years

Text

Fave Sprites in each AA Game: AAI1

(Spoilers for Ace Attorney Investigations 1)

So, this game confuses me. On the one hand, I really enjoy the new gameplay format and third-person movement. It also has some of my favorite character designs. But on the other hand, this is the ugliest Ace Attorney game in the whole series. It's also the weakest in terms of actual plot and cases. And I want you all to know that I have never disliked playing an Ace Attorney case (I enjoy 2-3, 4-3, 6-4, etc) but this is the only Ace Attorney game I would consider bad. First of all, I hate the art style they went for. It's a sort of anime-y style that works well for some characters, but then you have Ernest Amano and Zinc Le Blanc. Well, whatever, we're not here to talk about the negatives (I'll leave that for another time) so let's get into the animations I do enjoy.

(Oh, btw I have other posts on the other games, check them out)

Animation 1:

Kay Faraday. Mhmmm.

As a new character, I kind of don't love her inclusion (I personally think that having Ema be the main assistant would have made much more sense and added a better character dynamic).

But design-wise? She rocks. I love her scarf, and her hair, and her bag, etc. I also really appreciate the new "tiny" sprites that showcase larger actions with the whole character's design being shown. They're cute and chibi and great.

This animation in particular is very punchy (pun intended), and it creates a nice loop. I like how she bounces from side to side before stopping to punch with some nice smears on her jabs.

Final verdict: Kay's writing may not be my cup of tea, but I love how energetic and fun her animations are.

Animation 2:

Another "tiny" sprite and another animation that utilizes smear to showcase a fast action. I think that the reason why smears are so common in this game is because they make the whole animation much easier to read on such a small screen and sprite.

Well, the reason why I chose this animation isn't really thanks to the animation quality, but more so just how fucking cool it is. It's just cool to see Lang calmly catch Franziska's whip seconds before it hits him.

As much as I love Franziska, sometimes it's great to see someone stand up to her while she's acting like a spoiled child.

Animation 3:

We have arrived at my favourite character in AAI; Callisto Yew. She's so great. I love her fairly simplistic design, her carefree attitude towards Edgeworth's dramatic personality, etc. Her laughs are always animated wonderfully. Actually let's move on to the next animation and I'll discuss her a bit more there.

Animation 4:

So, animations 3 and 4 are fairly similar from a conceptual level; it is just Callisto laughing. But they're so amazing because you can almost feel and hear her laughter. In the first one she's cackling loudly and trying to stop herself. In the second animation she's completely out of breath and still letting out a few laughs. Overall her animations are sincere and really charming.

Idk if she's an assassin super spy or whatnot. If she kills me don't blame her: she caught ME slipping.

Animation 5:

I'm SORRY. I'm WEAK and I couldn't HELP IT. I had to put Ema on here and how could I NOT choose the iconic DS sprite (I mean, that's definitely a Nintendo DS, right?). This sprite has a special spot in my heart because my childhood DS, that i still use, is the exact same shade of pink <3

Also I love the small detail of the DS screen being reflected on her glasses, causing that to be one of the few animated things in the whole sprite (the other being her arms and fingers).

Honestly, as much as I dislike most of AAI's art design, the highs are VERY high, and I love Callisto and Ema.

Anyways, next time I'll do AAI2, which I really love a LOT. It's gonna be harder to find animations online, because the website I use only has sprite sheets. If you guys know a good website with a lot of AAI2's animations I'd really appreciate it if you'd let me know.

BYE!

#ace attorney #ace attorney investigations #AA Best Sprites #animations #sprite rating #kay faraday #franziska von karma #shi long lang #calisto yew #ema skye

13 notes · View notes

sword-dad-fukuzawa · 3 years

Text

Diluc v. Childe: Who Would Win in a fight, Husbando Edition?

I have THOUGHTS about what a fight between these two would look like, and because I have a Tumblr to scream into the void with, here! Have a fighting style analysis, because this is really and truly my favorite thing to do and I haven’t done it since last summer.

To make things fair, I’m not going to consider Childe’s Foul Legacy transformation until the end. I am, however, considering lore, gameplay, and cutscenes. Please note that I have not read the manga and am excluding it from this analysis.

Weapon Type

Right, so if you weren’t aware, Diluc has a claymore. Generally, this weapon is slower than any of the other weapon types, but it also deals the most damage per hit.

Childe is, first and foremost, a bow user--but his bow can turn into a polearm and daggers when he enters his melee stance. Childe himself states that he is fairly weak when using a bow, and I suspect his melee stance is his way of compensating. Do you know how bad this man is with a bow? He’s so bad with a bow that his last attack animation in his normal sequence is him throwing an arrow. Regardless, this means that Childe has two advantages on Diluc from weapon type alone.

Firstly--Diluc is a close range fighter. He cannot do any damage if Childe is out of his range, while Childe has the luxury of picking Diluc apart from a distance as long as he keeps backing up.

Secondly--Childe also has melee capabilities. If he were only a bow user, there’s the chance that Diluc would manage to catch him in melee range and then Childe would get flattened. However, his polearm and dagger melee stance is uniquely suited against Diluc’s large, unwieldy broadsword, by sheer virtue of being faster.

If you watch Childe’s attack animations in his melee stance, he’s incredibly fast and the dual-wielded daggers mean he essentially has a multiattack with each strike. Diluc would have an immensely difficult time fighting Childe, if only because Childe’s melee stance is quick enough that he can finesse his way under Diluc’s guard.

His polearm stance, as well, gives him about as much reach as Diluc’s claymore does. So Diluc doesn’t even have the advantage of a large reach in order to prevent Childe from cutting in close with his daggers, mainly because Childe has that polearm capability. That leads us to my next point.

Fighting Style

I watched their normal attack animations several times for this bit--at normal speed and slowed down to properly get a feel for the way they fight.

Diluc is flashy. His style involves twists and flourishes and frequent one-handed attacks despite being a two-handed sword user. It looks fucking dope, but as a side effect, Diluc leaves his torso open more often than not. At once point in his auto attack sequence, he even turns his back to his opponent in order to deliver a devastating swing.

But Diluc is almost always overextending--an issue seen in literally all of the claymore users with the notable exception of Chongyun. His sword is really heavy, so to compensate, he’s almost always reaching. Off balance, and it leaves him open. Now, his balance issue isn’t as egregious as Razor’s, but it’s still there.

I will say this about Diluc. He hits hard, and his charged normal attack is fairly fast for a claymore and more versatile than many of the other charged claymore autos. But it doesn’t matter how hard he can hit or how much damage he can do if he can’t connect.

Looking into Childe’s style, inherent ridiculousness of lobbing an arrow at a person aside, he’s much more balanced. His melee stance has him facing forward, typically balanced but with moments where his center of gravity is over his feed instead of centered. He and Diluc both have an overextension problem, but because Childe’s weapon means he’s already faster, it’s less of an issue for him.

There are enough openings in Diluc’s fighting style, at least from what I could tell from his autos, that Childe could take advantage of it with his daggers. For Diluc to win, he’d need to end the fight quickly, and on his terms. He can’t beat Childe in his ranged stance--that’s not going to work, because, well, claymore. So, it’d have to be with Childe in his melee stance. And Diluc is still at a disadvantage, as I just discussed.

Element

Now, let’s talk elements, which is fairly straightforward. Diluc’s skill is essentially him setting fire to his sword. Useful, and dealing high damage. His burst is his only ranged attack, generating a massive flaming bird.

Childe’s is his melee stance, where his weapons are made out of water. His burst is a hydro aoe.

The in-game elemental reaction here is vaporize--a reaction that favors hydro. It deals more damage if a hydro attack caused the reaction. Childe, therefore, has a leg up here in counteracting Diluc’s elemental skills and bursts.

Background

Background-wise, I think this category is up in the air. Diluc was trained with the Knights, and was a Cavalry Captain from a young age. This suggests a high degree of skill and work ethic. Diluc ended up traveling for a while, presumably still training, and he now moonlights as a vigilante. I would not accuse Diluc of being unskilled or out of practice.

However.

Childe is one of Snezhnaya’s foremost soldiers. His job is to fight people, and it’s been a long time since Diluc was a knight and in the same position. Childe needs to stay sharp in order to finish jobs and because he’s got almost the entirety of the Fatui’s eyes on him. Childe was also one of the youngest Harbingers, trained in the Abyss for three months by a master swordswoman who allegedly taught him “heretical” skills that made him a better fighter.

I can’t really weigh these two experiences against each other, but I think their different backgrounds do matter in a fighting comparison.

Emotional Temperament

Ah, the most difficult part of this analysis. Emotional stakes are near-impossible to weigh without context, and fights always occur with context. And emotional stakes are incredibly important. They determine the effort a fighter puts in, what they’re willing to sacrifice to win, and even their strategy during the fight. A desperate fighter will do more to win, for example.

Going off of their personalities in general, Diluc keeps his cool during fights. He’s calculating. A strategist. Someone who gathers intel before jumping into the arena. This gives him an edge on Childe.

Why?

Because Childe’s a loose canon who jumps into fights without doing research beforehand or gauging his opponent. He just likes fighting, while Diluc’s motivation is protecting Mondstadt. Diluc typically would have more to fight for.

However, Diluc also has emotional buttons. My personal thought is that if Childe knew how to piss Diluc off--possibly by mentioning his father and making this conflict personal by using a Delusion--he might even the playing field. Childe doesn’t get angry during fights, while Diluc is known to have gotten angry on at least one occasion (Diluc v. Kaeya when Kaeya got his Vision).

And anger, as a general rule, makes fighters sloppy. Considering how Diluc’s style borders on careless with his movements and energy, this isn’t something he can afford.

Remember how I mentioned Diluc would need to end the fight quickly? Right, so I sincerely doubt that Childe would let him. He likes fighting almost as much as victory. A quick fight wouldn’t satisfy his bloodlust--he’d draw it out, probably goad Diluc (see his goading of Traveler in his boss fight).

I was going to mention arrogance, but honestly? These two guys are both so confident in themselves and their abilities that they cancel each other out.

Foul Legacy

Foul Legacy is...annoying. It’s a truly massive buff.

It gives Childe another element, makes him inhumanly fast and strong, and probably increases his durability, judging off the armor. The only downside is the toll it takes on his body. I don’t think he’d use it unless Diluc truly injured him--and I doubt it would get to that point. But! If he did.

I don’t want to say he’d flatten Diluc right off the bat. But that cutscene with the robots in his story quest? He blitzed them. Three robots in under ten seconds, which is absolutely nuts. And Diluc’s biggest weakness is that he’s slower. Making Childe that much faster? The odds don’t look good.

So, tl;dr, Childe would probably win a fight between himself and Diluc. Feel free to disagree, this is just my opinion and I only wrote it because I adore fight scenes.

We’ll be back to our irregularly scheduled Bungou content tomorrow :D

#genshin impact #diluc ragnvindr #childe #tartaglia #fatui harbingers #fighting style analysis #Aurie Fighting Style Analysis

72 notes · View notes

300iqprower · 2 years

Note

3, 12, 20

3. Favorite Childhood Game...Well, I don't really deal in favorites cause my mind is perpetually in flux, but if we're talking EARLY childhood I'll throw a dart and go with the two games I loved so much that many years later I went out of my way to track down new copies so I could play them again: WarioWorld and The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning (both on GC). And I don't care what apparently every other person on the planet says, that second one was and having played it again recently STILL IS amazing.

12. Most bizarre game I've played...again, 2 picks, one if we're talking bizarre in a positive "unique" sense, one if we're talking in a negative "wtf is this crap" sense. The latter is White Knight Chronicles, a PS3 exclusive by Japan Studio (as per with Sony Exclusives) and Level 5 (yes, THAT Level 5, the Professor Layton people) that I found in a bargain bin for 5 dollars in 2020. Story and visual wise it is one of the most generic fantasy games I have EVER played, something I can comfortably say even though it's main selling point is what are essentially Gundam Personas. How did they mess that godly idea up you ask? It's actually really simple, and why I consider it so bizarre: Make the gameplay some unholy combination of Korean MMORPG and Final Fantasy 13. It boasts over 100 hours of stuff and I believe it, in that I believe there's about 5 times that amount of grinding and back and forth slow ass walking across big open areas that are blatantly reused MMO assets. The game launched with a heavy multiplayer element but it's still clearly a solo story driven game.

In short, it's the kind of game where I look at it and go "how in god's name did anyone think this was going to work?" because nothing about it makes sense on any level without the context of current trends to justify it (which is how FF13 happened as well but that had the excuse of being an oversaturated IP trying desperately to find a new hook) and yet they went into it with this big idea for it to be a massive franchise, partnering with Atlus to release soundtracks and audio tapes, wanting a manga, and releasing two different sequel. The term "Single Player MMO" gets wrongly thrown around a lot. Kingdoms of Amalur is a good example, calling that a single player MMO is basically like calling Skyrim one (another game it's wrongly compared to) or Darksiders 2 one. WKC, now THAT is a single player MMO, and it's as bizarre and miserably tedious an existence as it sounds.

As for the positive example, it's the fittingly titled The Infectious Madness of Dr. Dekker for which the premise alone will explain why I pick it: It's a murder mystery FMV Therapy-em-up set in the UK with you as the psychiatrist typing in questions (with responses based on autodetected keywords) to ask your incredibly varied patients about the things they were seeing the eponymous Doctor for. I won't say anything beyond the fact it has supernatural thriller elements, it's a Clue style mystery where each run has a randomly assigned culprit and multiple endings, and that as someone big on proper portrayal of mental illness I don't find any of it to be reductive let alone harmful. The acting strikes a balance of genuine and incredibly hammy in the best way, and between such acting and the supernatural elements it's made very clear that this isn't meant to be anything rooted in actual mental illness. Oh and you should absolutely play it, that too. It's only $9 on Steam which is borderline robbery. It's also on console, running $12 on PS4, XBOX, and Switch, although I can only vouch for performance on Steam and PS4.

20. Favorite Publisher/Developer...Well the only publisher I trust is a self-publisher, firstly, and secondly I've learned many a time the hard way corporations are not people and should never be treated as such let alone emotionally attached to in such a way. Although there's a 50/50 chance that question is actually meant to be taken as "what publisher has your favorite overall output". Thankfully either way the answer is Supergiant Games, who along with Thunder Lotus Games are basically the only two non-solo developers left who haven't stabbed my past love of them in the back or met a terrible Tencent/trend chasing fate (Fucking RIP Arkane and Platinum). I've been following both of them ever since their first titles, in fact I own 5 copies of Bastion (8 if we count those I've given away to my friends). Needless to say, seeing Hades and Spiritfarer reach the levels of acclaim they deserve has damn near brought tears to my face.

#video games #supergiant games #thunder lotus games #legend of spyro #the infectious madness of doctor dekker #never thought i'd get an ask #except in this case #askpost response

2 notes · View notes

legionofpotatoes · 3 years

Text

we decided to watch all story cutscenes from the new resident evil village videogame on a whim, since it’s not really our cup of tea gameplay-wise but seems to be this massive zeitgeist moment that made us morbidly curious. And I know how much everyone cares about my thoughts on things I know very little about, so. let’s get into it huh gamers. and yeah spoilers?

for context, I’ve only played resident evil 4 and a small portion of 5. I also read the wikipedia entry for 7’s plot recently. all this to say I was only vaguely aware of how tonally wacky the series was going in

I also completely gave up following the plot of the mutagens’ soap opera, so that paid off in spades here as you might imagine

anyway so that baby in the intro. that baby’s head is just massive. humongous toddlerdome. when ethan finds the baby’s head in a jar later on. there is no way that head would fit into that jar. bad game design. no not even game design. basic stuff. one hundred years in prison for jar modeler

if I see a single functional hetero marriage in video games I will cry tears of joy. I understand their misery is kind of The Point irt them badly working through the hillbilly romp trauma but like. sheesh. at least set that up as an emotional story goal the plot will help resolve. but nope they start off miserable and it goes nowhere

I know I know the mia thing has a huge wrinkle in it but like. not really in terms of dramatic function?? set up a happy end to the re7 nightmare (miranda can keep up appearances for all she cares) and then take that all away from angry griffin mcelroy for manpain. it will still absolutely work to set up the dramatic forward momentum. why throw in this cliche Hollywood Tension in their marriage if you’re not going to address it oh maybe because it’s normalized as automatically interesting because nuclear families are a self-propagating pit of a very narrow chance at emotional happiness relying on social stigma to preserve their empty function oops my baggage slipped in yikes abort mission

I called him griffin mcelroy because I saw his face on twitter and. yeah. I will continue to do this occasionally. my house my rules

... fuck the reason I’m hung up on this is specifically because the rest of the game is so tonally dexterous (which is a shining point to me! more on that later!), and yet they felt weirdly compelled to create the aesthetic trapping of a family-at-odds trope without following it through too well. a sign of both the good and the bad stuff to come

but listen the real reason why I wanted to talk about any of this is to nitpick the fascinating backwards-engineered nucleus of the entire thing; in that this game essentially creates a melting pot of just SO many disparate horror tropes and then makes a no-holds-barred unhinged effort at weaving thick lore to piece them all together. it is truly a sight to behold. like straight up you got your backwoods fright night situation, your gothic castle vampires, your rural-industrial werewolves, and don’t forget your bloated swamp monsters over there, with then a hard left turn into robotic body horror, and the entire ass subgenre of Creepy Doll writ large, and the bloodborne tentacle monsters, and a hellboy angel bossfight, which rides on the coattails of a mech-on-mech pacific rim bonanza, and just jesus henry christ slow down

almost all of these are textural hijack jobs that don’t really get into the metaphor plain of any of those settings but the game sort-of makes an argument that the texture IS the point and revels in it. It is kind of admirable almost. The same reason why the intro felt boxed in and unmotivated is also why the rest of the game just blasts off of its hinges to the point of complete and self-indulgent tonal abandon. I kinda loved that about it. lady dimitrescu made sure to hold her hat down as she bent forward in mahogany doorways and then suddenly she’s a giant gore dragon and you settle in your temp role as dark souls man with Gun to take her ass down. Excellent??

this rhino rampage impulse to gobble up every horror aesthetic known to man comes to head when the game wrestles with its FPS trappings in what is the most hilarious solution in creating visceral player damage moments. Since most cinematics and the entire game is in first person, that leaves precious little real estate for the devs to work with if they really want to sell griffin’s physical crucible. To wit. This dude’s forearms. Specifically just the forearms. They are MASSACRED throughout the story. The poor man lives out the silent hill dimension of a hand model. by the end cutscene he looks like a neatly dressed desk clerk who had decided to stick both his grabbers into garbage disposal grinders just a few hours prior. like in addition to everything else it manages to rope in that tinge of slapstick violence into its general grievous genre collection except this time it IS for a lack of trying! truly incredible

but wait his miracle clawbacks from everything his poor paws go through are retroactively explained away, yes, but far too vaguely and far too late to console me as I sat and watched everyone’s favorite baby brother reattach an entirely severed hand to his wrist stump by just. placing it on there. and giving it a lil twist ‘n pop terminator-style. and then willing his fingers back into motion right in front of my bulging eyes. this game just does not care. it does not give a shit. and boy howdy will it work to make that into one of its strongest suits

cause generally speaking resident evil was THE premiere vanilla zombie content destinaysh for like a decade, right? and as the rest of the world and mainstream media started encroaching and bloodying its blue ocean it went and just exploded in every single conceivable horror trope direction like a smilodon on catnip. truly, genuinely fascinating franchise moves

yeah the big vampire milf is hot. other news; grass... green. although I do love the implication that her closet is just identical white dresses on a rack. cartoon network-level queen shit

apropos of nothing I’ve said there’s also this hobo dante-devimaycry-magneto man, and I can’t believe this sentence makes sense. anyway he made that “boulder-punching asshole” joke referring to chris redfield and it was probably the only easter egg that really landed for me and boy did it land hard. I have not seen him punch the boulder in re5, mind. I had only heard about how funny it is from friends. and here this dude was, probably in the same exact mindset as me, trying to grapple with that insane mental image. with you on that ian mckellen, loud and clear

I advocate vehemently against the shallow pursuit of hyper photorealism in art direction but I gotta admit it works really in favor of immersive horror like this. the european village shacks especially gave me super unchill flashbacks to my rural countryside retreat in western georgia. I could smell the linoleum dude. not cool

faces are weird in this game. can’t place it. nice textures, good animation, but the modeling template is... uuh strange? and the hair. it has that clustered-flat-clumpy look that harkens to something very specific and unpleasant but I just don’t know what. sue me

griffin’s mental aptitude to take all this shit in stride and end every seemingly traumatizing bossfight involving some fucking eldritch being yet unseen through mortal eyes by essentially throwing out an MCU quip is just. What the fuck dude? I mean that was funny how you casually yelled the f-word at a god damn werewolf that you considered a fairy tale an hour ago but are you like, all right?? it was swinging a sledgehammer the size of a bus at you, ethan

oh oh the vampires are afraid of cold and your last name is winters. I get it haha

Pro Gamer Nitpick: boss fights seemed a bit unnecessarily long?? idk why the youtuber we picked decided the ENTIRE propeller man fight counted towards the vital story scenes he was stitching together, but man mr big daddy lite there really had some get up and go huh??

why are they saying dimitrescu.. like that. is it really how you say that word or is the english language relapsing into its fetish for ending every single word with a consonant at all costs

I’m not saying it’s a dramatic miss of a twist in context of all that’s going on, but the “you died in the last game actually and have been DC’s clayface ever since” revelation is low-key. it’s. it’s just funny to me, I dont know what to say. century-old god-witch fails her evil plan after she mistakenly removes heart from what was definitely NOT just some white guy with eight fingers after all

chris realizing he’s about to become the player character and immediately swapping out his tsundere trenchcoat for the muscletight sex haver sweater

the little bluetooth speaker-sized pipe bomb he taped to his knife was nuclear?? really??? I must have missed something because that is just too good. I buy it though I totally buy it. chris just got them fun-sized nukes in his car trunk for, you guessed it, Situations

anyway this is all for now just wanted to briefly touch on how unexpectedly funny and tonally irreverent this seemingly serious game turned out to be. did not articulate any cathartic story beats whatsoever but my god it had fun connecting those plot points. he just fucking put his severed hand back on his stump and it Just Worked todd howard get in here

#text #another one in my bulleted review series with no rhyme or reason #sorry resident evil fans this could be a painful read pls turn away #i know almost nothing about it but i am gonna be super fake familiar and critical of this one hey ho

23 notes · View notes

triforce-princess · 3 years

Text

well, i finally 100% completed hyrule warriors age of calamity in its entirety, including post game content, so i’m finally going to write a full review. beware this review will contain every spoiler imaginable so please do not click the read more if you haven’t finished the game yet and don’t want to be spoiled!

tl,dr; this game is a lot of fun despite some of its shortcomings and it’s really nice to see characters get the development they needed in breath of the wild. also a huge improvement gameplay-wise from the first game. if you’re a fan of breath of the wild it’s worth a try, just don’t expect breath of the wild style of gameplay! and if you’re a fan of the original hyrule warriors, you are going to love this a lot. ok now to get into the details. this is extremely long;

about the gameplay; it took me a while to fully adjust to the new controls and mechanics, but once i finally understood it it was so much fun. i originally wasn’t crazy about the sheikah slate runes since it was difficult at first to remember that a. i had that ability, and b. when the proper time to use it was. but when it finally clicked for me it brought a whole new interesting layer to the gameplay that challenged my memory in a fun way. it took me even longer to learn what the use of the rods were but those were great in a pinch once i figured it out. i also loved the flurry rush mechanic since dodging is a pretty important aspect of the gameplay. all these new layers added to this gameplay makes me wonder how i ever put up with the original hyrule warriors gameplay lol. something i wasn’t entirely crazy about was the wall jumping and paraglider stuff? i never really found it useful and it always just became a problem when i was trying to dodge and i’d be confused about why my character was slowly flying around at critical moments.

the camera in this game was pretty frustrating. with the more organic map & lots of tight spaces (which i’ll get more into later), the camera would get stuck a lot and you’d be unable to really see what’s going on and it got pretty frustrating at times. i wish there were some way they could fix that but i’m not sure what they could do without having the camera go out of bounds & show the edges of the map. maybe they could’ve made some of the objects that are in the middle not be things the camera get stuck on though.

i also felt like there were too many special effects going on with some enemies and attacks, sometimes it would cover up large parts of the screen & you wouldn’t be able to see what you were fighting and that was pretty stressful (i found myself frequently yelling “i can’t see!!” when i’d defeat a guardian or something in a room with lots of other enemies. this only became an issue in the later parts of the game though.

now about the maps, i do love how much more organic and natural they are. it’s a big upgrade from the original which had a lot of wide corridors leading into square rooms which were allied/enemy basses. but unfortunately, this causes issues with navigation and the camera getting stuck (like i mentioned before). i had a lot of problems where the map was too natural and i was confused about why i was getting stuck on level geometry when it looked like i could walk through there. i think the breath of the wild style makes this confusing too because you can’t really undo a thousand hours of being able to walk through nearly everything. but also it was just really unclear what was a wall and what wasn’t sometimes. i was surprised i actually had to zoom in on the mini map and look at that to move around at times. definitely an ambitious aspect of the game & i appreciate the effort and detail, but i don’t know if it works that great for this style of gameplay. i also don’t know why they bothered putting so many small details on the ground if they’re just going to pop in so close to the camera. it was kind of awkward when you cleared out all the enemies & were traveling to another location and it was the only noticable thing on screen.

speaking of ambitious, we can’t ignore this game’s framerate issues. it’s the first thing on everyone’s minds when talking about this game. most of the time, it was pretty acceptable. but they definitely pushed this game farther than the switch can go and it shows. i really appreciate the love they put into making this game as detailed as they did, but i don’t know if it was worth it in the long run. there’s only a couple times i can think of where the framerates got absolutely unacceptable, and it always seemed to be when there was a lot of electricity and enemies on screen at the same time. it happened once during the final vah naboris mission and another time where there were a ton of electric lizalfos all shooting electricity at once at the same time you have to fight an electric lynel. but, i’m not the kind of gamer that loses my shit over dropped framerates, i grew up with the n64 & have had to put up with poor early emulation many times in my life so framerates don’t really phase me until it just gets unplayable.

wasn’t crazy about how many late game missions were just boss rushes, but that’s pretty standard hyrule warriors fare. at least it was more fair in this game where most of the time you only had to fight one boss at a time and the next boss wouldn’t spawn in until you beat the first one, so there was no risk of accidentally aggro-ing a boss in another part of the map & have an unfair fight on your hands like in the first game. it was pretty anti-climactic how the seemingly final mission which had the highest recommended level was just another boss rush, and not even the hardest one (it was just a bunch of regular malice bosses in a row).

bit of a side note but i didn’t like having to grind for materials and find koroks for 100%. the koroks weren’t nearly as bad as breath of the wild though, thank god.

i’m pretty disappointed that some content that’s clearly in the game isn’t unlocked in the base game, it’s looking pretty likely that they’ll add it as dlc later & pretend it’s new content to make the game relevant again...i’ve always firmly believed dlc should be extra content that’s added in later. hopefully they’ll add some really cool stuff as dlc alongside the stuff that’s in the game & it won’t be so disappointing. there’s two characters i was sure would be unlocked as playable characters (sooga and astor) but i found it weird that you don’t get them in the post game and instead you get to play as the egg guardian (terrako) and calamity ganon???? talk about subverting expectations. also really frustrated to learn that zelda’s royal dress isn’t available in the base game but its in the files & is just missing one body part?? really hope that’s just a free update and not like, paid dlc. kind of dumb that they didn’t give the devs one extra day to model feet on the character.

about the story; the story starts out really strong i feel, i loved seeing characters get the development they didn’t get in breath of the wild and this game’s story makes breath of the wild’s story feel even more incomplete than it did before this game came out. and actually seeing the story play out in chronological order in real time without link having amnesia gave the story so much more feeling and connection. this is probably my favorite aspect of this game because i was always so disappointed with how disconnected you feel in breath of the wild because of the way the story is told. and it does so much of a better job illustrating link and zelda’s feelings. i’m probably the single most difficult person to convince when it comes to link and zelda being in a relationship or having feelings for eachother and i thought this was quite possibly the best master sword scene in any zelda game;

in previous games link has always had to prove his courage in a variety of trials spread across the land and to me its really boring, especially after how many times its been done. the thing that gets me about this scene is the master sword deems him worthy because of his desire to protect zelda even when he’s been beaten down & disarmed. that was a really beautiful moment to me & i’m glad they wrote the scene this way.

speaking of being worthy of power because you want to protect someone, i wasn’t really that crazy of zelda unlocking her power just because she loves link but honestly this game illustrated it in a much better way & i’m more down with it now. i loved this shot how it really captured what she was feeling;

it’s also in general awesome to see the champions in action, both in gameplay and in cutscenes. i remember being in awe the first time i got to play as urbosa. it feels like we finally really got to know them and how powerful they really were, instead of breath of the wild just telling us they were cool & we just had to believe it.

now for the part i know people say this game is shit because of; the time travel aspect. yeah, it’s a little silly and nonsensical, but honestly, it was kind of fun. and i don’t get how a time travel plot is somehow weird for the zelda series. the most critically acclaimed game of this series, ocarina of time, is entirely revolved around a time travel plot & the heroes would not have won if it weren’t for time travel in that game. yeah, it’s goofy, but this series is known for its nonsensical aspects & plotholes. there’s always some kind of unexplainable magic in this series that solves problems. i don’t think that makes this game shit. plus i was kind of starstruck when i first got to play as sidon lol. i was thinking to myself, man, who would’ve known 3 years later we’d get to play as sidon! crazy! none of the champion descendants were really my favorite to play as but it was still cool to see them & play as them.

something i didn’t understand was why kohga and the yiga clan joined zelda’s cause? i feel like a vital scene got cut. i don’t get why he’d join even when astor betrayed him, considering his group’s ambitions and how many times they tried to kill zelda. and where’d sooga go? the scene of astor betraying them kind of implied he was going to die but we never got confirmation of that, and he even shows up in a post game mission as an ally (no cutscene, just one line of dialogue during gameplay)

as for the ending, i guess it was alright? astor was a really lazily written villain and i just did not care for him at all. kinda don’t even care that we don’t get to play as him (yet, probably). calamity ganon’s design in this game was terrible. and i guess it would’ve been hard to make it work, but no beast ganon? just felt a little to easy to wrap up. despite this i guess it was nice to see hyrule get a happier ending even if it was a bit nonsensical at times. also this is just a bit of a personal thing for me but i liked seeing hyrule before it was destroyed. it always bums me out when you find a locaiton in game that’s been destroyed & you can only think about what it mightve looked like before. this is something that’s bummed me out since wind waker (was always disappointed you don’t get to see what greatfish isle is like!!) and breath of the wild gave me so much disappointment in that aspect lol.

one final thought but it was odd to me how many lines revali got & how often he interacted with link lol. was weird to see him slowly warm up to link a little towards the end (but of course he’s still a little mean...). no other character acknowledges link as much as revali. this scene confused me the most??

there were so many other people revali could’ve spoken to. he barely even acknowledges teba who was the one who specifically came to his aid!! and the way link looks at him with big puppy eyes?? link barely makes a facial expression at anyone else! and how revali expresses gratitude for the first time in his life after looking at link’s stupid cute anime face and smiles (but he turns around because he would be too ashamed to smile at link i guess)

anyway that’s it, i finally got out all my thoughts about this game. this went on way longer than i intended and i’m sorry if you read the whole thing & it took forever lol. this game is fun, get it.

#legend of zelda #hyrule warriors: age of calamity #breath of the wild #text #hwaoc spoilers

80 notes · View notes

dabidagoose · 3 years

Note

What's your fave video game sountrack(s)? =^o

Ok that is a very loaded question so this is gonna be a long ass response, I hope you're prepared for what you've done.

(ok there's a tl;dr at the end if you want it sorry for this lmao)

FIRST POINT my immediate thought was the Ikenfell soundtrack (actually my immediate thought is I can't fuckin' choose they're all amazing but. then ikenfell). On the personal side, I was pretty much obsessed with the game for like three months straight, and i fuckin' love aivi and surasshu's music. I am also a simp for chiptune so jot that down. Moving past what may very well just be personal preference there are some incredibly interesting musical choices and impeccable choices story-wise that hit just. SO fuckin hard. Like emotionally. I won't elaborate on to the context and why the song works so well but the final battle theme is absolutely SPECTACULAR. (I could elaborate though so. ask if you will and i'll write another spiel on why it breaks my heart and soul). But also to reference a less-plot relevant piece I'm gonna bring up Alchemy is for Everyone. The squish bass sounds at the beginning are SUCH a fun environmental sound, it is really just NOT a sound I hear often which makes the track really stand out. And it fits SO perfectly for all the slimes and just. It's so WET. I love it. Makes me wanna wriggle. Which ok is probably also personal preference on reflection because my friend hates a wet song that I love but. Ok it's GOOD. Anyways continuing to the melody the fuckin PITCH bends. This is digital music at it's peak. We get the fun sounds. We get the fuckin pitch bends. Which are so fun because having slightly out of tune notes is such a fun feeling. It's a little off kilter, it's a little different. It's just SO funky and sounds so awesome to bend those pitches just a little bit, take full advantage of the medium and play around with it. Now I'm gonna talk a bit about why I love aivi & surasshu's music so much which. Ok so I believe(?) they coined the term "digital fusion" where you're mixing all these fun fresh digital sounds with real instruments/more traditional sounds and it can work SO fuckin well (for extra musical literature on this subject I'd like to suggest Yoann Turpin and specifically Chip Ship). Which we already get a taste of that where the pitch bends are playing on piano but it really kicks in when the violin takes over the melody and it's SUCH a graceful instrument in comparison to all this funky/awkward stuff we've had. The dichotomy is fuckin awesome. The violin is like a graceful victorian socialite ballroom dancing in after these pitch bends just pinned their arms to their sides and wiggled their hips around. We then get a third spacey instrument (I. have no idea what it is.) and it is. SUCH a switch. We have moved from awkward and stilted to almost too perfect and graceful (I forgot to write before but the high piano at the violin adds so much) to a moment of awe and discovery. We are now exploring the universe, the world of science and alchemy, and it is fantastic. The song almost seems to have it's own little narrative, and this is just a backing track for exploring one of the buildings!!!! This is within the first couple hours of gameplay, it is incredibly non-plot-relevant but SUCH a piece of art. I am absolutely in a slime ball watching amazing science happen so precisely and it is. so fuckin cool. And I could probably go off about every single other song, but in the interest of keeping away spoilers and finishing this post before 2 am, I will not. (Addendums because I can: this is less wet than the one my friend hates, and also this song is MOIST. I would also like to mention It's Showtime and Between the Lines as other song favorites but if I went into them I would never sleep.)

Okokokok. So. So SECOND point (I'm. so sorry.) I looked at my video game music soundtrack (I have two main soundtracks one for just every music but I didn't want to overwhelm it with VG music so I made one just for that that has ENTIRE soundtracks from almost every game I've played which. oops.) and I found two other contenders based mostly on I Really Liked The Games. The Oneshot soundtrack and the Night in the Woods soundtrack. Ok I'm gonna talk about Night in the Woods first cause HOLY shit. holy shit. The fucking astral songs. Those are fucking masterpieces. Such a simple ensemble but it creates such an INTENSE atmosphere. I really love instrumental music can you tell. I specifically want you listening to Astral Train for this one (played it for my senior recital and even though I had to play the violin part on clarinet I maintain it was one of the best choices I've ever made), but we the way the layers blend together is a fucking masterpiece. Since this song had to be designed so that any layer could play alone and each one could join in any order, each part of the quartet has to be interesting, but they still all must blend together and so they each get melody moments but the harmony/bass lines have to be interesting as well and. They ARE. This is such a hard task and it's accomplished SO. INCREDIBLY. WELL. (Side note: also makes for a good ensemble piece for, say, your and your friends' senior recitals, so everyone gets fun parts, a chance in the limelight, and a chance to rest, haha totally irrelevant note right there definitely no connection to my real life). With Astral Train we really get this cool ghostly train feel and through all the Astral pieces we REALLY feel the absolute intensity of Mae's dreams and the music creates such an immaculate vibe. It is unmatched. The rest of the soundtrack contains plenty of bops in a variety of genres too, where the bass songs have to be both playable and fun (Die Anywhere Else my beloved), and we get nostalgic and mischievous music fit for this ragtag team. This is the feeling I've had hanging out with my teenage friends at 10 PM in a parking lot. It is absolutely perfect for this video game. The music is SUCH a bop and really emotionally connects to me cause the game is such a bop of a plot. It is truly fantastic. (Addendum: Ok listening to Gregg rn and. Holy shit bop. I love him. I love this)

Ok now onto Oneshot, which, admittedly, does not have as strong a holding on the podium as these other two do, but curse me for having been emotionally destroyed by the video game because now I am emotionally attached to the music too. But, again, ATMOSPHERE. I am once again gonna be speaking in the interest of spoilers here, so I hope anyone who's finished the game will forgive what I'm not saying, but the entire landscape of this desolate planet is just SO much. The world is so simple and empty, and yet awe is often mixed with this feeling of despair. This is incredibly fitting for Niko, for the hopeful little pal they are, and creates an incredible effect. (I included specific song reccs for the last but I don't quite for this - so I'll just say now that I'm listening to On Little Cat Feet). The visuals are fairly simple, the map small, and just looking at the game the world feels incredibly small. But the music makes it all seem so vast. We really get put into Niko's shoes (or their little cat feet I suppose), and get to see this world for the vast, terrifying, but incredible place it is. The music makes you feel like that child seeing a new world for the first time, (this isn't spoilers past the first chapter but I'm warning you anyways) even though you are meant to be a god, you are still made to feel small and the world still large. The music does so much of this work, and it's incredible. Throughout the soundtrack the underlying angst, the despair, remains present, and the game has so much more impact for the music. No game is incomplete without it's music, and Nightmargin does a fantastic job creating this music for Oneshot. I haven't analyzed the actual music instruments/structure so much, but it's those instrumental sounds again tearing at my heart strings again. I would also like to recommend this game beyond the soundtrack, since it is an incredible story, with some puzzling gameplay, and it has made me feel how no other game has. It is a masterpiece of a game, and I implore everyone to play it through. Get hints if you need to, or play alone, just make it to the Ending. You'll know when you're there. (Addendum: I think I'm very repetitive here but I refuse to edit it so you have to live with this. Anyways gonna say it again: Play Oneshot!!)

Now I have chosen three game soundtracks that had a story that incredibly connected with me, and music to bolster that story and those emotions in incredibly meaningful ways. But there are so many others with great music, but that didn't necessarily connect on such an emotional level. Portal and Portal 2 have fantastic soundtracks, Celeste has beautiful music, Underhero has some funky and spectacular beats, Undertale and Deltarune are famously incredible (although I also did emotionally connect with them... but they're already talked about enough. Lancer beloved.), Clam Man is just. Fun., Oxenfree is also incredibly atmospheric and spectacular, Sewer Rave just has nice beats, and Minecraft is nostalgic as all hell. There are so many games to choose from, that from the moment I saw your question I knew I would be writing a far too long Tumblr post to answer you, because it feels an injustice to just answer one without reasoning, or without bringing to light all of the other amazing sounds I've discovered.

To finally answer your question, I think Ikenfell deserves the top spot in my heart. My instinct was right, there's fresh sounds, great musical structure (see: Between the Lines that I didn't elaborate on), incredibly emotional sounds, and fantastic storytelling within the soundtrack. But I love all of these other soundtracks, so I must bring them up. For they also have spots in my heart.

TL;DR - Ikenfell wins but I also love Oneshot and Night in the Woods and many others so I don't know what to say chief (lies i have too much to say)

#i will not apologize you brought this on the world by asking #i'm so sorry you had to find out i'm such a nerd This Way #i want to ask my friends to proofread this for legibility before posting but lets be real thats not happening. it wont be legible #so sorry about being this much of a nerd. not really but. wow that got long. mm vulnerability my behated #ikenfell #night in the woods #oneshot #only tagging those three cause theyre the ones i got too emotional about.#ok ok im gonna post this now lmao #wait am i legally allowed to mention blaseball cause the garages or is that not allowed #ok i think its not allowed #but the garages r very good i listened to the newest album today and *chefs kiss*

15 notes · View notes

snatchamoon · 2 years

Text

(Some random thoughts about the story progression for Subcon that I was throwing at friends on discord, and then thought might be nice to put here as well. Bit rambly, since that’s how my brain works tbh.)

When Snatcher makes you sign a contract, of course the first one you have to do includes murdering the spirits, because you can't get around the forest without getting rid of the fire walls. But why does he have 'oh, and clean out the well' attached to it? Seems a little random to have murder and plumbing in the same task. (Outside of giving us two acts from the get go, which is kinda moot when he gives another contract after killing the Fox Spirits. Could have made the well a separate act, there's too many Snatcher traps and not enough contracts to sign.)

Maybe to have a source of water available, if the Spirits cause him trouble later and he would rather put out the fires to get rid of them. Which could lead to questioning if the well was ever really in use prior to Hat Kid unblocking it. There was presumably no need for the well water if everything and everyone was dead and dying. Maybe Snatcher didn’t think to get it flowing again until dealing with Fire Spirits he could have doused.

But the order of the acts is weird in general. One makes the most sense, and you can stretch a connection with two. And while technically the remaining contracts can be any order you choose to take them in, the official numbers go with Toilet, then Van, then mail. Story-wise, Snatcher should only be giving contracts as necessary, but the TOD doesn't cause any problems until you've started the job to destroy it. Narrative-wise, would have been better to have the acts play out the traditional game way. Step in blind, problem of the day gets addressed right away with someone talking to you right away. (Granted, he shouldn’t even be offering that contract until after the well, when Hat Kid finds the badge she needs to get across the gap to the arena. A way to stop the player, but would Snatcher have had some other way to get her across if choices for gameplay were ignored?)

Beating the Toilet could make Snatcher more willing to nudge Hat Kid to Van's for another Time Piece, as a half-reward and half-’you get it so I won’t have to go there’ after proving her resilience, though the mail delivering is still in a weird place. Is there a reason mail is last on the list? Does he deliberately make contractors deliver the mail if they survived everything he wanted them to do? It's presumably the only job that's happened more than once, since he had a previous mailman that went 'poof'. Do minions get their mail and know that the person making deliveries is getting offed soon? Is the mail secretly Snatcher inviting them to the arena for murder? Mail delivery seems deliberately chill compared to the other tasks, and is the one act where Snatcher is out and talking to you aside from the first task. For all the other ones, he stays in his tree. Feels like he intentionally plans mail when usefulness is running out.

(Would also be a fun little thing, with how nice he is about the mail delivering and getting a ‘gift’ for the occasion. The badge being a rental, but if instead of taking it away as soon as the job is over, the implication of it being temporary is because she’s dead after the job is over and he’ll just take it back.)

#non reblog #ramblings #We'll ignore the one wrench in the ordering of acts where TOD and Snatcher were both going to be part of the one boss stage #Though that order of events would also make sense with the 'oh; yeah no you're not allowed to have this'#'Now that you finished all the jobs; you won't be needing this Time Piece because you've outlived your usefulness'#Though the visit to Van's would literally just be a 'while you're here; could you get this; because I don't want to go there myself'#If Hat Kid didn't return; oh well; he'll take care of that soon enough #/And/ having the TOD as part of the finale would work better for the whole. Hat Kid's soul escaping to posses it #Because as act 3; that soul would have gotten out /immediately/#But as a final act; could wonder about how much a soul is aware; and if it knew Snatcher was gonna murder her anyway #Escape in retaliation and a more sudden 'uhhh; okay; kid; one more job because this is kinda urgent'#And /then/ go ahead with the 'oh; man; thanks for doing that because I didn't want to touch the thing; but now you can die'#snatcher

4 notes · View notes

ichika27 · 3 years

Text

The World Ends with You

(Yeah, it’s the same screenshot I used for my post about ep. 1. I couldn’t get a new one so...)

Ah, first week without the TWEWY anime to look forward to. I’m actually kinda sad cause I’d miss waiting for the episode every Saturday night (Ani-One posts theirs on that day here). I have some stuff I wanna say about the anime so I thought I’d make one of these plus this is a good way to end the twewy anime blog post series I make every week. I’ll try not to spoil until the very bottom of this post which will have a spoiler warning.

Also, this will be very long and rambly as most of my fandom posts are haha.

Story:

A boy named Neku wakes up in the middle of Shibuya with no memory and finds himself as a player in the Reaper’s Game. For a week he must partner up with a girl named Shiki and both of them must complete missions, battle creatures called noise, and survive as failure meant erasure.

Characters:

Neku Sakuraba - our main protagonist who somehow lost his memories and is now playing the Reaper’s Game. He’s a loner who isn’t too keen on getting close to anyone let alone working alongside anybody - unfortunately for him, it’s a requirement if he wants to survive. As a player he has an assortment of abilities to fight off noise and other enemies (in the game this meant he can use a lot of different pins).

Shiki Misaki - the nice and friendly Shiki becomes Neku’s partner in the Reaper’s Game. Unlike Neku she has knowledge of the game and fills Neku in on things he doesn’t understand. Her ability is to control her stuffed toy called Nyantan/Mr. Mew which she uses in combat.

Beat - the tough skateboarding player, he’s somewhat more like the typical hot-blooded shounen protagonist when compared to Neku. He’s protective of those he care about especially his game partner, Rhyme. He uses his skateboard in battle.

Rhyme - Beat’s game partner who is a lot kinder and calmer than him. Rhyme tends to be the one to reason with Beat when needed and the two are always seen together.

Yoshiya Kiryu - a mysterious boy who seem to know more than he lets on and acts at times acts suspicious. He prefers to be called by the nickname Joshua.

Sanae Hanekoma - a cafe owner who helps out Neku and the others and would give them advice. His advice prove to be very helpful and Neku takes them to heart. Seem to have a lot of knowledge about the Reaper’s Game but doesn’t seem to be a reaper himself.

Thoughts:

(I tried my best to not be spoilery in the character descriptions so some names weren’t written in full)

The World Ends with You (or in the original Japanese “Subarashiki Kono Sekai”/It’s a Wonderful World) is an anime based on the video game of the same name. It had to compress an entire game’s worth of story within it’s 12 episode run which meant they cut out a lot of things and combined some scenes to quickly run through them. It’s theme song is the anime version of the game’s original OP “Twister” although this wasn’t what was originally planned but an incident involving the band who sang the original theme forced them to make changes. The original voice actors from the game also reprised their roles for the anime. The series is created to be watched before the release of the long-awaited sequel game.

The art style is made to be similar to it’s game version (with a bit of change to adapt it as an anime like when it comes to body proportions). They also retained the effect of the characters from the UG (players/reapers) being brightly colored while those from the RG having darker/muted colors. While the noise are obviously cg, I personally liked this since they’re said to be from a different plane anyways so it’s a nice contrast to those from the UG and RG. They had to update the setting though as years had passed since the original game’s creation and they had to model anime version of Shibuya to what it’s real life counterpart now looks. The characters are also given smartphones instead of the flip phones they had in the game (anime-only watchers who are gonna play the game would have to get used to them still using flip phones though lol).

Okay so story-wise... it’s rushed. Of course it is. They shortened it so that what’s left would mostly be important plot points from the main story but they cut out many scenes that consist of character interactions and several little things that could’ve fleshed out the characters more. The gameplay is also made simpler with some mechanics taken away and the mini games weren’t adapted (RIP to Reaper Creeper and Tin Pin Slammer, especially the latter as you’re severely missed). The game boast an assortment of characters and some NPCs have their own stories but due to the anime’s limited run time, they had to either be cut out (and are just given cameos) or given smaller roles (and their stories weren’t adapted). They did, however, give a few bits and pieces of information that weren’t in the game such as some details about certain characters and one supporting character was given a bit more screentime that they did in the game version.

Despite the rushed nature of the series (which may or may not affect how one views the story itself), the anime made sure to adapt several important scenes and the dramatic stuff is made worse... like, they really had to make some deaths harder to take. The battle scenes were nice as well although my biggest complaint about them is that the boss fights were over too quickly. There were scenes that were changed for the anime version and there are those that I liked and those I didn’t but there are many which I think was as good as the game’s version.

Do I recommend the anime? The game is better, the characters and story are more fleshed out and the way the character/relationship development happens is better paced so of course, me, biased already would tell you to play the game instead if you haven’t yet. Do I recommend those who played the game to watch the anime? Yes! Yes I do. I think the anime is better watched when you’ve played the game and know the stuff that they cut out cause it’ll make better sense that way. Plus I found it enjoyable seeing the scenes from the game animated and the characters are speaking whole dialogues and moving. It’s great!

Even if the anime wasn’t perfect, like I mentioned before, they did their best to condense the entire main story in a 12 episode series and it tried to be as faithful as it could to the original story so despite the deviations when it comes to how things got to the way they did, if you summarize important plot points, they would be the same (with some details changed). Overall, it was very enjoyable and it wasn’t as bad as I feared when I heard how many episodes the anime was going to have.

Some spoiler thoughts:

It would’ve been better if the anime had more episode count than just 12. Cramming a 3 week story of game into just 12 made the thing very rushed with Week 1 only getting three episodes, Week 2 getting four, and final Week getting five. They had to get to the good stuff so they cut off a lot of scenes where the characters are interacting with each other which means they suddenly get character developments and relationship developments too quickly. It might not be that obvious to anime-only watchers but to me, it felt kinda sudden and it feels like it doesn’t work out well story-wise since Neku had to learn how to trust other people and make friends and with how he started vs. how he came out of it contrasting each other.

By the way, they made the characters look good in the anime. Especially Joshua. Have you seen Joshua? He’s so pretty in the anime. I want a picture of him I could stare at anytime I want to (I do not own a phone, sadly).

I like how they gave Eri more scenes though and that they changed her outfit for the anime so she won’t look exactly like UG!Shiki. All of her scenes though made me feel like I wish the anime gave closure to Shiki’s own story by showing us her and Eri making up. Another scene I liked in the anime is Neku’s fanboying of CAT when he finds out the truth. It was adorable.

Some info was taken away from the anime. Beat and Rhyme leaving home had scene dialogue and unlike Beat just narrating it in-game but they didn’t mention specifically why he was angry and his trouble at home. Joshua wasn’t present when Sota and Nao gave Neku a pep-talk either which is a shame cause I think that helped Josh as well.

I mentioned before how the anime made things go too fast. They cut off chunks of not-main-plot story that let the characters interact with each other more which means each game day is shortened as well. I think it made sense that Neku wakes up at the scramble in the end and not stressed out because he didn’t go through as much as his game counterpart did. That said, game Neku learned a lot from more than just the main cast in the game compared to the anime so I like his character development in the game better.

They took away Tin Pin Slammer. I am sad and disappointed. I was hoping so bad for Another Day to be adapted even if it’s an OVA. That and the ramen incident are part of Josh’s week which meant some side of him wasn’t shown (I mean, anime fans don’t know he wasn’t there on week 3 since he’s busy playing a kid’s game elsewhere and how he could talk about food like he is from a cooking anime). Speaking of Josh, they made him very suspicious from the get-go in the anime. I understand as there’s a limited run-time and they can’t really afford to be subtle about it but it meant some of the fun interactions with Neku is gone and so are some scenes where they actually got along. At least they had ice cream together, I guess?

(I have more to say when it comes to Joshua cause he’s my fave character but this is long and my thoughts on it would make this way longer. I might make another post.)

In the end, it wasn’t perfect but the anime was fun and enjoyable enough that I found myself looking forward to it every week. Seeing scenes I recognize from the game in animated form (with voice acting!) felt exciting and awesome. I’ll miss this show and I still wish it was longer.

If you’ve read this far well, thank you. And also I’m confused why but still hopefully that was a good time-killer. I have so many other things I wanted to comment on but that’s for another time. Maybe.

#Subarashiki Kono Sekai #subaseka #the world ends with you #twewy #sana_post

6 notes · View notes

surprisebitch · 4 years

Text

my experience playing Arknights for one week

i said i wouldnt pick up another gacha... but i really had to find out i could re-roll for SilverAsh.. and fast forward, it has come to the point i really want to play this game a lot and love it that i have to talk about why it’s so good

GACHA ASPECTS

first, the gacha is generous. you will always get a 5-star from every banner within your first ten rolls. you can also buy a standard 5-star and/or 6-star operator from the shop with in-game currency you either have to farm or save for with yellow certificates. these come when you roll a new operator from the gacha or from a weekly game mode called Annihilation. they dont come easily though but you can save for them

you get to recruit new operators for free too, you just gotta wait every 7 hours and 40 minutes if you want a 3 to 5 star. then if you get a special tag, set it to 9 hours so you can get a guaranteed 4 or 5 star

Annihilation is a mode you can do to get originium, LMD, and battle records depending on how many enemies you kill in a single run. so the game incentivises you to power up your operators so you can roll more since.

the reason why you would probably whale or be made to roll and save is getting copies of the 6-star because the more copies you get, the more they’d be cheaper to deploy. that is not a necessity though. another is sanity/stamina. people buy gacha currency to either play more, farm more, or speed up factory production

every operator is viable including the lower rarity ones. so dont feel that you wasted on one leveling them because they would all be investments especially. dupes can also make them cheaper to deploy so the more copies you get for them, the more they would most likely be in your squad for a while. once you get more than 6 too, they become currency which you can use. also cheap to raise with early to mid-game investment. they also learn a trait which can be a great asset for your RIIC or base! for example a maxed out 2-star can have the best type of base buff

the husbandos albeit few are eye candy. i hope as time goes we get more new sexy male operators. but honestly, the advantage is it will be easier to save for their banners. there’s also no male tax because they arent underwhelming and are really great units. in fact the S+ tier unit to this date (in NA at least) is SilverAsh and he is a catboy husbando who you can re-roll for free. you wouldnt get to experience his full glory though until you’re far enough which is level-gated by a well-leveled arsenal of operators

SO MANY REWARDS and give-aways!!! like this game is so generous. it has a cumulative login, consecutive login, monthly login, weekly login, campaign login, and event login omg. you also get rewards from missions and leveling servants. so many incentives are given to power-up your servants. its so newbie and f2p friendly

GAMEPLAY

when you have to farm experience or materials, there’s the auto-deployment function. so if you perfectly cleared it (3/3 rating) without using a support, you can just start the node with the function and leave it on the background. this may not guarantee 100% success though as sometimes your operators could die from a stray crit but luckily you can take over if an error risk is detected. so you dont have to go through the tedious process of doing it all over again. you can also overwrite that error

the difficulty spike happens not too far into the story that you will be forced to level up your servants and try out different strategies going out your comfort zone. this includes improving your base, leveling specialists, etc. you’d also be encouraged or forced to think outside the box because some maps can make certain specialists shine, so dont underestimate your crowd-control and shift operators as they can make the defense easier.

the game is so flexible. there isnt a fixed strategy, it’s well-balanced where every team could flourish. it really depends either how properly leveled they are and your gameplay.

you cant get carried by an S-tier support and you are forced to be independent. for one, their max level is scaled to your highest level operator. a friend support can only go so far but it’s your whole squad that matters so make sure they’re all properly leveled and youre proactive in activating their skills, withdrawing one, replacing, managing timing, etc. also, clearing without a friend support is what will allow you to auto-farm the node

you can practice any fight! so if the node seems to be difficult, you get 30 free practices per day, so you can assess or simulate if your operators are ready for the challenge. and if by chance you fuck up your official run when you start it officially the first time, you can leave and the game refunds all the sanity/energy you used! it will only start deducting sanity the more you try so use your practice drills wisely

besides the tower defense main gameplay, there are many things you can do to diversify your experience from setting up your base, designing your dormitory in your base with furnitures, etc. managing your operators and maintaining efficiency and workflow. a great base is what will help you generate income and experience to level up your operaots

many materials but nothing too overwhelming. the game gives you a good idea and guides you on where to farm them or how to get them. you can just click the material and it will tell you where to get those if you have completed the map. it will also tell you what node to complete if you havent. so you will never get lost

ART and SOUND

the ART! it’s so pretty omg from the backgrounds to the operator designs. also despite being predominantly filled with waifu operators, their designs are not fanservice. there’s like hardly any tiddy window. their body proportions are realistic. they’re all dressed up practically for battle

the soundtrack is sooooo good! i really love the vibe even the home page. it’s relaxing to hear you can leave it on the background. the battle music is also really nice

STORY

it is really engaging!! it is rather a slow burn and everything seems to set up to a battle every time but it does not feel too repetitive as we learn new things and the game is able to make these encounters realistic and connected to the story. the events are fun and make you learn more operators who are featured too. it’s very thought-out

TL;DR:

there are so many aspects about Arknights that makes it a cleverly designed Tower Defense Game: generous rewards/gacha, interactive gameplay, well balanced operators, farming convenience, aesthetically pleasing art, etc. If you are looking for a game that will get your mind working, Arknights is so worth it. Give it a try cause I wish i joined sooner, but hey, it’s never too late!

(cred: artist)

#arknights #damn i WISH i played this sooner

69 notes · View notes

gamer2002 · 3 years

Text

Danganronpa - Review2002

Danganronpa is a mystery VN, where 15 high schoolers are trapped in a murder school, and in order to get out one has to kill another and frame somebody else for it. Observed and manipulated by the headmaster of the school, a sadistic robot-bear called Monokuma, our main character, Makoto, has to survive and not lose his hope. Because there is a lot of despair. And hope. Despair. Hope. Despair. Light. Darkness. Kingdom Hearts.

But we’ll talk about that later.

Despite all the murder thingy, the game is just an edgy shonen and is very animu. It’s not a bad thing, because it’s entertaining, and that’s what matters the most. Characters are mostly simplistic, often stereotypical, but are distinguish and memorable (aside from meh protag). What is good about the cast is how the group dynamics changes with each case. Thanks to that, the characters seem more alive, and the surrounding drama seems more impactful. And sometimes the drama is really good, though it’s dragged down by the meme writing. But about that later.

The trials, where we try to figure out the killer’s identities, are good gameplay-wise. Aside from the rhythm minigame. I get the creators wanted to demonstrate losing arguments by lack of confidence, but, until half of the game, that minigame had nothing to do with logic or deduction. Every other minigame was good or ok, though.

Comparing to Ace Attorney, the trials were more dynamic, with constant new arguments and questions. It helps that the equivalent of AA’s testimonies is briefer (as it’s on a time limit). Not to mention, the filled with moving camera direction really made non-animated and non-moving characters feel alive. The music was ok – it serves its purpose, but it isn’t memorable.

The gameplay between trials was ok. Investigations didn’t drag too long. The free time did sometimes, but that’s because I was collecting more coins than it was necessary. The coins are spent for presents, which we can give to other characters, in return for learning more about them and gaining upgrades for the trials. But, to be frank, some upgrades were “turn off the setting we put to make the gameplay purposefully shittier”.

It’s an entertaining game with some good ideas, which earns 7/10 in my book. But there are reasons why this game doesn’t earn any higher, which I’m going to elaborate on. The subject is Kingdom Hearts Meme Writing, Monokuma being a letdown villain, the big revelation being a lot of nothing, and how the writers could’ve made the Hope vs Despair nonsense actually work. The last two are impossible to write about without spoilers, but I can explain the first two without them.

Despair. Despair. Despair. Despair. Do you get it? I hope.

I know this is a shonen, regardless how edgy it is, and the writers were pretty self-aware of this. But the despair/hope meme drags down the writing. Monokuma goes on and on about how he will turn all the hope into despair, and this is just as ridiculous as a talking cartoon bear that kills a man by literally blasting him into space can be. It’s a meme writing. A ham-fisted, forced meme writing.

Other examples of meme writing is Kingdom Hearts, with its light and darkness, or Ace Attorney, with its truth. We all roll our eyes over that. Characters are bringing up some concept in a melodramatic way, repeatably, with a ridiculous zeal that doesn’t just seem alien, but straight out autistic. But it’s okay, all those titles, including Ronpa, are still shonens. Kingdom Hearts is a battle shonen where you fight against forces of evil alongside Donald Duck. You can turn your brain off and enjoy yourself, no biggie. But turning your brain off is a bit harder in, you know, a murder mystery.

Yeah, Ace Attorney is murder mystery as well, and yet I give it a pass. That’s because “truth” is just an ideal of idealistic characters. Phoenix, Edgeworth, and the rest, are melodramatically motivating themselves by simplistically expressing their ideal. And melodrama is part of a wrestling, and logic wrestling is what Ace Attorney boils down to. So, why this isn’t the same in this logic wrestling game?

The problem with hope/despair is that those are not just some concepts or ideals, but those are emotions. Emotions that the writing does attempt to make you feel, sometimes pretty successfully. Case 4 is an example of a beautifully set up tragedy, it’s the game’s emotional peak. The reveal is shocking and sad, and the dramatic confession is filled with genuine emotion. And then the confession has the word “despair” in it, and my brain is immediately going back to Monokuma and his antics. Good thing that the official translation team has realized that they would have killed the mood sooner, if they had included that word in an earlier appearing evidence. Same thing happens whenever the word “hope” appears – it just makes us recall the memes.

In my AI: Somnium Files I’ve explained to you the need of being explicit about what is supposed to make the player feel emotions. But you can’t be ham-fisted about what the player is supposed to feel. Turning hope and despair into KH’s equivalent of light and darkness is turning them into a material for jokes. It is a repeatable telling us what to feel, and that simply can’t work. If the game didn’t do that, a lot of good moments wouldn’t be dragged down by being a reference to something we joke about.

Monokuma is just the biggest kid tier villain

There are spoiler reasons why Monokuma fails at being a villain, but I’ll mention them in spoiler section about improving the whole hope vs despair conflict. But the basic problem with Monokuma is spoiler-free, because it all boils down to the game’s initial setup.

Generally, Monokuma is a recurring type of villain that mixes nihilism, cartoonish silliness and cruel sadism into one, disturbing package. Other examples of such villains is the Joker, or Killer the Butcher from Zambot 3. When you look at Monokuma alone, he is (aside from spoiler reasons) a good example of such a villain. He is over the top, entertaining, scheming, memorable, gets all the attention in every scene he is in, and is constantly disturbing. All his bases are covered, so all is good, right? But only when you look at Monokuma alone.

Character in a story isn’t just some element you can look at alone, it’s an element you see among all the others. Great villain needs a great hero. Great hero needs a great villain. If one is unimpressive, the other can’t impress us with their triumphs.

The reason why the Joker is a great villain is because he is a challenge for the goddamn Batman, creating a clash of an unstoppable force against an unmovable object. Killer the Butcher’s enemies are kids piloting alien giant robot with superior firepower. What makes the Bucher a good villain is that, regardless of his lost battles, he still succeeds at causing significant collateral damage, which constantly contributes to his stated goal of slowly killing all humans. And Butcher doesn’t just rely on his show reaching logical conclusions about consequences of battles between giant robots, the entire arc before heroes directly attacking his HQ is about him using a weapon they can’t fight with a giant robot – kidnapped people turned into living human bombs. The amount of sacrifices, losses and traumas that kids from a 70s (!) super robot show have to go through is why Killer the Butcher is an impressive villain you love to hate.

But Monokuma isn’t an unstoppable force going against an unmovable object. Neither he is battling heroes that are capable of beating him in a direct confrontation, forcing him to rely on different forms of accomplishing his goals. He targets fifteen uninformed kids, with like three giving him a reason to worry, and puts them in a situation where they can’t initially defy him at all. It’s not a spoiler to say that the kids initially can’t find any clues that would’ve allowed them to free themselves from Monokuma. Their exploration of the school is limited, and next areas are unlocked only after class trials. Meaning, Monokuma limits kids’ ability to gather information required to beat him, until the next killing occurs. If the kids don’t kill anybody, they can only hope to (hah) apathetically accept their imprisonment by Monokuma.

To sum it up, all that Monokuma accomplishes is making some confused kids kill one another, when they are in a situation where it’s their only option to free themselves. Wow, what an impressive villain, doing whatever he wants with helpless children and driving them to murder.

It doesn’t help that the actual conclusion of the conflict with Monokuma is underwhelming, and all his actions only make us respect him less as a villain. But more about that later, in the spoiler section. But not immediately, because first we need to focus on the game’s disappointing big revelation.

Who cares that the world is over?

All attempts to escape the murder school were pointless – the world has already ended! Play the laugh track.

To give the writers credit, Genocide Jill’s explanation of that was funny and played out as a dark joke. And that’s the only way this revelation could be played out.

When it comes for the twist being a twist, it’s okeyish. The twist itself isn’t hard to guess, by the end of the first trial, and it’s almost given away by the third one. On the other side, there are photos of kids that died in previous chapters, and you could wonder if they aren’t going to reveal that everybody lives and this all was a simulation, or something. It can be easily guessed, but there is room for speculation, and you may not know which route the writers will go. Even if those routes are “predictable” and “a disappointing backpedal”.

But even if you end up being surprised… it’s an emotional bunch of nothing. Makoto gets his answer to what could’ve happened to his family, and he still doesn’t even realize it. That’s how the writing poorly handled one way it could’ve made us care about end of the world – through Makoto’s reaction to it.

Makoto is such an uninteresting, purposefully average, and ultimately unimpressive main character. We know he has family, parents, and a younger sister, but one picture of them is all we got. We don’t know the dynamics of their relationship, and we don’t know why Makoto loves them. Just saying “they are his family” isn’t enough. When Superman and his family are written well, we know why Clark Kent cares deeply about them – Ma Kent is such a great mother, Pa Kent is such a great father, and each scene with them demonstrates it.

Through the game, Makoto could’ve flashbacks to his family, as an ongoing C plot. That way we would’ve been shown why Makoto cares about them, why he wants to make sure they are safe, why he could feel tempted about escaping via murder (leading to him rejecting that idea because his family wouldn’t want it that way). And then boom – yes, the world has ended, and they are probably dead.

But Makoto never ever connects the state of the world to the state of his family. And that’s a big mistake, because that was a way to spice up the ultimate clash between Hope and Despair.

How to argue that Despair can be better than Hope

Before I focus on the topic, let me first expand on the topic of Monokuma being a disappointing villain, by telling you why Junko is a disappointing villain.

Junko just pulls everything out of her ass. Ok, she happens to have a super soldier sister, who was capable of killing Academy’s entire adult staff, letting her to take over the school. This part is acceptable by shonen standards. It was the Acadamy that was responsible for sealing the building and setting its defense, ok. But then everything else is an unexplained bullshit. Endless Monokumas? She has them because the writer says so. Ability to take away memories? She has them because the writer says so. Hijacking all TV channels? Performing ridiculously complex executions? Securing supplies to the Academy in a post-apo setting? She can because the writers says so.

She simply isn’t a formidable villain. She is nothing more than a bored girl, that could’ve been successful as a normal person, but the entire universe decided to grant her everything to let her play a supervillain. She doesn’t accomplish any impressive feat by herself. Even taking over of the Academy was solely thanks to her sister. With her granted unfair total advantage over the cast, there was no other way for her to lose than keeping screwing herself. She can’t even gain respect as a formidable opponent from sticking to her rules, because she not only purposefully handicaps the most competent person in the cast, but also keeps breaking her own rules.

The second aspect of a good villain is understandability. And Junko is a stupid incomprehensible mess. She always feels despair, and that somehow makes her constantly bored. But she wants to prove that’s better than hope. For some reason, she is a sadist. She is also happy about facing ultimate despair in form of her own death, but she didn’t yearn to that enough to off herself before all her plans. Nothing adds up, and she just does whatever crazy shit the writers needs her to do at the current moment. This is the aspect where she just sucks as a Joker-type villain. Such villains, when done well, aren’t just twisted, wrong, crazy edgemasters. When done well, they are also, despite everything, still somehow understandable. That’s what makes them actually shocking. It isn’t just shocking that they do horrible things, it is shocking that they can argue that everything they do serves a purpose and is consistent with a coherent belief.

Joker (when written well) and Killer the Butcher do have nihilistic philosophy that is wrong and twisted, but does have some shocking points. Joker believes that normal life is pointless, because one bad day can drive you mad, so it’s better to embrace awfulness of the world as your entertainment. And this philosophy is consistent with him wanting to commit macabre crimes. Killer the Butcher believes that humans are ungrateful bastards and will even treat their saviors like crap. And this philosophy is consistent with him wanting to kill all humans. Even if you don’t agree with their believes (I hope), you understand why somebody with such believes would be doing what they are doing. This understandability is what elevates banal conflict against a bad guy that does a bad thing that has to be stopped, into a conflict against a personified idea. Batman doesn’t just fight the Joker, he fights a nihilistic view of a pointless mad world. Zambot 3 kids don’t just fight Killer the Butcher, they fight view of humans as unworthy of living and being saved. That is why those conflicts aren’t banal.

Meanwhile, Junko makes a big promise for a Hope vs Despair conflict, arguing that the latter is better than former, but...

What is “despair” anyway? Is it to give up from stuff like escaping the school, and accepting whatever you end up having, however shitty it is? But what does it have with Junko’s boredom and embracing her own death? What is the point of the over-the-top executions? Junko is gleefully sadistic, what about despair makes you sadistic? Did she want the cast and her viewers to embrace sadism as well? How’s that better than hope? It’s incomprehensible, and fails to make any point. The blame lies pretty much on the out-of-place sadism that exists just to make Junko an edgelady.

Danganronpa is a murder mystery. And despite being an over-the-top shonen, it does focus, decently, on motives for committing murders. Every single killer in this game is understandable. Their actions were wrong, but you understand why they did everything they did. There is just a sole exception to this rule – the games’ main villain.

During the final confrontation, Junko was arguing that futile hopes of previous murderers drove them to committing murder. That alone does make a good point. Then she offered everyone safe peaceful life, if they acknowledged her belief and abandoned all hope. Ok, that’s a good dilemma. Surprising that with such a good prepared dilemma Junko bothered to handicap and eliminate Kyoko, when she could just guide the cast towards Junko and this dilemma faster. Still, Junko does make a point about despair being better than hope, and does make the cast face a dilemma, in a way that is consistent with her belief. But then she adds she wants to punish someone for lulz, and that person has to be our bland player character.

And how killing Makoto proves that despair is better than hope? It was a yet another act of Junko’s pointless sadism, which only made it more difficult for other characters to agree with her. Anyway, Junko is ultimately unimpressive, because she loses to Makoto just saying “let’s have some hope, guys”. All that buildup of understandable motives of past killers lead to a rather banal final conflict with a completely banal resolution.

Things would be different, if Junko didn’t forget about Makoto’s family and did bring them up during the final argument. I still think that trying to kill Makoto was counterproductive, but I understand the need of putting MC’s life at stake. But Junko could single out Makoto for execution because he was pushing for the idea of everyone leaving the school, despite the revelation about state of the world, and she could accuse him for selfishly risking lives of others, just for a hope of reunion with his own family. Imagine that being the payoff of flashbacks to Makoto’s family and his wish to reunite with them. Sure, here, Makoto has proved he wouldn’t directly murder anybody over it, but would he willingly disregard safety of others? He can’t really refute that, without giving up on leaving the school.

And that’s how Junko could undermine Makoto and make her point. Living trapped in the school and abandoning all hope for the outside world was bad, but it could be worse. At least it was safe, peaceful, and they had food plus entertainment. Looking for anything better outside was risky. Hoping for anything better was risky. Hope was bad. The state of despair, where you no longer hope for anything better than what you have, was good. Unable to accept this Makoto was spreading ideas that were dangerous for the well-being of others. How Makoto, willing to selfishly drag everyone else into a dangerous hell-word and risk their lives, was that much different from every other killer? Sure, they killed others directly, but at least none of their victims had a slow and painful death. Makoto was willing to potentially doom others to that. And this is why he had to be put down, like all the other killers had to be, regardless of their understandable motives. In the current state of the world, any reckless hope is a dangerous thought crime.

Here, the final debate could be more complex. Makoto could’ve pointed out that, even if he could be accused for having a selfish hope, it was the same with others. Everyone else wanted their situation to improve, and giving that up for hollow safety wouldn’t do. Hope is better than despair, freedom is better than safety. The future of post-apo is libertarian, and if we can’t live with the freedom to pursue our hopes, then we won’t live at all. No more lockdowns!

You don’t have to agree with such a statement, but at least it is some statement. Here, we have a clash of hope that accepts the risk against despair that is unwilling to accept any risks. Unlike what we got, where despair is somehow tied to sadism, and hope simply rides on the power of friendship.

#danganronpa #video games #video game review #story review #review #visual novel #vn #murder mystery #story #writing tips #writing #review2002

5 notes · View notes

bnha-scenarios · 4 years

Text

☕️ Special Thanks ☕️

As always, thank you so much for the coffee! Your kindness are very much appreciated! ♡

Emilija | Regan | Nela Kovaříková | 1 Anon

Onwards to the progress update.

I had. So. Many. Things. That I actually wanted to complete.

… Alas, work decided to be a bitch and swamp me with things to take care of. To put it simply, there were a lot of issues that caused a lot of overtime work even on weekends, so I had to step away from coding most of the time so I won’t burn myself out.

So yeah, I didn’t manage to complete a lot of features, though I did dabble on some stuff here and there. I’m not happy with the rather small progress either. But life happens, and there are just other things that are more important sometimes. So we just have to let it go and look forward to the next month!

I’d say that this month I was quite productive in terms of organization and planning instead of the actual coding. I have at least identified what I need to write for the ‘free activity’ time of the game, which makes about 30-40% of the gameplay itself. However, actually writing the scenes and executing it is a different effort altogether, which I have only started to embark on.

Still, it’s crazy to think that the development for the full game has been actively going for around three and a half months now. Whew. Knowing that I have a tendency to hyperfocus and then get tired of something after a short time frame, I’m going to at the very least give myself a pat on the back for still keeping this project up and running until now.

More details below ↓

Added Route: Kirishima

Let me preface this first with a declaration: I won’t be adding any more love interest after this. Please please please don’t make me do it 😅 Going through all the plans and re-setting up things to figure out how to add him in was such a painful experience…

But anyway. I will be adding this boy’s route to the full game, because a lot of people seem to want to have him in the game. He does seem like a fun character to write, so I thought I’ll give him a chance.

Gameplay

Places, Schedules, and Hanging Out with the Boys

I think you would have noticed from the last two devlogs, but there are several activities you can do in-game. One of them is to visit a place of your choice at a certain time in a day.

Some places can be unlocked when you reach a certain threshold in a specific stat, and there are others which will be unlocked when you reach a specific threshold in a character’s affection meter. Nai will message you whenever you manage to unlock a new place to visit, so keep a lookout for that!

But what happens when you visit a place?

Well, each character has their own schedules -- which you should be able to figure out either by coincidence or by talking to them at school when prompted to do so. Your Quirk will allow you to see the unlocked schedule of each of the characters, so my advice would be to check it out before deciding where to go! If you manage to come to a specific place at the correct time, you will bump into them. Normally, this will trigger a set of actions you can perform: Talk, Action, and Skinship.

Talking is a safe way to increase your love interest’s affection meter, especially in the first half of the game. More topics can be unlocked under some requirements. Generally, it doesn’t matter where you are, the topics you can talk about will be the same. There are topics which might trigger different reactions depending on how high your love interest’s affection is, so have fun finding them! However, be warned that most topics can be selected only once!

Action is another safe way to further increase your love interest’s affection meter. Unlike talking, different places have a different set of actions you could select from. More actions can also be unlocked under some requirements. Responses to this doesn’t exactly change based on the character’s current affection level, and it’s not limited to one time only.

Skinship is a riskier way to boost the affection meter: simply put, it’s a high gain with a high risk. Consider the character’s current affection level when you’re selecting from this list! He might not like it if you go touchy-feely when you’re not that close yet.

On the other hand, when his affection is high enough, you’ll find that you can have a lot of fun choosing the various options here. So be smart, bide your time, and have fun ;)

And that’s not all! Interaction is a two-way street, so depending on how your love interest views the main character, he will initiate Talk, Action, or even Skinship. There’s a lot of variations in here, and I hope you’ll have fun with this mechanic! I certainly am having fun while also pulling out my hair out of frustration designing this and trying to put the mechanism to control this into code…

Progress-wise, I think at the very least the functions for controlling this specific mechanic have been 80% completed. The actual writing however, is another story. There are still hundreds that I still haven’t had the time to write yet, and most of them are not yet coded in. Those who have been coded in still don't have sprites and music, so really, I’ll just say that the writing progress for this part is less than 1% completed….

On the left is the currently WIP full game project, with what I would say around 2-4% dialogue scripted in. And on the right side is the completed demo project.

…. Can you see how much effort the whole game is going to take me now? I did say to strap in and relax, cause this is going to be a long ride. And I wasn’t kidding lol

"Nai"

Although throughout the first week, the story will flow as your environment / characters around you teaches you on how the game works, I’m aware that the game mechanics might be hard to understand for casual players who aren’t too used to playing otome games (or games in general). Which is pretty much why I’m giving you a ‘helpline’ of some sort, in the form of another character.

Why a character? Because I can and I want to. Shush 😆

If you’ve played the demo, chances are, you’ve encountered a name which you had no recollection of existing in the canon My Hero Academia universe. Well, you’re right. Like the player’s character, Nai (full name: Namae Nai / 名前ない) doesn’t exactly exist in the canon universe, but she’s here to help you throughout the game. (She’s also there because if she wasn’t, 1-A class members becomes odd number in total and that just feels weird to me -- plus, the team exercise system in Heroics wouldn’t exactly make sense if the class has odd number of students)

For those of you who hate Original Characters with a passion (why tho), you don’t need to worry too much. She won’t be an intrusive character in the plot and will mainly not contact you unless she really has to (seriously, her full name literally means ‘no name’, so give her a break, ok?). And if, even then, you still hate her, well.... Too bad you won’t be able to enjoy the game, I guess.

For those of you who don't mind her existence: I hope you’ll take a liking to her dark sense of humor and appreciate her helping you get through the game!

Others

Fixed some bugs regarding unlocking Special Moves from certain activities and games.

Played around and customized the ‘input name’ for a little bit, so it wouldn’t awkwardly sit on the bottom of the screen. I have 0 talent in designing UI though, so the background still stays as a black screen -- but at least it looks more prominent now.

Added a little sign to indicate which route the player has entered. I think it’s pretty cute! Hopefully you’ll like it.

Assets

Those who follow me on Twitter would have seen this coming, but anyway, I’ll be using TMGS OSTs as the main character theme for the four love interests. Hush hush, okay?

Other than that, unfortunately I didn’t have time to do any assets gathering this month.

Writing

Nothing much to say here. I think I managed to script around 50% of the events in the first day, but honestly I’m not completely satisfied with it so I might go back and tweak them a bit. Still a lot of scenes to be written!

Plans for December

I'm not too sure whether there would be much progress for the next two months, since there are so many things happening and deadlines to be met at work, which is making me really unmotivated to do other side projects in my free time lately. I also feel like I haven't been taking care of my health enough ever since quarantine started, so I'm trying to get back into doing more exercises and looking for healthier food options, which also cuts into my free time and motivation I guess.

With that said, I'll still at least aim for getting some scripts coded in -- particularly for the events in day 1. Other than that, maybe hopefully some assets gathering for supporting Kirishima's newly added route, and finishing up the coding parts that I was unable to finish this month.

I'll see y'all again at the end of next month!

#my hero academia #boku no hero academia #mha #bnha #heroaka #midoriya izuku #bakugou katsuki #todoroki shouto #otomegameproject #wnha

9 notes · View notes