freakboards

Been playing a lot of psp games and theres so many gems on this thing! Really enjoying Coded Arms right now. a first person shooter with dungeon crawler roguelike elements (emulating through vita makes psp fps's waaaay more playable thanks to the second stick). Feels like an ahead of its time combination of genre for 2005. Skate Park City is some of the most fun ive had playing a skateboarding game ever, think Tony Hawk meets Jet Set with Sonic Adventure combat. Metal Gear AC!D is really really cool but its SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO hard

MINECRAFT RAAAAAAAAAHHHH

(Not sure whether to put this in the NES/GB Book Club thread or not since it is technically a gameboy game, but it does feel a little not in the spirit of it since it only released last year so I'm putting it here instead!).
I just finished playing a game called Swordbird Song: The Iron Owl Tower. You can play it yourself here, either in browser or with a gameboy emulator (or on hardware if they decide to release a cart)! https://freinicke.itch.io/swordbird
It's a game that looks to be inspired a lot by Link's Awakening, though featuring a cute bird instead of Link. The spritework in this game is very nice; I like the look of all the characters, especially the big crow guy and the main character. The gameplay is fairly basic but not too shabby, though the sword does leave a little to be desired (only swinging in a straight line and not having more varied swordplay). The dungeons are also pretty well-designed; lots of fun puzzles and the like, they feel fairly close to normal Zelda dungeons in ways that a lot of Zelda-likes don't manage, though admittedly they mostly feel like first dungeons with how they're structured. There's a lot of save points in dungeons as well, which I found very nice. The bosses were pretty fun too, albeit a bit annoying at times. I did find myself wishing there were more enemy types, though; aside from the bosses there's only four enemies, with one being a turret and one being moving spikes.
This game does have a few... noticeable issues aside from that, though. Getting through text is a bit slow, which becomes an issue when you're having to get through twelve bosses of dialogue and a cutscene before getting to rechallenge a boss. One of the more annoying obstacles in the game is the ledges – if you go even a pixel off of them, you have to go back to the beginning of the room and lose a quarter of your health. This wouldn't be too bad if it didn't stack with enemy damage, dealing half your health if you get hit by an enemy into a ledge (which happens quite a bit in one room in particular in the final dungeon that ended up killing me at least five times). Probably the worst part of the game, though, is the backtracking. The game makes it seem as though you have to do dungeons in a set order with what the crow guy says to you but you have to walk between them a lot before actually finishing any. In the end you have to go through each dungeon multiple times, and a majority of the time it's just walking through the already completed dungeon to get an item you need in order to do the same in another dungeon. The initial runthroughs of each dungeon are fun! It's just having to go through them two more times each (or more if you don't know the order in which to do things) that isn't.
But overall I did enjoy this game for the most part! It's a nice first project from the creator and I'd be interested in seeing how they improve in the future.

new momodora is out

Replaying Max Payne 2. I keep forgetting that this game doesnt have any autosave (X﹏X)

started playing Alan Wake last week, and started Powerwash Sim today
loving Alan Wake so far, but the camera controls while driving are rough

I started playing The Roottrees are Dead (https://jjohnstongames.itch.io/the-roottrees-are-dead) which is a free browser point-and-click mystery game! You have to fill out a family tree after one branch of the family dies in a plane crash, using just a few hints to start, a search engine from the 90s, a periodicals/magazine search, and a library book search. It's pretty cool! If you enjoyed The Return of the Obra Dinn, I think you'll like the structure of this game.

Finch wrote: ↑Mon Jan 29, 2024 4:18 pm I started playing The Roottrees are Dead (https://jjohnstongames.itch.io/the-roottrees-are-dead) which is a free browser point-and-click mystery game! You have to fill out a family tree after one branch of the family dies in a plane crash, using just a few hints to start, a search engine from the 90s, a periodicals/magazine search, and a library book search. It's pretty cool! If you enjoyed The Return of the Obra Dinn, I think you'll like the structure of this game.

Oh I looooove this concept, I'll definitely be playing it soon

the trick to being good at Into the Breach is you have to listen to breakcore while playing it

gotta be honest the new saints row game is not as bad as people say it is