i am a sord lol

(disclaimer: may not actually contain more.)

So I might just move doing this shit from Wednesday to Friday, just for ease of memory. Also, I did play some things, and I did clear one things, so.

I don't know why writing is so hard lately. Words in general are just failing me and I dunno why. The solution, obviously, is to keep writing anyway.


WTAT: Deep Dungeons of Doom

Got this one for free off the chrono.gg coin shop on a lark and... it's okay? It's a very skillbased pseudo-RPG where you smack monsters in the face with right, block with left, occasionally pick up equipment or items and then it's done. It's "a good Kongregate flash game". Dunno how pleased I'd be if I'd paid $5 out of pocket for it, but it's well known that I'm a miser.


Cleared: Shadowrun - Dragonfall (Director's Cut)
(Bonus Try A Thing: Shadowrun - Hong Kong)

Whoof. I don't know what to say about the Harebrained Schemes Shadowrun games? I'm not good at gushing but I really did like what I played, when I finally sat down to play it.

They're real good, though Hong Kong is a bit more approachable from a "you have never played Shadowrun" angle since the game actually lets you choose whether you know this shit or not. I'd say Dragonfall's got the better soundtrack thus far, though.


AND MORE: oh hey i actually got a snes classic

Bonus Try A Thing: wow starfox has not aged well and actually i kind of hate it in every imaginable way? I'd much rather be playing Space Harrier or Galaxy Force II.

Anyone who's known me for any length of time knows I adore me some rhythm games. Also anybody who's talked to me closely over the past week knows that I had a smattering of trade-in credit from Gamestop that was untouched, and on a lark I got a handful of bargain bin games. This was one of them - I knew that it was a rhythm game and that it reviewed decently well, but past that I was in the dark. So how is it?

Well, uh. It's Elite Beat Agents.

If you've played that, or its Japanese counterpart Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan!, you know exactly what to expect. Except there's no quirky scenarios explaining why a cheer squad/MIBs have shown up, it's just... Michael Jackson. Dancing. To Michael Jackson music. Because that's what he does. While in some ways that does remove some of the charm from it, it doesn't change the gameplay in the slightest.

What you're looking at here is the official Michael Jackson knockoff of EBA. No more, no less. So chances are, you already know what to expect, and how much you're willing to pay for it. If you don't know what Elite Beat Agents plays like, look up "Osu" on Youtube for an idea, or just grab EBA. I feel it's slightly better than this. If you loved EBA and want more, with Michael Jackson songs, then go right ahead and swoop this up.

Just be warned: This is the one version of the game without "Thriller". And yes, that is an unforgivable sin, because there ain't no second chance against the thing with forty eyes, girl.

I almost feel like this is cheating, but the spirit of the rules is trying new things, and this is a new thing that I am trying and is likely going to devour my time like a nerd elemental. See, I'd heard murmurs since about halfway through last year that there was a New FF Gacha Game In Town, and it was Good, and it was coming out soon.

And Tuesday evening it did in fact come out.

This might take a little bit of explanation, so bear with me.

Final Fantasy is an RPG series, which is more or less common knowledge at this point to most gamers.
Dissidia: Final Fantasy is a fighting game series with elements (and characters) adapted from the Final Fantasy series.
Dissidia: Final Fantasy Opera Omnia is a mobage RPG, complete with gacha mechanics. It is an RPG based on a fighting game based on an RPG. Because that's the level of self-recursive circlejerk we do around here in mobage land. Bitch just you wait and we'll have a crossover with Farmville and nobody will give two fucks.

And, honestly? I have to say, from my first.... five or ten hours of it... *cough* Needless to say, it's got its hooks in me already. Yes, there's a gacha, and yes, that by its very nature is manipulative and exploitative and there is no ethical consumption under lootboxes.

The gacha is the only form of cashgrabbing the game has, though, which is unheard of in modern day mobage. There's no stamina system to make note of (though your daily grinding dungeons are limited to X Amount Of Runs A Day), meaning if you want to just sit and plow through the story mode or an event in a single sitting, you can. And, unlike most gacha games, the gacha is for character equipment and for the most part seems largely not essential. Like, characters live and die on their own merits and are unlocked through the story mode (or, assumedly, events), your gacha is just jpegs of swords again. Yes, you want to do pulls, but there's nothing here that requires you absolutely have the Grand High Sword of Murderfucking to progress.

(Yet. I fully expect there will be a day where the Power Creep button gets pushed. It's only natural in the life cycle of gachas.)

Gameplay is their best attempt at adapting the weird Bravery/HP mechanic of Dissidia into a turn-based setting, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. Largely, though, it means that the concept of "using healers" is largely foresaken (which admittedly sucks for the few healers in the game) and the game instead becomes a juggling/balancing act of knowing when to strike without risking being struck back. It's awkward and a little unwieldy if you've never played a Dissidia game, so I wouldn't blame people for being pushed away by that. (Or by being a gacha game - I know not everyone has sold their soul to the RNG like me.)

That said, this is actually Square's development team on this. There are writers here, and they're good. The game has a lot more than just The Immediate Protags And Villains that the original Dissidia series has, which means there's a lot more subtle character interaction going on. Little things, like Sazh from FF13 getting grumpy that Cloud acts just like Lightning, or Vaan and Yuffie bonding over thievery"cultural reclamation". It's honestly a better sort of nostalgia trip than FFRK ever was, which is saying a lot since FFRK kind of completely held me hostage for several years straight.

As for the aesthetics, it's solid but takes some getting used to. Graphically, everything is in a stilted halfway point between Dissidia's graphical style and the more cartoonish WoFF ultrachibis, looking slightly cartoony but not ENTIRELY. It works well in the character art (except that nobody has noses again, they caught the FFT disease) but the models could use a little tweaking. Likewise, the music is solid if more or less directly cribbed from the mainline Dissidia games, and everyone's voice clips are in Japanese... which would be fine for a mobage based on a series like Tales or similar, but considering everything Square-Enix has put out in the past decade has been English Track ONLY, it's a bit weird for these American ears. It's a minor enough gripe, though.

You all know me well enough to know that I can't outright recommend gacha games with a good conscience. The monetization scheme is predatory and exploitative. That said, I feel like DFFOO is one of those games least hurt if they were to remove the gacha completely. Like, I fully expect their endgame for this title to be like what happened with FF Dimensions 2, where they run it as a gacha for a little while, but then pull the plug on that and just release it as a stand-alone game with an Actual Price Tag, complete in box.

If it ever gets to the point that they do that, then I can recommend without hesitation. For now, though, well. If you're okay with gacha games, this is one of the better ones. But it's still a gacha.

Well, I was right that this one was more of a game, in that there was actual input, and a goal, and it took time to do.

Half walking simulator, half stealth game, the story is simple: You are the last goose out of captivity. Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to exterminate the human race.

Wait, what?

Yeah, this is surrealist as hell, just as a forewarning. It's actually kind of got an Undertale-esque "things aren't what they first seem" vibe and it's pretty clear that amongst the list of inspirations, Yume Nikki and Undertale both rank fairly high in System Goose Overload's aesthetic choices and use of text/sprites.

The "stealth" segments (which mostly consist of "don't get caught by searchlights/lasers, but they don't notice you if you're curled up in a ball hiding") maybe wear on a little overly long for me, but also I'm not a fan of stealth gameplay, so it might just be that it's not my thing. The walking simulator isn't too robust either, as aside from a few free-roaming sections the game is more or less a long, curvy tube.

That said, the game has its share of atmospheric tidbits to look at, including the first time I've chuckled at a pop culture joke in ages. Turns out all it takes is to make it subtle enough that it's inobtrusive, and to not overstay your welcome. Also, the music is pretty good - dunno if I'd call it game of the year quality, but it's absolutely worth getting stuck in your head for a little while.

I might be more critical if I paid for it, but considering it's free, it's a solidly rompy way to spend about 90 minutes. And in the end, everyone is Geese and I didn't even have to stain my hands with your blood.

So I figured I'd try out the new gimmick and since it's Wednesday, I rolled something on Backloggery's fortune cookie option (similar to pulling a name out of a hat).

I got Sideway. Sideway absolutely refused to run, so fuck it too, I guess. (xyzzysqrl tells me I dodged a bullet and the game is actually pretty trash.) So I tried again.

My second go-around I got Shank 2.

I loaded it up, played about 10 minutes, and put the game down to write this up because I get the distinct feeling that even if I haven't seen most of what the game has to offer (I get the sinking feeling I have), I've seen enough to form an opinion on it.

That opinion is: wow, this sure is an XBox Live Arcade indie game from 2012. Heavy on the edge, and the blood and gore that you would expect from cutting yourself on all this edge, but past that it's a pretty standard, if well-paced, 2D character action game. (That means "it's a beat-em up but you focus on chaining combos and murdering meatwall enemies".)

In ten minutes I eviscerated cartoonish mooks with baseball bats, chainsawfucked them, fed them to meatgrinders. You know, exactly what you'd expect in an over the top gorefest beat-em-up. Things controlled decently well, though they use the right analogue stick for dodging and I will never be able to get that reliable because that hand is busy with buttons.

It's... I don't know what to say about it. I feel like I've seen what the game has to offer, and unless someone wants to barge in here like NO THIS IS WRONG YOU MISSED X Y AND Z WHICH MAEK EVERYTHING MORE GOODER, my consensus is: yeah, it's pretty good, but it's not my thing. Might come back to it later, but honestly my mind isn't in the place for a slash-and-bash like this right now.

Upon looking, I am utterly unsurprised that this was the guys that did Mark of the Ninja. Those fingerprints are all over this, just with less stealth and more murder.