Sumez

7 hours ago, Tulpa said:

On top of that, the quotes from the movie get rather grating when it isn't one of the Pythons doing it. Yeah, you're not being funny just going "Ni!" all the time. Yeah, I'm talking to you. Yes, you. You know who you are.

Fwiw I can agree on this. A lot of the jokes aren't really funny out of context. So much of it (hell, all of it) is really in the delivery and the context set up by the Monty Python cast.

It's also one of the reasons I prefer Life of Brian. The movie has a lot of stuff going on beyond just segmented gags.

1 hour ago, T-Pac said:

but it feels like you're mis-associating "not memorable" with "not good".

Actually the other way around tbh. Python humor is pretty silly and even though it has aged well for how old it is, I can totally understand especially younger people not attaching well to the jokes.

But even if I didn't like the movie, it's so off the wall and shock full of unique iconic scenes that I'd have a hard time forgetting most of them. And I'm really bad at remembering anything I've seen.

5 hours ago, T-Pac said:

This is a bit of an ironic viewpoint on a forum full of people who compulsively try to fill arbitrary checklists by collecting games

Fwiw I can't support that tendency either

6 hours ago, RH said:

I think what he meant by "your local spot" is your local game store... unless your store also sells groceries.

I wouldn't be surprised if ebay has groceries tbh

Night in the Woods - Beaten 15/4

"At the end of everything, hold on to anything!"

Some times the right words and the right music is all it takes for me to get enthralled with a game. The original trailer for Night in the Woods managed to grab me by the throat and made me want to play it ever since. But it's one of those situations where a digital release cost a little too much for my tastes, and I ended up waiting years for the physical release, which even got really delayed due to really unfortunate real-world circumstances.

The game is centered around a small American, partially abandoned mining town. Not that precise geographics are ever mentioned anywhere, and of course all the inhabitants are anthropomorphic animals (though this is never addressed, and even though the main character is a cat, actual pet cats also exist), but regardless it's still extremely American. In that whole bizarre "kids can drive cars, but you need to be really old to buy alcohol, and both education and doctors cost money for some reason" kind of way, all of which actually plays into the story.

Mae is a kid who returns to live with her parents in the aforementioned town of Possum Springs after dropping out of college. We don't know much about her history, but can piece things together from dialogue as the story progresses.
The game does a great job at painting a picture of Mae's troubled psyche which I guess shows symptoms of ADHD or paranoia, but mostly just paints her as a person who has a really hard time growing up, taking responsibility and generally getting a grip of her own life. On a surface level, her mental problems might feel blown out of proportions since it could be difficult to relate to just how messed up she feels at times - but Night In The Woods actually does a really remarkable job at letting us into her head and take a part in how she feels at every step of the story.
Her closest friends are Gregg, a childish hoodlum who is always up for fun and games, and Bea, a woman who had grow up up much too fast after losing her mom, taking over responsibilities for the family-owned store as her dad remains unable to do so. At first, Bea seems like a stranger who refuses to acknowledge Mae, but they clearly have a past, which caused me to pursue that route, rather than the Gregg one.

To explain, the core loop of the game involves waking up, walking around town and climbing buildings, and talking to people you find. As the game progresses you'll get access to a few more locations, but nothing changes much. Once you're done running around, you'll talk to one of aforementioned friends to do a hangout with them, go home and sleep, and then repeat the process. Outside of a terrible rhythm minigame, this is as much of a "video game" as is ever offered by Night In The Woods, it's a deeply story-driven experience.

As far as I'm aware, who you choose to hang out with doesn't affect the outcome of the story much, but it does of course affect who you get to learn more about.
Those hangouts are the meat of the story, but the majority of the game will be spent walking around Possum Springs, pretty much just checking out which NPCs have new lines of dialogue. On one hand of course you could just skip all that and go straight to the person you want to hang with, but at the same time in a game all about the dialogue I don't really want to miss any dialogue.

I'm not good with story driven games, but I also don't mind them either. And Night in the Woods has some extremely well written characters that get under your skin in the best way, while always topped up with a healthy dose of sarcastic humor.
What makes the game hard to recommend however, is that repetitive cycle of going to the same places and talking to the same people over and over, while most of the time nothing really happens. The core plot of the game only really kicks off in the final few moments, and ultimately I don't think it even manages to tie particularly well into the themes that carry the story and characters anyway.

Groceries

10 hours ago, Brickman said:

It was harder pre internet guides

I'm not sure there was ever a "pre internet guides" era for Pokemon  The English version came out in 1998. Hell, I played it on emulation while it was still only available in Japanese

10 hours ago, Brickman said:

People have come up with ideas on how to make the game more difficult though. Only sticking to the first 6 Pokemon you catch is a good one. 

6 pokemen might be harder than 1. Because my approach the first time I played the first game, was just exclusively using the one I picked in the intro, and for at least the last two thirds of the game, it'd already grown so strong it would just stomp all over anything it fought before they could do anything, no challenge at all.

9 hours ago, Brickman said:

I don’t really understand the kid argument anyway. A lot of NES games were designed for kids and are still great.

I'll try to elaborate. It might come across like a jab at fans of the games, but it's really just my impression of them.

A lot of the games I play (maybe even a majority?) are games that are definitely designed with kids in mind, and occasionally as the primary audience, which as you say is definitely the case with older games, since kids were the only people really playing video games then. But there's absolutely no reason a game made for kids in that context can't be a great game, with a ton of depth, challenge and well designed, fun gameplay.

But Pokémon conversely feels designed not around just being approachable for kids, but pretty much requiring you to be a kid.
I've actually given the games a pretty fair shake! I played through all of the original when the English language version came out, and I've played the GBA remake all the way through much more recently, as well as one of the GBA sequels. I also got one of the DS games when it came out, curious to see how the series had evolved, but gave up not too far into it out of boredom.
But regardless of all my time spent with the series, and me really wanting to like them, I've always felt my ability to have any fun with them was completely hindered by my frame of reference, comparisons to much better games, and expectations of a game's core gameplay to be at least a little bit engaging.

Pokémon instead hinges entirely of that feeling of compulsion that you get from finding additional creatures to fill out a stupidly large compendium (which can only be filled by giving in to a stupid marketing ploy of crossing multiple simultaneous but nearly identical releases). I could see that being really engaging if I were a kid, but as an adult with plenty of other things to play, I just can't be bothered.

Outside of the games themselves, I think there's a whole microcosm of various other things that helped make the franchise appealing which, once again, would bypass you completely if you were older than 13 or so at the time.
Like a line of toys, playing cards - and the cartoon (which is absolutely 100% a kiddie cartoon) especially was instrumental to Pokemon being a success at all in my part of the world at least.
And finally of course, there's the aspect of trading and fighting pokemans with other kids, which was one of the primary aspects used to sell the game. Again, this is something I've never been able to participate in on account of being too old for that when the game came out (and even then it took a couple more years for the series to actually get any traction at all around here).

23 minutes ago, Splain said:

I see just how small the game actually is, and how much the original was (intentionally or not) lengthened by the constant item switching.

I haven't played the remake, but I imagine the primary thing that makes the GB game feel larger than it is, is the segmented world map that (like in Zelda 1) flips you between single-screen rooms instead of scrolling smoothly. Honestly I really love that, and I wish more exploration based action adventure games would be designed around it.

No latter how you feel about it, Holy Grail "not being memorable" is one of the craziest claims I've read today for sure

Played the shit out of Warcraft 2 as a kid and was pretty excited for 3. I even played the leaked beta a lot with friends at the time.

When the game finally came out, I played it through once and I do recall probably enjoying it, but that's also about all I remember of it. I have no idea what I'd rate it.

I also have a massive collectors edition thing stored away in the attic...

2 hours ago, G-type said:

ok, I played about 20 levels of Baba is You. Good game! I can see getting frustrated when I can't solve the harder levels though.

I've given this advice before, and it might be obvious dunno.

But if you feel like you're ready to give up on a stage, just leave it and come back later, maybe days later. Some times you'll learn stuff from other stages that makes things more obvious in other ones. Some times you just need a fresh perspective. For me, just coming back later helped solve at least half the ones I was stumped on!
The game is really good at letting you do things in the order you want, so you're rarely ever stuck stuck, the game just keeps expanding the places you can go.

Also, an approach I like for taking a step back to solve something that seems impossible, which has worked for me in some cases:

1. Write down a complete list of reasons why the puzzle can't be solved, ie. "I need three rocks, but the stage only has two" (just doing it in your head is fine). Try to make the reasoning as watertight as possible
2. Go through each of them, and challenge yourself, tell yourself why your assumption might be wrong!
   1. Maybe you're assuming you need to do something that's not actually what you need
   2. Maybe you're imagining a limitation that's actually not a limitation at all
   3. Maybe you can do something that changes one of the statements

Without giving too much away, as you move on, the game is gonna expand in ways you probably didn't even imagine (or dared hope). Be ready to think really outside the box, in terms of how the game works - and how you thought it worked.

Ok, I'm actually unsure on #2. The soundfont seemed really familiar, but I think my guess is wrong. #1 I think I know the system at least. #3 and #4 are very easy if you've played either game even once

I got two, maybe three of them, but I'm not sure about #1.

Do I post the ones I have now, or wait 48 hours?  

I think quite a few of us here are old enough that "pokemon" gets grouped alongside the likes of Fortnite and League of Legends. We're aware of them, and know they are popular with the kids, but also realize they are simply for a different demographic

26 minutes ago, AverageOliver98 said:

The Lost Vikings 2

Correct

6 hours ago, Mario_Friend1982 said:

How should we celebrate?

A 3-day boozefest with live concerts and video games, topped off by a full week of hangover to follow

No, but somehow not too far off

Well

https://www.fangamer.com/products/tunic-fox-plush

I wouldn't call it an adventure game as much as it's a collection of minigames. It's not great as a game, but it features a ton of funny callbacks to the movie. I enjoyed it a lot when it came out, but it's probably a lot less noteworthy now.  

No one? Come on, I promise you know this game

Alright this should do it

Well it's definitely an underdog kinda game!

Soundtrack was made by Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra whom you might have heard of btw. which is kinda crazy.

7 minutes ago, Gloves said:

if it's not on a ton of "hidden gem" lists it deserves to be. 

I have actually seen it show up very frequently on those.

But it also had fairly wide distribution, and based on how often I saw it really cheap in second hand sales, it must have sold quite well. I even remember seeing it reviewed on national TV here. So I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people don't consider it "hidden".

5 hours ago, Tabonga said:

If you haven't seen it you might like Jabberwocky. Not in the same class as Holy Grail but it has its moments.

I'd recommend a lot of Terry Gilliams other movies. Time Bandits. Baron Munchausen. Brazil. Twelve Monkeys. All absolutely brilliant!

Not quite the Monty Python humor of holy grail. But they still share a lot of that movie's DNA.

One of the biggest classics in comedy.

But, I'll take Life of Brian over it any day!