DoctorEncore

Usually I find indie games to be overhyped and their review scores laughably inflated (I'm looking at you Stray), but I enjoyed almost every second of this one. I think it is a great example of proper project scoping and management. It sticks to what its good at (with the exception of a couple sequences towards the end) and executes almost flawlessly. I don't think everyone will enjoy it as much as I did, but I love it when games punch above their weight and absolutely stick the landing. It really did remind me of Hellblade in so many ways. In a world of endless open world checklists, there is something to be said for a tightly crafted adventure. Amazingly, I'll probably be getting sequels to both of these games within the next 12 months. It's a great time to be a gamer.

A Plague Tale: Innocence - Xbox Series X Score: 9/10 A Plague Tale is hands-down one of my favorite games that I have played this year. Its unique setting, interesting characters, enjoyable gameplay, and beautiful graphics place it heads and shoulders above most AA games. The closest comparison I can come up with is Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, another absolutely stellar game from a smaller studio that checks many of the same boxes. The game follows Amecia and her younger brother Hugo as they flee the Inquisition in 14th century France. Their escape is set against a virulent plague which is ravaging the land and somehow sending rats into a supernatural frenzy, all of which seems to be related to young Hugo. The setting really helps the game stand out from the crowd and was a big factor in my enjoyment. It also makes for some beautiful environments and impressive set pieces. The characters are amazingly detailed and the shift from a verdant green summer to a hellish, rat-infested nightmare is powerful. The game could best be described as a stealth adventure with light action elements. Gameplay can be a bit simplistic, but as Amecia learns more recipes and her abilities improve, things open up nicely. The game is at its best when it lets you creatively use the environment and weapons to lure enemies to their grisly death by rodent. There is also a bit of puzzle solving and exploration which are appropriately simple and keep the game moving at a nice pace. My only complaint comes towards the end when the developers opted for a few more action-oriented encounters which just don't work. They add unneeded frustration to the game and actually slow things down due to the relatively strict fail states. I personally enjoyed the limited boss encounters, even with their heavier focus on action, although your mileage may vary. A Plague Tale: Innocence is a phenomenal experience that I would highly recommend to all players. The story and setting do a lot to lift the total package above the more standard gameplay elements, but I found enjoyment in pretty much every aspect of the game. This is easily one of my favorite games of the last generation and one of the best AA games around. As for the rest of the backlog, no big changes. Still plugging away at FFX which is enjoyable (outside of Blitzball... ugh) and a few co-op Switch games with my son. Now that Deathloop is out on XSX, I'll probably give that a go after I finish Guardians of the Galaxy.

I'll have more to say in the Backlog thread, but I 100% get what you're saying. The last couple stages really do the game a disservice by adding way too much action into what is essentially a stealth game. It didn't ruin the game for me, but it is a real shame they couldn't tighten up the ending. Overall, I still really, really enjoyed the game.

Let's just say that I'm not buying any more Solana, haha. I still think it has a decent shot at long term viability due to all the institutional money that has been poured into it, but it definitely sucks right now. Crypto market is anybody's game right now. It could be one of the survivors from this winter or a whole new player that takes over.

Zack & Wiki is such an underappreciated gem. It's one of the few games my wife has actually played through with me and I really love it. It's a bummer that style of game didn't take off on the Wii.

I'm so behind on SNES games. I've played the true classics and most popular games, but haven't touched 95% of the library. Some day I'll play Yoshi's Island.

For me, the list is exceedingly short as I give a ton of credit to the original artist and producer for truly shaping the sound of the song. It's only when another artist finds something truly new and unique that I would consider them having bested the original. Songs That are Better than the Original: Jimi Hendrix - All Along the Watchtower (original Bob Dylan) Joe Cocker - With a Little Help From My Friends (original The Beatles) Johnny Cash - Hurt (original by Nine Inch Nails) Talking Heads - Take Me to the River (original by Al Green) Jolene - White Stripes (original by Dolly Parton) Janis Joplin - Me and Bobby McGee (original by Kris Kristofferson) Soft Cell - Tainted Love (original by Gloria Jones) Songs That Aren't Better, but are Still Great: As mentioned several times above, Metallica's Garage Inc has a bunch of great covers, although I can't speak to whether they are better than the originals. The same can be said for Guns N' Roses. Meg Myers does a great cover of Kate Bush's Running Up That Hill that's worth checking out if you got caught up in the Stranger Things excitement. Not better than the original per se, but a very good attempt. Pearl Jam's cover of Last Kiss by Wayne Cochran/J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers is pretty damn good. Red Hot Chili Peppers' cover of Stevie Wonder's Higher Ground just about surpasses the original. Alien Ant Farm's Smooth Criminal is a fun take on a classic. Muse has a really great cover of Feeling Good, originally by Nina Simone. The Beatles' Twist and Shout with McCartney's absolutely shredded voice is a classic as well. Who can forget Limp Bizkit's legit cover of Faith by George Michael. Probably one of the best things they did as a band. There are many, many more great covers, but this is a good start in terms of what I enjoy.

I'm going to go ahead and throw my name out there to vouch for the quality of Actraiser, as well. It's just a really cool and unique game. Skip the sequel though.

I've not hacked mine, but I agree that the input lag is quite bad. I don't really see how it could be fixed without just changing the software emulator.

Totally agree. I'm not sure if the actual percentage of great games is higher than it used to be, but the quantity certainly is. Also the quality of an "average" game now is light-years beyond the quality of the "average" retro game.

Man, I decided to completely ignore crypto and just hold. I'm still sitting on BNB-USDT, Orion-USDT, SOL, Fantom, and a bit of ETH. I'm not buying anything right now. I might actually make a few trades just to actualized my losses for tax purposes.

I've been working my way through A Plague Tale on Series X and it has really blown me away. The setting, characters, and story are unique and interesting and the gameplay is quite enjoyable. I often find beloved indie games to be overrated, but I've been pleasantly surprised with how good this one is. It reminds me a lot of Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice in the way it approaches AAA quality with indie sensibilities. Definitely one of my favorite games I've played this year.

That is awesome! Nice pickup! I have a small TG-16 collection, but it's probably my most desired full set. Someday I'll circle around to it and do irreparable damage to my bank account.

I also feel tremendous nostalgia and love for Adventure Island despite only playing it a handful of times in the 80s and early 90s. The gameplay, graphics, and music just coalesce into something very unique. As for SMS, I'd highly recommend grabbing a Mega Sg (https://www.analogue.co/mega-sg) if you have the cash. It's a beautiful machine that plays Genesis/Mega Drive games almost flawlessly and comes with an SMS adapter. It outputs in super crisp 1080p for pixels so sharp they could cut you.

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing that link. I also checked out a few YouTube videos just to see the difference. Maybe after I take on Adventure Island, I'll give Wonder Boy a shot.

I never knew Adventure Island was so tough. I'll have to add it to the list. Anyone know how Adventure Island compares to Wonder Boy (arcade/SMS) or Revenge of Drancon (GG) in terms of difficulty?

I didn't hate Dread but it just felt so mediocre to me. I really didn't enjoy the gameplay and it felt very padded from a content perspective. I'm not sure if it's because I've never been a big Metroid fan (outside of Prime) or if I've just played way too many Metroidvanias, but it just didn't do it for me. I've never played Samus Returns but I'd like to some day.

I don't know anything about the PlayStation game you are referring to, but the Roguelike genre is actually named for a PC game called Rogue which was released in 1980. The defining features of that game and it's namesake genre are randomized levels/loot and permadeath. It was apparently quite popular and spawned numerous similar titles, but the genre fell out of favor as games became easier and more linear. There have been many titles with similar gameplay elements since then, but it wasn't until the late 2000s and early 2010s that the genre returned in force. Indie game development blew up and games like Spelunky and The Binding of Isaac became big hits on streaming services like Twitch. While those games were popular, they were still quite difficult, limiting their audience. Some smart people realized that the randomization made for great replay value, but the permadeath was a negative for a lot of gamers. So they took the gameplay hook and added some progression between runs and the roguelite subgenre was born. So basically if a game has randomly generated levels, but some way to improve chances of success on subsequent runs (i.e. leveling up, weapon/item/skull unlocks, improved exploration/mapping, etc), it is a roguelite. If the levels are randomized and there is permadeath with no progression, then it is a true roguelike. Some of the most popular and successful roguelites are Hades, Returnal, Rogue Legacy, Risk of Rain, Dead Cells, and many others. EDIT: Just spent a few minutes on Reddit and apparently some people really, really care about the definition of a roguelike. Apparently they believe a roguelike MUST be turn based and anything else is a roguelite, but I think the definitions I've laid out are generally accepted at this time.

This is what DALL-E mini has to say: Prompt: "Online artist known as CasualCart throwing his pencils and a notepad into a garbage can in cartoon style with yellow background"

My curated list is Androids, High Castle, Scanner Darkly, Remember it For You Wholesale, Valis, Ubik, and Minority Report. If I can get me hands on the big short story collections, I may read those as well. It will probably take me a few years to get through all those, but I'm pretty sure I can do it.

I watched Jurassic World: Dominion last night and it was about as bad as I expected. We get a few enjoyable scenes thanks to the chemistry of Dern, Neill, and Goldblum along without a couple good looking dinosaur attacks, but everything else is really quite terrible. The movie could best be described as a bad James Bond movie with dinosaurs. The plot is non-sensical and all over the place with an antagonist who is played up as yet another painfully bad Steve Jobs imitation. It wasn't quite as bad Fallen Kingdom, but that's not saying much as I consider FK among the ten worst wide-release movies I've ever seen. 2/5 for me.

Over the last few years I've been focused on early sci-fi and worked my way through most of the Dune series and every Asimov novel. Asimov's writing style is a little bland but he had big ideas and it was fun to see the genre grow with him. I'm now moving on to Philip K. Dick. He was a prolific writer, but his most comprehensive collections are not available digitally, so I decided to start with one of his most famous novels, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Blade Runner is one of my all-time favorite films so I'm excited to see how it compares. The opening dialogue between a husband and wife is really strong and reveals a lot about the post-apocalyptic world and daily life of its inhabitants without explicitly explaining what happened. Hopefully it maintains that allure throughout.

That was my first thought as well. Not sure what else it could be. I always thought these PS1 save icons were really cool. I believe some games have multiple possible images for your save data so you can tell different saves apart. I believe SotN had that, although don't quote me. One more reason to go after a full PS1 set!

This thread is going to shame me into putting a couple of these retro games onto my 2023 backlog list so I can say I've beaten them as well. I've at least gotta do Contra and Ninja Gaiden.

Dead Cells (XSX) - 7/10 This is such a tough game to rate. It's a Rogue-lite with some very minor permanent progression (mostly unlockable weapons and skills that can subsequently be found or purchased during arun). It controls well, moves fast, and has quite a bit of variety when it comes to weapons, items, and upgrades. I liked it a lot at first, but the more I played, the more I started to resent my time with it. While there are a lot of weapons and passive upgrades to choose from, only a few combination seem truly viable for the endgame. It's pretty easy to power through the first few levels and boss, but if you don't start finding quality equipment soon, the final stages may be impossible. Couple that with the repetitive levels and the whole thing quickly becomes a grind. I was able to finish a few loops, but I eventually just got bored and decided to quit. I think there is a lot to like here and, if you put in the time, I'm sure that certain tactics and weapon combos start to become more useable, but I didn't find this game nearly as fun as others in the genre like Binding of Isaac or Returnal. I don't think I'll be coming back any time soon. Stray (PS5) - 6/10 This is probably the biggest letdown I've played in a while. The game was hyped by the games media ever since its initial unveiling and review scores are quite good (83 on Metacritic). In it, you play as a cat who stumbles into an abandoned underground world and must find a way out. The story evolves from there, but never rises above your standard post-apocalyptic genre fare. So with a story that's only borderline interesting, the gameplay must be stellar to achieve those high scores, right? Sadly, no. The gameplay is easily the least interesting part of the game. It is a combination of guided exploration (you can only jump to places with an "X" prompt on screen), light puzzle solving, light stealth, and fetch quests. That's literally the entire game. Talk to some robots, run around until you find an area where you can climb, climb, find MacGuffin, and repeat until you reach the end. It's so uninspired as to make me question if I played the same game as all these reviewers. Did they give it a high score because there is a cat? Or were they trying to keep up appearances since they foolishly hyped the game? Or am I just jaded? Whichever is true, I'm extremely thankful I got this game for "free+" with PS Plus or I'd be stewing over my lost $30.