Programmer | Play lots of video games, focused on single player experiences. Posting stuff about games I'm playing this year. I drop my full thoughts on stuff into my Backloggery page below https://www.backloggery.com/gubian7
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Snap pre-order. I've been doing a co-op screen share first playthrough with a friend, so technically this is more of a support-for-the-thing-I-love physical purchase lol. I'll probably give it a run on console once this arrives to experience it from the drivers seat though. Hands down my GOTY.
Being able to basically try whatever I want is pretty privileged though, but I really do hope everyone has the chance to experiment in whatever way they can. And please give the critically derided 7/10 a chance, seriously they've been some of my favorite things lately.
I wish I could say I savored what I had but instead I really restricted myself into a very narrow band of acceptable games. I'd fret over play time, replayability and game length. I only had two shots, so anything below an 8/10 was out of the question. I missed out so many things.
For me, its a matter of gaming as an adult with disposable income vs anything else. I used to get games twice a year max, so I replayed stuff or rented. My backlog has... kind of exploded since then, but I'm generally happier with the wider variety of experiences I've had as an adult.
Reminder that Collective Shout is backed by Christian fundamentalist groups who want to ban all pornography, and have used vague trafficking laws to pressure Visa and Mastercard to drop online platforms under threat of lawsuit
I never got past that level even once on Genesis lol. And god I forgot about the Bart game until now. My parents forbade Simpsons anything, so played it at a friend's, like I was getting away with something. That was the one with the slide puzzle after level 1 right?
Looking at you Lion King 😑
Even as someone that generally likes retrying something "difficult" until I win, so much from that era tends to feel badly designed instead of intentionally challenging. The worst is when you hit an obvious Blockbuster filter, added for no reason but to stop a kid from finishing it in one rental.
Wait, did they put the screws behind the label on these carts? Oh my god.
I think I recall renting this on the N64 back in day, but I intend to revisit this on original PS1 release. The visual style has aged quite well in my opinion.
Oh shit its setting in that this is actually happening this week. (Also props on keeping an affordable price; I do not doubt they could have gotten away with charging a lot more)
I bounced off this game so hard, like 3 times, until something clicked and I was hooked on the genre. By the end of the year, I finished all the Dark Souls entries I could reach. Hooked me good.
Hoo boy, that's an expensive shelf of games I'll probably never own at the point lol. Nice collection!
It has a fan translation too, in case anyone wanted to play it in English in an emulator.
The PS2 games I've been hoping to get sure don't feel affordable 😵. But I do agree with the general sentiment, a lot of the non-horror mainstream stuff I got recently was around $15-20. PS1/2 has been nice to seek/play since its reasonable to find stuff still with its box/manual too.
Never actually seen the console on the bottom? Assuming its a Japanese only released console? It obviously has cartridges, but whats the slot on the right take?
Enemy accuracy just increases until its basically 100%. Dudes with SMGs melt you instantly if you're within draw distance. They also start firing before they're rendered on screen. Guns all feel bad? Weapon spread feels fundamentally broken. Just kind of a letdown.
42. Medal of Honor Underground (PS1)🎮 Shocked this one managed to disappoint me so much. The change to Manon as the MC is the one high note this managed. The difficulty curve ending in *extreme bullshit* near the end killed it for me. It sucks because it was pretty enjoyable until the last 2 chs.
I just cannot imagine paying someone else to do my hobby. Like, what's the point? How is it possible to have so much wealth but find a way to look so pathetic and boring.
I'm about to beat my 15th PS1 game for the year, so yeah I personally think the generation holds up pretty well 😆. Incredibly nostalgic for pre-rendered backgrounds (which I think still look legitimately good), the wobbly polygons and dithering. Great console where so many new things were tried.
Is there a stock tracker for that one too? Its been revealing to watch the Switch 2 stock on Trails beyond the Horizon sit at 100% for so long.
Tunic, Outer Wilds, Blue Prince, 13 Sentinels. Once in a lifetime experiences that I'm not sure I'll ever get or could get, something similar to them ever again.
That's my instinct as well, but after reading how Team Cherry and Silksong. They didn't have to worry about the money, so they just worked on the one thing for 7 years. Maybe Valve's leadership is also that kind of creative? They're more inclined to hyper focus on one thing for years too?
I happened to have the JP version installed (diff trophy list) for Cold Steel 4 and the true ending trophy rate was a whooping 69.1%. (Stats are from the trophy screen when logged in on the console, not 3rd party trophy tracking sites that use different sources)
Trails fans in particular, are super consistent. Floor was like 48% for seeing the ending, for games on PS network. All of them are between 50-100 hours; the 100 hour ones had some of the highest beaten rates too.
I saw someone else talk about the % of people that beat their games and started looking at my trophies for a bunch of games. Noted that long RPGs have way higher beat %s than I expected them to be, while other genres and games were way lower.
I've found several posts stating that steam tracks owned vs achievement ownership, others that its people that booted at least once vs achievement ownership, so I really am not sure. If its ownership, 20% is a crazy high rate though. I've seen what people's backlogs look like after a few sales.
I think its a side effect of not being publicly traded, so there's no influence from shareholders demanding things release right now to make the line go arbitrarily go up. Instead they have that infinite money glitch, meaning leadership pursues whatever is important to them at that point in time.
Maybe xbox count total keys sold to how many finished the game, while other count the total as # of players that started the software once? I tried a quick search to see if that info is publicly known but seems to be a conclusive ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I have a feeling that if it was just 2 days, it wouldn't swing the difference so dramatically compared to PS/PC. It might be that I'm thinking about player behavior when I should be thinking that the stat might not be counted the same between platforms?
Steam is about 20%. Double double checked and it was on PS+ before, so maybe those services dragged both down? I'm curious what the cause is here, but I feel like something drags down the console beat %. My first instinct is the service behavior, but I have no way of proving it.
In general, completion %s are way lower than I expect them to be for a lot of games. But was this ever included in gamepass? I double checked what the PS trophy equivalent is and its 15.2%, more than double. Maybe a bunch of people DL and never played on xbox inflating the number there?
A lot of people confuse the toxic tribalism of the console wars and actual competition in the market. Long term, I think it'll be bad for consumers, just like every industry that ends up consolidating around one or two major owners. SO many great games were born out of competition to sell hardware.
YouTube is secretly using AI to edit people's videos • Skin is being smoothed or sharpened • Features like ears are being altered • YouTube confirmed there's an 'experiment' on Shorts to 'unblur' and 'improve' clarity • There's currently no way to opt out (via BBC)
The term started with SotN didn't it? I always assumed it encompassed both varieties; RPG elements like Castlevania SoTN and those without RPG elements, like Metroid. Anyway, Dawn of Sorrow was good! Touch features were a bit forced in a way I wish they weren't, but core was still fun.
Is it not just "playing"?
I fucking hate the speculative market invading retro games as a hobby. They drag the price up in a way that doesn't actually represent the demand from hobbyists, and makes the space less inviting to anyone new. Play your games, don't slab them in dumb plastic tombs. Basic case protectors are cheap.
These are almost always the same thing these days too. WATA games grading/slabbing is also rife with alleged unethical, possibly illegal, activity. They charge you a % of "market price", and partner with an auction house that drove up that price. There's an ongoing class action against them too.
41. Crash Bandicoot 3 Warped(PS1)🎮 Kind of surprised I slammed through this one so fast? Especially given that I got 105%. Guess muscle memory built faster than I expected, but that marks the end of the PS1 trilogy. Think its the best? Variety levels were nice for first run, but sucked for trials.
For the first time in awhile, I'm feeling a bit stuck on what to play next. I have a ton of options in my backlog but when Silksong goes live I'm absolutely going to drop any other game to dive into that. Then 2 weeks after that is Sky 1 remake. It feels so surreal that Silksong is so close 😂
40. Mystical Ninja starring Goemon (N64)🎮 Solid action adventure for the N64. Mostly enjoyed it, but the camera is rough. It did beat Zelda OoT to market by more than a year though, so it has some excuse. I also strongly suspect a lot of the jokes didn't survive localization. Still had fun though.
And maybe MGS Delta is a garbage fire, I haven't had enough time to think about playing it. But if the worst thing you have to say is "oh its like P3R", then they probably did a bit better than OK.
Like, I get the sentiment regarding Remakes vs new thing. I mostly agree with it. But seriously, SH2 remake, all the REmakes and P3R have real effort put into them, come on. If we're talking about AI upscaled, smoothing filtered, no effort ROMs sold at like $30, yeah fuck that. But P3R ain't that.
I just don't get it; all the "downgrades" I've read people complain about seem so benign, besides not getting FeMC from P3P. I generally seek out original releases to experience them first, but P3R was so much better for what I wanted, its absolutely my preferred way to play that game.
Haven't touched Delta, but the comment on P3R is nuts to me. I've tried all the other versions and bounced every time. I wouldn't have finished Persona 3 without the remake. Having almost everything in one package was a big deal. I cannot play a version of this game without party control.
Combined with the other dumb shit he's said in the past, I'm all but certain that his only expertise is hoarding credit for someone else's creative work.
OK yeah, fuck this guy. Some of the shit he said was dumb as fuck before, but I felt like Dead Space had to mean he had some creative vision. So obv that's not the case, so thanks? Why be creative when you steal someone else's work?
I've only really been satisfied with the pocket since I served as a means of consolizing my GBA and GB carts. But I feel like I've heard some pretty negative sentiments around people actually using it as dedicated handheld too.
Didn't really want this one, so no stake in this one for me. But since the Pocket, the product launches have been pretty questionable. I know tariffs and the state of ship manufacturing is ravaging this niche of the hobby, but this really hasn't been handled very well.
Also me. Especially with all the retro games I want to play taken into account. I haven't even started game of the year contenders for 2025.
Play them like once a year. Always end up sleeping through about the first and last 4 hours or so every time, so no idea what is actually happening. Don't recommend.
I want to say it was Asura's Wrath?
Yeah I'm probably going to turtle up and ignore the larger internet until I'm able to get the credit role. I get why people get excited about discovering stuff and wanting to share it, but I wish all platforms had better spoiler marking features.
...I wasn't prepared for this game to actually look fun to play.
Yeah, I only ever looked at retro or modern arcade cabs like what you're describing, before he pandemic, but it doesn't surprise me the prices are totally out of control. I've bought some expensive stuff for my retro setup, but $5k for flappy birds cab is a bit outside where I want to be 😂
They did that by charging $650 in 1990 lol. Carts started at like $200 and got more expensive as they required more on cart storage. For $2100 equivalent today, you too could have an arcade game at home!😂
Yeah, almost identical in so far as the CPU is shared. Everything else was just more expensive hardware. The only actual 1-to-1 home to arcade machine was the Neogeo AES? Because it was literally the same hardware consolized. Arcade MVS carts work on the AES with a converter lol.
Correction, Soul Calibur was not a Naomi board, I just typed that and forgot to double check. My bad.
I believe the Dreamcast was the only time this was true? I know the Naomi arcade board was almost identical to what the Dreamcast used, which is why ports of Soul Caliber and Crazy Taxi were such high quality. But before then nah lol. You're spot on, home conversions were exactly that; conversions.
Its also kind of disorienting, there's *way* too many push block puzzles and the performance got pretty dire. Future ports and the remaster fix some of this tho (map, compass). But I didn't get everything so I think I'll revisit the remaster in a year or so to get another perspective of this one.
39. Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver (PS1)🎮 Several content creators kind of hyped this one up for me pretty hard. Sadly, its not quite as good as my expectations hoped for. Combat didn't really click, some rooms just don't have environmental stuff to finish vampires with later on, which sucked.
I have my issues with the way Nintendo does... a lot. But at least at their Directs I feel like there's a real concentration of actual games that I can actually buy. Not crap that had that invested first and foremost on how to maximize my spend in an in-game shop.
God there is a lot of service slop in this gamescom ONL. Is most of this even "new"? Especially the inevitable Hoyo-likes that I can't tell the difference between, didn't this shit already release?
oh shit, everyone calm down and be cool
Clearly, we need to start define periods like art does. Renaissance, Modernism, etc. I don't know if its better but it sounds way funnier.
Do people really get this mad about dying in a video game? I've seen league rage, but *yikes*, in a single player game?
The Playstation can produce mind boggling effects
Atomic purple for life. I cannot express how badly I wish Nintendo did cool variants like this.
38. Medal of Honor (PS1)🎮 An old childhood rental I remember being as short as it kinda is. There's replay value in earning all the medals, but kinda not that into it. More forward thinking than I thought, had ok options for dual stick controls. But still kinda janky by modern standards lol.
37. Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back (PS1)🎮 Overall an improvement on the first game. A bit easier, but in a way I feel is less obtuse. New moves are neat, wish the slide was cleaner. Big upgrade is saving the game like a normal person, I hated how Crash 1 handled saving progress.
Thank god, Crash Bandicoot 2 saves like a normal video game lol.
I'm positive I finished this back in the day, but nothing I recall about it feels real 😂 I put it back in the backlog and need to get around to trying it again.
I've really taken to exploring older game libraries lately. Most of these consoles emulate well too, so you can just dip your toes in to see if it sparks some nostalgia for you. I missed a lot when this stuff when it was new, so the well feels infinitely deep.
AH ok. Just for consistency. Every MiSTer core targets the same hardware, so you know exactly how it will run every time. One of the reasons software emulation can be inaccurate is just because there are so many hardware configurations possible.
Best is probably not the right term? Potentially more accurate I suppose? Both are emulating older games, but MiSTer is done in hardware while PC stuff is emulation in software. One builds the console on a microchip vs translation of software instructions to run on modern PCs. Does that make sense?
For Gamecube games, doesn't the Gamecube have better quality for GC games compared to the Wii? Assuming you have the right cables for each? Or am I confusing Nintendo consoles again.
Played a lot PS1 games with early voice acting that have me like this.
I actually thought this was some kind of PC port to PS1, but apparently that isn't the case? PS1 is the original release. The PC version on GOG fixes the load times, so I'd recommend going there. Unless you're a mad man that loves playing on original hardware like me 😃
Basically everything is voice acted, which is insanely ambitious. However, I cannot hear without my subtitles. So some cutscenes were a struggle. And the voice acting is way better than what I expect for a game of this age.
It was still compelling enough that I wanted to see where this was going. You are definitely the baddie and the story/world are extremely dark. Combat is pretty primitive and hit boxes are kind of... bad? They're almost always different than what you think, but in a way that's good for you somehow.
36. Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain (PS1)🎮 I've been meaning to play Soul Reaver, but wanted context of the of this one first. I actually really kind of dug what this game was doing? But boy, its very much a game of its time lol. Load times are *savage*, I'm actually surprised I tolerated them.
Subs to play anything online was the worst thing xbox ever started. Sucks the rest of the platform holders picked it up.
...This reminds me, I could really go for some new shelves.
Oh my god the future is so stupid, STOP. I want to get off.
I'll probably look into re-shelling it, since the internals are all perfectly fine. I knew I was probably lucky my copy hadn't fractured yet, but I totally forgot about it when I picked it up lol. Just another project for the pile.
I realized that I forgot to add my N64 games to my backlog tracker late last night. There's actually a lot I want to revisit or try on that platform, a lot that I actually already have, so started adding them. Tragically, Majora's Mask crumbled when I picked it up. Gold plastic syndrome sucks.
Microsoft just giving up hardware, and just selling expensive Xbox branded handheld Windows PCs sucks. Sony trying to convert into a live service publisher blows more chunks than I can express. Nintendo having an actual monopoly on that space will also just keep getting worse.
It also likely means the death of physical media entirely in the gaming space, which I absolutely hate. I also worry about Sony moving onto PC with insanely bad launchers and DRM I know people feel like this means they'll get more things, but having hardware companies compete on software mattered.
I deeply worry this means we'll lose the affordable console market as consumers. I have the disposable income to buy expensive PC parts, but I still found myself preferring game on console for a number of reasons. Especially shitty because of how dog water Windows is.
I would very much like to play Silksong, but I'm so incredibly exhausted by other people in online spaces over this game. Every showing of anything is just dominated by a will they/won't they announce anything related to Silksong, or people being really unhealthy in general. Starting to resent it.
I hope no one gets big mad over these complaints, but its so very clear this isn't for me. I knew I wasn't going to be very positive mid-playthrough, but I did not expect it to end this way. I just had to see how this ended, but I kind of wish I hadn't.
The number of characters is ambitious, but why bother? No one really gets development and there's so much effort that was clearly put into tech animations. I've never seen something that feels so bloated but at the same time so unfinished and unpolished as Chrono Cross.
Then at the very end, they just take all the dangling plot threads and text dump it at the last possible second. Its just this knot of bullshit that I just... cannot comprehend that this made it to shelves. I really hate the story and didn't feel attached to any of the characters, at all.
And the pacing is just awful, I just wanted to get to the point for so long. I also feel like this was packed with retcons that severally damage my appreciation for the ending of Trigger. Everything is so fucking dark, I just feel like the people that wrote this just didn't want to even do this.
Where the fuck do I start with the plot. I don't think this works. Interviews imply they wanted this to be approachable to people that didn't play Trigger, which is an insane thing to even imply. I have full context and it was still a struggle.
I can't fucking stand how often you miss in combat. I know that the %s are likely accurate and its just my dumb fleshy meat brain. But missing feels so insanely frustrating in this game, more so than anything I've ever played. It usually just means I have to sit through another 2-3 animations too.
First, the music rocks. Its one of my favorite sound tracks from the PS1 and the intro has lived in my head rent free since I tried this game way back when. I kind of hate everything else? Losing Toriyama's style was a huge mistake, even if it was due to legal issues.
35. Chrono Cross (PS1)🎮 What in the high hell was that?? I'm so confused. I'm sorry, I try real hard not to get too negative about games, they're hard to make and they're someone's favorite. But I really do not think this was good. I'm going to get a bit mean on this one, so be warned.
While I'd love to have that, I think its super weird that we don't have a firm date on 4. If they were going to do those remastered, I wish they had gotten to them sooner, as I kind of just want 4 to happen already.