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Gyokuyoutama

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Posts posted by Gyokuyoutama

  2. Posted

    I guess another game I got last year was the SNK 40th anniversary collection.

     

    It's basically a collection of lots of old SNK games, and you can emulate almost all of them pretty easily.  What I like is that SNK seemed to have realized that and so put everything into a sort of museum format with concept art, discussion of the history of the games, allowing you to play regional variation and console ports, etc.  It raises the experience above something like the ports you get in the Sega Megadrive and Genesis Classics collection, for example.  This seems to be the speciality of Digital Eclipse, since theypumped out a similar 50th anniversary collection in 2022 for Atari. Sometimes it's just focused on one game, like the "Making of Kareteka" or a creator, like the Jeff Minter collection they released.  I have to say that I really like this format, since even when I am unfamiliar with a game I can appreciate it as something more than a random old game.  It also gives an excuse to play inferior console ports, so you can compare how things developed.

     

    That being said, the main point for getting it is the games.  I've only played for a few hours, so I haven't dived into most of them.  Mainly I've played Psycho Soldier, Athena, Crystalis and Fantasy.

     

    Fantasy is a fascinating look at really old arcade games, since the whole thing is pretty limited, but you can tell that they wanted to vary things up as much as they could.  Every level has a different type of gameplay, even if most of it boils down to "don't get hit by enemies" or "attack enemies by moving sideways."  On their own its a passing amusement at best, but the presentation encourages you to put yourself in the mindset of someone who was used to playing one trick ponies like Space Invaders, Galaga or Asteroids, and then think about how you'd feel when seeing a completely different level 2.  What could come next?

     

    I haven't gotten too far into Crystalis since I always end up forgetting about it when I start a new rpg (currently Trails to Azure.)  This is a game that I actually saw back in the day at several different places, but I never really got into.  It's a weird action RPG with a mix of fantasy and sci fi elements, and really pushes the level of worldbuilding that you'd expect on the NES.

     

    Athena is an arcade game based off RPG mechanics.  You pick up various weapons, armor and special items.  Athena infamously starts out in nothing but a bikini with no weapons but her slippers.  The point of the game seems to be to make you realize how stupid that would be: you can get ganked by even the weakest enemies in seconds with this equipment so you'll want to get a weapon and armor ASAP.  When you die your equipment resets, which really drives home how much equipment matters in later stages.  This also adds a lot of tension to fights since even if you have more lives, you don't want to have to go back to zero.  The main frustration with this is that you can get into situations where it's almost impossible to move on since you're so ill equipped to deal with the current enemies.  In the arcade setting this would mean walking away to not waste your money, so I try to simulate it by being very strict with how many lives I play with.

     

    Psycho Soldier is apparently also starring Athena, though only in character design.  Psycho Soldier's Athena is a schoolgirl in the near future with psychic powers, whereas classic Athena is a fantasy princess.  The gameplay here is very different: based around shooting and avoiding enemies in stages broken up into four floors.  The only real similarity is that both games encourage you to break apart the environment for powerups, though these are far less essential in Psycho Soldier.  IIRC from the in game write up, this was also the first arcade game to have a vocal track specially made for it.

     

    There's a bunch of other stuff, about 25 in all (not counting regional and console vs. arcade variations.)  Some are pretty well known, like the Ikari Warriors series, others are more obscure.  Worth getting when cheap, but I probably wouldn't pay 30 bucks for it.

  4. Posted

    7 hours ago, TheOnlyGuyEver said:

    I swear to god people need to start tapping into fucking ANTS already. There are so many fucking different species of ants and they're all wildly diverse and unique. There is so much you could do.

    • Deterministic ant roguelike with upgrades and trees based on the abilities of real ant species.
    • Ant strategy game or RTS with various unique factions of ants and caste unit classes.
    • Ant RPG with a myriad of different ant species. Utilize their different strengths to build your party.
    • Simultaneous mass-co-op ant puzzle platformer. Cooperate as ants to reach your goal using your combined might.

    They write themselves.

    SimAnt was the 3rd Sim game (after City and Earth) but never again did they revisit Ants.  I guess they technically never did SimEarth 2 either, but Sim Life and Spore are in the same wheelhouse.

  7. Posted

    As long as we're on the topic of older technology, I saw this:

     

    DWcT7N1.jpg

     

    and it got me thinking of other sort of stuff that's been kind of lost to time.

     

    Like the SUPER secret tracks that would occur before the first track. (You had to rewind to get to them, but most CD players made in the last twenty or so years don't let you do that.)

     

    The easter egg tracks that would appear on software disks encoded in redbook audio format.

     

    The images that appear on your screen when you pause a DVD with just the right age of DVD player.  (If they're too old they don't support it, if they're too new, or a bluray player, they go to some sort of home menu instead.)

     

    DVDs optimized for viewing on a computer, so you could click the image for bonus features.

     

    On the web one similar thing could be the use of image maps for games and the like, which technically is still possible but you hardly ever see despite being everywhere in the early 00's.

     

    It makes me wonder how much of this I should be writing down for future generations to understand, since a lot of this stuff certainly isn't going to be preserved.  A lot of this fits into the category of how do you even preserve it?  If a CD has a song in the pregap I guess you can get the song itself (with the proper hardware), but how do you accurately portray the difficulty and joy in finding it?

  8. Posted

    Sometimes I think I'm just getting overly cynical as I get older and that the internet wasn't any better than it is now.

     

    Then I go on Gopher and find some guy's personal webpage and I legitimately feel happy just browsing through it.  Can't chalk it down to nostalgia either, since my first experiences with the internet were on the world wide web.  I can get a similar experience browsing sites off of Curlie or Wiby.

     

    I think there's a few reasons for the distinction:

     

    1.) Personalization - In most modern sites, like Twitter or Reddit or Youtube, 90% of the design is already done for you.  Beyond that, there is a strong centralized culture pushing you to post certain things in a certain way.  The chase after "the algorithm."  As a result even when people are being passionate, they all end up sounding pretty similar.  On an actual personal website way off the mainstream you can literally find anything.  The layout, topics, files available, etc. are a whole new experience every time you find something new.  Even on Gopher, which is basically text only (you can post images, but only on links) you see a lot of variation.  Some people put ASCII art, some people litter pages with quotes, others just have things as no-nonsense as possible.  This leads into:

     

    2.) Lack of Bots - Yeah, a bot could make any of these pages.  But there is so little benefit in doing so that they do not.  The webpages they make are more along the lines of "How to fix **** causing high CPU" with the same 8 suggestions and links to sketchy "anti-malware" scans.  If you find some guy's homepage from 2009 talking about Sailor Moon or playing D&D solo or cataloging Finnish folktales or whatever, the chances of it not being made by a human are pretty slim.  But beyond that, on modern social media there's always the threat of getting a bunch of bot replies, even when you are initially interacting with real people.  This is always annoying to me because it's just a reminder of how dead the internet currently is.  You don't get that on classic homepages.

     

    3.) Exploration - There's actually a sense of finding something new and cool.  It's hard to feel that on a centralized site when everything looks 90% the same, since even if you do actually find something neat it will look nearly identical to everything else you've seen.  There's also the limited tools for exploring sites.  Search engines are pretty borked as a rule, to the point that even if you search for the exact title of a video or the exact quote occurring in a post it still might not come up.  General topic searches are even more useless.  And you usually don't have much in the way of tools outside of those things, other than relying on "the algorithm" allowing you to see something.  When it comes to classic homepages you also often don't have search; they're either too old or too small to implement such things.  But because people were aware of this being an issue, you'll find a lot more links to other pages, which allows you to actually go exploring.  On top of that, when you actually do follow a link it could go literally anywhere, not just to a single post or video that was sort of interesting.

     

    Webrings are the best for this, but unfortunately most classic homepages ended up using external webring services which have since went under.  Let this be a lesson to anyone making a webring now: just do hardcoded HTML linked lists, because these are more likely to last through time.

    Raison d'être reacted to this

  10. Posted

    Quote

    As for if a remote control counts... I'm definitely a layman to the genre but it feels like there's a crucial element missing there if it's ALWAYS remote controlled. Like a manned one that can be remote controlled is different than remote control only.

    There's a debate on this point that lasts several issues of 20th Century Boys.  It's presented as a generational thing.  The people who grew up in the 60's/early 70's not only accept remote controls as part of the genre but go so far to say that if you don't have a remote control option, then it isn't mecha.  The people who grew up in the late 70's through the 90's are all on team "it must be directly piloted."

     

    Quote

    Is Attack on Titan and Evangelion mecha?

    Attack on Titan no (unless they added some actual robots after I checked out), Evangelion yes.

     

    Of course this is all a bit of a spook anyway.  It doesn't really matter what's technically Mecha or not.  And even I'm not going to attempt to defend the "super robot" and "real robot" classifications.

  11. Posted

    23 minutes ago, A 1970 Corvette said:

    Metallic Rouge has brought to the forefront a question that has baffled people near and far:

     

    Is it still mecha if the fighting robots are just human sized?

    If the "robots" are hardsuits, like Bubblegum Crisis, or B-ko's various contraptions, yes.  On the western side of the equation Exosquad counts.

     

    If they are independent androids, no.  So stuff like Saber Marionette J or Battle Angel Alita don't count, though it's definitely a related genre.  But then again Sailor Moon style magical girls without any mechanical aspects are also a very closely related genre.

     

    The key aspect of mecha is having a human controller.  The real question is if you had a human sized robot that was being controlled via remote control a la Tetsujin-28 or Giant Robo.

  12. Posted

    the soundtrack is mostly bad.

     

    I was willing to politely disagree with you until here.

     

    Hideki Naganuma, Guitar Vader and Deavid Soul are all top notch.

     

    I think the controls are fine once you get used to them; I've gotten a Jet rating on all levels.  But they definitely have an unnecessarily steep learning cover.  The decision to map spray and reset view to forward to the same button was also bizarre, considering how many buttons on the Dreamcast received no function at all.  This more than anything will mess you up as you learning the game.

     

    But I will allow that the controls are kind of trash.

     

    But not the music.

  13. Posted

    I watched The Life of Budori Gusoko (kind of a follow up to Night on the Galactic Railway, but I've never heard anyone talking about this movie.)  In the ending, this plays:

     

     

    What was surreal about this for me is that I know this song, but I haven't heard it before.  I picked up a sheet music book for the band "Off Course" at music store, mainly because it was cheap and I thought that it was interesting that a Japanese song book ended up in the store it did.  So I've played an adaptation of this song (poorly) on piano.  But never heard the original.

     

    This made it a weird experience where I was sure that I knew the song, even from the first few words, but I was also sure I didn't know it.  Kind of a fitting end to the movie, which (like Night at the Galactic Railway) is one of the closest things I've seen to what you would get if David Lynch directed an anime.  (This doesn't mean what you think it means.)

  18. Posted

    Here we go:

     



    Dishonorable Mention: Dawn of War: Soulstorm

     

    I've had a physical copy of Dark Crusade for forever, but I never played Soulstorm until picking up the Dawn of War collection on GOG.  I did have fun with Soulstorm, and both the Sisters of Battle and Dark Eldar do play differently enough even though they are variants of existing factions.

     

    That being said the campaign is trash, which is unforgiveable given how good Dark Crusade's campaign was.  It has some good ideas, like giving each race a special ability that you can get by conquering them. But there are no special missions outside of the home base sieges, which are done worse than Dark Crusade, and just generally the maps are less fun to play.  The campaign map also has some of the worst design I've ever seen; everything's tiny and hard to process for no good reason despite the fact that you'll spend a quarter of the game here.

     

    Honorable Mention: Heroes of Might and Magic 3: Horn of the Abyss: Factory Update

     

    Doesn't actually count because I didn't play it until after New Years (despite it technically dropping before that.)  That being said from the little I've played it's a solid new town and the associated campaign looks pretty interesting even if the writing is stilted Russian to English translation as always.

     

    Honorable Mention: FHeroes 2 Resurrection

     

    Doesn't actually count since it's basically just Heroes of Might and Magic 2, which I've played for decades at this point.  But it's a very nice update of Heroes 2 for a modern interface while losing very little of the original.  (The main defect I saw while playing it is that the cutscenes for the original campaign don't play properly; the amulet you get is supposed to shine in time with the voice acting.)

     

    Honorable Mention: Inner Worlds

     

    I played this a lot back in the day, but this is the first year I actually purchased it.  It's a fun little game that really does feel like a "fixed" Jill of the Jungle.  If you liked the Shantae games but thought they were too easy, this also might be for you.  Music is awesome as well.  Alas, I didn't really play this for the first time this year, so it doesn't count.

     

    Honorable Mention: Top Nep
     

    It's a well done Space Harrier style game, and I love Space Harrier.  But you can beat it in like 20 minutes and (unlike Panzer Dragoon) it's not hard enough that you'll have any difficulty getting there.  I got this for practically nothing so I don't mind, but I can't honestly put it on a top 10 lest.

     

    Honorable Mention: The Manhole

     

    The first game ever to be on CD!  Well, for a loose definition of "game."  This is more of an "activity center."  It's kind of like Myst in that it's a first person game where you go around interesting environments, though unlike Myst there are many people (or rather animals) to talk to.  More importantly, unlike Myst, there's no endgame goal.  Just see what you can see, and you can see pretty much the whole game in about half an hour.  There are some interesting secrets (and I'm sure that there are many that I'm not aware of since this game isn't well documented online) but even with those you're not getting a whole lot of bang for your buck.  Worth it if you get it cheap, especially if you are interested in software history, but know what you are getting into.

     

    10. Civilization: Call to Power

     

    In some ways this is a dancing bear experience.  That is, I'm more amazed that I could see it than I am at the game itself.  I got a physical copy of the game from a thrift store, and was able to get it running despite many difficulties.  The game itself is in legal limbo since it was made when Activision had the rights to make a game called Civilization, but not a "Civilization" game.  Since that point they lost even the rights to the name (hence why the second one is called "Call to Power 2") and as such it is unlikely that this game will be released on any online store.

     

    My impression is that the game itself is so-so, though some of this might be due to me not understanding many of the mechanics.  They were legally required to change many of the basics to not get sued by Firaxis, which sometimes gets ridiculous (such as how all the wonders are different, as if Firaxis had the rights to the Pyramids or the Great Wall of China.)  That being said there are some real interesting mechanics, such as slave raids, the use of combined troops (instead of just "stacks of doom"), a greater focus on pollution, space and ocean colonization, etc.

     

    9. Panzer Dragoon: Remake

     

    There's not really a lot bad that I can say about this game.  It's a very competently done rail shooter with an interesting mechanic which requires you to look around your dragon for enemies.  In retrospect it also makes me understand the shooter levels in the Sonic Adventure games (i.e. Gamma, Eggman and Tails in 2).  The lock on from there works basically the same as Panzer Dragoon.  The soundtrack is beautiful, and the graphics in the remake are just what I'd want to see.  They basically take the original graphics and turn them into what you'd imagine the Sega Saturn originals to represent.

     

    The only issue here is that this is a rail shooter game, and not one with really deep mechanics like a modern bullet hell game.  So it's a game you'll play until completion and then not have much reason to come back to for a while.  More like a movie in many ways than most games, even though it definitely is loaded with gameplay.

     

    8. Toonstruck

     

    If you like 90's animation you'll appreciate this game.  Practically every major voice actor from that time period is here (ex. Dan Castellanata, Tim Curry, Tress MacNeille, Dom DeLuise, Jim Cummings, Rob Paulsen). You've also got Christopher Lloyd as the main character.  The animation is well done and really invokes classic cartoons; the only games that I can think of that did something similar were Kings Quest 7, Torin's Passage, Goblins Quest 3 and I guess (for something more recent) Zniw Adventure.  The plot is kind of like Who Framed Roger Rabbit if it took entirely place in Toontown.

     

    As for gameplay, it's a 90's adventure game.  Expect a lot of obscure puzzles, and a lot of wandering around to see where you can actually progress.  If you are ESL this game might be particularly tricky since the main puzzle for the first two thirds of the game relies on wordplay.  (You need to get the "corresponding components" to make an anti-doomsday machine.  For example the doomsday machine has a cloak, so you need to get a dagger.  The doomsday machine has a heart, so you need to get a sole (the fish.))  None of the puzzles are too crazy.  It wouldn't be a game assigned to murderers in Ross's prison game analysis.  But they will get you tripped up.

     

    And that's basically what it is.  A very competently done 90's adventure game with nice animation and loads of cartoon references, but it doesn't really rise above that.

     

    7. Doom 64

     

    This has to go down as one of the worst named games of all time.  The problem is that there were lots of ports to the N64 that just appended "64" to their names, like Duke Nukem 64, Starcraft 64, Wipeout 64.  Furthermore many games that didn't actually have a "64" after them were called that anyway, like Quake 64 and Hexen 64.  So everyone expected Doom 64 to be just another port of Doom or maybe Doom II.  There had been a million of those already, most of them sucked, and Doom was an old game by this point.

     

    Doom 64 is of course an entirely different game.  Its core is still doom; you have (mainly) the same weapons almost entirely the same baddie list, etc. But there are some variations in the enemies (Pain Elementals in particular are much more of a pain in the ass, as are Cyberdemons) and the maps themselves are entirely different.  Doom 1 and 2 are really only loosely horror games; in theory they are in horrific environments, but in practice they encourage you running through them like a badass.  Doom 64 is much more focused on an atmosphere of dread.  The lighting and music both add to this.

     

    I do think that the maps themselves from Doom 64 are better designed than most of Doom 1 and 2 (though not Plutonia or things like Strife).  However, it is missing some key components of the previous games (most notably the Revenant) which feels annoying.  The secrets can also be kind of BS.

     

    6. The Zachtronics Solitaire Collection

     

    I got this on a whim, not expecting to spend more than five hours on it.  Currently I'm at 40, so I guess that means it's pretty good.

     

    It's mainly just a collection of solitaire games from other titles (you'll already have two of them if you have Last Call BBS because they reused one there too.)  There is a new mode that uses a Tarot deck, and this one is particularly compelling.  I thought initially that it was impossible, since you have so many cards and can only move one at a time, but I've beat it 50 times.


    There's a good variety of games here both in theme and in goal.  Many do variations of stacking cards according to rank, but some have other goals.  I find the cribbage solitaire variant to be particularly interesting since the mechanics are so obvious if you've played Cribbage before, but at the same time it works perfectly as a solitaire game.

     

    Great game to fill 10 minutes with here and there.

     

    5. Touhou 19: Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Actually released in 2023!)

     

    I love Twinkle Star Sprite games, so I had to get this.  The genre is competitive Danmaku.  I've written more about the mechanics in another post, so I won't get into it here.

     

    This game has received more criticism than probably any Touhou game to date.  I get a lot of it.  The main problem is the story mode: You beat bosses in the story mode not by burning through their lives, but instead by outlasting their attacks.  (Technically you can kill them directly, but since they have five lives this is very unlikely).  That means that you won't be using the key features of this style of game.  On the flip side, attacks still end up being too random to be as satisfying as a real Touhou game.

     

    Apparently the netplay is also terrible, and la criatura del chupacabras is completely broken in multiplayer, but I haven't played online so I don't know.

     

    I've approached this mainly as a human vs. CPU battle mode thing, and there the game really shines.  I'm sure that ZUN balanced the game around this mode, with Story more of an introduction.  You do get a really nice back and forth at higher difficulties in this mode, and the experience changes dramatically depending on who you are playing as and who you are fighting.  I want to play this with local co-op, but unfortunately the people I know IRL draw the lines at weird JP games.

     

    4. Last Command

     

    Another danmaku that I talked about elsewhere, so I won't get into too much detail.  Suffice to say, it has an interesting gimmick (danmaku but also snake) and it does as much as it can with it.  The art style is simple but well done, and there are clever variations in the gameplay all the way up to the final stages.  Not the longest experience for the type of game it is (danmaku with RPG components) but well worth experiencing.

     

    3. Stasis: Bone Totem (Actually released in 2023!)

     

    Yet another game I've discussed elsewhere.  A very good isometric adventure game, which is doubly impressive since that genre basically doesn't exist anymore.  The puzzles are fair and interesting, the character dynamics are far far better than I would expect in this sort of game, and the world feels fleshed out.  There were a lot of little quirks later on that impressed me.  Every character seems like they could be a joke (especially the toy bear) but they are all treated seriously and all given fitting ends.

     

    This game also probably does better at evoking the sense of dread you get from HP Lovecraft stories than any game actually set in the "Lovecraft Mythos."

     

    2. Pizza Tower (Actually released in 2023!)

     

    I think most people know that this game is pretty great.  What really makes it work is the attention to detail at every stage of the game.

     

    One thing I really like about it is that it reaches many audiences without being annoying about it.  If you simply want to beat the levels, the game isn't that hard.  For most of the game you essentially have infinite health and retries, with defeat only being possible during boss fights and the escape segments.  This also makes exploring each level to find secrets not annoying.

     

    But if you want to you can challenge yourself in many ways: get the secret areas.  Find the treasures.  Do the chef tasks. Get a high rank. Go through multiple laps, and so on. I haven't gotten any P Ranks yet, but I can see myself doing that in the future.

     

    As you do each new challenge you get an appreciation for how the levels are designed a little bit more cleverly than you initially thought, and the mechanics are a little bit more polished than they originally appeared.  This is what really separates it apart from things like modern AAA games: every part of the game has been worked on until it's great.

     

    That's without getting into the nice music, great animation, variations in levels, etc.

     

    1. The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero

     

    It's my number one pick since I did enjoy it the most, but it's kind of hard to talk about.  Go play Trails from the Sky: FC.  If you like it, keep playing until you get to this game and you'll enjoy it.  If you don't like Trails from the Sky, you probably won't like this one.  It's a really well done JRPG.  One thing I did like in particular about this one is that the mechanics seem to be in about a perfect position.  There were a lot of things they experimented with in the later Trails in the Sky games, like team attacks, that didn't quite click.  Here they work great.  In contrast once we get to Trails of Cold Steel it almost feels like mechanics are being added simply to make things more complicated.  The Crossbell games are in sort of a sweet spot where they are complicated enough to really work well as an RPG, but not so complicated that you get annoyed.

     

    A side effect of this is that we still have the old Arts system, where your spells are determined by your overall elemental levels across different lines rather than having items give you specific spells.  I find this to be much more interesting than the system used in the Cold Steel games, but I understand that with the ridiculously large party sizes of those games and the general increase in complexity they had to cut back somewhere.

     

    These games are also interesting in that you are cops, rather than adventurers or students, so you get much more involved in the criminal underbelly than in other games.  Gives a nice change of pace both from JRPGs generally and other trails games in particular.

     

    But at the end of the day it really does come down to whether you like modern Falcom RPGs.  If you do, this is amazing.  

    Silent, Huff and hugthebed2 reacted to this

  19. Posted

    I had a dream that I've already forgotten most of the details about.  Something about a relative going crazy and being barricaded in a room.

     

    But I do clearly remember someone telling me at the end: "If you learn nothing else from this, it's that you should always keep a really big knife next to your bed."  Then I woke up and since it was around 3 AM I went back to sleep.

     

    But I guess this dream convinced me since apparently I set an alarm titled "BUY KNIFE" before going back to sleep.

    A 1970 Corvette and Huff reacted to this

  20. Posted

    Horn of the Abyss is easily the most respected Heroes 3 mod.  It adds content that isn't incredibly gimmicky like most mods, and actually feels like a third official expansion to the game.  I believe the guys behind it are also behind the very nice Heroes 3 HD mod (which looks better and has more features than the official HD edition.)

     

    One thing that Horn of the Abyss was particularly well regarded for was the Cove Town since:

    • It was a new town that didn't replace an existing one (like had been the standard for most mods at the time.)
    • It had a cool theme (pirates!)
    • That theme was actually lore friendly with the classic Might and Magic Enroth/Erathia/Antagarich setting.
    • The town was well balanced and had some interesting new features.

    Since that point they've been making a variety of tweaks, mainly dealing with better random maps, various map objects, and adding a couple new terrains.  But they've been teasing a second new town (Factory) for a loooong time.  (The wasteland terrain designed for use with the Factory was released in 2020, and they were working on the Factory before that.) There's been quite a lot of work on it, and they even got Paul Romero to help out (the guy who composed the majority of the music for the actual Might and Magic and Heroes games).

     

    This town in particular was hyped up partially because it was a "fixed" Forge.  The Forge was a town that was originally meant for the Armageddon's Blade expansion, instead of the Conflux town we actually got.  It was meant to be a tech town full of cyborgs and mad science and such.  This is actually pretty in line with the Might and Magic games which have had stuff like ray guns since the first game (generally the game will start out looking like generic fantasy, but slowly reveal itself to be taking place on a space colony or something.)  However none of this had appeared in the Heroes games outside some vague hints in the backstory buried in the Heroes 1 manual.  Couple this with a similar tech town in Total Annihilation Kingdoms that was hated, and some hated concept art (including a cyborg Naga with bare breasts) and there was a lot of backlash at the time.  Thus they made an elemental town (which conveniently already had four of its units in the game as neutral troops.)  The Factory is also a tech town, but in a more low key steam punk way that fits more in with the aesthetics of Heroes 4, and adds some cool Wild West aesthetics without looking retarded, somehow.  If you view it as a version of the Forge finally being released, then that's a wait of nearly a quarter of a century.  (Though to be fair there's like a dozen Forge mods already, but none have the polish of what the HOTA team puts together.)

     

    The FHeroes AI balancing is far less important, but I found it funny that that update came out at nearly the same time as the HOTA one.

  22. Posted

    3 hours ago, John Caveson said:

    To be a little fair, this year has been rather scarce in terms of actual good games, at least on the PC/Steam side of gaming. Combine that with normie's aversion to anything other than overhyped, AAA, corporatized, DRM-ridden slop, so they have no frame of reference for what actual quality looks like, and so just vote for what's popular opinion. So you get this.

     

    Labor of Love should have gone to Lethal Company. It was made by one dude after all. Runner up would be DRG.

    The only non-streamer game/non hyped AAA game that won any category was Dave the Diver (unless I missed something.)

     

    I'm not angry, it's about what I expected.  It's like expecting to get quality out of the Oscars or the Hugo Awards or something; that's not what they are about.

    A 1970 Corvette reacted to this
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