#and how much easier gameplay would be to have a few more 5* and the ability to have them fully leveled and reliced up

[thingswhatareawesome]

¨

[asparagusgremlin]

Started persona 5...shit is so good so far. I just finished the final boss of the first dungeon and am currently in the waiting time til the allotted dungeon days pass. I have immediately attached to Ryuji especially after his 3rd SL rank and I'm loving the gameplay a lot. I feel lowkey overwhelmed with how much stuff there is to do and how many shops there are but it's fun to explore.

I will admit I'm like one of three people ever who doesnt control my party members. I dont even really know why, i think when i played maybe 2 hours of p3 like 4 years ago the system got stuck in my brain, so when i played p4 i didnt control my teammates then either, and then when actually playing through p3 i had no trouble with not being able to do so. I genuinely think it's just as fun as it would be controlling them, it makes me feel like I'm cheering my friends on when they make good moves. It also makes fights go by easier and faster. It sucks to not be able to micromanage their SP, and sometimes they make bad moves, but so far it hasn't been the worst hindrance in the world, they're probably about on par with the p4 auto party intelligence. I will probably have to control them during some boss battles and such in the future but idk i think it's fun like this!

Also.....the music. I've been hearing for ten billion years about how good the music is, and I've heard just about every popular song a million times over, but it's been hitting sooo good. The dungeon music change after sending out the calling card.....that shit sucked and fucked me dry man. It's crazy how good it is. Especially when i hear a new song?? Shit is always fire. And hearing songs I'm more familiar with doesnt make it hit any less especially since I'm finally hearing them now in the context of the game.

I'm so excited to play more, I'm very hooked. The whole reason i started playing is because a convention I've been going to for the past few years is going to have voice actor guests from p5, and it hit me that i should play it now before the con. I def think it was a good decision, this feels like a good time to get into a long ass game like this. I'm a little sad i decided to start it now when i was playing a lot of tomb raider 1 before but it's not that big of a deal, tomb raider is much more of a game/series i can just pick back up later. But yeah. Persona 5 good (so far lol)

[tene324]

Ranking the mgs games I've played so far

I think all these games are amazing so even the 'lowest' one is still a great game.

1) Metal Gear Solid 1

I feel like this is such a duh moment. This was the second ever mgs game I played and I was worried it wouldn't gel with me due to its age and its limited graphics, but it's truly not impeded whatsoever by how it looks. TBH I see some people talking about a remake of mgs1 and I feel like that'd just be such a disservice. Its truly pointless. Amazing graphics wouldn't change anything about this game rather than making it more appealing to a certain type of gamer, but the story and soundtrack and characters do so much lifting that its not necessary. It was challenging but fun, and when I completed it I was both delighted and sad because I couldn't play more. I'm in the middle of my second replay of it and enjoying it more than the first!

2) Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake

SO charming!! I haven't played 2d pixel game in a long time before this, and it was so nostalgic in a way? The child models were really reminiscent of old pokemon games to me. Mg2 has an awesome soundtrack and undeniable charm. The bosses are so stupid but its entertaining, and despite it being impossible to navigate or complete it without a guide, I really love it. The more I sat with my thoughts after completing it, the more I enjoyed it. I especially love the dynamic between David and Big Boss, and their confrontation at the end. After playing mgs1 its obvious that a lot of its inspiration and mechanics come from here, but that only made it more endearing to me. Mg2 and Mgs1 are testaments to creativity and improvement in skill. Truly recommend playing if you've been putting it off!

3) Metal Gear 2: Sons of Liberty

Admittedly.. I really struggled with sons of liberty. I thought the gameplay was HARD and the stealth in comparison to the simplicty of 1 was a lot more difficult. I also struggled to connect with Raiden until later in the game. I wanted to like him, but I thought his personality was grating and Rose wasn't much better. However, the last hour or so of mgs2 is truly peak fiction. It completely turns on its head and becomes truly fantastic. Maybe if I replayed it I would enjoy it more? After I completed it I really wanted to return to it even though I had no desire to restart it, but after a few months I might. After everything that unfolds, you can't help but feel for Raiden. I very much enjoyed this story, and the first time you play it its like being blown out of the water.

4) Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

My first venture into the mgs franchise. Obviously a lot more modern and more attuned to current gaming, so it was a lot easier to get into. Whilst I wasn't overly fussed with the main storyline, the gameplay itself is fluid and I loved the tapes. I enjoyed being able to put on a tape while I was out in the world, and I thought it was an interesting way to get more information about other characters. Also, I just love Liquid Snake, so the introduction of Eli made my week. I like the dynamic him and Venom have, and also I really didn't see the twist coming. It's a bit stupid since its so obvious, but I was going down a totally different train of thought about what was happening. I'm probably biased but the gameplay here is amongst the best in the franchise.

5) Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker

I'm still not certain on the placement of this game, as the story is great and I really enjoyed this era of Big Boss. After playing mg2, I wondered how Big Boss changed so much from msf to the existence of zanzibarland. His relationship with the Boss is really compelling, and its fitting for the series that grief and trauma pushed him to become a shell of himself later in the series. Some of the mechanics in pw are quite finicky, but after unlocking certain weapons it's actually a walk in the park. I was also loving the fact that V is clearly a homage to it, similar to mg2 and mgs1! The comic book cutscenes were really the beating heart of pw aswell, as I think it wouldn't be a fraction as compelling with its shittty, stiff graphics. I'm surprised more games didn't take inspiration from this.

6) Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

Yall got any storyline? We got hype moments and aura. Great gameplay, great bosses, great soundtrack, but the writing is SO BAD that it truly negatively affects how good this game could be. I haven't played 4 so I don't know Raiden's character fully but I can tell this already butchers whatever might've been of him. I think it also could've been FINE, but they chose to be so cringe that I just can't take it seriously. Mgrr remake where Raiden is completely silent so he can't open his mouth and ruin everything.

[likelyamused]

As storytellers, there are so many pieces of our craft and I'm curious how you would rank each step of the process. Rank each of the following on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 lowest, 5 highest):

Setting up the scene (building sets, decorating, etc),

Posing the sims (creating / find poses, and setting up the sims),

Styling the sims (cc hunting, time spent in cas),

Writing the dialogue/story,

Editing the photos.

Send to three other story simblrs and get to know more about each others favorite and least favorite part of this crazy process!

Hi Hannah!

This is a fun ask. Thanks for thinking of me.

I think it really depends on the project (how inspired my vision is) and which mood I find myself in. You seemed to be in the same mindset with yours.

1- Styling the sims (cc hunting, time spent in cas)

My least favorite part is styling, in real life too. I wear t-shirts, jeans, hoodies and my converse probably 95% of the time. I have to do more research for this one. Also, styling for a story where they all have their own personal style and you can't have two of them wearing the same pair of pants in the same scene is a bit of a chore for me. I like when they go to school with their uniforms Lol

2- Editing the photos

The editing feels a bit more tedious, because it's usually just adjusting the lighting and drawing over the clipping (I can't tell you how many strands of hair I had to fill in, especially Celia's beautiful curls), for 25-30 screenshots per post.

I do love when a scene requires more creative thinking. Like when Max snuck into Celia's bedroom, where I had to figure out how to get the animation to work and still have the desk there. Or when Celia was starting an anxiety attack from overstimulation and I wanted her emotions to show in the editing. These come up in ranking for me.

3- Posing the sims (creating / find poses, and setting up the sims)

This comes really close to editing for me and they interchange depending on the project. I have a whole Pinterest folder dedicated to poses I like for various situations. Sometimes they inspire me in writing too. Setting up the sims is sometimes quite a chore, but it became easier since I discovered decosims... I couldn't have done some scenes without them! I enjoy making my own poses too. I started last December and I'm starting to get the hang of it.

4- Setting up the scene (building sets, decorating, etc)

I usually find building relaxing and I like to decorate to cater to the character's situation and tastes. I struggle with landscaping, though... And I still have to remind myself quite often that I don't need to build a whole house if all I need is a bedroom and it doesn't need to be gameplay functional!!!

5- Writing the dialogue/story,

At the beginning, I was rusty... When I re-read the earlier posts, I think it really shows I didn't have much of a plan. I've become more comfortable with writing and I've been really into it in the last few months. I have a plot already planned out for Part 2 and an idea for Part 3, and I can't wait to dive into writing those. I feel like the experience this time around will be much different.

Thank you for this ask! ❤️

[daandyli0n]

alright, so. because i've thought about this way too much:

how games/gameplay would be different in my Fnaf Rewrite

@that-darn-clown because i told you about this earlier

(also note: this is just an explanation of how the games would be different in this rewrite. any plot points that are mentioned won't be explained in too much detail; just enough context for something to make Some kind of sense.

however, if you Are curious about certain plot points...you can always send an ask :] aka Please Send Asks, I Wanna Ramble About This)

Fnaf 1:

mostly the same, but lore stuff is more...fleshed out? easier to understand? things are still vague, we aren't given all answers, but the main pieces are mostly in place at this point. main character(s)/protagonist(s) are different: Andrew Schmidt (Night 1-5) and Michael Afton (Night 6).

Phone Guy has a name and is a character: Alexander Afton. jokes around often with the nightguard, seems anxious and lost in thought often, seems to space out as he's reminded of...past events. dies on Night 4, with a heavy implication that he knows which of the spirits wants him dead so badly, before he's suddenly attacked and the call cuts out. another employee takes his place on Night 5, describing what became of him: he was found in the Backstage area, the top quarter of his head, the right side, bitten nearly clean off. his left eye in open wide in fear. what's more, they found "that old yellow bear thing" sitting nearby with its mouth bloody.

William is, in a way, referenced. while he goes by "Dave Miller" as a fake name, Alex will sometimes accidentally refer to the man as "dad" or "my father/dad." he is also described rather...suspiciously. as though he's hiding something. whenever he is brought up on the call, the newspaper easter eggs are activated. speaking of which:

Newspaper Easter Eggs!! first night - describes the disappearance of two young girls; Naomi Everest and Gabrielle Franklin-Martinez. second night - two more disappearances, this time of two young boys; Baker Fitzgerald and Felix Smith. (familiar last names, huh?) third night - one final disappearance, this time of another young boy; Kelsey Schmidt. however...it's not at a Freddy's, it's at "another local kid's pizza place." (wonder where That is?) fourth night - a newspaper article that appears to have been vandalized, showing a crying child's face drawn over a large portion of the actual article, obscuring many details. what is visible, however, tells us as follows: "Local Preteen Found Murdered Outside of Freddy's: The community was shaken today....the girl, Charlotte Emily....12 years old...appeared to be locked out...birthday party...found by her brother and father, as well as a family friend, Mic...fton.....loss has shocked the public, especially friends of the girl...The Father, [obscured] Emily, devastated, decided to close the pizzeria for the next week...give time to grieve...funeral will be held this weekend..."This is a shock to us all, and we will be doing our best to pick up the pieces and make sure this tragedy will never happen again." -Co-Founder, [obscured] Afton" fifth night - article describes how four of the bodies of the missing children were found, except for Kelsey's. article talks about how the pizzeria will close down in a few months after this, per the decision of the owner. we are told that while the restaurant might reopen someday, but there will be new management...he's passing the responsibilities onto another owner. the tragedies are starting to hit too close to home for him. we are told that the "tragedy" (MCI) took place three years previous to the article, and the article is dated in 1985. sixth night - not a newspaper article, but a paper simply repeating the phrase "YOUR FAULT" (believed to be a manifestation of Michael's guilt). this paper appears after the employee on the phone says "Listen...you haven't had an easy time in over a decade. You've gone through a lot of heartache, and this...horrible tragedy with your brother has probably dug up a lot of that pain for you all over again. We're terribly sorry for your loss, and I hope that things start getting easier for you. Genuinely." there is no newspaper article for the seventh night, as the seventh night isn't canon to this rewrite (there would still be a custom night, but there's no lore; just for the player to fuck around with).

motives given for why the two nightguards are here: Andrew blames himself for a currently unknown event (but is, at this point in the series, implied to be Kelsey's disappearance), and effectively has a death wish/is passively suicidal, probably hoping the animatronics will just kill him and get it over with (basically mentioned by Alex over the phone before his death, saying things along the lines of "L-Listen, I get it still hurts, that you feel like it was your fault, but we were all still kids back then! You were like, what, twelve?" and "T-Those things will kill you if they get in! You need to be careful, okay? ...Why did you go quiet? I, wait...that's...that's not your plan, is it?"). Michael is stated to be there until a replacement for Andrew's shift is found; turns out Andrew got promoted to the dayshift.

Golden Freddy/Fredbear is merely a hallucination, and is not an actual threat (can't kill the player). however, Fredbear will cause hallucinations to worsen in the office as long as he is in there, including causing the cameras to falsely flicker (basically making it appear as though the animatronics have moved when they haven't), so getting rid of him quickly is an important thing. you do this by quickly flipping the camera up and down; not lingering either time. lingering basically resets the process.

hallucinations are basically the same, with the addition of auditory hallucinations ("It's Me", "Save Us", "It Hurts", "I See You", etc) and the False (Camera) Flickers i mentioned earlier

all in all, not much is changed, but lore is slightly more fleshed out and the main pieces are in place, and there's some extra hallucinations.

Fnaf 2:

again, pretty similar to the original game, but with a few extra lore bits added in there. night guards are: Jeremy Fitzgerald (Nights 1-5), Michael Afton (Night 6), and Fritz Smith (Night 7; seventh night IS canon in this game).

Alex is still the Phone Guy, but he sounds...younger. he's more skittish, he stutters more often, and will beat around the bush when talking about rumors of what happened at the pizzeria a few months prior. he seems...more nervous, in general.

hallucinations!! we're bringing those back!! sometimes a missing child's poster will appear in the office, showing a different one depending on the guard that night (Jeremy will have Baker's missing poster show up in the office, Fritz will have Felix's. Michael won't have a missing poster show up; this time it will be the newspaper discussing Charlie's murder). the auditory hallucinations are back, now with extra sounds like "Save Them", "Help Them", and "They're Still Here", now said in a young girl's voice, whereas the others are more ambiguous. False Flickers are back!! sometimes, when the paper pal appears in the office, a missing poster for either Naomi or Kelsey appears.

the minigames are. a bit different now. while a lot of the death minigames stay the same, a few have some extra lore bits thrown in: with "Take Cake To The Children", the child standing in the upper left-hand corner (closest to the door, as we can guess) doesn't seem interested in the cake, having a straight face and never turning red. mid-murder, the boy suddenly seems curious, walking towards the door, as though he heard screaming. as Afton drives away and the boy (very likely Sammy, Charlie's brother) reaches the door, the Puppet (Marionn) jumpscares and the minigame ends. in "Foxy Go Go Go," two of the children stand out, seeming noticeably different; one has what seems to be a bunny headband, and the other has a reddish-orange striped shirt and appears to be frowning. during the second time in the minigame, the boy with the bunny headband is gone, but everything else is the same (not meant to imply that Baker was taken while watching Foxy; just meant to show he was taken before Felix). and during the third time, the boy in the striped shirt is gone, and Foxy starts walking noticeably slower, similarly to Freddy in the Cake Minigame once things start going wrong, before Withered Foxy jumpscares the player (showing that Felix possesses Foxy). "Save Them" and "Give Gifts, Give Life" are basically the same.

LORE MINIGAMES!! second night - you play as Jeremy with his brother, Baker, following close behind. you are told to "Go To The Arcade." upon getting there, Jeremy will stand in front of a game and, presumably, start playing. however, after several seconds of this, Baker will wander away a bit, only to be lured off by O'Hare (Springbonnie). Jeremy does not seem to notice this, and the minigame ends. third night - continuation of the previous night's minigame. Jeremy is now given the task "Find Your Brother." after exploring the building, he comes across the Backstage door before Withered Bonnie jumpscares the player (clearly meant to show that Baker possesses Bonnie), ending the minigame. fifth night - less a minigame and more of a cutscene, showing Jeremy sitting on a curb, presumably outside of Freddy's, crying into his hands as another person, presumably a friend of his (it's Michael, but the game would never explicitly say this), tries comforting him. sixth night - "Save Them" Minigame, but...different. you play as Fredbear, awakening in the Parts & Service room only with the goal "FIND HIM." as the player exits the room and explores, entering one of the Party Rooms shows Freddy lying on the ground, with Afton standing over him. Afton suddenly turns around to see Fredbear, and the text in the corner changes from "FIND HIM" to "FOUND HIM" for a split second before the minigame cuts out. seventh/custom night - you play as Fritz. Fritz is shown outside of a car with the text/task "Find Your Son." Fritz enters the building, entering Pirate Cove, he sees O'Hare leading Felix away. the task now changes: "Follow Them: Get Your Son." however, Fritz is blocked by the children crowding around in the hallways and rooms, and is eventually blocked off completely. the minigame cuts off after this point.

Jeremy is confirmed to be the Bite of '87 victim; mentioned in Night 6's newspaper, which also mentions the restaurant's closure.

everything else is just about the same; again, lore is just slightly more fleshed out during this game.

Fnaf 3:

again, mostly the same, with a few small changes. nightguards: Samuel "Sammy" Emily (Nights 1-5) and Michael Afton (Night 6).

Phone Dude!! we actually get more of him, plus a name: Daniel Scottson. we only get two training tapes during Night 2 and 3; one describing Springlock Suits and how to wear them safely, and another mentioning the suits being taken out of use due to "incidents." not...failures, but incidents. Phone Dude gets more worried throughout the nights, mostly about the new..."attraction." (our boy Springtrap) on Night 6, he basically does the Fnaf 2 thing of "Why are you there?!" Dan seems worried...hasn't Mike heard of the Hare? how...dangerous it is?

"Good Ending" minigames still require the player to "unlock" them, but will take place at the end of the night before the "regular" end-of-night minigames instead of happening right as the correct items are clicked and then resetting the night. the minigames also end showing which child was given cake via the masks the child wears: Mangle's was Felix, BB's was Gabi, Chica was Naomi, Fredbear's was Kelsey, and Shadow Bonnie's was Baker. upon getting to the "Happiest Day" Minigame, it is shown that there are seven children, and only one without a mask standing next to Kelsey. minigame ends as normal with this maskless, unknown child (Cassidy, but this wouldn't be revealed yet in the games) gaining a mask similar to Kelsey's and then ending with the masks falling and the balloons rising like the normal minigame. it is implied that Michael is assisting with these minigames after Sammy completes his shifts.

Regular End-of-Night Minigames: these are a bit different. the animatronics (or, the children possessing them) are lured using the things that lured the children the first time, with Wiliam luring them through the room entrances and exits: Gabi is lured using a cake, Baker sees O'Hare and decides to follow him again, Naomi is lured with what appears to be a dog (but is just a toy that can make noise), Felix is lured by William in a mask (he knew Afton had disguised himself, so he sees someone in a mask almost taunting him and of course decides to investigate). on the fifth night, an unknown child is leading another unknown child (Cassidy and Kelsey respectively) towards the back room where Afton is. the rest of the minigame continues as normal.

at the beginning of Night 6, it is confirmed that Sammy set the place on fire, but probably attempted to make it look like an accidental, electrical fire ("You know what to do, right, Mike?" "Yep. Loud and clear, Sammy." "I've got the matches ready. Keep him distracted, and then run out the door as soon as that clock strikes 6. If this doesn't work...Christ, not sure what to do at that point...*sigh*...Hope you're free now, Charlie...")

Fnaf 4:

quite a bit different, but has the general format of being based off of dreams that someone is having. Protagonist: Michael Afton during some point between 1994-2000. the exact timeline placement isn't clear. perhaps it doesn't need to be; the "nights" are just nightmares that give some idea of what Michael's mental state is like

end-of-night minigames are relatively the same, just with a few differences: we are given names (CC is Cassidy, Michael is the person speaking to us through the Fredbear plush, and Alex is Foxybro), Elizabeth is shown to not be around anymore, with Michael not mentioning much about her besides the information "It's been a year...", the minigame where Cassidy is trapped in the back room has extra dialogue from an unknown character in faint yellow text saying "Shh....I'm here. It's okay.." (this is Kelsey) and has a scene at the end where Michael comes in and and tries to comfort Cassidy while yelling "Alex, what the hell is your problem-?!", etc. smaller things, but y'know. Lore

each night takes place in Michael's nightmares, representing different periods in his life.

first night - represents Michael's childhood post-Cassidy's birth/Mom's death. the closest to original Fnaf 4. animatronics are grotesque and terrifying, resembling the original Fnaf 4 animatronics, and include: The OG 4 (Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, Foxy), Fredbear, O'Hare, Harriet (basically Circus Baby, but Hare), Blackjack (basically Lolbit), and Marionn (reminder; the Puppet). gameplay includes running and hiding from the animatronics. while all animatronics seem to terrify him, oddly enough...the animatronics that are Henry's creations (all except for O'Hare, Harriet, and Blackjack) seem to try and "comfort" him in some way ("Come on, Matey! Don't be so scared! A little adventure never hurt anyone!" "Come one, Kiddo! I just wanna give you a cupcake, sweetie! Wouldn't that cheer you up?" "What's the matter, scared of the dark? Come over here, I'll play ya a song, Kid. That'll calm yer nerves a bit, right?" "Do you want a gift? Gifts make people happy, right..?") (Lines are said by Foxy, Chica, Freddy, and Marionn respectively), whereas William's creations mock and taunt him for being scared and running. while not a noticeable detail, it would certainly give some perspective on how Mike viewed Henry and William, if a bit subtly.

second night - a mix of three incidents: Liz's accidental death, Charlie's murder, and the MCI. Michael hides in the building from "O'Hare," in a similar structure to the Ballora Gallery section of Sister Location (if the sounds come close by, hide/stay still). going near animatronics causes them to make noise and move, potentially alerting O'Hare if he's close enough. all of the animatronics seem to be leaking blood or have bloody spots, and Marionn can be activated by approaching the window, where they will jump up at the window and scare Michael from outside, playing "Pop! goes the Weasel." while Michael can approach the Backstage room, there is blood coming from under the door, and Mike seems to shake the closer he gets to the room. he will refuse to enter. there is the constant, faint sound of a young girl screaming in the background. no matter where Michael goes, the sound never gets any louder or any quieter.

third night - Michael is in a dark, abandoned hospital. looking at signs around the place, he seems to specifically be in the ICU. this type of memory seems to effectively come out of nowhere; the only knowledge we have of Michael potentially being in a hospital in the past is the fact that his mother died in childbirth (something i feel the minigames would briefly mention). so...this memory can't be of his mother's death; she wouldn't have been in the ICU. he is chased around by the OG Four, who have empty eyes. the only sounds any of them make are laughter and the phrase "Your Fault." but...Foxy has more lines; "Coward," "People-Pleaser," "Give Him A Kiss!" and, most notably, "Our Fault." there is a specific room that Michael refuses to enter to hide in. when prompted, we are simply greeted with the response: "You don't want to go in there. You're afraid of what you'll see when you open that door."

fourth night - seems to be based around the events of Fnaf 2. there are balloons floating around the building, obscuring any possible threats. Mangle is almost impossible to really hide from; crawling on the ceiling means they can see wherever Michael is, regardless of the balloons, meaning that once they approach, Michael can only really hide under tables to get away from them. sometimes, he sees IVs and hears a heart monitor beeping in the background (Bite of '87 Aftermath; Mike witnessed Jeremy get bitten).

fifth night - this is basically just Fnaf 1 but with Dream Logic and hide and seek. that is all.

sixth night - Michael is trapped in what seems to be a Parts & Service room. there are the sounds of a bustling party, but, more notably, the sounds of a screaming child is in the background. the door to the room suddenly opens after several seconds of this, and all of the sounds stop. the building is dark. Fredbear is up on stage, frozen in time, blood covering his mouth and teeth. he has a spotlight on him and in front of him. the one in front shines on four abandoned masks, the Foxy one bloody, and a bloody Fredbear Plush. Michael approaches Fredbear, the suit seeming to constantly let out the words "Your Fault," and upon picking up the plushie, the room goes dark and silent, and Michael pulls out a flashlight. from this point onwards, the player must find keys to leave the diner while warding off Nightmare, who is almost relentless. exiting the diner completes the night.

Sixth Night Minigame Cutscene: this shows a different minigame from the original game. Cassidy is shown to be in a dimly lit party room. there is a heartbeat monitor in the background. there are other kids around in the background, but Cassidy is shown sitting on the ground up front, with Charlie standing next to him. they start talking, and it sounds like Cassidy wants to help free the souls, with Charlie telling him that he doesn't have to if he thinks it will be difficult. they hear a voice (Alex) apologizing to Cassidy, as well as Michael begging Cass to wake up and not die, and Charlie promises that she and the other children are still Cass' friends, and that she's still there. Cassidy wakes up in the hospital, with his father and siblings there. everyone is overjoyed that he's awake again, but Cass stares at his father, narrowing his eyes at him before the minigame fades.

seventh night - this one isn't a dream...it's a memory. you walk through the woods, brambles cutting up your legs, sounds of nature accidentally scaring you. there aren't any true threats here, just tension as you walk through the woods. you come across a clearing, walking towards a makeshift grave. there are poppy flowers laid on top, and a small stone acting as a gravestone. Michael will sit nearby the grave once you get close enough, and will stare at the grave for several seconds before the screen goes black...and a minigame cutscene starts.

Seventh Night Minigame Cutscene: Cassidy is shown sitting beside the grave, staring down at the Earth. Charlie walks up to him and takes his hand, leading him away through the woods. they are both translucent. as they walk, Charlie looks down at him, saying "Don't worry, Cassy...we'll make him pay-" He cuts her off; "No. I'll make him pay." Charlie goes quiet for a second before saying "Well...in any case..." The screen fades out, showing Fredbear in the Backstage area of Freddy's. Charlie finishes her sentence: "I will put you back together." Fredbear "wakes up" (eyes now have white pupils) and the minigame ends suddenly.

and there's the ending to the game.

Fnaf Sister Location:

hoo boy, this is where the gameplay REALLY changes here. like a LOT. this is practically a different game. Michael is, of course, our protagonist.

takes place in the now abandoned Fredbear's Family Diner: Fredbear and O'Hare (now Springtrap) were moved back to the building after Freddy's closed (the current Fazbear Entertainment CEO just chose to ignore the WHOLE ROTTING CORPSE IN THERE because they've gotten bad at this point).

sort of in the same "format" of OG Sister Location: you have to complete tasks to complete the night.

imagine BUNNYFARM from the Walten Files but Sister Location edition and not a video game.

Family Reunion!! :D (< this is NOT a good thing)

Blackjack is an animatronic fox and is effectively Lolbit. y'know Showbear from The Walten Files? Blackjack is Showbear and Michael is Sophie, to give y'all an idea of the dynamic here.

Blackjack works as Michael's guide throughout the nights, as well as the one who reminds Michael of his past (of which he has repressed HEAVILY. for understandable reasons).

each night ends with a minigame cutscene from Michael's past, typically being the one that BJ tries to help him remember throughout his shift that night.

Night Four is interesting, though: this time, instead of Michael uncovering a memory, it's Cassidy telling him what had happened the night he died: William had strangled him to death in his sleep because...well, to put it one way, he knew too much. Michael and the others had been told that Cassidy had simply died unexpectedly in his sleep.

Night Five is supposed to be Michael's last day. he doesn't know how much more of this he can take, as well as the fact his father's still in the building with him. his final task before quitting is simple: clean up the mess in the Dining Room. put the tables and chairs back. a simple task...were it not for the fact one of the tables (with several chairs stacked on top of it) is basically the one bit of protection from his (now INCREDIBLY unhinged) father. but...it is part of his duties for the night. he literally moves Every Other Chair And Table first. like. He Does Not Want To Potentially Put Himself In Danger Because He Has No Idea What Might Happen If He Unblocks That Door. nobody is giving him advice on what to do here: Cass, Liz, and BJ are being uncharacteristically quiet tonight. he doesn't know what to do. like in the actual Sister Location, there are two endings depending on what Michael does:

Moving The Table And Chairs Back: Michael decides to move the table back, praying for the best. he shakes the whole time, trying to act fast. for a few moments, everything seems fine. Mike laughs; he was just being a bit paranoid, maybe his father wasn't even aware he was here. and then he hears the door open, and the voice of his father coming from behind it. i feel like the ending would cut here, only to pick up in Michael's bathroom. he's breathing quickly, clearly panicked. Jeremy knocks on the door, asking if he's alright, and Mike rolls his sleeve down to reveal a really bad scratch on his arm. (this would be considered the "Real Ending")

Not Doing Anything And Leaving Instead: Michael decides to leave the door to the Back Room blocked, and instead decides to tell his siblings goodbye. he tells them that he'll free them, even if doing so could kill him. with that, he leaves. there is no scene after this point. (this would be considered the "Fake Ending")

there is a sixth night that i can best describe as Playing Hide And Seek With Springtrap. you play as an unnamed employee who was tasked with finishing Michael's work, considering he clearly hasn't, as the table is still against the Back Room door, just slightly moved out of the way (showing that this takes place post-Real Ending). the employee has to hide in the building while accomplishing their goal- moving the table and chairs back -while also Not Dying. at the end, we are gifted a monologue from Michael to his father that is similar to the one from the OG Sister Location (basically saying "Hey Dad, What The Fuck, I'm Gonna Come Back For You," y'know?)

there's the game, basically! Michael doesn't die!! he's alive!! more traumatized now, but alive!!

Fnaf 6/Pizzeria Simulator:

almost identical, really. with a few changes like with the Lore Arcade Games (slightly different due to lore changes: specifically due to Midnight Motorist Shit; it basically got split into two different games, one that fit the Aftons and one that fit the Schmidts). once again: Michael's the protag.

so!! Arcade Games:

Fruity Maze: the same, but less gruesome. during the second go-around of the game, some of the fruit will still appear to be dogs, but the girl in the screen (Naomi) will appear more surprised than sad. same thing happens the third time, and instead of Afton luring the girl away with the promise of taking her to her dead dog, he instead promises to give her a puppy, if she follows him. the game ends.

Security Puppet: the same, but with a small section at the end where two people, one with orange text and another with red (Sammy and Michael), seem to be talking with each other, searching for "her", only to seemingly come across Charlie's body. they both go quiet. the screen goes dark, and text comes across the screen: "...Wait, is that-?" "...Charlie..?" the game ends.

Midnight Motorist: follows Afton. game is the same, just without the implications of Afton being drunk (in the rewrite, Afton was never an alcoholic). he returns home the night after he kills Charlie, where he is confronted by the rest of his family. he seems to be trying to act natural after what happened, and trying to find Michael, who we learn was upset that he couldn't go to Charlie and Sammy's party earlier after William "mysteriously" wouldn't take him or Cassidy, who also seemed disappointed. after finding Mike's bedroom door locked, he seems to get slightly worried; Mike almost never locks his door. he goes to Michael's bedroom window outside, discovering that it's open and that Mike isn't in the room. William simply comments that he knows where his son has probably gone, and the game ends.

Bear Race: this is basically the other half of the Midnight Motorist, but showing a drunk, potentially physically abusive parent; this follows Mr. Schmidt, Andrew and Kelsey's father. the "normal section" of the game has you playing as a blonde-colored Freddy (not Fredbear; looks closer to a pixelated version of Fnaf 1 Golden Freddy, but paler) racing against two other Freddys for several laps through the woods...until your character reaches a cabin. the minigame suddenly shifts; you're now a man with light blonde hair, moving slowly through a small, almost empty house. a woman sits nearby on a couch. approaching her gives you the following dialogue, labeled "New Girlfriend," where she says: "Ya gonna yell at him again? The kid's been having a bad day, and I'm sure you telling him that he should be dead ain't gonna help." you then move to the back of the house, coming to a closed door. this is where the "drunk parent yelling at their kid's bedroom door" section of the minigame occurs. Mr. Schmidt eventually kicks the door open, entering the room, where it is revealed that Andrew isn't in the room and that the bedroom window is open. furious, he heads back to the other room, where he demands an answer. there, his girlfriend admits that Andrew went to go stay with "that Afton kid again" (Michael) and might be back at some point. she sighs, telling him "You know it's been hard for him, especially since...look, it might be hard for you, but imagine how hard it is for him." this places this specific incident post-MCI, where Kelsey, Andrew's younger brother, had been murdered, hence this unnamed event that Andrew would be "taking really hard." the game ends after this point. (this also has some fun food for thought: Andrew is unknowingly staying under the same roof as the man who killed his brother, and thus effectively ruined his life :))

everything else is relatively the same...except for the ending.

there's a final cutscene after Henry's speech, and after he gives Mike a match to light and then drop. Michael attempts to beg Henry to come with him, to keep living. they can leave his father to burn, and they can live out the rest of their lives In Peace...but Henry says no. it started with him and William, and it will END with him and William. Michael, not able to convince him, runs. Henry and William are left in the building, and what happens next is unknown, at least from Michael's perspective.

aaand there's the ending! we get another cutscene afterwards. Michael comes to a small grave on the hill; Cassidy now has a proper grave, next to Charlie's. Michael talks to them both, talking about how they're both at peace now. he talks about how things have been getting better for him, for everyone else. he tells Cassidy that he loves him, and that maybe, just maybe, he can finally sleep well for once...

...until we see Fredbear in the dark, "waking up." and there's the ending. (leads into UCN)

UCN literally doesn't change besides possibly adding some fun death minigames in there, but i haven't thought to deep into those yet.

now!! GAME TIMELINE (aka, when everything happens):

(* could be switched)

Fnaf SL Night 1 Minigame (shows Liz's death) (April 1982)

Fnaf 2 minigames (May-June 1982)

Fnaf 4 minigames (except for Night 7) (1983)

Fnaf 4 Night 7 (as in, this around when the memory would've happened) (Sepember 1983) *

Fnaf 4 Night 7 minigame (September 1983) *

Fnaf 2 (1987)

Fnaf 1 (1993)

Fnaf 4 (the game itself; the nightmares are based off of memories) (1994-2000)

Fnaf 3 End-Of-Night minigames (late 1994-early 1995)

Fnaf SL (2001)

Fnaf 3 (2012)

Fnaf 6/PS (+ Fnaf 3 Happiest Day Minigame) (2014)

UCN (2014 onwards)

we ain't getting into Help Wanted onwards. i've got ideas but they aren't concrete, so they aren't going here for now.

anyway!! this took me a few days because i kept getting distracted, please enjoy!

[spewagepipe]

Spewage Litmus: Her Story

As much as I wanted to like Her Story, my experience with it was more like feeling lost and aimless instead of like a cunning detective. Maybe some of this is down to my ADHD, but I found that every time I caught on to a new lead I was forgetting the previous ones that I still needed to follow up on. This became easier once I started keeping my own notes – but if note-taking is a critical feature of Her Story's gameplay, then I can't easily forgive the fact that a simple text editor app wasn't included among the game's sundry desktop icons. The story was quite interesting, but I got a lot more satisfaction from just watching the complete interviews in order after the fact than I did from my own inept sleuthing.

REJECTED

I want to give Her Story a little more space on my blog than just the usual "APPROVED/REJECTED" because, while I can't approve a game that didn't work for me, I really recognize a lot of the cool stuff that's going on here.

Sam Barlow clearly set up a few intentional threads to follow, where looking up obvious keywords in one clip leads to others that build a related story. I have to applaud the intricate scriptwriting necessary to make that work, and to conceal heavier spoilers by ensuring there are at least 5 insignificant videos that mention any given word that might otherwise unveil the whole mystery too soon. But I think my experience was actually hampered by this feature – I got the impression that I was being strung along with a provided assortment of breadcrumbs, instead of making my own inferences.

That was, at first, the only real way for me to play at all, since the way Her Story throws multiple leads at you at a time was quite antagonistic to the way I normally correlate data, and so I just stop trying. Eventually, as I started to hit a wall where none of the search terms I could remember were turning up any new clips, I restarted from the beginning, this time transcribing keywords onto my own notepad so that I could follow up on each of my passing notions.

This eventually got me through the game, but the ideal approach probably would have included constructing at least two timelines: one to track which information appeared in which of the interviews, and a second to track the supposed timeline of events surrounding Simon's murder. That kind of structuring probably would have been too much for a lot of mystery enthusiasts, but also would have been invaluable accessibility features for me.

But the biggest reason I wanted to give an "APPROVED" to Her Story was just because it was a totally new and unique take on how to construct an interactive mystery. It may not have worked for me, but it worked for tons of other people, and I think that deserves recognition. I think it deserves to be copied and iterated upon, because it seems to me that games in general still haven't found a clear, working paradigm for mysteries – and this, or something based on it, has great potential.

[otakween]

Digimon 02: D1 Tamers - Final Thoughts

Woohoo! I beat the Ryo trilogy :D -pops a party popper-

I didn't feel the need to make this multiple posts because this game is verrry similar to the last one (Tag Tamers). The main difference is that it's in glorious color! They also added a couple new features for better or for worse.

This game was fun and addicting just like the other two. There was just a little more grinding than I would hope for. The entire game took me 3 weeks to get through because of that. (Still not too shabby). Full thoughts below the cut.

Notes:

-The plot of this one felt kind of weird and forced. Firstly, I immediately got kind of confused about the chronology because the last game ended with Ken becoming the Digimon Emperor yet he's back to normal in this one. I guess either he hasn't progressed too much yet (it's only been a few days) or this is his IRL façade since we don't see him in the digi world. Anyways, the main plot is that Ryo has to fight in a tournament and if he wins said tournament then he'll become a soldier for the ~Harmonious Ones~ against Moon Millennium. I'm honestly not sure why the digi-Gods were included in this. They added nothing.

-Speaking of the Harmonious Ones, they ask you to pick one at the beginning of the game. I picked Qinglongmon because he was the only one I recognized lol. I'm not sure what the point of this choice was other than the fact that he shows up and says a couple things towards the end.

-Ken gets reduced to a guy-in-the-chair, but a very useful guy in the chair! I found the d-terminal way more handy this time around when it came to figuring out digivolution. Ken tells you exactly how many JP (Jogress points) you need to reach the next level. Honestly, it was a relief not having to tag team in this one too, that was kind of an annoying gimmick.

-Although jogress was still annoying in this game, they thankfully added an item that allows you to add +5 JPs to your digimon which made it so much easier to get some megas on my team. Also, digivolution and skills just felt more intuitive and happened faster this time around which is appreciated.

-I think they realized how OP stun was and nerfed it a bit. It's still a good feeling to win by stunning all the enemy digimon, but stun misses like 60% of the time, so you just waste your turn a lot of the time.

-Playing this right after Tag Tamers was pretty magical because I went from black and white to color (a Wizard of Oz moment). Although the inside of the dungeons were still very repetitive, the outsides were beautiful! (Showcasing some of my faves above).

-One stupid addition that made me mad was the D1 Tournament. This is a Digimon World-style AI vs. AI tournament where you just stare at the screen and hope your digimon win. It was just a slog to get through and I just wanted to get back to the dungeons. I really can't see the appeal in that sort of "gameplay." In fact, I fast forwarded or got up for a snack whenever it got to that part.

-Another lame part about this game is that you can't buy multiple items at once anymore! You could do it in Tag Tamers so why did they go backwards!? You seriously have to buy one item at a time. How dumb.

-I'm pretty proud of my final team: Metal Greymon, King Etemon, and AeroVeedramon. Metal Greymon had poison and curse, King Etemon had stun and AeroVeedramon had the best all-enemies attack. I could of gotten AeroVeedramon to mega as well, but I realized I didn't need to to win and it would have taken another few hours.

-There was a bit more variety in the dungeons compared to Tag Tamers. They all looked the same, but a lot of them had a gimmick. Some of them had puzzles or various ways you were supposed to interact with the bosses to progress. I'm glad they mixed things up a bit since the last game was really straightforward.

-Pretty hilarious that this game ends all ominously by being like "~And then we never saw Ryo again~" but then you hit the new game plus and Gennai's like "Ah, if it isn't Ryo!" Like, clearly the new game plus bit isn't part of the canon storyline, but it still made me chuckle.

-Apparently the only thing to do in new game plus is just continue raising digimon which...no thanks.

-I've heard that this acts as a prequel to Digimon Tamers which is so exciting! I'm glad that I'm doing things in the proper order. One more game (kinda-sorta?) and then I finally get to move on from Adventure 01/02 ;w;

[executionerspity]

trying to get somewhere on deciding my next yuzugiri fic to focus on now that Rough Patch is nearly complete (in my drafts, as a very rough first draft) and ill have the time to work on other stuff

ideas under the cut, figured id at least get them out here and let people maybe comment or whatever

Idea 1: Focus on Catching Pop Flies and Feelings, a baseball AU with Baseball Pro!Sagiri and Bodyguard!Yuzuriha. It's already got the groundwork fairly set (and a few chapters uploaded), which allows for ease of transition into it, but I'm not a sports person, so I might prefer to keep it as a semi-sporadic fic to update.

Idea 2: Post-Series fic with a few of the butterflies that Rien planned to use on the mainland having actually reached there, altering things in ways that leave Yuzuriha and Sagiri investigating and handling several unwanted changes. This one could last a while with lower amounts of prep work, and could probably carry on and off until close to the end of the anime's airing, especially if they make 3 seasons with 1 cour each.

Idea 3: Modern AU fic with Cop!Sagiri, who makes a deal with Prisoner!Yuzuriha to get a confession from a different person to prevent a murder case mistrial, and the terms for Yuzuriha's cooperation requires them to interact semi-frequently. I've got a bit of the basics for this prepped, but not as much as the Baseball AU.

Idea 4: Arranged Marriage AU, where Yuzuriha agrees to go find an arranged marriage to get Saya better medical help in hopes of saving her dying sister. Cue Sagiri pushing her father's company needing to prove their diversity statements in order to get a wife, but her father insists on picking someone he thinks will be well behaved. Yuzuriha, of course, knows how to put on a façade. It's a newer idea, but fairly easy to write with minimal prep work.

Idea 5: Chess AU, modern. Nothing too complex or anything, just a meet-cute with some terrible pun title involving the word check or maybe a different chess term. Again, basically zero groundwork has been done for this, but it's a much easier concept to include overall, and can involve one of them teaching the other in order to make the gameplay lower level.

I do have a few different ideas beyond these that I've toyed with, but don't currently feel confident writing. I also could try to figure out another AU that's commonly used, like Band AU, Coffeeshop AU, or Florist/Tattoo Artist AU, and make that work. Probably would have some easy resources, but I'd be starting from square one on even building the ideas. Still down for people to suggest that stuff, in case anything pops out at me, it's just less likely than if I end up working on some idea of mine with some prep already done.

If I don't get any responses on this by roughly the end of April 12th (for at least one time zone), I'll probably end up working more on 1 and/or 3, but I'm pretty open to ideas. The time zone converter for that time is here.

[blazehedgehog]

Is it possible to make a game like Sonic 3 today within the deadlines it had back then? Pixel art, physics and all.

Why wouldn't it be?

It was the third game in the series. They already had a very strong idea of what they were trying to do with the character, they already had proven technology under them that they could easily extend and upgrade. They had been doing this on Sonic for three years already, and some of the people had been working for Sega even longer than that.

These were talented, experienced people. Professionals. Having the prior knowledge to be able to say, "if we do X, then we get Y" allowed them to work quickly and efficiently.

So I would compare it to, say, what I did with OverBite. OverBite was a game I made for a Clickteam Fusion Game Jam in 2016. We had from like, September 30th or even the 29th up to October 31st to make an entire game. It came out to something like 33 days.

So I made this game where you play as Dracula. I wrote all the code, designed all the mechanics, made all of the sprites, and built all of the levels. Alone. By myself. A single person. The only other person to help me with anything was my old friend Malcolm Brown, who handed me some music.

I had JUST bought Clickteam Fusion 2.5 on Steam, which means it had 0 hours of usage registered. I used it to make OverBite, which means I could track exactly how many hours I spent working on the game, and though I don't remember the exact total, I remember after doing the math it ended up shaking out to between 9 to 11 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 33 days. It was more than 300 hours total.

Again. For one person. I'm not saying it's the greatest game ever made. The level design in particular was extremely last second -- literally, I was down to the last day, only really had finished the gameplay engine, so I cobbled together four levels in a few hours and put it up seconds before the deadline at midnight. But the point is that I had worked in Clickteam Fusion for a decade and a half and could execute on my needs very well. I knew the software and the process like the back of my hand.

Now imagine having two people like that. Or five. Or ten. "300 hours of work in one month" suddenly turns into 3000 hours in one month. Using tech they already have, and proven gameplay concepts they have a lot of familiarity with.

It still wasn't easy, mind you. But the concepts that made it work back then not only still work today, they probably work even better because you aren't fighting to squeeze things down into such limited hardware. Like, the entire reason a game jam can even exist as a concept at all is because at a certain level of development, things are just easier now.

A game jam in 1994 is an impossible concept to think of because the tools had to be so super specialized to an incredibly narrow kind of work environment. You had to be a genius computer scientist to get something like Sonic the Hedgehog to function, never mind how much money it would cost to get something like a development kit.

Today, literally anyone can pick up a copy of Godot or Unreal 5, watch a few Youtube tutorials, and make a game from their bedroom with consumer tools. And those tools are faster, easier, and more intuitive to work with than anything that came before. It cannot be understated what a huge concept that is, and how that used to be totally impossible 15-20 years ago.

(And before some British dude rolls up like "yeah well you could always do that with the amiga" -- that's true, but it's also still different, and the fact that you can just give Microsoft $20 to unlock "Developer Mode" on an Xbox and start pushing Unity and Unreal games you develop on your PC to a console is still mindblowing in context.)

And it trickles down, too. If you know the conversion process, you can use these nice amazing modern tools to make proper retro games that run on real retro hardware.

All of this is to say that just because it's easier doesn't mean it should be done. OverBite absolutely slaughtered me. 11 hours of game development a day, 7 days a week, for almost five solid weeks was deeply unhealthy, physically and mentally. I haven't come close to finishing any game project, ever, since OverBite. It fried me.

And on Sonic Team's side, Sonic 3 was so massively stressful for them that they quit making Sonic games for almost half a decade. Crunch time development like that hurts in many ways, both visible and (mostly) invisible.

But yes, it could still absolutely be done.

[silent-partner-412]

i played through pikmin 1 again last night (on dolphin, not switch. i have no money) and i was struck by a few things. first of all, it is striking how well this game aged despite low key aging like shit. this game is jank as hell, the feel of the gameplay is significantly worse than pikmin 2,3, and now 4, and the pikmin ai and mechanics are just… so unrefined. honestly 99% of the difficulty in this game came entirely down to the jank of the game; put all the same level design and enemy placements in pikmin 2 or 3 and the game becomes significantly easier.

the thing is though, the gameplay loop of this series is so fundamentally strong that the game is still a blast anyway. attempting to comb these areas in the most efficient manner is so great, and because you only have one captain and the basic three pikmin types it simplifies things but also completely changes how you need to strategize.

this might be because i’m not nearly as familiar with the game compared to pikmin 2 and 3 (this was i think only my second time ever playing it through, compared to the probably 6 or 7 of pikmin 2 and maybe a dozen for pikmin 3?) but i noticed pikmin tend to die way more in this game in basic combat encounters. honestly you’d think this would make the game harder but what i noticed was it made sending pikmin back with the bodies of enemies a way more satisfying exercise because it felt so much more necessary. i never felt like i was low on pikmin because i was constantly replenishing my numbers, but it always still felt tense because my numbers kept going up and down. it’s something you don’t get as much in pikmin 2 and 3, which i think is a bit unfortunate honestly.

finally, the final boss of this game… sucks. it’s literally just a slow war of attrition, just hope you can do enough damage before the end of the day because his health resets after the day ends. i actually didn’t beat him because the day ended, and i just ran out of patience. it’s just not a very interesting fight; pikmin 2 and 3 also have long final fights that overstay their welcome, but at least in pikmin 2 it’s in a cave so you aren’t timed, and in pikmin 3 the boss maintain’s it’s health after the day ends. here it just sucks, and it was the only part of the game i didn’t enjoy.

didn’t intend to write a 5 paragraph mla format college essay about pikmin 1 but this is all just to say that i’ve massively underrated this game in the past because i never owned it like i did for the other two games, and this is a shame because it’s more or less just as good as them, it just feels much less refined and has much less overall content as them. still a great game in a great series and i think it’s probably the one people should start with if they wanna get into pikmin. don’t be like me and go backwards.

[happycricketbox]

Just finished a replay of my favorite game series, Mother!! I'm glad i did because my first time playing it my opinion was a bit unbalanced and influenced by my play order i feel, now i have newfound appreciation for all three of them!

more thoughts under da cut

First time i played in order of 3>2>1 and this time i went the other way around!

My opinion on Mother 1 has not changed much i think. I love the story the most, it is a simple unique contained tale with a sweet message. It is undoubtedly very dated and janky and also admittedly exhausting to play, lol. It's the combination of the monotonous visual, blaring song and just a big barren dangerous world to explore! I still love it so much though i would not recommend it as someone's first game in the installment in this series. Need to ease your way in from other installment(s) first.

Mother 2, i remember not liking it so much when i played it first time. Mainly because it was so different from Mother 3, lol. And the quirkiness takes precedence over everything else, at least that's what i thought back then. After replaying it i like it a lot more now!

It is similar to M1 in visual/ux though with *many* improvements that makes it an easier experience. I still don't appreciate how hard it is to navigate your way thru status conditions and healing them. Though i do feel that being able to heal everything via hot springs is a tad too convenient... so iunno! I like the world exploration aspect and i think homesickness is such a cute status effect, haha.

Mother 3 was my BIG favorite back then! I still love it now obviously though the flaws are a bit more apparent now that i play in the supposed order. M1 and M2 was like, cosmic horror for kids. And now in M3 that aspect is just gone? and it's more of a tragic family tale. It's great, but admittedly it doesn't hit me as hard as the first time. Maybe mainly because i think the first few chapters were a draaaaag. They're more intended for story progression instead of gameplay experience, and the game doesn't properly kick off until i have my full team (chapter 5). Also i don't really care about the lore dump since they just did it right before the end.

That was a big complaint but M3 also has plethora of positives. I like the cast the most (mainly for emotional reasons rather than gameplay efficiency but STILL), sound battle is a blast, fantastic music and animation. The world is less open and more of a linear path but they circumvent it by giving you the ability to run. Also it has the sweetest ending!!!

Final verdict? Mother series good. Play all of them

thank you for reading till the end!

[hybbat]

🔥 pokemon!

I have... a few...

There's nothing wrong with trubbish and vanillish as concepts, and unlike many pokemon their designs are still very good and cute and just the right balance of concept and design.

Gen 5 had almost nothong but banger pokemon designs and you cannot complain about them "just being replacements for other pokemon" when 1) pokemon has always had regional versions of the same concept, 2) newer games who only put out like 50 pokemon are also making blander clones of older pokemon, 3) regional variants exist and are far and wide a massive mistake, and 4) gen 5s takes on similar concepts were fully fleshed out into their own pokemon with their own place in the story and region and often did the concept and design better than the pokemon they are ecounterpart to.

Too many of the recent pokemon in the last two generations are too simple and just the animal theyre based on with a halfhearted gimmick or type slapped on in a way that usually ruins the design. This includes pokemon i like like wooloo, who is adorable and one of the few gen 8 pokemon I actually like, but it has no excuse for how simple and boring it is when flaafy exists.

Most regional pokemon force concepts onto older pokemon that would have been better as their own pokemon, but its easier to edit an existing pokemon. Most modern pokemon are designed to be easy to model rather than have good designs. There's a reason simple pokemon like diglett and pyukumuku have so many regional variants/similar pokemon and a lot more pokemon have patterns as their detail or simplified design concepts.

Raihan and Piers are some of the ugliest character designs in pokemon history, Marnie's character is nonexistent and her design is cowardly, and Leon is a nothing character with a bad design who has exactly one character trait (no sense of direction) which they go beyond tell dont show and have him actively contradict in his very first major scene (finding you in a foggy forest and guding you out)

The mainline pokemon games haven't become open world. They just became open field, and have less fun gameplay, less interesting locations, and worse visuals for it.

A 3d pokemon game is not inherently bad, even if it absolutely looks and plays better in 2d and 2.5d, and XY proves as much, as its only flaws could have been smoothed out entirely by a third entry the same as DPPt. The problem is the switch from tiling, the artstyle shift to more realistic, and switch to the switch which has done nothing but ruin all the portable consol games forced onto it while also making them more expensive. They problem is less content for your money, the simplification and reliance on nostalgia pandering to retain old fans, the poor modeling incapable of capturing the artstyle, and the refusal to give more time to make a game that requires more time to make due to the 3d. And the problem is the clmplete shift in focus and mindset that came with the onset of 3d games starting with ORAS and new management both in the pokemon company and nintendo.

Most fanmade pokemon games have terrible balancing and think increasing the levels and giving trainers bigger parties will make the game more fun. Imo gen 5 had the best balacing of any pokemon game, even on b2w2's hard mode, and I wish both official and fanmade games would take notes.

Pokemon went downhill when it took away HMs, because it also by extention took away most of its puzzle and exploration gameplay that was important to making grinding and travel fun. HMs had their annoyances, but they had an integral part of the gameplay that pokemon never truly bothered to replace, with the sole exception of ride pokemon in XY and Let's Go.

Pokemon sleep would be amazing and more than any company I trust pokemon to make games that have good intentions, and if it came out 10 years ago I would trust it, but I know it just exists to harvest data and track people.

I've gone on this rant before but rotomdex is the worst thing ever to happen to the emersion of pokemon. I hate having a smartphoen or tablet instead of a pokedex and poketch/pokenav/cute scifi device that could be made into a marletable toy.

Pokemon does not have any right to be a full price game on the switch, let alone package the postgame as DLC they also charge for.

[authortobenamedlater]

My conclusions about Infinite, which I keep meaning to post and not posting:

Definitely more fun to play than Halo 4. But my old junky piano with a cracked soundboard was more fun to play than Halo 4.

For real, though, this was one of the more enjoyable games in terms of just playing for me. The grapple shot makes moving around and keeping up way easier and was handy when I ran out of ammo and needed to stun a few bad guys.

Jen Taylor should win an award for playing Cortana, Weapon, and Halsey in one game. I enjoyed Esparza’s Just Some Guy Forced To Rise To The Occasion vibe, though I do wonder why they were so cagey about his name until the final scene.

Infinite should have started with a doomed mission to defend Infinity so we can get an idea of just HOW BAD things have gotten. The last thing we saw was Lasky’s “we’ll run until we can fight” line at the end of Halo 5. Clearly they couldn’t fight, so let us see how desperate things are. Maybe drop some info about the general state of the universe after a year of Created rule. An explanation about how Infinity lost 11000 crew in one year (I have my Opinions about this number but this is not the place). I know things are rough under Cortana’s undid iridium fist but geez. Show us the Banished boarding and ripping through Infinity like she’s tinfoil. Bonus if we get Chief and Palmer both stopping Lasky from launching himself at Atriox. We all know this happened. Make us understand how Infinity fell in four minutes. THEN give us Atriox going Hulk on Chief’s Loki.

The game could be kind of…repetitive. The side quests were all pretty much the same: Liberate FOBs, find Spartan cores and audio logs, boss fights, assassination missions, take out propaganda tower. But it’s pretty. 4 was ugly and 5 was…alternately oddly dark and OK-looking.

I liked how Chief’s relationship with Weapon is sort of inverse to his relationship with Cortana. Cortana always knew more than the Chief, but in many ways Chief knows more than the Weapon. Like in CE it’s Cortana who tells Chief about Halo’s purpose and in Infinite Chief has to tell Weapon. And, Chief chooses the Weapon. Not the same way Cortana chose him, but he still chose her when she said “You should just delete me.” It’s a good way of doing the same thing over again without doing the same thing over again.

I wish the gameplay would pause during audio logs because they’re staticky to begin with and I only heard about half of the logs while I was fighting bad guys.

Big questions:

Palmer and Roland are conspicuous in their absence from any audio logs. Where are they?

I’ll ask again what will happen to the Weapon in seven years. I have ideas but just. Do not put us through another Halo 4. Please Microsoft.

All this Endless stuff makes me think we’re nowhere near done with the Master Chief’s story. Steve Downes is 73. I hate to be morbid but what are they going to do if he dies before the story is finished?

I don’t know what to think about Weapon naming herself Cortana. It makes sense and I’m not sure I want it. Also wouldn’t be surprised if that “I think I have the perfect name” line turns out to be a bait and switch since Microsoft has commitment issues when it comes to storytelling decisions.

How will those little time travel portals become important? Weapon didn’t talk about how they traveled three days into the future just for fun. Read on for my theory.

Are the Endless the new Flood?

Headcanons and such:

Esparza’s family is not gone. We’ll eventually find them and Chief will get adopted into the Esparza clan against his will.

Whenever the time comes Weapon will find a way to cure or delay rampancy. Or we’ll just exist in a 6.5 year time loop for the rest of the games. Because again, one Halo 4 is enough.

Infinity is either drifting aimlessly in space or crashed on Zeta Halo, but she will rise again.

Next game we’ll find a bunch of Infinity crew, notably Lasky, Palmer, and Roland, through one of those time travel portals. For them it’s only been a day or two and they’re all like “Wow, Chief, that was fast” and Chief has to tell them it’s really been more like two years. I have a fic idea or two about this.

[jack-shadow]

A better look at Hexers

I'd like to start off by saying thanks for supporting the first idea, and thanks to your ideas I have made Hexers a much more defined class.

While a lot of this is still concept I have some gameplay ideas to share as well as a mjor feature and a few subclasses to make use of it.

Starting with the casting Stat, dye to tge fact this magic comes from their physical body and their DNA, their casting Stat is actually constitution, Unless you're playing a sylubclass that allows it to be replaced with Strength or Wisdom.

As you can already tell Hexers take a werid approach to spell casting and it gets even werider when talking about spell slots or as their refered to when a hexer uses them, Strikes (just Spell slots with a fancy name)

When a Hexer uses up all their strikes they lose control and become Awakened, Awakened is like the spell casting version of rage, you become more powerful (not sure how exactly yet) but you have less control over your charater and have to roll for Wis just to see if you actually preform that action and not a different one.

How I think this would work is you have to roll a D8 or something and if you don't get a 4 or 5 on your roll you cast the spell that's as many spaces apart as your number (E.G. you roll a 7 so you cast a spell that's 2 up from the one you wanted to cast)

Different subclasses would have different focuses and ability based around the Awakening, for instance the Curse (Curses being the name for Hexer subclasses) of the Experimint which is focused on control and making sure you don't become Awakened, or at least when you do you have more control.

In contrast the Curse of the Beast is all about Powering up the Awakened, and making it easier to enter at a moments notice.

As you can see there are multiple fun ways one can build a play style around or avoiding the Awakened state. The lore idea is that strikes are just how many times a hexer can use magic without losing themselves to it, which I think is very Hexer-like. They still can use spells while Awakened if that wasn't obvious.

Please feel free to give advice and tell me ways the Awakened state can be improved.

[silvercat-the-daydreamer]

it's time for fuckin touhou7 i guess

it's pcb it's the only one for which my brain accepted the abbreviation as a name instead of just "touhou7", interestingly.

myeah so i was just listening to other touhou music while playing cotc and then yt recommended a track from this game, so i thought i should give this one a try. it's got one of my girls in it after all.

first off my thoughts abt the music: "it's cute" was my thought when i was playing the earlier stages. and i'm not quite sure what made me think that. maybe it's that it's an older game or smth. anyways. i specifically enjoyed alice's theme, which has some parts that sound kinda mysterious and all and it goes pretty hard.

now the stage 5 theme, it's hard to say if it's a theme i like. that's because it's got some parts i kinda dislike, which are those that... have the vibe of thick fog with the sun shining through it that is way too bright. and then it's got lovely melodic parts which i'm always a fan of so... huh.

next, the final stage theme, which was the one that landed in my yt recommended. what i said to my friend about it was that it sounded like anxiety music, ha. especially the first part. it sounds like you're running for your life.

finally, yuyuko's theme... dude. dawg. man. this goes So hard and it's beautiful and loud like a reasonable final boss theme, fuuuck yeah. and the theme of the revive spell, it's so epic. bro was seriously cooking, idk what else to say man. 10/10 aaaaaaaaa

okay and now for gameplay notes. as usual i grabbed marisa, alright. well. kind of a terrible idea to start with her, not even knowing the best way to deal with certain attacks. i did terribly! so, after fucking dying miserably (and then accidentally hitting "no" when it asked me if i wanted to use a continue of which i only had one left, ...which was on the fucking revive spell btw), i begrudgingly grabbed reimu instead. that was more managable and i did finally beat the game on easy. used 2 continues on that run, wow...

then i remembered smth i'd heard about the game's normal mode not being that much harder than easy, so i went for that one too, and yeah, that was pretty much right. first attempt, beat that one on my last life on my last continue, which was stressful as fuck, but i did beat it, hell yeah

overall this game's... a little tough. there's one hell of a difficulty spike on stage 4, and i need to have a word with the prismriver mfs. (that word is: "ouch")

and god that revive spell yuyuko has is one mean motherfucker. it's very scary (even tho it seems kinda simple if you take the time to figure out what to do i guess...). apart from that, there's also a few spells that she has that i still don't really know how to deal with and i just kinda die there

now here's something fun. this game's actually pretty much unplayable with keyboard controls for me. wanna know why? it's because on german keyboards (which i have), the z and y keys are swapped. try to play with your hand sluttily stretched over half the keyboard, won't you. it's fine if you don't plan on using any bombs i guess... but why's this a problem for this game specifically? idk, any newer game i've played accepts the y key in place of the z key. the ones that are older than this game have that issue too, btw, at least the ones i played (which are just the pc-98 ones).

anyways. there's youmu!! appearing 3 times in this one game. that's a lot. girl does Not want us to bother yuyuko huh. so she comes in all badass like, slowing time or whatever that is, got a cool sword pose going. hell yeah. go girlie.

so well that's it for this--

...oh wait a fucking second i just realized i completely forgot you can set the amount of lives you start with. i guess that would make it a bit easier. i just left it at 3 huh. god that could have been a bit less of a struggle--

--THAT'S IT FOR THIS POST BYE...!

[bluealexa]

Been playing talos principle 2 lately, very near endgame I think.

First, a gameplay review - much easier than the first game in certain keys ways. The first one had a few puzzle elements that could kill you (reset the puzzle! Even if you were mostly done!) and some of them had anxiety inducing beeps when near you. So far I haven't found any such elements in the sequel. Lots and lots of puzzle elements and difficult puzzles, but I rarely die (usually a fall from a great height and it's fully on me... Except when the anti grav elements confuse the fuck out of me.) and only sometimes have to reset a puzzle because I soft locked myself out of a solution.

I never finished the first game because I could never cope well enough with certain puzzles to finish enough to unlock an ending. I love how much philosophy was tied up in the first games lore and I've heard about the different possible endings - but I have no emotional connection with those endings because even reading a guide I simply cannot get to any ending of that game.

Talos principle 2 though - I won't say I haven't read guides when stuck. Often enough it's that I misunderstood a puzzle element and even a small hint would get me on the right track (like when I was determined to solve one a particular way but I couldn't get the parts over where I wanted it - found a thread where someone did what I was trying to do and it didn't solve it anyway! So I backed down and looked for a new solution and found it 5 min later.)

But oh man the philosophy. There's so much lore, either in conversations with characters or to read off a screen or little voice note time capsules left for you. Bonus, if you have hurty hands, these are little breaks to sit the controller down and just listen.

The philosophy tied up in the lore is so amazingly captivating. I love it so much.

And so far still no puzzle elements I cannot tolerate. Not even on the optional puzzles that are just there to unlock other special things which I expect I'll get to after I get a clear of the main game.

I don't know yet if there are multiple different endings but I love that certain dialogue trees that ask me to state my opinion of the philosophical questions have sometimes 6 or more answers. I get to indicate my level of optimism about the problems, my level of determination to believe in the beauty of the universe, my tolerance of existential pessimism on the society level (hey it's fine if you're a pessimistic person but if society gets pessimistic then everyone loses the will to try to improve and that fucking sucks).