#my first time modding the game- first of all that was easy as hell. secondly. its 4 am and i started doing this at 1 am el oh el

[scalpelsister]

the dark urge

[puppys-rhythm-heaven]

why ds is the best game 100% serious

i couldn’t come up with anything for an “essay” (quote-on-quote) for why ds’ sequels are the best but i did make a shitty essay about why ds is the best game so enjoy i guess.

in this very serious (/s) essay, i will be talking about why rhythm heaven ds is the best game. just overall the best game. that’s how much i like it. ds has a lot going for it; the touch screen controls are very enjoyable, even when emulated (apart from the sliding, that’s the spawn of rhythm hell), the music’s unsurprisingly (given the games’ track record) very good, and it has some of the best rhythm games in the series. let’s go over these points individually.

firstly, the controls. sort of unsurprisingly given how obsessed nintendo was with using the touch screen in literally every game, rhythm heaven ds controls (almost) entirely with the ds’ touch screen, with the system being sideways during gameplay. there are two main types of controls: tapping and flicking. 

the tapping’s rather self-explanatory; you simply tap the touch screen with your stylus, finger or whatever you’re using when you’re cued to. flicking’s easy to explain as well; sometimes you’ll be cued to flick the touch screen with your stylus/whatever, with some games entirely controlling with this. while the controls can be a bit finicky at times, over all they’re quite fun, and it’s not any harder when emulated as far as i can tell, especially if you have the touchless mod which just lets you use buttons instead.

secondly, the music. given that rhythm heaven games are collection of various rhythm games, it’s no surprise that the series all has good music. this is especially the case with ds. while tengoku, fever, and therefore megamix all have songs i don’t like very much - though they’re still not bad - ds doesn’t have any case of this. from the simple solfege and then some that is built to scale to the lyrical masterpieces that are songs like love ooh ooh paradise and struck by the rain, every music track in ds is good. 

oh yeah, did i mention rhythm heaven has vocal songs? generally they tend to mainly appear in remixes, but in ds, this isn’t the case; all five of ds’ lyrical songs - thrilling! is this love?, love ooh ooh paradise, young love rock ‘n’ roll, struck by the rain and that’s paradise - are in its various games, and while i’ve seen people say the japanese versions are better, the english versions still manage to be really good. though i might just not have good taste-

lastly, the rhythm games. as i mentioned previously, the various games in the rhythm heaven series are called rhythm games. for some reason. nintendo’s just weird with that sort of thing sometimes. ds has 25 unique rhythm games, all of which have different cues, controls and patterns, making every game unique. though ds also has like six different repeat-after-me games so maybe not as unique as they could be.

said rhythm games are also all really fun, no matter how difficult ds’ nonsensical grading makes them. even a game as simple as shoot-’em-up, where you simply repeat a given pattern, still manages to be enjoyable. ds has no bad games, though there are some that. aren’t as good as others.

overall, these points all add up to ds honestly being the best game, at least in my opinion. the tapping and flicking, while simple, are fun, and the music playing in each very good rhythm game is, well, very good as well. uh i don’t know how to end this on a satisfying close so uh. play ds. i mean play fever and tengoku first but then play ds.

[elcorhamletlive]

fandom: MCU (post-CW, post-IW) ship: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark tags: Fluff and Humor, Crack Treated Seriously, Human Disaster Tony Stark

As most of Tony’s mistakes, it starts out when he’s drunk.

He’s drunk because of Steve. Because Steve is back now, apparently for good. He and his merry band of fugitives have been pardoned, the Accords are under revision, and he and Tony have made up. Truly, honestly made up. Few things put pointless fights in perspective like a Mad Titan knocking on your planet’s door.

So Tony and Steve are not mad at each other anymore. They’re speaking normally. All things considered, they’re fine.

That’s why Tony’s drunk. He’s drunk because Steve is back, and they’re fine, and that’s apparently all they’ll ever be. He’s drunk because Steve hasn’t moved back to the compound, instead settling into some shitty apartment in Brooklyn, and whenever he comes around for training or to work on Avengers business, he and Tony greet each other and make small talk about the weather and that’s it.

He’s drunk because he’s an idiot. Because he was hoping that, once he and Steve have made up, things between them could… be different, maybe. He was hoping they’d understand each other better. He was hoping he’d be able to look into Steve’s eyes and say something that wasn’t a snarky comment—hell, he was hoping he’d be able to ask Steve out for lunch or something, in between U.N. meetings. He was hoping they’d see each other more, and spend more time together, and…

It would be easier.

He and Steve are fine, but fine is not enough.

Therefore: alcohol.

Truth be told, the problem doesn’t really start because he’s drunk. It starts because he’s alone in his workshop, navigating through panels and archives aimlessly, and he runs into Vision’s latest The Sims file.

Vision has been into The Sims for years now. At first Tony thought it was hilarious, but Vision defended it earnestly, arguing it gives him good insight into human interactions. Tony had exchanged a meaningful look with Rhodey at the thought that Vision viewed The Sims as an accurate portrayal of human interactions, they shrugged, and now Vision is just into the game. Vision makes a lot of mods and shares them on the internet, and it’s a bit of a hit. Tony is pretty sure there are downloadable copies of the Avengers compound online, ready to be built in game.

Tony, on the other hand, hasn’t played The Sims for even a minute. He’s never been huge with simulation games—he either gets out of control with getting everything perfect or burns everything down in flames, no in between.

But The Sims 2 is, after all, a classic.

When the game starts loading, a corner of his brain (the same corner that constantly gives him great advice like buy Pepper a giant bunny or a suit of armor around the world, yeah, that’s going to work) wonders if Vision made models of them. Them, as in, the Avengers.

Then the same corner of his brain jumps to wondering if there are models of them, as in, Tony and Steve.

That’s where it gets messy.

As it turns out, Vision did make models of the two of them, but Tony chooses not to use them, because a) Viz gave Steve a beard, and Tony hates that fucking beard, he nearly started dancing in the middle of a conference room when Steve walked into the U.N. clean-shaved; and b) those pants he gave Tony to wear? Really, Viz? No way.

So he makes his own models. Or, fine, let’s just call it what it is, his own family. He makes himself and he makes Steve, and then he thinks making just the two of them is too creepy so he makes a dog, which, coming to think of it, doesn’t really help the newly-weds vibe, but okay.

He gives himself Knowledge aspiration, and after much thought he gives Family to Steve, because Justice For All is not an aspiration and he needs to pick something. He makes himself want to be a mechanic, and he gets Steve into law enforcement, because the lifetime goal Become Captain Hero is too appropriate to resist.

He names the dog Friday, which makes actual Friday lock up the liquor cabinet, saying I think you’ve had enough for tonight, Boss.

He does not start out the game with him and Steve in a relationship, but when he begins playing, all the immediate wishes of Sim Tony are about Steve. Talking to Steve, playing games with Steve, telling Steve a joke. Typical.

Then he clicks on Steve’s wishes, and there it is: Talking to Tony, playing games with Tony, laughing at Tony’s joke.

He clicks on Sim Steve, then clicks on Sim Tony, and sets Sim Steve to “Talk to Tony”.

And so they talk.

If only it were this easy, Tony thinks, clinging to his glass.

The next day, when Steve drops by to train Peter, Tony almost chokes on his coffee out of guilt.

Steve lays one strong, warm hand on his back, looking at him with worried blue eyes. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” Tony coughs, managing to swallow another sip. He doesn’t meet Steve’s eyes. “Just, uh, didn’t sleep much last night. Might’ve drifted off while drinking. Hardly the first time that ever happened.”

“Oh,” Steve says, scrutinizing Tony with his gaze. Tony tries his best to not let I made simulated versions of you and me in my computer and I think they’re falling in love show in his expression. “You can’t keep doing this, Tony. It’s not healthy.” And Tony can hear the scowl in his voice, the disapproval. “What if we had a mission?”

The judgment on his face sparks annoyance in Tony’s chest, and he immediately slips away from Steve's touch. “None of your business, Cap.”

Steve’s face shows a glimpse of hurt before closing in an annoyed expression, and Tony turns away and leaves.

When Tony gets back to his lab, he wants to let that anger out. Because who is Steve to touch Tony’s back with that gentle warm hand and stare at him with those blue eyes as he judges Tony’s sleeping habits? No one, that’s who. They’re barely even friends and there Steve is, trying to give him orders, acting like he cares when it's only a moral obligation that makes him worry about whether Tony was sleeping enough or not.

Tony turns on the game. His plan is to build a pool, make Sim Steve go swim, remove the stairs, and then watch as he drowns.

The plan fails, though. Firstly because he gets too distracted building the pool (building stuff is the best aspect of the game, in Tony’s opinion – he, Steve and Friday have the best house of the entire neighborhood), and secondly because, when Sim Steve starts to want to get out of the pool and there are no stairs, Tony can’t help but feel like shit. He can’t do it. Even a bunch of pixels with Steve’s name is enough to make him weak.

So, when Death comes to pick Sim Steve up, Tony sends Sim Tony to bargain with her. He wins, of course, but he was prepared to hack the entire game if he didn’t.

Then Sim Steve comes to thank Sim Tony, and they start talking again, and – okay, it’s a mechanic of the game that sims of the same group will have wishes about each other, Tony gets it, but it still tugs his heartstrings when he sees the line up of Sim Steve’s wishes. It goes: thank Tony, hug Tony, shake Tony’s hand, learn how to make pancakes.

The last one has the positive effect of reminding Tony that this is still a fucking video game, and he’s making starry eyes because a version of Steve he made up likes him.

There’s pathetic, and there’s the level he’s at right now, which Tony suspects is an entirely new category of depressing.

Still, he clicks on Sim Tony, and the wishes are pretty much the same (including the one about pancakes, which reminds Tony he hasn’t taught either of them to cook anything yet, so they’ve been living off cereal and juice boxes). There’s just one difference: In the place where Sim Steve had Thank Tony as a wish, Sim Tony has kiss Steve.

Tony very determinedly breaks the Sims apart and sends them both to read culinary books. He will not go there.

But… It keeps happening. He puts the game on ultra speed and every time he leaves Sim Tony without a command, he wants to do something with Sim Steve; and vice-versa. Sim Steve goes to sleep and a balloon thought with Sim Tony’s face pops up over his head. Tony gets distracted for a moment and they just start dancing together in the living room, to the sound of Bonito.

Tony considers breaking them apart again, but… they look so happy.

And besides, there’s nothing wrong with fulfilling the Sims’ wishes, right? That’s just the goal of the game, after all.

So Tony lets them dance. And when they finish, he makes them talk. And they talk and tell each other jokes and hug each other over and over again until the romantic options show up, and then both of their wishes bars are filled with each other.

Tony makes them flirt – Sim Tony gives Sim Steve a rose, Sim Steve writes a serenade for Sim Tony, and Sim Tony tells Sim Steve a dirty joke. Tony makes them repeat that ad nauseum, even after the “have first kiss with Steve” action appears, because he’s not risking getting rejected in a video game, thank you very much. He makes sure they’re at 100/100 on the relationship bar, and then makes them kiss.

There’s cheesy music, silly animation and little hearts floating everywhere. They kiss some more, and then Sim Steve gets the wish to “Have a serious relationship”, which Tony locks for later (because holy shit, Sim Steve, take it easy, buddy). Then Sim Tony gets the same wish, and that’s when Tony decides that’s enough gaming for the night. He makes the happy couple watch TV and cuddle together, pointedly ignores the balloon thought with the “Woo-hoo” symbol that appears over Sim Tony’s head, and goes to sleep.

read the rest on ao3!

[allaboardthemetro-blog]

Heavy Rail

It had been some time since you all were here... How long though? Maybe a day or two? Sure, there were clocks all around, but no way to tell when it was day, or night. Also, there wasn’t exactly a calendar anywhere, and all the newspapers are outdated. 

One thing is true though, and that no one is dead yet. Given the circumstances, that’s a really good thing. Some people even seemed hopeful after doing some exploration that maybe there was a way out of here.

Though in that moment, with you doing whatever it was, you felt something buzz. Feeling around, you finally realized it was your pager. It displayed a small message...

“Pass booth. Now. All of you.”

The sender of the message made you gulp, as it was from none other than your oh so gracious host Jenova.

Well, to be honest it didn’t seem like a good idea to disobey what he said, so you all decided to mosey your way on over to his requested destination. Upon arriving there, something seemed... Out of place.

Next to the pass booth was something that looked almost like a confessional, or maybe a photo booth. Or well, sixteen of them. They all were kind of compact next to each other, all about the size of an outhouse, and made of metal. It seemed there was a rather sloppily yellow painted cross on the front, with as equally sloppy set of white wings on each one of the booths.

Your attention was then sent back to the ticket/pass purchase booth when next to the slot machine, you saw a small tablet propped up there. Upon closer in inspection you...

Jenova?

Yep, that’s him alright. From through the speaker of the tablet you could hear him say, “I’ll wait for everyone to show up first. Tell me when they do.”

Soon enough, everyone was there and someone plainly told him, “Okay, you get on with it now.”.

“Alright!” He cheered out form his side of the screen. “So there are two things I wanna say before we get this ball rolling. First, you might wonder why I am not there in person, and am instead in this undisclosed location.” It did seem a bit strange considering he usually hung around you all in person. “Well, the answer is pretty simple. I don’t want to be around you all when I explain what is going to happen.” That gave... Literally no answers to anyone. 

“Secondly, you might be wondering what those confessionals are doing there.” Ah, so you were right. They were a bunch of confessionals. The world can rest easy now knowing what those things were supposed to be. “Well, that is where my little... Present for you all is going to be given.” This already sounds ominous and you don’t like it.

“Now then, it’s been a little while since you’ve all been here. Though from what we all know, no one is dead is yet.” He faked a pouting face as he drew little tears going down his face with his fingers. “So I thought I’d give you guys a twofer.” A whody whaty now?

“By that I mean, I am giving you a motive and a means.”

Oh boy. That’s... That’s not sounding good by any means.

“So first off, the motive side of the house. As some of you have expressed concerns on already, your family, friends, and general loved one seemingly have no idea where you are. However, you don’t know where they are either.” What the? What type of game is he getting at? “So I took the liberty of grabbing one extra captive. However, they obviously aren’t joining you. Instead, I am holding them hostage. This person is someone that one”, he made a large emphasis on that one, “and only one of you knows. I also know for a fact that they are rather close to you, in fact the closest person to you in the whole world. Now before you go questioning who it is, I’ll tell you some something.”

He cleared his throat before continuing. “If no one kills someone within the next three days, I will personally kill the hostage. Don’t think you are going to be killing me either, because you won’t be finding me. I’ve hidden myself until someone dies. If I end up killing this hostage, I will go out and find another one, and the cycle will continue.” You know, you couldn’t put this above him, this is exactly something he would do, but still... What the hell?! He’s actually going to kill someone?! “And if you think I’m bluffing,” he pulls out what seemed to be a revolver with an open barrel. He loads in six bullets, closes the chamber and points it at the screen. “then you got another thing coming.” His face was stone cold by now, not even a hint of his usual smile. 

He lowers the gun and sighs, shaking his head. “Now then, onto the second part of this twofer deal. If you don’t want this person to do die, well, I found a way to make this job a little easier for you all. In those confessionals you will find a pistol,” He holds up a different gun, this time a regular Smith and Weston pistol, along with two bullets. One has a black mark on it and the other has a red mark. “and two bullets. The pistol can only hold one shot. As for the two bullets, the black bullet means that the round in it is a blank. For those who don’t know what that means, a blank bullet is just a model basically, it just is there to make noise, and doesn’t hurt anyone. The red bullet means that it is an actual bullet and can and will do damage is you try to shoot someone.” He decided to bring the gun closer to the screen to show how to load a bullet into it, and how to properly latch it back in. “Now then, if you want to see who that captive is, I highly recommend loading in a red bullet. Otherwise, I won’t show you who it is. Simple as that. Though that’s not all.” What more could he possibly have? “Once you load your bullet, you will drop the gun into the slot provided in the booth. All the guns will be collected and randomized. You will get a gun back, but there is no guarantee it is the gun you loaded. I will tell you if the gun you have has either a black, or red bullet.” He then chuckled to himself, much to your confusion. “Oh, and don’t try to take the bullet out of the gun. I’ve modded the gun to where no matter what you try, the only way you are getting that mullet out is if you shoot something.”

This was... A lot to take in. What the hell is this guy?! “Now then everyone, each of you get into your own booth. You have no choice. Let’s make this as simple and easy as possible without me having to take any action. Oh, if you need help loading, and also to see what bullet you loaded, each of the booths have screens just like this in each of them.”

“Have fun everyone. Happy bullet showers.”

With that, the screen shut off, and all the confessional booths stood waiting.

It seems you really don’t have a choice in this.

[stewy497]

Stew Reviews - DOOM - Rip And Tear

Honestly, I can’t say that I’m the most qualified person to review DOOM; I’m under self-imposed oath to never play any of the modern FPS games it deliberately distances itself from, under the unabashed bias that they are morally- and creatively-bankrupt wallpaper paste made by cretins, for cretins; and other than a few minutes at a friend’s house I’ve never played the original Doom that DOOM goes back to. On the other hand, that does mean that as with The Witcher 3 this will be an unbiased review, so let’s make like DOOM itself and jump right in.

Like an erroneous maths student, gaming seems to have gone back to formula somewhat lately. First Overwatch decided it’d rather be a hyperactive ball of condensed fun than follow the established online shooter structure, and now DOOM has taken that idea even further and gone back to being a cathartic romp through gore-splattered scenery hand in hand with a very angry man with no objective in life other than to kill every demon he can find as painfully as possible. The game deliberately eschews all modern shooter tropes such as regenerating health, cover mechanics, and even reloading, in favour of fast-paced, frenetic and damned fun run-gun action, which simultaneously streamlines and improves the entire experience.

As an obviously harmless kitten of a man, I will freely admit that I love to feel powerful when I play games, whether that be via the stealthy predator method, a la Dishonored, or the classic approach that DOOM employs of being an unstoppable super soldier carrying enough firepower to wipe out a small nation. Whatever way you interpret that though, don’t let it be that DOOM is easy; powerful as the Doom Marine is, every enemy still poses a threat in some measure even at normal difficulty, so the game does a good job of balancing catharsis with challenge.

But like I said in my Darkest Dungeon follow-up, challenge and catharsis go hand in hand with context. While DOOM does have a story, it’s nowhere close to being the game’s focus, which I can respect because it’s staying true to its heritage. Throughout the game there are only maybe three proper cutscenes, and any additional information you might want to know about the game’s world is relegated to the in-game codex. The base story is obvious and straightforward enough though: you’re an angry man who hates demons, woken up in a science facility on Mars infested with demons. The facility is for siphoning energy from Hell, which the demons would rather the scientists didn’t do, so they convinced a high-ranking scientist lady to open a portal that would let them absorb our world into their own. You need to kill the scientist lady and all the demons you find along the way. Any questions? Good, moving on.

So, what’s the core gameplay of DOOM? While I hardly feel I need to say it at this point, it’s a fast-paced first-person shooter with a heavy emphasis on mobility and sheer brutality. You can move fast, double jump once you find the required equipment, perform excessively ruthless finishing moves on literally every enemy in the game, including bosses, and never even have to reload. As you progress you’ll accumulate a slew of powerful guns that allow you to murder demons in different ways. My personal favourite was the Gauss Cannon, which creates enough recoil to shunt the Doom Marine back several feet and usually reduces whatever the projectile hits to individual limbs floating in a puddle of bodily fluids. Additionally, there are weapon mods which give each weapon an alternative firing mode, with two mods being available to each weapon; powerups to change the flow of battle; and upgrade tokens that you earn by slaughtering every demon you find. But what if you ever find yourself low on health or ammo and the guns aren’t cutting it? Well then, you’re a berserker-packing man-and-a-half with a vicious chainsaw and fists like breezeblocks. Glory Killing enemies with the brutal, bare-handed finishers grants extra health pickups, and the chainsaw causes whatever it cuts open to spill ammunition like a Texan piñata, allowing you to keep the killing spree going indefinitely.

Another of the more interesting aspects of the game is the Doom Marine himself. The game never leaves his perspective and he has no dialogue, yet he still constantly conveys character through body language. And what is that character? Surprisingly multi-faceted, it turns out. On the one hand, he can snap a demon’s neck by twisting it like a pepper grinder or rip its head open by re-enacting the Pacman game over sequence on it, but on the other he also fist-bumps the collectible action figure pickups and references Terminator while dying in lava. I could mention the way he throws aside the expositional monitor in the opening sequence of the game, but every other games journalist has already done that for me, so I won’t bother. All in all, even without dialogue, DOOM does a good job of characterising the Marine as a vengeful psychopath with a sadistic streak a mile wide, tempered by a more whimsical side.

But while there is plenty to like about DOOM and I’d still recommend it to anyone who can stomach a bit… Well, a lot of gore, no game is perfect and there are flaws I’m compelled to point out. The most noticeable one is probably the level design; it’s alright for the most part and every level is distinct from each other, but within the levels themselves the environments are all pretty samey and I found that I spent as much time with my nose buried in my map screen as I did with my shotgun barrel buried in an imp’s face. The game cries out for some sort of HUD minimap, but I don’t see how that’s possible, since the levels are extremely complex and twist and curl all over themselves like streets of Edinburgh’s Old Town – even the dedicated map screen is a 3D model that has to allow you to freely pan and rotate it to give you a decent idea of where you are, and you can’t recreate that effect in a tiny window in the corner of the screen. Not until someone invents a controller with three joysticks anyways. Not that you’d want to use it, since the pacing means that you need the speed and precision of a mouse to survive the waves of demons DOOM throws at you.

But now I’m getting off topic. Let’s get back on track by comparing DOOM to a game I only got into fairly recently – Dark Souls. Dark Souls has similarly contrived and unintuitive level design, but I can’t begrudge developer From Software for that since in Dark Souls it’s always immediately apparent where you are from your surroundings. At time of writing I have twenty hours clocked on Dark Souls and thirty-two on DOOM, according to Steam, and despite that twelve-hour discrepancy I can easily guide myself from the starting areas of Dark Souls to any of the further-on locations in what is already a massive, seamless, open-ended game. By contrast, if you asked me to describe the way through, say, the Foundry level of DOOM, I could only stand there staring skyward, mentally sifting through images of bright-orange molten metal and brown catwalks. Not to mention that despite encouraging exploration with hidden secrets, weapon mods and armour upgrade tokens, DOOM has a nasty habit of sticking untelegraphed points of no return into its levels which inevitably result in advancing the game when you were just trying to explore and find the control panel to open a locked door.

Secondly, I found that generally only one of the two available mods for each weapon was really useful. For example: between a shotgun that doubles as a grenade launcher, and a shotgun that fires three bursts in rapid succession, which would you say is more useful? Or how about the Gatling Rotator which allows the chain gun to be spun up without firing, compared to the Mobile Turret mod which massively increases your damage and allows you to fire at max rate as soon as it’s deployed? That particular issue is meant to be addressed by the mobile turret overheating with prolonged use, but once you’ve upgraded it, the mastery challenge which allows continuous firing is the most pathetically easy in the game – kill X number of enemies without leaving deployed mode. But the turret doesn’t need to be firing to stay deployed or even need to be undeployed to cool down, so you tape down the right mouse button and wander about until you find an enemy, deal with it in a single quick volley, and then move on to the next one. And while I’m on the subject, not having to reload is nice, but I’m still a habitual reloader and the fact that the “swap mod” button is bound to R had me accidentally swapping mods with clockwork regularity.

So, bottom line: DOOM is a faithful call-back to the beloved retro shooters of the 90s and introduces enough of the polish of modern gaming to bring them up to and beyond par for today’s FPSs. The time spent not wandering around the levels looking for collectibles is just good, psychotic fun.