What Game/s are You Playing? Daily / Whenever Check :) (GAMEPLAY)

[Slate]

Super Bonk for the Super NES.

... So long as my power doesn't go out, I've gotten up to Level 6. I'm close to the end as it is, and this Super NES has been on for almost a week.

- Austin

[YoshiM]

My play time has bounced around quite a bit. For a while I wanted to play my Steam Deck during a lunch break but of course I never could take a break when my deck was there. Ugh.

I have gotten a little Atari 2600 play in with some Pitfall II. As my hardware ages, I am looking at retro-alternatives for play on modern TVs. I currently have my eye on the Atari 2600+, even though it IS a software emulation box. It is just becoming a GREAT emulation box, but it's best played with actual carts (though a Harmony cart can be used, but only loaded with one game at a time, but I don't know if I want to keep flashing it to change games). I bought a loose Pitfall II cart for a decent price from a local toy store, so after giving it a good clean I played that for quite a while. I will admit my memory really sucked on this title as I couldn't remember it had ladders as my CRT only showed "holes" to fall down (which I thought was the gameplay for a bit until I thought how this didn't seem right). My TV's brightness was too low (which I never noticed on ANY other game but this one so far) and after turning it up, the ladders appeared. I played a MUCH better game after that.

Earlier I got down with some original Sonic action on the first Genesis Mini. I have never beaten this game in what, 34 years or so give or take? I usually got as far as the second or third act of the Labyrinth Zone (or the "Water Level" as I told my kids) and that was that. The frustration level tipped over my threshold and I never got back around to playing it again. Thanks to the magic of save states, I finally got past that damned zone! I'm now in the "Scrap Brain" Zone and saved it there. I also have 4 chaos emeralds.

On Father's Day I went to a different arcade, "Hero's Venture" in Two Rivers, WI. as opposed to the Garcade in Menomonee Falls. I found it interesting that it had a "pay as you go" side and then the all day play-for-one-fee side. My overall experience was underwhelming. The "Pay as you go" side required the use of rechargable point cards instead of just taking cash or quarters, which I think is worse than having to buy tokens. The games there were mostly the really "big" machines, like a couple VR style systems, a lot of redemption machines and....pinball. The ONLY pinball they had in the place you could only play using a card. There were none in the "all day fee" side.

The "All day" side did have a nice selection of mid 80's games on up. I haven't seen Black Tiger, Lifeforce, Ghosts n' Goblins, Operation Wolf and such for a very long time. The games were in their section of sorts (fighting games of many ages in one area, sit down driving games in another, etc.) and they had about 4 air hockey tables along with a pool table. Sounds like paradise, right? The problem, for me anyways and my daughter (my son...he didn't seem to care but got bored near the end of our stay), was that there were a decent number of games in states of disrepair. Both Pac-Man and Mr.s Pac-Man were near unplayable because the joysticks were wonky. Pac-Man's stick had problems going down, meaning I'd have to slam it a bit to register. My son didn't say what his problem was on Ms. Pac but it was also joystick related. Pole Position's screen was off color, Ninja Baseball Bat Man's panel was lifting up while I played, Dungeons and Dragons: Tower of Doom had joystick problems....the list went on. The "back room" past the first room with the air hockey tables with the black light ribbons, floor tape in the shape of a Tron Recognizer and such looked like a dingy garage someone set up arcade machines in.

Overall, Garcade spolied me. Even though the outside of the place is part of an aged old strip mall, the inside is very inviting and has a lot of games of different genres from different ages. And I can count with maybe a couple fingers on one hand the problems I had with an arcade game there. On top of that, you can play ALL the games there on free play with an all day pass....including pinball.

Also on Father's Day I got some time in on Full Quiet for the NES. It is a pain in the rump trying to get the second cabin open! I watched a walkthrough and I was on my way to getting the place unlocked BUT I took too long and got killed by the monster that comes out at midnight. I guess you really have to manage your time in this leg of the adventure and if you don't know your way, you are scah-roood. I did notice my TV gets a bright glow on the lower right with the NES, so I'm not sure if I have to keep adjusting the brightness when I play Atari and then NES? Or if my TV is starting to show signs of impending failure (it was a refugee from a renter who just up and left the apartment they were renting from us, leaving most of his stuff behind).

[kupomogli]

Platinumed Ys8 again. Ys8 was a favorite of mine when it released on the PS4 when I first platinumed it, picked it up for PS5 and played through it then, I recently replayed the entire game on Nightmare difficulty using the new game plus option. I didn't carry over any levels and I didn't use any of the equipment, I just wanted it in my inventory so when I did get to the point that I could use it, I didn't have to worry about the materials and I'd already have them or the equipment. So it was a little easier than a brand new Nightmare save file but just cutting a little bit of time.

Also, I recently played through Cult of the Lamb. My first experience with the game I played a couple hours then I quit, but my recent experience I started a new game and after a week or more I finished the game in 16 hours. I think it's one of the better procedural games because it's about 80% survival/simulation game and only about 20% procedural dungeon gameplay.

So Cult of the Lamb is basically part Harvest Moon game with a lot of depth with its time/resource management. That can be stated of any game of this type and for Cult of the Lamb this is what you're going to be doing atleast 80% of the time. You start off with some followers and you'll speak to your followers and bless them daily which will level them up and provide you devotion, but they can also pray at the shrine to provide you devotion as well, and this is what you gain to acquire new things to built. At first, you can't make beds, so you'll want to build beds for them to sleep on and those beds will break so you have to repair them. From there they need to to be able to eat, so you want to make plots of land to grow crops. You'll eventually run out of trees and stone or need other material that is made from trees and stone, so you'll need to create mines, lumber mills, etc, and have them work on getting you more because otherwise you need to take multiple trips just to get enough of either resource. Your followers need to go to the bathroom regularly so at first you'll be sweeping up all the poop otherwise they'll get sick and throw up everywhere and followers will get sick from that. Eventually you can create an outhouse, eventually you can create a janitor area for them to clean up after themselves. You can create a building that can hold the seed you get from your crops and another building around your crops so your followers will water them and then later on you can upgrade this to where they will pick your crops for you. Every single time you get enough devotion, you need more and you get one item each level.

But you also have a chapel in which you can preach once a day. Each time you level up there, you can increase aspects of your character in dungeons from finding different weapon types and increasing the level of weapons that you find in the dungeon, so unlike most procedural games, going in the dungeon isn't a big requirement as long as you have the followers. Each time your followers level up you'll get these tablet pieces and each time you get a full tablet you can add a new doctrine. There are 25 doctrines in all minus the doctrines you gain after everything is completed which allow you to gain sin, which allows for cosmetic upgrades to your chapel. Each time you choose a new doctrine, you have the choice between one of two. You can have crops grow instantly, you can throw a banquet to fill up the hunger gauge(or the other option is to fast for three days without going hungry.) One that I've found very useful is sacrifice your followers to gain extra experience, allowing you to level your weapons and curses up faster and it's not really an issue because once your followers become elderly they can't do anything to help anyways. They just walk around town until they die of old age and then you have to spend the resources to bury them, some followers might get scared that someone died, etc, or you may have picked up a dissenter follower and you want to get rid of them so you choose one of a few options.

But the other part of this game is going into the dungeons. You were brought back to life to start a cult worshiping the one who waits and your object from there is to defeat all of the old faith. So you go into one of four areas(only one to start,) and you go through a few rooms until you get to a mini boss. Once killing the mini boss you'll get a follower along with everything else you've picked up and you come across a locked door. You'll go through each area three times with three mini bosses and you'll have two negative effects per old god that is set upon your followers, starvation, being sickness, even have to kill them when they're mind controlled and attempt to kill you. These dungeons are rather short and I'd say if you want to make them even easier, create a demon summoning location in your own and also choose the upgrade that allows you to sacrifice a follower if you die and only sacrifice them if you need that little bit of push to defeat the boss, another way that you can get rid of the elderly in your cult and have them prove useful.

Now, you may have heard the SRG version includes a little bit of DLC. It doesn't include all DLC and it doesn't really matter because even the DLC it includes is cosmetic. I never even used a single decoration in my entire game except for three cheap ones when I was requested by a member to do so. If you don't want to track down an SRG version then the standard version with no DLC isn't a big deal to own, it's the same exact game.

Though it would have been nice if they did wait because this August the game is getting a local co op mode to do everything with two players, a lamb and a goat. There are issues I had with the game though, technical issues. The game auto saves so the soft crashing wasn't a big deal as I pressed the options button went to the main menu and reloaded, but it happened in a dungeon during an event that never loaded and since it auto saves before entering the dungeon I had to do the entire dungeon again which as I said, the dungeons aren't very long. The second issue is that whenever the game goes to a different day, the transition appears that it should be smooth but knocks it down to single digit FPS for around two seconds or so. This is literally each and every time a new day comes around. I haven't noticed frame drops like that anywhere else in the game and on the PS5 version it does run at 60fps with no drops during normal gameplay.