bigsocrates

Not that it is particularly important but the Chicory blog is from January 2022. It got bumped, possibly by a bot or possibly a legit user, which is why I did not flag their post.

I generally appreciate being included in the spotlight and especially having the Game Club highlighted, but I thought I'd note that.

You probably think I'm going to bring up Mario 3D World here. HOW DARE YOU? I would never. I would never point out that you're claiming that No Straight Roads, a 70% on Metacritic, is many positions better than Super Mario 3D World, an 89%. It would be petty and repetitive to even bring up that TRAVESTY OF INJUSTICE PERPETRATED BY A ROGUE AI WITH LESS ACCURACY THAN GOOGLE'S PIZZA GLUE SYSTEM.

*Ahem*.

I think you make a good case for why this game connected with you, but I also think you have a tendency to forgive quality of life issues in games. This is a useful and positive review that makes me very hesitant to try this game because a lot of the things you describe as "small" flaws would bother me a lot. I guess that makes it a good review in the end, but man I'm tired of games that throw up hostile systems like grading walls that turn people off and don't really add that much.

So many systems in games seem to exist just because the developers think there should be a system there, or that difficulty or grindiness is good for its own sake.

Why? WHY?

I WANT ANSWERS, BOT! WHY?

@chamurai: Thanks for reading.

I thought a lot about all the quality of life improvements the game made while I was playing it. On the one hand it does dilute the "purity" of the project and blunt some of the impact of the strangeness. On the other hand they were making a commercial product they wanted to sell, and the CD-I games flopped, even with the Zelda license, 30 years ago. Trying to repeat that same thing but WITHOUT the license now would be kind of crazy. Also it would just suck to play because those games sucked not BECAUSE of their weirdness but despite it. I was around in the 90s. We liked weird stuff back then too. Maybe not for a true mass market product, but games like Earthworm Jim became hits off being weird. The Zelda games were weird but also terrible to play.

I just think they made the only choice they could under the circumstances.

@cikame: Those games have a lot of commonalities but I wouldn't call them the same genre. That's like saying that Madden is the same genre as Tekken because you can play 1 on 1 competitive in both.

I also don't think Smash is really the same subgenre as Powerstone. For one thing it's 2D, but there are lots of other differences. Obviously both are fighters and there are some similarities but I do think that 3D arena fighters are their own subgenre distinct from Smash clones.

@judaspete: I don't think Powerstone was simple. It had simple controls because it was an arcade game but especially Powerstone 2 had very complex item lists and arena mechanics. It's a different kind of complexity than you'd see in like Tekken but there was a lot of complexity and depth there (go for the powerful item or the powerstones or try to disrupt your enemy etc...)

But there's nothing stopping anime fighters from doing things like this. For some material it might not make sense (if you're going to make a My Hero Academia game you're going to want to focus on the characters' powers and not environmental stuff) but it does for others.

But it's complicated and tough to make something like that and make it well, which gets back to time, budget, and quality of team.

@ares42: These are projections. They may come true or they may not. It's possible that the Switch 2 causes a spike in console revenue or that other things happen. But these generally don't break out traditional games against the live service stuff we're talking about either.

The stats I've seen for recent years shows mostly stagnation in the traditional game space. Maybe that will change, but projections aren't always right.

@chamurai: It's an honor to be complimented by a #SupremeScreenshotSavant.

I have to admit that you immediately got my hackles up comparing this game to Medievil. I guess I'm more comparing it to the remake than the original, which I've only played the demo of (though I did buy the PS3 PSN version which means I also own the PS4/5 version), but Medievil is just so much better in pretty much every way. To be fair it probably had 100x the budget so maybe Pumpkin Jack wins in bang for development buck.

I thought Pumpkin Jack was pretty generic. It's not terrible by any means but as I said last October I think it plays like a 2nd or 3rd tier PS2 3D platformer. It's a game that functions and has some neat little moments, and I'll even grant that it looks good, but ultimately the platforming is average (which is to say fine) and the combat is somewhat below average (but at least not broken.) Even the minigames are pretty janky and not a lot of fun.

I agree that for a single dev game it's actually astonishingly good but while I can appreciate the accomplishment that doesn't make it anything more than okay to play, with admittedly good aesthetics that kind of wear out their charm before the end because of too many repeated elements and assets.

It's one of those games where it's not bad but there's just no strong reason to recommend it. Which is to say that while disagreeing with other people's numerical ratings is kind of pointless because it's all totally subjective, I think this is the kind of game that gets overrated because the accomplishment is so impressive.

But while it was made by one dev the price is still up there with games made by much bigger teams

To be fair it does stand out more against indie 3D platformers specifically, most of which are pretty dire.

Clive 'N Wrench, for example, woof that game is awful and I'm actively angry at the reviewers who said it was good because they wanted it to succeed even though it's bad. But Frogun is pretty good, as is Penny's Big Breakaway. And Mail Mole is probably about as good as Pumpkin Jack, so it's not all dross.

@allthedinos: Everything changes so I think it was inevitable that the Internet of 2024 would not be the Internet of 1994. What's sad is how much less functional it is in so many ways. It's hard to think of other products that have gotten so much worse over that time. Take video games. There are areas where they've gotten worse in the last 30 years but I'd say the games of 2024 are WAY better than the games of 1994 in general. And in some areas there's no contest. The Internet is better in terms of video, graphics, speed and reliability, and it did generally keep improving for awhile (the addition of Google and Wikipedia were huge net gains, as was Youtube and probably Netflix along with E-commerce) but sometime around 2010 or whenever you want to peg it things started to turn and it's been a downward slide ever since.

@imunbeatable80: Actually, an entity that tells people to eat rocks and put glue in their pizza sauce WOULD come up with some of those rankings, so that checks out. I'mma start calling you imabothaha80.

@spunkyhepanda: Statistically 1 and 2 are not the worst I've seen but I'm pretty sure 2 is trolling. I think the number of people who got it on 2 without knowing anything on 1 is miniscule, and most of the successful 2 guesses knew it on 1. I think 3 is not meant to be guessable based on the character but on other elements in the shot, and there it can be pretty helpful.

Then after a pretty brutal 1-2, and a difficult 3, 4 is pretty revealing and 5 is just a check as to whether you remember the title because by that point you know or you're never going to get it.

#GuessTheGame #748

🎮 🟥 🟥 🟥 🟩 ⬜ ⬜

#MasterGamer

https://GuessThe.Game/p/748