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| CaptainJistuce |
Today in Jistuce's PC: Squirrel With A Gun. You're a squirrel. Your goals in life are to eat acorns and shoot government agents that interfere with goal 1. Your double-jump is "point the gun down, fire, and ride the lightning". You can also drive an RC car. Game of the Year. |
| CaptainJistuce |
Posted by CaptainJistuce As an update: This game is friggin' fantastic with a VR headset, a joystick, and a throttle. I'm still stuck in the pilot's seat, but just being able to block out the world and look around me is so nice. ... Speaking of VR, the developer added on-foot play with the most recent major expansion(Odyssey) and... on-foot doesn't support VR like every other part of the game, so when you get out of your ship the game fades to black and then you're standing in a featureless gray void staring at a movie screen while Halo-but-worse plays in front of you. Good thing I'm only hear to fly around in space |
| tomman |
Puyo Puyo games have been present natively on Wintel PC Compatibles decades before Puyo Puyo Tetris, who would have known? Another pointless "let's run old games in old machines for lulz" exercise: - Puyo Puyo Sun: works wonderfully even on Windows 95 on a period accurate toaster, and looks sharper and cleaner than in any emulator. Install, apply the translation patch, enjoy. - Puyo Puyo Fever: One of Sega's response to the "It Runs DooM" craze, because they ported PPF to nearly every platform that can run games. Turns out the PC versions even have the English localization (sans voices) mostly intact on the disc, but Sega didn't bothered keeping the menu option to switch languages. But since the PC versions are straight Dreamcast ports, they use the exact save files (albeit compressed, but not on Mac for some reason!), so all you need is a single-byte patch. Getting PPF to run on Windows 9x was... more painful than what I expected. * Sega did two disc releases: 1.x and 2.0. The original 1.x release ISOs from 2004 are unobtanium (despite being listed on Redump!) and they have icky SafeDisc DRM, but you can easily find them in a hacked and prepatched English installer by Puyo Nexus... which will not work properly on 9x due to some leftover URL shortcut file with non-ANSI characters. And turns out you want THIS one because... * ...there was a re-release in 2008 to improve compatibility with Vista, with version 2.0. This unfortunately came at a cost: 9x compatiblity got broken - Sega didn't even bothered testing anything since the installer will run fine, the game launcher will run... and the game will attempt to run then die with no explanation, no errors, no crashes, no weird exit codes, no nada! And this is the ISO you're likely to find everywhere :/ * The English savefile patching tool runs on 9x, but assumes your savefile lives at %AppData%\SEGA\PuyoF, which is not true for 9x - on those platforms the savefile is right at the game install directory. There is no %AppData% on 9x at all! (a directory exists under C:\WINDOWS\, but no environment var exists). You will need to download a pre-patched save file and drop it on the install dir. * All other versions (1.x went up to 1.12 aka the Carnival Edition, while 2.0 apparently received some automatic updates too) are lost forever. Don't look for them. Long short story: install the prepatched Puyo Nexus 1.5 release on a XP or later box, copy the entire install folder to your 9x rig, put your English savefile there too, done. Alternatively, use the 2.0 installer, and get the following files from the prepatched 1.5: - hglNj.dll - SegaLauncher.exe (rename it to Launcher.exe) - Launcher.ini - PuyoF.exe - s_launch.exe - snapcl.dll - SnapUtil.dll ...and paste them on your 2.0 install folder, overwriting as appropriate. In both cases you will also need this added into your Windows registry (edit your install path to match yours, mind the double backslashes!): ...otherwise the English-patched launcher supplied by Puyo Nexus (s_launcher.exe) will fail to work in weird and wonderful ways. All this for... yes, native Puyos on platforms nobody cares about in 2024. Sega, you suck. |
| CaptainJistuce |
Posted by tommanWell howdy, pardner. |
| tomman |
Steam Summer Sale started today, and for the first time in years, I actually buy something~! After some bank-related snafu (check your card expiry dates! Don't be me!), ended picking ATS for $1, and the Texas DLC for slightly over $3, 'cuz Compared to ETS2, you trade relaxing European roads for... not so pretty American roads. No Autobahn here, but the speed limits are INSANE. And so are the AI drivers on the road! Exactly like in real life. And I still feel that those long-cab Volvos and Freightliners are too fast and furious for my scared self :D |
| CaptainJistuce |
Speaking of space battles and trucking simulators... I've just started playing Elite Dangerous(free from Epic MegaGames). ... Yeah, that's it. I don't have anything insightful to say. You fly around in a space ship, droppin' cargo and shootin' bitches. |
| tomman |
Tried playing Galaxy Angel again, and while this time I made some progress, the space battle parts really kill my will to play this "half visual novel half RTS". Ah well, maybe in 2034 I'll try again saving the Lost Technology... and hitting someone other than Milfeulle. Now I'm back to Euro Truck Simulator 2 after a decade of not touching it. Just like IRL, I suck at driving cars, and for me 80km/h at the wheel of any vehicle (be it real or virtual) feels like I'm flooring the pedal to ONE TRILLION KILOMETERS PER HOUR in straight line to sure death. Some stuff I've discovered in the meanwhile: - The UI hasn't changed that much, although they have added a bunch of online fluff I'm not interested, like World of Trucks. - The radio is a mess, since apparently SCS Software hasn't figured out how to sort filelists by name. - The default deadzone for steering wheels is way too big, with no way to reduce it since by default the deadzone slider for my setup is already at zero - that is, I can only make it bigger. This makes taking narrow curves at speed more dangerous than what already is. I know that my wheel setup (a Genius Speed Wheel 5 Pro) is pure garbage, but pretty much every other game moves when I slightly turn the wheel! - I hate driving double-trailers - they're likely to get stuck either at the pickup or delivery points when doing those narrow turns! - Game runs like a charm in pure Mesa with this amdgpu-driven Lucienne IGP. Not sure if this thing is using Vulkan, OpenGL, or whatever. - The dashboard on some trucks (particularly DAF) doesn't really give proper feedback on things like headlamps, which means you will be racking hefty traffic tickets for driving with lights off at the wee hours of the morning. Thankfully this is not a problem with Scania/Volvo/Iveco - the headlamp lights at the dashboard are BRIGHT and the lamp switch clicks loudly when engaged. - Stop hitting my truck, you ghost vehicles on the road! It's no fun to get a 250€ ticket because you hit a invisible vehicle out of nowhere! - It's amazing the nearly nonexisting advertising billboards on the roads. Looks like a missed marketing opportunity to make the game more realistic! I should pick up American Truck Simulator by the next sale. |
| tomman |
Done with Oreimo PSP Disc 2 (that final pesky CG refuses to unlock for unknown reasons, but it's 100%'d otherwise) In general, far better than Disc 1... but then the PSP game is non-canon, and therefore writers had more freedom to give fans what they (more or less) wanted (and that could ship legally). Since reviews of Disc 2 contents are surprisingly rare in English, here goes mine (SPOILERS AHEAD): - General: Well laid out presentation. The engine can now display variable height text. For whatever reason, Kyosuke's offscreen dialog is now non-voiced, which is a minor loss. Not sure if you absolutely need to 100% Disc 1 to unlock all the routes on Disc 2, it took my 99% savegame from Disc 1 and I was off to the races - a few visits to our two totally unknown hosts yes sir at Destiny Record are enough to get all the needed OREs for each heroine route, and then some. Unlike Disc 2, I got most of the good endings at the first try, and actually had to consult a walkthrough for clearing everything else. Most OREs and two-shots are actually useless here, except on a couple routes. Many "bad ends" are just the regular good endings sans the post-credits epilogue (notable exceptions being the Ayase and Manami routes) - Translation patch is well done, even cleaner than the Disc 1 one. They even managed to translate the CG names this time! - Kirino: They managed to dial down the tsun-tsun on this bitch a LOT, impressive! Of course they had to pull the whole "they are not really blood siblings lol" stunt to give the fans the Kirino ending many wanted. Her route is basically "let's get approval from our friends to be a couple", and except for Manami getting a massive troll at the very end (which seems to map nicely to her later-episodes canon persona), it was exactly what you were expecting for. - Ayase: "Yandere: The Route™". Oh boy, it's Kotonoha all over again :P But if you manage to keep the lewdness down enough, and actually glue to eyes to Ayase and only Ayase, the later half of this route is actually sweet, to the point that things DO get a bit spicy, something very off-character for our heroine... but that's character development for you, I guess. - Kuroneko: The staff of the PSP version really loved our awkward chuuni cutie, to the point of giving TWO routes to her: the regular "Ruri" one (where it's basically deconstructing the thick chuunibyou layer on this shy girl and actually progressing slowly as a couple with Kyosuke, spiked a bit with Hinata being a trollish tease), and whatever the fuck is "Yamineko" (more awkward chuuni nonsense, as a continuation of Disc 1's Ayase normal ending). Worth it, damn it! - Manami: Our ordinary childhood friend becomes a big-breasted college hottie with the same mannerisms as ever. Redoing the Kyoto trip courtesy of a extremely eager grandpa desperate for having grandchildren (respect, Gramps!), this route ia basically "keep her happy and you may be rewarded handsomely". And of fucking course, there are two separate CG sets for Manami, unlike every other heroine because she uses glasses and you get to choose at some point which Manami do you want. Keep little sisters away! - Saori: Get to know our big dual-persona heroine in depth. Help her getting past her chronic shyness. Learn why she became an otaku in first place. Solve her complex family background. Get along with Onee-chan and NOT DIE IN THE WAY (because of course there big sisters have to be dangerous). It's Saori, it's full of weird, and it's a good read anyway. Pay attention to the details because THERE WILL BE A QUIZ! - Kanako: She doesn't give a fuck on what you think about her - she just wants to be. Yet another heroine with a complex family background, and on top of that, you get Kyosuke's harem trying to pry her apart from his love target. But her resolve is impressive, and she manages to git gud, even earning the difficult parental approval in the way. If you came here looking for lolicon bait, move aside - this Kanako gonna kick your ass. - Sena: She only has eyes for three things: gamedev, homos, and her dear onii-chan (think a very dere Kirino, but even more rotten). Seriously, this girl is THAT braindamaged, but that's what makes her route fun (also, Kouhei Akagi doubling down as the Final Boss). Unlike the other heroines in town, you DO not get the regular good ending with her (and the bad ending has our boys literally looking for job at Bandai-Namco!) - For the lolicon pervs out there, you do get a route with Kuroneko's lil' sisters (yay~!). Sadly, Kirino gets on board and she turns out to be a borderline pedo here, forcing Kyosuke to play the straight man figure here. Short and sweet, with a non-ending for obvious reasons. - PPSSPP experienced many ridiculous graphic glitches with this title, particularly with some screen transitions and menu renderings, but only on Android. Yay Adreno. Switching Vulkan drivers may trade away some glitches for a new kind of glitches. Veredict: Disc 1 is kinda meh, but Disc 2 |
| tomman |
Finished the Oreimo PSP VN, getting all those extra Kirino endings was dogawful. Turns out however that this odyssey is not done yet! There is a DISC 2, and it's even translated! And you must 100% Disc 1 if you actually care about getting into Disc 2 as intended. And I'm sucker for pointless punishment. Ah well, at least it has Kuroneko's lil' sisters~ First stop: |
| creaothceann |
Still playing HoloCure (free), trying to finish all 7 stages with all the girls. Down to the last 4 (Anya, Kobo, Kaela, Zeta)... Some games that I have installed but not played yet: - Hotline Miami - Hotline Miami 2 - Portal: Revolution (free) - Sonic Mania Steam wishlist: - Holo X Break (free): same dev as HoloCure, same fandom, release date 2024-03-29 - Horizon Forbidden West, release date 2024-03-21 - Outer Wilds, which is 40% cheaper until 2024-03-21... but by the time I get to it there may already be another sale... _ _ _ Then there's a new book of the Ascendance of a Bookworm series that comes out tomorrow... |
| wertigon |
Recently started a re-run of the Ys Series. I've done Ys Origins, I & II, Felghana and Celceta so far. Next up, Ys 6, 7 and 8. Unfortunately 5 is not remade. I am gearing up towards Ys IX... :) And no, I'm not gamer enough for Nightmare, only did it on Origins and that was painful enough. |
| CaptainJistuce |
Kuroneko is best girl. Meanwhile, I'm basking in reruns. Moving from FTL(apparently I just wanted to die embarrassing and miserable deaths repeatedly for a bit I GUESS) to Blaster Master Zero(it's Blaster Master, but with more words and a tie-in to the japanese version's unrelated plot) and an EX character run as Gunvolt that I never actually completed before, to... ummm... Blaster Master Zero Two: Blast Harder(but not too hard, that's how you broke your gun last time{this is canon}). |
| tomman |
OK, ~87% later, I'm about to clear this "My Little Sister VN Can't Be This Wretched" thing: Another VN where if you expect to make good progress, a GOOD walkthrough is a must. But the good ones are in Japanese, and the English one are more unpredictable than Kirino's mood changes (Ended using one from Fuwanovel, where people actually made the effort to debug the flaws). The O.R.E. system and the two-shot dialogs are a mess, but they make more sense the more you get into the routes, although most two-shots are only good for the CG gallery and to be annoying. And now, onwards to the heroines! - Kirino: ~14 years later, I can finally understand why all the Kirino hate. Uuuuugh, tsunderes. Especially a tsundere with a strong brocon syndrome. Her endings were... meh. But then I understand that they toned waaaaaaay down the incest topic comapred to the original LNs, and yet still there is too many moments of her being a stingy brat every time her beloved big brother sets his eyes on another girl. Sorry, can't love her. NEXT! - Kuroneko: "Ooooh, a meek hime-cut flat-chested goth lolita catgirl cutie! She ticks all of my boxes!" Nope, once playing her route all you get is a incredibly awkward girl that can't be sincere with her thoughts. But then, again she got her route intentionally botched for this release to save the actual romantic stuff for the LN. Boo! On the flip side, not every day you get reminded of the importance of backups and system updates by... a goth lolita catgirl that writes shitty doujinshi :P - Ayase: Because every VN has to provide a yandere bitch, here is your designated nutcase. OK, she ain't Kotonoha, but gets dangerously close at times. The queen of stupid misunderstandings. But her non-bad endings are actually the best of the bunch, especially the good ending wich is D'AWWWWWW~! Surprisingly she has a latent otaku side, which may or may not be fine. Her route is definitely a good read. - Manami: D'AWWWWW~! Plain childhood friend girls are the best, even if poor Manami overdoes herself during half of her route :D Another fun read, with the right amount of drama. - Saori: She is weird by definition (and proud of it!), but her route was just sad, not weird. Even her good ending basically is a shotgun wedding. Ugh. She deserved better, folks! - Others: Well, there is And of course there HAD to be a Disc 2, which will actually check your homework before letting move on! But I'll save that nightmare for later, as my VN backlog is still bigger than Kiririn's ego. |
| tomman |
Posted by creaothceann Which is 1) embargoed, 2) Orrible®, and 3) not exactly the most charming platform for games, much less VNs. Fortunately I still have more than enough native metal here to run those problem titles (had to get that pesky Otome ending on my ol' Inspiron running crusty W7), but come on Wine, there is life beyond This Week AAA+++ games! (Also, I refuse to mess with Proton). ...Or I can switch targets to non-PC titles: just started playing the Oreimo PSP VN. Yes, that Oreimo. And as someone that never watched the anime or intend to read the LNs, I can now understand somewhat the Kirino hate. But this VN is... confusing. Those folks decided to throw out the door the traditional decision system you would expect from any VN, and instead replace it with the very unique and irritating "two-shot"/"O.R.E. System" mechanisms which don't give you a clear clue on where are you going. So far, I'm stuck at the "two male friends visit the Comiket to get some BL merch for their totally cute lil' sisters, there is nothing weird here no sir!" bad ending. Thaaanks Bamco/Banpresto. Well, at least there are targets other than Kirino... if I don't ragequit this garbo decision system first! |
| creaothceann |
Posted by tomman ...VirtualBox |
| tomman |
After finishing with School Days HQ, I went and like the good masochist I am, picked its - I hated Otome in SDHQ. I hate her even more after Shiny Days. Seriously, poor Ai Yamagata deserves better than this! - Everybody's favorite yandere princess got demoted to... slob lazy princess. At least Kotonoha got far better endings here, even if all of them basically were "from zero to [CENSORED] in one night at the festival". And she is the sanest of the Katsura bunch here! - Poor Sekai, cockblocked by mom at the eleventh hour :D - Yes, you can do not only the protagonists, but also her mums too. Trio of desperate - Things Setsuna enjoy: Paris, using childish nicknames. Things Setsuna hates: threesomes, being reminded constantly that she has the body of a little girl, videogames, manga, Niki. - Shiny Days is actually a remake of Summer Days, whose sole major addition is the Inori route. Well, many people HATED it, but my opinion on it is that while it gets boring at times, Inori is a very quirky and fun character, and her route does reveal quite a lot of the behind curtains scene on the power struggles at the lovely beach town of Haramihama. Getting to know some of the characters up close and personal is always a nice addition to any canon. - SDHQ was a mess but you could get to make progress with careful usage of savestates and the (screwy) route map. Shiny Days on the other side it's nigh out impossible without a walkthrough... and most there are trash or unusable (I found a handy one at GameFAQs, of all places!) - Did I mention that the reason to get into this hell was in part to contribute to Wine's languishing AppDB? Well... School Days HQ was more or less well behaved despite its 0verflaw Kwality™ reputation. Not so much Shiny Days, where the one thing that shines are the random crash dialogs under Wine. In particular, the one ending involving Otome is UNFINISHABLE under recent Wine versions due to the rampage of random, unpredictable (but highly reproducible) crashes! Looks like Wine hates her even more than me :D But yeah, sadly that means that just for that it's impossible to 100% this game on pure Wine, unless you wanna test your luck with a 2 year old release. Oh, and JAST USA changed the installers a few years ago to incorporate the latest patches, and I had mojibake issues with those when changing the default install dir! (which you should do if you intend to install *ahem* A Certain Content Restoration Patch). Veredict: Far better experience (crashes and convoluted routemap notwithstanding) than the original game, Shiny Days is a good read/watch/play if you survived the initial School Days experience. Sadly this is the end of the road for me with the Days franchise, as the next game on the road (Cross Days) has a fat chance in hell to ever get localized (it has contents far more polemic than the infamous Kokoro route), no English fan translation group is touching it either because it's radioactive, and while an Spanish translation amazingly exists... it's a dead link locked behind a Meta Platforms firewall :/ Time to move on to something less... insane. |
| tomman |
The one and only, the infamous murder and cheating simulator, Been waiting for 11 years on my backlog, but now that Wine can finally run it out of the box (and I can't make enough emphasis on this, as unlike your ordinary VN, School Days is actually an interactive anime, so perfect video playback is a must if you actually want to play this thing, something that has been a sore point for Wine for almost 2 decades), let's cross this one out off the list. OH GOD WHY I SPENT MONEY ON THIS!?!?!?! (found the receipt from October 2012 telling me that I burned $39.95 on this!) Anyway, with 5 out of 21+2 endings to clear yet, here are my impressions: - Makoto is a horny cheating bastard, we all know that. I don't get why all the girls in this school set their eyesights on this dude... but then at least he is a normal horny boy. Taisuke on the other end is a flat out rapist, and it's a shame there is no route where he dies! - The whole plot of this thing is an absolute trainwreck (which is ironic, considering that a good deal of the action on this VN actually happens around actual train stations): "guy gets in love with random girl he met at the train, random classmate offers to help him to hook up with random girl and succeeds, but classmate actually has been in love with guy since forever". Yes, I'm aware that this shit happens all the time in Real Life™, but still it's pure crap :P - The bloody (literally!) bad endings!!! Did I mention I _hate_ gore!? This is one of the reasons I don't play FPS games, I have really low tolerance to bloody scenes... and the very first bad end I got had to be THAT ONE. And the game makes sure for you to NOT forget by displaying the very last scene of the last ending you got on the title screen. Classy. - Now onto our lead heroines: Sekai is a crybaby that can't grow a pair and tell Makoto that she loves him before ending in this trainwreck. And Kotonoha... OH BOY, what the hell is wrong with this girl!? She literally REFUSES to get dumped, EVER! But once you know her past, you can even feel pity for her... almost. At least there is harem ending where you get both girls... which is nicely tucked between two bloody endings. - Initially I hated Hikari (loud screaming tsundere bitch, lovely)... until I got to her endings (she gets TWO!). Ended liking her for no good reason~ On the flip side, I didn't liked Setsuna that much despite being a cutie, because she is willing to backstab her BFF for that cheating MC. Otome and Nanami can rot in hell, thanks. - Every single filler character here is absolutely unlikeable human trash, especially Kotonoha's classmates. - BUGS! I wasn't aware that 0verflow was better known as 0verflaw... until I actually RAN the game. School Days HQ is more like a 11GB bugfest with traces of a visual novel inside. Broken route chart, broken flags, videos that sometimes will not play, meter bars that go offscreen if you push them too far (ha!), nonsense story branching, blatantly broken lipsync at some scenes, rampant abuse of animation recycling, weird crashes and hangs, and in my particular setup, Furnace Laptop Mode™. Almost all of those bugs are present on ALL editions of the game, no matter the OS or patch level! - No yuri ending, despite the cover art hinting at that! Veredict: School Days has its moments, but it's mostly unburnable trash. Even the HQ version hasn't aged well... |
| Kawaoneechan | To nobody's surprise, I've been playing Half Life. |
| CaptainJistuce |
I've been dropping into Star Ocean 2 R. I don't really know what to say other than it makes me feel like a teen again. It is raw nostalgia injected straight into my veins. |
| eccentricwind |
I've been playing Crono Cross for the last week like a maniac for no apparent reason (this is a cry for help) |
