Solo Death Match

[solodeathmatch]

pure f-zero voltage

went back to f-zero x on the n64. no story no exploration no bullshit. just 30 ships on a track and a weird thrash-metal-but-almost-jazz soundtrack going absolutely nuts in the background. what a statement of a game. its funny how some racing games are about fine lines and precision and braking and this one is about finding the balls to just never let go of the accelerator ever. like not even for a second. i think my favorite part is just how light and floaty it all feels. modern racers are so obsessed with weight and traction and realism. f-zero x's ships feel like they're made of paper and powered by illegal fireworks. flying through the corkscrews and the loops in mute city legitimately feels dangerous. zero fluff. you just turn it on and melt your brain trying to stay alive for two minutes straight. peak.

[solodeathmatch]

alpha protocol, beautiful trash

Alpha Protocol is held together with tape and prayers. it's so broken. AI is braindead. animations are stiff. but underneath the jank is an alright spy RPG. a conversation is just as dangerous as a gunfight. the amount of branching paths based on your choices is insane. who you piss off and who you ally with completely changes the game. you can feel the masterpiece fighting to get out from under the pile of bugs. a one-of-a-kind mess.

[solodeathmatch]

weird controllers

saw a picture of that Rez trance vibrator and was like "oh yeah. games used to ship with strange bricks of custom plastic". all these special dedicated custom controllers are a lost art form now.

like steel battalion required you take out a second mortgage for what looked like a salvaged A320 cockpit but you got the full mech fantasy out of it. every guitar hero guitar ended its lifespan completely unusable because they weren't exactly built to last. everyone had one sticky fret that ruined Free Bird for them. still good tho.

[solodeathmatch]

just one mission

i will never understand friends who can buy a multiplayer-only extraction shooter or looter or whatever and only play one single round. one match of The Finals, one delve into Tarkov. how? the entire logic of those games is The Next Run. ur chasing something. my brain requires a minimum of five runs. preferably till like 3am when u hate everything. anything less is just wasting potential.

[solodeathmatch]

my fortress is flooded with cats

a stray cat wandered into my fortress in dwarf fortress. so my dwarves adopted it. then it had kittens. then those kittens had kittens. i have like 60 cats now. my framerate is dying. they steal all the booze. my best mason just had a tantrum because a cat vomited on his masterpiece engraving of a cheese wheel. i cant butcher them because my dwarves will get sad. they are a plague. a fluffy unstoppable plague. this is the best game ever made.

[solodeathmatch]

gun valkyrie on xbox has weird energy

everytime i try to explain gun valkyrie to someone i sound insane. its like a jetpack-fueled action game but your jetpack controls are on the right stick. like katamari controls but for dodging laser fire. its so weird at first and the game absolutely does not care if you get it or not. throws you in. survive. such a sick early xbox exclusive that everyone just kinda forgot about. came out right in that experimental halo aftermath where everything tried to be weird. super demanding game too. but once the dual stick flight controls click youre a literal combat helicopter and its bliss.

[solodeathmatch]

red faction changed my brain

playing red faction today still messes with my head because the geo-mod technology feels like a thing we should have in every game. walls arent just walls theyre suggestions. youre pinned down by dudes on a bridge? cool just blow up the supports of the bridge they’re standing on. cant get through a door? fine im making my own door next to it with a rocket launcher. that shit of truly destructible environments changed how i thought about level design forever. we got it right in 2001.

[solodeathmatch]

bad cover art masterpieces

remember going into gamestop and seeing those insane EU/NA cover arts for old RPGs and picking something on sheer whim? the NA cover for Ico might be one of the funniest crimes against graphic design i've ever seen. looks like an evil horned tween trying to elope. while the JP/PAL art is a dream.

and og megaman for NES. its infamously awful but I have this deep seated affection for that fat little man with a realistic handgun. nothing on that cover conveys ANYTHING about what the game actually is. a masterpiece of misdirection. almost like it filtered players back in the day, like you had to be a true Believer to look at that and spend your money on it.

they had a whole brand of 'gritty bad rendering' in the PS2 era for european releases that’s so endearing now. a kind of dark artistry that we will never achieve again. bring back bizarre, wildly unrepresentative box art for AAA games i'm BEGGING you.

[solodeathmatch]

on the streets of rage soundtrack

some people say good videogame music should blend in the background. never. wrong. for games like this it IS the foreground. youre controlling the beat itself with your punches. the beat em up genre just doesnt work right without a pounding relentless soundtrack backing you up. you lose steam without the high bpm house trance beats egging you on to break one more trash can for that delicious mystery chicken. you can date a game instantly from a screencap of its graphics but the best soundtracks are just ageless. if the SOR2 ost was released today by some soundcloud artist itd probably top all the charts or whatever. no one would ever question it. genius work with limited hardware always produces cooler shit than lazy work with unlimited hardware.

[solodeathmatch]

real retro shit

blackthorne. this game had so much attitude for an SNES title. a blizzard game before warcraft that everyone forgets. u play as some prince guy in shades with a shotgun. you can press a button and he holds the shotgun behind his back just for style points. completely useless but looks cool.

[solodeathmatch]

dumb buildings

just going through gta 4 and enjoying being a tourist. its still amazing how liberty city feels like an actual shitty place you wouldn't wanna live in. the buildings are all just big ugly rectangles but they're believable ugly rectangles. and thats art. no super shiny sci-fi architecture. just fire escapes and water towers and miserable concrete.

it holds up better than a lot of open worlds cause its not trying too hard to be fantastical. it's grounded. it makes the crazy story happening inside of it feel so much more serious. rockstar understood that a boring building is the perfect backdrop for an exciting gunfight.

[solodeathmatch]

medal of honor menu

sometimes i just boot up that first Medal of Honor on the ps1 just to let the main theme by Michael Giacchino run on loop in the background while i do other stuff. what an incredible piece of music. felt way bigger than the little grey box it came out of.

[solodeathmatch]

the enemy npc group chatter from FEAR

this is common knowledge but its still so cool how well the npc soldiers coordinate in fear. you kick open a door to flank a guy and you HEAR someone else in a different part of the map go "there he is!!!!" so you know your brilliant strategy is instantly busted and they know. its like theyre communicating live which is absolutely insane coding for a game that old. modern AI companions barely do this properly let alone the guys youre trying to gun down. they call out when you throw grenades, when youre reloading. they try to suppress you and hold positions. you feel outsmarted all the time by this very logical enemy system. its not because their aim is perfect god-mode sniper aim, its because they just act intelligently and are paranoid, which feels right. that team logic stuff is something i desperately miss, it turned combat into like these little emergent puzzle encounters instead of just "point and click on heads popping up from behind the exact same gray crate everyone hides behind". its more satisfying overcoming real organized pressure instead of just more spongey enemies. the entire mood is something else too with alma breathing down your neck during firefights. such a special game honestly.

[solodeathmatch]

what happened to immersive sims?

feels like we don't get true immersive sims anymore. i'm talking about the old school Looking Glass / Ion Storm stuff. Deus Ex, Thief, System Shock. games that were about being dropped in a complex level and having a huge toolkit of abilities and just being told "figure it out."

i miss feeling smart for finding a hidden vent or figuring out you could stack boxes to get somewhere you weren't supposed to be. that was the magic. it made the world feel real.

[solodeathmatch]

a good menu screen

something about a main menu that actually has a vibe. Nier Automata is the one for this, its been years and I still think about how it just throws you at a muted grey screen with that soft music. its bleak and empty and perfectly sets up the whole thing. no pressing buttons, no big logo splash. you just exist there for a second.

its the opposite of like ninety percent of menus now where you have the news feed and the dlc store and two different cursors flashing at you. those things immediately feel like a product. feels like walking into an office. I dont want to manage spreadsheets i just want to find the settings screen without getting four popups.

games used to get this more. perfect dark with its whole declassified computer interface. metal gear solid 3 and that weird green hazy background that never made any sense. they were like the loading bay for the world you were about to go into and actually got you in the right headspace. huge.

[solodeathmatch]

oh god i think its breathing

decided to build a character with max beauty in arcanum but dump his intelligence to like 3. everyone i talk to loves me, tells me how gorgeous i am and then realizes five seconds in that they are talking to a brick wall. its glorious. the game fully accomodates your choice to be an idiot god king. every dialogue option is basically '???' or 'u not pretty. go way.' just walking through Tarant yelling at garbage cans.

[solodeathmatch]

braid

someone told me to try this game. braid. the art is weird feels like a painting but the whole time reversing thing is genius. some of these puzzles make you stare at the screen for 10 minutes feeling like an idiot and then you get it and youre a genius. its cool. smart game.