I've been using emulators since I was a kid and I've only ever toyed with shaders like twice before, so I sat down and toyed for a little bit for fun, there really are a lot of subjective improvements to be made that's for sure.
Despite having played most of these games on original hardware, I've never been a purist who 'needs' shaders built to make it look like it's blurring on an old CRT through composite (hence why I don't fuck with these settings usually) but I gotta admit, I do like how it looks with some of these effects lol.
I wouldn't mind doing some research and trying out some shaders meant to replicate the OG look for some future games.
Also wouldn't mind just fumbling around for a bit for a look I prefer, but in those situations I'm probably gonna say screw it and go unshaded.
Anywho, nice to toy with, some of these looks really do feel like a vast improvement over unshaded and jagged. Others just made me nostalgic but definitely looked worse lol (like, not 'improvement' worse, 'worse worse').
OH! And turns out there's shaders that just show the console as a border if that's your feel for handhelds. That's neat, genuinely fun and explains the widespread use in youtube content lol.
is a blog I’ve run for 5 years as a poor man’s letsplay/liveblog platform and if you’re looking for bizarre haphazard liveblog game posts, bad opinions, analysis of things you don’t care about, and a way to make me a mild dash of endorphins through clicking a button- you can follow that blog :)
In order to give a semi-relevant display of what the blog is like I figured I’d share a few pics and captions from the past year (2020). Spoilers avoided, which sucks because I wanted to share moments that made me cry but that sounds rude for a promote post to do lol.
This post is long, press J on your keyboard to skip it or curse me out in an ask if you’re on mobile.
I am LOVING how strong the orders are for taking out tanks. Being able to take down a light tank with just a scout so consistently is wild. (Valkyria Chronicles)
(This game made me cry and was such a visual treat with its watercolor artstyle)
This is a very very good bug. (Hollow Knight)
(Hollow Knight is an amazing game, through and through!)
NINJAS.
CAN NOT USE.
SNEAK. ATTACK. (Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together)
(I spent most of this playthrough noting weaknesses this game had in comparison to the spiritual successor Final Fantasy Tactics, but I ALSO pushed a guy off a cliff to win a fight so it has its ups and downs for certain)
Did some REAL gaming. Including winning I think my very first game of minesweeper ever because I haven’t played it since I was a kid and I never learned how as a kid? (System Shock 2)
(I beat the final boss by jumping in place)
Feeding pixel pups is always rewarding. (Fallout 2)
(Fallout 2 WAS very fun, but mostly it made me realize just how much I loved Fallout 1.)
Alright!
Screw everything else about this game.
I’m beating it with this on.
Bowser is getting bopped by Bippo the clown and I will overcome any obstacle to make that happen. (Super Mario Odyssey)
(SMO is a lot of fun and it added so much bright and colorful vistas to my switch, I loved that)
I love him, SO MUCH (Dragon Quest XI)
(SERENA IS PERFECT AND THIS GAME MADE ME CRY AND IT MADE ME THINK AND IT’S SO MUCH BETTER THAN I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE.)
That’s a GNOME? (Lost Magic)
(This was an interesting playthrough mostly to see exactly where this game from my childhood succeeded and failed. It’s not the best game, but it’s interesting, and gimmicky as HECK.)
You KNOW I repeated the time honored tradition of throwing yen by the bucket-full into the prize grabber. I just had to get this french bulldog! (Yakuza 4)
(Yakuza games come by the blog semi-frequently. 4 was alright, it had faults that bothered me, and it’s my least favorite currently, but it was alright.)
And that’s just some 2020 stuff, the blog has tackled a LOT over the years and it’s been good fun. Maybe some day I’ll evolve the blog into another site’s format of content, but for now I’ve just been enjoying posting clips, pics, and gifs with some thoughts below good old tumblr live blog style.
I gotta thank ya for the @ because I struggle to keep tabs on tumblr with all the updates bricking my addons etc x.x Not that I was particularly on top of things before that lol.
god, same, yeah. no problem.
Also thank you for reminding me that Hollow exists, downloading now because I’m more or less juggling games to see which I intend to sit down and marathon a lot of and that’s a good idea for a title!
I really cannot recommend it enough. Easily the game I’ve played the most over the last couple years, and probably the game I’ve enjoyed the most since Undertale. That includes Dark Souls, which I first played during that period, and I *really* liked Dark Souls.
I would love to hear your take on it, when and if you end up getting around to it. It’s also nice to recommend a game to you that isn’t, like, bad in more ways than it’s good, with the great aspects that do peek out at you through the jank only serving to taunt you with the actually great game that might have been.
I do maintain that a game that’s bad in interesting ways can be a more compelling experience, and make for more interesting analysis, than a game that’s just good, but Hollow Knight isn’t *just* good. It’s fantastic, in a dizzying myriad of compelling ways that are all interesting to discuss, from the way it builds its tone and atmosphere to the way it highlights the best of what the classic 2d metroidvania has to offer while also sidestepping a lot of the genre’s pitfalls.
I don’t know what it is lately with various games I enjoy or try to keep tabs on suddenly and arbitrarily making difficulty spikes that don’t fit the game? I mean, it’s hollowknight, it’s a souls like and all that jazz, but you’d know better than me in this scenario since YOU PLAYED IT
It’s not all that bad, since it really is quite overtly segregated from the rest of the main game, and isn’t necessary to get what otherwise feels very much like the actual canon ending. Honestly, though, I think there was maybe an over reaction on Team Cherry’s part to what seemed to be a relatively common complaint about the base game, one that I would have shared honestly, in that it didn’t feel like there were enough difficult late game bosses to take advantage of the knights full move set.
This is something of a natural consequence of the open design of the game. It starts out pretty linear, but once you get a couple movement abilities virtually the entire map opens up and you can go almost anywhere, finding meaningful progression pretty much wherever you go. As a result, though, the devs are almost never sure of what upgrades you already have when you reach a boss, so they couldn’t really include any in the main game progression that required you to have particular upgrades to effectively fight them.
I think the trade off in favor of exploration is worth it, but it does leave a bit of a gap in difficulty for those who are old hats at 2d platformy action games.
But it seems like what the devs heard was “Hollow Knight is a baby game for little children”, and their response was basically
The first three content pack updates added several new and much harder endgame bosses, most of which are a ton of fun and have fantastic presentations. They even went back and ramped up the difficulty of some of the lackluster bosses in the base game, in particular one boss in one of the few late game areas that does need more of the knight’s move set to reach now calls on the use of those abilities in the fight itself.
And people loved it! All these expansions went over great. People loved the Grimm Troupe in particular, in part because of the legendary difficulty of its final boss. So it’s perhaps not surprising that the devs pushed even further in that direction for the final DLC, one that revolved entirely around bosses, and it’s not surprising that they ended up overshooting the mark for a fair portion of the audience. And given that there are many players super invested in the lore of the game that found themselves gated out of new endings by an absolutely brutal slog of an overlong boss rush capped off by a much more difficult version of the one boss in the main game that most players already thought was impressively hard?
I really do think the Godmaster DLC is worth trying even for those who go in content that they’ll never beat it. Some of the fights that can be accessed much earlier in the DLC are really cool and worth experiencing in their own right, but I have nothing against anyone who takes one look at it and just nopes the heck out, and I can’t disagree with those who point to it as one of the few noticeable flaws in what is otherwise a truly majestic game overall.
Some of it probably comes down to that “souls like” moniker. Hollow Knight really isn’t a souls like. Its a classic 2d metroidvania action-platformer, that just happens to have a similar tone, story structure, and method of lore delivery that are all heavily inspired by Dark Souls specifically. And the game really benefits from that influence. But where the game tries to parrot souls-like mechanics, whether in super hard bosses that the player is meant to throw themselves at repeatedly until they ‘click’, or in the corpse run mechanic, which is overly punishing in the early game when money is hard to come by and some progression paths are gated behind expensive purchases, but means nothing at all in the late game since HK doesn’t have a leveling system like DS does, so once you’ve purchased the stuff you want there really isn’t any cost to losing your cash on hand any more? That doesn’t work so well.
Worse, it’s actively detrimental to the idea of exploring wherever you like, by pointing the player back in the same direction every time they die, when players in the early mid game might be better served by taking death as an indication that maybe they stumbled into an area that’s a bit much for them right now and they might be better served by trying another path first.
There’s one clear example early on of a particularly tough optional boss fight against multiple opponents. If the player dies to this boss, the game even puts a friendly npc on the path back who heavily implies that the boss is maybe too tough for them, and the player should look for a way to upgrade their weapon before coming back. But that npc shows up /before/ the player reaches their corpse, which happens much closer to the boss itself, and by the time you get there to get your money back - again, this is still relatively early game so loss of your money really stings - and by the time you reach your corpse you’re right outside the boss door, and taking another crack at it can feel less daunting than climbing all the way back out of the area.
If you do beat the boss, ... actually, no I wrote a fair bit but no, cut that. I've got more to chatter on about that but I don’t want to spoil more than I already have. The point is, while it’s really cool you can beat this boss and the area behind it “early”, and I love that the game lets you do that, the corpse run mechanic pushes players who are less comfortable with the game mechanics to keep throwing themselves at the fight when they might be better served by trying another progression path.
monhun
I haven’t played the the new Taroth or however that’s spelled. Heck, I haven’t fought master rank jiva either. The most recent thing I’ve tried is the raging brachy. I actually found that fight pretty fun. Reminded me why I like Monster Hunter. But after seven runs in a row without getting a single reactor drop it also reminded me why I don’t like Monster Hunter nearly as much as you & Bard do.
Still, we should do a few runs together again at some point.
Man, what a thing to type when discussing a souls like, asking to martyr myself mentioning difficulty spikes or difficulty modes/options heh.
Honestly, I kind of share the criticism some people have made of the souls-like genre overemphasizing difficulty. Mechanical challenge is a key aspect of the games, but Dark Souls 1 in particular is really Not That Hard. It’s obtuse more than anything else, but once you know what the stats mean, know how to upgrade your weapons, and have a feel for the mechanics, it’s not that bad. Especially if you take advantage of the summoning / multiplayer mechanics. I know purists can get uppity about getting help, but those mechanics are part of the game for a reason. Dark Souls is probably the easiest of the souls-like games I’ve played so far once you know how it works. I’d also say it’s probably my favorite, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
The over-emphasis on difficulty alone when people discuss souls games can get in the way of enjoying them. For instance, it leads to situations like new players trying dark souls for the first time bumping into the skeletons at the start of the game and thinking “wow, dark souls really IS as hard as they say” instead of “these guys are clearly too tough, I must be going the wrong way”. It can also lead to developers focusing too much on challenge, and on a particular /kind/ of challenge, and missing out on the other compelling aspects of Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls, including the way Demon’s Souls in particular emphasized delivering a variety of game play scenarios, or how it understood that a well placed deliberate anti-climax of a boss can sometimes be more engaging than yet another straight forward test of reaction time and pattern recognition.
>final achievement
BIG CONGRATS, THAT’S SICK! I know what going over the edge on a game renown for challenging gameplay can do to ya, and that’s quite the darn accomplishment!
Thanks! I’m quite proud of myself, even if there are harder things that I still haven’t done in the game yet, and probably won’t ever. Stuff not tied to explicit achievements, but that still have little in game rewards or markers that you’ve done them. I certainly wouldn’t say I’ve mastered the game. But I’ve probably gone as far as I’m going to go, and I’m quite content with how far that turned out to be.
Not that I’m done with the game. I’ve played it all the way through three times already, and I can already tell it’s a game I’ll be coming back to replay fairly regularly.
>no thanks, I think I’m good
I’m probably projecting since I’ve said the same thing 100 times (or thought to) on this very blog, but I ‘assume and apologize if I’m wrong in doing so’ you say this because you feel some sense of guilt like you didn’t ACTUALLY do all you could and you must put on airs for the blog and let me say, screw that noise.
Oh, no, not at all. Yes, there’s stuff left that I’m not able to do, and there’s people WAY better at the game than I am, but going by steam achievement records less than 3% of the people who beat the first boss go on to beat the final pantheon, so by that metric I’m in the top 97% of rattatas Hollow Knight players.
So yeah, I feel pretty chuffed with myself.
>Can’t promise it’ll suddenly be my next game, and even if it was it wouldn’t sadly get much showing I suspect because my pc is more or less down. I DID get replacement equipment so MAYBE? But I haven’t sat down and attempted to get my old setup running again.
So it goes. Again, if and when you do play it, I’d love to hear your thoughts on it. Even if I can’t, like, watch you stream it or whatever. Honestly, I’d like to be able to just blather on about it to you at more length without feeling like I’m spoiling stuff.
It's crazy that I have such memories attached to Army of Two when according to the timestamps on achievements I played it for 5 days in 2008, then came back a year later to do one mission more at least.
Now I know WHY that's the case- this was during a time where I'd play a LOT of hours EVERY DAY, so 5 days of near sleepless play is a lot, and 5 days of play with my best bro at the time is gonna build memories- but it's still a game I effectively played for less than a week in some respect and yet I hold it as a top coop game experience that I've had lol.
On March 30th, 2015 I decided I wanted a gaming side blog. (so we're early, but shush, it's the month for me)
I didn't know what I'd use it for exactly, but I had ideas- something I always have even if most of them only get as far as daydreamin' or writing out before closing them :P
For proof on the lack of direction the blog initially had- the March 30th date is the anniversary of my first post, an in-depth and lengthy review of Dragon Warrior Monsters for the GBC.
If you know the blog then you know "Extremely long and in-depth reviews" aren't the norm around here. As a matter of fact, that first post is the ONLY one I've done!
The closest I've come to ever repeating that would be the (word of the day) Directionless video I put out on Hades to get a grip on the concept of making videos, but that wasn't nearly as much of a 'review' as that first post is.
Tangent, definitely planning on trying my hand at videos some more for the foreseeable future. Probably not gonna use the tagline Full Impressions that I tossed as a whim for the Hades video but yeah- I'm excited to try my hand at a few videos :) tangent over.
It didn't take me long to come up with what I'd like to do for the blog though :)
A few months later I liveblogged a challenge run of FFT where I used only Ramza- a solo run. - Which maybe only happened because I tried a nuzlocke run a year prior on my main account-
(Nuzlocke | FFT challenge run)
Thanks to that haphazard liveblog experiment I started to realize a couple things which became the primary motivators behind this blog.
1) I LOVE sharing experiences. No brainer, I'm sure, but being able to share my experiences, and compare them with others' experiences, and just that mutual sharing is uplifting and feels good to do.
2) Liveblogging is an EXCEPTIONAL motivator to buckle down and play all those games I said I'd play (cue everyone laughing because I'm still way behind and have an immeasurable backlog).
But I mean that, on both respects. I have plenty of motivators toward the blog today, but if I were to be concise it's pretty much "It's easier to beat games if I liveblog them- otherwise I get distracted and play other games" and "I love sharing experiences and thoughts with people about my favorite thing- games."
Since 2015 I've tackled around 70 games as full playthroughs, and an untold ton as one offs or just to ramble about for a bit.
I've had a lot of highlights over the years, and I don't talk much about it as an overall experience so I thought for the anniversary I'd try to do just that. Not everything- I can't say I have photographic memory that would bring all of it up without prompting after all :P But whatever comes to mind as I browse some of my old stuff- as well as some thoughts on what I'd like to see in the future.
It's gonna be a bit self-centric I assume as I type this preamble to it, so let me say outright that this blog wouldn't be half of what it is without all the people who've given it the time of day over the years.
From recommending games they love or appreciate, to comparing thoughts, to offering kind words for analysis I've done over the years, to pointing out when I'm dumb and misread a situation :P- to, yes, even the people who decided "Fuck this guy's ramble" and deleted my captions before reblogging my gifs way back during Hamtaro (Of COURSE I remember that! It's amusing lol).
This is better because of others, because of the interactions and the people I've gotten the chance to chat with or befriend. It's just a liveblog more or less, my own little bit of fun I toss out for myself if for anyone- so seeing others enjoy this or that from the work I put into sharing my experiences or thoughts is always a joy in itself :)
Anyway, onto selfishly rambling about some tidbits of the past :)
Also sorry but no, opted to not shove a ton of photos in, it does have a handful of links to old posts though :P
This'll be disorganized as heck as I'll add to it over time before I feel it's worth posting (or the tumblr post editor becomes a hassle and more or less forces me to).
First~
FFT Solo Ramza Challenge: Considering it was roughly the first thing this blog has done, it's also something that's stuck in my head a lot more clearly than most of the other stuff I've done to be honest lol.
In truth, this is partially because FFT is my favorite game, bar none. But it's also because the whole experience was pretty new to me. Prior to it I had really only done one self-imposed-challenge that wasn't requested by the game in some manner and that was a nuzlocke run of Blue version.
So adding a challenge to my favorite game was a fantastic experience!
Notes I just wanted to say today about that run: If anyone enjoys FFT I honestly recommend giving it a shot for the unique story it lends itself to. I do recommend skipping the rules until after the second battle but that's up to YOU to decide.
My first post on the subject is me complaining about spending 4 hours grinding out the second fight and, despite hyperbole being my natural state, that was NOT hyperbole.
It DID take 60~ restarts to beat. It DID take 4 hours. The reason is that that 2nd battle is RNG as HECK, you HAVE to have Delita do some meaningful actions, you HAVE to have the enemies miss and make poor plays, you damn near HAVE to crit a few instances to save yourself from taking too much damage.
It's a numbers game to the extreme, so I wouldn't fault anyone for 'cheating' and skipping the 2nd fight for the ruleset lol.
The memory that stands out the most for that run is actually isolated in a post in which Ramza (Purrick in this run) talks like a total badass as just ONE DUDE running into a room full of enemies. I just think on that as a great encapsulated view of what it was like. The run started off face grindingly difficult, but because FFT is a game that offers so much freedom to the player it was extremely easy to 'break' the game into making Purrick overpowered as hell.
That's something I love about some tactical RPGs, I love having the ability to play smart so that I can play stupid later on, and breaking the game into making him one shot god is certainly a good payoff for playing smart early on :P
RetQuick: I miss RetQuick, it was primarily a short experiment I did in 2015 where I'd play a game for a short span of time (REALLY short, like 10-20 minutes) and record that for the purpose of making gifs and saying a short piece on what I thought.
It's one of those formats where the purpose was pretty shallow- but had a reason. I wanted to try making some gifs with some tools that existed online, so I made an excuse to do just that.
I also wanted to play a TON of games, usually through emulation on my sister's PSP, and this let me do that.
These two minor goals came together and so I spent a while making RetQuicks which were honestly more fun to make than they had any right to be. I mean the gifs were tedious but the playing? The thought sharing? The end product ocassionally having more appeal than just a photoset? It was fun.
I'm thinking whenever I have trouble picking a game for the blog I'll revisit the format... sorta.
I already reused it for a short stint to show clips I had no plan on expanding into a playthrough, but that died as well as it was too similar to Tidbits posts (another tag I no longer really use).
My thought is to rebrand retquick as something of a tryout for what game comes next. Play a handful of my backlog games for an hour or so each and say some thoughts before saying which one I'll continue as the main game for that period of time.
Old Tag Stuff: One of those things that only sticks to me since I made the decisions but it's always funny for me to look back on my old posts because I was apprehensive as hell toward making my posts visible. The reason my early playthroughs on the My-Tags page are variants of Ret instead of just "The name of the game so people can find this post" is because I felt like a liveblog would just spam the tag to hell-
Something I don't remotely feel bad for doing anymore.
So I avoided getting any sort of spotlight for quite a while on the blog for little reason.
Why Retphienix?: This is just a dumb thought I wanted to share and I'm sure I've said before.
It stands for retro!
Yeah!
Ain't that dumb and also not a real shorthand? lol
I think I have some sort of deer in headlights anxiety towards naming things, I mean do you think I think Full Impressions is a good summation for a video? I don't. But perhaps that's overshadowed by the other inexperiences and anxiety driven decisions that had- doesn't matter.
Retphienix is Retphienix because I sat there in 2015 and thought "Well... what do I name an alt account?"
My main is Redphienix, which yes, is ALSO a terrible name AND is misspelled. But it's that because of sentimental reasons. As a kid I misspelled Redphoenix when making my gamertag (I knew how to spell Phoenix back then as well, I was too excited about xbox live and misspelled it) and it's become something of a sentimental misspelling.
So I wanted to make a mix on that for my game blog, but I had no idea what. In the end I thought "RetroPhienix? I don't know. Retphienix is closer to Redphienix. I'll do that" and so it was done.
And just like how Redphienix is both bad and misspelled but exists because of sentimental reasons- Retphienix has acquired the same 'flavor' in my eye lol.
Aspirations for the blog: I have no immediate ramp up plans or road map or whatever, and in truth I'll be happy if the blog stays just as it is forever- up until tumblr ends- I cry over lost posts- and I reopen it on another platform.
But I do have blurry half-considered daydreams that I'd like to see happen for the blog through some hard work or shifts on my part.
One is something I'm already doing kinda, hence my embarrassing means of bringing it up a lot lately. Videos- I want those. I wanna make some looks back on series people don't talk about that I enjoy, I want to make videos sharing my thoughts on games I beat for the blog (like what full impressions kinda was, but I don't think they'll have a unified name from here on out). Maybe retrospectives, but mostly when I think of making a video tied to retphienix or me in general it's me looking at a game that said something to me, and saying it louder with my own interpretations on it.
You know the kind, videos where they talk about a video game but not the whole thing- just a singular message they really heard loud and clear from it intentionally or not. I dig those and I know I end a lot of games having plenty to say that could be directed into such a format.
We'll see.
And I'm along for the ride on that one as well- currently I'm keeping my eyes on whatever is directly next, which happens to be "I plan on playing Omori, if it clicks as something to talk about I would like to take a shot at that in a video too!"
The other is that I'd like to build a small community. Wouldn't know the first thing on doing that in a modern sense, but just a little online friend group to chat with and play games together. Something that could open up multiplayer and coop experiences being better shared on the blog and would just in general expand my gaming to what it used to be back on the 360 when I had a large group to play with.
Since the 360 era ended I've pretty much closed off- stopped playing competitive games due to lack of interest- and slowed down to playing all games either solo, with randoms (and no mic usually), or with my cousin. It's a rare instance when I play with some good people like @gamesception or another friend of mine, John.
When I diverted from playing competitive games nonstop toward other genres I didn't intend to also cut out all my online gaming buds, it just kinda happened, and I never really put any effort into rectifying that.
So more or less I'd like to one day sit down and work on a discord server, and then buck up and put the leg work in to make some gamin' buds again, but that's such a vague concept anymore.
Sounds all sad and what not but it's more ambivalent, I made decisions that
changed how gaming worked for me after the 360 and this is just where it landed for better and worse- I'd just like to see if I can make it a little better :P
General things I think when I think retphienix: Honestly? I think of how much fun I've had over the years and how thankful I am to have had an outlet that encouraged me to explore more of the medium.
I REALLY love games. I went to college for games, I've written LEAGUES about games, I've played countless games, my childhood was games, my adult life is games- games games games yada yada yada.
So when I think of retphienix I think of how without it I probably wouldn't have explored a lot of the corners of gaming that I have.
I genuinely, and I mean this, might not have sat down and beaten FF7 for myself and would have considered the amount I played as a kid to be enough.
I might not have played Chrono Trigger yet, and I KNOW I wouldn't have played Chrono Cross, and I'm happy as hell to have played both of those. CT was a mind blowing moment for me that showed me just how good an RPG can be, and CC gave me miles to think of in terms of innovating an RPG and how beholden to the narrative a sequel should be (I don't feel CC should have been chrono at all lol).
I DEFINITELY wouldn't have given New Vegas another chance. And I know I'm a sourpuss on NV, I've been that way since I maxed my achievements on the 360 for it, but replaying it really did reveal to me how exceedingly negative I was being.
My memories had become "It's brown and a boring location >:(" and "The factions all suck and it doesn't do anything with the idea of bad factions >:(" and became "It's... a little brown guys, not a big fan of the area" and "They didn't do enough with exploring the gray factions" while adding "Wait. This is pretty damn fun. And 90% of the additions are stellar. And I forgot about Dead Money, my favorite dlc in any game ever with a story that tears at my heart every time I think of it, NV good actually?"
Faxanadu would have remained a cool game I saw on SSFF and not a game I played to the end and fell in love with the aesthetic feel it has!
Also that's a game I cheated like crazy on lol, I would do it again! Save state scumming games meant to be rudely difficult is only fair :P
I probably would have never sat down to play through Windwaker which was such a positive and uplifting experience that I now get the most relaxed and warm feeling in my heart when I see those blue waves.
There's so many experiences I would have left on the table in favor of like... putting more hours into a live service title or something.
Maybe, and no offense to my cousin or anyone else playing it, but maybe I'd be no-lifing World of Warcraft nonstop just stagnating my interest toward the skinner box mechanics of an MMO?
Some offense, actually but lightheartedly lol.
But beyond the entire games I've played for the blog, when I think retphienix I picture all the time making gifs, all those games I played on the PSP for short stints, buying a retron 5 to add to what I could explore and being stoked when they shipped a freebie box of old controllers to go with it, getting angry at the retron for being a Piece Of Shit lol, crying at the end of damn near every game with an emotional story because I'm a big emotional mess of a person who finds investing and crying at a story way too easy thanks to empathy pulls, oh!-
Getting excited whenever I found that I had a "*controversial*" opinion that no one would care about lol. Like the one that comes to mind is that I thoroughly believe that Dragon Ball Z II: Gekishin Freeza!! for the NES is WAY better than the fandom recognized and appreciated sequel/remake Dragon Ball Z: Legend of the Super Saiyan!
How many people do you hear talking about either game, let alone saying the NES game that is roughly half of the SNES remake is the better one :P But I stand by that! The SNES one is a remake of DBZ1 and 2 for the NES but it loses all the charm and some of the fun of the NES ones by being a lackluster SNES game!
lol
I admitted wholeheartedly that this post would be a lit-
little directionless (gotta love the new tumblr poster making me break sentences like that), but to sum things up.
It's been 6 years. It's been an untold amount of work to be honest- liveblogging a game, at least for me, hasn't been the easiest thing. It's a lot of thinking out my thoughts (heh), it's a lot of learning tools to make the capturing process possible, it's a lot of experimenting, it's a lot of writing and editing, and, well, sometimes it's just tough.
I mean I went to school for coding, not video editing, not writing, not image processing, not this or that- but this hobby has introduced a lot of things even if only at a VERY base level (I admit fully to using online alternatives to make gifs for instance).
I learned a lot about, well, a lot of things in order to use this blog to learn more about games- and all that work has become part of why I've loved all 6 years of this blog.
6 years of gaming, work, and you all- and it's been worth the investment :) Here's to many more and all of you whether you stumble upon this post or not- literally anyone who's interacted in these 6 years, thank you, and anyone who hasn't I offer you well wishes as well.
Digging my 360 out is always a weird blast from the past for me, especially if I hook it up to an ethernet and look at more stuff (I recall getting really emotional over a lost family member's account still being there the last time I did this, I won't this time I promise).
Instead I just wanted to point at some of what shows up on My Games tab because it's a fun mix of good memories and things I don't recall at all.
Beat Hazard, played a bunch of songs on that.
My nerd ass getting all the achievements on Fallout 3 and NV because I was obsessed.
GAME ROOM existing, oof.
Hitman Absolution was my first hitman game if you don't count a handful of minutes at a relatives! I LIKED it! What the FUCK! lol I'm glad I liked it, but I honest to god could not go back to it today, I'm certain of that.
Maxed cheevos on I Am Alive- a game most don't respect at all but I really enjoyed it at the time- it came out when I was obsessed with post apocalypse stuff so it scratched that itch at just the right time.
I Made A Game With Zombies in it is a MASTERPIECE of a game, highly recommend looking up a playthrough for the music alone.
Iron Brigade is actually a game I've brought up before! For good reason! It's a game I love wholeheartedly and I think to date it is the only game I became THAT invested in the COMMUNITY side of things.
And what a unique experience that was.
Picture a game, right. You love it, it is niche as heck and you love it. The game has an official forum and pretty much no other place on the internet- so the forum is active! The devs are there! The best of the best and the most obsessed are there!
Now picture my nerd ass diving in, making an ass of myself, becoming at least recognized by a great portion of them, receiving a gift from the DEVS THEMSELVES, building the wikia with them, writing guides with them, stupidly turning down the opportunity to be involved in world first perfect runs with them (what the fuck was my problem) building broken strats with them-
I was incredibly active on the community side for that game, I miss that dearly. I really should take such a big commitment step again for the next niche game I enjoy :)
Enough about IB.
I went and maxed out Minecraft on 360 for some reason? What a bizarre thing to do. I'm pretty sure the achievements were stupid as hell (I ain't checking) and I don't recall really "playing" much? But that's also the biggest platform I ever played minecraft on? Oof.
Monday Night Combat, that was a fun game during its time.
Maxed out oblivion- fun story on that one.
Oblivion was one of those few games that I was hyped beyond words before release. I would watch the trailer again and again, I'd talk with friends and family about it nonstop, I recall going on and on about being able to choose how you used weapons, dual wield, one hand, two handed, magic, bow- I was blown away by the concept.
I did a similar bit of "gushing about basic mechanics" with Halo 1 to parental figures, that was fun.
But anyway- I was hyped for Oblivion, and I got all the achievements as you can see- but to this day I have not actually done much in Oblivion lol.
Little kid me was new to the entire concept of an open world RPG!
Little kid me JUST followed the quest markers and ONLY for the main quests and guild quests!
Little kid me did NOTHING in Oblivion! lol
So I have all these hours in it, I went and did a lot of the traditional Oblivion things like making a 100 chameleon armor set with duped sigil eyes or whatever but I haven't actually "just played" Oblivion, outside of stealing, I did a lot of stealing. But side content? Nope.
OH HECK YEAH PAYDAY 2!
I played Payday 2 on 360!
For those who don't know, PD2 on 360 is the OLD version, the OG skill system and the like. It's kind of a train wreck, but I played it nonstop for like a week? Maybe just a weekend? I recall telling my cousin to get it and then I don't remember us actually ever playing? I played with some friends, then by myself, then quit.
Fast forward and I buy it on PS4 and play it TOO MUCH then buy it on PC and play it TOO MUCH lol.
Oh, Rainbow Six Vegas is in the mix. Vegas and Vegas 2 were extremely fun IN THEIR TIME. I'd revisit them with a friend I'd bet, but the liklihood of that is kinda low.
You could use the 360 camera to add yourself to the game which was sick, and I'll never forget that sniper rifles could pinpoint blind fire due to an oversight. If you went against a wall (it's a cover shooter) and clicked in the zoom toggle for a sniper you would "zoom" your blind fire reticle which actually made the sniper go from "blind fire inaccurate" to "pinpoint directly on the reticle accurate" so snipers were busted lol.
If my reckless ramble wasn't a hint at what I'm about to say at the beginning: The 360 was the true height of my gaming history. It was the console I played as a teen which is to say it was the console I had infinite time and resources to pour into, and pour into I did.
Even today I don't just sit around playing games nonstop, sometimes I wish I would, but it just doesn't "fit" anymore- but kid me? He loved that shit.
So when it comes to stories I have about games, most of them are about the 360 which means a lot of them aren't really the most entertaining to share I think?
Most people want to hear about classic game stuff, or modern game stories- but I have all this weird and out of place knowledge about what it was like being obsessed with games on the 360- an experience a lot of people my age also have so, again, they aren't interested in hearing :P
Getting to read through your extensive (from my position) understanding of Hollow Knight is always such a darn treat. I feel like this will backfire as a roundabout brag but I rarely get to just enjoy the dialogue from this angle since 9 out of 10 times I'm the 'knowledgeable friend' dragging someone into a game or if I AM recommended something it's not a game the person dug 110% out of, it's just a game they enjoyed (which is extremely fair!). So I just wanted to thank you and (1)
Vaguely apologize for not reblogging literally every interesting as all hell thing you've thrown my way to respond to. Nearly everything I'd say is a simple "That's awesome!" "I agree!" "It's a shame that got cut but understandable- interesting remnant/rework!" I'm out of my element and feel ashamed to offer so little when I really shouldn't x.x I'm impressed with what you've gathered and how much you've pushed to get better at the game and better know it inside and out and thank you (2) :D
I absolutely did not expect you to extensively respond to all my extensive responses. That’s just asking for things to get out of hand! :p
As is, I’m just super stoked to see a pal play through one of my big new favorites. It’s given me some fun hollow knight content to enjoy while I sit through the wait for Silksong - which was originally speculated for release around now times, due to what was even then probably an entirely mistaken release date temporarily listed on Steam, but currently looks more likely for maybe a late 2020 or early 2021 release.
With Team Cherry it’s sort of a ‘reading the tea leaves’ situation, since they seem disinclined to give the game a specific release window until it’s near about done. Which, I mean, that’s good, better that then rushing for arbitrary dates or disappointing fans with missed deadlines, but yeah, the wait is hard. So thanks for the distraction!
Otherwise, I absolutely love playing the ‘veteran fan introducing a friend to thing-I-love. It is, in fact, my favorite thing to do, and I get precious few opportunities to play that role these days. So again, you’re welcome, and thank you!
I have such a primal and insane love for the Wii and Gamecube and I owned neither of these consoles when they were current.
Like the gamecube has this intense and unending level of nostalgia from all the media I consumed during that time, all the games I wished I had but decided against asking for since I went Xbox (money is a thing), all those minor but cherished experiences I had with my cousin on his gamecube as he showed off all the latest titles he was able to get like Pikmin, Super Mario Sunshine, Viewtiful Joe, Melee, or Super Mario DDR.
The Wii was a revolution and I only experienced it in tiny tiny bursts, a couple hours on a weekend once every other month or so, a couple rounds of bowling, being introduced to Brawl, losing my mind when I saw that you could browse the internet with a wii mote, seeing Metroid Prime with light gun controls, hearing that Wii dashboard tune, or my god the shop music.
Just exploring, and I use that term lightly since mine is underpopulated, the multi-screen menu with all your downloaded games and apps gives me such a deep joy and yet it’s not something I can say I did when it was relevant, at least not really.
It’s strange, but despite being slightly foreign to that time in my life- revisiting either console just drags me back to being a kid when consoles were racing forward at lightning speeds and it feels nice.
