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You ever play Katamari? I've played Katamari. You ever play a game like Katamari? Me neither. (it might have something to do with the gameplay being patented or something but ignore that for now) This is a thread for games with unusual mechanics, strange atmosphere, weird subject matter, or basically any quality that separate them from other stuff. I'm guessing that most of the stuff in this thread will be relatively obscure, but you can post popular stuff here, too. (Like katamari) 1000 Heads Among the Trees   A game based on the developer's visit to Cachiche, a Peruvian town founded by witches. Wander around at night, talk to the citizens of Cachiche, and be a photographer. Talking to citizens primarily involves showing them pictures, which they will comment on. Your best friend is a brujo (sorcerer) who owns a restaurant and a motorcycle. Also there may or may not be ghosts. Blockland   A game where you build stuff with your friends. On the surface it seems like it's just virtual legos, but it also acts as a simple game development tool. It has a simple programming system that lets you make blocks respond to events, which can be used to make RPGs, shooters, and a variety of other types of games. It also has a good modding API. The community is basically 4chan, though I would be willing to host a BYOB server if there's demand. Has a free demo. The long description may betray that this was basically my favorite game from age 8 to like 14. Nidhogg  Fencing with ritual suicide by apocalypse worm dragon thing. A multiplayer game with simple mechanics: stab your enemy, run past their corpse. The first person to reach the far side of the map wins. Surprisingly interesting matches given the simple mechanics. Eczema Angel Orifice  A collection of surreal twine games that mostly relate to the author's own experiences. Kind of hard to describe, but there's one where, if I remember correctly, you shovel skulls out of a pit so that you can buy more skull-shoveling equipment and you can also talk to a dude in a cave. The Endless Forest  A "multiplayer online game and social screensaver...where you can play with your friends." A game with a very BYOB description. You are a deer with a human face, and you can explore a forest and gesture at other deer. I think they also hold events in-game sometimes. At some point I'd like to post about Kentucky Route Zero, but that needs a lot of time and effort to do it justice and I don't have the time right now. There's also a bunch of stuff that I didn't put in this post because of time (or because I forgot about them) but that I know would work for this thread, like The Beginner's Guide. Also, feel free to expand on games that I've already covered. Music Theory fucked around with this message at 20:44 on Sep 26, 2016 |
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Sep 26, 2016 20:34
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I love Katamari.  excited to hear about more unusual games.
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Sep 26, 2016 20:46
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I haven't yet bought this, but I'll probably get it next weekend: Calm Down, Stalin:  You control Stalin's arms and have to keep the capitalists at bay, and keep Stalin calm at the same time. Hogge Wild fucked around with this message at 20:52 on Sep 26, 2016 ---------------- |
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Sep 26, 2016 20:50
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Calm Down, Stalin looks hilarious and I'm definitely going to play it with my dudes when we're all in town at the same time. Shores of Hazeron  An MMO space empire builder. When you start the game for the first time you can choose to join an existing empire or build your own; I've never chosen the first option, so I can't tell you anything about it. The second option dumps you on an uninhabited planet in a huge galaxy, and you are tasked with building an empire for your species. You start with a single city and you can eventually expand to a interstellar system of metropoles You could also build a starship and gently caress off into space if you felt like it, I guess. It doesn't have a very large playerbase, though: I only ever saw one person my entire time playing it. It does, however, have global chat. |
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Sep 26, 2016 20:53
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City of Glompton posted:I love Katamari. everyone loves katamari teehee also nidhog is good i have a friend who brought that over one time |
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Sep 26, 2016 21:02
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I loved Urban Dead (https://www.urbandead.com) which is mostly dead now, so sad it's a text based rpg and it's survivors vs zombies in the city of Malton. you can switch between being a survivor or a zombie by being killed or being revived. you only get 50 moves per day unless you pay for an upgrade so step lively... when it was being attended to by its creator, fun things would happen for different holidays City of Glompton fucked around with this message at 21:08 on Sep 26, 2016
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Sep 26, 2016 21:02
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big black turnout posted:everyone loves katamari teehee I would hope so it's such a good game! I haven't played it for years, I miss it...
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Sep 26, 2016 21:03
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Maze, by Christopher Manson A "building in the shape of a book." If I remember correctly, you're supposed to navigate to a specific room and back in the smallest number of moves. This is surprisingly hard, and I'm pretty sure the publisher held a contest that nobody actually won. Also, a goon ran a really good LP of this book once, but I can't find it. |
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Sep 26, 2016 21:07
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I hope Cubivore is unusual enough. it is one of my very favorite games and I've never played anything else quite like it. You enter a drab, colorless world as a newborn Cubivore and must fight, eat, and mate your way to chromatic supremacy.  Its graphics are simple and there isn't a whole lot to the gameplay, but the Cubivore world is very charming. If you ever have the opportunity to play it, I think it will bring a smile to your face.
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Sep 26, 2016 21:08
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Cubivore definitely fits. I always wanted to play that game as a kid because of the Smash Bros. trophy from it. 
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Sep 26, 2016 21:08
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Limbo and Inside are strange and unusual games. |
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Sep 26, 2016 21:18
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Those are very strange games. The Something Awful CYOA  Given that I haven't really encountered much like this outside of SA or old books, I'd say the Choose-Your-Own-Adventures in The Game Room count as strange or unusual. The general format has one person act as the storyteller, while everyone else helps tell the story by collectively deciding important decisions. This is usually in the form of everyone voting on a single character's actions, such as in Paradise Lost (link in picture), though that's not always the case. I've run a few, though I've never actually finished one. You may remember CYOA books from your childhood, like the Goosebumps ones; these are, I think, the progenitors of the genre. Also, GBS refugees may remember Sword of the Bastard Elf, a goon made CYOA framed as a book he found in a yard sale or something. Music Theory fucked around with this message at 21:33 on Sep 26, 2016 |
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Sep 26, 2016 21:28
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City of Glompton posted:I loved Urban Dead (https://www.urbandead.com) which is mostly dead now, so sad Oh wow! You're the first person I've seen post about Urban Dead in forever. I used to love that game in college (around 2007 I guess!). That spawned like an entire genre of browser-based games, and then some of those developers hit on the idea of taking donations in exchange for replenishing/expanding the donor's energy pool, which then became a mechanic in modern MMOs. Nidhog is a cool as heck game that I play with my buddy Sodacan, who fenced semi-competitively in college iirc. I fenced a little while as well, but stopped after my first exhibition match (me and another ambidextrous new fencer sorta kinda stabbed each other in the throat and groin). https://gaming.youtube.com/game/UCXbdjx025Q6O3OO7ANN1A1A#tab=0 I don't have a screenshot handy, but Sword & Sworcery EP is a neat indie adventure game that came out for iOS and on Steam, backed by a great soundtrack from Jim Guthrie. I almost never saw anything about it besides an article on RPS, which is disappointing. The gameplay and narrative are framed by a metanarrator who superficially seems really ironic and directly addresses you, the player and "god," but the metanarrator is actually never ironic at all. It's entirely sincere. The gameplay itself isn't difficult, but there are some easter eggs tucked away for diligent explorers. I don't want to spoil the ending of the game for anyone who hasn't already experienced it, but I was moved (and kind of upset, to be honest). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2AUeftLFQE I was also a fan of Space Funeral by thecatamites. This is a recording of a stream by forums user Supergreatfriend, who at least some of you might know from his LPs of Deadly Premonition and MODE (the latter of which is another great, strange game forgotten in the sands of MS-DOS and FMV games). Space Funeral is a critique of forms and pretty much a strange little art commentary made in, iirc, RPG Maker. There's nothing else quite like it as far as I know. The main character in the party reminds me of Charlie Brown from Peanuts. Not sure if that's intentional or not! |
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Sep 26, 2016 21:28
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RedTonic posted:Sword & Sworcery EP How'd I forgot that! One of many things that the soundtrack convinced me to try. Can confirm that it is good. |
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Sep 26, 2016 21:32
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RedTonic posted:Oh wow! You're the first person I've seen post about Urban Dead in forever. I used to love that game in college (around 2007 I guess!). That spawned like an entire genre of browser-based games, and then some of those developers hit on the idea of taking donations in exchange for replenishing/expanding the donor's energy pool, which then became a mechanic in modern MMOs. haha I wonder if we ever ran into each other...I played it from 2005 I think to 2011 or 2012. I even ran a wiki for a group because nerd. I still pop in every now and then when I think about it. my main character spent a lot of time in a survivors group in a hospital before I went on a very orchestrated, role-played pk spree and got put on a bounty list lol.
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Sep 26, 2016 21:33
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City of Glompton posted:haha I wonder if we ever ran into each other...I played it from 2005 I think to 2011 or 2012. I even ran a wiki for a group because nerd. I still pop in every now and then when I think about it. my main character spent a lot of time in a survivors group in a hospital before I went on a very orchestrated, role-played pk spree and got put on a bounty list lol. I was one of the idiots going around saying harmannn hambarrrrzh! We probably did bump into each other, because I played it a lot during my part time office job back then and was pretty devoted to exploring everything (which is how I died so often). |
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Sep 26, 2016 21:42
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RedTonic posted:I was one of the idiots going around saying harmannn hambarrrrzh! We probably did bump into each other, because I played it a lot during my part time office job back then and was pretty devoted to exploring everything (which is how I died so often). lol my main character was played as a zombie for a long time. harmannn hambarrrzh for sure. I almost forgot there was a language for zombies. that was zombieprincess, but I also had Perez Hilton, and my favorite character to kill with, a big black dildo (apologies for being so crass) (also apologies if I ever killed you)
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Sep 26, 2016 21:48
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Jazzpunk Be a secret agent during the height of the cold war! Talk to boxes! Smuggle pigeons! Degauss FBI agents! A game that's weird enough to cause me to forget what most of the plot was in the time since I played it, though its weirdness did stick with me. Ennuigi  Walk around a decrepit mushroom kingdom and reflect on how you came to be in this situation. Also, you're Luigi. You can play this in your browser! Do it. Music Theory fucked around with this message at 22:01 on Sep 26, 2016 |
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Sep 26, 2016 21:56
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RedTonic posted:
Space Funeral was super neat and also got me into Les Rallizes Dénudés, so it's super neat X2. Did you ever play OFF? ---------------- |
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Sep 26, 2016 22:02
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mysterious frankie posted:Did you ever play OFF? I played a bit of it, but didn't get very far. You should post about it. 
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Sep 26, 2016 22:03
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Yume Nikki A surreal, oftentimes disturbing exploration of a young isolated girl's dreams. Space Funeral  A fever dream of an RPG where a crying pajama man and a horse made of severed legs travel to the mysterious City of Forms Middens  An exploration game with a pretty gorgeous collage aesthetic about executing things with a sentient revolver
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Sep 26, 2016 22:13
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oh drat, looks like someone beat me to the punch w/Space Funeral
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Sep 26, 2016 22:14
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Apparently we all need to play Space Funeral. |
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Sep 26, 2016 22:15
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Music Theory posted:I played a bit of it, but didn't get very far. You should post about it. haha, ok. OFF is an rpgmaker game about a mysterious hero, The Batter, who is on some kind of mission that isn't fully explained, but revolves around visiting a bunch of interconnected zones it's pretty short and easy- it's really more of an experience in game's clothing- and it's free, so you don't have much to lose if you want to try it. https://forum.starmen.net/forum/Fan/Games/OFF-by-Mortis-Ghost ---------------- |
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Sep 26, 2016 22:14
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HighwireAct posted:Yume Nikki mysterious frankie posted:haha, ok. OFF is an rpgmaker game about a mysterious hero, The Batter, who is on some kind of mission that isn't fully explained, but revolves around visiting a bunch of interconnected zones it's pretty short and easy- it's really more of an experience in game's clothing- and it's free, so you don't have much to lose if you want to try it. these are all great. im also gonna recommend gingiva by the same person who made middens  very similar in art style, you play as a woman with a turnkey for a head, who tries to escape a factory she is essentially forced to work in. its also slightly connected to middens, with characters from it reappearing  another great strange game is chu♥lip, where you are a boy who moves into a new town with his father, and he encounters a girl he saw in his dreams. your quest is to deliver her a love letter, and to do so you must increase the power of your heart. you increase it by kissing the characters in the game through cues they give you
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Sep 26, 2016 22:27
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Salmiakki posted:chu♥lip The PS2 was a really good source of weird games, for some reason. |
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Sep 26, 2016 22:28
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Salmiakki posted:these are all great. I actually have a boxed copy of Gingiva from the Kickstarter laying around somewhere! I'll see if I can dig it up
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Sep 26, 2016 22:38
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Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life It's Harvest Moon, you just farm and romance people, right? Yeah, but this one kind of stands out to me. The setting is such that there's a bit of an air of mystery surrounding everything, from the turtle to the beach to the shed on your farm that you can't unlock. It's not a game that tells you a lot, so you're left to come up with your own interpretations for a lot of things. Other than that, though, it's a pretty standard Harvest Moon. Although, I guess, there aren't a lot of games like Harvest Moon. Actually, Animal Crossing could probably also be considered a strange or unusual game, even though it's super popular. I wonder why there are so few games like it? |
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Sep 26, 2016 22:39
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Music Theory posted:
Animal Crossing stole my woman, and my woman stole my 3DS. ---------------- |
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Sep 26, 2016 22:42
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I bought an old GameCube recently to play animal crossing. other games too, but mostly animal crossing. love that game I have never stolen a handheld console over it tho
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Sep 26, 2016 23:09
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pathologic is one of my favorites. think david lynch + franz kafka with a dash of russian literary sensibility and you'll get an idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbBoqAD8hoI the original game is janky and buggy, but that's part of its charm. thanks to kickstarter a remastered version came out last year, and next year a full unity-based remake is planned
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Sep 26, 2016 23:09
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death sext posted:I bought an old GameCube recently to play animal crossing. other games too, but mostly animal crossing. love that game That one had a lot of weird stuff that I wish was still in the newer ones in at least some capacity. Like the mayor asking you to take care of the lighthouse, or the summer minigames thing. MiracleWhale posted:full unity-based remake is planned Whoa dude! Also, didn't they make another weird game involving color that was set in some sort of purgatory? Space Station 13  An atmospheric simulation that requires 2D spacemen to function correctly. Each round, antagonists are chosen from available players. The antagonists' job is to make things interesting (usually by antagonizing people), and everyone else's job is to do whatever and not die. Part of what makes it interesting is the Dwarf-Fortress-style layering of a bunch of systems, creating a wide variety of interactions that you can take advantage of. The other interesting thing is that, because the goals are so vaguely defined, there are a lot of rounds where the antagonists or crew decide to do some crazy thing, and the other group responds with something even crazier. A lot of people have tried to make similar games, but they all fail in the "tons of systems" department. Music Theory fucked around with this message at 23:21 on Sep 26, 2016 |
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Sep 26, 2016 23:15
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Music Theory posted:That one had a lot of weird stuff that I wish was still in the newer ones in at least some capacity. Like the mayor asking you to take care of the lighthouse, or the summer minigames thing. both of those are aspects of the game I really enjoy. Blanca the faceless cat stuck around in one form or another all the way through New Leaf, but there was something uniquely odd about her showing up on random train rides.  For those who don't know, Blanca is a cat who randomly joins you on the train ride between your town and the towns of your friends. Somewhere along the way she misplaced her face, so won't you please draw her a new one? I like making her look like Garfield. Another weird face thing is the "gyroid" face that appears on your character when the game gets shut off without saving while you're out traveling. You lose all your progress, your items, and your beautiful face! 
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Sep 26, 2016 23:39
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A lot of devs tend to cut the esoteric stuff that doesn't really apply directly to the main game, but, imo, that's the stuff that really sells the atmosphere. There was actually a Kill Screen article about that kind of thing recently; I think it was in the print version, though, so I can't link it. Something it focused on was this room in Castlevania that was just a cathedral where you could see ghosts sometimes, but was otherwise just a hallway on your way from one place to another. There are a lot of things like this in Kentucky Route Zero, too, like this burning tree that you can find in, I think, Act 1. Also, that gyroid face is terrifying. |
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Sep 26, 2016 23:52
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Music Theory posted:Apparently we all need to play Space Funeral. Yes! I haven't played OFF, I will have to try it out. Now that I'm old and my spare time/attention span are limited, I've come to like smaller games like A Dark Room and experimental things like thecatamite's games. I used to read JayIsGames regularly when I was an office drone, and discovered Mateusz Skutnik through that site. Skutnik is a really talented illustrator, but beyond that, I found the atmosphere of his Submachine series really absorbing. They're room escape games with the usual puzzles, but Skutnik's artwork and sound design created a powerful ambiance. |
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Sep 28, 2016 01:36
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I really reccomend OFF, it's pretty unusual and I doubt you will have a bad time playing it Also one of the secret to Middens is that you don't have to kill with your sentient revolver, although you totally can murder the entire place if you want to |
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Sep 28, 2016 02:30
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I recommend watching SuperGreatFriends Lets Play's of ILLBLEED, D, and D2 if you want to see some weirdass games you won't be able to play without a dreamcast, and probably wouldn't want to if you could. Also https://odditie-s.tumblr.com |
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Sep 28, 2016 02:38
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I really like Uplink by Introversion. for those who have not played it's a simulation of early 90's Hollywood style computer hacking, and it's a blast. The soundtrack is killer too. Also Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth was suitably weird for a lovecraft game. it even had a sanity meter where looking too long at ancient horrors could drive you mad. ---------------- |
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Sep 28, 2016 03:12
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Hemingway To Go! posted:I recommend watching SuperGreatFriends Lets Play's of ILLBLEED, D, and D2 if you want to see some weirdass games you won't be able to play without a dreamcast, and probably wouldn't want to if you could. I love his LPs. It's always a real chill time. The Dreamcast was the first console I ever bought for myself. Saving and scrounging for it was a poo poo load of work. The old TV I hooked it up to had to have some kinda exotic adapter and the screen wasn't actually big enough no matter what I did. I learned how to troubleshoot and to not be afraid of gadgets though, which are pretty good lessons for a middleschooler. I sold the DC a few years back because I wasn't making any use of it. I hope the buyer gave it a good home.  Chunky Salsa posted:I really reccomend OFF, it's pretty unusual and I doubt you will have a bad time playing it Speaking of revolvers, have any of you played Receiver? It's a little game where your player avatar spawns in a random part of the small game world with one of three handguns (including a revolver, naturally). The HUD is minimal, since one hit is basically a game over, and the aesthetic is pretty simple -- bold colors and simple environments. The core of the gameplay is that you need to perform all of the tasks required to operate a real gun. That includes chambering rounds, racking the slide, filling the magazine with rounds, and keeping track of how many shots you've made (there's no ammo counter, so I hope you remember your Colt's capacity and how many shots you've already made). I don't generally care for shooters, but I played through far enough to complete the narrative. |
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Sep 28, 2016 03:14
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| # ? Apr 24, 2024 15:17 |
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anyone remember rare's viva piñata? |
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Sep 28, 2016 04:03
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