madbuk

Shadows like that are usually used to make stuff like depth perception easier, so it's easier to tell when you're getting close to an upcoming obstacle. Also helps define the hitbox a bit.

#280 - Thumper I believe that this is the first rhythm game I've ever played outside of minigames (like Yakuza karaoke or dancing in Sly 2.) I'd been wanting to try one out for a while, and with Thumper being on sale for as little as £3.99 I figured it was a good chance to jump in and see what I had been missing. The end result? I think maybe rhythm games aren't my thing. Maybe I was missing some pivotal audio clues that most rhythm game players would pick up on, but overall this just felt like a bunch of death traps thrown haphazardly together with no indication as to when they're coming up. Sometimes you get ample time to react to what's on the screen, most of the time everything is just whizzing by and you have to die to an obstacle to learn that it's there, so you can retry and avoid it with your new knowledge. It felt like a memorization game more than what I expected a rhythm game to be tbh. Sometimes there were some definite musical beats that you could use, but most of the time it just felt like random noise that you couldn't anticipate. It's definitely satisfying to play when you're doing well, and everything falls into place, but the frustration required to memorize an entire sublevel to then play it perfectly just wasn't fun. Unless someone tells me otherwise, or PS+ gives me a freebie, I may just assume most rhythm games are like this and not play another anytime soon lol. I will say though that this is an impressive game for a team of two developers. I can forgive its shortcomings quite a bit considering how abnormally small the dev team was. It was also very stylish, although you don't really get to appreciate the sights when you're doing your best to avoid dying.

Progress Update: #280 - Thumper I believe that this is the first rhythm game I've ever played outside of minigames (like Yakuza karaoke or dancing in Sly 2.) I'd been wanting to try one out for a while, and with Thumper being on sale for as little as £3.99 I figured it was a good chance to jump in and see what I had been missing. The end result? I think maybe rhythm games aren't my thing. Maybe I was missing some pivotal audio clues that most rhythm game players would pick up on, but overall this just felt like a bunch of death traps thrown haphazardly together with no indication as to when they're coming up. Sometimes you get ample time to react to what's on the screen, most of the time everything is just whizzing by and you have to die to an obstacle to learn that it's there, so you can retry and avoid it with your new knowledge. It felt like a memorization game more than what I expected a rhythm game to be tbh. Sometimes there were some definite musical beats that you could use, but most of the time it just felt like random noise that you couldn't anticipate. It's definitely satisfying to play when you're doing well, and everything falls into place, but the frustration required to memorize an entire sublevel to then play it perfectly just wasn't fun. Unless someone tells me otherwise, or PS+ gives me a freebie, I may just assume most rhythm games are like this and not play another anytime soon lol. I will say though that this is an impressive game for a team of two developers. I can forgive its shortcomings quite a bit considering how abnormally small the dev team was. It was also very stylish, although you don't really get to appreciate the sights when you're doing your best to avoid dying.

#279 - Bully I'm not a huge fan of Rockstar, so I wasn't really sure going into this whether or not I'd like it. I'd seen it described as having the spirit of Harry Potter without the magic (obviously). From that, and knowing about the day/night cycle mechanic, I went in expecting a game where you do classes and interact with peers during the day, and progress the main story sneaking around at night after curfew. That's not what I got, unsurprisingly, but I'm okay with that. What I got instead is a game where you have to balance your missions around your class times - if you start a lesson at 8:45, for example, you may not finish it in time to attend your 9-11:30 class. This was a pretty interesting mechanic and I enjoyed it a lot more than something like Persona, where you have to choose between options like bonding with classmates or eating or studying, etc. In this, you can do it all if you manage your time correctly. Unfortunately the mechanic becomes obsolete pretty quick, because there's no reason to attend lessons after finishing them 5 times and getting every ability from them. I liked how small and compact the game was, it may just be because of hardware limitations, but it meant that traveling from place to place didn't take forever, and it wasn't filled with pointless bloat. A lot of the side activities were genuinely enjoyable which was pretty shocking after playing L.A Noire, which was literally void of anything to do outside of main missions and finding useless golden reels, and GTAV where none of the side content is interesting or fun at all. Games are too large these days tbh. Story was nothing particularly special but it's a step above what I was expecting from Rockstar. I hate all the characters in GTAV and L.A Noire was pretty forgettable overall, but the characters here all felt distinct and unique without being shitty over the top tropes like Trevor and Franklin, which made them far more likable. It also seemed surprisingly short but I suppose I shouldn't expect a PS2 game to be super lengthy. I would've liked some more side missions to flesh out some of the students that we never even really interact with (speaking of which, it's pretty neat that every student in the game is unique instead of being copy/paste nameless models. The differences are barely distinguishable for some students, but they're definitely uniquely named - the yearbook requires you to photo every student, so clearly some work went into making sure the same person wasn't running around in two different places like in other open world games.) I'm surprised by how much I liked this game and I'm glad I gave it a chance despite my lukewarm reception to L.A Noire and my extreme disappointment with GTAV. I was going to skip it, because Rockstar, but the HP comparisons I kept seeing and the fairly unique premise caught my attention. I'm not sure I trust modern Rockstar with a sequel, but if it does happen it'd at least be interesting to see where they go with it.

Progress Update: #279 - Bully I'm not a huge fan of Rockstar, so I wasn't really sure going into this whether or not I'd like it. I'd seen it described as having the spirit of Harry Potter without the magic (obviously). From that, and knowing about the day/night cycle mechanic, I went in expecting a game where you do classes and interact with peers during the day, and progress the main story sneaking around at night after curfew. That's not what I got, unsurprisingly, but I'm okay with that. What I got instead is a game where you have to balance your missions around your class times - if you start a lesson at 8:45, for example, you may not finish it in time to attend your 9-11:30 class. This was a pretty interesting mechanic and I enjoyed it a lot more than something like Persona, where you have to choose between options like bonding with classmates or eating or studying, etc. In this, you can do it all if you manage your time correctly. Unfortunately the mechanic becomes obsolete pretty quick, because there's no reason to attend lessons after finishing them 5 times and getting every ability from them. I liked how small and compact the game was, it may just be because of hardware limitations, but it meant that traveling from place to place didn't take forever, and it wasn't filled with pointless bloat. A lot of the side activities were genuinely enjoyable which was pretty shocking after playing L.A Noire, which was literally void of anything to do outside of main missions and finding useless golden reels, and GTAV where none of the side content is interesting or fun at all. Games are too large these days tbh. Story was nothing particularly special but it's a step above what I was expecting from Rockstar. I hate all the characters in GTAV and L.A Noire was pretty forgettable overall, but the characters here all felt distinct and unique without being shitty over the top tropes like Trevor and Franklin, which made them far more likable. It also seemed surprisingly short but I suppose I shouldn't expect a PS2 game to be super lengthy. I would've liked some more side missions to flesh out some of the students that we never even really interact with (speaking of which, it's pretty neat that every student in the game is unique instead of being copy/paste nameless models. The differences are barely distinguishable for some students, but they're definitely uniquely named - the yearbook requires you to photo every student, so clearly some work went into making sure the same person wasn't running around in two different places like in other open world games.) I'm surprised by how much I liked this game and I'm glad I gave it a chance despite my lukewarm reception to L.A Noire and my extreme disappointment with GTAV. I was going to skip it, because Rockstar, but the HP comparisons I kept seeing and the fairly unique premise caught my attention. I'm not sure I trust modern Rockstar with a sequel, but if it does happen it'd at least be interesting to see where they go with it.

https://twitter.com/anameformyself/status/1047975335235481600 There are still some left, only Retchel's team was laid off a few days ago.

Not everyone got laid off, just part of the skeleton crew.

It only takes 3 hours even without cross-save, so there's really no major benefit to using it in the first place.

As I told you in another thread, that edition already exists. It's called the Croft Edition.

You would, but honestly that'd be a waste of at least 20 hours. It's a very lenient speedrun, would be faster to just do it on beginner.