Game musings and news

[nosimpleway]

Kirby games are kid-friendly fun romps, until you get to the end, at which point they rather famously turn into cosmic horror. but whaddyagonnado

[Brantly B.]

I want to cut off my own right arm and choke myself with the left for saying this, but Crypt of the Necrodancer.

Unless that also has cutesy actual horror buried under its cutesy cutesy horror. Or makes you want to fuck a fish. I don't know any more.

[pacobird]

Ring Fit Adventure, because if he doesn't like it, you can play it you fat fucking fatass

[nosimpleway]

I want to cut off my own right arm and choke myself with the left for saying this, but Crypt of the Necrodancer.

I don't think there's any actual horror in CotN but I feel like a lot of the appeal would be lost on a child. "Well see, blues is a style of music, so that's the kind of music they're playing. And they're underground in a dungeon, right, so that makes them deep blues. And Deep Blue was a chess-playing computer, so they're chess themed, and they're all instruments or playing instruments because... well, look, because it's a music game, okay?"

whether it makes anyone want to fuck a fish I dunno, I don't remember there being any in the game

[Mongrel]

Crypt of the Jeff-Romancer

[Thad]

You could also try the easier Mario games.

I think my nephew's played more hours of Mario 64 than I have.

Not saying that one's easy, exactly, but it's an easy one to just wander and fuck around.

I remember Sonic Adventure being the first game that really clicked with my younger cousin, probably for similar reasons.

Kirby games are kid-friendly fun romps, until you get to the end, at which point they rather famously turn into cosmic horror. but whaddyagonnado

I never did beat the last boss on Dream Land 2.

Yoshi's Woolly World has a training-wheels mode; I don't remember the exact details but I think it prevents you from dying when you fall down a pit?

[nosimpleway]

Ha ha remember the end of Dream Land 3 when the secret final boss tears its own eyeball out in gouts of SNES-graphics friendly blood-red spray and you start falling back to the planet in a timed boss fight while the eyeball flies around and continues to try to kill you good times, good times

[François]

Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker feels like an easy recommend. It has Mario's kid-friendliness turned up to 11, there's no reading, and the levels are so brief and so varied that I can't imagine attention span would be an issue. The Switch version has co-op as well, though I've only played the Wii U version so I don't know how it works exactly.

[Lottel]

The top three video games my almost five year old son plays are Animal Crossing, Super Smash Bros, and Duck Game.
He got Luigi's Mansion 3 for Christmas but the actual game wears him out fast. He prefers just to walk around and mess with the vacuum instead of fighting ghosts.

[zaratustra]

Is this a good place to talk games for kids? Because it looks like my son has gotten tired of pretty much all our current games.

He's pretty okay at games for a 5yo. The main things I'm keeping in mind:
- Not much reading involved (he's still working on that)
- Appeals to youngsters with ADHD (especially hyperactive)

These are the ones my 5yo likes and I don't have an aneurysm playing with him:
(ignore the comments i made this list for fellow parents in our school)

Nintendo Switch
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Kirby Star Allies
Mario Odyssey (both 1p and 2p mode)

Apple Arcade (subscription service for iPad and iPhone)
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What The Golf?
Alba: A Wildlife Adventure
Lullaby of Life
Monomals
Spongebob: Patty Pursuit

iPad or iPhone (some also available on Android devices)
-----
World of Goo
Donut County
Monument Valley
Metamorphabet
Windosill
Where's my Water?
Pocket City
Train Kit

PC (Buy on Steam)
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Pikuniku - also on Nintendo Switch
Spore
Megaquarium

He really wants to play Kirby's Epic Yarn but i don't have a working setup to play it right now

[Yoji]

Holy cow, that's a lot more feedback than I intended! Thanks!

I guess Castlevania would at least introduce him to new monster ideas. And ninja cats are pretty cool, which Ninja Gaiden is like if you don't think about it at all.

I thought I heard that Necrodancer could be played with a dance pad? That sounds both tempting and awkward.

Upon searching through our games, I don't actually have a copy of Super Star. Either my brother or Romo has it, or it was stolen in the Great Game Heist. Which is a shame, because trying The Great Cave Offensive sounded fun.

I laughed when I saw Monument Valley and Donut County. I already got those for myself and MV serves us pretty well for surprise car rides and mornings ("Okay, you can have phone game, it's 6am on a Saturday")

We just got Odyssey and Captain Toad yesterday, and they seem to be a hit. Captain Toad's stages are pretty cute; I kind of want to print one for my desk. And I like that I can co-op, even when it turns into me holding his hand when he runs out of energy. I should keep Wooly World in mind too for the training wheels.

[Blossom]

I didn't find out until just the other day that one of my favorite PSX-era games is getting a remastered version for consoles and PC on, uh, Thursday.

SE's marketing is nonsense, but I'm very excited for this.

[mharr]

I love how hard they're leaning into the heroic watercolor portrait vs. gummi bear with pony tail in-game character. Until now I'd not seen that modernized in a way that captures the SNES RPG form.

[nosimpleway]

I've got mixed feelings about a SGF remaster. Some of those old bugs are what made the game tolerable to play.

Ren can be seen in Fuse's party at 6:42. He wasn't around for Emelia's campaign the first time through, so that's a new thing.

Red still looks like he's slipping on money.

[Destynova]

I heard that there are bonus dungeons that let one grind for cash/skills to avoid certain old pitfalls.

Legend of Mana will be getting a remaster. Here is hoping that forging weapons/golems actually make sense.

[Blossom]

I'll be playing this heavily starting Thursday. I assume the junk shop moneymaking was intentional if undocumented, but if the gold ingot trick is fixed, yeah I'd hope there's some alternate means to make money.

[zaratustra]

ok played the new (old?) isaac dlc now

it's pretty and well done, but one issue is that it's not chill

the average run of isaac is pretty chill. it's easy to get a game-cracking combo, and none of the bosses are really that much of a challenge once you have their patterns.

edmund and crew have set up to "fix" that. all the most powerful items and combos have been nerfed. blank card + jera doesn't work: you need a blank rune instead, and it takes 12 power to recharge if you have jera.

the new bosses are very definitely un-chill and now you'll have to defeat them... 34 times if you wanna unlock all the items - but it's okay because there's not many rewards that are super good anyway.

now ed is likely to tone down the difficulty and soon mods are coming back anyway. so. i'll give it a 7/10

[mharr]

For my sins I have finally, in 2021, gotten around to sitting down and playing Planescape: Torment, years after greatly enjoying the sequel.

There are no original reactions left to have, I assume. It struck me how rare it still is for a wizards and demons high fantasy world to really lean into the implications of the lore and play science fiction's game of following the rules all the way down the rabbit hole.

What surprised me most is how much of a regular D&D dungeon crawl it also is. I'm sure there are ways to min-max a zero combat run if you know what you're doing, but my random wanderings are beset with endlessly respawning muggers, classic traps & treasure loot dungeons, monster closets and escape-the-endless-minion-summons boss fights. D&D spells being the non-renewable resource that they are, my inventory rapidly went standard JRPG, an endless hoard of condition removal and health potions with one small pouch of everything else.

I'm left even more impressed with the setting choice and design of Numenera, even if the player character is just TNO again wearing novelty sunglasses and dad's coat.

[Friday]

The "no combat" run assumes you just run by/sneak by all encounters. It's possible because all scripted and forced encounters can be beaten by talking them to death, and yes, that includes the Final Boss. Sometimes you'll need a high enough Int, Wis, or Cha to do it. For the Final Boss I think all three have to be absurdly high.

In general a pacifist run isn't worth it, it's just possible. Just trick out your mental stats for the conversation battles and let your party members do the physical fighting.

And yeah, Torment fucking rules.

[Newbie]

Tides of Marinara is good, but once I realized how much of the story revolves around what is basically just the Blood War all over again, I couldn't maintain my interest. It just felt a little too cute that they were recapitulating so many of the character and setting choices despite the other obvious differences.