Daytime Waitress

You can tell FL posts from a really rough neighbourhood - instead of bullet holes in the street signs, they have 'em on the report buttons.

The polluted water, decaying vegetation, muted lighting and rope bridge across the chasm give off a big bang of a certain part of Elden Ring.

Right down the road from the Village of the Albinaurics, yeah? I've always wanted to unload an SSG into an Omenkiller.

Now I've got a mental image of a butter-fingered pinkie frantically trying to free a sea turtle from a six-pack ring, "Jeez, we came from Hell to ruin everything, but you guys have just taken it too far!"

Contra Hard Corps TC is coming along nicely.

This is a really good point: it's not just using more, it's using what's already there with a whole heap of panache. Being one of those fans, I'm consistently impressed with how this set keeps pressure on you not just through numbers or higher-tier enemies, but angles: it's constantly tasking you to blow a hole through a squad and move between relative safe points, but there's always a window or a slit in a wall where some shotgun puke can get a bead on you from your "cover". I probably never would have seen this mapset without this review, and if I had, the "beta" tag likely would've put me off. Community service, this, rd!

There are a lot of mechanically interesting things posted in this thread, but how the Kick Attack! surfer bros were somewhere in the back of @Doomkid's mind and he was savvy enough to dredge them up for Ray Mohawk 2, and pair them with hula imps, is one of those little things that will always make me happy.

I guess it just comes down to your own personal goal with that game. Right now, I'm playing a lot of shmups and my goal there is to learn each game to the point where I can reliably clear it on one credit (1CC). Memorising where enemies will spawn in and when; picking up on what threats I can let by and what enemies I have to eliminate before they shower the screen in bullets; knowing where I can't hope to deal with a bullet pattern and have to bomb to evade an attack, then discovering a way around that so I have one more resource in my back pocket for later, more difficult sections - the acquisition of all this knowledge and seeing the improvement on a stage by stage or title by title basis is enjoyable and rewarding to me. And with Doom, I've almost no desire to improve my level of play to such an extent - finishing a map, let alone a megawad, deathless and saveless isn't a priority for me. And so my goal is just to enjoy the environment and blast popcorn enemies while save scumming - because I need that blow-off after labbing Psikyo games lmao

Very bright, very 80's Miami. You're gonna put a chainsaw in the bathtub, yeah?

What scale are you collecting them at, and what drivers have you got?

Slapped it on HNTR because I didn't feel like recreating the Teutoborg Forest after a long day at work. I know Ed produces absolute quality, but somehow I was still surprised. Bright and breezy, with loving detail stuffed into every corner. Massive popcorn massacres and lock ins that reward fancy footwork. Adore how ghost pinkies can still catch you off guard in the noonday sun. And how it ratchets up the tension with the quiet lead into the hedge maze. Absolute class act.

Aesthetically very unique and cohesive - hell, just plain impressive at some points - but it feels like the gameplay still needs quite a bit of time in the oven. The actual fisticuffs mechanic feels decent, and you can tell they've considered that important enough to build the game around it, and lavished time on it. But almost everything else feels kinds of... disconnected and weightless? After playing Selaco for a couple of weeks, jumping especially feels like you're on the moon. And the AI just isn't at the level where it can support a stealth mechanic yet: I blew up a bunch of gas canisters in a 10ft area and - even accounting for how jank splash damage feels - I had two goons die from the blast, and another (standing right next to them) acknowledge movement, activate, and then immediately return to his idle animation... I think they've done well in releasing it at such a low price point, because the environments do feel good to explore, and you're given a fair bit of leeway with regards to what order you approach each of the potential encounters spread out across an area. And it's held together real well with the voice acting and the cinematics and the style. And maybe it's silly of me to expect it just because they're both under the same small publishing umbrella, because they're both very different games with very different goals, but it just doesn't reach the level of polish and interactivity that Gloomwood exhibited when it transitioned from demo to Early Access.

Love the image this one paints: a marine who has died so many stupid deaths from collateral explosions that he now considers the inanimate nukage receptacles to be aligned with the forces of hell. Fear the allies of the Icon of Sin: Astaroth, Belial, and the Forty-Four Gallon Drum.

I know there are folks that genuinely enjoy the clusterfuck of continunity that is the Tekken storyline, but for me the game is at its best when it is completely decontextualised from any and everything (i.e.: the way 12 year old me first encountered it) - "holy shit, that cat in a tie and suspenders just pulled a sick suplex on that karate man!" Video games.

While there were a tonne of QOL features added across SDV's lifespan, the bulk of the final two updates really just added a mess of endgame stuff that you don't really have to interact with or won't even see for an absolute age, especially on your first run. I put the most time into the DS/3DS versions of Animal Crossing, but there was something about the gritty, lo-fi aspect of the GCN rev that was lost in later editions. They were still working out all the mechanics, and the comparatively limited amount of stuff to interact with, coupled with the kinda scuffed aesthetics made it very homely, very compact, very cosy, like that little world was your own. And SDV taps into some of the best aspects of that. The characters obviously have way more depth and nuance to them than Nintendo's speak-n-spell menagerie (including a few that get surprisingly dark), but you still get attached to the residents and build your own narratives around them. You still look forward to participating in the annual events. You spend two in-game years busting your butt to produce a bumper crop, and sacrificing whatever time you can spare to hunt down specific gifts for the townies, and you're tired and you're exhausted and then you hit the night market event, fishing for deep sea creatures in the only few precious hours a year the game allows it and the entire world just melts away. Sure, you can listen to it any time once you've obtained the jukebox (soundtest) item; heck, you could even play it on youtube all day. But being in that moment is one of the most uniquely zen experiences I've ever had in a game. Masterful stuff. Those moments of not just ownership (read: hoarding), but of experiencing and being embedded in a tiny little self-contained world were the hallmarks of Animal Crossing, and they're definitely something to treasure in Stardew. Turok's always been a weird one for me. Rented it quite a few times back in the day, but never really got on with it as I wasn't much into FPS at the time. It deservedly copped a bit of flak for its fog, and it was never going to dethrone any of its contemporaries, but it had such a charm to it that I find that it always occupies some part at the back of my mind. I stupidly bought the ND rerelease along with a bunch of other stuff and consequently got distracted from it, but it has such a unique vibe to it that I'll no doubt make time for it soon.