Topic: What (Non-PS4) game are you playing??

I’ve been playing Valorant a lot on my PC and osu haha

@RogerRoger Well, I mean, the characters looking like sentient lego people didn't strike us at the time. The style, as rough as it is now, was still incredibly involving coming off of 2D games of the era. It's hard to overstate how big of an influence its often heavily cinematic stylings had on the medium as a whole.

With that said, THAT scene never bothered me. In fact, I deliberately refused to Aeris when I didn't have to, and was even more sour on her after the foisted her underleveled a#s on me in... The Temple of the Ancients, I believe it was called... so her death was a welcome development for me. Primarily, though, I've always been a huge Cloud x Tifa shipper, and she was in the way.

@Ralizah Oh yeah, I'm speaking as somebody who played the original for the first time last year, and totally appreciate how gorgeous FFVII was back in the day.

More importantly, however, I'm speaking as somebody who agrees with you regarding Aeris' character, although not because I'm also Team Tifa (Cloud x Barret FTW, so much so that I obliviously triggered their date). That's why I didn't cry, which then gave me the headspace to wonder about the reputation of the scene and its awkward Roblox graphics.

Glad to know it's not just me who kept her underleveled 'til then, then!

@Ralizah @RogerRoger I’m definitely Aerith > Tifa but yeah, I don’t think I ever willingly used her in combat. I usually have Red and Barret/Yuffie for their ranged attacks and then as soon as I get Vincent it’s Cloud, Red and Vincent for the rest of the game.

@nessisonett Never used Vincent once, alas. I was Barret and Red XIII all the way.

And, since I gave all the characters in my playthrough silly names, I genuinely had to Google "final fantasy dog" just then, because I was about to call him Red IX.

@nessisonett Vincent has the worst limit breaks though in my opinion.

#teamtifa

@Thrillho If you keep Vincent healed then he probably has the best limit breaks. The only issue is getting the right elemental one in levels 1-3 as some enemies are immune. Chaos, his level 4 one is insanely good as it’s non-elemental. I also love Vincent because I pair Deathblow with Extra Cut, which means he usually lands Deathblow with his higher accuracy and also gets another attack in. Currently that’s about 2000 damage per turn and I’m just about to go to Mideel for the first time.

I remember Vincent being my favorite. And Tifa. Definitely Tifa. Aerith was lame.

@nessisonett @RogerRoger Potions and the materia system in general kinda make a dedicated healer feel unnecessary.

Haha, the Barrett x Cloud date only gets triggered if you keep all the women at arms length until that point. The tension between them on that ride is hilarious, admittedly.

I've seen the game played with mods that add the FMV character models, but it always looked sort of strange to me. The exaggerated, almost mime-like animations they often engage in and weird humor of the game jive better with the older models.

The HD version's low-res backdrops look terrible when contrasted with the razor sharp HD character models, though, and I HATE how S-E added mouths to them. The original PC release was the worst, because it gave certain characters these horrible O-mouths, like you'd see on cheap blow-up dolls.

It's especially hard to take Sephiroth seriously when he walks arounds like
: O
all the time.

Jessie had an O-mouth too. Ugh.

Even when they're closed, though, the mouths just look awful on those models. They're not supposed to have mouths!

So, on PC, I use the ReMako mod that uses A.I. to upscale the backdrops and make them look much sharper in HD, and I used a mod of some sort that removed the mouths to give them that authentic PS1 look.

@Ralizah Yeah, I’m using ReMako too but I quite like the FMV models in the environment. To be fair, I haven’t played Midgar with that mod as I keep a save straight after Midgar due to me not really liking it and having played it approximately 5 million times.

I've started Headhunter on my trusty ol' PS2 and hey, first impressions aren't too shabby. The story seems to be beyond cheesy ("My name is Jack Wade, and I've got retrograde amnesia, so I'm gonna shoot perps and ride a motorcycle 'til I get my memory back!") and it's wearing its Paul Verhoeven Appreciation Society membership card on its sleeve, but it has its charms. The in-game camera is a disaster, as are the motorcycle controls, but it's nothing impassable. Fantastic soundtrack, too.

I’m getting absolutely slaughtered by The Lion King on Mega Drive. How in the hell did kids beat this game???

@nessisonett they didn't 😅. One game used to last a long time because of repetition back then even if the game itself is really short! Takes a while to learn all the level designs I think but it is possible

@nessisonett Is it that mother fudging level of jumping between the hippo tails?

@Thrillho I finally beat that level yesterday and then got floored by the Elephant Graveyard. Got further tonight in the Elephant Graveyard after clearing the first two levels on one life but lost 2 continues worth on that one level! It’s just brutal.

@ralphdibny Even so, I’ve played some older games that haven’t been quite this insane! Great game though, the soundtrack and graphics are brilliant for the time. Less sure about the detection on holding onto ledges!

@nessisonett I think it was the only game we had on our PC at home when we were little; the Disney one with Lion King and Aladdin.

The latter was fine with some tricky levels but Lion King was insanely difficult. 99% of the time I gave up on that second level.

Slowly making my way through my Mega Drive backlog with Shining in the Darkness. Lord this game is punishing. I quite like a dungeon crawler though and it’s cool seeing the little flourishes back in 1991 that would become Camelot’s trademarks and be seen right the way up to Golden Sun and the Mario sports games on GBA.

@nessisonett Blimey, you're taking some deep dives! How big is your MegaDrive backlog?

I am playing Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines on PC. It's one of my girlfriend's favourite games ever and she's been planning to get me to play it forever. So I'm mouse and keyboarding and it's so annoying. The game is good though. Well, the game is a mess, but it's a fun mess. It's like a Bethesda mess. The world and lore and everything is fun enough that I'm okay with the glitches and the general silliness.

@RogerRoger Considering that I kept buying Mega Drive games without any means to play them for a good long while…. quite a large backlog 😂

@johncalmc Bloodlines is also one of my favourite games. It really is a mess but the fan patches iron out the messy bugs and such. It’s somehow a great game despite all that though.