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

Been playing some Eastern Mind: The Lost Souls of Tong-Nou. It's reeeeally weird since it's the same guy that did LSD, one of my favourite games and one that I probably should have submitted for that box-art poll. Anyway, here's some 2007 footage that sums up Eastern Mind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyDwfeYaDIM

Got my partner Yoshi's Crafted World (Switch) for Greetings Card Company Shareholder's Day and have been playing it (in short chunks) ever since. Its charm carries you through what is otherwise an insultingly-simple platformer, although I'm missing a lot of the optional collectibles (and when I say "missing" I don't mean "just running through and choosing to miss", but more of a genuine "Wait, there were six of them? Where the heck were the other three?!").

But given Nintendo's reputation for inventiveness and esoteric mechanics, I was expecting the crafted element to be a little more in-depth than a clever graphical style. There's no option to build solutions, or design anything with materials you find; it's just cute when you roll paper along the path in front of you, and enemies burst into confetti when you throw eggs at them.

Having no prior knowledge of Yoshi's games, perhaps my expectations were set too high. Rather than admire its cover from afar, all playing it has done is balance the scales in favour of the perception that Nintendo makes simplistic games for single-digit children.

Which is a shame, as I'd just started to shake that notion. Ah well.

I always called it Florist and Chocolatier Appreciation Day.

@Th3solution Celebration of People Getting Massacred Day

Or

Everything is Less Then Half Price the Next Day Day

@Th3solution I once dated a lactose-intolerant chap who was allergic to flowers, so only made that mistake once.

@JohnnyShoulder Ah, so you're somebody who buys all his Christmas cards in January, yeah? And why not. It's a wonderful racket they've all got set up.

@RogerRoger I loved Yoshi's Wooly World to bits, but Crafted World... I tried the demo, and it feels WAY too basic for me. It feels like a game made for small children. Not nearly enough actual challenge or platforming for my tastes.

Of course, the depth in Yoshi games typically comes from level design and exploring to find hidden collectibles. They're left-to-right platforms, so you're not going to get super deep mechanics there. YI and YWW excel at being simple but addictive and charming platformers, though.

I doubt that'd be a huge issue for me. Lactose-intolerant people should be easy enough to accommodate at restaurants, and flowers are overrated.

@Ralizah @RogerRoger @JohnnyShoulder How the retail business has convinced us all to buy our significant others useless and disposable temporary items like flowers and cards is beyond me. Gifting a game or even a dinner or some treats is a much better idea. But that’s the pragmatic part of me speaking. I’ve rationalized out any romantic aspect of my personality. 😜

I've been playing on the Mega Drive mini with my stepson to introduce him to some classic games. We beat Streets of Rage 1 (somehow mine has more games 😉) and we're going to move onto 2 and 3 soon and a bit of Sensible Soccer. When he's not around I've been playing Link's Awakening and Monster Boy on Switch

@Ralizah Glad it's not just me. I'm struggling to find where the "game" part of Yoshi's Crafted World is hiding (and this coming from me, somebody who doesn't exactly want to be tested by the things he plays). Basic is the right word; it's a showcase for some brilliantly-charming graphics, but otherwise it unfolds like Baby's First Nintendo Platformer.

Although it's still early days. I'm sure later levels will up the ante, and going back to get 100% everywhere appears quite the undertaking, but in the immediate I think your impressions of the demo are steering you right. If there's any seismic shift down the line, I'll let you know.

If I didn't know better, I'd think you were fishing for his number.

I'm playing Baldur's Gate again, which I feel strange going back to after completing Planescape Torment last year. The combat is as annoying as always, with characters flailing their swords at thin air until they hit the bloody kobold or die trying. I don't remember being quite this bad at the game but I might have picked a stupid party (I'm still using Imoen so clearly something's not right). I beat the mines though and that's the real first brick wall you can hit so I'll try muddling through and slowly build up my party to not be annihilated in 5 seconds.

The game looked pretty good on my TV, so I was shocked when DF reported that the game hangs out around 576p when docked, and even lower in handheld mode. I guess the aggressive depth of field effect helps in this regard.

I think the problem with Crafted World is that it sacrificed level challenge and design complexity in favor of this weird gimmick where you interact with background and foreground elements in levels. It slows the game down to a crawl and takes away a big part of what makes 2D sidescrolling platformers... well... fun. Also, having to manually aim at stuff with a reticule sucks. I miss just eyeballing a throw with one of my eggs. It's snappier and rewards skill.

Also, unlike older games, which are still designed according to classic 2D level motifs (Yoshi games had more exploration than, say, Mario platformers, but they still emphasized a continual progression from left to right, and designed the game to be fun to just progress through), Crafted World seems to have gone a full collect-a-thon route and makes the player poke around these cute little dioramic environments where there's really no risk of falling to your death and the focus is on observation and experimentation as opposed to skill challenges.

That's the impression I get, at least. I do hear that later worlds and the special stages become more challenging, but the bits I play just felt boring.

Also, the OST is... sedate. I miss the energy from Wooly World's OST:

I don't have the time in my life for a man.

@Ralizah Wow, okay... yeah, the soundtrack is definitely a downgrade in Crafted World. It even repeats the first level's BGM during multiple subsequent levels, regardless of environment type. There's nothing of that variety represented (and you've only embedded three Woolly World tracks!).

And the manual aiming is a pain in the butt, yes. I didn't realise that wasn't a staple of the series. The numerous timed sniper challenges (foreground and background) are the only moments of frustration I've encountered. Having to press and hold, er... whatever the Switch has in place of triangle, having to press and hold that slows an already-sedate pace and does make key instances more of a fiddle than they need to be. Which is weird, considering how easy and simplistic the overall game is; it's like they deliberately made the controls counter-intuitive and awkward to create artificial challenge.

Sounds like they've shaken up what didn't need shaking to begin with. Sorry to hear fans, like yourself, have been disappointed by it. I'll keep making slow progress and shall report back; look forward to either "Well, that escalated quickly!" or an underwhelming dismissal somewhere down the line.

@RogerRoger There's a huge amount of variety to the OST, and most of the stages have their own themes, and they're mostly quite good. Looking online, the complete OST for YCW is a little over an hour long, whereas Woolly World's OST is around 4 hours. And when you factor in how YCW's themes all sound similar and painfully childish... jesus. Downgrade is right.

This should give you a sense of how much more quickly you can throw eggs in previous games.

The level design in YWW was solid, too, spanning labyrinthine fortresses, ordinary platforming levels, auto-scrollers, levels with unique gimmicks (one level, for example, was essentially a series of separate escape room puzzles; one level made it where you had to lead an aggressive chain chomp through to the end), etc.

The baffling thing is that these two games have the same developer. They KNOW how to make a really good Yoshi game.

Well, I look forward to hearing if your time with the game grows more positive.

It's weird how Yoshi games vary so wildly in quality. A strong argument can be made, for example, that the original Yoshi's Island is the best 16-bit platformer ever made. YWW isn't quite there, but it's still a strong return to form.

But then you get mediocre Yoshi games with soundtracks that sounds like this:

@Ralizah It’s incredible how awful a couple of tracks are in Yoshi’s New Island because the main theme is one of the best themes of any Ninty game in recent years. I could never really get into any of the games other than the original and DS. They’re really really easy and kinda boring which puts me off.

@Ralizah Only an hour of music in a full-sized game's soundtrack? Blimey. I was hoping it'd get a little better, but I shan't hold my breath now. Thanks for the warning.

And thanks for linking in a video of Woolly World, which I think I prefer the look of (both graphically and in terms of gameplay). I see what you mean about the egg-throwing, too. There have been brief moments of variety in Crafted World, which I've neglected to mention because I felt that they weren't really worth the effort, or just standard platforming tropes. Occasionally, you'll need to ride a dog thing to progress, and there was one level where the screen auto-scrolled, but nothing to write home about. It all just feels samey, even when it's trying not to be, which is somehow worse.

Sweet merciful heck, those tracks from Yoshi's New Island are... well, I would thank you for sharing them, but it'd be a filthy lie. Yet more evidence that "same developer" doesn't always mean "same creative energy and quality" as individual artists, directors and designers come and go. As a BioWare and Sonic fan, I can certainly (and unfortunately) attest to that trend.

@RogerRoger @Ralizah I raise you Resident Evil Dual Shock’s basement music 😂😂

@nessisonett Oh wow.

That most certainly deserves an E-Rank on its results screen!

I am technically playing Luigi's Mansion 3 but I haven't played it for a week or two because I decided I was going to play all of the Dark Souls games. I was meant to be starting Fire Emblem Whatever on Switch too, but now I can't because it's too close to Final Fantasy VII and Persona 5 Royal so I guess I'll get onto it by Christmas.

Decided to fire up Gran Turismo 3 as part of my efforts to ‘complete’/get the credits in every GT game. The licenses are evil but the games are fun.

@KratosMD Maybe how juvenile it was appealed to you? You were younger.