Krudler
- 0 Posts
- 99 Comments
It definitely sucked at the time, but it also taught me some key lessons.
Like don’t assume a game is good because it comes in a nice box. Don’t assume a licensed IP means good gameplay. Read reviews, don’t just make a snap purchase.
It was a huge loss for me at the time but I feel like these lessons actually saved me quite a bit of money/frustration over the years.
It was recently given away. I prowl the free games communities but often don’t play myself, just collect.
Edit: actually bought this years and years and years ago when it came out. They tried to do Quake but then put it on methamphetamine, stir in huge wave battles reminiscent of OG Serious Sam. It’s mostly a 6/10 game but I also don’t regret buying it and it was fun to play.
I could only come up with three for now because it’s no small task!
-
Squarez Deluxe
-
TormentorXPunisher
-
Quake IIx
I didn’t choose anything with crafting or making, because I can still craft and make things in real life. I chose games that provide something that I could never get anywhere else, and also games that for me are infinitely replayable. I would never pick a story driven anything because if that’s the only game I can play for the rest of my days, I don’t want to hear/play the same story 70 times, and RPG combat systems are easy to figure out and game after a while
Squarez Deluxe to me is the greatest shape packing game ever made, it makes Tetris look like Tinker Toys idc fite me. It’s probably three decades old by now and it’s DOS freeware and I still play it. Extreme mode only, my peeps
TormentorXPunisher is the best twin stick shooter I have ever played, and I have played hundreds of them. It has an infinite skill ceiling. I play every day and have done so for about 7 years. I was number two WR on hard mode until my protegé took me down, but I recently ascended on regular mode by 14 ranks. I’m so invested in this game I actually developed a friendly acquaintanceship with the sound engineer Joonas Turner
Quake 2 is just a granddaddy of all amazing FPS with again, an infinite skill ceiling esp in movement. I actually enjoy the movement of Q1 better, but the mod support of Q2 and upgraded engine makes it a game that goes on forever. Team CTF, rocket arena, etc
I have a lifetime boycott of all things Ubisoft for this very reason. I bought game after game after game from the late 90’s until early 2000’s. 100% of them were legal purchases and with the CD in the drive… "please insert CD " error
Then I became the lead developer for gameloft.com and saw how completely incompetent the French leadership of the company is. Absolute morons to the highest levels.
Never another penny shall be conveyed to Ubi from my holdings.
edit: You wanna know what I’m talking about? Ok. They import the director from France. He does not speak English, he does not speak Quebecois, which is very different than Parisian French. He has no knowledge of the games industry whatsoever, but is a cherished family friend. He cannot communicate with anybody in written or verbal ways. He shows up for work at 10am and takes 2 hour coffee with other “leadership” and then lunch. Then he comes back from a 2 hour lunch, and him and come C-Level turnip laugh at his Billy Bass for 30 minutes. I am not making any of this up. This man installs a friend he met into the position of Executive Producer. The man’s previous experience was managing an Esso gas station. No embellishment. So I’m the Sr dev and I’m the fucking acting director, account manager, game designer, executive producer, producer, technical producer, project manager, director of production, developer, creative director, QA lead, every god damned thing just to get some corny-ass games produced.
edit2: Laughing at a Billy Bass. A Billy. Bass. Singing. Fish. Laughing at it uproariously.
Tormentor from Tormentor❌Punisher!
I have 400+ hours and was HardMode #2WR until I the students I tutored defeated me lol
In my opinion, it’s the best twin stick shooter ever made. Hugely discoverable mechanics, completely skill-based, and a nearly infinite skill ceiling.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/500670/TormentorPunisher/
They gave it away on Epic as well several years ago, check your launcher!
This is so true of many people.
I was a professional game developer for two decades. I was never formally trained, I am completely self-taught.
I must break things apart and build them up from the individual molecules, in order for me to understand things.
When I learned trigonometry in school, or should I say when they attempted to teach it to me, it flew over my head like a flock of birds. I could understand none of it nor could I understand any of the reasons.
When I started to develop an obsessive passion for programming when I was around 14, and I needed to figure out how to shoot a bullet out of a cannon at a certain angle and break down the components of motion into x and Y… I felt like I invented trigonometry myself in about 3 hours.
People are weird and everybody approaches things differently. I could see myself beginning to Intuit calculus concepts with a game, but at the same time I think it’s such a specialty ask that it’s not realistic.
It failed because it offered too much customization. Really.
Physical construction was shit tier. I should know, I early adopted November 2015 and in total I went through 17 not counting the 3 DOA. My ear actually became attuned to the specific mini-crunch that signaled the impending demise of a shoulder button.
It also had undeniable layout and design issues. The D-Pad they implemented was a joke. Fanboys wouldn’t shut up about it but truth is, it was completely unacceptable to put a track pad in it’s place and it was more or less unusable. Other buttons and inputs were juuuuust a little cramped or off-kilter and it was common to input mash accidentally.
The configuration software was also a nightmare. Ever try setting up a Mouse Region for a twin stick game? Sweet jeebus. They tripled the efficiency of the configuration screens in recent updates and it’s still a nightmare. It’s 30 inputs just to tweak something like a deadzone, then you have to menu out… then test in game… then drill allllll the way back down to tweak a little more.
But back to my assertion at the top. It made SC gamers literally unfairly better. Gryo aiming, effectively programmable macros, mode shifts, radial wheels, action layers, targeted mouse clicks, button toggles, sliders, regions, I can’t even remember it all from back before it got heavily neutered. It got out of control to the point where you could bypass “cheating” standards and macros in big online games, etc. You could simulate inputs.
Design iterations would have fixed the other issues, but it became a deadly-unfair device for competitive gaming and a lot of companies hated how the Steam Controller hardware and software customization… basically allowed people to “cheat” their systems in a sense. It opened a huge fucking can of worms. Something like it will probably never be seen again for these reasons.
Prone?
Hell, they are almost designed to break. They are utterly shabby in terms of build quality.
I was one of the early adopters going back to November 2015
I am not lying when I tell you I have been through 17 of these controllers. It’s the right bumper almost every time.
I have a giant handful of the dongles. I was saving them thinking they would go up in value but now like $2 knockoffs are available LOL
Edit: the first one I received, out of the box, had a broken face button membrane. The replacement I received had a non-functioning back right paddle. The replacement for that had a non-functioning R shoulder and you could hear the plastic crunching on each press. That’s just the first three I received and I’m not counting those in the 17 that I destroyed in my own hands.
They were built like absolute shit. After the first run got sold and they shored-up manufacturing problems, they got marginally better but the fundamental underlying issue never was solved.
If it wasn’t such a wonderful controller, I would have stomped the first one into powder and never looked back.
I feel like it’s been a decade already… I paid for this app called CalenGoo. It’s kind of clunky and reminiscent of older office software, but it is such a powerhouse under the hood.
It is insanely customizable, and it did the thing that I needed the most, which was to remind me in a way that I define!!!
(Edit the whole reason I purchased it at the time was because there simply was no option available where you could get an Android app to continually remind you. Back then it was one reminder and then fuck you if you miss it or didn’t hear it go off. CalenGoo was life-changing in this way and I’ve come to love all the other features)
Plus when it does have a reminder go off, I can set any kind of quick snooze or even a very customized snooze like remind me in 172 minutes. If I dismiss a reminder I can undo it, and I can go into the specific event at any time and I can change the snooze, it’s just… I don’t even know how to describe how good this thing is.
When I set an event I can link it to map coordinates, Contact Cards, attach objects, have it synced to multiple calendars. It integrates with other apps which can then add in reminders (eg a line music event on FB). Linked events will update in real time and you’ll get notifications for example if the venue changes.
Squarez Deluxe
Originally a paid DOS game and the developer is a cool dude who changed it to freeware. You can download it on myabandonware or archive org. Then grab a free copy of DOSBox.
In my view, it is the best shape packing game ever made, and it never really got its due, possibly in part to somewhat extra complexity, and partly from the time it came out.
You learn the ropes in the early modes, but you really need to play on EXTREME Mode. There are many different special pieces, and you decide how to move them in the playfield and rotate them.
There are mud traps and acid pits and missiles and bombs and traps. And you have to not only play the shape packing aspect, but you have to continually think about how to deploy these hazards, to your best advantage, or least disadvantage!
Over the years, I continually come back to this game, and I have probably sunk over a thousand hours since I was young.
This doesn’t even sound like a real business. This sounds like one of those extemporaneous pitches that gets pulled out of the ass after martini 3, delivered by the sales doofus that doesn’t know how to send an email.
The red flag that caught my eye was all the cheerleading and then snuck at the bottom was (paraphrased) ‘well, people can play as much as they want but, ya know, if it’s like 10 games a month we might have to look at stuff’.
So, what? It’s subscription service but the games vanish (oh you can buy them individually) and and if you use the service for its advertised purpose, there’s going to be problems - only $7.99 ?
I should have said martini 8