What Did We Play Yesterday?

I recently discovered bilgincoskun has ported Brogue to Android. It's a good port and I've put it on both my devices. I have trouble playing on my smaller phone screen (not that it stops me from pecking away while at the doctor's office) but like it on tablet quite a bit and I think this is how I'm gonna play from now on.

I've tried a few other ASCII rougelike Android ports and found most difficult to play, as they require use of a soft keyboard, but I did like Pathos: Nethack Codex, the touch controls are intuitive and solid. The ASCII theme tileset is okay, but considering the ask (playable rogueLIKE on Android with ASCII) I have zero complaints. I keep reminding myself no ASCII game can compare to Brogue when it comes to aesthetics, it is, by far, the prettiest.

I had some trouble with controls on Sil, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, and CDDA, though I will give Sil another go. I think a game like CDDA is just gonna be overwhelming without a keyboard at first, to me it's a "hunker down at the keyboard in your game cave" kinda game. I got some real mileage out of HyperRogue a while back but now I'm burnt out on it and find it too simplistic.

There are roguelikes that only have graphic tilesets that interest me. I won't dismiss a game like Ananias out of hand, but I am really looking for ASCII games right now.

Finally, Caves of Qud will be ported to Android eventually. They said this year, but who knows.

Joe & Mac was one of several SNES games I picked up at the second hand store for a pittance. I liked it, admittedly mostly because of the cave babes, but it was also a solid platformer with cute dinosaur graphics.

Johnny Turbo Arcade Classics has released Joe & Mac and Joe & Mac Returns arcade ports for Switch, and when I saw Joe & Mac 2: Lost in the Tropics on Nintendo Switch Online I assumed it was the SNES version of Joe & Mac Returns. It isn't! It's a distinct sequel with a few added adventure game elements. I later learned the PAL version of this game was called Joe & Mac 3: Lost in the Tropics. (Congo's Caper was technically the second game in the Data East series).

Joe and Mac 2 is a cave man-themed platformer/heteronormative household sim. So, if you're into that read on, if not you can do an image search for "joe mac cave babes" to enjoy cute pixel cave babes in various states of mild bondage.

The story is a bad guy stole the chief's crown and you are supposed to collect 7 gems for reasons. There is a central village with a shop as well as various characters who offer useful game services (password, warp, etc). In addition to the usual weapon pickups you can ride a dino buddy and gain their special powers. You also have the option to upgrade your hut. Each time you upgrade it new furniture is added. There are also a few arbitrary mini games, like mine cart ride sequences a la Donkey Kong.

JM2LT is... not a great game, honestly. I'm not sure why it was included in the Switch Online collection, but I'm glad it's there because it fetches a premium on the secondhand market now.

The devs attempted to add more complex adventure game elements, but it's not well-tuned. There are dinosaur buddies you can ride, and the flying one breaks the levels its in as you can simply fly over everything. There are areas were enemy attacks are too frequent, or they spawn too quickly, which feels cheap. There are also what I consider design inconsistencies. For example, in the first level there are spikey snail enemies you can destroy. In the Jungle level, spikey snails are impassable barriers that cannot be killed, which feels a bit like a rule change. Additionally, the game doesn't do a good job of explaining how secondary weapons work, it was only while reading online that I realized eating sometimes grants a temporary secondary projectile, so eating meat gives you a chance to shoot bone projectiles for a while. I was never sure why my character sometimes had projectiles. Granted, this is an era when one would read through the instruction manual for such info.

In the first Joe and Mac you immediately start saving the cave babes. This is awesome, because they are cute and they give you a kiss, and that was definitely the highlight of the game for me. In Joe and Mac 2 there are no cave babes in evidence, but there are flowers in the shop so I put two and two together and figured, okay, sure. I'll woo a cave babe, it will be even better. So I began to focus on upgrading my hut. It's slow going at 50 wheels per upgrade, but I add rugs, a picture of Congo (which only makes sense if you know the game's history so the random picture of some other caveman was probably lost on the majority of players), some weird stone Ikea furniture, etc. Having done that, I set about buying flowers (30 wheels). Each time you buy flowers you can pick one of three cave babes who are behind a screen, and if she likes the flowers she will live with you.

The RNG on this is pretty harsh and apparently the hut upgrades have no impact on it. If you continue to give her flowers, you have an equally random chance to produce children. My only real beef with this odd nuclear family mini-game is the RNG makes it difficult for no real reason. I would be willing to accept the game as a caveman family simulator that just happens to be a platformer if it were more fun overall, but the levels are generally tendious and farming for wheels is no fun. The added adventure elements just end up being weird and extraneous. This one was odd enough to write about, but not really something I'd recommend.

So when I did an image search for "joe mac cave babes", per my own advice, I discovered Joe & Mac Returns has quite the bounty of cave babes. And robots? Clearly I played the wrong game.

It feels weird to say it, but FFXV came out over three years ago.

I have played the first 13 FF games. FFXII was definitely the high point for me and the 13th game marked the point where I began to feel ambivalent about the franchise. I liked the faster-paced battle system, but found the empty world bleak and the story confusing. I remember beating that game and having no actual idea what had happened. I tried to play FFXIII-2 but gave up within the first 20 minutes. The story made no sense, I had no idea what was happening, and I could not summon the interest to work through it. My love of Final Fantasy had evidently run its course.

Well, now FFXV is on Game Pass, so I knew I had to at least give it a shot.

I have played a lot of these games, so I can accept certain franchise staples. Bit-of-a-tit male protagonists, for instance. Hair. Crystals. Impossible fashion. But I am also a much less forgiving gamer than I was 10 years ago. When Cindy was introduced my first thought was, Do you want me to play your game or not? P, who was sitting next to me, expressed surprise at her design. I was also surprised, I knew FFXV was a sausage party but I wasn't expecting a character design like Cindy's right out of the gate. This contributed to my early impression that was I was playing Final Fantasy Entourage, and putting those three words together is just wearying beyond measure, but I decided to play a bit more before I called it.

There are some pretty interesting companion AI behaviors, both idling and in motion. I like the car, and how it essentially slows down fast travel and sets a leisurly, unhurried pace for the game. I'm not big on open world at this stage in my life as a gamer but I accept the atmosphere, the car, it all just works. I like the fluidity of the battle system but I'm not big on the QT-style mechanics. Noctis' hair drives me absolutely insane. I can accept the boy band style, but his shagginess just makes me want to brush his hair out of his eyes.

I know from reviews that they got some complaints about the third act of the story and actually rewrote it, and that the latter part of the game, after the open-world cruising and camping and fishing and bro-ing, is a mess plot-wise and is difficult to follow. I also know you can reasonably beat the game in 25 hours, so I'm not necessarily signing on for a 60-hours of incomprehensibility.

I'm not really sure how to parse Cindy Aurum in the Year of our Lord 2020. Evidently the design was criticized in 2015 and the developers were surprised (?) by the criticism and declined to make any changes. Quotes from that conversation, as published by EuroGamer, suggest some disconnect between the character's presentation and what the devs thought they were presenting, but it also reads a bit like sticking one's fingers in one's ears and going LALALALALALALAA.

I'm still on the fence on this one. I think I will probably enjoy most of the first part of the game but will get really annoyed by everything after that. If I'm going to play a big game I would like to have a full, start to finish game experience. XBox time is kinda special, I have to clear my schedule, make sure my tornado child is accounted for, and so on. We'll see.

Deckbuilding happens to be my favorite tabletop mechanic at the moment and Slay the Spire is a pure deckbuilder wrapped in a roguelike/dungeon crawl skin. After playing a bit on Game Pass I bought a copy on the Switch, which is of course the natural home for a game like this. The dungeons are randomly generated and you play until you die, upon which you lose all your cards and relics and start over at the beginning.

As you traverse the dungeon you proceed along a map with icons for the types of encounters: enemy, elite enemy, treasure chest, camp, ?, shopkeeper, and boss. ? events are often CYOA-style choices, like whether to barter with a stranger or attempt to steal a gold idol from a pedistal, but sometimes they are one of the other type of encounters.

One of the most interesting aspects of the game is relics. These items bestow permanent boons and curses (or a mixture of the two) with no limit. Each of 3 three starting characters begins with a relic and others are earned through chests and after battles. (Think perks in Fallout.) The combinations of relics and different cards keep things interesting and make every run different, as you end up relying on different strategies. I love collecting relics and there is a starting option that allows you to trade your starting relic for a random boss relic that can really shake things up, since some of the relics have a positive and negative aspects.

The RNG is strong, but it's a solid card game and I hardly mind. It scratches a very similar itch to Unexplored for me. I wish I could write a more informative review to be honest, but it Just Works.

That being said, I may be about done with games with roguelike elements (more roguelite roguelikes, I suppose?) for a while. It seems I always get about 10 hours into these roguelikes before I wander off. If a game doesn't have an interesting storyline or some underlying progression I can only play so much before I need new stimuli. I think ASCII roguelike are ultimately a better fit (Cogmind and Caves of Qud have been on my list forever) but playing games on my PC with a keyboard does not appeal right now.