The Lincoln Highway (dropped)

it always feel bad to have to drop a game that is apparently super beloved.

The lincoln highway is a 600 page long adventure book set in the america of the 1950's, it's considered by many people and critics as one of the best if not the best book of 2021, according to wikipedia it's also the favourite book of barack obama for that same year.

I dropped it 200 pages in, found it kind of boring. My biggest problem with this book is that I just didn't see what was the point of it, it feels it isn't really trying to say anything interesting but just to be a entertaining book, which isn't bad by any means, but I don't know, if that was the case then it failed to captivate me.

The way this book is written is that there is a very, very wide cast of character, each chapter being short and advancing the story of one set of characters, everyone has different personality and origins, and their stories start to converge in the lincoln highway, during the first couple of episodes, I was intrigued, I wanted to see what was going on the lincoln highway, that's the name of the book after all, but the book is 600 pages long, and they keep introducing new characters and stuff for a long time, and it just felt like an anthology of stories that have the promise that they will eventually merge and form a larger and more interesting narrative.

The problem is that I didn't find the stories intrinsically interesting, I found the first couple of episodes interesting for the mistery of the lincoln highway, and you know, after so long reading, the fact that the stories have yet to really converge, or the book to really give me any episode that feels like payoff, I just didn't feel like I had the patience for this book. I'm not willing to read another 400 pages because of that promise.

The book lives on that formula of having so many different characters and disconnected stories, this is actually far from the first story to feature such narrative, for example, recently I played this videogame called "13 sentinel", the gimmick was similar, you have 13 characters, each with their own stories, that will eventually merge together and form a cooler story. I did finish that game but I again have the same problem. That gimmick of having so many different stories and characters does not work for me, I don't think it's inherently cool. Another famous example of a story doing this would be the movei pulp fiction.

The one exception to this for me is acutally my favourite novel, battle royale (yes, really). Battle royale shifts consistently between characters, but it does it for a good reason, first of all, their stories have all already converged from the first chapter, when battle royale shifts perspective, it's to showcase the different mindsets and philosohpies of each of the students and how they clash with each other, it explains how a betrayal forms from the perspective of the one stabbing and the victim. It's not just because it's a cool gimmick, it serves a deeper purpouse, and I don't see that same deeper purpouse on this book.

I feel that general philosophy is also showcased with the way the chapters are ordered, you start with chapter 10, and then it starts to count down until 1. Why? again, just because it's cool?, i've not reach the ending but I really fucking doubt it's going to fuck with the metanarrative that hard to where it would explain and justify the chapters being this way. It's just again, creating more intrigue for the end, but if you don't give me any sort of payoff until that point, i'm going to get bored of it

I don't know, I don't get this book, I may be impatient or something idk, placed in D tier since I couldn't finish it.

---

I should be close to done with seraph of the end

started driver san francisco, it's nice so far.

Owari no Seraph

very, very standard shounen

This anime takes place in a world where almost all of civilization has fallen, and most of the world is controlled by vampires, then there is this guy, who wants to kill vampires.

It's just, nothing special, at first this anime almost felt like an attack on titan clone, society has fallen except for a small part of the world who is walled in and this guy comes in with dreams of genocide, it does deviate from taht AoT path very early on, but it showcases the fact that this is just nothing new

The plot is just a device to deliver cool moments, it does try to appear to be deep, but it isn't. I remember a line that went something like "The vampires are here to punish humankind due to our ceaseless expansion", sure, ok, so you're complaining about the industrial revolution, tell me more, elabore on it dear ted kaczynski, the problem is that they never elaborate on this. It has a tendency to say things that sounds deep but that doesn't acutally say anything, it says "industialization bad" but they never tell you why, another example is how the vampires consistently look down upon humans, even if their brains work the exact same. It's just very nonsensical and aimless.

the animation is fairly standard, as well as the OST, nothing remarkable on that front.

placed in D tier


--

still playing driver san francisco

It's made by the same studio, and yeah it was mid.

half life alyx with this mod. it definitely wont feel the same without a vr headset but from what ive seen it is still worth playing

burgernfat wrote:

half life alyx with this mod. it definitely wont feel the same without a vr headset but from what ive seen it is still worth playing

denied, if I play alyx it will be with vr.

have you watched Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop yet

tapperruiii wrote:

have you watched Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop yet

no, will do

Driver: San Francisco

I have been greatly surprised by this game, ended up being better than I thought

Driver san francisco is a racing game set in the city of san francisco, who would have ghessed, it is more narrative heavhy than this type of game tends to be, which isn't a lot, and I think it's generally fairly tightly designed and original.

The main gimmick of the game is that you can "shift", you can basically astral project yourself into the sky and possses another driver, controlling their car for as long as you wish. The whole game is designed around this mechanic.

While this is racing game, I would subcategorize it as a car crashing game. This is probably closer to a game like burnout than need for speed, the actual driving and races are never very difficult, instead, they make you engage with that shift mechanic as much as possible, and that often leads to chases and similar scenarios where the optimal strategy is to shift into another car, and crash it directly into someone, the fun of this game coems from the chaos and destruction you can create.

The shift mechanic is used very well, there are some situations where they even shift the perspective of the camera to some really wacky ones, which is fun.

The level design is all very well thoguht, for example, whenever they shift you into a weird camera angle, they usually make you drive across wide roads to give you more room for error. If you're in a race, they will usually make you drive on alleways and dirt roads that aren't very busy or one direction al traffic to avoid you from being able to shift a car into your rivals and win by disqualifying everyone else. The cars actually don't have a front light that they can turn in dark areas, so there is only 1 dark are in the map, sidestepping the issue instead of creating scope creep. While there is rubberbanding, for the most part, excluding the first and last race, it's well hidden

though while the rubberbanding is generally well hidden, there are some points where it does act in fairly wack way, something about acceleration messes them up which makes you be able to get a insane lead fairly easily, it's probably harder to win some races and chases if you're driving perfectly than if you're crashing around and deaccelerating constantly

The story is very, very silly. Not bad written, in fact, it somehows manages to explain almost everything that goes in the story, with the exception of why can't you just shift into the cars of the other drivers during a race or the cirminals you're chasing. The story is all about you, a policeman, trying to chase down a dangerous criminal who is making some sort of evil plot. There is no real deep meaning to the story or whatever, but agian, I also didn't really notice any problems with it, it works pretty well for the context of the game, as this game mainly focuses on gameplay. In fact they often interrupt the story with some side quests that are obligarory, which again, is never really explained why are you even doing half of them as they have no correlation with the main plot.

The game features some ingame currency that you can use to upgrade a specific stat that is not the most useful (you can beat the whole game without upgrading it) and also to buy cars. You tell me what's the point of buying cars in game which gimmick is that you're consistently shifting into random cars you find on the street

This currency feels mostly like it's meant to reward sandbox play, just ignoring the main plot or continuing to play the game after you completed and doing all the miniquests and challenges around town, in fact, every 20 minutes they give you a influx of cash just for having the game open, it's not a significant ammount of cash, but yeah, it's meant for you to get some sort of positive reinforcement in case you're just messing around in the open, which is sometihng that I understand perfectly. If I got this game as a kid, I would have spent 200 hours in it even if I probably 100% the game in 20.

Another thing i'm surprised by is the ammount of references in this game, I count references to twin peaks, to blues brothers, and even spinal tap. Honestly I like references, I know there is some hatred online torwards referential comed,y as it's seen as cheap, reusing a joke someone else made rather than making your own, but I don't agree with that.

In the topic of references, yesterday I tried reading "Omniscient Reading Viewpoint", and one things that manhwa did was include videogame mechanics into the story. The protagonist is albe to interface with the world like if it was a videogame, think solo leveling. However, the videogame mechanics that story incorporated were from F2P mobile games with cash shop and the such, which made me sad. So seeing a game like driver san francisco (Granted that it released in 2011), go like "hey, we've seen blues brothers", makes me feel happy, like if the developers are saying to me "We're just like you", and I like that.

Despite all the praise i've given driver sna francisco i'm not really going to give it a super high score, it just doesn't feel right. I've been thinking of why is that the ase, and I honestly feel the game is just solid, but it lacks that "wow" element, maybe the shift mechanic would have taken more by surprise back in the day, or if I had played less videogames before it. I wish it did more with the shift maybe, to have even faster and shorter shifts making the game more adrenalinic, maybe more curated set pieces in story missions, maybe I wish they had chosen a different city since I didn't think san francisco in this game was particullary pretty. I just wish for it to be even more, but yeah, the game that we do have is really solid, everything is very well designed and thought, and I barely have any criticism to it despite usually being extremely pedantic in my reviews. Might just be my soft cap for the genre as it stands tho, I don't think I will be finding another non-competitive racing game that I enjoy more than this in the near future.

Placed in B tier, probably one of the best racing games i've played, not that played many.

---

have yet to watch the movie

Patatitta wrote:

I've been thinking of why is that the ase, and I honestly feel the game is just solid, but it lacks that "wow" element, maybe the shift mechanic would have taken more by surprise back in the day, or if I had played less videogames before it.

That's my case right there. I used to play driver 1 and 3 (3 was pretty mid tbh) and didn't think much of the later games but they started talking about some shift and I was like "Holy baller this is the shit".

Too bad it's ubisofts'. They're probably either not gonna bring back another one or make an absolute monstrosity.

Cider no You ni Kotoba ga Wakiagaru

wholesome cutesy cliche romance movie

The plot is about this guy who is generally a bit lonely, who accidently meets this super famous girl, and then romance happens. Nothing about this anime is exactly new or mindblowing, it kinda goes through all the beats and set pieces most animes of this sort seem to go through, while it does have a bit of flavour of it's own in the execution, I don't think it's extremely outstanding either, resulting in a anime that is just ok.

this anime is very family friendly, the animation is extremely colorful and the story is pure, all the characters are lovable and the story doesn't discuss complex topics, this is mostly meant to be like a comfort watch more than anything else.

One thing I will say is that during this whole anime there is a lot of pararelism and comparasions between the old and the new, the setting is very modern and I would say it's not a inaccurate depiction of reality, there was nothing that ticked me off. The characters consistently engage with the internet and social media, to contrast that, we have the male protagonist write haikus, and a very important plot point surrounds a vinyl disc. Both the new and the old are depicted in a positive lifht, exposing they can live in harmony and benefit from each other

it's good for what it is, C tier

----

queue empty

Nobody mentioned FEZ?

McEndu wrote:

Nobody mentioned FEZ?

AFAIK is just a pure puzzle game, I don't like puzzle that much and it's not the type of stuff I cover here, so I'm thinking of denying it

just played volcano princess recently, i think it's worth a review

tapperruiii wrote:

just played volcano princess recently, i think it's worth a review

Already played volcano princess

volcano princess is the chinese, modern version of the princess maker franchise. In this game you're given a daughter and are tasked with raising her, the choices that you make end up defining her future and giving you a ending out of the twenty gazillion ones that there are

There isn't that much plot other than whatever happens in your playthrough, it's closer than a simulator than anything else. In fact while you're supposed to be playing as the father, you can also control what she does even when she's alone because the perspecitve shifts to her, so yeah, not exactly worried about realism here, but that's fine.

The gameplay look is quite basic, you can move across location, and each location has a different list of activities you can perform, each activity costs energy, that will replenish every ingame day and will boost one of the many stats. Trying to optimize this stat gain and buildign her in the stat that you wish is the core of core of the game

I've played princess maker 2, which is considered the best and most influential princess maker game, and I enjoyed volcano princess a lot more, it may be because it was a 1993 game, but I found it generally very obtuse and often not very satisfying, it didn't ooze the same charisma, the cutesy graphics and the sound effects and stuff elevate volcano princess to another level, this is a game that requires being cute to create that attachamente to your daughter, and it delivers. Volcano princess also makes the onboarding easier to a new player, it's tutorialized better

In general it's a fairly unique game, it really gets you to care about your daughter, and while it's a very simple concept, i've not seen really any other games with this type of gameplay

My only real compain is that there are certain skillsets that are considered more "important" than others. Endings have certain star ratings, and all the highest star endings involve rating high in the military minigame.

so yeah, I think this is a fantastic game. A rank

Patatitta wrote:

In general it's a fairly unique game, it really gets you to care about your daughter, and while it's a very simple concept, i've not seen really any other games with this type of gameplay

strangely i've seen a lot of h-games that have this concept, i really think it should be done more

tapperruiii wrote:

Patatitta wrote:

In general it's a fairly unique game, it really gets you to care about your daughter, and while it's a very simple concept, i've not seen really any other games with this type of gameplay

strangely i've seen a lot of h-games that have this concept, i really think it should be done more

yeah agreed

ooo you should do flowers blooming at the end of summer, you'll have to download an older version using steamdb and depotdownloader in order to play an unofficial english patch (which is high quality with ui translation and allat if i recall) game is pretty peak i promise

tapperruiii wrote:

ooo you should do flowers blooming at the end of summer, you'll have to download an older version using steamdb and depotdownloader in order to play an unofficial english patch (which is high quality with ui translation and allat if i recall) game is pretty peak i promise

will do, however, I will be outside all of next week, and when I get home I will probably be playing silksong, and the week after that I start class, so I may take a little wihle on that

Patatitta wrote:

tapperruiii wrote:

ooo you should do flowers blooming at the end of summer, you'll have to download an older version using steamdb and depotdownloader in order to play an unofficial english patch (which is high quality with ui translation and allat if i recall) game is pretty peak i promise

will do, however, I will be outside all of next week, and when I get home I will probably be playing silksong, and the week after that I start class, so I may take a little wihle on that

i am really hoping that silksong will be peak

tapperruiii wrote:

Patatitta wrote:

tapperruiii wrote:

ooo you should do flowers blooming at the end of summer, you'll have to download an older version using steamdb and depotdownloader in order to play an unofficial english patch (which is high quality with ui translation and allat if i recall) game is pretty peak i promise

will do, however, I will be outside all of next week, and when I get home I will probably be playing silksong, and the week after that I start class, so I may take a little wihle on that

i am really hoping that silksong will be peak

same

Patatitta wrote:

reffty_gag wrote:

https://myanimelist.net/anime/60489/Takopii_no_Genzai

takopi anime review

oh boy, already watched it

tldr: fuck nilism man

already ranted about this anime to at least 3 peole I know, the plot is about this space octopus that is kind of a pardy of doraemon (they have magical gadgets that they pull and can use), and triges to help this depressed girl who suffers from bullying. The octopus doesn't know shit about the human race and wont learn, instead always coming to the wrong conclusions, this doesn't cange during the rest of the anime.

Let's get the good out of the way, this anime knows how to hit your emotional strings, the topis that they tackle are heavy, the situation is anything but subtle, it's cruel but in a way that you feel a story like this is plausible. All of the reveals and plot twists are impactful, the animatin is really good to add to that.

That's where my praises end, I think the writing of this anime is just pure ass. I think a good first step is to think what the message of tis anime is, is it a realistic and grounded depiction and study on bullying, both from the perspective of the one being bullied and the bully?, no, it is not, it's so extreme of a situation that if something like this were to happen irl, it would be the edgest of the edge cases. If all of the campaigns to educate peopel about bullying has told me anything is that real world bullying both has more nuances and it isn't as transparent. At least where I live, if you were to idk, fucking assault the other students laugh at them in public and quite literally write stuff like slut on their already broken backpack, you would at least be called out for doing so, but I guess teachers and the such just straight up don't exist in this anime.

so what's the point?, we know this situation is, we know that the author fantasized this situation just to inflict maximum pain on the characters, so what's the goal?, I think the first and most obvious deduction is that the world is a cruel place. Both our emotional reaction to the events and the general dialogue of the octopus, trying to understand the human race only to be confused by our evil doings. I'm fine with this, I agree the world is cruel and that humankind is more often than not evil. So you, so I , the ones living in this cruel world, what should we do? THe anime doesn't offer a solution, it just screams THE WORLD IS EVIL and then refuses to elaborate. Why is it that some people thrive in this cruel world and others don't?, if i'm not in a privilaged situation, what should be my outlook in life?, why did planet happy devlop into being this magical land of dreams while earth didn't? what is it of our human psychology that did that?, why do some people find happiness?, how do they do it?Why won't this anime answer any fucking question?

even in the ending, the resolution is that the octopus sacrifices himself to travel back in time once more and do things right for real this time. Because even as adult, everyone was depressed, no one was able to really recover or move on. So in this reset what changes in the general actitude of the protagonist that allowed them to finally live happily?, well, nothing much, she shows weakness and the bully just completely collapses and everything is fixed now I guess.I hate this for so many reasons. FIrwst of all I don't think this really solves anything, I don't think it really says a solution, but more than that, I hate that the ending is just "let's go back in time again". The message I recieve is that if you're an adult living with trauma, honeslty you're out of luck. We don't have a takopi in our lifes that can deus ex all of our problems away, and I just find frustrating that this anime will refuse to answer the question of how to be happy in a painful world, taht it doesn't adress how to moev on, it's just, there is nothing in this anime that you canreally learn from as a human.

This anime exists for one reason and one reason alone, which is to be emotional, this isn't inherently bad, I loev stuff like I want to ear your pancreas for examples, however, one thing I really fucking hate is nihilim. When the message is that the world sucks and lacks meaning and it's all pain and you can't do anything about it, that boils my blood, because it's just not true. It's possible to be happy, there are solutions to all of the problems takopi depict, however these are solutions that the anime will refuse to acknowledge. In addition ,if you were to subscribe that general ideology takopi spreads. Honestly I think you're going to live a very misserable life. You need hope in this life, not to drown in your own misery.

I think in that way it diffeers to animes like anohana or pancras,. THey don't really need to refuse to acknowledge solutions to make them emotionally powerful.

The writing in this anime is just very bad, one thing thatI really hate about this anime is the lack of any sort of foreshadowing, or in general for them to really commit to what they have already said. For example, on episode 1 they talk about the rules of using magiacl gadgets, this is a plot point that is utilized in like the next scene, and then never agian, you spent like 30 seconds explaining the mechanics of how doraemon works only to not really make use of it. Same withj magial gadgets, again the one that doraemon gives to the protagonist girl in episode 1, not really brought up again. Whenever they kill the other girl and hide the corpse using alien technology, did the police not care about finding ALIEN TECHNOLOGY on a crime scene involging the death of a grade school kid?, anda gain, the ending is the worst, the camera was broken but yeah I can kill myself to make it work again, this was never really ever explained or could be predicted, and it's that way by design so you don't seee it coming and have a emotionalr reaction or it, but it's just such a coward way to write this story, it's horrible

plaed in D rank, I really hate this style of anime.

------

just started signalis

wow i watched this recently and you weren't wrong, this was BAD. really really really bad

was complaining about it for awhile in my team chat, everyone in this anime (except my goat junya) acts like a lobotomite

tapperruiii wrote:

Patatitta wrote:

reffty_gag wrote:

https://myanimelist.net/anime/60489/Takopii_no_Genzai

takopi anime review

oh boy, already watched it

tldr: fuck nilism man

already ranted about this anime to at least 3 peole I know, the plot is about this space octopus that is kind of a pardy of doraemon (they have magical gadgets that they pull and can use), and triges to help this depressed girl who suffers from bullying. The octopus doesn't know shit about the human race and wont learn, instead always coming to the wrong conclusions, this doesn't cange during the rest of the anime.

Let's get the good out of the way, this anime knows how to hit your emotional strings, the topis that they tackle are heavy, the situation is anything but subtle, it's cruel but in a way that you feel a story like this is plausible. All of the reveals and plot twists are impactful, the animatin is really good to add to that.

That's where my praises end, I think the writing of this anime is just pure ass. I think a good first step is to think what the message of tis anime is, is it a realistic and grounded depiction and study on bullying, both from the perspective of the one being bullied and the bully?, no, it is not, it's so extreme of a situation that if something like this were to happen irl, it would be the edgest of the edge cases. If all of the campaigns to educate peopel about bullying has told me anything is that real world bullying both has more nuances and it isn't as transparent. At least where I live, if you were to idk, fucking assault the other students laugh at them in public and quite literally write stuff like slut on their already broken backpack, you would at least be called out for doing so, but I guess teachers and the such just straight up don't exist in this anime.

so what's the point?, we know this situation is, we know that the author fantasized this situation just to inflict maximum pain on the characters, so what's the goal?, I think the first and most obvious deduction is that the world is a cruel place. Both our emotional reaction to the events and the general dialogue of the octopus, trying to understand the human race only to be confused by our evil doings. I'm fine with this, I agree the world is cruel and that humankind is more often than not evil. So you, so I , the ones living in this cruel world, what should we do? THe anime doesn't offer a solution, it just screams THE WORLD IS EVIL and then refuses to elaborate. Why is it that some people thrive in this cruel world and others don't?, if i'm not in a privilaged situation, what should be my outlook in life?, why did planet happy devlop into being this magical land of dreams while earth didn't? what is it of our human psychology that did that?, why do some people find happiness?, how do they do it?Why won't this anime answer any fucking question?

even in the ending, the resolution is that the octopus sacrifices himself to travel back in time once more and do things right for real this time. Because even as adult, everyone was depressed, no one was able to really recover or move on. So in this reset what changes in the general actitude of the protagonist that allowed them to finally live happily?, well, nothing much, she shows weakness and the bully just completely collapses and everything is fixed now I guess.I hate this for so many reasons. FIrwst of all I don't think this really solves anything, I don't think it really says a solution, but more than that, I hate that the ending is just "let's go back in time again". The message I recieve is that if you're an adult living with trauma, honeslty you're out of luck. We don't have a takopi in our lifes that can deus ex all of our problems away, and I just find frustrating that this anime will refuse to answer the question of how to be happy in a painful world, taht it doesn't adress how to moev on, it's just, there is nothing in this anime that you canreally learn from as a human.

This anime exists for one reason and one reason alone, which is to be emotional, this isn't inherently bad, I loev stuff like I want to ear your pancreas for examples, however, one thing I really fucking hate is nihilim. When the message is that the world sucks and lacks meaning and it's all pain and you can't do anything about it, that boils my blood, because it's just not true. It's possible to be happy, there are solutions to all of the problems takopi depict, however these are solutions that the anime will refuse to acknowledge. In addition ,if you were to subscribe that general ideology takopi spreads. Honestly I think you're going to live a very misserable life. You need hope in this life, not to drown in your own misery.

I think in that way it diffeers to animes like anohana or pancras,. THey don't really need to refuse to acknowledge solutions to make them emotionally powerful.

The writing in this anime is just very bad, one thing thatI really hate about this anime is the lack of any sort of foreshadowing, or in general for them to really commit to what they have already said. For example, on episode 1 they talk about the rules of using magiacl gadgets, this is a plot point that is utilized in like the next scene, and then never agian, you spent like 30 seconds explaining the mechanics of how doraemon works only to not really make use of it. Same withj magial gadgets, again the one that doraemon gives to the protagonist girl in episode 1, not really brought up again. Whenever they kill the other girl and hide the corpse using alien technology, did the police not care about finding ALIEN TECHNOLOGY on a crime scene involging the death of a grade school kid?, anda gain, the ending is the worst, the camera was broken but yeah I can kill myself to make it work again, this was never really ever explained or could be predicted, and it's that way by design so you don't seee it coming and have a emotionalr reaction or it, but it's just such a coward way to write this story, it's horrible

plaed in D rank, I really hate this style of anime.

------

just started signalis

wow i watched this recently and you weren't wrong, this was BAD. really really really bad

was complaining about it for awhile in my team chat, everyone in this anime (except my goat junya) acts like a lobotomite

hahahaha fair, I feel you need to turn your brain off super hard to really enjoy takopi

Patatitta wrote:

tapperruiii wrote:

Patatitta wrote:

reffty_gag wrote:

https://myanimelist.net/anime/60489/Takopii_no_Genzai

takopi anime review

oh boy, already watched it

tldr: fuck nilism man

already ranted about this anime to at least 3 peole I know, the plot is about this space octopus that is kind of a pardy of doraemon (they have magical gadgets that they pull and can use), and triges to help this depressed girl who suffers from bullying. The octopus doesn't know shit about the human race and wont learn, instead always coming to the wrong conclusions, this doesn't cange during the rest of the anime.

Let's get the good out of the way, this anime knows how to hit your emotional strings, the topis that they tackle are heavy, the situation is anything but subtle, it's cruel but in a way that you feel a story like this is plausible. All of the reveals and plot twists are impactful, the animatin is really good to add to that.

That's where my praises end, I think the writing of this anime is just pure ass. I think a good first step is to think what the message of tis anime is, is it a realistic and grounded depiction and study on bullying, both from the perspective of the one being bullied and the bully?, no, it is not, it's so extreme of a situation that if something like this were to happen irl, it would be the edgest of the edge cases. If all of the campaigns to educate peopel about bullying has told me anything is that real world bullying both has more nuances and it isn't as transparent. At least where I live, if you were to idk, fucking assault the other students laugh at them in public and quite literally write stuff like slut on their already broken backpack, you would at least be called out for doing so, but I guess teachers and the such just straight up don't exist in this anime.

so what's the point?, we know this situation is, we know that the author fantasized this situation just to inflict maximum pain on the characters, so what's the goal?, I think the first and most obvious deduction is that the world is a cruel place. Both our emotional reaction to the events and the general dialogue of the octopus, trying to understand the human race only to be confused by our evil doings. I'm fine with this, I agree the world is cruel and that humankind is more often than not evil. So you, so I , the ones living in this cruel world, what should we do? THe anime doesn't offer a solution, it just screams THE WORLD IS EVIL and then refuses to elaborate. Why is it that some people thrive in this cruel world and others don't?, if i'm not in a privilaged situation, what should be my outlook in life?, why did planet happy devlop into being this magical land of dreams while earth didn't? what is it of our human psychology that did that?, why do some people find happiness?, how do they do it?Why won't this anime answer any fucking question?

even in the ending, the resolution is that the octopus sacrifices himself to travel back in time once more and do things right for real this time. Because even as adult, everyone was depressed, no one was able to really recover or move on. So in this reset what changes in the general actitude of the protagonist that allowed them to finally live happily?, well, nothing much, she shows weakness and the bully just completely collapses and everything is fixed now I guess.I hate this for so many reasons. FIrwst of all I don't think this really solves anything, I don't think it really says a solution, but more than that, I hate that the ending is just "let's go back in time again". The message I recieve is that if you're an adult living with trauma, honeslty you're out of luck. We don't have a takopi in our lifes that can deus ex all of our problems away, and I just find frustrating that this anime will refuse to answer the question of how to be happy in a painful world, taht it doesn't adress how to moev on, it's just, there is nothing in this anime that you canreally learn from as a human.

This anime exists for one reason and one reason alone, which is to be emotional, this isn't inherently bad, I loev stuff like I want to ear your pancreas for examples, however, one thing I really fucking hate is nihilim. When the message is that the world sucks and lacks meaning and it's all pain and you can't do anything about it, that boils my blood, because it's just not true. It's possible to be happy, there are solutions to all of the problems takopi depict, however these are solutions that the anime will refuse to acknowledge. In addition ,if you were to subscribe that general ideology takopi spreads. Honestly I think you're going to live a very misserable life. You need hope in this life, not to drown in your own misery.

I think in that way it diffeers to animes like anohana or pancras,. THey don't really need to refuse to acknowledge solutions to make them emotionally powerful.

The writing in this anime is just very bad, one thing thatI really hate about this anime is the lack of any sort of foreshadowing, or in general for them to really commit to what they have already said. For example, on episode 1 they talk about the rules of using magiacl gadgets, this is a plot point that is utilized in like the next scene, and then never agian, you spent like 30 seconds explaining the mechanics of how doraemon works only to not really make use of it. Same withj magial gadgets, again the one that doraemon gives to the protagonist girl in episode 1, not really brought up again. Whenever they kill the other girl and hide the corpse using alien technology, did the police not care about finding ALIEN TECHNOLOGY on a crime scene involging the death of a grade school kid?, anda gain, the ending is the worst, the camera was broken but yeah I can kill myself to make it work again, this was never really ever explained or could be predicted, and it's that way by design so you don't seee it coming and have a emotionalr reaction or it, but it's just such a coward way to write this story, it's horrible

plaed in D rank, I really hate this style of anime.

------

just started signalis

wow i watched this recently and you weren't wrong, this was BAD. really really really bad

was complaining about it for awhile in my team chat, everyone in this anime (except my goat junya) acts like a lobotomite

hahahaha fair, I feel you need to turn your brain off super hard to really enjoy takopi

fr at least the OP and animation is good

just started re-watching Wandering Witch: The Journey of Elaina (Majo no Tabitabi)
I think this is one of the best titles I've ever seen

Cytus II (it has story)

You should play emerald seaglass romhack of pomemon emerald. It probably takes 15 - 20 hours to beat.

New pokemon, types, some side stuff / features. Good art. Story is mostly the same though so maybe that might dissuade you.

-Izuki- wrote:

just started re-watching Wandering Witch: The Journey of Elaina (Majo no Tabitabi)
I think this is one of the best titles I've ever seen

I agree. In fact, every anime that has a witch with a big hat is automatically good, lol. (I even have a figure of Elaina)

Behrauder wrote:

-Izuki- wrote:

just started re-watching Wandering Witch: The Journey of Elaina (Majo no Tabitabi)
I think this is one of the best titles I've ever seen

I agree. In fact, every anime that has a witch with a big hat is automatically good, lol. (I even have a figure of Elaina)

already seen it

Majo no tabitai is essentially fantasy kino no tabi, in fact both come from light novel and have had unfinished anime adaptations and cancelled manga adaptations despite the original material probably being super good (i've not read the LNs)

In this anime, elaina just travels around the fantasy world, without any real goal. Each chapter covers a different scenario that she comes across her travels. These scenario tend to just be stories that makes you think. I think this anime is a lot less dense than kino no tabi, it's not that agressively unapologetic philosophical rambling, and instead tries to be easier to digest and generally maore fun than it.

I really enjoy elaina, in fact, I would argue that it's underrated, and I don't really use that word lightly. Whenever I like a anime that has a low score I just feel like I have a unpopular opinion, but with both kino no tabi and elaina, I just truly feel that the MAL and anilist demographics do NOT really overlap with the audience this anime is shooting for, that audience may be small (making the anime not sell super well and doom any possible sequels), but it's out there (The LN for example are a lot way better rated, having A LOT of 9/10 and 10/10 in their rating distributions)

I normally don't really like episodical anime, and this is undeniably one, you shouldn't watch it out of order, as there is character developement and flashback and stuffs, it's stuff you're often expected to know in the later animes but it is episodical. my problems with episodical anime like cowboy bebop or samurai champloo is that they're often predictible and it often mitigates the stakes. If you're trying to create tension, the fact that you know it's going back to the status quo at the end of the episode does harm that feeling. However, elaina doesn't try to do anything that would be harmed by a episodical nature and in fact takes advantage of it. It's an anthology of short stories that makes you think. The general plot of each episode would be hard to fit in a regular anime, they're hard to develop or are too batshit insane for them to really make sense in any other context, instead it just presents a scenario, elaina walks you through it, you get your thoughts, and then it ends.

Elaine itself is a pretty pasive protagonist, doesn't get acutally involved in most of the drama and problems, instead acting more as a passive spectator. Not as passive as kino in kino no tabi, but still pretty passive. Again, I like this, the anime isn't really focused on "what would elaina do in this situation" and insteads asks you, the viewer to think about it, the world itself is the main protagonist.

The fact that it's fantasy also aids the anime, it can rationalize a lot of the weirder elements of this anime with "oh yeah that is just magic and stuff", it just gives you a bit of a explanation that makes everything feel more grounded.

Also big hats are moe, and I need to read the LN someday, placed in A rank.

Corne2Plum3 wrote:

Cytus II (it has story)

does not count, the fact that it has a story mode does not qualify it as a narrative driven videogame, like puyo puyo tetris has a story mode, you tell me what story that game has

Ashton wrote:

You should play emerald seaglass romhack of pomemon emerald. It probably takes 15 - 20 hours to beat.

New pokemon, types, some side stuff / features. Good art. Story is mostly the same though so maybe that might dissuade you.

accepted, while pokemon is not a narrative focused game, I do want to get into romhacks and this is a good excuse to do so, this thread isn't objective after all so I will allow it. sorry corne. But the same that I said to tapperruiii applies here, i'm going to be busy for a while, so I may take a while until I get around to it.

flowers blooming at the end of summer

this game just didn't super hook me tbh

First of all, I want to talk about the process of getting this game running in english, I download the game and open it. It indeed doesn't have a english translation. So I decide to google how to download old versions of steam games, since I hadn't done it before and it apparently was required. I google and find depotdownloader, I download it and apaprently it had to be run from the command line since it had no GUI.

I decided to look up a tutorial on how to use the software. I thought this was the only way, so I search on yotuube something along the lines on "how to download old version of steam games". And then, I start to follow the tutorial, and realize that software wasn't even needed since you can do it by itself on steam so what the fuck was the deal with that. Another problem was that I had no fucking clue what version I had to download, the mod didn't say, so I assumed it was v3.0 since that was how the file was called. However in steamDB the version number was not written, so I had to search for the release date of that version and download the appropiate depot. After that, I copy the patch in and it works.

However, I didn't stop there, I still had the latest version downloaded so I just tried putting the mod in that one, and it just worked??? didn't crash or anything??? there was no need to downgrade the version???? what the fuck was anything of that about???

Also after starting the game I noticed that the translation was actually done with AI instead of being an actual translation, which while above machine translation, it's still not ideal to lose quality in the wriing in a game that is ONLY writing. Also the editing was bad and sometimes the dialogue would overflow the textbox


Anyways about the game itself, it's a lineal korean indie vn made in renpy about this ghost girl. The art is pretty basic and the backgrounds are actually just real world pictures that have been heavily edited. This is in fact something pretty common in low budget vns, I think the original release of higurashi was like that.

The actual drawn elements are very simple, once again also using a very, very stylized style where they can get away with making lower quality illustrations. Nothing wrong with that, they had like 20 cents of budget probably and they did a good use of it.

The story didn't really hook me. The stor felt a bit messy and all over the place. For example the introduction spends a long ammount of time describing all about the ocult club and the wierd circumstances of the world, which by itself should be interesting, but I think it's against what the game was trying to do.

The game is all about this ghost girl who appears later, in fact it's like one of the only characters of the whole story. It's supposed to be your typical romance that's kind of sad and makes you cry. The problem is that all of those segments explaining the paranormal and how the world works kinda just detracted from the actual emotional relationship with the girl. They felt like infodumps that kinda interrupted the pacing of the story. I get that all of this paranormal stuff is what would led to the sad stuff later but like it's too long and complex of a setup.

In the end it just ended up boring me really, the AI translation also didn't help, sadly placed on D rank

---

next: Pokémon Emerald Seaglass

Try the "Devil May Cry" series by Netflix

-Izuki- wrote:

Try the "Devil May Cry" series by Netflix

i've not played the games

Not very related to games, imho

-Izuki- wrote:

Not very related to games, imho

yeah but idk I don't want to only have seen the netflix adaptation of such a beloved gaming franchise

bruh they translated it themselves before too

tapperruiii wrote:

bruh they translated it themselves before too

"Because this is my first time trying to translate a game and trying to use Ren'Py, there might be typos or errors in the game. If found, please contact @ddockson on Discord. Feel free to add friend, and please send me the part where an error occurs with a screenshot.

Also, since my first language isn't English, I had problems translating. Especially, I could finish redesigning the UIs and videos, but couldn't even start translating the scripts. Thankfully, I could find a script translated by codeforker, using Bing AI and GPT-4 and GalTransl(You can check the repository at here[github.com]). However, while reading the translated scripts, I could find some sentences that were translated a bit awkward, so I changed the scripts to be a bit more accurate. I also searched for some natural phrases that are used in real life. If it were not for codeforker, I couldn't have finished making this translation. Thank you!!"

wack, i don't know why the game doesn't have an English translation anyway

tapperruiii wrote:

wack, i don't know why the game doesn't have an English translation anyway

korea is like china in the sense that often their internal market takes priority when developing a game. They don't really advertise nor try to aim for a global audience.


anyways

pokemon emerald seaglass

pokemon emerald except that it's almost exactly the same

There is really not a whole lo I bave to say about this game. In normal circumstances I would have rejected this game, but I want to play more romhacks and mods.

Whis is aeesentially a retexturing of pokemon emerald, making it plore poel art intead of that smooth tetuding game emerald has. I'm a bit mixed in the new textures, on one hand, the enbvoronments look nice, on the other hand, the character sprite seems directly taken from jojos.



The game adds balance changes which I did not notice. at first I was kind of scared that it would make the game too hard and I wouldn't be able to really play like I usually do pokemon which is catching the pokemon that I like rather than trying to form a well balanced team, but that didn't happen

it's a fine hack, it's essentially just pokemon emerald. B rank

hi coming back after a while, was locking in studies. anyway, could you watch haibane renmei? same writer as serial experiments lain btw. i think the story is quite beautiful but lmk your opinion on the series

oh yeah have you gotten close to finishing silksong yet

frothyyy wrote:

hi coming back after a while, was locking in studies. anyway, could you watch haibane renmei? same writer as serial experiments lain btw. i think the story is quite beautiful but lmk your opinion on the series

already seen it, I don't recall it perfectly since it was years ago so this is going to e shorter and more general.

Haibane renmei is about this girl who hatches from a giant cocoon into this world of angel looking people, like in lainm or other anime of this style, nothing is ever really confirmed, everything is ambiguous and up for interpretation. This is not my favourite way of telling a complex message but it does have it's fans.

Still, unlike other abstract anime, this one has a tone that is a ot more relaxed, often just following the daily lifes of the protagonist, focusing on that and how different characters adapt to that new society and how they find enjoyment in life despite the circumstances

ngl I don't remember shit outside that i'm also not at my best I remember enjoying it more than lain tho B rank

tapperruiii wrote:

oh yeah have you gotten close to finishing silksong yet

I don't think i'm covering silksong after I beat it, but i'm halfway throughg act 2 I think

Ah yeah what you think about CITY? Ik you've been watching along...

CLICKMACHINE wrote:

Ah yeah what you think about CITY? Ik you've been watching along...

i've yet to finish it, may stil take a week because reasons, will say whenever I finish it

Patatitta wrote:

CLICKMACHINE wrote:

Ah yeah what you think about CITY? Ik you've been watching along...

i've yet to finish it, may stil take a week because reasons, will say whenever I finish it

Ahh gotchu take your time.

CITY

I've read the manga and seen the anime, I enjoyed both, will be mainly talking about the anime though.

CITY is another comedy manga/anime by the creator of nichijou, it is very similar to this one in comedy style, it's all very fast and very absurd, but I would argue CITY is more lighthearted, less shounen segments and anime girls holding heavy weapons, and more over the top cutesy segments

Nichijou is a very legendary anime, not only for the comedy but also because it was adapted masterfully, it had a very unique and distinctive visual style. CITY aimed to do the same (it's also made by the same studio, kyoani), but they didn't just use the same style as nichijoum instead they just once again did a brand new, very unique and distinctive visual style while remaining the anime charm.

CITY is very minimalistic on it's art, having stuff like the sky be a solid color, the clouds are also almost pure white and they have your stereotypical cloud drawing shape, almost appearing childish, I think this represents the more light tone of city very well

The way city works is that there are A LOT of characters, it has a insanely big cast, each cast member has a very marked and clear gimmick and personality. You got the two girl best friends, you got the butler, you got the mangaka and the editor, etc. Each character is doing it's own thign, and doesn't know all of the other characters, it's not a simpsons situation where every character can be seen hanging out with everyone. However, despite this, a lot of the time their stories do mix in or they can be seen around the same spaces.

Each episode is divided into different chapters, each chapter actually just being a manga chapter. Each chapter usually follows different characters doing funny stuff. The way the jokes themselve work, (note that this isn't the case for every joke, but I do think it's a recurring pattern), is that they usually tend to start very slow, in a scenario that is almost typical, and then they slowly go introducing more and more jokes, until the very end of that segment where it's a barrage of punchline after punchline

The anime adaptation heavily trims the manga, each episode covers an entire volume, I believe that if they actually adapted the whole manga they would have had enough material to a 24 episode season or just another season before they caught up. I do think the actual selection of episodes is good, manga and anime are different mediums, and for comedy that matters a lot, something may be funnier in writing than in anime. The anime does also add a lot of new gags using the animation and the visuals more.

In the manga, in each episode you would almost always see almost every character, with the end/start of the volume (tbh I don't recall which chapters were the oens that did this), usually showcasing everyone, it really gave you the sensation that it was all just one big city, you see everyone doing their own thing and then you see everyone coexisting and it's really cool. Ifeel that sensation is a big lost on the anime though, the moments that showcase everyoen are a lot less spaced out, so you grow more acostumed to them, and the selection of chapters do give more protagonism to characters like naguno, since she now has considerably more screen time than other characters, which didn't happen as much in the manga, breaking a bit of that immersion of it's all just a big city.

I don't think this is inherently bad though, they did what they needed to do to get this adapted, and it's a damn good adaptation, I really enjoyed it

also, fun fact, nichijou, the faster and more violent manga releases in a shounen magazine, while city, the more laid back and family friendly manga releases in a seinen magazine (also in general, CGDCT IS considered seinen, kirara magazine is actually seinen).

Also fun fact number two, CITY was originally a finished manga, but it seems the adaptation was successful enough that it has actually resumed publication, I had never seen a manga actually continue after it was considered done, also nichijou is still publishing to this day. A rank

Review Fortnite or League of legends

Spamix wrote:

Review Fortnite or League of legends

denied, I don't do multiplayer titles

Patatitta wrote:

CITY

I've read the manga and seen the anime, I enjoyed both, will be mainly talking about the anime though.

<Review>

So true. Though it didn't touch up most of the characters (Shia barely got any screentime ToT) and there were some more kickass chapters I wished to see animated but they pretty much went "Quality > Quantity" which is great. And the music was perfect, they fit really well into the scenes.

Also fun fact number 3, Nichijou also actually ended in 2015. (Probably because he wanted to try something new?) Then he began writing CITY in 2016, ended it at 2021, and then continued to write Nichijou months later. Buddy can just end something and continue it years later like it was yesterday.

CLICKMACHINE wrote:

Patatitta wrote:

CITY

I've read the manga and seen the anime, I enjoyed both, will be mainly talking about the anime though.

<Review>

So true. Though it didn't touch up most of the characters (Shia barely got any screentime ToT) and there were some more kickass chapters I wished to see animated but they pretty much went "Quality > Quantity" which is great. And the music was perfect, they fit really well into the scenes.

Also fun fact number 3, Nichijou also actually ended in 2015. (Probably because he wanted to try something new?) Then he began writing CITY in 2016, ended it at 2021, and then continued to write Nichijou months later. Buddy can just end something and continue it years later like it was yesterday.

did not know this

Patatitta wrote:

CLICKMACHINE wrote:

Patatitta wrote:

CITY

I've read the manga and seen the anime, I enjoyed both, will be mainly talking about the anime though.

<Review>

So true. Though it didn't touch up most of the characters (Shia barely got any screentime ToT) and there were some more kickass chapters I wished to see animated but they pretty much went "Quality > Quantity" which is great. And the music was perfect, they fit really well into the scenes.

Also fun fact number 3, Nichijou also actually ended in 2015. (Probably because he wanted to try something new?) Then he began writing CITY in 2016, ended it at 2021, and then continued to write Nichijou months later. Buddy can just end something and continue it years later like it was yesterday.

did not know this

Yeah and I didn't even realize the Shounen Seinen thing. That's funny.

Can you try reading The NOexistenceN of you AND me?

Its not that long but i found it really interesting and I'd like for you to read it.

RoksNRoll wrote:

Can you try reading The NOexistenceN of you AND me?

Its not that long but i found it really interesting and I'd like for you to read it.

sure, may take a few days since i'm finishing other games rn, whenever I finish one I will get around to playing that.

review the film hunt for the wilderpeople, classic new zealander film

sametdze wrote:

review the film hunt for the wilderpeople, classic new zealander film

I know that one, last good taika waititi film, will watch

The NOexistenceN of you AND me

ended up palying this earlier than I thought, however, I did not enjoy it.

It's a short VN about your relationship with a girl, I don't really know how else to put it, there is only one characterin this whole game which is the main waifu and all of the game is essentailly you talking to her

You have a lot of options to talk in this game, however, I consistently ran into a problem that I honestly didn't really know how I should act, most of the decisions I couldn't actuall choose a question that reflected how I was feeling or what I wanted to say, nor did I ever know enough about the protagonist where I can really insert myself i nthen and then just respond by roleplaying as them.

I think my biggest problem with this game is how sueprficial it feels, the game tries to be philosophical and deep, but the way it achieves that is by crafting this very cryptic and hard to follow storyline, but while it appears to be deep, at leats i've not really been able to extract any meaning from this game

in many ways it feels almost contradictory, as a example, the game is VERY meta, and early in the game, they gave me a decision in the game, where I think asked me what did I think she was and I had the option to say "A videogame character", I pressed that option and then she kinda just said that I needed to have suspension of disbelief and that sort of stuff, only for her to not really follow the following stnadards

the question the games ponders also vary widly, a minute you're alking about the self and what whe consider reality then the other it's talking about abour art and music as a outlet of artistic expression and it just keeps switching and switching, but it never achieves a conclusion in any of them. In factl, a lot of the time the game kinda asks a open ended question and then it gives you 8 possible responses, you choose one, then maybe the girl says one sentence in relation to your pick and it moves on. This is as philosophically deep as googing a list of philosophical questions, it gets you in the door for thinking about it but honestly if you want to actually understand or elaborate on any of those ideas you're going to have to read a different thing.

This game just doesn't really stand for anything. It refuses to tell you anything, everything is cryptic and left so much to interpretation where you aren't really breaking new ground. I will say, after completing the game, I actually decided to read the synopsis of the game, and it describes itself as horror. I have no clue where that horror is, but I guess this could be a explanation of why it's the way it is. It isn't meant to really say anything but just to create a weird (and scary by extension?) vibe, but idk if that is something I fuck with, are you going to just try to appear something look deep but to try to make the player not actually think too hard about it?, I don't get it

placed in D rank

---

have yet to watch hunt for the wilderpeople, it's been like 2 hours since it was requested so

no other games on queue

I didnt play that game because "Lilith" was one of the character names.