Zacktorial
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ZacktorialParticipantStrong second on Dr. Strangelove. There’s also a really neat found footage documentary called The Atomic Cafe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Atomic_Cafe
I’ll have to check out A Boy and His Dog, thanks for the rec!
ZacktorialParticipantHey I just remembered one. Slipped my mind because it’s not exactly mouse and keyboard (but you could 100% do it with mouse and keyboard.)
The Wii game Sin and Punishment: Star Successor is a run and gun that uses the nunchuck for your movement, and the Wii remote as your pointing device for where your character aims. The perspective shifts over the course of the game, sometimes it’s a rail shooter, but for a large chunk of the game it is a 2D run and gun.
I highly recommend it. It’s by Treasure, the studio you might know as the creators of Gunstar Heroes and Ikaruga.
ZacktorialParticipantI love the control scheme, and the atmospheric visuals and sound work for me. Where the game really suffers is the level design, which seems to be almost entirely based on surprise. The enemies aren’t super varied, so to keep the game “interesting” they just spawn a bunches of them randomly.
Level 4 is where the game starts to verge into trolling. Level 3 is the level that starts to teach you that those cocoon looking things will spawn xenomorphs later.
Level 4 has this one spot in particular where there is one cocoon but then like a dozen xenomorphs spawn. You can just hear the designers saying, “lol, gottem”.
I hate that they introduce a game mechanic and then almost immediately subvert it. Like, give me a little time guys. Not that it’s ever really relevant, because of course they also just spawn the xenomorphs all over the place, no cocoon needed.
ZacktorialParticipantOh lord, I haven’t had a keyboard with a numpad in years now. I forgot all about numpad insert. That makes way more sense.
I’ve just been only using ctrl to just cycle through weapons. It works well enough.
ZacktorialParticipantIt’s pretty funny to me whenever reviews talk about what programming language a game was written in. But hey, lisp is actually pretty cool.
Other famous games written in a dialect of lisp include Crash Bandicoot and Jak & Daxter, because the Naughty Dog folks were big lispers until Sony made them stop.
ZacktorialParticipantI mean WASD would be preferably , but I haven’t had any problems mousing and using the arrow keys at the same time. Honestly my big beef is switching weapons is ctrl and…. insert? Really? That’s an insanely out of the way key when alt is right there.
ZacktorialParticipantDang, I feel like I missed out. I remember seeing Abuse in maybe scrolling through the games section of synaptic, or maybe it was included in Knoppix or something. Either which way, I never actually tried the game, the little blurb I saw about it did not grab me.
ZacktorialParticipantI’ve done a few game jams, I’d definitely participate in a DOS one.
ZacktorialParticipantAs for the music in the game, it’s a lot of classical music, but more crucially, it’s all pieces that were used in some cartoon or another.
I’m sure The Barber of Seville overture is a wonderful piece on its own, but I will always associate it with Bugs Bunny.
ZacktorialParticipantI played he shareware of this game. I remember it being pretty fun once I figured out the UI, and also maybe a little easy. Perhaps that’s just what was available on the shareware. I also remember the game being pretty slow. You didn’t need a high APM.
ZacktorialParticipantOh this is perfect. The perfect amount of getting unstuck without ruining anything.
ZacktorialParticipantI thought I heard Tress MacNeille in there!
My first impression? Wow, what an obnoxious Virgin Interactive logo. But after that my impression is quite positive. I’ve played maybe an hour and a half, collected a bag full of nonsense cartoon items. I’ve figured out what to do with a few of them, and it’s getting late enough at night that my puzzle solving ability has deteriorated beyond my ability to keep making progress. I have been both delighted with a successful application of cartoon logic and unsuccessful applications of cartoon logic so far.
The presentation of course is insane, and other than the resolution being garbage for a modern display, it holds up quite well! I think it holds up stylistically as well, but having been a child in the early 90s, this style of animation is both familiar and nostalgic to me. I wonder if younger people would get as much out of it. I feel by 1996 this style of animation and the whole Roger Rabbit “man in a cartoon” thing was already making its way out of the zeitgeist. The nail in the coffin was probably Space Jam.
