JeremyR
Member
I dunno. There have been a lot of decent games based on ancient Norse and Greek religion.
I think a lot of times Christianity just gets used as a cheap "license" to put out crap. Be it games or music or movies or general merchandise. If you can't afford Squarebob Spongepants for your T shirt or novelty keychain, then use biblical characters.
I played and beat Nostatic's Ascent of Kings yesterday (technically, I started playing it two nights ago, but that was for 5-10 minutes). Pretty fun, but it involved much more platforming than I was expecting (I didn't remember our review), and not the easy kind, either. It wasn't so bad that I got frustrated, but I had thought the game was more adventure, less platformer. As it is, there might be parts where some players could get stuck for a long time, if they're even worse at platforming than I am (such people do exist! . . . theoretically). Granted, a few of the areas are optional; I only had 6 or 7 of the 12 lesser shrines found when I finished the main quest. But, some of the hardest platforming areas were still on the main path, and those remaining shrines weren't much harder to do. Speaking of which, finishing all the shrines only netted a congratulations message. :)
All in all, it was fun and most definitely worth the 49 cents I spent. No word yet on it coming to PSV natively, but Nostatic's four adventure games will be going PSV-native in a pack.
In other PSM news, I discovered that The Sexy Seashore received an update . . . 6 months after the last time I had talked to the developer! According to this blog post, version 1.02 was released in mid-December 2013, with these changes:
- certain hard-to-see enemy bullets had their colors changed
- bosses had their life halved (!)
- support for on-screen controller added
- in Free Play mode, a shaking animation was added (there's a broken video link to demonstrate; my guess, he's talking about jiggling)
Also, his blog has some other posts around the same date discussing tactics for the game, though I haven't looked at any of them.
- 2015/07/18 GMT
AXM
Member
There have been a lot of decent games based on ancient Norse and Greek religion.
No word yet on it coming to PSV natively, but Nostatic's four adventure games will be going PSV-native in a pack.
JeremyR
Member
Well, the thing about Greek myths is that many of the gods really were rapists and murderers. Zeus, well, there are too many to list. But to name just just one, he ate (and thus killed) the mother of Athena, trying to keep Athena from being born. Look at poor Hephaestus, his parents (Hera and possibly Zeus) tried to kill him just because he was ugly.
Probably the one decent person in the whole mythos was Prometheus and he ended up getting tortured for eternity for being nice.
AXM
Member
Yes, but that was part of the mythology itself. We consider Jesus the son of God, a human being who died to redeem us from the original sin, our one and only savior. Killing people is both out of character and offensive for people believing in Him, right?
The Greek religion is much more interesting, in my opinion. It makes gods more "human" so to speak, instead of our "perfect" Trinity. It was the original Game of Thrones. Georn þāra Giftsols, as glosbe.com calls it, in Archaic English.
Also, look at what those Muslim terrorists did because of that Charlie issue. If there were people that insane believing in the Christian religion and a game with the Jesus I described, a catastrophe would ensue.
I played and beat Reflect It last night, a reflection-based puzzle platformer (sort of like Mighty Flip Champs! DX, but with localized, user-defined reflecting) made by undergraduates at the University of Utah. Side note: PSM games Origami Kami, Galactic Labor Union, and Princess Revolution were made by other students in the same program. Reflect It turned out to be a little short for its price, 20 levels for $4.29, but the mechanics were very interesting. You can use either the right stick or the touchscreen (it isn't PSTV-compatible) to define a square on the screen, sized, oriented, and located by your choosing, and the game will recreate the contents of that square in the opposite direction. The things created by the reflection become tangible objects in the game world until you make another reflection. If you reflect a piece of a wall onto a rope, the wall cuts through the rope. If you reflect a grilled passageway onto a solid wall, the wall becomes another grilled passageway. The only things you can't do are reflect a solid wall onto yourself and reflect yourself. If you want to see the game in the Store, well, I'm afraid I couldn't find the UM# for the publisher. That's all I'd need to produce the link, since I know the game ID# from the backup on my PC.
I tried to copy Super Crate Box from my PC to my PSV. A 5-MB game, and Content Manager hung without the transfer even moving 1 byte. After 10 minutes, I hit Cancel. Now my PSV is stuck at "Please wait...", with the PS button not allowed (like always when CM is transferring), and as it's been in that state for over half an hour, I think my time wandering about in the closed-for-everyone-else PSM Store has come to an end. Most likely, the only way out of this hang is to power cycle the PSV. :( *sigh* It was fun while it lasted.
Yep, power-cycled the PSV. I'm out of the PSM Store for good now.
Something I've just learned from experience: the backup you take of a PSM game on your PC is authorized only for the device that made the backup. If you put that backup on another one of your PSM-activated systems, it will need to reauthorize the game. Wonderful. I now have a whole bunch of PSTV-incompatible PSM games' backups that are only authorized to run on my PSTV. Speak my mind, Q*Bert.
- 2015/07/19 GMT
AXM
Member
Mighty Flip Champs! DX
I tried to copy Super Crate Box from my PC to my PSV. A 5-MB game, and Content Manager hung without the transfer even moving 1 byte. After 10 minutes, I hit Cancel. Now my PSV is stuck at "Please wait...", with the PS button not allowed (like always when CM is transferring), and as it's been in that state for over half an hour, I think my time wandering about in the closed-for-everyone-else PSM Store has come to an end. Most likely, the only way out of this hang is to power cycle the PSV. :( *sigh* It was fun while it lasted.
Speak my mind, Q*Bert.
Is there something else I could possibly mean?
What's the deal with all these Mighty games, that always have nothing to do with each other? Mighty Jill Off, this one, Mighty Switch Force, Mighty Gunvolt...
Well, Mighty Switch Force! is related to Mighty Switch Force! 2, I think. Also, it's related a bit to Mighty Flip Champs! and Mighty Milky Way, since they're all by WayForward.
Princess Revolution, the other University of Utah PSM title that I have, turned out to be really short. In under a half hour, I went through the entire thing, which is a tilt-control, puzzle-labyrinth game, and that included several accidental restarts because I kept thinking that "Main Menu" at the between-levels screen would eventually mean a level select screen. Nope, it meant the splash screen at the beginning of the game. There's no level select, nor is there saving, because it's very short. After finding that I'd beaten it all of a sudden, I went back and replayed the whole game. Even with challenging myself to do one of the later levels a much harder way, I was done in ~15 minutes. That said, it has a cute polygon-graphics art style and presentation. However, it was never particularly challenging (hence why I went and did a solution the "wrong" way, the right way being too easy). Pass.
- 2015/07/20 GMT
Maybe we should do a post about the PSM links for the main blog? It'll help get a little traffic from people curious about it, and those links are pretty useful.
That's not a bad idea. JeremyR, what do you think? However, I'm kind of reluctant to drop the Angus hates Aliens review post out of the top spot after only a week.
By the way, I actually have been crafting a fully alphabetized (by developer), HTML version of the PSM links in the topic. I was thinking of posting it at my plug-n-play website, though really only for my personal reference.
The direct links are damned useful, much better than the interminably long waits for the PSM download list. And if you want to download something that's older than 32 objects down in your download list, be prepared to wait a second time for that part of the list to load. On top of that, after you pick something from the download list to download, it has to reload the list again--and from the very top, to boot.
By the way, I meant to ask this earlier, Ofaliss, but why did you get Oh, Deer! Alpha if you don't have a PSV anymore and can't play it on the PSTV? Are you planning to get another PSV (plus memory card) before September?
Hmmm, I remember beating Ascent of Kings and not getting overly frustrated.
I wrote that it wasn't so bad that I got frustrated, so you're presumably no worse than I am at platforming.
- 2015/07/21 GMT
Are you planning to get another PSV (plus memory card) before September?
Yes to both the system and memory card.
FYI, JeremyR, if you're in agreement with the "make a blog post out of the PSM links list and keep it updated as new ones pop up" plan, I have the HTML list all set and current. Someone can start the post, and then I can just toss in the data in an edit.
Maybe we should make the post but not Sticky it? It'll still be on the front page, under the "We're closed" and Angus posts. Or do we want it as visible as possible, even at the cost of the first Mini in so long? Does visibility even matter, though? People weren't coming to our front page for PSM news anyway, and the site doesn't do ads anymore either. If anyone out there links to it, they'll most likely go to the post rather than the front page.
- 2015/07/22 GMT
AXM
Member
If someone has a Twitter account, they could write something to BlueMaxima. He "only" has 17,000 subscribers, but he is, as of now, the main Vita channel on Youtube. Since a lot of people keep writing on the comment section of his videos "Oh, I'd so buy this if the Store still worked", he could do a video about it and make everyone happy. This website could also get much more views, and we could get more users.
I wanted to do it myself, by sending an e-mail, but his address is nowhere to be seen.
BlueMaxima knows about our links thread already. Or at least, he should know, because he's been included as a Mention on tweets that have discussed the thread.
Here is an interesting promo video for one of the final PSM games, Million Shells - The First Encount. It's advertised as a mix of shooter and tower defense, which seems to really end up meaning "Missile Command descendant." An interesting, and visually pretty cool, gimmick involves paying 5000 of your score points for a crazy burst of firepower a few seconds long. Check out the video to see what I mean. Or not, since it seems like one of us in here doesn't actually read any of the PSM-related posts we've written lately, at all.
- 2015/07/24 GMT
It's been 2 weeks now with the Angus review in Sticky status. Are we go for trading it in for a PSM-links post in Sticky status? With the 2 weeks mark passed, my thumbs-up joins Ofaliss' thumbs-up; how do you vote, JeremyR?
Again, if we're doing it, someone just start the post, and I'll take care of the links and Sticky attribute.
- 2015/07/28 GMT
Jeremy 54, where are you?
If anyone here ever bought any of the following PSM games, can you check if they're still in your PSM download lists?
- Frederic - Resurrection of Music (our review)
- Hungry Giraffe (our review)
- Loot the Land (our review)
- QuizQuizQuiz (our review)
- Panic! (our review)
- You Are The Ref (our review)
The PSM Store direct links for these don't seem to work at all for me; they only return an error. Thus, I'm curious about whether they also don't exist anymore in download lists, as is the case for Samurai Beatdown.
- 2015/07/28 GMT
I can put something together, though I have no idea what the sign in stuff is anymore, but I would at least want an okay from Jeremy before I did it. He is pretty much the unspoken captain of the ship.
Yeah, with him being the most senior remaining member of Ye Olde Crew, it would feel like I were overstepping my boundaries to go and publish something without a go-ahead from him. At this point, the only voice higher in the hierarchy is the actual site owner. I wonder if I ought to just host the consolidated PSM links page at my own website for the time being. Does nothing for visibility, and it would be in my typical boring presentation style, but at least it would be easier than the forum thread for seeing everything from a single developer/publisher at once.
- 2015/07/30 GMT
I beat Gun Commando today. Overall, I found it kind of tedious--but then, if you combine a gun upgrade system dependent on not missing shots with my usual way of playing FPS games, creeping around almost as if in a stealth game, that spells "tedious." The comic book-style cutscenes were a nice touch, though. Anyway, here are some assorted thoughts on the game.
- The final boss is curiously easy. Firing at max speed, I've been able to take it out in ~12 seconds, before it can even unload any henchmen (but this depends on its 3 teleportations going somewhere I can find quickly). Counting definite impacts, I think it took 15 shots from my Level 22 gun to kill it. Of course, if you're playing for points, you might let it unload so you can farm, except . . . the game doesn't save after completion, meaning the high score on the start screen is from up to just before the final boss.
- My gun ended up at Level 22. A promo screenshot for the game features a Level 23 gun, but I wonder if it's actually possible to get there. I rarely missed, averaging maybe 5 in the longer levels, yet my final gun was far from the next upgrade. Note: if you miss no shots, your gun is Level 16 at the halfway point; upgrade progress gets very slow at the end, hence Level 23 being so far off.
- Usually, upgraded guns = more points per enemy. Not for bosses, though. Boss #1 was only 50K; #2 was 100K; neglected to check for #3; the last was also a mere 100K.
- Level completion screens show a bonus (if any) and, under it, your score. Strangely, the bonus is not included in that number. It's only added after that screen.
Other PSM games I beat in recent weeks:
- Hermit Crab in Space - A very interesting "shooter" built around a fight-scavenge cycle. It can get addictive arranging your acquired parts to build up your floppy little ship. Sucks when you accidentally build such that you shoot yourself, though. :P
- Super Skull Smash GO! - A well done puzzle platformer, but it leans toward the platforming side too much for my tastes. I did collect all the coins, so I guess it isn't that hard, but there are some parts with pretty tricky timing.
- Oh, Deer! Alpha - Visuals and sound are very nice. An unfinished game (hence "Alpha"), it's only one course, but it still took me maybe 10 tries to reach the goal. Buggy, unfortunately; the second section occasionally would fail to load, and the car would end up in a sort of limbo. FYI, there are 666 deer in all.
- Quiet, Please! - A fun little adventure game, but very quick if you know what to do. I'll have to put the PSV-native The Quiet Collection on my "buy someday" list.
- Haunt the House: Terrortown - I really like this game's sense of style, but it's almost disturbing how much fun it makes the act of scaring someone so badly that they jump out of a window.
- 2015/08/31 GMT
Freelance
Member
I love Haunt the House! Im pleased that you enjoyed it!! It sucks though that the PC version has an extra level and a new ghost which came free in an update, and when people asked if its coming to Vita, they didn`t get a single answer :P The art style is really cool, I thought, and chasing after one person and constantly scaring him/her is fun as heck :D All the animations are really cute, despite it's 'horror' theme.
Does anyone here own at least one of the following PSM games?
Palomino
Atlas
ega
Tribute
The guy who made them is a homebrew programmer for classic systems, including the 2600. So, given his experience, his games should be pretty good (I mean, they're more likely to play like actual games rather than a beginner's programming exercise). I'd like to get them into our links list, if possible.
Let me know if you have one or more.
- 2015/09/07 GMT
Here is a nifty promo video for a Japanese PSM game we didn't see released in the West, Vengeance Boss. It's a 2D beat'em-up in which you're a mafia boss making his way to the samurai who took him down and then took over his empire (so all the henchmen he's fighting used to work for him). The particularly nifty mechanic is the ability to grab anything and use it as a weapon. "Anything" means not only environmental objects but also enemies, effects, and even your power gauge--which you need to make sure not to break. After you defeat the samurai, he becomes a playable character, with totally different gameplay.
But no, I was not able to find the link for Vengeance Boss. :(
If anyone here has played the action RPG Emil's Task, you've seen the absolutely terrible English in it. :D Really, it's so bad that it is, without exaggeration, totally unintelligible at times; literally, not even the context helps. The English made so little sense that switching the text to Japanese helped, even with my not recognizing many of the kanji. An example of the nonsense: in the prologue, Emil says to her boss, "A fizz should [do something]." What the heck is a fizz? Well, if you had it in Japanese, you'd know that "Fiz"/"Fizz" is the name of Emil's boss. The translation seems to think you can refer to people as countable common nouns in English. . . . Poor translation aside, though, it's not a bad action RPG. It does seem like it's getting grindy in world 3, though (i.e., I'm unable to finish a level with a quick time, for a good rank/loot, with my existing powers).
By the way, the narrator on that Vengeance Boss video was one of the developers. The credits list him as both narrator and "planner," which I think is the Japanese name for what we typically call a director or project lead.
- 2015/09/10 GMT
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