What video game(s) are you playing at the moment?

[607]

I've recently been 'working on' Castelian on Game Boy (the game called Nebulus on Amiga and ST), Super Mario Bros. 2 on the Game & Watch (emulating a Famicom), Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on the Switch, Gradius on the NES (on Switch), The Legend of Zelda on the NES (on Switch), Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania on the Switch, Dewy's Adventure on Wii, Yoshi's Woolly World on Wii U and Re-Volt on N64.
That's a lot of Switch! It's been like that ever since I bought it. I'm not playing anything on GBA at the moment, which was my favourite console/handheld before getting the Switch!

[Strato Incendus]

Given that Lemmings was originally marketed as an "action puzzle", I wonder if anyone here has ever come into contact with the Mirror's Edge games?
I discovered them one year ago, and are currently replaying them again - because replay value is certainly something they have going for them!

They're definitely more on the "action" than the "puzzle" side, but I'd kind of say they combine the best of both worlds:
During the initial playthrough, when you still need to figure out the path through a level, you will be busier with the "puzzle" side;
then, you're organically incentivised to do a re-run (not in a ham-fisted Yoko Taro-like way ), because you'll naturally want to improve your performance in getting through the level.
So the second time, when you know the level better, you can focus more on the "action" side. It's one of the few games literally made for speedrunners.

Basically, imagine you had a Lemmings level and its rerun, both being an X-of-everything level; but the first time, you mess around trying out whatever you want; the second time, you put a self-imposed time limit on the whole thing, trying to get through it as fast and efficiently as possible.


I assume Mirror's Edge won't appeal to the puzzle purists, because execution difficulty is definitely a major component.
However, where in Lemmings, execution difficulty is accidental and mostly unwanted, in Mirror's Edge, it's an intended part of the challenge - just like if you were doing Parkour for real.

The "accidental" and usually "unwanted" part of Mirror's Edge is the gun combat, which slows you down and eliminates most of your movement options, i.e. does the exact opposite of what the game otherwise wants you to do (just like execution difficulty in the original Lemmings games hindered the puzzle aspect). That's why they removed gun combat from the sequel, Mirror's Edge: Catalyst, which only has martial-arts combat. However, even that often still ends up being clunky.

While many trash the story of both the original 2008 game and Catalyst, and it's certainly nothing to write home about, I actually found myself more invested in at least some of the events (especially in Catalyst) than in other games that attempt to go for a more complex and elaborate story, but fail at establishing a connection with the characters.



I'd sum up the basic idea as a combination of Tomb Raider, Spider-Man, and Temple Run :
You're doing fast parkour puzzles in a metropolis while being chased by cops and private security.

I have only found a few other games that attempt anything similar, but none of them quite come close:
- The Dying Light games and Cyberpunk 2077 (though I prefer the aesthetic of Mirror's Edge over both, since "dark and gritty" has been done to death at this point, and some even refer to Mirror's Edge as cyberpunk, too; I've discovered it by, and hence have always been referring to it, as "Grimbright").

- And then, I recently saw somebody randomly flash in gameplay of Neon White, which looks to me as if somebody had taken the abstract level shapes from the Mirror's Edge DLC time trials (where you're jumping around somewhere in the clouds) and mashed it together with The Legend of Zelda.

[namida]

I've recently been playing two games that both might be of interest to people here. The first is Understand, a puzzle game heavily inspired by Zendo. The second is PsiloSybil, a retro-style 3D platformer with a very similar feel to Crash 1 (but harder); it's early access but the only bug I've run into is slight frame rate drops from time to time, which may be down to my hardware (and in particular that I'm running it at low power to extend battery life).

[Pieuw]

Yesterday I played What Remains of Edith Finch and I absolutely loved it. It's a very short game (~ 2-3h) and the gameplay is ultra linear but the atmosphere and story are incredible. I just wanted to chill but ended up with the feels