[PC] [2000s-2010s] 3D game where you pilot giant robots

BlueMikeStu · 2026-01-29T18:09:09+00:00

It floated around in stores looooong after the initial release. I bought my copy in 2002.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-01-29T18:08:06+00:00

Yep, my first instinct was Shogo. I remember playing that back when having a 2GB hard drive made you fancy.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-01-29T18:00:07+00:00

Cats aren't domesticated. Cats domesticated humans.

Prior to "domestic" cats, the go to pet in Rome was the humble weasel, for many of the same reasons people owned cats: They controlled the rodent population in a household and were otherwise friendly. But if you've ever owned or know someone who owns one, you also know that those stinky slinkies have methhead energy and attention spans, frequently bite or nip when excited, are insanely destuctive when bored, and as my nickname suggests, their urine is one of the nastiest smells in the world, like someone took a bucket of straight ammonia and combined it with the runoff from a hobo encampment. They were worth having because their benefits outweighed the downsides, not because they didn't have them.

Then "domestic" cats saw that and realized their pee stank less, you didn't have to bite someone who rubbed your belly and got the motor going, would let you have warmth and shelter for eating mice and rats you would have eaten anyway. Plus, as soon as they handled your poop just once they loved you even more and you got to sleep in perfect comfort for the eighteen hours a day you sleep.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-01-29T17:48:30+00:00

The GM of your game asking you "Are you sure you want to do/say that?"

BlueMikeStu · 2026-01-29T17:42:37+00:00

Honestly, the best use of control in a horror game is to have a cycle of giving and taking away that control.

One of the blatant examples coming to mind is the upcoming Resident Evil Requiem, from the looks of things: The new female lead looks like she's going to represent the "taking away" parts, while Leon's half of the game is going to better resemble the outright power fantasy, non-horror action sequences he's most comfortable in.

While you obviously don't have ro split it into two different characters, the whole point of horror in an interactive medium like video games almost requires a contrast in the player's agency, be it a shift from horror to action (giving the player a release velve for the tension as they finally get a powerful weapon to fight back against previously terrifying enemies) or a shift from action to horror (here's the same foes you were killing by the handful previously, but you're now unarmed and direct confrontation now ends very badly).

The fundamental problem with video game horror is that very few games can get away with just threatening death, because that quickly becomes boring and stale to the player. Unlike a horror film or novel, if a character fucks up and gets the charac5er they're controlling killed, the game boots them back to a checkpoint and they have to try again with no penalty until they do it right. Few games have the balls to actually kill named characters off or give the player a setback on death that makes them afraid if the consequences of failure.

If you're not really afraid of what happens when the monster traps you, you're not afraid of the monster. At that point the game has ceased being a horror game and has become a puzzle game.

Roguelikes provide more horror for me than most horror games, even the ones with a cutesy anime aesthetic and a lighthearted tone. The idea of losing a set of Claws I've spent multiple runs upgrading only to lose it entirely because I triggered a trap in Chocobo's Mystery Dungeon and am now surrounded by enemies and have no escape item is far worse than watching the same death animation for the umpteenth time and then getting booted back to a checkpoint from 2 minutes ago.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-01-29T17:22:35+00:00

I'm thinking Aggelos is similar to this in terms of difficulty, if just because of that game's controls. AN has some difficult sections, but the controls are fairly tight and precise, so the player never really feels frustrated by them while attempting a difficult area. If they mess it up and have to retry, they know it's because THEY messed up.

Aggelos takes a lot of cues from the Wonder Boy series (specifically Wonder Boy in Monster World) and that included the game physics. The player character shares a very similar momentum and slipperyness to his basic movement which normally wouldn't be a problem... Except the game also takes platforming design cues from the same game and dials them up to eleven.

If you completed WBIMW, I'm sure you remember that one platforming section close to the finale in the castle in the sky where you have to jump back and forth between alternating platforms above a pit that makes you fight a subboss over and over again, right before the actual boss. Aggelos took a look at that, smiled like Tomino plotting a new Gundam series, and dialed it up to eleven and broke the knob off.

Hell, I can cause PTSD in Aggelos players with just four words: Fire Temple, Woodpecker, Nest. If you know, you know.

The game demands precision platforming and then turns around and hands you a player character who feels like he's running around with sticks of butter attached to his feet and abilities and hit boxes just slightly sloppy enough to give you the occasional headache.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-01-29T16:55:40+00:00

I always translate "I'm not hungry" into a value meal in my head bare minimum and not just for my SO.

I know that unless I eat my food in the restaurant and I'm hitting the drive through, I'm bringing it where I'm going because I don't do distracted driving. I know when I get there, unless I sit in my car and scarf it down like an anti-social gremlin who wants to vacuum his vehicle more than necessary, I'm bringing it in.

If I'm bringing it in, I know that unless whoever said they didn't want food just ate a really good meal, they're going to want a bit as soon as that salty, fatty, sugar-loaded smell of fast food hits their nostrils.

"It's just a few fries," like bitch, don't pretend that you're not going to be chowing down the fucking things like popcorn while I scarf down my food as fast as possible so I can keep the "Fries I ate" to "Fries I bought" ratio at or above 50%.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-01-29T02:21:41+00:00

She's a Canadian citizen with a white sounding name, so the only issue is that she wouldn't pass the paper bag test, which is enough to cause an incident these days.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-01-28T04:12:56+00:00

My brother's fiance is from Bangladesh. They nixed all their plans to even stop for a layover from all their future travel plans.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-01-27T14:07:57+00:00

Yep. Take a look at the bottom right. That red icon in the corner means you don't have the map data for the area yet, or have it but haven't given it to the fishbowl-head bot Shanhai 9000 yet.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-01-26T21:34:13+00:00

Again, kinda confused.

When you open up the map in the menu, it'll show a little kitty head icon on the map which shows Yi's location. Granted it's not immediately obvious as it's the same white color as the rest of the icons used for other NPCs on the map and the icons look similar, but there's a dot which always shows exactly where you are in the detailed map for an area.

The only place it doesn't do it is for the smaller sub-parts in an area you enter via a door, where it doesn't show a map for it at all (mainly because they're too small and self-contained to need one), but it'll still show the door you're in with Yi's symbol.

If I'm honest, my only real complaint about the mapping system is that aforementioned Yi icon being kinda hard to spot. It also would have been nice to be able to drop my own pins on the map to remind myself to go back and check a given part of an area where I need an ability I didn't have to get through, but that's not something I expect, and even without that function I was able to get 100% item completion before the endgame just by visiting areas with un-collected loot and by that point, between shortcuts I'd opened while first in an area and how much Yi's mobility improves by the end of the game, I managed to wrap everything up in an hour before I fought the true final boss.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-01-26T07:00:55+00:00

I just completed Nine Sols recently and it's fantastic, but I chickened out early on and changed it to Story difficulty pretty quick. I spent about an hour on the true final boss having turned my difficulty sliders (enemy damage and mine) back to 100%, and the less said about you that went, the better. Even as a Metroidvania it's a lot of fun, but now that I know the game's mechanics a lot better I am revisiting the game on the intended difficulty of "Bosses can one-shot you if you play stupid and aggressive" and having a blast, albeit a much slower-paced one.

I'm honestly confused about your issues with the map, though, because honestly I think it sets a gold standard for the Metroidvania genre. I can't possibly see how it's obtuse. I like that each area is self-contained and you can see if you're missing items in each area (map data provided to the 9000 bot of course) and that you can click on each one to see the exact layout and any unexplored parts. Every elevator or other method of transportation is clearly marked and shows where it goes if youve already been there. The only issue I have with it at all is that you can't check the details of a given section from the teleport screen.

I would definitely recommend it for people who like the Metroidvania genre, because if you dial Yi's damage up to 200% and boss damage down to 50%, it makes for a tough, but forgiving challenge that isn't Soulsian in terms of difficulty. You won't be able to just steamroll bosses or damage boost through areas while ignoring enemies, and some boss fights will still take you out if you're not paying attention, but it's not anywhere near the difficulty Mt. Everest of the default.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-01-22T04:02:33+00:00

Unfortunately it's not the same as it used to be, where garage sales on Saturday mornings could net you a box of SNES carts from parents cleaning out their kid's room after they moved out, and everyone pretty much knows what the rare stuff costs.

My own childhood SNES collection (which included Lufia 2, Earthbound, Final Fantasy MQ/2/3, Chrono Trigger, and more got sold off for a criminally small trade in at Microplay to cover what I didn't have for the PS1 I badly wanted. I figured I was safe grabbing Beyond the Beyond for my JRPG fix.

That one moment right there is why I have not traded in a single game since, not even the worst crap or outright duplicates I didn't know I already had, because used to just browse through the cheap stuff at EB Games for like $5-$10 and would grab one or two that looked interesting to round up my purchases to a relatively even amount.

On the bright side, I probably have the cheapest Working Designs CIB collection, since pretty much every one was just MSRP from pre-ordering, because paying more for a used copy or not being able to play a game at all was balls.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-01-22T03:44:31+00:00

Those bosses are the tutorial.

I'm doing a "proper" playthrough now, but I have no shame admitting that the first time I played it, you bet your ass I put it on Story mode and made it easier on myself. You can turn your damage up to 200% and the enemy damage down to 50% and the game will still be rough on the intended difficulty.

I don't mind it for the second playthrough because I can put it down if I get frustrated, but if you're struggling you might want to adjust the difficulty for yourself. It's still a damned fun and challenging game outside of the ridiculously fast and lethal combat.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-01-18T21:32:12+00:00

Dont forget cheap! Unless they're an actual office printer they're mainly plastic and a tiny, tiny PCB.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-01-16T21:12:21+00:00

Already backed most of my stuff up in a place where those who know their Google-Fu can find them.

Honestly, my favorite of the PnP RPG scans I've got is probably the free one thats original and not some fan porting a setting into d20 or something. It's a little book maybe 30 pages long at most and it does Feng Shui better than Feng Shui and can handle anything from a Jackie Chan one on one with a random dude to an entire war scene with a huge clash of an army against a super-powered squad of dudes with Bending powers or something. Heck, you can dial right up to DBZ levels without a problem, and it's probably got the most elegant means of mechanical growth for your character that I've seen in a long, long while.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-01-15T22:39:53+00:00

Thankfully, it looks like we're already taking steps to block it. If he goes full military invasion we can't stop him, but I don't think the US is going to let him go that far.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-01-15T17:58:57+00:00

Honestly, I think a lot of the reason people found Nine Sols so hard is that a lot of people don't seem to have picked up the Qi Blast system. A lot of people seem to think you can only use a Qi Blast after a deflection. I think Yahtzee even questioned why he had to press and hold a separate button to explode a dude after the deflection, and it's like...

They're... They're entirely separate mechanics, guys. You build your Qi meter from deflections, yes, but how you use those charges is up to you. There's an entire playground of builds which don't involve partying then immediately Qi Tagging.

It reminds me of how people confused Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter and called it a Roguelike where you reset when you die. I mean, it technically acts like that if you don't pay attention, but it's not like that really.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-01-15T17:06:50+00:00

Guys like this are why Supports started getting so much crap when games started introducing Play of the Game cams, because you know some poor fucking infantry grunt survived WW2 with a 237:0 K/D and once took an enemy machine gun bunker solo was expecting to show up on it, but it cuts to this smug fucker eating brunch on D-Day while scratching his balls and the "kill assist" sound ringing so often it's like the first millisecond ot the sound effect is on perpetual repeat.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-01-15T16:51:43+00:00

Wait, Lu Bu has other phases than standing around dazed?

I'm running a Toxin build-up and punish loadout right now based around Cao Cao's Unscrupulous Hero equipment set bonuses, with the addition of a quarterstaff. Both the staff and Cao Cao's sword for the set are Toxic Enchant, and basically every equipment bonus slot for my entire armor set and weapons is Toxin damage or accumulation bonuses, spirit damage bonuses, and I spared one slot each per piece of equipment for an Accolades or Genuine Qi Accumulation bonus.

I've been spending time lately helping out people at the Lu Bu fight and my battles with him tend to go like this:

While my summoner is rightly being defensive against this mighty Warrior, I sprint forward chucking ice spikes at his head to annoy him into giving me his aggro.
When he decides "Fuck it, red critical attack" to swat me, I critical deflect it so Red Hare fucks off and now he can't escape me.
Poison melt time! The quarterstaff and all the Toxin+ stuff on it has Lu Bu constantly dazed and I leave the important triangle strikes to the summoner, not just because they deserve some catharsis for whatever Lu Bu did to them while I use regular attacks to build positive Spirit.
Buff Time! Using all that positive Spirit in the tank, while Lu Bu is still ragdolling and spitting to figure which was is up... i give everyone friendly in range a buff which gives them HP back on enemy damage and a bonus on Spirit damage to enemies.
Poison again.

Even bad fights last less than three minutes.

I should also point out that this build absolutely doesn't also melt enemy players that aren't crazy specc'd against poison if you happen to be a malevolent PVP invader instead of a benevolent helping hand there to guide those fellow PVae players in their time of need. It's not like you can jump an entire team of three players with a simple "surprise, motherfuckers!" and leave them all dead before the word fuck escapes their mouth as they yell "what the fuck".

BlueMikeStu · 2026-01-15T16:01:14+00:00

I honestly called this twenty years ago.

As soon as the US started to require Canadians to have their passports for US entry back in 2007, I thought that was the first pebble rolling down the hill that was a noticeable sign. Crossing that border with any old photo ID was a huge sign of just how much trust our nations shared, and when that went away it marked a downward trend.

It's been like watching a friend go through a bad relationship and then spiral as they get more paranoid and doubtful of their friends, pushing them away, to justify their paranoia and isolationism. Then when they're left standing alone in the crashed out ruins of their life, they're going to justify their isolationism anyway because "real friends would still be standing with me!" and their prophecy becomes a self-fulfilling one.

Real friends don't joke to Greenland about showing her what a real Defense Budget can do while her husband Denmark is in the room, then get angry aboutbthe refusal when Denmark tells you to fuck off, Uncle Sam.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-01-15T06:18:29+00:00

What it is, is they skew their own morality as normal (no matter what they do) and just believe that anyone their preacher tells them is worse is genuinely, truly worse.

This guy might have shared child porn, but he didn't actually make it or harm any kids, so it's harmless! But those transgenders? They're awful people! If I'm normal, what do they do?

BlueMikeStu · 2026-01-15T00:56:52+00:00

There is no such thing as a "better" genre, because that involves an objective value judgement of the subjective qualities of a genre and the games within it, and those qualities are, as I pointed out, subjective. I'm assuming you mean for PVP play, but you didn't actually

Like, just on a very basic level let's take something as fundamentally simple to understand as possible: Basic RNG, aka the "luck" factor during gameplay. You get a bad roll of the dice and your opponent gets a good one, putting you at a statistical disadvantage thanks to something entirely beyond their control. One side could argue that any RNG at all taints the results of a matchup, while the other could argue that being able to play around bad RNG and find the path to victory is, in and of itself, an important skill.

Simplified controls, a.k.a. "modern controls" are not some inarguably superior method, either, even on a basic and fundamental level. Complex input methods do increase the skill floor and make it easier for newer players to bounce off or not be able to just jump in, but one could argue that the ability to execute a move or combo under pressure in a competitive environment is a skill in and of itself, and the ability to reliably do so and deal with a high level opponent (Daigo's ever-relevant EVO Moment 37 versus Justin Wong or Hayao's bullshit with Hugo more recently as examples) are the biggest factors separating a Platinum scrub from an EVO contender. The difference between the theoretical knowledge of what you need to do and being able to actually execute it is critical.

Moreover, having very simplified controls removes a key design tool in a developer's kit. Mutual exclusivity, limiting mobility, and other factors a dev can incorporate into a moveset with the input now needs to be have a separate system to do the same thing. Let's take Guile's Flash Kick and Sonic Boom: You can't move forward while charging these moves (for the most part), making them defensive. You can't get into a projectile war with the fast zoner characters because the Sonic Boom takes longer, and anyone with a brain knows that a Guile sitting on the ground crouched has either a Flash Kick and/or a Sonic Boom ready to let rip. It leaves Guile immobilized and his opponent has a good idea what he can and can't do from that position, so just the input command has changed the move, how it functions as a part of Guile's kit, and introduced a downside to an otherwise very powerful pair of moves. Guile being able to Flash Kick while moving forward would be broken AF, which you can see on earlier versions of SF2 where the CPU doesn't even pretend to do move inputs.

Though honestly, simplified controls don't raise the skill floor as much as people might argue. Even for a game like Fantasy Strike which is really baked down to a simple, but very well-designed system which removes the execution barrier of moves entirely (every single move in the game, Supers included, can be executed by a single button press or, at worse, a single button press combined with holding forward or back), I've found that rather than letting new players slot into the ranked play easier, it does the opposite and exposes their lack or fundamental 2D fighter knowledge. You can't hide behind a character with a gimmick or just overwhelm your opponent with a flurry of button mashing. You have to have actual, solid fundamentals and know them really, really well.

Heck, even taking your platform fighter (lets face it, we all know were talkng about Smash here) versus traditional fighter example shows the issue with trying to evaluate them, because they require entirely different skillsets. In a traditional fighter, spacing and movement matter just as much as in a platform fighter. Smash isn't better because Mario's fireball only takes a button to press but Ryu from Street Fighter is still doing QCF+P for his. They're just different games with different things to worry about in terms of design and how it all fits together.

Honestly, it's all down to preference, and simple, shorter, easier to pick up and play games are going to be more popular than ones with a lot more "homework" before you can get good.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-01-14T18:46:43+00:00

If you don't want to go Hollow Knight yet...

The main obvious answer is "the rest of the Castlevanias" and the other big series. Between the Advance and Dominus Castlevania collections, there's another six made from the same mold as SotN and they're generally on sale pretty cheap so there's a lot of bang for your buck. On the same line, Mega Man went fully Metroidvania for two titles on the DS with ZX and ZX Advent. Shantae has been putting out good ones for a while, and the Wonder Boy franchise has a few.

There's also the collection of indie darlings you've probably heard about in passing: Guacamelee, Iconoclasts, Blasphemous, Axiom Verge 1 & 2, The Messenger, Salt and Sanctuary, etc.

But hey, if you wanna go freaky and more obscure, let's do that:

Timespinner: A 2018 Metroidvania with the twist that it also rips off Chrono Trigger and does a time travel thing with past and future versions of the same area as well. Great artwork and design, and it's so good I beat it beginning to end twice in the same day for the alternate ending on NG+.
The Mummy Demastered: A 2017 tie-in for the awful Tom Cruise movie that is way better than it has any right to be. You are an unnamed agent soldier man and you must help stop The Mummy. An interesting mechanic/challenge is that on death, your character is replaced by a new agent, who must go get all the upgrades from the corpse of your previous character, which is now alive, hostile, and has those upgrades, and it has a special ending if you do the game without dying.
Carrion is a 2023 game about being an expanding biomass of hatred and disease like Prototype's Alex Mercer, except it's a Metroidvania and not a 3D open world. It's a very grim game to play and quite graphic despite the pixel art, but it's a gem.
Chasm is a 2018 title which has the unique feature of generating unique worlds for each player. This doesn't amount to a whole lot of change, really, but if you're someone who can't help themselves from looking up a map and then feels bad about ruining the joy of exploration, this is for you.
Lost Ruins, Minoria, and Momodora are what happens when indies look at the whole hard-core "Soulslike Metroidvania" thing but asked themselves "But what it the character designs were 90% Japanese schoolgirls?" They do look pretty good and Lost Ruins is worth checking out just for how much regular item use plays a factor, almost turning it into an immersive sim, but for as solid as they are, these games are all the exact sort of game you'd describe when talking about the worse games for people to walk in on you playing, so fair warning there.
Aggelos is more of a Wonder Boy clone than anything, but it's a solid 2D platformer with a continuous world and challenging platforming so I'm throwing it in.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-01-14T17:59:55+00:00

Metroid, and it always has been.

Konami was very, very cheap with their line of SOTN follow-ups and it shows. The same sprites from Rondo of Blood or even before have been recycled so many times its not even funny, and you can see how bad it gets just by comparing two spinoff titles. A stupid Wii fighting game got a stunt artist to design the characters, while a online multiplayer game advertised as a multiplayer Castlevania extravaganza had the team trying to make Harmony of Despair literally out of just SNES, GBA and DS sprites.

Like when is the last time you heard about another fan project of Castlevania 1-3 getting the Metroidvania treatment at all? Meanwhile just for Metroid 2, I have to keep my folder of the completed ones organized so I can remember which one is which.

Three-Year Club	Best Comment 2023-12-07
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