CerebralHawks

Friendly reminder that this is the game that launched the same day as the new Animal Crossing, and fans turned it into one of the biggest and best gaming crossovers of all time, spawning gems such as this, despite neither studio embracing or contributing to the crossover officially — it was all fans. There’s a ton of fan-made DOOM and Animal Crossing crossover stuff, and since Animal Crossing lets you create art and display it in the game, DOOM outfits and other decorations remain popular in parts of the community.

If it worked on my computer (Mac), I’d consider getting it, but it’s made by a Microslop company (Bethesda). Might be able to get it on Xbox though.

I love what GOG does, but you’re basically buying an emulator and ROM with some built-in cheats and being locked to Windows here. Granted, Mac and Linux gamers know how to run Windows stuff. That said, you shouldn’t emulate a PlayStation emulator for Windows when you can just get a PlayStation emulator for your platform and run the ISOs directly.

Of course then there’s the question of legality, but it sure does beg the question of why they say Windows only when Mac and Linux can both emulate PlayStation just fine. And if you say “well buy it from them and then emulate on your platform,” that’s actually a good idea, but I bought the game on original hardware when it was new, so I guess we’re good on that front.

That being said, $8-9 is not bad for FF9. (I still haven’t beaten it. But I’ve never tried cheating. I’m playing FF7 Remake on Xbox, and it came with the PS1 original, and I’m finding the cheats make it a lot easier to get through. Fast-forwarding is awesome (and it’s in Remake as well, hold RT/R2 during cutscenes.)

Just realised this is Android only. On iOS, I think Dead Cells is on Apple Arcade. (Just checked, it is. You can also get it free with a Netflix subscription — so, that should work on Android, too, though this is a better option since it’s not tied to Netflix.) Apple Arcade isn’t free, but it’s part of Apple One, which is an awesome deal. I don’t plan to ever stop paying for the family plan.

It’s also on Xbox GamePass. If it’s not now, it was before and will probably be back. Like Bloodstained has come and gone from GamePass a few times. It happens.

Because I’m saying I loved the game but it had some flaws that should have been caught in testing? That’s my honest opinion. I’ve played through and beat SWD2 twice, and I’ll probably do it again in a year or so. The game is a fucking blast, it just has a couple parts that could have done better.

Sadly, while SWD2 was an improvement over SWD in virtually every way, they quit making them after 2, and only make tactical/sim games set in the same universe. Complete and utter tripe. But at least the first two hold up, and go on sale fairly frequently.

If nothing else, you will get far more enjoyment than your $0.99 is worth before you hit the first wall (the wind thing). And even then it’s not like it’s impossible, just poorly designed. And then you get past it and it’s simply never an obstacle again. As for the other thing… you just keep doing it until you realise what you’re supposed to do, and then you keep trying until you get a pattern that is possible to get through.

I cannot say enough good things about this game. Still haven’t beaten the secret/challenge dungeon at the end.

The first one is good too! Absolutely worth playing. Plays a little differently. The core concept is the same. If you can, play the first one first. It’s fine to play the second one first (I did) but the first one sets up a couple elements.

Oh yeah, the second one had two parts that were badly designed and either not tested, or not tested well. Without spoilers, the first area involves wind. If you’ve played through it, you know what I mean. It’s meant to be down to timing, but it’s mostly luck. The second area is… completely different from anything before it. It’s BS on consoles/Steam because there’s an achievement for doing this part without dying the first time. Problem is, that’s not strictly possible. It’s like a claw machine, there’s a random chance it’s possible. If you roll that dice right, you have a chance. It’s still hellishly hard. If you don’t — you have no chance. The only way to get that achievement is to start over and try again. And it’s a few hours in. (Though there are speed runs, they bypass a lot of the game, including that part. In fact, the game was designed to be exploited. But once you’re in that area, it’s a dice roll every time you restart it whether you can possibly complete it or not. I’m not saying they should nerf it, but you should be able to complete it every time, if you know what to do and where to go. Leave it hard, just make it not impossible much of the time.)