I need to start this off by saying I am not Ulillillia, despite being a notorious Bubsy defender. Yes, these games range from mediocre to terrible, but I somehow I can't bring myself to hate any of these games... except for Bubsy 2. I shit you not, I would MUCH rather play Bubsy 3D than Bubsy 2. I've played so much Bubsy in a joking meme-ish manner that I've come to appreciate them, in some weird fucked up way. It's kind of like an abusive relationship. To clarify, this review's gonna be more about the collection release, and not about the games themselves.

When I first saw that they were coming out with a full on collection release featuring all of the games aside from the reboot duology released in the 2010s, I just simply thought "oh that's cool." Then I found out Limited Run Games was behind this release and thought "oh, that's... not so cool." I hate LRG as a company, but I won't get into that here. Then they showed off how actually fucking high effort this release is, despite how much hate the IP has gotten over the years, and I thought "oh that's actually fucking cool." So this has every "classic era" Bubsy game, including the rare Japanese release of Bubsy in Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind on the Super Famicom, the entire OST for each game, loads of magazine, advert, etc scans, concept art, exclusive interviews with the original devs, and probably one of the nicest fake CRT filters I've seen on an official commercial release of a game, all packed into a really attractive and charming UI. And to top it all off, there's a romhacked version of Bubsy 3D here that includes full 360 movement and camera movement. All for $20USD.

Though I was hesitant on giving LRG my money, I spent my weekly $20 dinner budget on it anyway since the guys I normally go out with were on vacation elsewhere. And it's about as great of a release as I expected it to be, with some minor caveats. There are a few technical issues, at least on launch, that admittedly most people won't have anyway. If you're playing on anything wider than a 16:9 display, you're gonna have a bad time. The display is not just pillarboxed, it anchors the entire image to the corner of your screen if you have fullscreen enabled. Using Borderless gaming alongside windowed mode doesn't help either, it achieves the same result fullscreen gives you. Things behaved fine on my Steam Deck when I put it in windowed mode though, since you're not gonna be seeing a taskbar or wallpaper in gaming mode anyway. This issue is fine, I can deal with this. What I am truly disappointed about though is the lack of 4:3 support, so I can't play these games on my CRT. You do at least get a bunch of nice borders to fill out the empty space surrounding the game though. Another small issue I have is you can't set the aspect ratio in the ""refurbished" version "Refurbished Edition" of Bubsy 3D (very fucking funny, guys) with the new controls, you're forced into 16:9.

And speaking of Bubsy 3D...

The new controls are decent, nothing mind-blowing. The game is actually fucking playable now, so if you want to play Bubsy 3D for some fucking reason (god knows I do), this is easily the most palatable way to do so. One majorly annoying issue though is that while the 3D space is rendered perfectly fine in 16:9, the UI isn't. Any and all UI elements are stretched, and maybe this won't be too much of an issue for most casual Bubsy fans, but hardcore Bubsy fans such as myself may find this incredibly annoying. And as I said previously, there is no way to change the aspect ratio in just this one specific game. Even in the original version of the game (which this collection does provide) allows you to switch between aspect ratios. Other than that, Refurbished Edition plays absolutely fine and I can see myself playing through the game without putting on a generic white shirt with pens in my left pocket and a pair of glasses while yelling at the TV.

Besides the various minor issues this release has, it is otherwise a SHOCKINGLY high effort collection of questionable at best games from an IP that should have stayed a failure, but somehow came back in place of other much more successful platformer mascots of the era. The emulation quality is also quite good, contrary to what I've heard about other releases from LRG (especially Gex Trilogy). For $20, if you're a Bubsy fan, it's absolutely worth it.

I am not Ulillillia btw

During the past couple days, I've been working on a massive overhaul for how the standalone Windows build for TardQuest is visually presented. Instead of using the boring default native Windows titlebar + icons, I've hidden it and replaced it with a fully functional CSS based titlebar (which, yes, is still draggable across your screen). It'll also attempt to center the game's content within the window (or, of course, on your screen as a whole if you're in fullscreen). There's also a fullscreen toggle next tp the maximuze button, so you no longer need to have super magic 5G radio wave shadow wizard knowledge to put the game in fullscreen COUGHF11COUGH. I've also added a dropdown selector on the left edge of the titlebar that allows you to pick what border artwork displays around/behind the game content, or just disable it if you don't like it. This build is still currently locked out of online features though since captcha doesn't really like Electron. The custom buttons and titlebar background were made in Photoshop.

This build isn't gonna be released until the next version of the game is done, but I just felt like sharing it here. I'm proud of what I came up with.

I should probably preface this by saying I never did play through KCD1 properly (only got through the prologue and didn't play much after that) and watched a video recapping that game's story before I got started on playing KCD2. The first game just didn't quite grab me at first, but that was back when I was a little less patient with games that demand so much patience out of the player. The sequel seemed interesting when it came out earlier this year, and I felt like it would have been right up my alley now that I've gotten much more interested in hardcore RPGs and such, but I was busy with other games at the time. But just recently I've picked up KCD2 on sale, and just finished the main story with 90.2 hours logged on Steam. So what do I think of it? I think my playtime on Steam should speak for itself; I fucking loved it. Easy GOTY contender for me this year.

I'll leave my thoughts on the story brief and simple to avoid spoilers; I thought the story was deeply interesting almost all the way throughout. There are loads of plot twists and it's never afraid to take risks. It's a very slow burn, but very much worth seeing all the way through. I didn't do a ton of sidequests, but the vast majority of the ones I did do were very interesting and had varying quest and dialogue outcomes.

Besides the story being fucking awesome, the actual game itself was truly something else, though definitely not for everybody. It clicked with me real almost instantly though. It takes a lot of time to learn how the combat system works, especially if you're anything like me and didn't play KCD1 beforehand. I would say this is the closest thing you can get to a flatscreen non-VR game where it feels like you're learning how to engage in swordplay. It's not an entirely polished system though, as it very easily falls apart in tight indoor spaces where if you're just slightly behind a piece of geometry it just... won't allow you to even attempt to land a hit, yet the enemy can. That can lead to some really annoying, fucking bullshit moments for sure, but besides that, I really like the swordplay here. I only ever used swords though, so I can't comment on how other weapon types (especially polearms) handle. Bows kinda handle like shit, and it's not because I wasn't going for a long-range oriented character build. The aim just feels really off to me in general.

And also, much like what little I played of KCD1, you do effectively start the game off as a complete nobody level 0 fuckass peasant once you get past the prologue. I spent a huge chunk of the game constantly barefoot because the only shoes I had kept breaking, NPCs hated me, and bandits would two-shot me. And with how the game's save system works, it really makes you weight your decisions and think about what you're doing, especially in the earlygame. It's brutal, and I loved every minute of it. It is an extremely immersive game that makes you "live" in it. You need to eat, bathe, and sleep. The game even demands that you take your appearance into account, as NPCs will react differently to whether or not you're covered in blood or dirt, or what kind of clothing and armor you're wearing. They'll even be able to notice you easier if you smell like shit.

Speaking of stealth, I also really quite enjoyed the whole theft system in place here. Unlike Skyrim and other such Bethesda titles, NPCs will actually pin the blame on you to the guards if they notice something is missing from their property and you were recently witnessed in the area. I actually had a moment one time where I loitered inside an armor shop until 1AM. The shopkeeper was still present, so I threw a rock next to him so I could sneak upstairs and pillage his entire residency. Left the store presumably undetected, waited outside of an inn because I forgot they aren't open to take reservations at 4 in the morning (go figure), slept at the inn when they did finally open, left the inn, and was greeted by a guard who recieved reports that an armor store was robbed. I was not able to talk my way out of this one, so I paid a simple fine and had my stolen goods confiscated. If this was a Bethesda game, I this would not have happened and would have gotten away with it just based on the fact that nobody "saw" take anything. NPCs will also notice if you're wearing a piece of their equipment that you stole. It's a seriously fucking brilliant system.

Visually, the game is fantastic and runs unreasonably well, using an RTX 4070 Ti/i9-12900k/32GB DDR4 and reaching 70-80fps on high settings + DLAA at 3440x1440. And not a SINGLE stutter during regular gameplay? This and DOOM: The Dark Ages are prime fucking examples of how a frametime graph should look. It puts UE5 to shame, more devs really should consider using Cry Engine. The game's also got really, super realistic terrain formations and the forests look insane. One of the coolest feelings I had playing KCD2 was seeing a big ass wall of trees, which many devs would just use as an excuse for a map or out of bounds border, and just being able to go through and be met with... well, a forest. It sounds stupid the way I describe it but it just feels awesome. Terrain elevation looks and feels super realistic too.

It's pretty evident that I love this game, but what don't I like about it? I mentioned it already, but the combat falling apart in tight spaces and the bow handling were pretty annoying bits of jank. But also, as someone who really loves the architecture of cathedrals and such, it was really, really disappointing that NONE of the chapels in this game have interiors. You can't go inside a single one of them. And apparently, it's just because Warhorse didn't have time to model interiors for all of them (and there are quite a few of them), and they didn't want to do a sloppy job at them so they just decided not to include them at all. I'm just gonna pin the blame on Deep Silver (their publisher) for this one though. Actually, there are a lot of buildings in this game that seem like they would be pretty cool to enter, but have no modeled interiors. Huge disappointment there, but it's also worth keeping in mind that Warhorse isn't a triple-A dev studio either. Not a huge team, and Kuttenberg is already a pretty big city with lots of buildings as it is. So I'm willing to cut them some slack here. I also feel like the game gets a little easy after a while, and Savior Schnapps (the consumable item that allows you to run a manual save) become too plentiful. There's also a couple pretty annoying quests towards the end of the story. And thankfully, that's about all I got to say here.

So yeah, good ass game. It's a solid 9/10 for me and I will likely be giving KCD1 a proper playthrough sometime, though probably not anytime soon. KCD2 is long and I just wanna focus into heretic and Hexen for now until the Metal Gear Solid 3 remake comes out... unless it sucks, of course. In which case I'll move onto Death Stranding until Silent Hill f releases next month.

It appears we've already begun working on the next major feature for TardQuest. It's been in discussion for a while, but we're finally working on adding the Cocksucking Gay Vampire into the game. Below are examples of artwork and a unique music track I've made for him.

But webmaster, what does he DO?

He works similarly to Persona 3-5's Reaper. If you spend too much time on a floor, a ridiculously high level enemy will spawn and chase you down. Obviously, this would not be a winnable fight in the earlygame. This is to prevent you from grinding for too long on one floor, forcing you to descend onto the next floor and fight stronger enemies.

As for the track itself, I had a little too much fun making that one. It draws heavy inspiration from Earthbound's Pokey Means Business in the sense that the intro is rather basic and rudimentary, then suddenly you're hit with something that spirals into absolute chaos.

Aaaand that's about all I got for this blog entry. Farewell, and don't fucking die :)

TardQuest 1.16.0 has finally been released as the main stable build! This release has been in development for a long time (AT LEAST over a month) compared to previous updates, and the sheer magnitude of the changelog reflects that. Absolute nightmare to type up, you can go see for yourself on the page hosted here. To summarize things, the UI has been massively overhauled, all new artwork has been created for enemies, and you can play the game in its entirety using either a mouse or any Xinput or Dinput gamepad, with Dinput support just being optimized for the Dualsense controller. We'll probably add input mapping support and such later though. Also loads of new music has been added, as I've already shared in a previous blog entry.

Here, have some found footage of me playing the game using a PlayStation Classic controller.

Ignore the fact that the control mappings are wrong in the video above. If you have any reading comprehension, you would know why this is the case. In other news, I'll include a mockup to conclude this blog entry. I will elaborate no further.

Many thanks to my team for helping make this game as awesome and fucking retarded as it is :)

Nothing much to post here, just wanna share the new bits of music I've been making for TardQuest. Gotta say, these have been a significant improvement over the old tracks. These will be featured in the upcoming 1.16 build of the game.

These new tracks are quite starkly different from the old ones though, so you'll also be able to pick what battle or exploration tracks are able to be played in-game via the settings menu.

The Cumdown (battle4)

SURPRISE COCKFIGHT! (battle5)

Mucal Parasite (explore4)

Into the Tardspire REDUX (explore5)

Welcome to Slobmart! (merchant theme)

Since James Rolfe had recently uploaded a video regarding his love for classic sci-fi films, that got me thinking I should probably start getting some good old atomic age films off my backlog... I am notoriously bad at watching movies I say I'll eventually watch. The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) happens to have already been one of my favorites in the sci-fi genre. Them! is another one I like a lot, as silly as it is. So why the fuck not, right? I need more of this in my life. Ended up watching Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and The Blob back to back. Here's my general thoughts on these movies that I had somehow not watched previously. Note that this list is also in watch order.

Earth vs the Flying Saucers (1956)

I kinda see this one more as a fairly typical alien invasion film. Fun enough to watch, it just doesn't exactly hold up as something too special either. It does do something somewhat unique by giving the aliens severe physical impairments to their sight and hearing senses, which is alleviated by wearing this big ass helmet. It's a neat enough film, I enjoyed it.

Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)

This one, I certainly liked a lot more than the previous movie. There's a lot of really cool underwater shots that hold up well today, and the monster costume still looks quite nice. It's not very scary today, but it does have some rather frightening ideas. Like, there's a whole ass world under the ocean we hardly know anything about. There could very well be some killer humanoid fish dude in a remote lake somewhere out there on our planet. If you think about it, it's no different from the mindset of "space is huge, there must be intelligent life out there." The only difference is that it's right here, on our planet.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

I felt like this movie was a lot more interesting and thought provoking in its ideas, it may be my favorite one on the list here. It brings up the age old question of "would you rather be human and feel pain, or lack a human soul and be content." It also very clearly reflects the hysteria that was going on in the US at the time, except instead of communists, it's alien pod plants replacing every human on earth with exact soulless clones. Lots of good camera shots and effects here as well, and the film closes off with an appropriately bleak grey area ending.

The Blob (1958)

Similarly to Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Blob was also relevant to the en masse hysteria relating to the spread of communism in 1950s North America (as depicted by an ever expanding blob of mysterious red goop from outer space), though this message is represented a little more vaguely here. This movie is actually a little harder to take seriously right off the bat just because of the name alone... "The Blob." The effects aged rather poorly, but it absolutely does have a certain charm to it, and I just love the 50s setting here... which obviously is a given, considering this came out in the late 50s. But it's still a cool as fuck time period regardless, aesthetically speaking.

Now that I've gotten to spend more time playing the BF6 beta, I've been able to formulate more thoughts about the game as a whole. This ain't it, DICE is still having an identity crisis. This feels nothing like Battlefield, this is more like COD without the overwhelming autism. The maps are so small and the TTK is so low, there's no breathing room to do anything, no room to strategize, no room to fall back if shit is happening. This is literally just COD with cool destruction physics. Hard pass, I will most certainly not be playing any more of this.

On a more positive note, I've picked up the Nightdive remaster for Heretic/Hexen. Having a great time with Heretic so far (surprisingly I've never played these), I would even argue I like it more than Doom. KCD2 is still my primary focus for the time being though.

So it's been a while since I've been even remotely interested in a new Battlefield entry. Not since like, BF1 back in 2016. That game was good. BF6 actually looked like it was going to bring the series back around after how fucking dogshit V and especially 2042 were. So I figured I would actually try the open beta for 6 this time around. So I downloaded 36GB + a 6GB update later.

As it turns out, just to have a respectable amount of time to play the beta you need to suffer through some bullshit cunt's verified Twitch stream for 30 minutes to get "early access". To an open fucking beta? This is some bullshit, but fine, whatever. So I waited for this "Twitch drop" thing to unlock, and made it to 96%... then it goes back down to 0%. Well this is fucking bullshit. I waited another half hour and finally got the damn early access beta key. Then I click the notification and it brings up the EA code redemption page, and Twitch doesn't even let me copypaste the fucking code, so I enter it manually. Needless to say, I hate Twitch with a burning passion.

So was it all worth it? Was it worth downloading 42GB out of our limited allocation of data per month?

What in the cowafucking troglocunt is this bullfuckery? EA should have no problems hosting servers, being that they're one of the richest goddamn corpo cunts in the games industry. Whatever, I shelved the game for the time being and went back to playing Kingdom Come Deliverance II instead. Came back about an hour or two later and the queueing finally calmed down, so I did get to play a couple matches before I went to bed.

Game's alright. The maps that have been presented to us so far are a bit small for Battlefield if you ask me. Nothing like BF1 for sure. So far I think the guns feel good to use and movement is snappy. Graphics are nice and it doesn't run like ass on my specs (RTX 4070 Ti, i9-12900k, 32GB DDR4), though I have heard there is a potential memory leak issue at the moment. Can't confirm since I haven't played for long. The destructive elements look pretty nice.

Overall, I'm not super convinced so far and I would absolutely not pay full price for BF6, but I will keep playing the beta while the servers are still running. The main takeaway here is that Twitch is a fucking garbage platform.

Today marks the day that my blog page has come to fruition upon the wretched netscape. I will occaisionally just post about whatever bullshit I feel like, maybe some game reviews here and there. Maybe some TardQuest related stuff too.

Speaking of TardQuest, we have a massive update that should be ready soon. Most notably, we've massively overhauled the UI and are also making it so you can control the entire game using only a mouse or touchscreen. We've also included much improved and more detailed enemy artwork, as we felt it didn't match the art direction we've recently gone with the game. There will be a lot more details in the changelog when we drop the update. I will share a some mockups and screenshots below. You may click to open them in a new tab.

You can get a glimpse of one of the new bits of enemy artwork up there, but I'll let the rest be a surprise.