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dhamster posted:Null: Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War + Expansions - Played a bit of vanilla, had a pretty lukewarm experience. I'm probably not going to end up playing these. If you ever feel like picking it up again I'd actually start with Dark Crusade. It's the zenith of the series and lets you play as any race you want. My favorite's Imperial Guard. But it's a meta-map RTS like Dune 2000 so if RTS in general isn't your thing then go ahead and skip it.
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May 7, 2017 02:47
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Beat - The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: The internet has a lot more to say about this game than I do. I enjoyed it, flaws and all. I might try to collect more stuff after the DLC comes out and beckons me back into the game.
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May 7, 2017 05:03
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vermin posted:If you ever feel like picking it up again I'd actually start with Dark Crusade. It's the zenith of the series and lets you play as any race you want. My favorite's Imperial Guard. But it's a meta-map RTS like Dune 2000 so if RTS in general isn't your thing then go ahead and skip it. Maybe I will check it out. I was a little confused where to start with that series anyway, so that's helpful.. thanks.
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May 7, 2017 06:03
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dhamster posted:Beat: Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor - Really nice production values. World seems a little small for a sandbox, but there's lots of stuff to play around with and some very flashy animations. You can snipe with a bow, stealth with a dagger or brawl with a sword, and switch between it all pretty smoothly. Some game mechanics are more gimmicky than useful, and sometimes the flashy animations can be a hindrance: sneaking by orcs is usually easy and stealth kills aren't hard to pull off, but sometimes it's hard to avoid being spotted by orcs during a kill, and there's nothing you can do but watch them call for help while you're waiting for the stealth kill animation to finish. The Nemesis system is really cool, but it stops being as interesting once you are able to dominate orcs, since it doesn't take long to flip most of the captains on the map to your side.. Your power level starts off pretty low: stealth is effective throughout, but it's not easy to kill big groups of orcs. By the end, however, enemies put up hardly any fight at all. The story was alright, it was certainly more interesting than a lot of other LOTR games I've played (which isn't saying much), and the chracters were largely more than just carbon copies of Fellowship members. There wasn't a ton of collectible content for an open world game, which I actually didn't mind--it motivated me to find all the artifacts and stuff around the map, though I was a little let down that there wasn't any kind of reward. Anyway, it was an enjoyable game. I heard the DLCs are poo poo though, so I decided to skip them. You're breaking my heart. Then again this is like lining up every Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Shin Megami Tensei, and Tales game up and burning out after the first one.
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May 7, 2017 13:37
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BEATEN: Assassin's Creed: Syndicate & DLC I have now played every single one of the main series (including Liberation and Rogue) and Syndicate was possibly the best of the lot. I really appreciate the way they've tried to strip out a lot of the poo poo that bogs down the rest of the series. There's a tonne of quality of life improvements here, but probably the best are that any tailing missions are mercifully rare and it feels like there's less arbitrary mission desync conditions than before. Moving around the city is fun and easy, fighting is a bit easy but the animations are satisfying and the set piece assassination missions are all very well thought through. The undisputed highlight for me though were the Dreadful Crimes detective missions, where for once the game slackens the leash and lets the player work stuff out for themselves without being led through a mission by the nose. You essentially play Sherlock, using your eagle vision to piece together a crime scene, track suspects and evaluate evidence. Generally you have to triangulate means, motive and opportunity, while eliminating the red herrings along the way. For example, you can have a crime where a crapload of evidence points towards a women drugging the victim and robbing him, but despite her seeming incredibly suspicious, she wouldn't have had the strength to hurl him from the roof of the train. It's that great kind of design that makes you feel smart when you get it right. It's all much better written than the main game too. I guess I also liked it because I live within the in-game map and, though it's only really accurate in the West End and around major landmarks, it's still fun to sit on the approximate position of where my house is now, and get to climb up landmarks I cycle past on the way to work each day. Even right now from where I'm sitting at work I can see the place where, in-game, Charles Darwin tasked me with ridding St James Park of hallucinogenic flowers. Only real downside is that familiar old Assassin's Creed problem of being completely unable to tell a satisfying story. Jacob and Evie are in the top tier of AC protagonists, but the main bad guy is so thoroughly disconnected from them and has really vague plans that there's not really a drive to kill him. There's good moments in the story, but think about it a little and it all falls apart. Plus the modern day stuff is completely unintelligible. DLC wise, The Last Maharajah is skippable filler, and the Jack the Ripper missions are alright, but jamming Assassin's Creed silliness into real life serial killings felt a bit tasteless. BEATEN: Gunstar Heroes  Tossed up by my randomizer. I'd played it before back in the day, but I'd forgotten just how much creativity and imagination goes into the game. Every single level has some wild twist or surreal new element: whether it's a side-scrolling space mission, heading through a mineshaft, or playing an ingame boardgame. I love experimenting with the different weapon combos and I particularly like the decision that touching the enemies doesn't hurt you, and you can toss them about the screen. Gets really hard towards the end though and even with infinite lives the checkpoints are so unforgiving I had to save state my way through the last bosses. BEATEN: Syberia  Loved the design, weird atmosphere and writing, hated the time it took to get anywhere. Unravelling the mystery of Hans Voralberg really is interesting, and the really original clockwork faux Eastern Europe setting is quite striking in a dowdy sort of way. Most of the puzzles seem to rely on sensible logic too, and though I did have to look up a couple of things in a walkthrough (mainly finding out that I'd missed clicking on a tiny background element) the game does hang together pretty well. There is one giant convoluted puzzle in which you're trying to get $100 where I was just wishing Kate could go to an ATM and withdraw it instead researching wine, fixing a clockwork violinist and so on, but hey-o that's the genre. The only really awful thing in the game is that it takes forever to do anything. You can't skip screens, so a huge portion of the game is spent watching Kate running across pre-rendered maps. Also, the animation engine can't deal with stairs well, so when she reaches one she the character has to painstaking align with them and start a slow canned climb. You'd think if the game had this much trouble with stairs they might avoid them buuuut nope, there's stairs loving everywhere. BEATEN: INSIDE  Loved every second of it. It's not the most ambitious bit of game design, but what it does it does perfectly. It's a real masterclass in scene-setting, visual storytelling and gameplay informing the atmosphere. The graphics are beautiful, with fantastic use of muted color and lighting, mixed in with one of the best implemented procedural animations systems I've ever seen in a game. The puzzles are precisely as hard as they need to be, not exactly slowing you down but still giving you a sense of achievement. Even though it's a brief game (took me three hours to get through) images from this game are going to lodge in my memory far more vividly than say, the 50 hours I put into Fallout 4. And that ending!  If you have it play INSIDE asap.NULLED: Dysan the Shapeshifter  Tossed up by a cruel randomiser, this game has a rare outright 'negative' Steam rating and reeks of cheap, badly coded trash. Fortunately for me, the game absolutely shat the bed at rendering this, leaving the game as a psychedelic nightmare. I fiddled with the settings a bit, but couldn't be arsed to fix it so nulled it. NULLED: Space Hack  Another cheapo disaster. Personality free ARPG that, despite having N64 level graphics, judders and creaks along. Is badly translated (I'm guessing from Russian) and just feels awful to play. Killed a bunch of aliens and decided my time was better spent doing literally anything else.
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May 10, 2017 16:02
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Beat: Invisible, Inc. - Played this twice, first on Beginner (Decker/Internationale/Fusion/Lockpick) then Experienced (Banks/Internationale/Fusion/Parasite). Both playthroughs felt a little easy... I only had to use the Rewind feature a few times. The time-limited takedowns (and the subsequent alerts they cause) are the biggest source of difficulty, but with some creative use of pinning you can keep multiple guards incapacitated for a long time. I wasn't crazy about how new agents/programs were unlocked. After the first game I unlocked two new agents, then another six(!!) after my second game. Because of RNG in detention centers 3/4 of my full team was the same both times. Still, I really liked the game. I wasn't sure how a turn-based stealth game would work, but they really found a way to make it it interesting and engrossing, albeit a bit... light? Anyway, great game. Highly recommend.
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May 12, 2017 00:35
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hi it's been a while but i was on a trip and i did just play two very long games. and. and. and here they are BEATEN: The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild - Pretty good Zelda, 8 out of 10. to be fair i give most Zeldas an 8 out of 10. I have more complex thoughts about this game but I don't think I can articulate them in just one short capsule burst. BEATEN: The Legend of Heroes Trails of Cold Steel 1 - As enjoyable as it is infuriating. While Trails in the Sky balanced its slow pacing with an uptempo game engine (you move really fast for example), Trails of Cold Steel has a more traditional PS2-esque game feel but with the same sluggish pacing as Sky, and this mix is not pleasant at times, especially when combined with the Vita's bad and WAY TOO FREQUENT load times. finally, a not long game BEATEN: Slime-San - Finally, a challenging platformer that does not succumb to "rage game" difficulty curve or level design!!!! It's also a very cute game and I love the town you can just hang out in when you're not playing levels.
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May 13, 2017 04:20
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Quest For Glory II posted:BEATEN: The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild - Pretty good Zelda, 8 out of 10. to be fair i give most Zeldas an 8 out of 10. I have more complex thoughts about this game but I don't think I can articulate them in just one short capsule burst. Beat: Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Maybe you can't articulate your thoughts on this in brief, and I know I can't, but I'm gonna voice them anyway. I've got a sort of approach to long-running franchises that, until recently, I thought was fairly commonplace. Basically, as long as they've got that central core of whatever it is I want from them, I'm on board and anything else is just a bonus. As long as Civilization continues to let me build an empire from the stones up I'm happy. I expect my Final Fantasy games to be modestly number-crunchy and a healthy amount of batshit insane. As long as Pokemon keeps being a simple turn-based RPG with a lot to play with under the hood, I'm good. And naturally, if they mess with that, I'm not happy; Fallout 4 made choices that totally ruined the self-directed narrative that Bethesda games are known for, and I soured on it immediately for that. Breath of the Wild has probably the best open world in gaming, and it uses it well. But for me that just didn't overcome the fact that it's not a good Zelda game. The dungeons are few, small and weak, the bosses range from 'boring and unfun' to 'frustrating and unfun', your arsenal of gadgets to deal with puzzles and enemies never grows, said puzzles are almost all really limp and halfhearted, actually looking for secrets for the most part isn't hard nor is it enjoyable (the photo-matching being the exception, that was loving brilliant)... basically, if I had a checklist of things I wanted in a Zelda game, all of the things listed would either not be fulfilled or were done poorly. It's a shame, because it is genuinely a good game otherwise and really wants to be a love letter to the series as a whole. It just failed to actually honor them in gameplay the way it did with namedrops and visual references. Oh, also I was very vaguely offended by how they did Zelda's character arc, but I can't really stand by that stance in the same way as everything else because I don't really have a good response to 'well, what did you expect'.
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May 21, 2017 06:20
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Counterpoint: It's not a love letter to the series as a whole, it's a love letter to the two originals. Link to the Past established the formula every other game in the series used but the NES games had few puzzles, a ton of combat, items that primarily helped you navigate, and even with dungeons/palaces the challenge of the games is navigation and endurance. The prototype is brilliant and also shows where their mindset was. I don't think "modern Zelda" could exist as an open world 3D game, it's too deliberately designed, but BotW is like everyone's mental image of playing LoZ back in '86.
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May 21, 2017 18:39
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My biggest gripe with the game was the lack of diversity in enemies / bosses. Other than that, I thought it a very enjoyable experience.
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May 21, 2017 18:42
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your take on it isn't quite the same as mine but i will say that, some of the tangible reward for exploration that existed in past zelda titles isn't quite as sated in BOTW because of the shrines. there being so many shrines is great but it very much is an inorganic sort of thing. in LTTP it was fun to bomb a wall, find a two-floor mini-dungeon and get a heart container. maybe that stuff is BOTW but all i saw were little caches that had treasure chests that would have maybe a weapon that was on par or worse than what i had. i would rather the heart/stamina boosts be hard to find and just out there in the world than in this very rigidly structured "get 4 orbs from 4 shrines" loop. the other decisions the game made were good and fine but that design decision disappointed me a lot
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May 21, 2017 18:48
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The shrines are inorganic by design, but aside from the ones that are very obviously used as quick travel points the rest are placed in inorganic locations. Like the first time encountering a dragon was a particular "wow" moment and it was secluded in an area with no plot relevance. And all the shrine quests in general are very rewarding as the reward is finding them, not running through the shrine itself. But with all that said, the shrines being these deliberately constructed puzzles built on a set of rules means you can find ways to break the rules. I don't know what better way to reveal hearts/stamina but I'm glad it's through a currency because it lets the player pace themselves. Whenever someone complains about difficulty in Zelda the response is "don't grab the heart containers etc." but then you're deliberately missing out on content. The orbs mean you can set your pace for the game. e: Also I'd much rather be rewarded with a weapon for exploration than rupees. Rupee chests in Zelda games feel like coins in Mario, just a waste of time.
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May 21, 2017 19:17
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Hey there, Steam Anonymous, it's been awhile. BEATEN: DOOM. I found this very draining to play, but I now have the true measure of first-person violence. After nearly 20 hours of Ripping and Tearing, the prospect of slaughtering a thousand-odd dudes in Borderlands or even the Saint's Row games feels... inadequate. There's also some very thoughtful game design here, and while I was never entirely sure how much of it was intentional the player's relationship with Doomguy's actions was far more clever than I was expecting it to be. So, what was I doing when I wasn't beating demons to death with their own faces? COMPLETED: The Fool's Errand. COMPLETED: At the Carnival. COMPLETED: 3 in Three. IN PROGRESS: System's Twilight. Formerly-commercial Classic Mac puzzle games, that's what, with an emphasis on wordplay and logic puzzles. They've still got a bit of charm, but if you've got Professor Layton games on your backlog, I think those are more worthwhile. These are definitely their own thing, though, and I mean no disrespect to them. But At the Carnival in particular was really obviously a half-hearted book of traditional puzzles set to mouse and pixel. And that's fun, but I'm going to need a new A-Game now that DOOM is finished. I'll probably move away from my Steam backlog over to my old consoles and handhelds for a bit. NEW GAME: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. I never did actually use my Wii Motion Plus for anything, and I'd make a crack about being hilariously late to the party but my last two Zelda games in this thread were Link's Awakening and Zelda II.
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May 22, 2017 08:23
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Quest For Glory II posted:your take on it isn't quite the same as mine but i will say that, some of the tangible reward for exploration that existed in past zelda titles isn't quite as sated in BOTW because of the shrines. there being so many shrines is great but it very much is an inorganic sort of thing. in LTTP it was fun to bomb a wall, find a two-floor mini-dungeon and get a heart container. maybe that stuff is BOTW but all i saw were little caches that had treasure chests that would have maybe a weapon that was on par or worse than what i had. i would rather the heart/stamina boosts be hard to find and just out there in the world than in this very rigidly structured "get 4 orbs from 4 shrines" loop. I didn't really have any tremendous issues with the shrines come to mind at the time, although I did get bored of them. But I think you're definitely right in noting that they standardized something that absolutely shouldn't have been standardized. In other Zelda games, especially overhead but also in the 3Ds, there were a ton of secret areas hidden in ways you learned to catch, that could hide any number of things. But then in BOTW they're all in identical obvious structures that you have a radar to find anyway, it stops becoming a 'reward for exploration' and starts being a 'reward for being there'. The entire game feels unnecessarily standardized, in fact. Weapons began to feel really samey because they didn't really differentiate what the enemies actually wielded; puzzles started to blend together because they're based on the same four or five tools you've had all game; the many pieces of equipment you get seem nice but outside of situational defenses you have no reason to deviate from a standard*; exploring a new region always felt like it had a very rigid structure; all the shrines, dungeons and major enemies share the exact same aesthetic; the dungeons themselves all have basically the same central puzzle. After the first quarter or so it just felt like the game had played all the cards in its hand, because everything was so standardized they didn't have anything left to show me. *And honestly this would've been fine if it weren't for the fact the 'standard' kit will inevitably be the Champion's Tunic and whatever hat and pants has the best defense value for you, rather than what you actually want to wear. I really wanted to spend the entire game in the Gerudo outfit, but that's just blatantly non-viable and it sucks.
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May 22, 2017 11:52
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Playing: Football Manager 2017. I finished my tournament based on footballers' city of birth, now I'm doing a 64-team tournament where each team is the best of each countries' league. Played more: FTL. I'll never stop coming back to this, it's so good and possibly the only game I've ever been good at. Beat: Dishonored 2. Really enjoyed this, though some of the levels were a bit of a pain to get round. Loved feeling like a ninja when everything went well, which wasn't often because I'm rubbish. I'll likely return to it for a high-chaos Emily run. Beat: The Magic Circle. It was a lot of fun! Messing about with the creatures and objects in game was a lot of fun and a flying rock that breathes fire beat the boss for me. Can't help but think there should have been more of that and a little less story-heavy stuff at the end but the writer clearly had a point to make, which I like in a game. Goddamn, was the fangirl character annoying, though. Playing: Kerbal Space Program. I've been reading a lot about actual spaceflight lately so I've abandoned my ancient save and started a new one on the newest patch with mods that add stuff like food and oxygen, signal delays, needing a signal for probes and such. I've downloaded a ton of parts and a new, bigger tech tree so I'm allowing myself to go way beyond the constraints of the mission to gather lots of science, otherwise I'd never get anywhere. Playing: Tekken 2. Did it for the nostalgia and screenshots for my collection but I'm shocked to find that this is still so, so much fun.
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May 22, 2017 12:34
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Walton Simons posted:Playing: Tekken 2. Did it for the nostalgia and screenshots for my collection but I'm shocked to find that this is still so, so much fun. This is for PS3, right? Do they have any plans of releasing the titles before Tekken 7 on PC?
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May 22, 2017 15:10
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AbstractNapper posted:This is for PS3, right? No clue, but they can't release arguably the best classic title, Tekken 3, because of the presence of Gon.
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May 22, 2017 15:45
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Been a while since I posted, but here's a random string of things I've beaten recently(ish): Super Mega Baseball (played a whole season) ~ 15 hrs Neon Chrome ~10 hrs Ziggurat ~6 hrs Turing Test ~5 hrs Deep Dungeons of Doom ~6 hrs Ziggurat was fun, but largely disappointing. I was hoping it felt more 'magicky' but seemed more like a shooter in the end. I don't know what I was expecting, honestly. Neon Chrome was good, and I got some lucky breaks to finish it when I did. Sometimes it's a bit too heavy on the RNG, but a quality rogue-lite IMO. Turing Test was a great experience, and would definitely recommend. Deep Dungeons of Doom was fairly bland. I don't regret playing it, but I wouldn't regret NOT playing it either. Super Mega Baseball was actually good fun. I don't enjoy watching or playing baseball normally, but I felt like it was accurate, yet accessible. Apparently it can become a very detailed sim when you crank the difficulty settings up, but I played on what the game called 'medium', and spent most of my time crushing the AI(which is the way I enjoy sports games). Up next: Starpoint Gemini 2 maybe, finish Renowned Explorers, and dive deeper into Hard West.
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May 23, 2017 06:48
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AbstractNapper posted:This is for PS3, right? It's a PSX title, I'm playing it with ePSXe. Shadow225 posted:No clue, but they can't release arguably the best classic title, Tekken 3, because of the presence of Gon. I had no idea he was a thing outside Tekken. This is like when I found out Jay Sherman in the Simpsons had his own show.
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May 23, 2017 13:26
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Yeah, he's from a manga iirc. Tekken 3 isn't even up on PSN where Tekken and Tekken 2 are. I'll post some updates of my own on the backlog. I'm still an idiot and buying things faster than I can play them, unfortunately. I'm trying to value myself as a quasi collector, so I jump on sales and such. Walton Simons posted:It's a PSX title, I'm playing it with ePSXe.
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May 23, 2017 15:04
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Nulled: Apothecarium: The Renaissance of Evil I can't remember when, if ever, I have quit a HOG outside of technical issues, but this one sucked donkey balls. Really annoying mini games, no sense of where you had to go, pixel hunting for objects to use in a puzzle several screens later. If I want that poo poo, I'll play a classic point-and-click adventure where the story is actually worth following. Finished: Ghost Files: The Face of Guilt Much better. One of the latest Artifex Mundi HOGs, which is really polished in every way. Batshit insane story, bad voice over but a nice couple of hours tuning out and chilling, while clicking on objects that are hidden. Finished: Japanese Women - Animated Jigsaws A pretty OK jigsaw game with the gimmick being that the puzzle is a looping animation. The movement of pieces is not as tight as the Pixel Puzzle Ultimate game and there are no help functions whatsoever except for separating edge and regular pieces, but the largest puzzle sizes, 350 pieces are still pretty easy to solve. The only gripe I really have, is that the subject animations are really awkward looking. You would think it would be possible to either make clips or pick some publick domain scenes where the actor/woman in the scene could look a bit more natural, and it really started to annoy me way more than it should for a casual puzzle game. Finished: klocki Fun little casual puzzler. Only takes about an hour to finish if you are used to doing the kind of puzzles usually found in Hidden Object games, like sliding blocks, switch blocks to create a pipeline etc. Very nice graphics and ambient sound. Finished: LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 I've never been a big fan of Harry Potter. I read the first book because a coworker kept insisting. I saw the movies but had forgotten who most of the people were between each one, so most of it made no sense. I absolutely loved this game, which is still one of the old ones that don't use movie samples, has a huge hub world where there are plenty of "side quests", fun main story and a great way to handle the magic part/multiple skills. Already looking forward to playing the second part. Nulled: Ziggurat This just didn't click with me. Not sure if it's the arena match layout, the roguelike elements, the weakass weapons or whatever, but I just couldn't be bothered to level up to a reasonable level before uninstalling it.
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May 23, 2017 17:55
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BEATEN: Deus Ex: Mankind Divided What a crushingly disappointing game. It's disappointment that sneaks up on you too. I went into it with lowered expectations as it notoriously suddenly ends about 2/3 of the way through the plot with nothing much resolved (and it's never going to be resolved as the sequel was cancelled) but it fell short in areas I wasn't expecting it to. First the good. Whoever is in charge of environmental design at Eidos Montreal deserves a pay rise and a promotion. Picking up where Human Revolution left off, the game is crammed full of fascinating scenery and art. Prague looks futuristic in a believable way, obviously influenced by Blade Runner but with a contemporary digital sheen over everything. The amount of care that's gone into building cool places to walk through is seriously impressive, particularly the Palisade bank and the augmented ghetto. But then there's everything else. The gameplay doesn't really seem to have advanced one atom from Human Revolution. Though the game bills itself as having a choice between stealth and action, it's heavily weighted in favour of stealth. But even that's finicky. Guards are omniscient, so when one spots you they're all on your case immediately. It takes them so little time to go on full alert and so long to cool down that it encourages quicksaving and quickloading, which doesn't feel right. Plus there's technical glitches like being spotted under a desk because the model has a 1 pixel gap between two vertices. But even if you do decide to fight back you're limited. I couldn't see any fun heavy weapons in the game - just a boring selection of bog standard shotguns, rifles and pistols, none of which are particularly satisfying to use. The new augs don't add much either and seem mostly redundant. On top of that the game stays rooted to it's Prague map for most of the game, getting rid of the globetrotting fun of the previous games. Prague is a big, complex map - but they tease other locations that you never visit, which I guess were probably intended for the sequel. On top of that the dialogue is subpar, the ropey facial animation is distinctly last gen, the mantling system is unreliable, the lovely FtP Breach mode is boring and the game never really feels like its adapting to your actions in the way other DX games do. When I started I figured that a DX game couldn't be that bad, and that I could get round the fact that it's essentially half-finished. It's not a crushingly bad, unplayable game - just that there's a thousand tiny annoyances, flaws and problems that add up to a pretty bad experience over time. I can see why it didn't sell, and I probably won't bother with the DLC unless I see it deeply discounted. BEATEN: Sonic: Lost World  Chucked up from the randomiser. This is apparently a Wii U port that I think I got in the Humble Bundle Sonic collection. It's a weird departure for Sonic, obviously copying from the Mario Galaxy games. It also makes you hold down a button to get Sonic to run fast, which feels kinda wrong. Despite a couple of fun moments it's a pretty bad Sonic game, mainly because controlling him here simply isn't fun. At high speeds he's overly twitchy and his jump seems weird decelerated, so I was constantly falling short of gaps and dying. There's also a fair amount of jank where the lock on jump fails to work or collision detection sends you plummeting into the abyss. Also, the 2D levels feel like they were constructed in Mario Maker - often being just blocks suspended in mid-air above bottomless pits. There's also these sudden difficulty spikes that are so severe that Sonic Team put in a 'Wing' power-up that just skips the part of the level if you die so many times in a row. Throwing your hands up and admitting that bits of the game just aren't fun seems like a red flag for game design - though much of this feels like it was rushed out the door without a proper design polish applied. BEATEN: A Story About My Uncle  Ultra chilled out first person grappling hook fun. I knew the game was good when I found myself leaning forwards in my chair to try and get the last inch out of a jump and make a platform. FPS platforming is a tricky thing to get right, but the combo of a long-range grappling hook and later kickass rocket boots makes for a pretty drat fun package that doesn't outstay its welcome. The plot and acting are a little weird, but they're easy to forget about when you're swooping through the clouds acrobatically. I think it's in the dollar tier in a bundle at the moment and it's well worth the price. BEATEN: This War of Mine  Hardcore depress-em-up that gives you an insight into what it's like being a normal person scrabbling for existence in an urban warzone. It sounds kinda weird, but I think the game actually gives a pretty accurate depiction of life of Sarajevo during the siege. You quickly learn to fend for yourself and focus on keeping your basic needs met, together with dealing with boredom and depression. It's not exactly a fun game - though it is satisfying when you find a stash of food cans amidst the trash that'll ease you through the next few days. Played two campaigns, in my first everyone froze to death in winter because I didn't realise you had to add several firewood to the heater to keep things warm. In the second I managed to make it through to the ceasefire, though my characters did murder a lot of semi-innocent people to do so. It's tough going and grim as gently caress, but a really cool and unique game. BEATEN: Lara Croft GO  The last of the GO games I've played and probably the best. Has a gorgeous flat-shaded aesthetic and some seriously clever puzzle design. I actually thought it was a bit easy at first and blew through the main campaign in about a week. But the bonus missions, Cave of Fire and Mirror of Spirits, are loving fiendish and took me two months of on and off playing to make it through. I've enjoyed all the GO series, they're great value for money, and hope they're planning more soon. NULLED (for now): Rust  Rust is pretty objectively not fun. You get dropped naked and hairless into an online warzone crammed full of homophobes and racists who casually murder you just for fun. The environment is full of furious animals, you starve to death pretty quickly and there's invisible pockets of radiation everywhere. Despite this there's something weirdly compelling about it - like you're participating in some hosed up Darwinian social experiment. When you're not being murdered it's surreal to walk through this (quite pretty) landscape, full of rickety player built structures. Typical game story: I spotted a group of players running down a valley so hid in a bush and watched them bomb their way through an enemy base for no good reason other than they could. I sneaked in after they'd had their fill and found myself a load of supplies with which I managed to build a bone knife and, once I'd figured out how to, a furnace. I was just about to smelt some metal and make something a bit more high tech when a bear came out of nowhere and killed me. But that's Rust for you. It's still in Alpha after three years, but the devs promise it's going to be a finished game one day. I think I'll check back in every so often to see how it's doing. It's weirdly compelling. NULLED: Mordheim: City of the Damned  Essentially XCOM meets Warhammer. I don't know much about the setting, and this is a game crammed to the top with stats, percentages and weird status effects. I found it all but impenetrable until I read a bunch of beginners guides. Essentially your job is to wipe out the enemy while collecting glowing green stones. On my first attempt half my team were killed by my second go. Upon restarting the game I made it to the end of the first section, only to be brutally smashed into smithereens by a giant monster and an unfriendly RNG. I guess the main problem is that it's simply not very fun to play. The environments are bland, the combat lacks oomph and there doesn't seem to be much scope for tactics other than desperately hoping the RNG swings your way. On top of that the game is locked into Iron Man mode, so one false click and you can screw over your entire save game. Feels like a game for masochists. (man I wrote more than I meant to)
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May 26, 2017 12:55
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A Criminal Past you the best of the DLC bunch for the newest Deus Ex. The others are ok and fill in some small story details but could probably be skipped.
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May 26, 2017 16:00
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People like to poo poo on Rust, but I've always had a lot of fun with it on peaceful servers. I'm very much the "resource collector" type player, though.
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May 26, 2017 16:07
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Still in the throes as a new PS4 owner. BEATEN: Dishonored 2 It was fine. The story was a complete nonfactor since it gave you absolutely no surprises. You're betrayed by some super evil lady who kicks you out of your home, you kill a handful of her conspirators and then her, the end. There are only 9 chapters with 2-3 major areas each so it was also pretty short which I don't fault games for anymore. None of the sidequests were really interesting either, often just a fetch quest of some sort. I guess Dishonored 1 was similar, I found it really fun to play but very little of it was actually compelling to experience. There was a lot more bombast and clever tricks just with level design and presentation that I appreciated. COMPLETED: Horizon: Zero Dawn I was slightly spoiled first by Zelda. I thought I was getting way the hell over open world games, but Horizon is just so god drat fantastic. It stands next to Witcher 3 with excess amounts of care put into everything that puts so many other games to shame with their weaknesses. The story is doled out at a steady pace that keeps you going and wondering what could happen and the characters are all interesting and people I'm glad I was friends with. I was half wishing this was a Mass Effect sorta game because some of your friends are genuinely funny and caring and I wanted them to be my spouse and bone down. The writing for everything is pretty top notch, from all the bits of lore to almost every sidequest. This is also the first game I platinum'ed in well over 10-15 years because 1) it actually wasn't a tedious slog since you can do everything in one playthrough 2) even every collectible has lore attached to them 3) it's just god drat fun to play and run around murdering robot dinosaurs. The weakest part were the villains since they all just seemed like bit factors until the Big Bad Guy shows up, and, like most humans, they just don't live as long as robo-dinos. Also lots of fashion options which is one of my favorite parts in games. I loving loved this game. BEATEN: What Happened to Edith Finch I liked it. It's very similar to Gone Home, though it's even shorter. It's a lot more loose and escapist with its story-telling, and a few of them were really really surprising with how far they went. As soon as the 'gimmick' started getting a little old it was over. Nice piece of writing: sweet, funny, and morbid. DOUBLE CLICK HERE fucked around with this message at 15:15 on May 29, 2017 |
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May 29, 2017 15:12
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BEATEN: Assassin's Creed: Liberation - Aveline is the best AC protagonist other than Ezio but unfortunately she's stuck with a low budget game  BEATEN: Deus Ex: Mankind Divided - My opinion of MD is higher than the previous post on this page but, BUT, I did feel a malaise by the end of the game that made me not want to play a AAA game for a while. I think I hit my limit of stark bleak dystopia and need to just chill to some happy games. BEATEN: VA-LL HALL-A - Dorothy is the worst, the worst, the worst, the worst BEATEN: Ryse: Son of Rome - And I thought Final Fantasy 13 was linear!! BEATEN: Rolling Sun - Mediocre ball-rolling game. BEATEN: Game About a Dragon - Went in depth about this in the Steam thread already. BEATEN: Layers of Fear - It looks nice, it lets you pick up plenty of things, but that's about all it's got going for it. Reminds me of Master Reboot, a narrative that is just not very interesting. BEATEN: Super Galaxy Squadron EX Turbo - Decent shmup with some bullet avoidance (mostly by the bosses). BEATEN: Dead Effect - Janky trash FPS gently caress yeah. I'll play all the janky trash shooters. I'm literally gonna do Dead Effect 2 next. BEATEN: Kimmy - Pleasant but melancholy non-anime VN about babysitting a kid with a lovely home situation.
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Jun 1, 2017 05:10
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Wound down from DOOM by working through two action-puzzlers from Smudged Cat Games. I'm not sure how I even got them to begin with, but that's what makes backlogs so much fun! BEATEN: The Adventures of Shuggy. More action than puzzle. Giant web of levels that blob out to unlock the later ones from the start. COMPLETED: Gateways. More puzzle than action. Metroidvania setup but still pretty linear. These are competent and cute but uninspired and uninspiring. They also both really like the "cooperate with your past echoes" gimmick I got sick of back in Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom. Mixing them with laser puzzles, as Gateways does, is a primo dose of oh-god-go-gently caress-yourself. I needed to watch a walkthrough video for the final puzzle and then repeatedly study it just to work out the final piece of mechanics information I had lacked to solve it myself. And that was the patched, toned-down final puzzle. The first one was four minutes of setup and cloning and running around and argh. No thank you. The magic rope in Shuggy was pretty awesome though. It had some of the old Bionic Commando fun while not being the same mechanic and having a few fun extra tricks in it.
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Jun 1, 2017 09:15
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Beat: DOOM 2016 gently caress, I needed that, I haven't enjoyed a game that much since I cracked into FFVII for the first time last year. I didn't really grow up with Doom. I mean, I played it as a kid, but it was markedly before my time, the FPSes that stuck with me more were Duke Nukem 3D and Goldeneye (this is all when I was like, six or seven tops; them parenting skills, yo), so a lot of the nostalgic specifics kinda didn't hit for me. But once I realized where the game was kinda going, I got really into it, because I realized and loved one of its other inspirations. Those tons of little bites of lore hidden around, the upgrades, and the ways it hides secrets? This is a Metroid Prime game. And it's a good Metroid Prime game, too!
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Jun 4, 2017 08:55
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Beat: Mass Effect (the original) Never got around to beating these back in the day so I decided with all the Andromeda hype and anti-hype I should get around to it. I'm pretty sure most people here have played it already, but anyway: it was a solid sci-fi shooter/exploration/RPG game, a bit wonky at times because it's older but honestly that was part of the charm for me. All the poo poo that everyone told me I was going to hate (like driving the Mako around) I actually found pretty fun, and in general the missions and story improved a lot as the game went on. The game's climax and ending was fantastic. I'm currently making my way through Mass Effect 2 but ironically I'm having a tougher time with it because it's so streamlined and comes at you really fast, and I kind of liked the slower pace of the first game. I'm also playing Clicker Heroes which is an endless idle clicker but I've put enough time into it now that I feel I can pretty much mark it off the list. I started playing it because I've been busy with work lately and I wanted something casual to play between shifts and it turns out that once you get up to the higher levels of the game it gets pretty drat mathy and complex. Which is why I'm still playing it 
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Jun 4, 2017 14:46
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Pikestaff posted:Beat: Mass Effect (the original) The difference between the first two Mass Effects is huge, with 1 being an RPG with shooter elements while 2 (and the ones afterward) was a shooter with RPG elements. And I'm with you on preferring 1's speed and gameplay, it was doing something I really liked that nobody else really was. And sure, it was a bit of a shaky attempt, but when the only guy in the division is bad he still wins.
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Jun 5, 2017 06:38
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I remember playing through ME1 and then being blown away with how slick and polished ME2 was... though it was relatively new at the time. That scanning minigame though...
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Jun 5, 2017 06:51
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I hated how ME2 and ME3 dumbed things down and then to add insult to injury hosed with the lore of the game by including an excuse to add ammo and reloading to the games. Going from guns with unlimited ammo but overheated to ones that needed ammo felt like a step backwards.
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Jun 6, 2017 18:47
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Allegedly they were going to compromise with a system akin to the one used in the Ghostbusters game, where you build up heat and then have to manually vent it once in a while or suffer the consequences, but then dumped it. In exchange we got the worst ammo pickup system I've ever seen in a game.
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Jun 6, 2017 23:24
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Ammo with heat was cool, good, and lore-justified. Then 2 rolled around and was stupid and dumb. I was ESPECIALLY angry when Shep wakes up at the start and is like "Hey this gun doesn't have-" and I thought it was gonna be a comment about heatsinks, but she just magically knows the entire galaxy has switched to ammo clips while she's been loving dead. By the time 3 arrived it wasn't so bad because it was fast and snappy enough to be bearable, but 2 was mediocre as hell. I just finished replaying the series and I'm still baffled, utterly, by the popular insistence that it's the best of the Shep trilogy. I mean granted it does have Thane and Legion but. (Admittedly some of that might have been the fact 3 have the Particle Rifle and that one in Citadel that use ME1-style recharging)
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Jun 7, 2017 00:01
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Yeah, 3's gameplay improvements got hugely overshadowed by the noticeable downturn in the writing ( which was already going downhill in 2, but nobody cared at the time  ).
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Jun 7, 2017 01:10
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BEATEN: Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment. This was a lot more fun than Plague of Shadows as a game, and a lot more grim as a story. There's a ton more new content here, too; this is a far more [i[thorough[/i] expansion than Plague of Shadows. Overall, I think Shovel Knight's earned its spot as the best 80's platformer of the 21st century. COMPLETED: System's Twilight. 90's Mac puzzle game by Andrew Plotkin, who I know of because he went on to make a bunch of text games I liked. This is more a Fool's Errand/3 in Three homage/successor, and it does a really good job of being that. IN PROGRESS: Ace Attorney Dual Destinies continues, though there's been less of that as I played these. Now that I've got my Wii set up again I've also been looking at the Virtual Console games I never really got deep into, particularly Super Mario RPG and Paper Mario. I don't have any ideas what I want to play next on PC. I'm open to suggestions.
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Jun 12, 2017 08:11
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ManxomeBromide posted:Now that I've got my Wii set up again I've also been looking at the Virtual Console games I never really got deep into, particularly Super Mario RPG and Paper Mario. God I really, really love Super Mario RPG. I replayed it again a couple years back and still loved it, but I'm really not sure how much of that was because of nostalgia and how much of that was it actually being good. Either way it's still one of my favorites. It's just really charming and fun and so very old-school Squaresoft.
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Jun 12, 2017 10:36
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time for another batch BEATEN: Dead Effect 2 - As janky and trashy as the first BEATEN: Ghost 1.0 - C+ grade Metroidvania, an improvement from UnEpic BEATEN: Mini-Ghost - a small spinoff from Ghost 1.0, I liked it better, and it allows for custom Metroidvanias, looking forward to seeing what the community makes BEATEN: Song of the Deep - B grade Metroidvania under the sea, I enjoyed it quite a bit except for the tedious laser mirror puzzles BEATEN/ENDLESS: Bit Blaster XL - Asteroids-style score chase game BEATEN: Replica - Was looking forward to this one and very disappointing but its amateur writing and unironic usage of Anonymous/Guy Fawkes/redpill memes BEATEN: Rungunjumpgun - Fantastically tense and frustratingly fun two-button action game BEATEN: Jones on Fire - Nothing special to be honest BEATEN: DEADBOLT - Honestly, not as good as I was hoping it would be, in terms of the level design and routes. Just okay.
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Jun 14, 2017 19:23
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Mister Adequate posted:Ammo with heat was cool, good, and lore-justified. Then 2 rolled around and was stupid and dumb. I was ESPECIALLY angry when Shep wakes up at the start and is like "Hey this gun doesn't have-" and I thought it was gonna be a comment about heatsinks, but she just magically knows the entire galaxy has switched to ammo clips while she's been loving dead. Wait didn't 3 still call them heat sinks even though they worked just like clips of bullets? But yeah that whole justification for not calling them ammo even though they operated exactly the same was goddamn dumb.
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Jun 14, 2017 20:57
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Summore BEATEN: The Book of Unwritten Tales: Critter Chronicles - Another in the point & click series that is really unfunny. I decided to start saying Bazinga every time an unfunny reference happens in the game and that ended up being a lot of fun. BEATEN: The Turing Test - First-person puzzler that has some similarities to Q-beh, but with an actual narrative, although not necessarily the strongest. BEATEN: No Time to Explain (Remastered) - I have to give TinyBuild credit, this game always annoyed me in commercials (especially during GDQs) and it is a bit of a Newgrounds-quality game, but it was more fun than I was expecting and I did laugh a couple of times, specifically in the Games Are Art universe which made a couple of jokes that, having just played The Turing Test, really did it for me. BROKEN???: Platypus - Claymation shmup from over a decade ago, just flat out doesn't work on my PC (freezes at menu no matter what compatibility mode/settings) Trying to catch back up with my schedule. I'm adding games as I'm beating them, so right now I'm at 76.6% beaten of my Steam backlog, and will probably take a bit to get to 77%. UP NEXT: Mirror's Edge Catalyst, Unravel, The Saboteur, Gemini: Heroes Reborn, The 39 Steps
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Jun 18, 2017 08:14
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