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BEATEN: Dies Irae ~Amantes amentes~ - ayep, it's one of them visual novels. This one's about a highschooler teaming up with a girl who is also the guillotine used in France to execute people during the revolution and fighting magical supernazis trying to bring Hell directly to Earth in a ritual conducted in his hometown. ... Yes, I know. It culminates with them fighting God himself. It's anime in its purest form. ....It was actually a ton of fun to read! The fights were clever, interesting conversations, the characters had their own charm, and the plot twists were engaging. It helped that the translation was very well done, too. As the first ten or so hours of it are free to read on Steam, I'd say give it a go if you want to read one of the best visual novels on steam - and there's no moe in it. Thank god. Everyone's a highschooler and generally looks it. Finally, regarding the whole time = money fallacy, this one's got a lot of bang for your buck. Reading the entire thing - all four routes, plus the bonus stories, took me sixty hours, and it was consistently a good time. (With good QoL stuff too - you can skip ahead to choices, the backlog works, etc etc.) And so, next up on my reading list VN-wise is the House in Fata Morgana or Tokyo Babel - these things are great for when I'm not up for handling actual gameplay. Just grab a drink, chill, and read.
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Jul 29, 2017 11:13
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Mr. Flunchy posted:NULLED: S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl Much like the original Deus Ex, you're not meant to have fun-with-guns a la every FPS out there, but find other ways to achieve things. Poor gun handling is solved in time. What is has going for it is it's an FPSRPG and therefore exceedingly rare at the time, and offers an immersive world. A lot of that has aged poorly, though.
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Jul 29, 2017 21:44
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Khablam posted:Much like the original Deus Ex, you're not meant to have fun-with-guns a la every FPS out there, but find other ways to achieve things. Poor gun handling is solved in time. I get that, and I dig the original Deus Ex. However even on 'Master' difficulty (which FAQs were recommending for new players because it makes gunfire more deadly for you and enemies) I was sneaking up on enemies and shooting them in the head point blank and they just turned and killed me. I really tried to enjoy it, but every second I spent with the game was depressing, ugly and unfun and I've only got so much free time.
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Jul 30, 2017 00:10
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Depending on what "fan-fix" mods you installed it may have altered with the balance of the game but STALKER's early game is rough until you get better weapons.
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Jul 30, 2017 01:32
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Mr. Flunchy posted:I get that, and I dig the original Deus Ex. However even on 'Master' difficulty (which FAQs were recommending for new players because it makes gunfire more deadly for you and enemies) I was sneaking up on enemies and shooting them in the head point blank and they just turned and killed me. Ya, I played STALKER with the same difficulty and it was annoying to deal with enemies. I always play games on the hardest difficulty but I wouldn't recommend it for Stalker. It completely ruins the game's atmosphere and design. The game is supposed to be a gritty survival in post nuclear radiation area. It is suppose to be a kill or be killed world. It makes no sense that a random bandit takes full clips of Ak47 to the head because the game is on a higher difficulty. IF they were gonna do that they should have given the bandits high level gear so it would make sense. Some games higher difficulty basically = more dmg more hp. 0 change in ai, enemy layout and small gameplay changes. One of my favorite higher difficulty changes was in Crisis 1. On the hardest difficulty the enemies would actually speak Korean which would not reveal what they are planning or if they figured out where you are. Also you there was no warning if they threw a grenade or flashbang at you. It was two very small changes but it did increase the difficulty very organically. Still think Stalker is a great game but Master difficulty ruins what is great about Stalker in almost every sense. I think the makers didn't have any idea what to change at higher levels so they took the easy way out of more hp + more dmg even though it makes no sense in the lore of the world.
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Jul 30, 2017 02:51
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Have not been feeling the videogame urge lately, but I did get some progress in. BEATEN: Geometry Wars 3 Dimensions Evolved. For the first time in my memory they stopped resetting your score multiplier every time you died. Now you're either running a strict survival mode or you're unleashing endless carnage in various kinds of stunt play. I'm calling it "beaten" because there's an "Adventure Mode" with challenges and boss fights and stuff and sure, I finished that but didn't unlock everything or max everything out, so I guess that's "Beaten". BEATEN: Strider (2014). I feel like I shuold have liked this more than I did, but I really didn't like this much. You start out with a slightly nerfed Crissaegrim from SotN, which is right and proper, and you can do basically continuous damage based on how fast you can button mash, which is also to the good, and the controls are all extremely smooth, which is a first for Strider games. But the enemies are all enormous damage sponges and exploration felt kind of half-hearted even when it was obviously carefully designed. If someone were incredibly nostalgic about all the old Strider games, this would at least have lots of nostalgia candy, but I, who merely played and mostly liked them, found myself instead saying "oh hey, it's that thing, from that earlier game, and now it's less janky. Hooray?" I'm not sure what I'd change; it's smooth and it mostly hangs together. But it had no impact. COMPLETED: Full Throttle Remastered. This was a replay, since I'd played it back when it came out. An old dormmate had the best summary. "This is not the best adventure game ever made, no matter how you measure it. But it is the most awesome adventure game ever made." That still holds up, and the remastered audio sounds really good. I did the replay in the first place for Cleaned Up Audio of Villainous Mark Hamill, but Maurice LeMarche (Nestor) stole the show for me. The commentary is hilarious but spoily as Hell, so don't turn it on if you're playing it blind. Also I must assume there were drinks being served as the commentary was recorded because they were both having more fun and making less sense than the previous commentaries I remember.
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Jul 30, 2017 07:56
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Streets of Rage 2 is the best beat em' up. fight me
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Jul 30, 2017 08:32
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Ulio posted:I think the makers didn't have any idea what to change at higher levels so they took the easy way out of more hp + more dmg even though it makes no sense in the lore of the world. But i think the point of Stalker's Master difficulty is that health remains the same but weapons are more deadly, so it's kinda like Deus Ex's Realistic mode.
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Jul 30, 2017 12:29
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Fargin Icehole posted:Streets of Rage 2 is the best beat em' up. fight me I don't think anyone's gonna really argue this. Though I will say the D&D beat-em-ups by Capcom are pretty dope too and for some reason they got a Steam release.
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Jul 30, 2017 15:47
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Mr. Flunchy posted:But i think the point of Stalker's Master difficulty is that health remains the same but weapons are more deadly, so it's kinda like Deus Ex's Realistic mode. The higher difficulty increases the base accuracy for everyone. I don't think anyone truly knows how the system works but the gist of it is that it does some behind the scenes calculation to determine how far off your shot veers from whatever your aiming so even if you're dead center there's still a chance your shot will pull wide. So yes, it's possible to miss point blank with a clear shot. The idea when fighting humans is to crouch, aim at center mass, and unload until they fall. Once you get a scoped weapon you can start making targeted shots but with early game equipment it's spray and pray.
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Jul 30, 2017 17:21
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I don't know what fan mods you added, but on vanilla I seem to recall the early game being about stealthing onto people and blasting them with a shotgun. Granted I haven't played it since 2009 or so.
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Jul 30, 2017 17:38
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al-azad posted:The higher difficulty increases the base accuracy for everyone. I don't think anyone truly knows how the system works but the gist of it is that it does some behind the scenes calculation to determine how far off your shot veers from whatever your aiming so even if you're dead center there's still a chance your shot will pull wide. So yes, it's possible to miss point blank with a clear shot. Alright that makes more sense. It is cool they put that sense of progression for the players aim but it doesn't feel natural in a videogame or real. I remember getting as far as where I had scoped weapons but never finished it.
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Jul 30, 2017 17:59
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Since I last posted, I was forced by Steam's disabling of "buy as inventory gift" to stop pretending and just add to my library all the games I stored in my inventory, plus all the bundle and Kickstarter keys I had, plus a load of new games from the Steam sale. End result - my backlog has grown by a little over a hundred new games. Oh well, at least I know precisely how bad the problem is now. COMPLETED: Geneforge I. A classic RPG. It holds up well today, and is very much worth playing. That said, the second half of the game has way too much dungeon crawling and way too little plot development. Still a great game though, if you can overlook the ancient graphics and slightly clunky interface. COMPLETED: Grim Legends I: The Forsaken Bride. A rather generic Hidden Object Game, it does have very nice art and decent voice acting. That said, its high production values are the only points in its favour, and the fairy tale aesthetic in HOGs is really beginning to rub me the wrong way. COMPLETED: INSIDE. A bleak arty platformer from the creators of LIMBO, this is what its predecessor should have been. The designers have gotten much better at guiding the player in the right direction; I never got lost the way I did in LIMBO. The ending sequence is absolutely fantastic, and must be seen to be believed. If you like platformers even a little, you need to play this. COMPLETED: Grim Legends II: Song of the Dark Swan. A fairy tale HOG like The Forsaken Bride, this one is noticeably superior to the first. The puzzle design is much better, and the plot didn't annoy me the way its predecessor did. It also maintains the high art and voice quality of the first. Decent enough, but there are better HOGs out there. PLAYED: Darwin's Demons. Space Invaders, but with enemies that adapt to your tactics. It sounds a lot better than it is. You see, you kill enemies to get cash to buy upgrades. The upgrades are split between ship and weapon unlocks, which are permanent, and combat boosts, which last only for the current game. The thing is, you need those combat boosts to survive more than a few waves, but buying them eats into your funds for permanent unlocks; thus, the whole game is just a long, slow grind. Maybe if I was in the mood for that sort of thing I'd have played it for longer, but I just couldn't be hosed putting up with that. COMPLETED: SLAMMED! I know I said I wouldn't buy anything from Choice of Games until they added an undo button, but CoG's stuff offers experiences you really can't get anywhere else. I'm glad I broke my word though, because SLAMMED! is truly excellent. I don't care about professional wrestling and know nothing about it, and I still loved the gently caress out of this. As a text adventure, there's little I can say about the game without spoilers, so let me just say that if you like text adventures, this is very much worth adding to the wishlist. COMPLETED: Age of Wonders I. A strategic RPG, similar to the Heroes of Might and Magic series. It was released in 1999, and it's kinda showing its age by now. The interface is clunky, and there are a few gameplay features that seem half-finished. It's still reasonably enjoyable, but there's a fair bit of jank you'll have to put up with. COMPLETED: Grim Legends III: The Dark City. Now this is what I like in a HOG. Unlike the first two, this is more urban fantasy instead of fairy tale; automatically winning it points from me. The puzzles are clever without being obtuse, the plot is above HOG-genre average, and the art is Artifex Mundi's best yet. One of the finest HOGs around. I'd recommend it even to people who don't usually play HOGs. COMPLETED: Omegaland. Someone described this as "like Eversion" and I was hammering the "Add to Cart" button within seconds; Eversion is one of my favourite games of all time. Well, despite the pixel art and plot twist, it isn't much like Eversion at all. It's got more of a sense of humour, for one. Still worth the $3 it costs, though. The middle section, after The Twist and before you buy the good upgrades does drag on a fair bit, but that fades as the game picks up the pace for the climax. My favourite joke in this is that editing admin privileges involves a guillotine. Omegaland gets a recommendation, but one with fine print.  Next up: I feel like reinstalling some old favourites: Civilization IV and the Freespace series.
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Jul 30, 2017 21:07
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Finally going back through my BackLoggery after some hiatus and playing a few games. Good news is I'm only up to 1500 games, and own a Vive with 100 or so VR games to play through now. 1739 games in my backlog before narrowing down the choices and fixing the ones I've already beaten.  I've always had such trouble with Stalker crashes and bugs that I ended up nulling it. It's probably a great game, but my desire to play it could never outdo the frustration of setting up a working install.
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Jul 30, 2017 23:41
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BEATEN: Mainlining - A game similar to Orwell with a little more typing involved, you "hack" (not really) into servers to download incriminating information and try to chase down a drug ring and hacker syndicate. It's a little veering too much on the silly side (the game has Phoenix Wright caliber names like Bud Blaze), but this was extremely my poo poo otherwise. BEATEN: The Bug Butcher - Pang with alien bugs. I have not tried Pang Adventures but I have a feeling Bug Butcher eats its lunch. It's a very solid arcade game. BEATEN: Dead Space 3 - It was fun but like the other two Dead Spaces, WAY TOO LONG!! A pleasant side effect of this is that the first third of the game actually does play just like the first two games with all the spookiness in space. A shorter game probably would've punted you right to the snow planet where it quickly just becomes an action title with alien zombies. BEATEN: Crysis 2 - Be an overpowered wild boy stealthing, shootin and hootin, as an unrelentingly bad narrative shouts at you the entire time. That Hargreaves character is so awful and the twist is so obvious.
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Jul 31, 2017 03:28
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BEATEN: Watch Dogs 2 - This I actually had a LOT of fun with. The likable characters and hatable antagonist helped but generally the gameplay was varied and interesting. The series could definitely use some kind of dichotomy between a nonlethal happy go lucky hacktivist crew and a lethal quasi/literal cyberterrorist group because while I did enjoy the characters greatly, it was a little bit strange to be able to slaughter dozens of people that the game actually tells you are generally okay and good people in order to pull off a publicity stunt. The nonlethal gameplay options were not fleshed out enough nor did they have any consequences so while they did have the option, it is far too easy to end up ignoring them. Either way, I hope they make more because I feel like they're getting closer to a truly winning formula with this one. BEATEN: Dishonored 2 - This wasn't radically different from DIshonored, which is fine because that was a good game. In kind of an inverse of Watch Dogs 2, I found the writing and atmosphere to be so miserable and dull (which it is by design) that I stopped paying attention, but the gameplay of course had the various options and well-made levels that the first game was great for. It was good, and while the first one seemed to give out all its value after 2 playthroughs, and I imagine this one is the same, I'm not going to be playing it again right away like I did the first one. What to play next is a good question. I am still getting through Ghost Recon: Wildlands but interestingly it makes my computer run so hot that it makes the computer room hot, so I'm keeping that one in my back pocket for cold days and the fall. This is okay, because in true Ubisoft open-world fashion, the game has too much poo poo to do, but the fact that all the buchons are unique means I won't be able to not do all the missions in the game. However, as my need for the side ops diminishes, I can do more main mission content. Either way, its a meaty game that I can beat over a long period of time and there's nothing wrong with that. Other options are one of these bazillion shorter indie games I pick up from bundles, finishing my Ottomans mega-conquest run in Europa Universalis IV that has about 100 years to go, playing Mafia III which is the third AAA game (along with the two I beat above) I purchased from the summer sale, Rise of the Tomb Raider or maybe giving Dark Souls another go.
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Aug 2, 2017 07:49
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Nulled: Dark Messiah of Might & Magic I love watching those videos of orcs being kicked over cliffs and bridges, or tricked to run on icy surfaces only to fall and being an easy kill, so I finally decided to give this a go. It lasted through the first mission and then I couldn't stand it anymore. It Might have been fun to play back in the day, but the Magic is gone now. Finished: Enigmatis 3: The Shadow of Karkhala Pretty decent HOG and last entry in the Enigmatis series. Only limited HO scenes, and none of them revisited was a let-down. A lot of hidden collectibles and no indication if you had found them at the different locations also didn't jive with me. Nulled: The Flame in the Flood Beautiful game, excellent soundtrack, awesome atmosphere. Too bad the gameplay and concept is not interesting at all. A procedural generated apocalyptic world where you have to survive by crafting, fighting and inventory management. It has a Don't Starve vibe to it, it you like that kind of game. Finished: Picross Touch There is a whole lot of Picross levels here + an editor and integrated Steam Workshop for an almost endless stream of extra levels. I enjoyed the game, and even though there are a few rough edges, it's being constantly updated with bugfixes and new features. Oh and it's free. Nulled: Remember Me I had really looked forward to this, but it turned out to an awful brawler with terrible storytelling and cutscenes, usually reserved for Japanese games, but amazing graphics and scenery.
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Aug 6, 2017 11:16
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Hey Presto, you casual game playing grandpa, have you played the Danse Macabre series, Eventide A Slavic Fable, or Hidden Folks? You're probably the only person who has played these. Also have you heard of Gorogoa? It looks sweet.
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Aug 6, 2017 14:16
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al-azad posted:Hey Presto, you casual game playing grandpa, have you played the Danse Macabre series, Eventide A Slavic Fable, or Hidden Folks? You're probably the only person who has played these. Also have you heard of Gorogoa? It looks sweet. The two Eventide HOGs are good HOGs in that the production values are on par wwith recent Artifex Mundi games. I'm not familiar with the Slavic tales they are based upon but I enjoyed both games. I just checked Hidden Folks (it's been in my library for a few months), and it's really, really good. This is 100% pure Hidden Object and is basically a black/white Where's Waldo, where you have huge scenes and need to spot both hidden and in-the-open persons and objects. You get a hint at where the different objects are by clicking on them, and you don't have to find everything to progress to the next scene. It's definitely my kind of HOG, as I always enjoy the HO scenes more than the mini-puzzles. Gorogoa looks really nice, and it went straight to the wishlist. On that note, I also Finished: Amaranthine Voyage: The Tree of Life. A HOG with a couple of years on its back, which shows by the few missing quality of life features missing, like no integration of achievements in Steam, a map showing active quests but no fast travel, and extremely laughable FMV characters, inserted into the game. Other than that, the puzzles were easy and there were a lot of HO scenes. Not bad at all.
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Aug 6, 2017 17:24
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Playing - Wasted : 25 hours in and Im only halfway through the 2nd of 5 dungeons. The RNG is good and the game is fun. I can see myself playing this for a while or until completion. Playing - Path of Exile: After beating the base game years ago with a Mage character at level 37, I now have a 33 Archer and am only on act 3/10 since they just updated the game. Im a total sucker for ARPGS and this one is great.
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Aug 7, 2017 19:09
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Fart of Presto posted:Finished: Picross Touch Just give me a god drat 3D Picross, that was/is one of my favorite 3DS games.
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Aug 8, 2017 20:36
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BEATEN: Pharaoh Rebirth+ - Not that great, unfortunately. Looks nice, but has bizarre performance issues, and isn't super fun to play. Has an AWFUL "mine cart" style level that goes on forever. BEATEN: Headlander - Alright now we're talking. Here's a solid Metroidvania, not spectacular, just decent, as you would expect from Double Fine, whose entire catalog could be described as Decent. Main issue I had was repetition in design, variety is lacking in enemy design. But there's also something to be said about strength in simplicity. BEATEN: Dust an Elysian Tail - Yes the furry metroidvania. Combat is alright but gets old eventually (you basically have the same combos through the whole game). BEATEN: Unbox: Newbie's Journey - 3D Platformer that has really fun traversal (you essentially have a sextuple-jump) and large open worlds, but lame oft-repeated mission design. BEATEN: Interfectorem - Short visual novel fairy tale murder thing. Pretty immature writing because it was made by literal kids for Girls Make Games. Mostly got it to support the initiative. BEATEN: Monochroma - Dollar Store INSIDE(tm) basically. It doesn't look terrible or anything, it's just very much like Inside but not as good in all criteria. BEATEN: Pang Adventures - Well! I stand corrected! This was better than the Bug Butcher despite its generic look. Turns out it's not actually by DotEmu but Pastagames (Pix the Cat), so I should've known it would be good and a worthy successor in the series. BEATEN: Yooka-Laylee - Played this before and after this past week's update. Didn't notice a TON different but the new manual camera IS WAY BETTER. This is actually the first Rare 3D platformer I've played to completion, which doesn't make it better than Banjo Kazooie by a longshot, but I think just the fact that it runs at a smooth 30 (instead of the awful N64 framerate of their past games), and the worlds are nice and big and surprisingly NOT sparse like I feared they would be, and the amenities they've added to speed up dialogue and skip cutscenes has made it a pretty enjoyable experience. It still has plenty of issues that put it far below a 3D Mario game, like for example, Pagie mission design is very inconsistent, sometimes fun sometimes a chore sometimes so simple as to be insulting. And control issues remain, especially rolling around, and trying to jump mid-air in the mine cart missions.
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Aug 14, 2017 03:22
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Quest For Glory II posted:BEATEN: Dust an Elysian Tail - Yes the furry metroidvania. Combat is alright but gets old eventually (you basically have the same combos through the whole game). But the work on everything, which means among other things that you can use your airthrow to bodyslam helicopter gunships out of the sky. It's even a one-hit kill! NULL: Wings of Vi. Don't get me wrong, I love me some challenge platformers, but as an attempt to move from I Wanna Be The Boshy to something that's more Super Meat Boy scales, this isn't quite it. Working through this felt less like "work out and execute a tricky sequence, with controls tight and fluid enough that it's clearly my fault when things go wrong" and more like "keep trying the same thing dozens of times until the stars align enough to make it all come together." This is at least partially subjective; I spent 6 hours and 600 deaths getting to the fourth boss on Normal, where I then brickwalled for 125 deaths worth of play—then I started over on Easy mode and got back to that same boss in 45 minutes and maybe 20 deaths, and I defeated her on my first attempt. I'm not convinced already having seen the maps helped that much, but maybe it did, because my deathrate shot way up afterwards. I've hit the "thousand deaths" point, and managed every achievement that at least 10% of players got except for one ("Beat Terravine", which on my playthrough would be the sixth boss—there's some flexibility in boss order, which I do appreciate), I've decided I've seen what this game has to say and it's off the backlog. The best thing I can say about it is that it's the first platformer I've seen where difficulty settings manifest in part by making some platforms crumble or not depending on setting, but that's a very good thing: that's a trick I haven't seen before.
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Aug 14, 2017 11:02
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Nulled: Black Viper: Sophia's Fate Nope, this is just a very bad HOG. Pixel hunting for scenery that you can interact with. Bad UI, both with regards to the zoom gimmick in HO scenes and the storytelling/dialog. Nulled: Death Road to Canada I can't remember why I supported this on Kickstarter (goon made?), but it's just not my thing. The game feels polished enough. The devs are really active and keep fixing bugs and adding stuff. I don't mind the pixel graphics. The writing and humor is fine and even fun. It just didn't click. Finished: Hidden Folks An excellent Hidden Object game, where you explore small and huge areas, trying to find objects through clues given, that describes their whereabouts. Lots of fun little easter eggs to be found, though I never did find Waldo. Finished: Portal of Evil: Stolen Runes A lovely HOG. Here is a longer review I'm currently having a blast playing Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Wildlands in coop with Kragger, so I though I'd play the two other Clancy games that would trigger some dress-up doll equipment in Wildlands. Nulled: Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Future Soldier This is very close to the single player version of Wildlands, in that you are a part of a squad, can mark targets for take downs, use sensors to detect enemies etc. At first I had plenty of fun: It's a corridor shooter where you go from point A to B, shoot some men, then got from point B to C, shoot some men and repeat. But unfortunately your squad buddies sometimes get stuck and if you have gotten to a rendezvous point, and activated it, you are stuck there as well, and can't go back to save your friend Supafly Johnson. So you are waiting for a squad mate, and the squad mate is stuck. Instead of the game detecting that and teleporting the squad mate, your only choice is to restart the mission/from the latest checkpoint. That sure as poo poo gets old really fast. Nulled: Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Blacklist I only played an hour, but that was enough. While this might be a fun stealth game, I might have expected something else, and it didn't work for me. There was also something off with the proportions of how much screen space my character used, that I didn't like - just like the Dead Space games. I'm guessing it's because the game is designed to played as a couch game on a big TV? And the support characters were insufferable: Semi-hot analyst lady and lots of tension, and clearly something had happened earlier between my guy and her. Overly creepy nerdy guy, that almost orgasms every time he gets to do something techy that involves death. The "new guy" that clearly gets killed/betrays the heroes later in the game (didn't get that far), and then you can call your teenage daughter when flying around in a souped up Hercules all over the world. Nope...
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Aug 15, 2017 01:04
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Beaten: Dead Rising 2. Got this out of a Humble Bundle a few weeks ago, which was great because it meant that a lot of other people were getting it and I got to play some coop in an otherwise long-dead (ha) game. This game was almost perfect. That isn't to say it's one of the best games, or even that maybe it's a really good game. But it was solid; one can observe all parts of this game and imagine that nothing had to be cut, there wasn't anything so ambitious they couldn't pull it off. It's an all around great package, no bugs (that I encountered), good graphics, never a slowdown for anything, controls were standard (I played with mouse and keyboard), and the multiplayer stuff was remarkably simple and effective. I could never get into the online gameshow, though...I couldn't tell if it was a bug or just that there was never enough people playing for it to work. But it would tell me "Game found, waiting for players..." but it would never move beyond that point. Anyway, this is a really great game, and scratches a really weird, quirky, niche itch of mine. The idea of running out into danger and rescuing people and then bringing them back is something I've always loved. I don't know why. Games like Skies of Arcadia where you can go out and recruit people for your ship, or Pirates! in that same vein, or Pillars of Eternity wherein you build up your keep. I love that poo poo. And being able to transform weapons into new weapons was a fun thing, even if they were most effective at just loving around with zombies. I guess my one complaint about this game is that the level cap is 50. I beat the level at 48 (you can restart the game and keep your character level; I did this at level 15, about a quarter through the main game's storyline) and don't plan on going any farther with it, but I can see people wanting to dive back in and gently caress around in this mall or whatever it is. The Humble Bundle also came with Dead Rising 2: Off the Record. What is this? It's not a DLC, so it's a new game? vvvv There's not a lot of people playing, since it's seven years later and sequels have come, but there are still some. I was able to join one or two briefly, and twice had someone join mine. I had played DR1 when it was new and quit pretty early because it was so hard and the time limits removed any fun. I found that by resetting at level 15, I was allowed plenty of time to run around, save people, defeat bosses, kill zombies and complete the game without any real sense of urgency but for one part near the end that I managed to do just in the nick of time. Starting at level 15, I feel like the time limit made the game more exciting, rather than a constant distracting anxiety trigger. One feature I rather like is that you can keep playing even if you've failed the main game. And also, other events still happen as they're intended to. The only difference is you don't get the ending thing. So, at level 15 when I decided to restart the game, I hosed around for as long as I wanted until I was ready to play again. It's unfortunate that the game doesn't have everything open right from the start, because I think a good approach to a Dead Rising game would be by first allowing you to play in this sandbox and gently caress around until you're ready to begin playing, and then you can start over with your current level. But as it is now, much of the mall is unlocked, some weapons aren't available... credburn fucked around with this message at 12:18 on Aug 15, 2017 |
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Aug 15, 2017 09:46
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I found the time limits in Dead Rising 2 detracted from my enjoyment. I wanted more time to gently caress around in the mall and not have to rush from place to place. Often I found I couldn't even stop to kill the hordes, I just had to try and rush through them as fast as possible to beat the clock. Also some of the bossfights are pure bullshit. I also had issues with follower pathing. Some times they'd just get stuck and swarmed by the horde, but maybe that's been fixed in a later patch. It's been a while since I played it. DR2 came out in 2010 so there's probably not a whole lot of people playing online any more, especially since it's had two sequels since then. Off the record is a standalone game, which basically puts the protagonist from Dead Rising 1 in the game instead.
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Aug 15, 2017 10:16
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Collateral Damage posted:I found the time limits in Dead Rising 2 detracted from my enjoyment. I wanted more time to gently caress around in the mall and not have to rush from place to place. Often I found I couldn't even stop to kill the hordes, I just had to try and rush through them as fast as possible to beat the clock. This sums up my experience. I can't stand being forced to progress when the mechanics encourage me to goof off and explore.
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Aug 15, 2017 19:44
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InevitableCheese posted:This sums up my experience. I can't stand being forced to progress when the mechanics encourage me to goof off and explore. There is some elusive middle ground somewhere that would make the ideal game for me. The idea of constantly being out of time, of having to desperately take chances, of foregoing one thing for the more important thing, of making sacrifices and seeing the consequences of not having done enough, or done things differently, or done things too slowly -- all that sounds like one of the greatest gaming experiences. In practice though, every one of those things feels awful.
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Aug 16, 2017 07:34
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Beat - Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment: Another great DLC to a great game. Specter Knight controls very well and was super fun to play as.
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Aug 20, 2017 03:42
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credburn posted:There is some elusive middle ground somewhere that would make the ideal game for me. The idea of constantly being out of time, of having to desperately take chances, of foregoing one thing for the more important thing, of making sacrifices and seeing the consequences of not having done enough, or done things differently, or done things too slowly -- all that sounds like one of the greatest gaming experiences. In practice though, every one of those things feels awful. But one of the later updates to the game broke that trainer and I never found an updated one since the game was pretty much dead on the hacking scene by then.
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Aug 20, 2017 05:03
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BEATEN: Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice Ludicrously good looking action adventure with a fantastic design sensibility and some of the best audio design I've ever heard. Hellblade is something I want to see more of: a mid price, relatively short and focused experience that tells a tale without DLC, sequel hooks, crowbarred in multiplayer or microtransactions. Ninja Theory has always been threatening to make atruly great game but have always fallen short (Enslaved was the closest they got imo), until now. Hellblade is actually a fairly simple and easy game that's sometimes just a couple of notches above walking simulator (it actually reminded me of Ryse quite a bit, albeit done right), but it transcends that by offering an outstanding audio/visual package - everything from the psychotic break simulating visual distortions to the excellent binaural audio throughout and a great script (though the characters sure do say 'darkness' a lot). Also, if there were an award for digital mocapped performance in a game, then Senua actor Melina Juegens really deserves it, she's jawdroppingly great.  Buuuuuuut. About 90% of the way through the game I got hit by a save ruining bug. I ran past a flame I was supposed to light my torch with, and the game autosaved when I was in a room where I needed a torch to progress and it wouldn't spawn my character with one. As the game only has one save file there was no way back or forward. I waited a week for a patch, but that didn't fix it. After whinging on the internet, Ninja Theory themselves got in touch with me and asked me to email them my save file. Apparently, my save is being used to make a new patch that'll fix the issue I had.  But I'm out of town for while from tonight so I just gritted my teeth and played through the whole drat game again. It's a pretty short game if you know where you're going, but that's still five hours out of my life. I still loved the game, but the bug has tainted the experience a bit (I also felt the ending was a bit underwhelming). It's probably the prettiest game I've played in a while though - and it's got an amazing photo mode. BEATEN: Titanfall 2  A bit underwhelmed by this. The single player mode has been praised to high heaven, but I think it's polished but deeply derivative. The game absolutely nails FPS movement and acrobatics, and it's great fun to wallrun around the obstacle course levels and murder dudes like some high-tech space ninja, but the Titan sections feel clunky and a bit loose for my liking. There are a couple of interesting flourishes in level design and I dug the level where they build a house around you. There's also a level where you shift between past and future to fight and solve puzzles, which would have been amazing if I hadn't just seen the concept executed better in Dishonored 2. What's left feels pretty bog-standard, with a complete nobody hero and a cliched buddy-cop relationship with a robot. On top of that, while the graphics aren't exactly bad the character models look very last-gen. Feels pretty inessential. Didn't touch the multiplayer btw. BEATEN: The Walking Dead: Season 2  I never hear a good thing said about Season 2, so I wasn't exactly hyped up for it. Three episodes in I was sure that this was a classic case of nerd nitpicking, it was easily as intense and gripping as the amazing Season 1. But then it all fell apart in the final two episodes and I realised why it's got such a bad rep. The characters start constantly getting into arguments for no obvious reason - bickering at each annoyingly and ignoring you when you tell them to act like adults. By the fourth time this has happened you're ready to throw up your hands and abandon them to the zombies. Also, as in the worst Telltale games, the choice mechanics are painfully exposed. Go out of your way to save someone from the zombies and you can guarantee their role in the story is done even if they survive now - with the 'saved' character generally dying 20 minutes later and there's nothing you can do about it. It all culminates in a seriously stupid (and badly written) finale full of painfully artificial conflict that ended with me getting the 'worst' ending and ditching the other characters and heading into wilderness alone. I think Clem is better off by herself than surrounded by these jerks tbh. BEATEN: 2000:1 A Space Felony  Neat pint sized detective game that came with the Humble Monthly and parodies 2001: A Space Odyssey. You play a detective tasked with visiting a Jupiter bound spaceship and investigating the deaths of the crew. The first part of the game is collecting evidence in and around the ship, then you confront the AI and try to find logical inconsistencies in his story. It's not very well optimised and some of the humour doesn't land, but it's about an hour long, the flat shaded graphics are pretty stylish and it's just a really interesting experience (particularly if you're a Kubrick fan). If you got the July Humble Monthly, I recommend checking it out. BEATEN: X-Men Children of the Atom  Continuing to work through a load of 2D fighters with my new arcade stick. Although this feels a little rough compared to the later "vs" fighters and only has ten characters (with some weird choices like Spiral) it's still a lot of fun. In fact, the relative simplicity made it possible for my six-year-old nephew to enjoy playing me while I was babysitting him - he had a great time leaping about as Wolverine and Psylocke. The single player is 'yer bog standard arcade mode that culminates in a seriously unfair boss fight against Magneto in which he uses impossible to dodge attacks and frequently becomes invulnerable. I only managed to beat him by playing extremely defensively and running the clock out on the fights. Cleared it with a couple of characters and called it a night. Great game, especially as it was Capcom's first go at a Marvel fighter. NULLED: Galactic Civilizations I: Ultimate Edition  Dated and borderline incomprehensible 4X space conquest game. Doesn't have any kind of tutorial so I tried my best (on the easiest possible difficulty) and just couldn't work out what the hell I was supposed to be doing or how anything worked. Put an hour or two into it and gave up. I probably could watch a YouTube tutorial, but from what I saw it didn't feel like it was worth the time. Necrothatcher fucked around with this message at 13:29 on Aug 22, 2017 |
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Aug 22, 2017 13:22
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Mr. Flunchy posted:Buuuuuuut. About 90% of the way through the game I got hit by a save ruining bug. I ran past a flame I was supposed to light my torch with, and the game autosaved when I was in a room where I needed a torch to progress and it wouldn't spawn my character with one. As the game only has one save file there was no way back or forward. I waited a week for a patch, but that didn't fix it. After whinging on the internet, Ninja Theory themselves got in touch with me and asked me to email them my save file. Apparently, my save is being used to make a new patch that'll fix the issue I had. Whoa this is really cool!
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Aug 22, 2017 21:57
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SolidSnakesBandana posted:Whoa this is really cool! I know right? I've been moaning about games online for years and this is the first time I ever got an email from one of the game's creators offering to fix it personally. They even tried to patch my specific save file and email it back to me, but that didn't work out. Pretty drat good customer service from Ninja Theory.
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Aug 22, 2017 23:34
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How do folks apply backloggeries statuses for Steam games, especially those with achievements? This is how I would apply the statuses as I'm considering trying to tackle my backlog. Unplayed - self explanatory. Unfinished - self explanatory. Beaten - end credits have rolled Completed - done all game modes, ran through NG+, etc, but haven't gotten all the cheevos Master - unlocked all achievements Nulled - can't be beaten (multiplayer, no end state) or retired because it's not to taste, game breaking bugs, or other reasons why one would put the game down with no intention of coming back.
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Aug 24, 2017 18:47
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I've kept mine fairly simple. Complete - I've rolled the end credits on Steam, or on another platform. Incomplete - I've never seen the end credits in any version of the game. Endless - MMOs, Survival Games, Multiplayer Games, Etc Nulled - Didn't like it, Didn't run properly, Etc. And that's it. I don't care much about achievements, so I've condensed things down about as far as I think I can.
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Aug 24, 2017 19:21
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Thanks, did you set up those categories in backloggery, or in steam? I did something similar in steam some time ago. Not sure I really need much of a backlog tracker as I have only 100ish games in my library and maybe 40 of them I've never touched. It might be just as easy for me to use a random number generator to pick something new.
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Aug 24, 2017 20:23
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I set them up in Steam and have mostly stopped using Backloggery. Unless you want to keep more meticulous details, I find my four Steam categories to be easier. If you want to keep track of your completions, give little ratings, track DLC, etc, I'd recommend Backloggery. And if I really can't decide what to play, I'll use the Random Steam Game Picker website to help decided. You can check that out here: https://servc.eu/rsg/
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Aug 24, 2017 23:52
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BEATEN: The Witcher 3: Blood & Wine I've putting off playing Blood & Wine as I don't really want to live in a world where there's no new Witcher 3 to play. But I gave my housemate the game on PS4 for Christmas and he'd finally gotten to it so I felt obliged to get through it before I was spoiled. As I felt after playing the main game and Hearts of Stone, CDPR just leave pretty much every other developer in the dust. Not only is Blood & Wine exceptionally well written and full of rounded characters whose stories I actually care about, not only does it look and sound stunning in every way, but the open world feels meticulously designed in a way that other devs never come close to achieving. Everything feels bespoke and carefully considered - from the smallest sidequest right down to whatever's lying in the back alleys of the cities. And there's so many memorable moments just in this game, with the obvious highlight being the ridiculously detailed fairytale world-in-a-book you travel to late in the game. Beauclair itself is a technicolour dream after the muddy misery of Velen, but then you go to an even more fabulous Wonderland that's filled to the rafters with actually funny gags and imaginative flourishes. How can I hate a game where my grizzled monster slayer ended up losing a fight to the three little pigs (bit embarrassing that one). And, despite all the effort that's gone into that location, it's an optional branch of the main adventure (apparently the other branch is similarly amazing). I felt a genuine sense of loss when the credits finally rolled. I've been playing Witcher 3 since May 2015 for 240 hours according to the ingame clock and now that the game is finally exhausted of mainline story content it's going to be drat tricky to find anything that can replace it. To extend the goodbye a bit I'm doing a little stroll down memory lane of the game, riding from south to north Velen, checking off those Skellige isles I skipped and maybe finishing up some of those contracts I half finished. Then it's goodbye for good. Possibly the best game I've played in like, thirty years of videogames. BEATEN: The Vanishing of Ethan Carter: Redux  Visually dazzling but somehow incomplete feeling walking sim. It's got great atmosphere and a smattering of neat moments but it never quite came together satisfyingly for me. For one, the game proudly opens with the message that it's not going to hold your hand. That's admirable, but I'd have liked a teeny bit of guidance on what you're supposed to be doing - not knowing left me wandering through half the game leaving most of the puzzles incomplete (I didn't even realise they were puzzles at first) and then having to backtrack across most of the game map to end the game (this appears to be a common complaint). Also, while it's always nice to see a vaguely literary narrative it's just felt a bit twee. And while the game world is stunning, it's also pretty much entirely static, kind of like a pre-rendered environment in real time. Still, it's short enough. BEATEN: Sonic Spinball  Sonic Spinball is a bit of a gaming white whale for me. As a Sonic mad kid I got it for Christmas in 1993 - having been desperate for something new after finishing Sonic 1 & 2 50 times each. Even back then I knew this wasn't great - the animation was off, the graphics were kind of gross and Sonic just didn't look like Sonic. I perservered as best I could, but never managed to get past the second level before dying. Eventually I moved on (Sonic 3 was released 2 months later). But now, with a nudge from Steam Randomiser, I can finally see what I'm missing - via cheating like a bastard with save states. The answer is... not much. The game is an absolute teeth gritting bastard even with save states - requiring you to flip Sonic through pinpoint holes on the tables and always ready to send you plunging to a rapid, unavoidable death. Even if you don't die, misjudge a flip and you plummet to the bottom of a table. Mistime your attack on the final boss and it's plausible you can fall so far down it'll take another 10+ minutes of frustrating pinball wizardry to get him back up there - and then you might have to do it all again! Finally seeing the credits was satisfying though, even if I cheated. I guess in some ways impressive given that the game was developed in only 61 days to meet a Sonic-less holiday season, and the soundtrack is pretty fun. But I'm honestly glad I never ever have to play it again. BEATEN: Shelter  Indie badger-em-up in which you play a mother badger who has to guide her babies through the forest to shelter. It's got a... unique graphic style that I had a love/hate relationship with. Feels a bit janky to control and is pretty drat repetitive. Managed to get all my badger babies to the final level which concludes with an unwinnable sequence where you're stalked by an eagle until you die. The message is a circle of life kind of thing as it's feeding its babies. The game is basically alright as a small scale experiment, but the ending felt a bit  NULLED: Revenge of the Titans  Kind of a fast paced cross between a tower defence and an RTS. I actually enjoyed it quite a bit, but boy does it get tough fast. I kept running out of money and not being able to get the upgrades I needed, and ending up in an unwinnable death spiral. Did that a couple of times and put about 5 hours into the game before accepting that I'll probably never finish it. Wish it was a bit more forgiving because watching your turrents blast invaders is pretty satisfying. NULLED: Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds Saga  It's Age of Empires 2 reskinned as Star Wars and released back in 2001. I'd only played a teeny bit of AoE 2 and this seems like a competent enough reworking of it. Buuuuuut, frankly it's a little too finicky to play for my tastes. I got annoyed by the constant micromanagement of commanding my workers to harvest resources and you can only select so many units at once so moving a large army is annoying. Plus I'm generally not a huge fan of RTS games so it didn't do much for me. Finished the first campaign and got halfway through the second before giving up as I wasn't having fun. Nice that it's gotten a recent patch for higher-res displays though.
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Aug 25, 2017 11:36
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Mr. Flunchy posted:NULLED: Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds Saga Man, me and a dude used to 56k the poo poo out of that. I so fondly recall as I destroyed his base as the Gungans, him baffled that I was winning by effectively throwing balls. As for me... Beaten: DOOM the new one. Well, this is about as solid a game as there can be. I swear though, there wasn't a loving Berzerk or Quad-Damage I didn't loving waste. Every single time, I would either find the invincibility/damage boost/berzerk thing just after all the monsters were dead, or I would get one and then spend thirty seconds running around unable to find anything to kill despite only a moment ago being swarmed by Hell Barons.
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Aug 26, 2017 18:38
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Beat - Deus Ex Go: the Go series of games by Square Enix are really great mobile games. Quick to pick up and play for short periods of time, and they have a decent challenge to them. I enjoyed this one as much as the rest.
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Aug 28, 2017 04:12
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