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Wamdoodle posted:More like still drunk with the way it starts out in the bar. I also couldn't help but roll my eyes and chuckle at the Mobius agents in sunglasses at the bar Well he gets knocked out in the bar and wakes up in Mobius, so I'd imagine he's got one hell of a raging headache when he's up.
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Oct 20, 2017 14:34
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Bogart posted:Remake (since the wise man bets on the sure thing) or EW2 (because I want to get off Mr. Mikami's Wild Ride).
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Oct 20, 2017 15:42
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chitoryu12 posted:Well he gets knocked out in the bar and wakes up in Mobius, so I'd imagine he's got one hell of a raging headache when he's up. Fair enough
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Oct 20, 2017 16:44
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 SPOOKY G4MES: The Ghost Dimension 1. Stories Untold 2. Rusty Lake Hotel 3. Rusty Lake: Roots 4. Left in the Dark: No One on Board 5. Daily Chthonicle: Editor's Edition 6. Eleusis 7. Dead Effect 8. Dead Effect 2 9. State of Decay 10. Dead End Road 11. Goetia 12. EMPORIUM 13. F.E.A.R. 14. F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin 15. F.E.A.R. 3 16. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter 17. Bloody Streets 18. Layers of Fear 19. Dark Fall 2: Lights Out 20. Painkiller: Black Edition    It used to be that you didn’t need much of an excuse to go out and shoot monsters. Wolfenstein pitted you against Nazis (and we all know what to do with Nazis), Doom’s tale could fit on three splash screens, and even Quake left its story in the jewelcase manual. Painkiller doesn’t have much of an excuse itself but it tries really, really hard for some reason, and the result is a mostly mindless shooter with some unexpected depth. That’s not meant as an insult, either, because we’re talking about what might be the pinnacle of mindless shooting here. You play Daniel, a gravelly early-00s badass who pancakes his car into another before you even get his backstory. He ends up in limbo while his ladyfriend gets to roll on to heaven, and he’s offered a deal to join her by a pale, waxen mop of a man. All Daniel has to do is kill the four generals of hell and he gets a free ticket through the pearly gates. Of course, there’s more than a few demons between him and his targets, and it’s going to take a boatload of shotgun shells and wooden stakes to get the job done. And that’s not even accounting for the other twists added to the story between chapters. Don’t trouble yourself too much with the plot just yet, let’s go back to the shells and stakes. Painkiller plays out over almost 30 levels full of monsters eager to de-limb your torso, exotic locations like prisons and opera houses and ancient chapels floating in a serene void. This is limbo, after all, and it can look like sun-drenched Venice but with gimp zombies if it wants. All you have to do is get to the end of these levels, and that just means blasting your way through a few hundred rampaging hellcritters apiece. It’s an arena shooter at its core, where tripping a checkpoint seals that path behind you and starts spawning Serious Sam-ish waves of demon samurai and cannibal clowns to overrun you. They won’t, of course, because you’re armed with one of the more creative and versatile arsenals in FPS history. And it’s only five weapons! Your default is a melee staff that turns into a person-sized weed whacker, or launches its tip to one-shot weaker enemies or cast a damaging energy beam between you and it. The shotgun requires no reloading and the alt-fire releases a freezing wave. The stake launcher launches forearm-sized stakes that do more damage the further they travel, or drops heavy grenades because why not? A combination minigun/rocket launcher and lightning gun that shoots shurikens rounds out your armaments, giving you an assortment of vicious weapons to splatter, skewer, or scorch your foes. As much fun as launching tent poles into armored skeletons on the steps of a cathedral sounds, it can threaten to get stale after a few hours. The grand levels with their soaring architecture are still mainly just rooms for enemies to gang up on you in, with few actual gimmicks to break them up. Most foes are simple mixes of melee and projectile attackers as well, meaning battles don’t take much more than aggressive circle-strafing and decent aim. The real joy here is in the details, in how enemies spiral off towards the horizon from shotguns blasts, how they crumple against walls on the ends of stakes, and how they splatter everywhere when pounded with explosives. The ragdoll physics are turned up to 11 here and it’s just as hilarious as you’re hoping. There are a few mechanics at least that try to spice up the slaughter. Levels hide plenty of secrets, some requiring extensive searching or acrobatic feats to find. Gold is your reward for most of these discoveries, which is used to equip cards that give new active and passive abilities. Cards are earned by completing a level with an optional objective, one that usually presses you to play in a way you wouldn’t normally. Enemies also drop souls which heal you a tiny bit and turn you into an immortal demon briefly when you have enough. It isn’t much, and pales in comparison to modern unlock and customization schemes, but try not to worry too much about that when you’re shredding ninjas with an automatic shuriken launcher. The game spans five acts of 4-6 levels each, with a boss capping each act. They vary in quality, with the first being far and away the most interesting and impressive, the last being exceptionally creative (the whole final level is pretty amazing), and the rest being pretty forgettable. It’s also worth mentioning that the difficulty not only changes balancing within levels but also how the acts flow together, with the highest difficulty ending on some unique levels and a totally different finale. There’s enough to explore and master here to make it worth some repetitive combat, and honestly the weapons are so good that it’s almost a blessing you get to use them so much. Painkiller hasn’t aged gracefully but it was never a graceful game, instead giving us all the blood and action we could want from a hellish shooter.
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Oct 20, 2017 16:48
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I loving love Painkiller
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Oct 20, 2017 17:25
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SuccinctAndPunchy posted:You're not wrong, but part of the game's brilliance is that it obfusticates the poo poo out of how the Alien actually ticks, keeping it seemingly unpredictable and tense. Which is why Alien Isolation is the only game that I can play again and again and legitimately get my heart racing and palms sweaty. Xenomrph posted:In my playthrough I found my usual tactics definitely got more ineffective over time. A big one that stood out for me was the flamethrower; it became practically useless by the end because the moment I broke it out, the Alien would immediately charge me and knock me on my rear end. If the Alien didn't kill you and just took health than the Flamethrower worked, you just didn't hit him enough with it. I wouldn't doubt if the amount of fuel it takes to repel it goes up further into the game though.
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Oct 20, 2017 18:32
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s.i.r.e. posted:Which is why Alien Isolation is the only game that I can play again and again and legitimately get my heart racing and palms sweaty. Yeah, the more often you use it the braver the alien is.
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Oct 20, 2017 18:39
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oldpainless posted:I loving love Painkiller I've been meaning to replay the series from the top once I finish the Serious Sam series.
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Oct 20, 2017 18:51
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Xenomrph posted:I've been meaning to replay the series from the top once I finish the Serious Sam series. "Replay"? I'd love to hear your thoughts on everything that came after Black, because I have never heard anything good about any of them and they form a pretty consistent downward spiral in reviews.
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Oct 20, 2017 18:58
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play Painkiller main campaign and then move on to Necrovision which is actually a really good spiritual sequel and was unfairly maligned
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Oct 20, 2017 19:13
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I'll take any more plot coherence out of EW that it can give me. I eventually gave up a good way through just because I felt that i wasn't going anywhere. RE4 had some weird stuff but it was at least coherent, EW1 pushed the "oh it's just a dream or whatever" boundary too far for my taste.
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Oct 20, 2017 19:22
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Lunchmeat Larry posted:EW2 looks good but is it actually Scary? It looks fairly RE4ish It's not really scary, no. I wouldn't even say it has much in the way of jump scares. It's extremely good though. I actually came in to talk about how cool it is. I just started playing last night and have gone through a few stages of opinion about it: 1. Wow, new Evil Within! Looks great and I love this hub world idea; I can't wait to search around for secrets! 2. This is bullshit. I can't enjoy exploring because I keep getting killed. If this keeps happening I'm turning the difficulty down and enabling aim assist. 3. Oh poo poo, now that I've upgraded a bit and found the shotgun it's awesome to explore! I'm glad I didn't turn down the difficulty! Don't listen to anyone who says it's open world. It's got hub areas, like Dishonored, and there's lots of cool stuff to find but it's not a big, mostly empty, horror themed sandbox. Everything is super tightly constructed and you'll never find yourself wasting time exploring something that feels generated for the sake of having a good square kilometer map count.
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Oct 20, 2017 19:29
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EW 2's plot is basically the same as the movie The Cell with Jennifer Lopez.
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Oct 20, 2017 19:30
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Improbable Lobster posted:Yeah, the more often you use it the braver the alien is. From what I understand, the flamethrower isn't actually able to kill the Alien but the Alien doesn't know that. It's scared by the unfamiliar sensation of pain from the fire, so it flees when hit. If you use it too much, though, it starts realizing that it won't actually die to it and starts to lose its fear.
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Oct 20, 2017 19:38
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TEW is pretty straightforward. Problem is the key details you need to actually make sense of it are exclusive to the DLC which is dumb as hell. The shadowy organization behind the entire thing isn't even named in the main game.
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Oct 20, 2017 19:42
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Yeah The Evil Within actually has a pretty neat story, it's just that it's told in the worst possible way with half of it only being revealed in the DLC and the other half only being revealed if you bother to pay attention to all the notes and memos you find. Otherwise it really does feel like random poo poo is happening for the sake of random poo poo.
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Oct 20, 2017 19:48
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chitoryu12 posted:From what I understand, the flamethrower isn't actually able to kill the Alien but the Alien doesn't know that. It's scared by the unfamiliar sensation of pain from the fire, so it flees when hit. If you use it too much, though, it starts realizing that it won't actually die to it and starts to lose its fear. You could write a children's book about a brave little xenomorph overcoming its fear of fire
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Oct 20, 2017 20:09
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Improbable Lobster posted:You could write a children's book about a brave little xenomorph overcoming its fear of fire Not quite, but close: Alien Next Door https://www.amazon.com/dp/1785650262/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_agO6zbEQNW0GA
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Oct 21, 2017 00:10
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chitoryu12 posted:From what I understand, the flamethrower isn't actually able to kill the Alien but the Alien doesn't know that. It's scared by the unfamiliar sensation of pain from the fire, so it flees when hit. If you use it too much, though, it starts realizing that it won't actually die to it and starts to lose its fear. One of my favorite moments in that game is aiming a flamethrower at the alien without any ammo. It rears back, cautious...and when the fire doesn't come, it rushes you and murders your poo poo.  The fire does always send it running, but eventually it gets braver, yeah. It'll stop cautiously rearing back when you aim at it, and when it does it gives you less time before moving in. Eventually it straight up charges at you even when you blast it with fire--it doesn't kill you, and it still flees, but it takes off a good chunk of your health. Alien: Isolation is so good.
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Oct 21, 2017 00:11
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Picked up Evil Within 2, any Before I Plays for it?
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Oct 21, 2017 03:10
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DreamShipWrecked posted:Picked up Evil Within 2, any Before I Plays for it? the melee upgrades suck. the last stealth upgrade sounds way better than it ends up being in practice. raising your health a bit makes the game much easier. the bushes make you a death machine. I really do like it. It's so much better than the first in a lot of ways. But I love the complete insanity and nightmare logic of the first game so I'm torn. (Basically) Knowing what's going on from the start makes it much less scary.
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Oct 21, 2017 04:03
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Also don't be afraid to upgrade the pistol. The 60% chance for a crit will be useful throughout the whole game.
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Oct 21, 2017 04:23
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Spite posted:the melee upgrades suck. Except for the corner assassination upgrade. I love that thing. Almost everything is a corner if you jimmy around with the camera enough. I'm behind a tree, bad guy on exact opposite side of tree, 20 feet away? Lemme just toggle the right analog stick around to the left... little to the right... up, down aaaaaaand... would you look at that? I CAN HIT X NOW *enemy teleports to me, murder, repeat*
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Oct 21, 2017 05:02
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the extra melee damage really is kind of useless, because like half the time an enemy won't be staggered anyways if you knife them so you're going to get knocked upside the head. even ignoring how cagey it is to try and get into melee range without getting hit anyways. later enemies are also pretty much suicide to try and close in on without multiple things stacking the odds in your favor at the time. which i guess makes it sound like the combat is awful, it's not, but melee is pretty much reserved for if you have an axe and can be pretty much almost guaranteed a kill with it
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Oct 21, 2017 05:28
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The Predator stealth skill is actually extremely useful. It lets you run up to the enemy from behind, it extends the range of the sneak kill threefold, and the animation is both fast and ends with you in crouching position.
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Oct 21, 2017 10:53
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Is it possible to do stealth attacks on the bosses? I've never managed to get close enough to one unnoticed to try.
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Oct 21, 2017 16:15
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Vakal posted:Is it possible to do stealth attacks on the bosses? Nope. Pretty much all of them are aware of you from the get-go and will follow you closely or teleport around. Late-game boss spoiler: It might be possible when you fight the Keeper/Safe Head again, but I doubt it.
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Oct 21, 2017 16:18
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You could sneak attack the first boss in Evil Within. He'd promptly ignore the knife sticking in his neck and proceed to chainsaw you in half.
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Oct 21, 2017 16:22
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If you mean the guy chained up in the barn, you can sneak attack kill him, it's just not a one hit kill so you have to do it multiple times or do a certain amount of damage to him first, there's a trophy for it.
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Oct 21, 2017 16:26
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Oh, the first time you face him at the start of the game. 
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Oct 21, 2017 16:27
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Oh yeah no not then, whoops
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Oct 21, 2017 16:28
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Started playing Murdered: Soul Suspect and it's OK. The collectibles aren't nearly as bad as expected, I've pretty much got half of them just having a cursory look, there are just a few in the area of the Town with all the Burnt Out Ghost Buildings Where I'm having trouble figuring out how to access inside the perimeter one of them, or the top floor of one of them. Just got the mission to go to the Graveyard. The side stories are definitely worth scouring for collectibles for though.
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Oct 21, 2017 18:37
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Do you have the teleport ability yet? There's a bunch of collectibles that require that skill. I dug the plot in that game, overall it was a pretty neat story even if the gameplay was largely linear and hand-hold-ey.
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Oct 21, 2017 19:01
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Xenomrph posted:Do you have the teleport ability yet? There's a bunch of collectibles that require that skill. I knew I was missing something. Good to know I didn't just fail to solve the puzzle, but I do like using the "Hide" mechanic to go past ghost objects, that's cool. Also while I enjoy the characters none of them so far are really "popping" for me like Grace in Get Even. I was super invested in that game by the end, I was genuinely just going "Woah, that's what that means?" at every new revelation and when starting the first level over I realised exactly what the opening conversation was. Get Even has the most satisfying plot I've played in a long time, even if some of the twists are a bit cliched in and of themselves. BioEnchanted fucked around with this message at 19:08 on Oct 21, 2017 |
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Oct 21, 2017 19:03
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Apparently Hidden Agenda has been delayed in europe less than a week before launch due to translation issues. Urrrgh. What horror games are good to play if you have a group of friends over?
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Oct 21, 2017 20:40
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Spite posted:the melee upgrades suck. To emphasize. The Brawler abilities suck but the stealth abilities are all good. Also the Stamina increasers. Being able to run longer when poo poo hits the fan helps.
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Oct 21, 2017 22:36
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Liking the game so far but playing on controller with the aim assist disabled by difficulty is brutal.
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Oct 21, 2017 22:46
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This weekend I'm going to cover the little-known Doorways trilogy, a set of episodic first-person horror games that came out a few years back. I'm skipping Doorways: Prelude because I watched my buddy Captain Swing stream it long ago and it certainly didn't look good enough to play through myself. I've played the other two now, and while they try to improve on the first they have their own flaws which are worth examining, at least as cautionary tales. SPOOKY G4MES: The Ghost Dimension 1. Stories Untold 2. Rusty Lake Hotel 3. Rusty Lake: Roots 4. Left in the Dark: No One on Board 5. Daily Chthonicle: Editor's Edition 6. Eleusis 7. Dead Effect 8. Dead Effect 2 9. State of Decay 10. Dead End Road 11. Goetia 12. EMPORIUM 13. F.E.A.R. 14. F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin 15. F.E.A.R. 3 16. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter 17. Bloody Streets 18. Layers of Fear 19. Dark Fall 2: Lights Out 20. Painkiller: Black Edition 21. Doorways: The Underworld    I always hate it when games only manage to get halfway to their potential. You see it a lot in indie horror, games that nail the look or the feel or the story but fall apart in the execution or details. Doorways: The Underworld nails a few particularly important aspects of horror, and then stumbles and face-plants on all the rest. It’s enough to give me hope that Saibot Studios will eventually produce a great horror game, but this one definitely isn’t it. Doorways: The Underworld is the middle chapter in the Doorways saga, preceded by Prelude and followed by the auspiciously-named Holy Mountains of Flesh. The plot in each follows a common thread: You are Thomas Foster, an investigator with the mysterious Doorways organization. Through means that are never explained (at least not in this installment) Thomas can remotely enter the minds of serial killers to track them down and apprehend them. That means each game is a sequence of dreamlike locales, symbolic of the demented psyches that produced them. I never played Prelude but it doesn’t seem necessary to follow the plot here, because Underworld is concerned only with capturing one particular villain. Underworld is so named for the dim and claustrophobic depths you will plumb in your quest. Your target is a corrupt doctor who experimented on her patients in unspeakable ways (which will be spoken of in notes) and so her mind is laid out like a labyrinth of caves, sewers, prison cells, and laboratories. The symbolism isn’t as thick as you might expect here but the result is appropriately nightmarish and moody thanks to some expert lighting and audio design. The tight mine shafts and sodden sewers carry a palpable sense of dread, colored as they are in sickly greens and oppressive reds. That’s the atmosphere they nailed, and if that level of quality was kept throughout we’d have an indie horror gem here. But as effective as the feel is, the look doesn’t match. The level design here is noticably weak, with each area being a simple loop or winding path of mostly featureless hallways. Rooms off these paths contain little more than bare tables and generic crates, with few items or notes to find. Even the details like skeletons and corpses are unconvincing with their low-effort textures. Worst of all, the level design makes it obvious when you are and aren’t in danger once you realize you need places to hide from enemies. All those straight hallways are completely safe havens, and you only need watch out when conspicuous alcoves and pipes appear to cower in. As for the enemies of Underworld… well, I’ll give them credit for scaring me in how they’re used. The most terrifying feeling in games for me is being chased, and that’s exactly how the monsters here threaten you. They’ll emerge from the cavernous gloom, seeking you out and driving you to hide or flee as fast as possible. It’s a thrilling sensation, but one that feels more like a theme park ride than an actual threat. Your foes are fairly goofy amalgamations of corpses and medical equipment, stomping after you on makeshift legs or wheeling about on support frames. Their movements are heavily scripted and they teleport around at times to be exactly where you don’t want them. And your hiding places are strangely immune to scrutiny, because even if they see you duck into them there’s nothing they can do but pace for a bit and then wander off. If you’ve played Outlast, this feels very much like the sewer chapter from that game, right down to the bloated, lumbering foes and hiding in small drainpipes. It’s not a good look for a game that came out a full year later, especially since it fails to meet the same level of terror or engagement using familiar means. The fear produced here is purely reflexive, because the monsters and environments are nowhere near as immersive as other horror titles manage to be. Beyond that there’s very little interaction or exploration to the game, with a handful of simple puzzles solved by collecting a few items (mostly valves) and putting them in the right places. Nothing here could be considered at all challenging aside from maybe learning the predictable patterns of some enemies. I know Doorways: The Underworld is only about two hours long, but I didn’t even make it an hour before I lost all will to play it. I got through the mines, I got past the wheelie monster chase, I got through the first sewer where you collect valves, and reached the second sewer where you collect even more valves. The notion of doing the exact same thing on a larger scale held no value for me, especially when my reward would be more of the same wandering and occasional running. I never found any hook in the story, either, since the scattered notes just recount atrocities the woman you’re chasing committed. There’s no reason to feel invested in your character, not even for the awkwardly-worded monologues delivered with as much aplomb as the talented voice actor from Amnesia could muster. There’s nothing worth seeing here in the Underworld, just some cheap scares and decent atmosphere propping up empty halls and lacking gameplay.
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Oct 21, 2017 23:18
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Mr. Fortitude posted:Yeah The Evil Within actually has a pretty neat story, it's just that it's told in the worst possible way with half of it only being revealed in the DLC and the other half only being revealed if you bother to pay attention to all the notes and memos you find. Otherwise it really does feel like random poo poo is happening for the sake of random poo poo. I just finished the game and all the dlc and i still don't know how or when everybody ended up in the STEM. Like, kidman volunteered but at some point everyone else had to be rounded up and put in bathtubs and we are never told how that was accomplished. Not real sure why that patrol cop was put in either.
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Oct 21, 2017 23:47
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Agnostalgia posted:I just finished the game and all the dlc and i still don't know how or when everybody ended up in the STEM. Like, kidman volunteered but at some point everyone else had to be rounded up and put in bathtubs and we are never told how that was accomplished. Not real sure why that patrol cop was put in either. If I remember right, the STEM is able to send out a wireless pulse that draws people into its sphere of influence. Mobius used it to pull in Kidman, Sebastian, Joseph, and Redshirt McDiesnextscene into the STEM all at once so Kidman could go about her business extracting Leslie while the detectives investigating Mobius got killed by Ruvik. Though it didn't work out that way, in true Umbrella-esque tradition.
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Oct 22, 2017 00:04
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