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demos  Shumi Come Home and Mail Time Two casual 3D platformers both featured in Wholesome Directs that are similar enough that they actually crossed over for Next Fest, with Shumi appearing in Mail Time. While Mail Time focuses on delivering mail, Shumi is about collecting crystals and fetching items for people. Although Mail Time also has that. I've talked before about 'wholesome' games, and how we've just sort of taken conflict-free children's games and marketed them to adults... both of these sort of fit that bill, they don't specifically list themselves as being all-ages or for kids (one even lists itself as a 'cottagecore' game, something generally marketed at young adults and was big at the height of Pinterest and Tumblr image blogs) but they have almost no conflict, everyone is nice, the edges are sanded off, and the music is gentle. This sort of thing is not really for me because I like there being SOME sort of stakes or driving force, and I say that as a fan of the fuckin Atelier series (look the newer games HAVE had stakes ok) As for how they play... they each have awkward elements to them. Shumi's got a weird bit of angling on the movement where the character doesn't plant and turn on their feet, so it has a kind of floatiness to just moving around, but jumping and gliding feels alright, and the area in the demo has some nice bits of elevation and is interesting to explore. Mail Time has more natural feeling movement, but the jump is too high (the character actually partially crops out of top of frame), and the area in the demo is pretty small and not super exciting to play around in. So of the two, I'd lean towards Shumi as the one to play as it feels like it is more exploration-heavy, has crystals all over to collect, and so you can get something out of that.  Boti: Byteland Overclocked Okay, now we're talking. While I don't love the jump (it's too fast, it needs a little hangtime to feel smooth), and the voice acting is bafflingly bad, this feels a lot more like a legitimate 3D platformer than some of the others I've played in the Next Fest to this point. While Koa & the Five Pirates of Mara is going for a Mario 3D World feel, Boti is clearly going for Ratchet and Clank, but without the guns (which is unfortunate because the combat is not very good). So you get linear levels but they have large open areas and side paths to collectables, and everything you destroy has a pleasing sucking up of currency (in this case, megabytes, which are used to power devices), and there's a sliding rail section because of course. Unlike Ratchet and Clank whose platforming is purely perfunctory for the purpose of taking you from combat encounter to combat encounter, Boti has more actual platforming in it. YMMV on the difficulty of it, it seemed like an early level so it was not very difficult for me. There are four types of collectables but the only one that provided a function in the demo was a collectable that awards you a new wardrobe each time. It's promising enough to go on the wishlist, but I hope they add subtitles at the very least.   MEATGRINDER Do the above GIFs look sick to you? then you might be the target audience for Meatgrinder, the closest an FPS has come to feeling like a coin-op arcade experience without the coins. Yes, I know Half-Life 2 had an arcade game, this comes closer. The premise is simple: stop moving and you die. I guess that makes it a secret Crank game, mixed with Clustertruck. You have a grappling hook in your shoe (it just works, don't think about it) and the ability to dash in the air three times before landing, and a bunch of vehicles to hop across, all while dealing with enemies via guns or kicking. Yes you can kick enemies. You can also grapple enemies and send them off of the truck they're on as you zip towards them. You can grapple off of falling boulders from the mountain that are destroying the trucks. Did you see the planes in the GIFs above? There's a lot of craziness happening (I didn't see any planes in the demo levels I played though). The game is structured so that the levels just keep coming as you make your way forward on the road, with music tracks (not very seamlessly) transitioning you, and the types of vehicles and scenery changing, as well as the occasional boss. If it had a time limit ticking down as you passed checkpoint banners to extend your time, this would basically be a 1995 Namco game next to Time Crisis that costs 4 quarters per play. It's fun.... BUT. but. I wonder if it can maintain the energy the whole way through before the novelty fades. If the full game is a 3 hour experience with 30 levels I think that'd be pretty solid and in line with the kind of arcade experience that the demo has conveyed. If it's a 10 hour game with 100 levels.... errrrrrr no. I think I'd get bored eventually and move on to something else. Added to Wishlist: Meatgrinder, Boti: Byteland Overclocked Demos Remaining: Affogato (just didn't have time to fit it in this afternoon), Cynthia: Hidden in the Moonshadow, The Darkest Files, Coven, Full Void, Grim Guardians, Benedict Fox, Gripper, Radio the Universe, Rusted Moss, Slave Zero X, Stack Gun Heroes
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Feb 10, 2023 20:35
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Is there any big reason to get the Sonic Origin collection if you already have the listed games already ?
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Feb 11, 2023 01:35
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Sab669 posted:It's another perfect example of "genre name that doesn't tell you anything about the game itself" I wish we could go back to the good old descriptive genre names like "adventure game" and "role-playing game" and "arcade game"
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Feb 11, 2023 01:39
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If we're going all the way we need to bring back the Computer Role-Playing Game genre.
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Feb 11, 2023 01:46
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Jossar posted:So I think while I will still continue to try out this wonky stuff just for the sake of experimentation, most of the things that are actually going to make it onto my wishlist for the long term are what goon/general consensus deems to be actually good. Okay, having said that...   Take a cocktail mixer, throw in one part Terra Invicta, one part Disco Elysium, and a dash of other science fiction and visual novels. Shake well and pour yourself a glass of Lightracer Spark. Over the vast course of the universe, civilizations flourish and decay as part of the standard flow of time, until a malevolent unnamed civilization discovers how to alter the fundamental constants of the universe. Having done that, they've taken a hammer to the laws of physics in order to ensure that the expansion of the universe is halted and instead a Big Crunch will occur, with themselves reigning as omnipotent beings over/just before the resulting singularity. Recognizing the danger but recognizing that the malevolent civilization is currently too powerful to confront directly, the remaining universal polities have combined into the United Cosmos Front and are instead biding their time, hoping to strengthen themselves to have the best possible shot of stopping this looming threat. As part of their efforts, they are sending out 500,000 artificial intelligence probes into the vast reaches of space in the hopes of artificially accelerating or "amending" the development of nascent civilizations so that they can either directly contribute to the fight or at least produce something worth harvesting before they are annihilated in their own local conflicts. You play as one of these Amenders, in what is basically a Terra Invicta style mapgame that hops from planet to planet, with occasional dumps into visual novel/CRPG sections for the advancement of a planet's local plot. The specifically Disco Elysium-esque element promised, as opposed to just any other CRPG style system, is that you have a bunch of subroutines that are supposed to butt in whenever they feel like it, although I felt that they were pretty subdued in the demo. I'm a little nervous that the devs might not be able to stick the landing on this one just because they're juggling so many things at once - for instance some of the visual novel sections felt a little too neatly tied up in a good/evil binary that seems like it might form the basis for a fairly bland morality system. But it's still the most exciting of any of the games I've tried so far, and definitely think it deserves a bit more press. Jossar fucked around with this message at 02:30 on Feb 11, 2023 |
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Feb 11, 2023 02:20
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Hogama posted:If we're going all the way we need to bring back the Computer Role-Playing Game genre. We unironically do, if CRPG means a UI that's actually designed for PC and not a one size fits all crap that behaves best with a controller I also think we should just call every game a ___-like where you just say whatever game you're cribbing off of and how yours is different
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Feb 11, 2023 02:28
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It's true, all video games are Tennis for Two-likes with varying degrees of divergence.
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Feb 11, 2023 02:41
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Dr. Video Games 0069 posted:Inkbound This was largely my experience as well. I really want to like this game. Nib and Bin are cute. The game's narrative framing of an endless sea of unwritten stories is an aesthetic that really appeals to me. Unfortunately, the combat is just not that interesting. I played the thread-based class and your three abilities are, setup your other abilities, an aoe, and another aoe. None of the incombat choices felt meaningful. You just always cast your big AOEs. All of the upgrades are so small, they don't really feel consequential either, and the demo just keeps going on for what felt like forever.
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Feb 11, 2023 02:43
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Mode 7 posted:It's true, all video games are Tennis for Two-likes with varying degrees of divergence. frankly, I prefer Tennis for Two-lites
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Feb 11, 2023 02:50
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More Next Fest Demo impressions! Vernal Edge - HMMM - A pretty neat metroidvania with 2D character action combat (aka juggles, parries, combos and other fancy tech) and a focus on being free to explore islands in the sky with your airship that contain hub cities, dungeons, sidequests, and more. Uses a 'pulse' system where you throw your sword at enemies and use mana to 'pulse' it to deal damage and generate health. It is a little rough around the edges in some slight ways, such as the cliche "badass" protagonist's demeanor and some lackluster animations and sound effects I wish were better polished, but the overall feel is decent so I'm keeping my eyes on it.    Magenta Horizon - HMMM - Very similar to above, it is another game with a focus on 2D character action combat, but while the above was a exploration metroidvania, this seems more like a linear stage-by-stage game with tons of straight-forward combat and platforming challenges. In addition, it boasts a rather surreal and bizarre "prog-rock-album-cover" aesthetic. Has some weird mechanics like throwing a healing bomb at enemies to make them sprout healing orbs when you hit them. Again, similar to above, there are some slight rough edges here and there with some dropped inputs and such, but the overall feel is decent so I'm keeping my eyes on it.    Shady Knight - COOL - Like a combination of Neon White/Mirror's Edge meets Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, you quickly dash, grapple, slide, and clamber through bite-size levels while stylishly dealing with enemies by improvising with environmental props (throwing barrels at them, kicking them off ledges or into spikes or other enemies, etc). Very fun and very smooth, overall quite impressed. Only worries is whether the game will continue to vary the environments and enemies sufficiently, and dangle enough story/lore nuggets to keep motivation going. https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/256929683/movie480_vp9.webm?t=1676067543 (couldn't find gifs and didn't want to show just static images for such a dynamic game) Farworld Pioneers - COOL? - Like a combination of Terraria and Rimworld, this game not only has the standard Minecraft loop of crafting and gathering by yourself, but you also have a bunch of colonists that you need to protect and can order around to craft and gather as well. Actually kinda confused me at first since typically you're either just an explorer by yourself (Terraria) or you're a faceless god monitoring your people (Rimworld) but since this has both, sometimes I was a bit confused on what I should be doing. However, after getting used to all that the game has to offer, I started to have some good fun, but will admit I still felt incredibly overwhelmed with the controls and all the contextual clutter. I think it's overall very polished enough that it's worth a shot for veterans of the genre: I'm just a big noob so understandably was overwhelmed.    COVEN - COOL - Was a very pleasant surprise and I'd recommend it for fans of horror-esque boomer shooters like Dusk and Blood and CULTIC. You play as a witch who is burned and rises from the grave, and immediately you start your revenge by brutally chopping villagers apart with an axe and eating their body parts (spleen, testicles, eyeballs, etc) for health like you're in Cruelty Squad. Felt like the game was really well-polished and fun: big levels to explore with all sorts of charming interactable things, satisfying and explosive gore effects, powerful weapons, alt-fires and spells, and so on. https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/256906328/movie480_vp9.webm?t=1663347461 (no gifs for this one) Mortal Darkness - NOT COOL - Boring, ugly, absolutely horrendous in almost every aspect. First Perseus and now this: can I not get a top-down hacky-slashy that isn't an absolute trash fire in this Next Fest?  Edge Of Dead - NOT COOL - It isn't bad, but it isn't really that great either: just a decent Nuclear Throne/Gungeon game with a decent level of polish and juice to it, but nothing special.  
FutureCop fucked around with this message at 03:52 on Feb 11, 2023 |
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Feb 11, 2023 03:41
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LLSix posted:All of the upgrades are so small, they don't really feel consequential either, and the demo just keeps going on for what felt like forever. This wasn't my experience at all. I had a bunch of runs where either I or someone I was teamed up with was completely overpowered by the end of the run. For me though the main appeal is that it's a turn based co-operative tactical game, but the players can all move simultaneously so turns don't take forever. Grouping with other players lets you take advantage of their status effects, like the Mosscloak having easy access to guaranteed criticals with their Marking abilities. Lots of fights were about trying to maximize my ability value while avoiding damage. If I remember this run correctly, my build was based on stacking up dread via dealing magic damage, to then inflict huge damage with jinx. The Weaver also gets a bonus ability point and bonus ability power for having all enemies on the screen threaded, so I was trying to maintain that as well. https://twitch.tv/videos/1714236316 In this run I was playing Mosscloak and I was able to stack ridiculous amounts of poison. (It's actually only 583 stacks of poison and 1/10 stun, I misread because of the display error). https://i.imgur.com/OHddI7G.mp4 I had another run where I got an item that gave me +1 ability power on kill, so by the end of the run I had an extra 650% damage, it was nuts. I'm interested in seeing what the game has to offer at higher ranked difficulties. The ranked mode gets harder as you rank up, which is also novel for a co-op PVE game. I'm also looking forward to the Dual Shields class because I wish more games let me dual wield shields. 
Diephoon fucked around with this message at 04:01 on Feb 11, 2023 |
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Feb 11, 2023 03:54
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Well, I had my fun. Time to get back to the junk. Godfist has a very simple premise: you were betrayed by God and are therefore going to climb his tower, punching all of his servants in the face, until you get to the end, whereupon you will punch God in the face. You and the enemies can't actually die from HP loss, instead it works on Smash Brothers rules where the more damage you take the further you fly away from an enemy's attack and permanent death occurs when you fly off the tower. The only thing that keeps this from being a straight 3D beat 'em up is that there's a bunch of special abilities keyed to a roulette which you can activate with gold (which is also used to buy new abilities from merchants) and a level up system to increase the damage of certain abilities. Honestly, the frills don't really feel like they add much, and I kind of wish it was just a pure beat 'em up, but the game's too barebones either way to be really enjoyable for long.  Dark Tree is a top down style ARPG that, sadly for FutureCop, is an absolute trash fire. It promises that you get to combine multiple weapons against enemies to devastating effect, but really what you're doing is just sort of running around while the game auto-attacks on whatever weapon you're holding down the key for at the time or just defaults to the weapon bound to the B key. Maybe you can do it for multiple weapons nearly simultaneously if you want, but the whole thing just feels super awkward, and it's not like the placeholder plot is worth the trouble. I've had games intentionally built as idle/incrementals whose undisguised button pressing to make numbers go up felt more fun and engaging than this, avoid. Jossar fucked around with this message at 04:09 on Feb 11, 2023 |
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Feb 11, 2023 04:04
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I appreciate you just trying stuff out at random. I've mostly been looking at stream footage to see if I might vibe with a game. I'll play another batch of demos tonight after I'm done work. Looks like Coven was covered so I'll focus on ones people haven't tried.
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Feb 11, 2023 04:24
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Thanks, it's definitely helpful to have a community here since it ensures that people get to take their chosen approach towards the festival and nevertheless get an aggregate as to how everything works out. Love everybody else's reviews! (Process isn't entirely random though - I also check for vibes, though based on a much lower bar of entry consisting of concept idea and screenshots.)
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Feb 11, 2023 04:34
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The 7th Guest posted:I appreciate you just trying stuff out at random. I've mostly been looking at stream footage to see if I might vibe with a game. I'll play another batch of demos tonight after I'm done work. Looks like Coven was covered so I'll focus on ones people haven't tried. Doh, I didn't even realize Coven was on your list: sorry I keep stepping on your toes with crossover, but I'd still love to see your impressions on everything since I play these demos pretty fast and impatiently so I could be missing out on some of the deeper aspects that another perspective might have. Jossar posted:Dark Tree is a top down style ARPG that, sadly for FutureCop, is an absolute trash fire. Whew, dodged a bullet there! But still, depressing.
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Feb 11, 2023 04:39
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FutureCop posted:Doh, I didn't even realize Coven was on your list: sorry I keep stepping on your toes with crossover, but I'd still love to see your impressions on everything since I play these demos pretty fast and impatiently so I could be missing out on some of the deeper aspects that another perspective might have.
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Feb 11, 2023 04:43
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One last review before bed: The hacking game genre has a surprisingly wide spectrum of offerings these days, but at its extremes there are two lines of thought - the ones that go all in on trying to teach you Unix commands and the ones that abstract out the computer touching entirely. DROP is the latter. Sure you're on a computer and get to run autonomous programs to take out some of the scutwork for you, but this is a fast-paced game where you're too busy running around smashing things and slamming buttons to actually learn how to code. You don't even do the thing where you break into a server via 50 different IP bounces, all the action is local to the individual level. And maybe it's a little too fast, the pace got pretty harrowing by the end of the demo, although the real game is supposed to give you more of an opportunity to grind for upgrades to make things easier on yourself. But for what it is, a cyberpunk themed action packed puzzle-y hacking simulator, it hits all the right notes and is worth checking out. Jossar fucked around with this message at 05:54 on Feb 11, 2023 |
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Feb 11, 2023 05:46
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I beat the first videogame of the year, a *checks notes* almost 7 year old game, Opus: The Day We Found Earth It was very good , I would suggest waiting for a sale because it's only a few hours long, around 5? and it's technically missing 2 DLC from the mobile version
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Feb 11, 2023 06:54
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GreenBuckanneer posted:I beat the first videogame of the year, a *checks notes* almost 7 year old game, Opus: The Day We Found Earth I liked Opus:echo of starsong by the same devs, though theres some stupid event style stuff that can just end the game early while traveling around which is bad. I'd still recommend it on sale though
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Feb 11, 2023 07:13
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Friday Night Demos Cynthia: Hidden in the Moonshadow I think that if this was a student project that was going to be released for free when it was done, I'd be a bit more forgiving, but I think it's going to be a $20 game and as such... it's not fully baked. Everything feels rinky dink except for the general feel of the movement... the lighting is so bright it almost feels fullbright. Imagine my surprise when I crafted magic arrows and then found out that arrows don't incapacitate enemies??? They just seemed to immediately point the enemies in my direction to insta-kill me. The dev on their store page says they're looking forward to Hogwarts Legacy. lol. skip this mess '  Gripper Hmm, not sure how to feel about this one. It looks like a Telltale-rear end lookin motherfucker just rode into Furi with a motorcycle, but it's not that simple. Your primary means of attack is your motorcycle's grapple, which you use to strip bosses apart, as well as throw objects at the boss. So it's not really the same, and I don't know if it's necessarily super fun. It's kind of awkward and you're just a sitting duck as you're trying to find something to throw and then set up the shot. Will probably wait on reviews.  Full Void I believe I mentioned Future War a couple of days ago. Well that game was made by Delphine Software, who used rotoscoping for all of the character animation. They would also make a couple of other games with this technique: Another World, and Flashback. I'm a long-time rotoscope platformer veteran, having played those games, the original two Princes of Persia, Heart of Darkness, Abe's Oddyssey, Deadlight, The Eternal Castle, The Way, Tomb Raiders 1-3... pretty much anything with a delay on moving and jumping, I've seen it all. While my attention's mostly been on LUNARK as the spiritual successor to Flashback, Full Void might fill that... well, void, that Another World fans have been waiting to fill for a long time. It's got buttery smooth rotoscoped animations, constant danger around every turn, cinematic death sequences, atmospheric sound design, and lots of climbing up things, jumping, and climbing down things. I would like to see a sprint or roll button, but at least the simplified controls keep everything in front of you in terms of what you need to do. You'll never die thinking "wait was I supposed to sprint there?" At least that's how it should go in theory, AND IT DID, BUT!!! There were a couple of deaths where I just wasnt sure if they were meant to be intentional or not. Right off the bat in the demo I get pursued by a creature I can't outrun and I die, but then the second chance I go through those screens, it doesn't show up. Did I trigger it somehow the first time and not the second? Or was that just meant to be a premonition? One thing I like about Full Void is that, aside from a particular elevator death, the demo didn't feel like it was trying to trick you into deaths. Collapseable platforms are clearly textured differently, steam vents run on specific intervals, creature chases are designed for you to act before thinking (just moving and jumping as you need). There's a door in the sewers you can open that blasts you with water... well, you can see through a window on the exterior that it's full of water, so there's no gotcha moment, you obviously have to come back to it later. Stuff like that, I appreciate in a subgenre like this, where deaths will happen a lot. Checkpoint placement is not too frequent but its not too far away from where you die either, it's usually a couple of rooms to get back, so it's not too aggravating. If the rest of the game is as fairly designed as the demo portion, then it will be a possible hidden gem. That's definitely the tricky thing about this subgenre though, huh? There's always some sequence, some part of a later level that is infuriating and threatens to ruin the whole experience. I guess we'll see.  Affogato Here's one to keep an eye on in the future. A combination of coffee-shop game (ie Val-Hall-A) and reverse tower defense game, with additional Persona-esque side activities to pass time and increase your stats. It's not anywhere near on the level of those games in terms of ambition, as the cutscenes are either with a couple of VN drawings or chibi sprites in the world that don't emote. But it's an enjoyable mix, with a lot of funky music and everything boopin to the beat. In the TD segments, you place your heroes on the lane via cards COME BACK WAIT STOP. it's just set dressing for "if you have X points you can summon this hero", it's not a buncha randomized attack cards or w/e. Each class offers something different, from tanking to pure offense to healing to charge attacks. In the coffee shop, customers talk to you while you brew them coffee, with a process that feels like a lite take on Cook Serve Delicious, only with dragging things around and not, you know, the avalanche of customers swarming you. A couple of negatives: It seems like engaging in certain strategies will leave you DOA, like if you spend all your opening Penta points on the tank class (who can't attack). In the second tutorial level with the drunk guy, it was telling me to summon a card to protect my main attacker, but nothing I did could stop them from getting killed, and so I dont know if that was inevitable or if there's some design flaw with that level, which would be a red flag. I also don't like how often the characters address the player to explain things and spell them out. That can all be handled in-universe with characters talking to each other, or even just with tooltips or whatever. You don't need the character to look at the player and go "Corruption level is how much my soul has been corrupted by the demon I made a pact with," etc etc. Also there was some stickiness with the coffee shop stuff. Like stuff wouldn't leave my cursor when I let go, and I'd have to keep clicking on the target and EVENTUALLY it would work.  The Darkest Files Intriguing. In late 50's Germany, you play a prosecutor tasked with re-opening cold cases of Nazi crimes and bringing said criminals to justice. A slickly stylized look on this one, although a lot of it just amounts to going from one room to another in a cramped office, while talking to people. You interrogate witnesses, interrupting their statements if you need to press them for further details, and while this is happening the scene is playing out in front of you, and then you can walk around in the memory and get further details by examining highlighted objects. The game also has a reconstruction board where you use witness statements as reference to place characters on the board at the different stages of the crime, to see what lines up and what doesn't. And of course there's documents and photos to observe and cross-reference as well. The potential trouble of a game like this is in rehabilitating people who claim that they were never REALLY Nazis and they're good people-- the game is based on real life crimes but with the names changed. The final cutscene of the demo, however, has Fritz Bauer (the one unchanged name from history) saying (paraphrasing) "Everyone always claims that they resisted. But the fact is, someone said yes." And so it makes the smart decision to make no suspect a secret hero, but instead pathetic people pointing the finger at each other while claiming virtue. So I think this subject matter is in decent hands to be handled right. Wishlisted: The Darkest Files, Full Void Remaining: Coven, Grim Guardians, Benedict Fox, Radio the Universe, Rusted Moss, Slave Zero X, Stack Gun Heroes The 7th Guest fucked around with this message at 09:09 on Feb 11, 2023 |
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Feb 11, 2023 07:14
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Jossar posted:One last review before bed: Seconding this one and I would like to thank you for posting it to the thread, checked it out on your rec and HOLY poo poo it's good! What a great demo too, runs fantastically, puts you in the game within seconds and gives you a really good idea of what the full game will be like. A lot of demos this NextFest felt more like very early tech-demos with varying degrees of stability and varying success in getting what the game will really be like across, but not Drop. Super excited for this one! Plays great with a controller too
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Feb 11, 2023 11:42
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fit em all up in there posted:Is there any big reason to get the Sonic Origin collection if you already have the listed games already ? None at all, unless you really need to have everything in one neat bundle.
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Feb 11, 2023 14:44
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so I could say that I finally figured out what this god damned cube is doing. Get well Lowtax.
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 Okay, a big asterisk here in that, as a Goon, I have no friends and could not actually play this and had to settle for watching a stream. Presumably you could jump into the discord and find an active session if you really wanted. King of the Castle is pretty much summed up as "the board game King's Dilemma, but if instead of the king's decisions being made by clockwork, mechanical systems, they were controlled by a streamer/the friend in your group who actually owns the game, while the rest of you plot to backstab them." There are a lot of... questionable stylistic decisions going on at the edges here which confuse me as to its target audience (the game is obsessively fanatical about asking you for your pronouns, but one of the consistent decisions that you can select to have as an option for the King with respect to his barons/counts voting is an obvious Trump joke, even if it's designed to annoy everyone when you use it), but the underlying game itself seems fairly well designed. It's only going to be $5, and really that's only for the one person who owns the game, since everybody else can connect in via the game's private website or Twitch. Realistically this thing looks like streamer bait of the highest caliber. But it's also decent enough that I can't just dismiss it out of hand? I dunno. Jossar fucked around with this message at 16:32 on Feb 11, 2023 |
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Feb 11, 2023 16:19
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So do we reckon Boundary has more legs than that 3DMark space shooter years ago? There's more typos and bad grammar in the game than there's space junk in orbit, but gameplay is more important obviously.
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Feb 11, 2023 16:28
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When I played Boundary the matchmaking had us 5v2 and everyone was a sniper and most people left after 5 minutes. I then uninstalled it. I also don't think it bodes well that on a free weekend they only have 1,300 people playing. When it is a paid game, will it have half of that at launch?
Rusty fucked around with this message at 16:38 on Feb 11, 2023 |
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Feb 11, 2023 16:34
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Gonna slowly trickle these in all day, I think. The Magical Mixture Mill is pretty much fantasy Factorio/Satisfactory/Dyson Sphere Program/etc. combined with Recettear and similar shop games. Yeah, there's a lot of other games I could compare it to instead, but it's got too much automation game DNA involved for most of those to be an accurate comparison. The only reason i'm not calling it a pure automation game is because you are still selling the potions to people who gain relationship meter. Mechanically it works and is a satisfying experience, and I can even forgive that a lot of stuff isn't in yet because it's the demo, but... The game splits the tutorial between the kindly, if slightly insensitive, old witch who teaches you about the basics of potion brewing and a horrible little bag goblin that you acquired by beating up an evil sorcerer who teaches you about all the automation elements. Both parts are critical to the game, but the goblin spends a lot of his time dunking on the witch behind her back and saying how her whole setup is inefficient, and I feel like that sort of extends to TMMM in general. The whole thing feels like it has an undercurrent of mean-spirited metacommentary on the witchy life-sim potion brewing genre that's been in vogue recently. I could just be reading way too much into the game's style of humor though. Jossar fucked around with this message at 18:13 on Feb 11, 2023 |
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Feb 11, 2023 18:01
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I played a little bit of Nioh 2 last year on PS5 after beating Nioh 1, and I just picked it up on PC to give it another shot. I don't remember the movement being so....loving lovely? Half of my deaths so far have been from walking my stupid rear end off a bridge because I tried to turn around and apparently you have to walk in a giant goddamn circle in order to do anything other than an exact 180? It feels awful to control to the point where I spent close to 30 minutes trying to troubleshoot what's wrong with my controller because it gives me the same kind of feeling as trying to play with like 200ms of input lag, but I determined that's not the issue. I wonder if using an Xbox controller this time versus a DualSense last time changes the feel just enough that I kind of hate it. Not to mention every basic enemy stunlocks me to death if they even get a single hit in, but I do remember that from Nioh 1. I won't give up just yet though.
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Feb 11, 2023 18:09
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Volte posted:I played a little bit of Nioh 2 last year on PS5 after beating Nioh 1, and I just picked it up on PC to give it another shot. I don't remember the movement being so....loving lovely? Half of my deaths so far have been from walking my stupid rear end off a bridge because I tried to turn around and apparently you have to walk in a giant goddamn circle in order to do anything other than an exact 180? It feels awful to control to the point where I spent close to 30 minutes trying to troubleshoot what's wrong with my controller because it gives me the same kind of feeling as trying to play with like 200ms of input lag, but I determined that's not the issue. I wonder if using an Xbox controller this time versus a DualSense last time changes the feel just enough that I kind of hate it. Both problems are solved by blocking. You can't walk off edges while blocking and you can also block while being attacked, where you can't dodge to avoid being "stunlocked".
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Feb 11, 2023 18:10
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You can't even turn while blocking and you can absolutely walk off edges. 
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Feb 11, 2023 18:15
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Volte posted:You can't even turn while blocking and you can absolutely walk off edges. I don't have the game installed so I can't check it but I could've sworn blocking made you not drop off ledges, but maybe I remembered wrong.
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Feb 11, 2023 18:17
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Volte posted:I played a little bit of Nioh 2 last year on PS5 after beating Nioh 1, and I just picked it up on PC to give it another shot. I don't remember the movement being so....loving lovely? Half of my deaths so far have been from walking my stupid rear end off a bridge because I tried to turn around and apparently you have to walk in a giant goddamn circle in order to do anything other than an exact 180? It feels awful to control to the point where I spent close to 30 minutes trying to troubleshoot what's wrong with my controller because it gives me the same kind of feeling as trying to play with like 200ms of input lag, but I determined that's not the issue. I wonder if using an Xbox controller this time versus a DualSense last time changes the feel just enough that I kind of hate it. On the movement thing, I have no idea, I've never noticed that. Movement in those games always feels much more precise and smooth than in From's games. And yeah Nioh 2 is definitely a game where you want to avoid taking direct hits as much as possible. Especially early on when healing is a more limited resource (pro tip: set up auto-buying medicine at shrines ASAP). A lot of enemies have like combo attacks that you can dodge by just like... going to the side, once, instead of trying to block. It's a great opportunity to get some hits in, since they usually have a big cooldown after.
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Feb 11, 2023 18:18
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Waves of Steel: I am a buffoon, an absolute schmuck, for trying to sink the enemy ships with cannons and torpedoes what I should have done all along is just take a hull, and put a giant loving drill & like six feet of armor on it
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Feb 11, 2023 18:30
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what is a battleship, but a very large torpedo.
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Feb 11, 2023 18:31
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Begemot posted:On the movement thing, I have no idea, I've never noticed that. Movement in those games always feels much more precise and smooth than in From's games. A few circular movements, and then an up-down-side-to-side cross shape. In Dark Souls you can see it pretty much maps exactly to my intentions while in Nioh 2 he just kind of has a seizure and wobbles around and you can see the very wide turning radius in the cross-shaped movements. https://i.imgur.com/8lnPEv5.mp4 https://i.imgur.com/cjLM5Og.mp4
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Feb 11, 2023 18:37
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I'm taking a break from it too but that is not at all how I remember the movement. Poor guy is knackered, what have you done to him!
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Feb 11, 2023 18:43
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 Is The Ranch of Rivershine any good? Well, I suppose the answer to that question depends on the answer to another question: "who's playing?" For the gamer specifically interested in simulating riding horses, ours is a terrible landscape to navigate - unless you're really into Star Stable, an MMO which is really more designed around kids with its cutesy artstyle and fantasy plot, most of the games that are universally agreed upon as being good are action-adventure games that just incidentally happen to have really satisfying horse riding mechanics. For instance, Red Dead Redemption 2, which is the one that seems to show up consistently on all of the ranking lists. Once you start getting into horse-riding specific games, there seems to be a neverending series of arguments as to whether certain aspects are accurately represented or fun. There is also the problem that if you are not very specifically into horses, all of these games come across as really, really boring. The Ranch of Rivershine is an attempt to square the circle by making a horse game that doesn't involve you shooting people in the face but still expands beyond the racing/riding elements by including life sim elements. I can sort of see how it might work, if the developer puts a lot more effort into tightening up the controls and adding more things to do, but to be honest it still comes across as fairly empty beyond the core horse-racing mechanics. At least this is a better fate than that of Jane Austen fans, whose MMO closed down back in 2021 and now they have to content themselves with the upcoming Regency Solitaire II.
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Feb 11, 2023 19:00
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Actually I'll save these for next page lol played through Radio the Universe and Benedict Fox demos, just have 5 more to go....
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Feb 11, 2023 19:01
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Black Griffon posted:I'm taking a break from it too but that is not at all how I remember the movement. Poor guy is knackered, what have you done to him! I'm replaying Nioh 2 and loaded it to check. That's just how the game controls. When you hold the analog stick all the way, you have some momentum and a small turning radius. You can't move in tight circles like the OP is trying. If you walk, instead, you can be more precise. You might also be more precise if you have your weapon out, but I forgot to check. You just have to be careful about trying to move at full speed right next to ledges. After several hours, I'm not even noticing it anymore. Mostly unrelated, but my favorite comedy deaths on my first playthrough of Nioh 2 were when I forgot I had the tonfa's back dodge on ki pulse skill equipped and would knock an enemy off a ledge, quickly turn around, then ki pulse and jump backwards after them.
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Feb 11, 2023 19:34
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Huh. Well, I guess I'm just incredibly good at moving in Nioh 2 (and of course extremely attractive whilst doing so).
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Feb 11, 2023 19:39
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As long as this is the way it has to be, I'll keep powering forward until my muscle memory cooperates. I beat Nioh 1 so I guess I must have it in me somewhere.
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Feb 11, 2023 19:40
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