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playing some demos of games currently on sale Ganryu 2 ($7) Neo Geo obsessives might remember the original Ganryu, or maybe not, because it didn't have a home conversion until 2016, and then got a Dreamcast port of all things in 2017. But here is a sequel to that game, which basically plays similarly to the Shinobi games but with that extra colorful Neo Geo flavor profile. The game has the right look and feel (though it doesn't actually look all that similar to the original game), but it's a bit TOO retro for me, in that it has infinitely spawning enemies, slightly clunky movement coming in and out of jumps, and feels like it's designed for the "it's HARD like games USED to be!!" crowd with only 3 lives and 5HP per life (though healing items at least seemed plentiful.  Beep's Escape ($6) Going further back for this dev's inspiration, we've got a tribute to Speccy adventure platformers like Dizzy with Beep's Escape, which has you going around a facility as a robot trying to avoid being decommissioned. It's got all the pros and cons of this era of gaming, with the charming colored tile limitations, blippy music, names for every room, and inventory puzzling right down to having only 3 slots to carry items. If you're a modern gamer you hate this, if you're a Speccy gamer you're probably like "three slots! my word! a bounty!" My only criticism, aside from wishing I had one more slot, is the movement is very slippery, which is not ideal when there are hazards that kill you and you only have 3 lives. A modern Speccy-type game should really not have lives at all, I think it's a weird aspect to have in an inventory puzzler, regardless of trying to be authentic.  Kapia ($6) Every bit of Kapia is awkward. I think there's something interesting here, in terms of the worldbuilding, and I actually do have a soft spot for 3D point-and-click adventures controlled via gamepad because it's very reminiscent of a specific time in adventure gaming. Because it's by a two-person dev team, though, the art style is a bit awkward looking, the camera work is awkward, the utilization of the inventory is awkward, proximity to hotspots is awkward, the voice acting is DEFINITELY awkward and the writing is awkward, and a lot of the demo was played in near silence. Awkward!! I do respect what one reviewer called the "sad magic" of the setting, but the lack of polish is a major issue. I also think the character animations are weird, they have 'what do I do with my hands' syndrome where they're just moving and gyrating around, not for any real reason other than to not be still. But being still would've probably been preferable I think.  Mirror Layers ($7) An escape room horror game that invites collaboration with other players via the in-game social media app, which is also required in order to make progress and solve puzzles. That means it requires an internet connection, so this already has a clock above its head ticking down to inevitable delisting. I was hoping this would have more of a PS1 aesthetic than modern horror, it ends up feeling clunky but without the retro excuse. Puzzles weren't super engaging to me either.  Pulling No Punches ($6.49) I picked some weird ones to start off, but it was mostly that they took up the most space on my Steam Deck. This one I feel wormy about. It's a beat-em-up by a Brazilian dev about beating up people who don't wear masks during the COVID pandemic. I feel wormy about it because it's not like you're just beating up the people feeding lies to the public, you're going around beating up random strangers in the street and businesses for not wearing masks. It almost feels like a parody of mask wearers rather than some sort of praxis game. There's one thread on the SA forums that would probably love this though. For me though I put it in the same category as the Kyle Rittenhouse game, of, why is this on Steam. It's not like it's as inherently vile as Acquitted, obviously, but it's still just... a game about beating the poo poo out of a perceived political enemy, which turns out to be drunks and partiers, some of which aren't even attacking you?? I have to keep in mind that Brazil had a much worse time of it because of Bolsonaro being a huge piece of poo poo, but this is still weird. It came out in August 2022. Speaking purely about the gameplay though, it's kind of basic. You have a three-hit combo, a dash, a block, an air kick, a grab, and that's about it. It feels a little too 1991 and not modern era, when other games like SOR4 have really moved the genre forward. You can unlock new moves, but only by collecting three pages in each stage, and that seems dumb to me. Making a game less fun to play until you unlock the fun parts of the gameplay is always stupid to me. You should always have a full or close-to-full movelist. Why do games do this so often? And lastly, not a demo but something I played on Friday night:  Bloody Hell (Free) I'm generally impressed at the quality of some of the free-as-in-freeware games that have been coming out on Steam over the last few years, from Unbeatable to Helltaker to Khimera. Bloody Hell is another Overwhelmingly Positive free game on Steam, as it has the level of polish of a paid game, but I suppose the dev felt the game was too short (2-ish hours) to warrant charging for it. This one doesn't rise to the level of the others I've mentioned, but it's still decent. It's a twin stick shooter and dungeon crawler that is basically one large Zelda dungeon, where you get multiple new abilities progressing through, as well as buying charms that you can equip to give yourself passive boosts -- though this requires playing inventory tetris and expanding your backpack with new tiles found through the dungeon. There's secret walls, there's new abilities like dashing and hookshot, the game mostly looks nice for what it is, and there are several bosses. The hangup for me, playing from start to finish, was that the shooting itself was never very fun. Though I know there are upgrades to your gun like a split shot and a machine gun, the basic fire was just flat out bad, like 'worse than the start of a Binding of Isaac run' bad, felt bad to shoot, and enemies took forever to go down. This ultimately kept me from loving the game as I didn't feel like I was getting much more powerful, and bosses ended up having too much health and looped their patterns too much and got kinda boring. Tonight I'm gonna try: Ladybug Quest, CHORVS, Butcher, NYAF (yeah I know some of these sound made up), Our Secret Below
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Mar 19, 2023 19:46
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Recently finished up playing a game I backed a long time ago and recently mentioned in this thread back in NextFest: Vernal Edge  It's a bit of a 'rough gem' where they blend Devil May Cry/Kingdom Hearts stylish combat with island-hopping metroidvania exploration. In a lot of ways, it is quite difficult to recommend as, compared to the large amount of more shiny metroidvania contemporaries on the market, it has a very underdeveloped story with an unlikable protagonist, a general feel of being unpolished with lackluster special effects and jankiness, and combat plagued with unintuitive hitboxes and spongy enemies. In spite of this and the few times I almost dropped it, I found myself to keep coming back to explore the various islands and uncover all the secret lore and boss fights, as well as having fun mastering both traversal and combat abilities through all of the scenarios it put me through, and before I knew it, I had beaten the game almost 100% which is something I rarely do. It's probably not for everyone: if you're someone who just plays the game wanting the main story, you'll probably be left quite unsatisfied as it is a lackluster ending. However, if you're the type of person that likes checking out these rough indie gems, as well as experimenting and mastering mechanics to the fullest and making stylish combo videos and the like, consider giving it a go!
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Mar 19, 2023 21:11
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Jack Trades posted:Bruz gets the fort. 
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Mar 19, 2023 21:39
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The 7th Guest posted:
OMG thank you I like to get these Speccy-inspired games and I hadn't seen this one
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Mar 19, 2023 22:06
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Trying more demos of games currently on sale: Ladybug Quest ($6) (Time spent: 15 minutes) Pretty good! This game is a tribute to the PS1 Frogger games, complete with occasional 2.5D camera turns. It's got snappy controls, and it is deviously difficult even in the opening stages. Seems quite polished and well put-together.  NYAF ($3.59) (Time spent: 5 minutes) I was promised hidden object, and what I got was absolute chaos, in a bad way. The characters to find are just ghostly moving stickers placed randomly on the 'board' of art, so they're not, like, integrated into the art. On top of that, each one makes a noise when you click on them, some of which are like... a guy singing for 30 seconds, or a kid giving a full speech in german. So as you find multiple characters, the audio just becomes this cacophony of random voices singing and talking in different languages. No thanks. I know what I described sounds funny but it's not actually fun to experience.  Our Secret Below ($7.49) (Time spent: 20 minutes) Darkstone Digital is a solo dev that likes to make the same kind of game over and over, an escape roomy/walky simmy horror game where you've been abducted. It was the premise of The Subject, it was thee premise of Kohate, and it's the premise of Our Secret Below, albeit not in space or sci-fi, but instead a stalker kidnapping you and giving you four hours to escape. I think that's kind of interesting, but the execution is a little clunky, the character was stuck crawling on the floor for half the demo until I figured out the key to get them unstuck from the position. Some occasionally interesting imagery, but very very basic puzzling. Not the worst thing I've played but not super exciting. Also, dev, do you have, like, an abduction kink, or what's going on there. It's the premise of three of your four games.  Chorvs ($15) (Time spent: 20 minutes) Yeah it's one people actually know. I'm not a one-trick pony, I can play popular games too, I'm just not as excited by them, that's all. First off, whoa, I've never seen a more thorough introduction in a demo than what Chorus provides, it basically details a ton of the story up to the demo mission, then goes one by one through each of the controls demonstrating them with a little video. I'm not sure it's actually necessary, but they really, really didn't want people to be lost or confused. The whispering voice is loving hilariously bad, but I like the story aspect to the game. It's just that I'm no good at playing space dogfighting games. I like Descent? I like that kind of spaceship game. This doesn't have the kinda maneuvering of the Descent games though, even with the added powers and drifting. You have a little bit of strafe but it's just for a quick dodge. So this is not really for me. If they made a Descent game with storytelling though, I'd be all-in for that. Overload is neat but it's just focused on pure gameplay. Next batch: Stereo Boy, Super High Ball, The Shattering, Pile Up, The Corruption Within, Puddle Knights The 7th Guest fucked around with this message at 07:39 on Mar 20, 2023 |
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Mar 20, 2023 07:36
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It's a shame about that pricing thing with Ori and the Blind Forest, because I really want to encourage as many people as possible to play both Ori games. They're wonderful.
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Mar 20, 2023 11:18
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I mean, Ori is still cheap right now, with some additional features if anyone cared for such. You'll just have to wait for a sale like for anything else you think it's not worth full price (which it is).
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Mar 20, 2023 13:04
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Not sure if this is the best thread for it, but what's the best hardware to use to do steam link (or other desktop streaming) at 4k with HDMI out? I did something really dumb in the last few weeks. Did a big living room renovation, got a new Samsung tv. Ran HDMI and optical cables through conduit in the walls to mount the tv. Didn't bother with Ethernet as I figured I'd be using my PS5. THEN I find out the Samsung tv I bought has a native steam link app. Naturally the conduit doesn't have enough room to add Ethernet, and now the tv is mounted, performance over WiFi is dogshit. So I'm pretty gutted about that. I hadn't even considered that I'd be able to stream games from my PC to it, but now I really want to and I've got to buy something to do it.
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Mar 20, 2023 14:01
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Serephina posted:I mean, Ori is still cheap right now, with some additional features if anyone cared for such. You'll just have to wait for a sale like for anything else you think it's not worth full price (which it is). Part of the mentality battle with Steam and the prospect of sale pricing. There are games on my wishlist that I want to play more than some of the games from my list that are on sale, and I still haven't bought them. Talking about games which are £6 or less even at full price and still cheaper than some of those on sale. It's ridiculous really and before this sale is done I think I'm going to have a thorough look at how I've spent my money during this sale. I'm leaning towards refunding a couple of sale items and just buying some of the games I actually really want to play whether they're on sale or not.
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Mar 20, 2023 14:11
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How much am I being screwed if I buy hitman 3 or whatever it is calling itself for $40 despite having everything prior to hitman 3? Is it just an extra $10 from what it was in January ? I can prolly stomach that I guess.
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Mar 20, 2023 14:33
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kater posted:How much am I being screwed if I buy hitman 3 or whatever it is calling itself for $40 despite having everything prior to hitman 3? Is it just an extra $10 from what it was in January ? I can prolly stomach that I guess. Yeah, they raised the price by  when they integrated Hitman 1 and 2 into 3.
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Mar 20, 2023 14:34
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I bought the Ori collection after I got into metroidvanias with Metroid games and I HATE blind forest. The floaty, imprecise movement with one button spammy combat is not fun and it's not like I didn't give it a fair chance. I spent over 50 attempts finishing a particular section and when it was done, I had zero interest in figuring out where to go next.
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Mar 20, 2023 14:50
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The escape sections are stupid. I don't mind timed content in general but the way they're done is just bad stress. I know the escape sequences are supposed to be what ori is all about so yeah idk. I stopped playing Ori 2 at the start of the final dungeon out of lack of interest so I guess I dont enjoy the movement/combat much either.
No Wave fucked around with this message at 15:14 on Mar 20, 2023 |
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Mar 20, 2023 15:11
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kater posted:How much am I being screwed if I buy hitman 3 or whatever it is calling itself for $40 despite having everything prior to hitman 3? Is it just an extra $10 from what it was in January ? I can prolly stomach that I guess. The idea is that they've made Hitman 1 & 2 'free' with Hitman 3 now, so it doesn't matter if you own them or not, but they also raised the price by $10 so that doesn't help things. There's no way to get it cheaper for owning the last two games, there's no discount because they're 'free' and not something you're 'really paying for' or some bullshit. So you're getting screwed over for buying it now for $10 extra than what it was a few months back, but not because you already own 1 & 2.
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Mar 20, 2023 15:17
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The case of the Golden idol A+ I rate it 1 obra din out of possible 1 Pay attention is the best advise I can give
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Mar 20, 2023 16:08
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Upsidads posted:The case of the Golden idol There's very few games that I step away wishing the game was longer and The Case of the Golden Idol is one of them. It's great.
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Mar 20, 2023 17:03
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Just like Obra Dinn, I would be incredibly happy to have a sequel to The Case of the Golden Idol that was just a new case even without any new features or improvements.
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Mar 20, 2023 17:15
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It sounds too much like a game I'd enjoy for me to not get it at some point, but I really don't jive with the art style of the characters. It's like grotesque political satire cartoons without the recognition factor to focus on.
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Mar 20, 2023 17:34
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I noticed that SEVERANCE - BLADE OF DARKNESS got a patch. A patch in 2023, to a game released in 2001  I got my barb to level 16... works fine at 4K, didn't encounter any bugs. The game didn't look as bad as I remembered. Would be a GREAT game to implement RTX and higher resolution "horizon" textures, drat this would rule so much... one can dream. HIGHLY recommended for friends of hack & slash  https://store.steampowered.com/app/1710170/Blade_of_Darkness/Edit: I wish I could be tough enough for this achievement.. "Express Darkness: Complete the game in one run, in 8 hours or less without using saves a single time" Ihmemies fucked around with this message at 18:19 on Mar 20, 2023 |
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Mar 20, 2023 18:17
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Ledenko posted:I bought the Ori collection after I got into metroidvanias with Metroid games and I HATE blind forest. The floaty, imprecise movement with one button spammy combat is not fun and it's not like I didn't give it a fair chance. I spent over 50 attempts finishing a particular section and when it was done, I had zero interest in figuring out where to go next. i also didn't like ori 1 and ori 2 is one of my favorite games. try it
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Mar 20, 2023 18:26
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Ihmemies posted:I noticed that SEVERANCE - BLADE OF DARKNESS got a patch. A patch in 2023, to a game released in 2001
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Mar 20, 2023 19:04
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The 7th Guest posted:similarly, if you ever got the 3D Realms Anthology at some point, you should have the new Terminal Velocity remaster in your library now. it's not much of a remaster, basically just rendering at 640x480 rather than 320x240 and at a fuller framerate, but still. it's something at least
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Mar 20, 2023 19:19
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My favorite shadow of war memory was one orc that I killed like four or five times and eventually whenever he showed up he would see me and then immediately run away, and it became a hosed up reverse nemesis system where I was trying to hunt him to get him to stop showing up
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Mar 20, 2023 19:28
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i played shadow of war (on playstation) after they took the treasure looting.. the frustrating thing about it was how you needed some item to transfer over your orcs.. so eventually i stopped playing when i realized i had to transfer over orcs in that weird way to the next territory.. was i doing something wrong or did they ever address that? i really liked the first one but the second one just annoyed me when i had to deal with that after spending way too much time in the first area.
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Mar 20, 2023 19:33
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As far as i can tell it's all just "hit pause, go to Garrison, and throw 1000 ingame currency at it". i think it used to be one of the many P2W sins in the game but i don't clearly recall
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Mar 20, 2023 19:44
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Veotax posted:The idea is that they've made Hitman 1 & 2 'free' with Hitman 3 now, so it doesn't matter if you own them or not, but they also raised the price by $10 so that doesn't help things. ExcessBLarg! fucked around with this message at 19:50 on Mar 20, 2023 |
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Mar 20, 2023 19:47
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Strong Sauce posted:i played shadow of war (on playstation) after they took the treasure looting.. the frustrating thing about it was how you needed some item to transfer over your orcs.. so eventually i stopped playing when i realized i had to transfer over orcs in that weird way to the next territory.. was i doing something wrong or did they ever address that? i really liked the first one but the second one just annoyed me when i had to deal with that after spending way too much time in the first area. They made it easy to transfer orcs between territories but also...I barely used that feature in my 4 playthroughs. There's little point to it unless you're really struggling.
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Mar 20, 2023 19:47
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My favorite memory from Shadow of War was me doing Shadow Wars post-game stuff and then almost being done with it but the very last attacker of the very last battle manages to get me and I'm out of lives and would have had to restart the whole stage uf not for an allied orc nicknamed The Lookout, because he could only say "Lookout", yelling "Look out!" and shooting the guy right between the eyes.
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Mar 20, 2023 19:51
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why would you want to transfer orcs? Theres more than enough in each territory
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Mar 20, 2023 20:35
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ScootsMcSkirt posted:why would you want to transfer orcs? Theres more than enough in each territory It would give you a head start in a territory since you can use them to gang up on orcs and have an easier time converting new ones that way, but it's only really something I would bother doing on Gravewalker difficulty.
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Mar 20, 2023 20:39
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ScootsMcSkirt posted:why would you want to transfer orcs? Theres more than enough in each territory If you to shove all the ranged assassin orc captains with "No Chance" you've recruited in one stronghold to piss off people doing an online raids. Yeah, for that one specific scenario it is mildly annoying. Edit: I posted this on the toilet. It is rather obvious in hindsight. Mierenneuker fucked around with this message at 21:37 on Mar 20, 2023 |
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Mar 20, 2023 20:42
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ExcessBLarg! posted:That Humble Bundle with Hitman 1 & 2 in them was really sneaky. IO knew what they were doing with Hitman 3 by that point, so that they got donations for titles they were ultimately making free (but also not) was quite scammy.
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Mar 20, 2023 21:13
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Ihmemies posted:I noticed that SEVERANCE - BLADE OF DARKNESS got a patch. A patch in 2023, to a game released in 2001 Quoting this because Severance is an absolute gem, and shames/outs people who use the term 'soulslike' for their lack of genre knowledge. Also dang, that achievement is something I almost did naturally back in the day; it turns out that once you've beaten the game a single time, you don't need save files at all as you remember where all the ambushes where. I think I saved once per level, sometimes every other level, on my second playthrough. It's mostly doing that challenge in a single sitting that's the problem.
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Mar 20, 2023 22:08
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Man, I was not expecting to bounce off Lingo hard, but here we are. I prefer something with more structure and I can't stand the Antichamber spacial fuckery. The actual puzzle logic is also way too arbitrary and abstract for me. I might not have hit the refund button immediately if there were adequate hint/walkthrough/etc. resources out there, but nah like 20 people have played this thing, there's no help to be found past the absolute basics.
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Mar 20, 2023 22:15
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Mierenneuker posted:If you to shove all the ranged assassin orc captains with "No Chance" you've recruited in one stronghold to piss off people doing an online raids.
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Mar 20, 2023 22:45
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Jack Trades posted:It would give you a head start in a territory since you can use them to gang up on orcs and have an easier time converting new ones that way, but it's only really something I would bother doing on Gravewalker difficulty. Jack Trades posted:My favorite memory from Shadow of War was me doing Shadow Wars post-game stuff and then almost being done with it but the very last attacker of the very last battle manages to get me and I'm out of lives and would have had to restart the whole stage uf not for an allied orc nicknamed The Lookout, because he could only say "Lookout", yelling "Look out!" and shooting the guy right between the eyes.
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Mar 20, 2023 22:57
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Ciaphas posted:i'm in act2 now but I think I may restart the game on Gravewalker (edit: or maybe Brutal?) instead of Nemesis. I'm doing too well and that isn't making for any fun stories like this so far Recommendation, if you're thinking on bumping it up to Gravewalker, just do Brutal difficulty instead. Gravewalker greatly increases the enemy health and damage, but leaves yours the same, making the game very tedious. If you up it to Brutal, the enemies are buffed like in Gravewalker, but your damage is increased comparably, making fights difficult, but not tedious. I really enjoy playing at that difficulty as you really need to take advantage of your allies strengths, and exploit your enemies' weaknesses. It really feels like you're plotting against every oruk that you need to take down, since they'll have many strengths and very few weaknesses (with only one if any mortal weakness). You'll still die in two hits, so you'll experience the nemesis system in all it's glory, but you'll feel badass when you form a plan to take down a bastard that had been hounding you, and it just works. E: as an aside, you don't have to restart the game (unless you want to) - you can change the difficulty at any time in the options menu. Velocity Raptor fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Mar 20, 2023 |
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Mar 20, 2023 23:03
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John Murdoch posted:Man, I was not expecting to bounce off Lingo hard, but here we are. I prefer something with more structure and I can't stand the Antichamber spacial fuckery. The actual puzzle logic is also way too arbitrary and abstract for me. Every single one of those those 20 people are in the game's Discord, so you can go there to ask if you're stuck. Here's the link: https://discord.gg/USa9sx7b
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Mar 20, 2023 23:13
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I refunded Like a Dragon after about 90 minutes because the (time spent watching cutscenese) : (time spent controlling a character) ratio was way too big for me. Like greater than 2. I've also got Yak 0 in my library and I'm assuming I bounced off it for the same reason, but have vague memories of enjoying the little I played of that? I don't remember the cutscenes being as egregious, but it was a long time ago. So I'm guessing these games just aren't for me, and I'll ignore any others that show up in my recommendations. Are the other games just as cut scene heavy? I remember kinda liking Zero and wanting to give it another shot some day. It wasn't the turn based combat that turned me off in LaD, since in 90 minutes I only got into like 3 encounters.
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Mar 20, 2023 23:28
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I mean, the remasters of 3, 4 and 5 might not be quite as cutscene heavy, but if you bounced off the two best entries in the franchise, you're not going to like any of the others.
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Mar 20, 2023 23:36
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