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Spaseman posted:Can someone who doesn't own Shadow of War tell me what the definitive edition costs? I bought the base game without thinking and now I see that the definitive edition costs only a dollar more but I'm not sure if thats because I already bought the base game or if I screwed up and need to do a refund. Just open the link in a private tab in your browser (But it's $8.99 USD for me when doing that^)
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Mar 23, 2023 01:34
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Spaseman posted:Can someone who doesn't own Shadow of War tell me what the definitive edition costs? I bought the base game without thinking and now I see that the definitive edition costs only a dollar more but I'm not sure if thats because I already bought the base game or if I screwed up and need to do a refund. I see it for 8.99 USD on the website while not logged in.  https://store.steampowered.com/app/356190/Middleearth_Shadow_of_War/ e:fb
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Mar 23, 2023 01:36
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Trick Question posted:Just before the sale ends, where does NMH3 fall on the scale of Suda51 games? I'm fine if the gameplay is a little off as long as it's a fun ride, Killer7 style, but I got kind of bored during Travis Strikes Back. It's game play is more of no more heroes 1 and 2 if you enjoyed those. Go to arena, fight aliens, play minigames for money to buy upgrades/unlock the next major fight. The combat is pretty good and the story is a suda story. The thing that I don't like about it is they got rid of the levels on the lead up to the boss. Now you go to a certain amount of way points, be transported to a battle arenas, fight all the enemies, and keep doing that until you unlock the boss fight way point.
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Mar 23, 2023 02:49
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which yakuza games have pool?
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Mar 23, 2023 02:59
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 anything here stand out as being meh? edit: uh, how are the new versions of Age of Empires? I pissed away so many hours on the old ones GreenBuckanneer fucked around with this message at 03:05 on Mar 23, 2023 |
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Mar 23, 2023 03:03
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GreenBuckanneer posted:
Hey I just got World of Final Fantasy too. Apparently there's a launch bug easily overcome by setting it to run as administrator.
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Mar 23, 2023 03:07
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Wingspan Digital is neat, you get accurate birb chirping when playing a bird's cards. Crystal Project is great in spite of its platforming, not because of it
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Mar 23, 2023 03:10
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Mescal posted:which yakuza games have pool?
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Mar 23, 2023 03:32
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I have weird tastes but Crystal Project is legitimately one of the best and most innovative games I've played since like, the original Dark Souls. Not that it's at all comparable to Dark Souls but they both have that sense of a nonlinear world to explore full of things worth exploring to find.
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Mar 23, 2023 03:37
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Ghostlight posted:i'm pretty sure every single one except the one set in meiji japan. nice. are they all the same or is one better pool? i tried kiwami and it seemed great but i want to try a different one
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Mar 23, 2023 03:42
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I think it was the 3-5 remakes that had a bug where the controls were way too sensitive which made it really difficult to hit the ball perfectly straight
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Mar 23, 2023 03:46
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Azran posted:Crystal Project is great in spite of its platforming, not because of it  I don't like platforming, how important is it
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Mar 23, 2023 03:47
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Mescal posted:nice. are they all the same or is one better pool? i tried kiwami and it seemed great but i want to try a different one Unfortunately it seems none of the Dragon engine games have pool, so it's only Yakuza 0, Kiwami 1, 3, 4, 5 and Dead Souls. It's a bit strange now that I think about it.
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Mar 23, 2023 03:47
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GreenBuckanneer posted:
You could play it doing not TOO much platforming, but I wouldn't bother. The idea behind Crystal Project is that it's a JRPG with a cool class system, but the world is made of big voxel chunks and you can jump around on them to do bullshit like get into areas you're not "supposed" to be in yet, find hidden powerful equipment, new classes, etc. A lot of the game, for me, was running from scary enemies and finding weird/powerful poo poo. The game includes a straightforward Big Road To Follow that is there explicitly to lead you to new places you can explore FROM, or I guess just go to the end of the game in the most expedient way. I think the platforming is what makes the game cool and unique, and if you wanted to skip as much of it as possible, I'd say the game would probably end up competent but middling.
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Mar 23, 2023 03:58
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GreenBuckanneer posted:
You can go hog wild and explore very early on by running from strong enemies and getting into some platform shenanigans. Or you can play leisurely to the point where you unlock ~20 fast travel points and mounts that give you high jump, slow fall, swimming, etc. that make the platforming much easier.
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Mar 23, 2023 04:15
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Mescal posted:which yakuza games have pool? 3, 4, 5, 0, and Kiwami.
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Mar 23, 2023 04:27
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Psychorider posted:Unfortunately it seems none of the Dragon engine games have pool, so it's only Yakuza 0, Kiwami 1, 3, 4, 5 and Dead Souls. It's a bit strange now that I think about it. I think the old pool engine is just super janky and they haven't hit on one that works yet in the new games. Like the pool "puzzles" where you have to hit a specific trick shot, you can perform the exact same input every time and when the game came out on PC people were frustrated that they kept getting different results. It turned out it wasn't randomized or anything like that, instead the ball physics were tied to current framerate. I love Yakuza and I love Yakuza minigames but I don't think they ever quite nailed it with pool.
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Mar 23, 2023 05:10
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Are the mirrors edge games worth picking up before the spring sale ends?
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Mar 23, 2023 05:13
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fit em all up in there posted:Are the mirrors edge games worth picking up before the spring sale ends? The first one is good.
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Mar 23, 2023 05:39
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fit em all up in there posted:Are the mirrors edge games worth picking up before the spring sale ends? The first one is really good when you get a section that really lets you get into the flow. Other sections will be pretty trial and error. The art direction is absolutely on point The sequel...? Ehhh. They tried to open it up to give you the freedom to make your own lines and capture that flow more, but I found it hard to care about running back and forth through tower blocks that all blurred together, and the missions didn't really do much to make me invested in it either. Definitely a letdown, even if you can find some moment-to-moment fun here and there.
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Mar 23, 2023 05:45
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just a word of warning for posters above, world of final fantasy on steam is framecapped at what i could only describe as a 'bloodborn' 30fps.
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Mar 23, 2023 06:06
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Started playing Wo Long, then got back into Shadow of War, then felt like playing Sekiro again and now I'm swapping back and forth between all 3 and basically that means I am loving hopeless at countering in all 3 games because they all work completely differently
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Mar 23, 2023 07:05
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The story on Tax Heaven 3000 has finally come full circle: https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/interest/2023-03-22/viral-visual-novel-about-doing-taxes-with-anime-girl-removed-from-steam/.196280
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Mar 23, 2023 07:18
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Flair posted:The story on Tax Heaven 3000 has finally come full circle: https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/interest/2023-03-22/viral-visual-novel-about-doing-taxes-with-anime-girl-removed-from-steam/.196280 I'm glad that it's found a safe haven on itch
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Mar 23, 2023 07:59
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it is the nineties and there is always time for demos: Super Indiemania ($3) (Time spent: 15 minutes) (# of Steam Reviews: 4) Sometimes you try a game that is cheap and looks kinda amateur because you think, well it's a passion project, there might be some love in the design... but this one doesn't have it unfortunately. I do appreciate the details the dev put into the various enemy death animations, but the gameplay and level design don't really bring much to the table as far as Castlevania clones go. The feel just isn't quite there, and the whip length is puny.  Super Mega Zero ($2.49) (Time spent: 10 minutes) (# of Steam Reviews: 15) What the gently caress!! This is sick!! Why did I never hear about this game before? It's a precision platformer in the Sunblaze/Meat Boy/Celeste variety but with math symbols as characters/powerups, and it has a slick look, it feels good to play, and it has a lot of constant shuffling of ideas.. within a few levels I was suddenly put into a horizontal shmup, and then at one point during a level i got to hop into a ship and scoot it around while shooting at stuff. It doesn't reinvent the wheel but it's a very nice iteration of existing die-and-retry platformer concepts.  Stereo Boy ($4) (Time spent: 4 minutes) (# of Steam Reviews: 18) Someone figured out how to fix bad splitscreen game The Medium: turn it into Captain Toad's Treasure Tracker. Not what I would've done, but this is a cool and chill puzzle game about warping back and forth between two parallel worlds, and rotating the stage around much like in Treasure Tracker to orient yourself, as well as collect shards used to unlock bonus levels. Didn't need to play this long to know that it's definitely gonna be up my alley, so I'll probably buy this one as well.  Rockin' Pilot ($1) (Time spent: 8 minutes) (# of Steam Reviews: 18) It's interesting to see that the dev of this game went on to make edgy "action" hidden object game Adam Wolfe and then this past month's AA release Scars Above. This is much humbler, a twin stick shooter that feels kind of like a high-polished Newgrounds game (the co-developer's name Gungrounds does little to brush that vibe off). I don't know that it's necessarily for me, I do like twin-stick shooters but the cramped screen is a bit odd for me. But it seems decently put together for a game that costs a buck.  Orcen Axe ($2) (Time spent: 5 minutes) (# of Steam Reviews: 6) This is another one that's just okay and is not really worth playing in place of other much better games in the genre. I gave it a go because it's by a dev that has been in the gamedev scene for a looong time (origamihero) going back to the days of The Games Factory and when the biggest indie release was Eternal Daughter (not their game but just giving you a time frame). But it's just kind of an ok platformer in an engine that feels pretty dated at this point.  Nadia Was Here ($3) (Time Spent: 12 minutes) (# of Steam Reviews: 31) Next, a couple of JRPGs. This one was purely a combat demo, battles only, so I didn't really get any vibe of the world or the characters. The combat system seems sort of interesting because it's got the ATB aspect, but you're dragging characters around into different lanes to attack enemies when their meter fills to the top (or cast a spell that could attack or heal an ally, etc). Each character has different abilities, like Nadia being able to steal weapons she can then use, and the mage being able to learn enemy spells. But without a sense of the world or what the vibe is for general gameplay, it's hard for me to even justify the 3 bucks. At least not when there's other stuff I want to buy.  Osteoblasts ($3.59) (Time spent: 20 minutes) (# of Steam Reviews: 100) Now this one DOES pass the vibe check. An undead skeletal JRPG jam from Moonana (of the upcoming Keylocker, a game I have talked about in a past Steam Next Fest), you're a newly reborn skeleton doing favors for a cat witch. The art is a mixture of cute and neat, and the battle system is intriguing because of how skills are installed via equipment and are heavily stat-based, not just in how lethal they are but whether you can even perform them (and then such stats also function as potential vulnerabilities/resistances). It's a neat concept and although the demo was a tiny bit clunky (no controller detection so I had to use M&KB preset on Deck) and it does that thing where character portraits and text are a different resolution than the rest of the game -- which I know people can't stand -- I think this is likely a pretty quality little game.  Mothmen 1966 ($3) (Time spent: 11 minutes) (# of Steam Reviews: 143) Okay, starting to get into the territory of games goons MIGHT have heard of. This one is the first of a series of crunchy lo-fi VNs called "Pixel Pulps" by developer LCB Game Studio (Varney Lake being this year's edition), and tells the tale of four people intertwined at a gas station beset by cryptids. It's told decently (though not exceptional in its prose), but the star of the show is the art direction, with a gorgeous limited color palette and striking illustrations to go along with the retro text (which evokes the days of early Mac games). I might be willing to give this a full spin based on the first chapter I read.  The Corruption Within ($2.49) (Time spent: 5 minutes) (# of Steam Reviews: 81) Truth be told, I was probably going to buy this anyway, after playing the dev's more recent game Blood Nova late last year. But I figured I'd try the teaser demo anyway, which runs very short. The environmental artwork is a bit more amateur but I still have an affection for this VGA-core aesthetic that Cosmic Void has with their games. It's not the greatest artwork but it feels authentically 90s in the same way The Crimson Diamond feels authentically like a Laura Bow game. This one has more of a gothic horror bent than Blood Nova's sci-fi shenanigans, but I'm still gonna give the full thing a go even if it's a little more archetypal.  The Long Reach ($3) (Time spent: 12 minutes) (# of Steam Reviews: 310) Undecided on this one but might go for it at the low sale price. It's a psychological horror game, the kind that is mostly thrills rather than brooding terror. Within just a couple of minutes everything's already gone off the rails, with killers and people crawling around weirdly. It's also an adventure game, but one controlled via gamepad/keyboard rather than the mouse. Which will make it suitable on the Deck, but also means it won't be for people that dislike inventory games where you have to actively move the character around. The game also acclimates you to the concept of hiding behind things so I guess running from enemies and hiding is gonna be a thing in the full game. The thing that bothers me the most though is the dialog system which almost feels like a real-time chat room that you're fast forwarding through, rather than just, people talking. It's a bit hard to explain without playing it but that's what it feels like to me. Given that the spring sale ends tomorrow, I'll just have to cut myself off here. There's a lot of demos I intended to play while the sale was going on, and I'll still play them, but with much less urgency (Who's Lila, Silicon Dreams, Papetura, and Heartbound to name a few). e: I ended up buying Butcher, The Long Reach, The Corruption Within, Mothmen 1966, Osteoblasts, Stereo Boy, and Super Mega Zero for a total of $22 altogether. I plan at some point to get Ladybug Quest and Beep's Escape, but not quite yet. I'll see if they go on sale anytime before the Summer Sale. So what will the next demo batch be? Well it's gonna probably be me picking stuff at random since nothing will be on sale at that point, just figuring out what to put/keep in my wishlist and what to disregard. The 7th Guest fucked around with this message at 09:05 on Mar 23, 2023 |
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Mar 23, 2023 08:58
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The problem I had with Shadow of War is that you'd be concentrating on trying to kill one orc and then would suddenly find yourself surrounded by 6000 orcs out of nowhere. I don't know if it was a difficulty setting or something, but Shadow of Wars answer to difficulty seemed to be "MORE ORCS!" It was quite frustrating.
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Mar 23, 2023 09:26
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I wrote this about The Corruption Within:quote:An atmospheric point-and-click adventure game with great music and moody visuals. The story is quite satisfying, you even get to make several decisions that impact the ending. All in all a solid indie effort, an easy recommendation for adventure game fans.
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Mar 23, 2023 09:28
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Communist Bear posted:"MORE ORCS!" morcs
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Mar 23, 2023 09:38
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GreenBuckanneer posted:
I absolutely hate platforming as a concept and as a mechanic and Crystal Project was still an incredible game, probably the only time that platforming has ever been fun in a game IMO. I don't think calling what it does "platforming" is really fair. Mostly it's because the game is chock full of hidden jumps you can make to reach places, there are almost zero "hard to make" jumps, and it takes a very "if you can reach it, you can do it" approach to things where you can "platform" your way up the side of a dungeon, enter from the exit of it, nab the final treasure, kill the boss and leave. The world design is straight up devious in how many different ways it gives you to get from Point A to Point B without making any of them too obvious. There's almost no required platforming, 95% of it is "Whoa I was just jumping randomly as I ran around and found my way up on to this mountainside and that opened up 12 new paths..." And almost none of it is "platforming" in the traditional sense - it's more like sequence breaking by seeing a jump you can probably make and then trying it and realizing that not only can you make the jump, but there's a ton of content down here you wouldn't have seen if you didn't sequence break your way down here. Its platforming is 100% spatial reasoning and 0% fast-paced twitch-action i wanna be the guy platforming. The closest thing I can compare its platforming to in another game is the process of bunnyhopping your way up mountainsides in gamebryo games. Except every inch of the game world is designed to reward you for doing that, instead of being a weird physics glitch you're abusing. It's not like, hopping across floating platforms where you die if you fall. From what I can remember there are maybe two "platforming dungeons" - one where you bounce on mushroom tops to reach various platforms, and another where you do have to make some fairly quick twitch jumps but it's not too bad. Outside of that nothing in the game ever felt like a platformer to me  My main legit gripe about the game is late-game balance, where fights toward the end of the game are massive drains on your consumable resources, but there have been some changes made since I last played to make that all more tolerable. The writing is very hit or miss for some people, I think the key to getting it to hit is realizing that it's satire - if you try to take it seriously it reads like it's poorly written, but if you look at it as satire of MMO players it's spot-on and actually legitimately funny at times. It's just that it has this whole game-within-a-game thing going on where the game you are playing is an MMO and the NPCs are other players, and when you talk to them, you're talking to the player, not the character. So a lot of characters sound like dumb zoomer weeb teenagers... because that's literally what they are. Anyway it's definitely not a game for everyone but if you're the kind of person who likes running around in job-based JRPGs collecting classes, leveling them up, chasing down ultimate gear, finding all of the treasure, etc. it is distilled digital crack. deep dish peat moss fucked around with this message at 10:08 on Mar 23, 2023 |
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Mar 23, 2023 09:46
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From what I played of the demo, Crystal Project's platforming reminded me of climbing poo poo and hopping around in Disgaea games for bonus poo poo, but as a primary game mechanic.
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Mar 23, 2023 10:05
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Communist Bear posted:The problem I had with Shadow of War is that you'd be concentrating on trying to kill one orc and then would suddenly find yourself surrounded by 6000 orcs out of nowhere. I don't know if it was a difficulty setting or something, but Shadow of Wars answer to difficulty seemed to be "MORE ORCS!" Are you basing that on your experience from the first area? Because there's a reason for that there specifically. You can absolutely isolate lone captains otherwise.
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Mar 23, 2023 11:20
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Jack Trades posted:Are you basing that on your experience from the first area? Because there's a reason for that there specifically. No it was the 2nd area, the 1st chapter/prologue city was fine. The 2nd area was a nightmare.
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Mar 23, 2023 11:24
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Communist Bear posted:No it was the 2nd area, the 1st chapter/prologue city was fine. The 2nd area was a nightmare. The mooks spawn from buildings in camps/fortress or approach the battle if they see it. They don't spawn out of nowhere. Causing an alarm in a camp/fortress will also draw already spawned mook and captains from further away.
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Mar 23, 2023 11:33
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Jack Trades posted:The mooks spawn from buildings in camps/fortress or approach the battle if they see it. They don't spawn out of nowhere. I wonder if I need to knock out camps/fortress options first then before approaching boss battles... I'd still say there's many orcs making it difficult to concentrate on a singular one (made worse by your character doing some completely different from what you wanted him to do when pushing buttons).
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Mar 23, 2023 11:59
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The 7th Guest posted:Okay, starting to get into the territory of games goons MIGHT have heard of. Excuse me, I have 23.3 hours in Nadia Was Here.  I remember it being quite good though the puzzle dungeons eventually get a bit repetitive.
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Mar 23, 2023 12:22
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Communist Bear posted:I wonder if I need to knock out camps/fortress options first then before approaching boss battles... Yes orc's strength is in numbers. One on one they pose little challenge which is why it takes some effort to isolate them. You can always create Ambush nemesis missions, or wait for one to spawn that can do it for you, like Hunt or similar if you're really desperate to isolate an orc. Also the moves that that rely on softlock, and thus cannot be aimed perfectly, like attack swings or dodges or executions, are all either completely invincible or can be interrupted by any other move, like the dodge or the parry, so that you don't get punished for not reading the softlock correctly.
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Mar 23, 2023 12:37
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Communist Bear posted:I'd still say there's many orcs making it difficult to concentrate on a singular one (made worse by your character doing some completely different from what you wanted him to do when pushing buttons). Yea that's console-itus for ya, the grossly overloaded button presses are awful in the Mordor games. Will you jump away, climb a ladder, or grapple an orc? Who knows!!
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Mar 23, 2023 12:52
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Big ups to rope kid and team winning Best Narrative at GDC for Pentiment and Josh then using part of his acceptance speech to dunk on the conference. https://twitter.com/shacknews/status/1638741715287781378?s=46&t=IW0MSOWK0Lh4VsB3wVLoOA
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Mar 23, 2023 13:15
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HopperUK posted:Who's the best Shadows orc? I like the one who rhymes all the time. And the one who's creepily in love with you. It's just so unexpected. I like One-Word. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ1Xbj3zu_g I also like the look of the Olog who is called "Dwarfhater" or something. He has a necklace of dwarven skulls... with their beards still attached to them.
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Mar 23, 2023 13:49
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A big thing I hated in Shadow of War was how due to the way they rebalanced the difficulty modes (ie, just shifted them down one from Shadow of Mordor) the new normal difficulty had every single orc almost unfailingly higher level than you by default. Which meant recruiting them inevitably required mindfucking them to drop their level down, which was both increasingly uncomfortable and unpredictable, and most importantly loving tedious.
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Mar 23, 2023 14:03
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