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Toxic Mental posted:Basically I just wanna say: Alien is a real good film with real good acting and the actors don't get their due. Ok, well let's talk about killing it. We know it's using the air shafts WILL YOU LISTEN TO ME PARKER? SHUT UP!
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Jun 23, 2023 01:48
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Cessna posted:I just bought the tabletop rpg, it looks good. It's terrific and it perfectly captures the feel of Alien, my group haven't done anything akin to Aliens (yet) but it handles combat really well and I think the core mechanics of the game makes it incredibly easy to make it feel cinematic since you're not getting bogged down by rolling dies forever.
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Jun 23, 2023 01:49
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I picked up Aliens: Dark Descent and I'm several missions in and I like it. It's far from perfect - while a lot of the core game design is really sound, there are bugs and things that could use more polish. Also, you can't skip in-mission cutscenes (except for the occasional prerendered cinematic) which makes it suck if you die during or after an encounter that is prefaced with a scripted sequence and have to reload an autosave from before it. I also feel like that would hamper replayability somewhat even though the game has customizable difficulty and random between-mission events and random marine trait and job choices, which seems like it might encourage playing the game multiple times. I think they captured the feel of Aliens very well. Sure you can kill lots of aliens in a mission, but the mechanics are set up so trying to fight them constantly is extremely against you. I didn't have a good understanding of the mechanics for the first mission and I had four of my marines end up with serious lasting trauma from the stress that built up. So at the start of a mission, the aliens roam around and occasionally hang out in vents waiting for you to pass by. I feel like the patrols follow similar logic in Alien: Isolation (or seem to) so they gradually drift toward you until they find you. Also, demolitions and gunfire cause noise which sends them running (but you can use this against them with the fact that you can detonate a deployed motion tracker to lure them away.) However, they inevitably find you or you're forced to fight them or human enemies or you'll stumble on eggs, etc. and the hunt begins. Aliens will spawn in increased numbers and will haul rear end toward the last place they think you were, and if they don't find you they run around at top speed looking for you. If the hunt goes on long enough, at certain break points big swarms will spawn and head right to you, and after that is defeated the hunt increases in difficulty so more and tougher aliens spawn. And at other break points, minibosses will spawn and patrol the map. So of course you can fight them, but your marines and your sentry guns have limited ammunition, and it can be difficult to not take at least one point of damage fighting a group, especially in cramped missions. But worse, marines get stressed when in combat and/or when aliens are actively hunting you, and every time a marine's stress reaches 100% it resets but causes lasting psychological harm which manifests as some kind of debuff for the rest of the mission. Enough levels of stress cause them to have permanent (until healed during long times in therapy) trauma, and even more levels of stress cause that trauma to worsen. And many debuffs and traumas cause further stress damage in that marine and/or the others constantly or in certain circumstances, which can turn into a spiral if you don't manage it. During a mission you can heal stress by consuming a medkit to pop pills and reduce the stress level back to 0%, but you have limited carrying capacity and limited availability of medkits in each level, and buying medkits when you're out of them isn't cheap. You can expend one or more tools to seal all the doors to certain rooms to create a temporary rest spot, which heals the stress of all marines (and stops the current alien hunt, if any) but again, limited number of tools on top of not every level having convenient single-door rest rooms - or many rooms to rest in at all. The Sergeant class can use Reprimand to stop all stress buildup for 30 seconds, but that costs a command point which regenerates slowly over time, but is the same resource used to activate grenades, flamethrowers, etc. so it competes for that a little. So fighting aliens if you don't have to is actually a losing proposition. Your marines wear out and your resources run out and the aliens escalate surprisingly quickly. Sneaking around is better, and if you mess up or need to fight to proceed it's best to have a saferoom in mind to retreat to. Sentry guns are also good for setting up safe places to hide, but I noticed a quirk with the AI where while sentry gun fire doesn't alert them, if enemies are killed by sentry guns more will very quickly spawn somewhere and proceed directly to the sentry gun location. It's funny at first but it seems like a losing idea because not only will there be a lot more enemies on the map, the sentry guns will eventually run out of ammo or get overwhelmed. Stress levels and temporary debuffs (but not lasting trauma) reset when you retreat from a mission, the hunt difficulty resets, you restock to a default level of ammo (but lose anything you can't carry, if you had more), and can refill on medkits and tools from your stockpile. However, every day that passes since the start of the campaign contributes to worsening alien activity across all missions, has a chance of a bad event occurring, and later in the campaign there is an actual death clock. So while it's good to retreat when it's bad, you need to be extremely careful about how many times you do it and you may need to send B-team marines in if your A-team needs too much time in the hospital for physical or mental harm instead of waiting for them to recover. Anyway, I recommend it for people who are Thinking About Aliens, especially after it has time for some patching.
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Jun 23, 2023 02:22
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That all sounds really, really cool to me. It also sounds extremely difficult, but that’s fitting, as any encounter with large number of xenos in that universe doesn’t bode well for even heavily-armed humans. Sounds like after a couple of patches it’s going to be great.
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Jun 23, 2023 02:35
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BattleMaster posted:I picked up Aliens: Dark Descent My big complaint right now is that the game likes to put rescued civilians in front of the Marines at all times.
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Jun 23, 2023 12:51
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Whats the performance like? I'd prefer to play this on PC but my machine is pretty antiquated but still above minimum spec. Got an i5 4670k and a GTX 1070.
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Jun 23, 2023 15:10
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BattleMaster posted:Anyway, I recommend it for people who are Thinking About Aliens, especially after it has time for some patching. Sold, I'll get it. Thanks for the review!
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Jun 23, 2023 16:14
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Lord Ludikrous posted:Whats the performance like? I'd prefer to play this on PC but my machine is pretty antiquated but still above minimum spec. Got an i5 4670k and a GTX 1070. My CPU is better but my video card is worse - Ryzen 1800X and GTX 1050 Ti - and I can run the game fine on High but not Epic.
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Jun 24, 2023 02:02
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game over man!
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Jun 24, 2023 02:35
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BIshOp!
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Jun 24, 2023 03:27
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Greggster posted:It's terrific and it perfectly captures the feel of Alien, my group haven't done anything akin to Aliens (yet) but it handles combat really well and I think the core mechanics of the game makes it incredibly easy to make it feel cinematic since you're not getting bogged down by rolling dies forever. I had them playing Destroyer of Worlds but they played super conservatively so the next time we played we talked it over and everyone wanted to just be space truckin'/ocassionally run into weird-rear end alien poo poo as like the climax of an arc so we went with that and I just have their travels intersect with the released campaign stuff between more regular missions/Outland Simulator.
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Jun 24, 2023 03:52
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Saw a video for the final section of Dark Descent so I checked it out given I don't care about the game. lol, lmao. Watching it all I could think of was Kong: Skull Island. Also, kinda breaks immersion a bit when the characters run so slowly they're under the thing they're running away from.
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Jun 24, 2023 21:11
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Sentinel Red posted:lol, lmao. Watching it all I could think of was Kong: Skull Island. Also, kinda breaks immersion a bit when the characters run so slowly they're under the thing they're running away from. Nice Prometheus homage lol
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Jun 26, 2023 00:29
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Greggster posted:It's terrific and it perfectly captures the feel of Alien, my group haven't done anything akin to Aliens (yet) but it handles combat really well and I think the core mechanics of the game makes it incredibly easy to make it feel cinematic since you're not getting bogged down by rolling dies forever. I also just picked up a copy of Another Glorious Day in the Corps, the miniatures game based on Aliens. The models are pretty good, and I'll supplement them with some 3d printed stuff. I don't know if I'll play the game much, but I'll definitely use the models for the rpg. :strip_icc()/pic4560972.png)
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Jun 26, 2023 15:54
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Sentinel Red posted:Same. It's so much better without the colony pre-fuckening stuff, just a total journey into the unknown. The colonists only exists to be killed by aliens. And on theatrical version they already have been killed by aliens when the film gets to LV-426 and we can skip to the good part.
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Jun 26, 2023 20:15
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Mumpy Puffinz posted:game over man! They're cummin on my walls, man!!!
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Jun 26, 2023 20:33
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https://twitter.com/arvalis/status/1673777401065783296?s=61 Here is a good painting.
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Jun 28, 2023 01:06
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That is a very good painting.
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Jun 28, 2023 01:28
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So like in the Avatar movies, the Space Marines are bad. But in Aliens, the Space Marines are good. Shades of gray....
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Jun 28, 2023 01:37
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I wouldn't say the USCM are really 'good guys' if you take the implied lore at face value: It seems like most of what they do is keep mutinous colonies in line (I can't remember if this is explicitly said or just implied in the film or its novelization, or possibly some of the comics).
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Jun 28, 2023 01:41
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IIRC the USCM Technical Manual has them quelling colony rebellions and killing space communists.
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Jun 28, 2023 02:06
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Yea part of the story pre-Aliens 3 (I think?) is that the Sulaco drifted through the space of the Union of Progressive Peoples, and being a USCM vessel they were royally pissed about it. e: might’ve been part of the story in Colonial Marines? Never played that though, so not entirely sure. Icon Of Sin fucked around with this message at 09:24 on Jun 28, 2023 |
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Jun 28, 2023 09:20
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The UPP doesn't show up in Colonial Marines, but they are mentioned in a text log in Dark Descent, and are featured heavily in Aliens Infestation and in the Colonial Marines Technical Manual. Probably other stuff too, I haven't read all of the Dark Horse comics or looked at the recent RPG - I wouldn't be surprised if they made it into those. The Colonial Marines suppressing a rebellion on Lethe is also a big part of the backstory in Dark Descent and helped create the conditions that let the Darwin Era cult thrive, too. They're only really the good guys if you need them to hunt bugs
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Jun 28, 2023 09:42
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Sentinel Red posted:Saw a video for the final section of Dark Descent so I checked it out given I don't care about the game.
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Jun 28, 2023 10:28
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BattleMaster posted:The UPP doesn't show up in Colonial Marines, but they are mentioned in a text log in Dark Descent, and are featured heavily in Aliens Infestation and in the Colonial Marines Technical Manual. Probably other stuff too, I haven't read all of the Dark Horse comics or looked at the recent RPG - I wouldn't be surprised if they made it into those. "Another bug hunt, Sir?"
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Jun 28, 2023 16:35
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Starship Troopers: Extermination is on sale now. -20% for $20. Guess I'm getting it now!
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Jun 29, 2023 22:35
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Pennywise the Frown posted:Starship Troopers: Extermination is on sale now. -20% for $20. Guess I'm getting it now! let me know what you think
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Jun 29, 2023 22:49
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Mister Speaker posted:I wouldn't say the USCM are really 'good guys' if you take the implied lore at face value: It seems like most of what they do is keep mutinous colonies in line (I can't remember if this is explicitly said or just implied in the film or its novelization, or possibly some of the comics).
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Jun 29, 2023 22:58
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The tutorial sucked. It just teaches you how to build a couple of things, but not why. I mean I can figure out the simple stuff but I don't know how it all interconnects. I played one round and it went well. It was pretty fun but a bit janky. Graphical lagging at inopportune times is annoying. Also I don't know what anything on the map means or what the icons are for. I guess that'll come with time.
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Jun 30, 2023 00:38
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Loving Dark Descent so far  I love the way ammo, stress, and alien activity all play into extracting vs pushing through to complete an objective. It’s close enough to XCOM to scratch that same itch, but still enough space to make it feel like it’s own thing. Seriously hoping for some DLC sooner or later, I’ll buy it embarassingly fast.
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Jun 30, 2023 01:31
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yeah, DD is great, because unlike fireteam, any engagement you have carries significant future weight. constantly weighing "how important is it that I clear that room or actually get to the objective without pissing off the hive and then make it more difficult later" is a cool decision that I don't see a lot from isometric tactical real time strategy games. its like they married tabletop wargame design to it, and it works real fuckin well for the most part
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Jun 30, 2023 01:43
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I still haven’t hung around to see the hive get enraged yet, as soon as the alien difficulty gets halfway into medium I’m looking for an exit. Usually by that point everyone is stressed to hell anyways, they’ve been thinking about surviving aliens for too long 
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Jun 30, 2023 10:26
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Thinking About Aliens (moving out)
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Jun 30, 2023 10:50
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Red Rox posted:Thinking About Aliens (bugging out and calling it even)
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Jun 30, 2023 12:38
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Thinking About Aliens (dusting off and nuking the site from orbit)
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Jun 30, 2023 16:54
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Icon Of Sin posted:I still haven’t hung around to see the hive get enraged yet, as soon as the alien difficulty gets halfway into medium I’m looking for an exit. Usually by that point everyone is stressed to hell anyways, they’ve been thinking about surviving aliens for too long trauma and stress is actually less of a problem than getting wounded, of course usually one leads to another anyway. but wounds keep troops in medbay and can rack up 10 days absent intensive care, which really fucks you hard. since i started to prioritize traits on rank ups like the one that auto-removes trauma after three days and the one that makes them immune to tired status, i barely have to pay attention to stress/trauma. although its good practice to use pills and/or resting to drop stress under the first threshold before ending a deployment whenever possible
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Jun 30, 2023 17:00
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It's payday, so I'm downloading the Aliens game. Just noticed there's a $4 DLC where you can buy a cat to sit in the spaceship, and goddamnit I'm actually considering getting that. These bastards know how to get me.
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Jun 30, 2023 18:15
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Make sure to say "Come here you stupid cat" when you buy the DLC
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Jun 30, 2023 20:17
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Fatrick posted:Make sure to say "Come here you stupid cat" when you buy the DLC Or save the money by saying "and you, you little shithead, you're staying right here" and not buying it.
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Jun 30, 2023 20:30
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Parkingtigers posted:It's payday, so I'm downloading the Aliens game. Just noticed there's a $4 DLC where you can buy a cat to sit in the spaceship, and goddamnit I'm actually considering getting that. These bastards know how to get me. It literally just adds an orange cat in the periphery of the various rooms you visit on the Not-Sulaco
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Jun 30, 2023 20:35
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