|
Axiom Verge's first tool it gives you is a gun, and lets you start blasting away while exploring the weird alien world you've been dropped into. You feel immediately up to speed and move through an initially linear area, but it starts opening up more and more as you go with novel exploration items. AV2, on the other hand, gives you a terrible melee weapon, an okay ranged weapon (with an abysmal rate of fire) and tosses you literally into the deep end to start off with. Enemies deal way more damage, they're much harder to avoid, and it's drat near impossible to get past them without eating chip damage or playing methodically to the point that it's a bit unfun. Your first traversal upgrades are just "moving in water doesn't loving blow" and "ledge grab". After a couple hours of hitting repeated dead ends, I finally found the first useful upgrades, one being a Shockwave attack that lets you finally get past some obvious cracked walls, the other being a Hack ability. Why the hell did they take a briskly paced metroidvania with an interesting focus on unique weapons, and turn the sequel into a worse, platformer-focused game where you are objectively better off running past enemies before the stealth mechanics show that you've alerted them?  I'm hoping that with these two abilities, I'll finally get into some meatier parts of the map/find some traversal abilities to offset the god-awful platforming. If it weren't for finding these two abilities, I was about to slam refund on this and go play Ori instead. I still might! Some of the best-in-class of this genre make it a fundamental design decision to give you your main attack verb immediately so you familiarize yourself with it. Hollow Knight's Nail, castlevania's whip, metroid's beam cannon, Axiom Verge 1's weapon wheel, why the gently caress did they choose to tuck the two first interesting things about this game so deep into the first two areas?
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 06:38
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 18:43 |
|
|
Agents are GO! posted:Memories of playing Breath of the Wild and Horizon: Zero Dawn back to back. Started playing BotW for the first time recently and I keep trying to click down on the analog stick to activate my Focus. 
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 12:29
|
|
|
Spiritfarer is a gorgeous game and I want to play it more but it calls itself cozy and maybe it's just me but it's a smidge too heavy to be a cozy chill time.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 15:20
|
|
|
 Axiom Verge 2 is an exploration-heavy metroidvania-like that takes place in an impossible ruined temple with advanced technology and alien races. The puzzles are a little obtuse, and the platforming has a weird momentum to it at times, and the combat mechanics make it a better idea to run past enemies than systematically fight each one. It's not Metroid, it's loving La Mulana! It's just a tonal whiplash going from the first game's heavy and obvious Metroid influence to this game's heavy and obvious (in retrospect) La Mulana influences. That's why it wasn't clicking at first! E: oh God, the game literally gives you a cryptic note from the ancient civilization explaining that they had to hide away a treasure beyond a certain room, and if you can sus out what room the game's referring to it straight-up leads you to the ability that lets you move freely in water. I don't think this could have been more obvious. bawk has a new favorite as of 15:40 on Jun 22, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 15:32
|
|
|
Len posted:Spiritfarer is a gorgeous game and I want to play it more but it calls itself cozy and maybe it's just me but it's a smidge too heavy to be a cozy chill time. Agree. On one hand, it's like yeah just going across an ocean on a boat doing quests, growing plants, giving hugs, on the other, time to discuss regrets of life and saying goodbye to new friends so that they can welcome oblivion! Cozy!
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 15:50
|
|
|
Len posted:Spiritfarer is a gorgeous game and I want to play it more but it calls itself cozy and maybe it's just me but it's a smidge too heavy to be a cozy chill time. I had precisely the same experience with Spiritfarer. Also most of the NPCs just bitch at you every time you talk to them, which gets old real fast.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 16:08
|
|
|
Yeah, Spiritfarer looks cozy outwardly but has both a heavy theme and some thoroughly unchill moments. Like one of the earlier souls you meet is an older woman suffering from dementia, she gets confused right at the moment where she's about to pass across, and you end up kinda pressuring/tricking her into going through. That just kind of soured me on the whole rest of the game.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 16:10
|
|
|
spiritfarer was so blunt with its allegory that it really hurt the events that you actually experience in the game and it just got blunter with every content expansion
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 16:26
|
|
|
SilentChaz posted:Started playing BotW for the first time recently and I keep trying to click down on the analog stick to activate my Focus. I'm not even sure where I picked that up (BotW?) but I somehow developed the habit of pressing B (on XBox, the button on the right) to pick up items so when I recently started a new Dark Souls game I killed myself a few times by, instead of picking up an item on a ledge or a rafter, backstepping into nothingness for no reason.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 18:03
|
|
|
The main game of Power Wash Simulator is incredibly satisfying and relaxing. Take your time cleaning off grimy poo poo and admire the shiny clean thing at the end. ...Challenge mode, obviously, is the opposite of this, where you have to clean the thing either in X amount of time or Y amount of water (speed vs precision). I wouldn't bother, but there's two achievements locked behind it and they're taunting me. 
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 21:43
|
|
|
Isn't there also an achievement that requires you 99% clean a job without getting a single individual items 100% clean? And considering how big the auto-completes the game gives you on big parts can end up, it's really hard to judge when to stop cleaning, say, a wall or floor.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 22:38
|
|
|
Red Minjo posted:Isn't there also an achievement that requires you 99% clean a job without getting a single individual items 100% clean? And considering how big the auto-completes the game gives you on big parts can end up, it's really hard to judge when to stop cleaning, say, a wall or floor. 95%, but yeah. Apparently the level recommended for this is the giant hand statue in the desert, as the individual pieces are so big.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 22:53
|
|
|
Read After Burning posted:The main game of Power Wash Simulator is incredibly satisfying and relaxing. Take your time cleaning off grimy poo poo and admire the shiny clean thing at the end. Read After Burning posted:95%, but yeah. Apparently the level recommended for this is the giant hand statue in the desert, as the individual pieces are so big. I've 100%ed the achievements in that game twice, once on Game Pass and once on Steam, and I'm excited that the DLC coming out next week is adding some more!
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2023 02:48
|
|
|
These "Don't take any damage" challenges in Street Fighter 6 can eat my whole rear end
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2023 03:33
|
|
|
Is Luke on steroids? Those arms are very upsetting to look at. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMQo0n-HQ-s&t=30s
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2023 06:42
|
|
|
I'm really enjoying Final Fantasy XVI but gear and crafting is barely even an inch deep, there's just nothing to it. Which doesn't get in the way of the game, at least, but it makes me wonder a bit why it's even there. There are only three equipment slots (not counting the three accessory slots), sword, belt and bracer. Only the sword changes appearance. It basically comes down to the game throwing materials and money at you so much that it's never an issue to upgrade, and the upgrades are just number goes up. Getting a better sword does more damage, better armour makes you take less damage. Whenever you beat a major boss, they drop a special material that lets you craft a unique sword. Which then has marginally better stats than the one you have. No buffs to any abilities or whatever, just more base damage. Then you'll probably find a better sword in a store 20 minutes later than this super rare boss sword or whatever. Accessories are a little better at least, early ones are boring stat boosts, but later ones directly buff specific abilities or types of attacks. Still nothing special, but slightly more interesting than the rest of the gear. Mostly feels like the game just has gear so it can have a little more RPG trappings and not just being a DMC-like game. Which I would be ok with.
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2023 13:11
|
|
|
My biggest gripe with FF16 is that dodge is on R1 by default and you can’t switch it to a face button without changing the entire control scheme, when just swapping it with Circle would make more sense intuitively (putting all your eikon abilities on R1/2). Why can’t we just fully customize the control scheme anyway it’s the year 2023 people!!!
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2023 13:57
|
|
|
I can live with r1 dodge because I instinctively use circle as the style action / devil bringer button anyway. Its funny how this game shares similar lock on issues with DMC5. It tends to target whatever and you just have to deal with it.
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2023 14:00
|
|
|
As the old saying goes: No dodge on face = total disgrace
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2023 14:02
|
|
|
I get wanting to have dodge on R1 because it should enable faster reaction times but not even giving the option to swap it with Circle sucks. And in FF16 specifically it seems like putting the dash-in command on R1 instead would make more sense because it's something you're going to want to immediately follow up with an attack.
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2023 14:36
|
|
|
Leal posted:These "Don't take any damage" challenges in Street Fighter 6 can eat my whole rear end Yeah, I had kind of hoped the singleplayer campaign would mean a move away from needlessly stringent "play the game perfectly" "tutorials" but they just rolled them in as side content. It also has a bad habit of rolling random reward challenges on NPCs that are either completely obnoxious (like take no damage!) or are asking for techniques the game hasn't explained (yet?) - what the hell is a wall jump? Probably doesn't help that the story mode is a surprisingly slow burn. And that it's too easy to get bogged down in loving endless clown car spawns of Mad Gear members.
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2023 21:11
|
|
|
John Murdoch posted:And that it's too easy to get bogged down in loving endless clown car spawns of Mad Gear members. There's an upgrade in the tree that says something like "makes lower-level enemies slightly less likely to attack you" but actually what it does is "anyone lower level than you will cower in fear when you approach" and it's very much worth taking.
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2023 21:25
|
|
|
John Murdoch posted:Yeah, I had kind of hoped the singleplayer campaign would mean a move away from needlessly stringent "play the game perfectly" "tutorials" but they just rolled them in as side content. You don't have to play perfectly, you just have to not take damage which you can do by exploiting how stupid the AI is. I beat these by spamming hadouken, and you can overlevel to the point where your damage output is much higher than the HP of the trainer by just....waiting to do those side missions if cheesing the AI is too tricky. The perfect parry missions are far harder for me, I still can't really read the timing on them. I'd also point to the sharp difficulty spike near the endgame as the real problem with World Tour mode.
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2023 23:36
|
|
|
Jokymi posted:Power Wash Simulator If this post ends up helping me 100% this game, you're going to be my new best friend. 
|
|
#
?
Jun 24, 2023 01:20
|
|
|
I really don't like psychic guards and stuff in games. It's dumb enough when like, the guards in oblivion know I did a crime and immediately try to arrest me only to instantly forget I exist when I tell them to gently caress off because I'm invisible. But I've been playing kenshi again, and I knocked out this guy, god emperor of this entire faction, and stuck him in his own prison because gently caress that guy. And somehow everyone just knew. And since everyone knew, they immediately aggro'd onto the rest of my crew, who I'd left just idling in the streets because I didn't expect this to happen. So now the whole city is dead. This could have been avoided! Just let me steal your leaders in peace!
|
|
|
#
?
Jun 24, 2023 01:25
|
|
|
You guys got me to try the Power Wash game and a bunch of achievements have been screwed up since April apparently Apparently there's an update next week that will fix them but still
|
|
#
?
Jun 24, 2023 01:54
|
|
|
Opopanax posted:You guys got me to try the Power Wash game and a bunch of achievements have been screwed up since April apparently Oh, bummer! Which ones and what platform?
|
|
#
?
Jun 24, 2023 19:28
|
|
|
Read After Burning posted:Oh, bummer! Which ones and what platform? A bunch of the level specific ones on Xbox. They've said it'll get a fix with the Bikini Bottom back though
|
|
#
?
Jun 24, 2023 22:00
|
|
|
The water temple escape sequence from Ori and the Blind Forest is genuinely one of the coolest set pieces in a game that I've played this year, and I loved every second of that mad-cap dash using the brand new ability they give you. Flinging around in all directions while collecting all of the goodies is a tough, but stylish, bit of platforming. The wind temple escape sequence can eat my whole rear end. They took every part of the first sequence that made it fun/interesting and decided "we can't have any of that, gotta get rid of all that poo poo." Feather the trigger button so you don't go too fast in our escape sequence, or else you'll get damaged by random gusts of wind that are different than the rest of the freezing-cold gusts you're riding to freedom. Die once while you're trying to figure out how to trigger the environmental hazards to open up the paths to proceed, then gently caress you, die a couple more times to this insta-kill falling boulder that happens to land exactly where you could see a safe spot. I'd rather do the Path of Pain again than deal with this poo poo. Path of Pain lets you work the system so the challenge is in the moment-to-moment obstacles between you and the end-goal, but there's constant health refills and other ways to entirely ignore the possibility of dying/starting over with the exception of the very, very last room. I'm stood at the furthest point I've made it so far, I've got 4 health left, I know there's about to be a shitload of icicles raining down on me that I will have a hard time avoiding because the glider you need to use handles like dogshit, and you're not allowed to heal. gently caress you, start over. e: I died because I saw an insta-kill rock about to fall down and land on me, so I hit the stomp ability which lets you move downward quickly, and all 4 health got shredded by a pair of wind gusts which did not loving exist while I was dodging icicles on the way up. Who is this for? Who sat down and played the incredible water escape sequence and said to themselves "perfect, let's do that again but without any fluid movement and lots of bullshit traps, because if there's one thing that people like about platforming setpieces, they like doing the same screen, slowly, over and over again" bawk has a new favorite as of 01:59 on Jun 25, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jun 25, 2023 01:52
|
|
|
I've been in the mood for good games lately, so I impulse bought PGA Tour 2k21 when I saw it at 75% off. All good, waited for the download and sat through five minutes of EULA agreements...then suddenly remembered that the series only discovered that you can press buttons to control golf shots for this year's release. Sure enough, the first thing you do in the game is set which analogue stick you want to use for your swing. I *can't stand* analogue stick swinging in golf games, every time I've given in and tried a serious golf game in the last decade or so, I've given up on it because of the controls. All I want is the simpler arcade-style button pressing. Solid chance I won't even boot the game up again, maybe someday I'll learn to look at games before I buy them 
|
|
#
?
Jun 25, 2023 02:22
|
|
|
Golf games figured out the three button swing on like the NES and gameboy wtf lol
|
|
#
?
Jun 25, 2023 04:37
|
|
|
ilmucche posted:Golf games figured out the three button swing on like the NES and gameboy wtf lol The more simulationist golf games latched onto stick/mouse swings and decided that was just how it was gonna be for years and years, with no alternative options. It's really weird.
|
|
#
?
Jun 25, 2023 04:43
|
|
|
Captain Hygiene posted:All I want is the simpler arcade-style button pressing. 
|
|
#
?
Jun 25, 2023 06:24
|
|
|
Just pick up a Yakuza game and play golf in that.
|
|
|
#
?
Jun 25, 2023 09:39
|
|
|
Or Everybody's Golf.
|
|
#
?
Jun 25, 2023 22:39
|
|
|
Everybody's Golf was fun, especially the opportunity to do impromptu golfcart chases with online randos wandering through the course. It's been so long that I'm struggling to remember, but I gave up on it after a while - getting too grindy in terms of the amount of replaying courses to unlock new ones, I think? I did end up going back and giving the PGA one another try, though. It turns out to have enough discrete control settings that I could disable the worst parts of the stick swings, so at least it turns out to be playable even if it's not what I really wanted.
|
|
#
?
Jun 25, 2023 22:51
|
|
|
I really liked Pangya on PSP and it's honestly one of my favorite games but it is punishably, loving deviously difficult and it's probably Too Anime(tm) for some
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2023 00:34
|
|
|
Like the final boss in the story mode straight up gets clubs and equipment that just drive way ahead of you with no recompense maybe its because hes a demon but gently caress. you have to basically win every one of the 18 holes and hope the ai fucks up at least like twice because he will tie or beat you every other time drat i just dug into some buried rage
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2023 00:35
|
|
|
in red dead redemption 2 you can praise AND pet dogs, but you can only praise cats, no petting. it's bullshit.
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2023 13:04
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 18:43 |
|
|
Petting cats should be like russian roulette, sometimes they'll purr and whatnot, sometimes they will
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2023 13:07
|
|