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More Next Fest Demo Impressions:  OK - SENTRY: A pretty decent tower defense game mixed with FPS combat, kinda like a combination of Orcs Must Die, Sanctum, and STRAFE. Basic gameplay has you put down your traps, turrets, mines, and so forth along the hallway(s) from where the enemies come marching to get to your core: while they get roughed up by your defenses, you also pitch in by blasting away with your guns and tools. There are also some nice touches like being able to shatter windows as one-off traps to vacuum enemies into space, alongside regular explosive barrels scattered about. Feels pretty good, but I will say it was a bit dry and a bit generic, not really having a unique core wit, identity or charm about it. Still fun though, and I imagine it'll be nice in coop: worth a look.   HMM - Soulslinger Envoy of Death: Standard FPS action roguelite affair where you go from room to room blasting enemies and collecting rewards to empower yourself both now and on future runs ala games like Gunfire Reborn, this time with a gritty Dark Tower-esque cowboy theme. Feels a bit style over substance: the game looks pretty cool, but not only it is all just assets (hello Sevarog) the gameplay was pretty generic, clunky and got old quickly due to boring spongy enemies, only having one gun for the whole run and the abilities being cookie-cutter. It ain't bad, but with games like Voidborn, Roboquest, Gunfire Reborn and so on having much more expression and pizazz, this doesn't quite measure up and excite me. Also I just can't abide a game that has revolvers but doesn't have a cool reload: they totally skip over it with this magic hocus-pocus hand-waving animation, and doing the timed reload doesn't feel satisfying or different from normal: c'mon!    OK - Apocalypse Party: Bullet-heaven/survivors-like action roguelite top-down shooter where you slash or blast hordes of enemies, level up, and face against bosses with your crazy synergistic builds. Was actually quite pleasantly surprised with this one as while there are tons of survivors-clonse, this one had pretty good combat with nice feedback and variety in characters/abilities/builds, and also it just had a really bizarre weirdness to it with crazy tonal shifts and general goofy premise. Again, it's not exactly unique, and is a bit clunky with bad translations, but it actually felt surprisingly fun with its wackiness and rose above the clones for me.   NICE - TEVI: Cute anime metroidvania with a focus on deep and stylish combat and bullet-hell bosses: if you've played Rabi-Ribi (prequel) or the Touhou Castlevanias, you'll be in familiar territory here. Overall it felt very smooth and polished: exploration/world design was a bit plain I'll admit, but the combat and progression was very fun, and I was really impressed that they took the extra effort to construct a special demo experience. Yes, it is anime so your tolerance may vary, but I'll say that compared to Rabi-Ribi it seemed way less anime that you'd think.   HMM - Simulakros: Warframe-esque third-person shooter roguelite where you pick your frame and blaze through randomly-generated cyberspace, stylishly blasting or smacking enemies while powering up your abilities and unlocking new frames. It's promising with some cool combat mechanics like timed dodges giving slow-mo, class abilities being nice and fancy, combos granting buffs if you keep them up, neat bosses and so on, but it is also pretty generic, lacking any really unique and fun abilities like movement tech, lacking enemy variety as it recycles the same dumb melee enemies over and over, and the world just being a series of boring generated corridors. Could be nice, but at the moment just a bit lackluster and repetitive.  HMM - ELDRIMAR: First-person soulslike with a focus on advanced melee combat where you need to use directional strikes to aim for weak points in your opponent's armor, ala Chivalry or Vermintide. I really wanted to like this one as I found the melee combat to have loads of potential: enjoyed aiming for weakpoints with appropriate horizontal/vertical strikes or thrusts, and they had a lot of varied armored opponents to keep you on your toes, including these crystal enemies that shift their crystal armor around every strike. World was very pretty as well and could be interesting to explore. However, the game just felt incredibly sluggish and tedious to move around in, was confusing to understand the mechanics which weren't explained properly for things like counterattacks, the exp/level system was dreadful, using the crossbow/spells was too slow to switch between to be of any use, being restricted to light attacks until you build up rage for heavy attacks felt annoyingly limited, and overall just generally felt kinda clunky and unpolished. Maybe I'll keep my eye on it though. FutureCop fucked around with this message at 02:23 on Oct 11, 2023 |
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Oct 11, 2023 02:16
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I don't know how far I am into finishing the ROBOCOP demo when I am going to see Soot's concert, but the game is not optimized. The patch notes mentioned the demo got better over last week and I am not seeing it. Most of the time, I get 40-50 fps just idling on medium settings and low doesn't improve anything. It is constantly dropping to the 20s when there is explosions, background loading on the map, and story cutscenes. Any time after you leave the tv station it struggles. Loading up the demo takes minutes to load and the fps counter is single digit. It already feels slow paced and people have graphical glitches of their lips melting into their teeth when they talk, assuming their mouth is moving correctly. It is a slow moving mess that makes the gameplay feel janky.
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Oct 11, 2023 02:23
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Scalding Coffee posted:I don't know how far I am into finishing the ROBOCOP demo when I am going to see Soot's concert, but the game is not optimized. The patch notes mentioned the demo got better over last week and I am not seeing it. Most of the time, I get 40-50 fps just idling on medium settings and low doesn't improve anything. It is constantly dropping to the 20s when there is explosions, background loading on the map, and story cutscenes. Any time after you leave the tv station it struggles. Loading up the demo takes minutes to load and the fps counter is single digit. I was wondering if that was just my computer or the fact that I didn't install the demo on SSD, but yeah, I had a lot of performance issues in the demo as well for my experience. Once it got a head of steam going where I assumed it finally loaded up all of the shaders or whatever, I had some decent stretches of gameplay, but still plenty of stutters and such.
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Oct 11, 2023 02:26
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American Arcadia seems like it could be a decent Limbo-alike (or are they Inside-alikes now?). The demo seems like it spells out the entire conceit of the world from the word go so I don't think we're looking at a mysterious world full of alien dangers but more about finding out the reasons behind of what's happening. While the main part of the game is probably going to be the sidescrolling it also has first person puzzle areas with another character thought there's only one of those in the demo. The developer's previous game was a first person puzzle game though so do what you know. You also occasionally use security cameras using that other character during the sidescrolling segment to help the main character along.
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Oct 11, 2023 02:55
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Maybe the Clutch Claw isn't great, but it brought us the Lance Clutch Counter which is dope as hell.
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Oct 11, 2023 04:13
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Sokani posted:Maybe the Clutch Claw isn't great, but it brought us the Lance Clutch Counter which is dope as hell. Hammer also got to have some goofy fun with it https://i.imgur.com/STd3xtL.mp4
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Oct 11, 2023 04:34
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Kibayasu posted:American Arcadia seems like it could be a decent Limbo-alike (or are they Inside-alikes now?). The demo seems like it spells out the entire conceit of the world from the word go so I don't think we're looking at a mysterious world full of alien dangers but more about finding out the reasons behind of what's happening. While the main part of the game is probably going to be the sidescrolling it also has first person puzzle areas with another character thought there's only one of those in the demo. The developer's previous game was a first person puzzle game though so do what you know. You also occasionally use security cameras using that other character during the sidescrolling segment to help the main character along. oh my god everyone in that trailer is so talky. i don't care if you got yuri lowenthal, you shouldn't have loud exertion grunts for every jump in a 2d platformer
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Oct 11, 2023 05:04
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Oxxidation posted:oh my god everyone in that trailer is so talky. i don't care if you got yuri lowenthal, you shouldn't have loud exertion grunts for every jump in a 2d platformer I hope you really like Yuri screaming OH MY GOODNESS THE ACTION I AM ABOUT TO TAKE IS NOT AT ALL IN THE SCOPE OF MY USUAL ACTIVITIES AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA I get the impression that it was a herculean effort to not have Angela say "This isn't a video game Trevor" in the trailer Hwurmp fucked around with this message at 05:35 on Oct 11, 2023 |
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Oct 11, 2023 05:26
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Empty Shell, sorry, EMPTY SHELL might have something going if you're looking for a top down action-horror roguelite with a distorted CRT look - boy that's a lot of descriptors. Though it actually leans much closer to an actual roguelike as unless I was doing something wrong there is no progression you get to make between deaths. You can buy upgrades for the character you're currently using during the level but if you die those upgrades and the money you spent and and still had are gone - the only thing you might get afterwards is a pittance left on your previous corpse with a new character. And with that said it seemed pretty loving hard. The first level is basically a tutorial, a nice spooky intro to the shitshow the second level will eventually turn into though that wasn't too bad until the minibosses started showing up. Still, its a roguelike, so part of the experience is learning how to deal with new enemies for next time. I kept pressing on and made it to the actual boss of the level which promptly killed me in 10 seconds. Fine, go back in... and get 3 minibosses spawning in the same room without even a chance to get anything of value yet. That's where I tapped out for now. I think its got a pretty good if basic combat loop but the RNG seems like its going to be an absolute fucker at times and if you're the type that doesn't want to keep slamming against a wall until you get lucky it might not be for you.
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Oct 11, 2023 05:41
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A small batch of Next Fest impressions before beddy-bye time: UGH - Vengeance of Mr Peppermint: I was really hoping this would give me nice River City Ransom, Sifu or Katana Zero vibes, but while it may look pretty, it just felt awful to actually play with everything just feeling not only off and awkward in terms of feedback and hit detection, but brainless, exploitable and repetitive with no clear strategy and no enemy variety as you just do execution after execution with no issue, making the only decent aspect of the game (being the pixel art and animations) quickly wear thin. It's got a cool cinematic presentation and intrigue, but it definitely feels style over substance: I like beat-em-ups so it makes me hope it can get better, but I'm not holding my breath.  UGH - Unawake: Second verse, same as the first: again I was really hoping this would be a cool melee-focused first-person game like ELDERBORN, Dark Messiah or Vermintide vibes, but I got nothing but an incredibly awkward and bad feeling game. Looks pretty at first, but the animations and hit feedback and loot and stats and gameplay in general are just AI/asset placeholders with no sense of design and just bad, bad, bad. Maybe I'm being too mean since it is an alpha, but I wasn't seeing any sort of interesting/unique/cool core mechanics either. I mean, at least ELDRIMAR, while being clunky, had directional melee and armored enemies that take advantage of that as a core focus: that's potential for interesting combat! This has got nothing: fancy stylish Unreal tech graphics do not make up for a lack of substance.   NICE - Laika Aged Through Blood: Finally, some good loving food. Not only does this game look stylish as all get-out with beautiful hand-painted graphics and animated cutscenes, it has just as much, if not more, substance to go along with that, being the very first "motorvania" as they call it: a combination of Metroidvania exploration with dirt-bike Trials Fusion traversal physics. Reminds me a lot of something like Yoku's Island Express which made traversal through pinball. The story is awesome and interesting, gameplay and bike mechanics feel smooth as butter and so much fun to get used to when I really feared it would be a hassle to get around, and combat is so cool with you being able to stylishly block bullets with the bike, time drifts to reflect bullets back, and use your revolver slo-mo during jumps to blast foes and then reload by doing a flip. Definitely check this one out. FutureCop fucked around with this message at 06:03 on Oct 11, 2023 |
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Oct 11, 2023 06:01
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pseudorandom name posted:How'd you feel about talking to citizens and solving crimes in RoboCop? Missed this question when it first came up, but actually I never got as far as that sequence as the game crashed when I finished the first level of saving the hostages in the TV station so I just knocked it on the head: it was only later on when I was watching other people play did I see the open world aspects you're talking about, which...I guess are ok? I dunno, part of me wants it to stick to just action, but then again the action did seem a bit too simple, so variety can be good, but it didn't do much for me...I dunno, haha.
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Oct 11, 2023 06:14
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Kibayasu posted:Empty Shell, sorry, EMPTY SHELL might have something going if you're looking for a top down action-horror roguelite with a distorted CRT look - boy that's a lot of descriptors. Though it actually leans much closer to an actual roguelike as unless I was doing something wrong there is no progression you get to make between deaths. You can buy upgrades for the character you're currently using during the level but if you die those upgrades and the money you spent and and still had are gone - the only thing you might get afterwards is a pittance left on your previous corpse with a new character. Seems cool: gives me real Teleglitch vibes if anybody remembers that game! I'll add it to the list and give it a go.
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Oct 11, 2023 06:18
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Sokani posted:Maybe the Clutch Claw isn't great, but it brought us the Lance Clutch Counter which is dope as hell. Hmm. Maybe my lack of understanding for all the Clutch Claw hate IS in fact completely based on the fact I play Lance and nothing but Lance. Because yeah the addition of another incredibly cool counter to the already cool counter filled Lance playstyle was super rad to me. Plus it looks rad and/or goofy depending on the exact circumstances.
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Oct 11, 2023 06:44
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repiv posted:they moved it over to DX12 and mostly just made it perform worse in the process, even if you disable the raytracing options they added Welp, that would explain it. It looked pretty good when I ran it save for the water/wetness effects having this weird super white reflection to them I didn't go too far into it after entering the police station though.
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Oct 11, 2023 07:28
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Triarii posted:Hammer also got to have some goofy fun with it this yoyo means violence
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Oct 11, 2023 07:49
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with lance, either you get cool clutch claw counters off or it is going after everyone else so armor break is their problem.
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Oct 11, 2023 07:56
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FutureCop posted:
This looks great and it's out in 8 days so I think I'll test the demo quickly.
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Oct 11, 2023 09:17
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I have been playing KOTOR, a game I haven't played in over a decade. The morality system being one-dimensional is a feature of the setting I guess, but drat the conflicts in this game are so simplistic. Dialogue is like "I was a Jedi like you, but I absent-mindedly threw a candy wrapper away in the forest, therefore I am now an Evil person and wear black robes and black eyeliner and cackle maniacally about purging the weak, as is expected of me, an Evil person". And the PC says "[persuade] No! You can go back and pick up the candy wrapper and it will make the world whole again", and the NPC says "[success] I guess you are right, how can you ever forgive my Evil?" while putting away their black robe and plastic imitation bone necklace and taking out their red coloured contact lenses. My god. If I were made a sequel, it would be the edgiest deconstruction of this poo poo as I could get away with, and it wouldn't be enough.
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Oct 11, 2023 14:28
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Antigravitas posted:My god. If I were made a sequel, it would be the edgiest deconstruction of this poo poo as I could get away with, and it wouldn't be enough. that was KOTOR 2, the game where your wise mentor scolds you for giving money to a beggar
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Oct 11, 2023 14:34
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 Not edgy enough.
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Oct 11, 2023 14:39
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Hwurmp posted:that was KOTOR 2, the game where your wise mentor scolds you for giving money to a beggar tbf if you dont let the beggar do a sidequest they won't get exp and will always remain a lvl 1 beggar, that's how the force works right
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Oct 11, 2023 15:15
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This is some paranoid poo poo but how does steam library sharing work? Would the person sharing the game to the Smurf account only need to be online for their library to be accessible? I’m playing a co-op with someone and I think they’re playing ahead but hiding achievements. I don’t have evidence so I’m not speaking on it but I’m just checking if this is possible.
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Oct 11, 2023 15:26
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They can play from your share any time you aren't playing ANY game in your library. It's basically sharing your login without sharing your login.
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Oct 11, 2023 15:50
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Black Noise posted:This is some paranoid poo poo but how does steam library sharing work? Would the person sharing the game to the Smurf account only need to be online for their library to be accessible? If person A shares their library with person B: - Person B can use the games while in standard Steam mode anytime Person A is not playing a game. - Person B will be given a warning of "wrap it up, timer is counting" if Person A starts one of their own games during this period. - Person B can continue to play the library games without issue if they're staying in Offline Mode. This is also the only one of these scenarios where you'd not pop achievements publicly (but I think it might offline, so it could sync next time they're online).
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Oct 11, 2023 15:53
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claw game handjob posted:- Person B can continue to play the library games without issue if they're staying in Offline Mode. This is also the only one of these scenarios where you'd not pop achievements publicly (but I think it might offline, so it could sync next time they're online). This changed recently (maybe not intentionally?). Steam will still know if the other person is playing even if you’re in “offline” mode. You now have to literally disconnect from the internet to get around this
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Oct 11, 2023 16:26
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if you can get past the extremely mediocre combat, Yohane the Parhelion demo (out next month) is pretty solid. it's Inti Creates doing another GBA-style Igavania but this one is patterned after Ender Lilies. it's got nice visuals, great music, and solid UI amenities. it's really just the combat holding it back because there's literally no comboing Darkest Abyss is a conventional castlevania and it's just okay. it gets the look and feel right but it's hard to know if a castlevania-like is going to be good just from playing the first level. demos i've downloaded to try this week: American Arcadia, Another Crab's Treasure, Asura the Striker, Between Horizons, Europa, Forgive Me Father 2, Go Mecha Ball, Jusant, Murder on the Orient Express, Overrider, Plungeroo, The Last Exterminator, The Last Faith, The Talos Principle 2, The Thaumaturge, Twilight Oracle, Tevi, Vengeance of Mr. Peppermint, Venture to the Vile, Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom, Little Locked Rooms, Koumajou Remilia 2, Octopus City Blues, The Diary, Sorceress, Battlecore Robots, Noreya: The Gold Project, Ete, My Work Is Not Yet Done, Peripeteia, Poems & Codes, Snap the Sentinel, Aureole Wings of Hope
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Oct 11, 2023 16:33
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Hwurmp posted:that was KOTOR 2, the game where your wise mentor scolds you for giving money to a beggar Eh, to be fair, she scolds you either way. The entire point of that (admittedly annoying) scene is that she wants you to think about the consequences of actions you take beyond the immediate. "Give money to a beggar" is not the best choice for it.
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Oct 11, 2023 16:41
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Yeah I like Kreia as a character even though she annoys me but the beggar scene is just poorly placed especially since there are other moments on that same planet that would have worked better for her "lesson".
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Oct 11, 2023 16:46
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To be fair right after another begger shows up to ask for money and then sells you out to a bounty hunter. Kreia was onto something
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Oct 11, 2023 16:47
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Darth Kreia may not have the best morals.
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Oct 11, 2023 16:54
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The 7th Guest posted:if you can get past the extremely mediocre combat, Yohane the Parhelion demo (out next month) is pretty solid. it's Inti Creates doing another GBA-style Igavania but this one is patterned after Ender Lilies. it's got nice visuals, great music, and solid UI amenities. it's really just the combat holding it back because there's literally no comboing I've played the Tevi demo before that, so the combat felt really bad in comparison, but that wasn't the only problem this game has: The bosses felt like they had way more HP than necessary, which was made worse by them making you fight the exact same boss 3 times in a slightly different arena 
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Oct 11, 2023 17:02
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FutureCop posted:A small batch of Next Fest impressions before beddy-bye time: I appreciate these demo impressions. Only one I've played so far was for Stronghold: Definitive Edition , it is the original Stronghold with new graphics, audio, some new missions, multiplayer support, and also Steam Workshop. It seemed exactly like the original Stronghold, which is great, and there is a MODERN right click to move (yay!). If it's not too expensive I will pick it up, The game is still solid, and I love all the little animations of your people baking bread or making bows etc.
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Oct 11, 2023 17:03
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Leal posted:To be fair right after another begger shows up to ask for money and then sells you out to a bounty hunter. Kreia was onto something
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Oct 11, 2023 17:51
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last night i tried out cobalt core which was cute and good like everyone is saying. i got an event where i had to save an incompetent frog from shooting himself with his own missiles lol. i failed and he blew himself up  also tried knight vs. giant which didnt really do much for me. pretty generic and boring. too much dialogue that is trying too hard to be funny. nothing exciting or standout compared to the million other similar games out there.
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Oct 11, 2023 18:11
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Rinkles posted:This changed recently (maybe not intentionally?). Steam will still know if the other person is playing even if you’re in “offline” mode. You now have to literally disconnect from the internet to get around this I confess I have never been person B to know this, I'm basing it on a housemate borrowing things on a Steam Deck and just going into Offline so I don't bump them. That makes sense since that might actually require flipping the Wi-Fi switch off.
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Oct 11, 2023 19:19
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New humble bundle: https://www.humblebundle.com/games/bandai-namco-fights-frights-and-fantasy tekken 7, code vein, .hack//gu trilogy, katamari damacy, tales of vesperia, god eater 3, pacman for 10$ which is a surprisingly awesome deal if you don't have those! 
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Oct 11, 2023 19:28
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Vesperia by itself never goes below $10 on Steam
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Oct 11, 2023 19:32
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StrixNebulosa posted:New humble bundle: That bundle's a banger
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Oct 11, 2023 19:34
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What didn't you all rush out to buy Lamplighters, now its a failure... It's only been a week...
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Oct 11, 2023 19:41
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Maybe this is the new turn-based stealth tactics hotness https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWncX-Ab0cc
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Oct 11, 2023 19:55
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