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Echoing the thoughs on Eiyuden. I didn't have that bad of a time, it's a pretty ok game for chilling and watching numbers go up, but it's nothing special, and once I didn't play it for a bit I never went back to it. Ghostwire for whatever reason was one of top 5 games I've finished last year, however. Also a deeply imperfect game, but its exploration is a blast, and vibes are immaculate. I hope they do some sort of follow-up because open-world collectathon that doesn't show everything on the map nearly immediately is a breath of fresh air.
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Jan 9, 2024 12:34
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After ~60 hours, I finally beat Factorio (well, "beat" meaning I launched the rocket). What a crazy time sink.
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Jan 9, 2024 16:40
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Have just completed Pentiment. What a great game, definitely worth snapping up on sale and I'm glad I went in blind. I do have a reasonable gripe* with it but that would kind of be under spoiler territory so I'll just say that if you like narrative, dialogue heavy games with really strong characters, definitely give this your attention. * The game's actual narrative linearity given the vast amount of dialogue choices. I would have also probably made it just a touch shorter but that's just me.
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Jan 9, 2024 22:43
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I just beat Chants of Sennaar. I saw a thread in the LP forum and it looked interesting enough to drop fifteen bucks on a whim, and then I devoured it in about a day and a half. Fun little adventure game, the symbology and translation puzzles were entertaining.
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Jan 9, 2024 23:26
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fridge corn posted:I'm sorry you had such a bad time with the game. As someone who has a lot of appreciation for this title I can honestly say the majority of your complaints are completely valid. Everything in the game is very simple and basic to the point where its practically a mobile game. As a big fan of the Suikoden series however i will say where Eiyuden Chronicle Rising succeeds is how well it manages to capture the feel and spirit of a Suikoden game and what that possibly means for the main title coming out in a few months. Yes, I put this game at #10 on my goty list purely because it's given me confidence in an as yet to be released title no to the first question, but "maybe" to the second question, in what i guess is kind of the punchline to my whole screed. i do think the game's art and music are great, and i have been trying to branch out into playing more jrpgs, and the characters and writing are just good enough that i'm interested to see what they can do in the main game. definitely not a day one purchase, but if impressions and reviews are good, i could see myself picking it up close to release. that said, i really wish they'd had a better hook at the end of this game than just "what will happen to these three characters?" (and also, i assume, the town guard who literally does nothing all game what the gently caress, and the sailor scout, and the two antagonists in the final cutscene). i'm really surprised they didn't build up the setting at all; you get these vague notions of a "league of nations" and an "empire" and presumably they're about to go to war setting up the main game, but they give zero context on what those are. really feels like they scrambled to figure out a plot that wouldn't require them to have the broader lore of the world locked in e: oh i just realized Eiyuden Chronicle Hundred Heroes is going to be on Game Pass so i absolutely will play it. i feel kind of silly having bought rising instead of using game pass, but otoh i'm glad i could play it on my steam deck. kinda feel like hundred heroes would also be a good steam deck game but i'm not gonna pay an extra $40 for that abraham linksys fucked around with this message at 01:05 on Jan 10, 2024 |
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Jan 10, 2024 00:51
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. Fwiw I only ended up playing it because it became available with my ps+ subscription and probably wouldn't have paid money directly for it. Are you a fan of the Suikoden series? Are you planning on playing Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes?
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Just finished Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man who Erased his name Imagine a LAD / Yakuza game with only two combat styles, no Legend mode, 31 Hours to finish it with all of the achievements, the secret boss Amon, as always being a comparative pushover and the game serving primarily as a means of bridging the gap between stories. Disgraceful. Except of course it isn't - the game was fantastic from beginning to end and I really liked having a more trimmed down Ryu Ga Gotoku game compared to everything else in this monolith of a series (which I adore with every fibre of my being, might I add). The story relies on a fair bit of prior knowledge / remembering details, but manages to be interesting and a little bit insane in the way RGG games do best. I was always going to play this game but I'm nevertheless glad I did. Pocket Circuit is back and is fantastic and fun as it was in Yakuza 0, the Cabaret clubs have found a new level of creepy / bizarre (thank God you can use the skip functionality and machine gun through them for the achievements although I'm sure someone, somewhere, enjoys them for what they are) and the combat feels genuinely great. It's a RGG game though so the combat kinda always does do a lot of work, but it's nice to be able to play Kiryu in a super modern game nonetheless. The new combat style - Agent - is unique to most things Kiryu has done in the past too, and the gadgets - something I thought would get in the way and made me basically default to the Yakuza style of fighting for a while - actually ended up being super fun and reasonable to use. I was already ready for Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth but now I'm Ready for it. I'd probably not recommend Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man who Erased his name as the first entry in the series for someone looking to get into it to pick up - there's far too much going on that relies on having prior knowledge - if you've never played one of these before then the recommendation still goes to Yakuza: Like a Dragon or Yakuza 0 instead. BUT if you're familiar with the series and want some more time with Kiryu then it's pretty drat great all in all. Roll on the next Chapter in this never ending tale of old Japanese muscle dudes taking their shirts off.
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Jan 10, 2024 01:41
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Just finished My Time at Sandrock after many pleasantly undemanding hours. I think I need a break from the genre, but I quite enjoyed myself.
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Jan 10, 2024 04:55
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Recently wrapped up the Super Mario RPG remake. Game still holds up remarkably well, even if the new additions make an already easy game even easier. I also recently finished another run of Final Fantasy Tactics A2 and have been chipping away at whatever constitutes its postgame during my night shifts. Still love this game to death. The plot might not hold a candle to its predecessors but I really appreciate the "fantasy sandbox" vibe it has going for it and the gameplay proper is as good as it gets for the Tactics games. I've never actually played FF12 beyond renting it at my aunt's place well over a decade ago when video rental stores still existed, so I picked it up on Steam during the winter sale. It's about time I put some context to all of FFTA2's references and guest stars.
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Jan 10, 2024 07:41
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Cambria Bold posted:Recently wrapped up the Super Mario RPG remake. Game still holds up remarkably well, even if the new additions make an already easy game even easier. I loved FFTA2 but it really suffered from that problem where the game gives you tons and tons of freedom to make this huge and mixed army, but once the final battle comes you'll get hosed for not having leveled up a few very specific characters 
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Jan 10, 2024 10:47
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i beat dragon quest on the game boy color last night. i was gonna play this as my goofy little downtime game during boring meetings and whatever, but then it turned out to be like 4 hours long when you play using fast-forward on an emulator, so i just powered through it while listening to some podcasts. played it on my miyoo mini+, which is a great little device. love to have a lightweight alternate to my big ol' steam deck that i can use for nes/snes/gb(a) games, and even some d-pad based ps1 games. dragon quest is pretty funny because it's one of those legendary "this started a genre" games but also is so barely-formed that it's kind of amazing that people latched on to it like they did. here's the entire combat system in dragon quest: * there's a normal attack command * you can use a healing item, or a flute that puts enemies to sleep * by the end of the game you have six spells you can use in combat. two of these are completely worthless attack spells. two of these are healing spells, which you'll use a lot. you also have one that can sleep enemies, and one that can theoretically stop the enemy from casting spells. i never got this last spell to actually successfully work. that's it, that's the strategic depth of dragon quest 1. you will spend the game attacking and sometimes healing. for like 10 hours, if playing at original speed. it's not exactly engaging! this is a game where you have two accessory slots and exactly two accessories you can find to equip in these slots, there is not a lot of depth to be found. that said, there is something engaging about the actual exploration of the world. dragon quest is nonlinear, you can walk anywhere on the overworld from the jump. i was posting the other day in the switch thread about how, as a child who started with the N64 generation of consoles, i did not understand JRPGs at all as a genre. i particularly did not like the combination of overworlds with a lack of clear direction (given most JRPGs didn't adopt quest logs and map indicators until, like, the mid 2000s) and random battles, since it made me exploring feel like a chore. i think i could see myself enjoying this dragon quest even as an impatient child, though, because of its small size and ease of combat. if you die it's not a huge penalty (hell, you even keep your XP, you just lose half your gold, which you can bank for safe keeping). you definitely can get hosed up early on by venturing out too far, but it's not a long walk back. the dungeons are small enough you wouldn't have trouble navigating back through them. i did end up using save states to avoid some exploration penalties later in the game when i was venturing further out, but early on, i just sucked it up and pressed on when i died. you end up writing down your own quest log in this game, which is kind of fun. my notes for this game are very silly:  i did end up having to use a guide for a couple things i'd missed - the rain shrine in the north i just totally did not see the path to (wonder if the game boy version having a smaller viewport made that harder than intended), the 70/40 puzzle i had to look up because i forgot what item needed to help with that, and i think there were one or two other things that were unclear enough i had to google. but honestly it felt easier to navigate than i was expecting. i was surprised how much i enjoyed the dialogue in this game, given how simple the story is. lots of fun townspeople, and i really liked the part after beating the final boss, where you can explore the world with no fights and can go back to the towns and talk to people. most of the townspeople seemed to share post-game dialog, but there are a few people with unique dialog, like the weird couple standing around on the edge of the one town who finally manage to link back up. i think my only real complaint about this game is the limited inventory means you have to do some backtracking to the bank to get the right key items you need to progress, adding some annoying walking. otherwise this was a fun, breezy time. didn't even really have to grind much outside of the start and the very end. looking forward to playing 2, which sounds like it has more going on. i've been warned i should use a walkthrough for that one, so i've acquired the prima game guide for the GBC version, for an authentic experience
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Jan 10, 2024 17:39
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I've played DQ 1-4 last year and it was fun seeing how the genre was forming. Each Dragon Quest is pretty different and adds new mechanics, but I think after playing them I respect Final Fantasy a lot more because that series was throwing away conventions left and right while DQ made very incremental progress. It really didn't help that they were all in the same engine on NES and for whatever reason not only movement was slightly laggy, but it kept the command menu throughout all the games. It's not like you ever talk to a door or search stairs, they really could've just let you press A by game 2. From what I've seen GBC ports seem better in every way except for the screen size. I've switched back and forth throughout the games and 1 was a blessing because it clearly made grinding more tolerable, but 2's zoomed in screen meant I could barely understand where I was. That said, they're a neat curiosity, but probably some of the weakest first-of games of any genre. Definitely not as fun today as SMB or Mario 64, Zelda, Wolf 3D or many other games.
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Jan 11, 2024 19:10
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I beat Ghost of T. I still have more on the DLC island to do, but I think I'm finally Switching to Elden Ring after almost a year off. Ghost was great. Gorgeous on the PS5, and for that style of open world, a top one honestly. (Behind the two most recent Zelda's of course). As for Elden Ring I'm level 69, and just breaking into the northern part of the map. I played some last night and forgot all the controls and almost died twice. I think I can sink my teeth into this, but I also think I may need to do something shorter before I play through this as my next "big" game. Also playing pokémon Violet on Switch, just started but my friend has perfect starters for me, looking forward to having a team of all three starters. This is the year where I'm really trying to go through my backlog (and play less Fortnite) but we'll see.
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Jan 12, 2024 01:02
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I've had Ghost of Tsushima loaded up to play again for a while, but other stuff keeps getting in the way. I think it's my favorite open world in terms of having a reasonable amount of side stuff to do - it's the only game I've ever platinumed, because I did practically everything in the game purely out of having fun. By the time I was ready to be done, there were like three quick things left to tick off the list to get all the achievements, it was great.
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Jan 12, 2024 01:20
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Finally beat all of Dicey Dingeons, including the DLC most of it wasn’t too hard, just required a willingness to rewire your brain to deal with insanely volatile rules Last stretch of the Halloween DLC was a motherfuck though. gently caress Pumpkin Spice. The last run has a Golden Path where there is only one way to beat each opponent, and that felt… I dunno, narrow and limiting? Other than playing the witch in the Halloween DLC, fun game.
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Jan 12, 2024 07:06
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Super Metroid: Subversion might be the best ROMhack I've ever played. With over double the amount of rooms from the original, completely new world, new music, new abilities, new pick-ups, and a ton of creativity, it's one of the best Metroid games of all time even if we count the official releases. I'll try not to spoil a lot, but if you're waiting for Metroid Prime 4, I highly recommend to play this game as it borrows a lot of stuff from Prime series in addition to the original 1994 game it's based on. Possibly the biggest inclusion is the logbook which acts as both a lore repository, a tutorial library, and a hint system. With the game being double the size of the original it's a very organic way to remind players of what they've seen and even tell them what else they need to do by featuring "obsticles" section with large red markers for unsolved puzzles. This didn't actually help me from getting stuck, as by the time I realized I needed it I didn't understand how it works. My fault completely, frankly, but I do wish a tab called "Need new weapons" was a little more heavy on Ice Beam mention, as I saw it, read it, saw the big "UNSOLVED" and figured I need a Plasma Beam or something. Even now I feel like other hints are much better at reminding you what exactly you need, mentioning tight passages, gusts of wind, lasers, and so on. The game does a pretty wonderful job of navigating the player through its mazes and I can remember only a few times where I went somewhere I didn't need to and ended up getting stuck, like with aforementioned Ice Beam where, after getting it, I remembered a nearby puzzle and went off on a loop around the world going away from my actual goal. The game is still a hack, so it's clear that there are some things they couldn't change. Most bosses are about the same, with some being given a twist that's a bit too ROMhacky (Spore Spawn now has Mega Man-esque disappearing blocks and is on top of a much taller room?), but a few battles do have very interesting remixes. However, there are a LOT of things that are changed from the original in a way that feel like a miracle. For example, multiple times throughout the game player will change the state of the world! You remember those rare things in Metroid series where a sector would blow up in Fusion or when a place would get overtaken by ice in Dread? This game does this, but I'd say what it does is even cooler. Some new mechanics also feel like they don't belong in Metroid, but in a good way. Instead of feeling out-of-place, I was just constantly surprised by this being a mod of a 30-year-old game. One thing that's pretty much completely changed is the pick-up system. I don't care much for pick-ups in Metroid games. Getting 100% is my goal at the beginning, but after picking up samey upgrades I lose interest. After all, getting your 48th missile pick up just feels prefuntory. Subversion goes the Prime way of balancing ammo adding its own touch which makes it much more appealing: Super Missiles cost 5 ammo, but Power Bombs cost 10, which means ammo pickups are much more desireable, not to mention that there are two varieties of them - one adding 5 to your max, and another adding 10. Even beyond that, there are completely new pickups that make the game so much more interesting. Refuel tanks, damage and charge amps, space jump boosts all feel extremely important and made me feel way cooler and stronger than any pick-up from an official Metroid did in the past 20 years (except for E-tanks, I guess, those always felt important). There is nearly nothing negative I can say about this game. Its pacing and new power-ups, new mechanics and enemies all add up to something that feels completely unique. The world is divided into even more areas than the original which helps make it memorable despite its way bigger size (don't worry, authors didn't just take Norfair and added 50 more rooms to it), and the surprises this game has in store rival official Metroid games. Looking at 100% item map after beating the game it might be the case that I missed a completely optional area? Not to mention there are challenges in the menu that push you to go for specific playthroughs and tell you what kind of things are possible (various skips and recommended times for speedrunners). If there's one thing that's a bit dated it's the OG Super Metroid weapon switch. The game has one more item on your select bar than the original, so by the end of the game it leads to mashing Select way too much. Other than that? This is by all accounts Super Metroid 2.
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Jan 12, 2024 13:42
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Coming back to it after many years, I finally beat a full run of FTL: Advanced on easy which can be notorious for frustrating RNG, but not so awful if you stick it out and figure out how you're supposed to play. Now that I feel like I get it, I can do a bunch of challenges to unlock the other ships and layouts, then beat the game with those as well. 2nd wave of the final fight can suck an rear end.
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Jan 12, 2024 17:14
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Cultic is a pretty good shooter, just shy of great. Just needs a little more enemy variety, a little better pathfinding for enemies, and a way to make a boss fight that doesn't suck rear end. Other than that it's doing pretty much everything right.
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Jan 12, 2024 17:42
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sirtommygunn posted:Cultic is a pretty good shooter, just shy of great. Just needs a little more enemy variety, a little better pathfinding for enemies, and a way to make a boss fight that doesn't suck rear end. Other than that it's doing pretty much everything right. has anyone made a list of all the good boss fights in first person shooters? because i feel like you could include every shooter ever made and the list would be maybe 15 items long at best
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Jan 12, 2024 18:08
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abraham linksys posted:has anyone made a list of all the good boss fights in first person shooters? because i feel like you could include every shooter ever made and the list would be maybe 15 items long at best This issue would make a great thread.
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Jan 12, 2024 18:21
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TheMostFrench posted:Coming back to it after many years, I finally beat a full run of FTL: Advanced on easy which can be notorious for frustrating RNG, but not so awful if you stick it out and figure out how you're supposed to play. Now that I feel like I get it, I can do a bunch of challenges to unlock the other ships and layouts, then beat the game with those as well. Man, launching FTL and hearing that title music start is forever an S-tier moment in gaming. Doesn't even matter how many times you've heard it.
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Jan 12, 2024 20:07
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abraham linksys posted:has anyone made a list of all the good boss fights in first person shooters? because i feel like you could include every shooter ever made and the list would be maybe 15 items long at best the Metroids Prime Turbo Overkill Black Mesa some of the Serious Sams, maybe Daud in Dishonored Painkiller Cultic doesn't have the best boss fights, but the Asylum Grounds are really good at making you feel like a one man army Hwurmp fucked around with this message at 21:25 on Jan 12, 2024 |
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Jan 12, 2024 21:17
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Just beatFar Cry Primal I bought it cheap years ago, saved it to stratch the ubisoft open world itch whenever I got it.
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Jan 13, 2024 02:57
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Discendo Vox posted:This issue would make a great thread.
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Jan 13, 2024 05:36
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TheMostFrench posted:Coming back to it after many years, I finally beat a full run of FTL: Advanced on easy which can be notorious for frustrating RNG, but not so awful if you stick it out and figure out how you're supposed to play. Now that I feel like I get it, I can do a bunch of challenges to unlock the other ships and layouts, then beat the game with those as well. The fun part is that the worst phase of the big boss depends on your build! Great game.
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Jan 13, 2024 21:37
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Just beat Blood West, posting my steam review here: As a fan of exploration imm sims with lite RPG elements like Thief, System Shock, Weird West, and STALKER, and as a fan of antique wild west weaponry as seen in Hunt Showdown, I had a nice time with this! If you're a fan of these properties below, then I think you'll have a good time too: 1) Sneaking around and exploring big, hostile environments and hoovering up all the cool and unique loot that has been finely crafted by the designers to be hidden down every path, nook and cranny in secret caches for you to find. 2) Deadly and intense combat that, while possible to deal with, you'll want to avoid with stealth and caution due to aggressive, high-damage enemies and your weapons being antique wild west implements that are slow to fire and reload. 3) Hardcore mechanics that punish you for sloppy play by progressively cursing your character for every death, which can only be recovered from through quests or expensive items (can't reload your save since it's all autosave-only). 4) RPG-ish build customization through a lot of interesting trinkets, weapons and skills with very unique properties beyond just simple statistical changes that allow you to change up your playstyle. That's not to say it's all sunshine and rainbows though. Some rough aspects: 1) Only having two weapon slots, one for something big and another for something small, can feel quite annoyingly limiting. For example, your instinct might be to have a shotgun for trouble, a pistol for general use, and a knife for stealth, but that's three, and you can only have two at a time. Therefore you either need to get good at awkwardly switching weapons quickly in your inventory, or just make some hard choices to limit yourself. 2) Don't come to this for the story. Yes, there are some fun characters and events, but for the most part the story is non-existent, with the worst being the ending, which felt incredibly unsatisfying (and that's coming from someone who's perfectly fine with doom and gloom endings). 3) As much as you can build your character in all sorts of ways, I don't think it would be significant enough for replayability beyond self-imposed challenge runs: the way its balanced feels like you're always gonna play somewhat the same as a jack of all trades. In particular the skill tree felt awkwardly skewed, with the bulk of them going towards melee. 4) As the game went on, it did start to drag for me a bit. It tries its best to keep changing things up which is nice but it wasn't as much as I'd like. Furthermore, some events that should've been great, like the final boss and some other dungeons, felt a bit lackluster.
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Jan 13, 2024 22:09
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i beat Marvel's Spider-Man a few days ago. i was going to play the DLC before i wrote this up, but it turns out after 20 hours of web-swinging in the base game (and 16 in Miles Morales) I'm ready to move on. the DLC is not that long (only 6-7 hours if you focus on the story per HLTB) but is also just not that engaging, and it amps up the number of enemies you have to hard-counter and do specific moves on and I just don't have the effort for it. i think i'm gonna leave it installed on my Deck as long as I have room and try to dip back in to play a little bit at a time on the easiest setting whenever I need a break from whatever I'm playing, just so I can see the rest of the story. that said: I really liked this! I was expecting to not like the story but I'll be damned if I don't find this Peter Parker as charming as MJ does. they have some wonderful relationship scenes in this, and it really might be my favorite version of Peter I've ever seen on screen. i feel like every new piece of Marvel media is even more in medias res than the last one - does Uncle Ben even get mentioned in this game, outside of a couple things May says offhand? - and i kinda dig that. no more origin stories! well, except for Miles, but he has a less-defined one (especially in a world where Peter Parker is, uh, alive without any timeline shenanigans). his stuff was the weakest part of this game by far, and i'm 50/50 on whether they should have included him in it at all - it's already a very overstuffed story. but i do like the idea that Miles is now a central part of the Spider-Man franchise and should always be included. maybe the next MCU reboot will get there, or more likely, a lovely 6-episode Disney+ show no one watches, as is the way of things one nice aspect of this is that they can drop in random villains and it doesn't feel cheap. when you establish that Peter's eight years into doing this and is a whole 23 years old (ancient by Spider-Man standards - and the way they treat the Peter/MJ story you'd think he was 35), you can throw a Vulture or Rhino or Electro into the mix without it feeling like they're cluttering up the story. general story spoilers: the main negative is that I thought Martin Li got pretty loving shortchanged; as someone who had never heard of Mister Negative before this game I was kind of excited by a new villain but he barely gets to do anything, and he really doesn't get to display a personality. I could not buy him being as evil as he was, especially since the game really didn't explain the split-personality thing so they never contextualized him working for FEAST. I really thought the Doc Ock reveal was too late into the game, but I did appreciate that he was already going down this path before the final heel turn - I figured the Raft plans and the scorpion stinger blueprints were foreshadowing, but didn't consider that he was already working on them for nefarious reasons at that point, so that was fun. and, well, having the supervillain cause a respiratory illness pandemic in NYC and Aunt May dying of it sure does hit a certain way to me, someone who was living in NYC during Covid lockdowns and had family affected by it (though thankfully didn't lose anyone to it). the least realistic part of this superhero game is the part where people go to the the open world is an open world, and has the problem that Miles Morales didn't: way too many side things. did all the backpacks and photos, but sorry Harry's Mom, I'm not doing these pollution side missions that genuinely feel like they fell out of Spider-Man 2 for the PS2 (right down to half the missions having weird fog effects that kill the draw distance). also the random crimes are just a bad mechanic. I think they had the idea of "people don't like icons on the map, what if some of our stuff was random instances instead" but it turns out when you put a completion counter and gate unlocks behind it, it still just feels like more loving icons on the map except they're more annoying because they appear and disappear randomly. the combat is worse than Miles Morales because the gadgets just aren't fun to use, and you have to use them so much for hard counters. Miles has lots of hard counters but most of them use the Venom Powers, and that feels good as hell. this, not so much. like I said, this is the big reason I'm not doing the DLC; I've gotten the fun I can out of this combat. I'm hoping Spider-Man 2 switches it up more. similarly, the stealth was so tiring that by the end of the game I was just running in and doing the combat (when you have the option), since inevitably even if you do all the stealth takedowns you'll probably have to fight a couple more waves of enemies after. i've avoided posting number ratings so far this year, but i feel like the easiest way to explain this game is that it's like a 3 star open world game with a 4 star superhero story, and good superhero stories are rare enough these days that I was as delighted by it as i was by Miles Morales. if I end up picking up a PS5 for FF7 Rebirth, I'm absolutely going to get the bundle with 2, though I'll probably wait a few months to play it so I don't get burned out on the combat again. very excited to see the outer boroughs
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Jan 14, 2024 02:40
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abraham linksys posted:i finished chants of sennaar today. i started this late last year in the runup to goty and, three hours in, i didn't think it would make my top 10, so i set it down. having now finished, it wouldn't quite make my top 10, but goddamn did it come close. Finished CHANTS this weekend too and I loved it. The puzzles/language deduction mechanics are almost always very intellectually satisfying. They aren't too hard, you could brute force it if you want, but I think they are just really solidly designed puzzles that give you a burst of happy juice when you figure it out. Even if you think the puzzles are too easy, the environments are BEAUTIFUL. I loved every second hanging out in the tower. It's got that kind of SABLE artstyle that makes everything feel like a painting or something.     
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Jan 14, 2024 05:25
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Beat Lunacid, which is a cool fromsoftlike made by the person who also made Spooky's Jump Scare Mansion. Very cool mysterious vibes, great music and atmosphere. Nice selection of weapons, although ultimately combat was pretty simplistic so there's not that much strategy other than having an element the enemies are weak to (and once I found my mainline weapon I stopped paying attention to even that). My one gripe would be the lack of minimap - even the first level was at times too samey and I ended up going in circles a lot. Unfortunately the level design is not good enough to allow intuitive traversal like in Dark Souls. I tried to play organically until about the halfway point, but after that I just opened a guide on the side. And it turned out I was missing a lot. Still it's a pretty cool game and impressive for a one person project. I got it back when it was in EA at 1/3 the current price and it was absolutely worth it.
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Jan 14, 2024 12:12
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i finished Momodora: Moonlit Farewell last night, 110% map completion with only an optional boss rush left between me and the last 1%. took about 8 hours. the previous Momodora game really blew me away when i played it in 2017. i've always had a soft spot for the metroidvania genre but i'm terrible at platforming, so having a vaguely dark souls-inspired one (re: there's animation priority and a dodge roll with iframes) with more of a focus on combat was right up my alley. the art and music were beautiful and i liked the world well enough, but i really just enjoyed every moment of gameplay in Momodora 4 in Moonlit Farewell... not so much, unfortunately. i was looking forward to this game because of how much i'd liked 4, but i tried to keep my expectations low since the developer's last few games seemed to go through some rough development cycles. in the end, this game certainly met my low expectations, but also feels like a game that just didn't quite come together like how i (and the developer) wanted it to. the core flaw here is the combat. you still have the dodge roll and animation priority and a "sigil" system where you can equip different perks you find in the world. unfortunately, none of this feels particularly good this time around. the enemy tells are awkward - maybe i got too spoiled by spiderman, where the "spidey sense" tell always just means "press dodge right now," but in momodora, many enemies will emit a "about to do a big move" indicator several seconds before they actually do their attack. with so many enemies having very wide and fast attacks, it almost feels more like timing a counter in super mario rpg than responding to a tell in a normal way - just trying to remember the exact length of time before an enemy attack comes out. you never get an airborne dodge, which keeps things grounded and thus less fun. while most enemies don't hurt you on contact, some of the largest ones do, making it almost impossible to dodge roll through them without being hurt - annoying when you're in tight combat areas and get cornered. the sigils are not transformational enough to be interesting, but also make it trivially easy to skip 90% of the combat. this is one of those "well, if you wanted the game to be more fun, you shouldn't have equipped the item that lets you ignore most of the mechanics" problems - there's a sigil that gives you a one-hit barrier when you use a heal, and many sigils that give you magic regen so you can cast your heal more, and if you combine those together you can literally tank everything through the final boss of the game by just standing on it ignoring mechanics and healing through everything. if i played through this again, i guess i could try equipping something less broken, but none of the sigils are particularly interesting. there's no real logic to when you get the sigils you do, either. the only thing you can use money on in this game is buying some sigils from one npc, and one of the last sigils you get, long after you've bought the last sigil from that npc, is one that will earn you extra money from enemies. what the gently caress? if you told me all the sigil placement in this game was randomized i'd believe you, because it makes no loving sense. so that's combat. for something i'm slightly more positive on, i do think the world is beautiful and great to explore from an aesthetic "what's the next room gonna look like?" perspective. unfortunately, the platforming is trivial, and i think that lets this game down specifically because the combat is so bland. i have a love/hate relationship with tricky platforming: i like it when the stakes are low (i respawn at the start of the room) and hate when the stakes are high (i lose 10 minutes of progress and have to redo a bunch of fights because i fell on a spike). that said, this game absolutely could have used some tricky platforming. it seriously feels like an entire layer of optional challenge is just missing from this game - you unlock a jump power up near the end that you basically never use! the movement in this game feels tight enough it absolutely could have used some rooms where you have to traverse some spikes instead of just fighting more guys. as the first 2024 game i've completed, facing down a big slew of big games in the next couple months, i think this game was fine. it didn't overstay its welcome, it provided a good-enough follow-up to a game i have a soft spot for, and it was certainly an easy play-through. but drat if there isn't a lot of potential here wasted by the bad combat system. i really hope this developer can try to break out of the sidescrolling realm entirely and do something different for their next game, they have made so many beautiful environments but don't seem to have a good read on how to make a game like this cohere (which, to be fair, is loving hard; there are many higher-budget metroidvanias with problems like what i'm describing). which, to leave on one note of optimism: this game has a lot more storytelling than the last momodora game, and really nails the dialogue and characters and cutscenes. i think that stuff totally lands and makes me think this developer could do a lot with a more story-heavy game. gimmie a bombservice adventure game or something, this art would be incredible in a smaller scale, less-action-focused game That Dang Dad posted:Even if you think the puzzles are too easy, the environments are BEAUTIFUL. I loved every second hanging out in the tower. It's got that kind of SABLE artstyle that makes everything feel like a painting or something. i really want to see a behind the scenes on the art and level design of this game, like an editor view showing everything in an area connected. i have to imagine most of the game is developed as independent screens (e.g. i don't think all of the level warrior temple actually exists as a coherent physically modeled space), but think at least the outdoor areas in the first and third sections might have been built up as a single piece of geometry abraham linksys fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Jan 14, 2024 |
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Jan 14, 2024 16:30
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Solar Ash beaten. Interestingly enough it felt very similar to the Gravity Rush games. Solid game though, doesn't overstay it's welcome too much. Didn't feel like beating it another two times to get all the trophies though.
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Jan 14, 2024 20:40
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hello has anyone beaten tf2 and how did you do it tia
databasic fucked around with this message at 00:12 on Jan 15, 2024 |
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Jan 14, 2024 23:48
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Just beat Under the Waves, a nice and chill story-driven game about a guy who tries to escape his troubles by taking an assignment living on the bottom of the ocean. It's pretty short, but you get a good-sized underwater map that you can freely explore in a little submersible. No combat of any kind, just driving or swimming around doing routine tasks, taking pictures of wildlife, exploring caves and old wrecks, and occasionally trying to untangle the corporate malfeasance of the shady oil company you work for. I liked it quite a bit.
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Jan 15, 2024 04:31
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databasic posted:hello has anyone beaten tf2 and how did you do it tia Titanfall? It's like five hours long
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Jan 15, 2024 10:45
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databasic posted:hello has anyone beaten tf2 and how did you do it tia You have to get all the hats.
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Jan 15, 2024 14:14
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I beat Star Wars: Jedi: Survivor last night on the PC. Still a lot of exploring/collectables to get. While I thought the combat and enemy variety was better than Fallen Order, the environments weren't as interesting or varied and it doesn't feel like they were quite as clever with placing the climbable bits and bobs. Why is this gray scaffolding here on the cliffs of Jedha next to a Jedi monastery? Who knows?! They also throw some pretty challenging jumping puzzles right out of the gate. Long stretches of ziplines that you have to jump between followed by wall running followed by more ziplines kind of sucks when you're trying to get the controls down and falling means restarting a ways back. When the real fun is slicing up stormtroopers, those bits are standing in the way of the fun stuff. And the combat is pretty great. All the laser sword stances feel viable and are at least strong in either single target/bosses or fighting groups. Boss fights were better than Fallen Order and, playing on Jedi Master, it all felt very fair, even the final boss. The PC port still stutters and DLSS 3 doesn't actually help with that or improve framerates so ray tracing was too much of a performance hit to keep on even with a 3080ti. Which is kind of terrible compared to how well something like Cyberpunk 2077 runs. However, I didn't suffer any crashes or bugs beyond faceless people once or twice. Worth it I think if you liked Fallen Order and get it on sale like I did.
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Jan 15, 2024 20:05
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Ash1138 posted:The PC port still stutters and DLSS 3 doesn't actually help with that or improve framerates so ray tracing was too much of a performance hit to keep on even with a 3080ti. Which is kind of terrible compared to how well something like Cyberpunk 2077 runs. However, I didn't suffer any crashes or bugs beyond faceless people once or twice. https://www.nexusmods.com/site/mods/738?tab=description Also used one of the optimization mods, this one seemed to get rid of a lot of the remaining microstutter by fixing some of the settings. You may be able to make these tweaks on your own but I didn't: https://www.nexusmods.com/starwarsjedisurvivor/mods/247?tab=description People in the comments are saying a new patch broke it, but it may just need to be reinstalled. Guess I'll try it later and see if it broke! This has been a big help with getting over the hump of god awful performance in these newer games for me, ymmv
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Jan 15, 2024 22:28
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Just beat Assassin's Creed: Mirage. The fact that I actually finished this game says a lot, as I never finished Origins, Odyssey, or Valhalla and have no desire to. Mirage was meant to be a stripped-down, back to its roots kind of thing and in that I think it succeeds beautifully. Getting rid of the absolutely terrible RPG mechanics was a great start. I always hated that poo poo and it was some of the worst examples of pointless RPG stuff I've ever seen in games. More than that, this game dips more into the immersive sim end of things, giving you a bunch of super fun tools to use in your stealth assassination missions. While not incredible tense at all times, looking at each target location as a puzzle to be solved stylishly was really intriguing and created a lot of fun for me. I really liked the heat meter, where if you're seen by civilians killing guards, it'll go up and every guard in the city will trigger on you if they see you, which is super annoying so you have to find wanted posters or town criers to reduce it. The graphics were kind of subpar, which I feel like is sort of the norm for Ubisoft these days. Especially the characters, they don't do any mocap acting and it really, really shows. Good but not great graphics, which is okay really. The story was just okay, but more than good enough and I was happy to kill my way to the top of the Order. Apart from the ending, which I didn't understand at all, but I'm guessing that has to do with not finishing Valhalla, which also has Basim as a character. On the negative side, even though I played on the Master Assassin difficulty I thought the game was a bit too easy. Especially towards the end, stocked with all my tools, I wasn't intimidated by any of the late game locations, I felt confident I could kill my way through them pretty easily while finding all chests and examining all entrance options. The combat can be difficult if you get ganged up on, which is good, but I wish it had been even more so. Taking out two or three guards in open combat was more than doable, but there'd still be guards around the place standing a little bit further away, which I feel like was a missed opportunity. Open combat with guards should result in them shouting for their comrades to the point that most of the other guards in the area come running. That kind of pressure and negative results for failing stealth is sort of what I want from an AC game. Anyways, best AC game in a long long time for my money, and I'm really hoping their next one will be way more like this one and way less like Odyssey and Valhalla. Ash1138 posted:Worth it I think if you liked Fallen Order and get it on sale like I did. I picked this up a bit ago, but could never finish it because I'm one of those unlucky bastards who got horrible stuttering throughout the whole game no matter what graphics settings I chose. I played through it for a while, beat the one armed guy and did some missions on other planets, but eventually I just decided that I couldn't play this poo poo anymore. Really too bad because I liked almost everything else about it. Philippe posted:Titanfall? It's like five hours long Maybe they mean team fortress 2? Does that have single player? Play fucked around with this message at 01:56 on Jan 16, 2024 |
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Jan 16, 2024 01:53
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Recently beat Gravity Circuit!  Here's my steam review: What else can I say that isn't patently obvious from just looking at this? Obviously, if you're a fan of Mega Man Z/X games or action platformers in general, then this game will be right up your alley and well-worth the purchase. Game looks great, movement is smooth, feedback is juicy, levels and bosses are varied and fantastic, combat is fun to flex on enemies with your varied arsenal of moves and satisfying grapple-throw mechanic, and so on. Even when I beat the game around 6 hours, I was still jonsing for more and would easily consider a replay just for the fun of it, if not to also unlock achievements or challenge myself on harder difficulties. If I were to have any gripes about the game to be wary of, they'd be mostly auxiliary concerns: *The story wasn't much to sneeze at and felt a bit unsatisfying. It's kind of stuck in that awkward middle-ground where it doesn't do a classic 'beat the bad guys' nothing story, and it doesn't go crazy with a wild complex story either with all sorts of twists and turns: it just starts to dip into complex stuff late in the game but didn't feel like it built upon it enough to make it worth it or have some sort of satisfying meaning or ending. It's fine, but it's almost a case where less might've been more? *The various directional moves and burst techniques Gravity Circuit has and can unlock makes you think it'd be a really fun and stylish action game where you're going all DMC on enemies with cuhrazy combos, but it all feels very token and unnecessary. Some moves like your upwards kick will just get you into trouble since if you don't kill with it, you'll end up ramming yourself into an enemy and taking contact damage. Furthermore, enemies will generally die in a few hits meaning there's no chance for big combos, and bosses aren't a candidate for combos either since the game will force constant invuln states to prevent you from comboing them too long. *Similar to above, the various chips you can unlock feel very token as well. You're almost guaranteed to have one slot reserved for double jump because of course you will, and you're also guaranteed to have another one of your slots reserved for the attack length extension because it's way too dangerous and annoying to get so close to enemies that have contact damage with your stubby fists otherwise. That means you just have one chip slot free, meaning there isn't that much freedom for customization (not that the remaining choices are that great). Basically, it's a great game overall, but a lot of the auxillary systems that I thought would be really neato like burst/chip customization are just there to look cool for trailers instead of serving important design purposes, so don't expect this to push the envelope. FutureCop fucked around with this message at 07:48 on Jan 16, 2024 |
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Jan 16, 2024 07:45
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Play posted:Maybe they mean team fortress 2? Does that have single player? That was the joke, yes.
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Jan 16, 2024 07:52
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Recently finished Haiku, the Robot - a solid indie metroidvania with heavy Hollow Knight influences. Fun game! It's not quite a must-play, but it's solid from front to back and has a lot of heart. The art direction is great, the world is satisfying to explore, the background lore is fairly well developed and enticing enough to push you forward. I've seen some reviews complain about the short length, but I wrapped it up in about 8 hours which is the perfect length for a Metroidvania IMO. A solid time all around with nothing really holding it back, but also nothing truly unique or special to elevate it to "great" status. https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/256884570/movie480_vp9.webm?t=1651244772 https://store.steampowered.com/app/1231880/Haiku_the_Robot/
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Jan 16, 2024 17:15
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