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I saw the Martian the other day and picked up Take on Mars on a whim, since it was on special. I couldn't find any discussion for it on the forums, so I suppose this would be a reasonable place to mention it, since it's essentially a survival sim, although it does have builder aspects to it as well which are not dissimilar to something like Space Engineers. So if anyone had been interested in it (probably very few judging by the lack of attention it seems to have here), I'll share my thoughts: It's underwhelming and I don't recommend it. At first it's really cool and different because hey, how many survival games are there set on other planets with a realistic, hard sci-fi slant to them? So hopping around on the Martian landscape in low gravity (or the lunar one - yes there's a Moon scenario too), driving the Mars truck and gouging deep tracks in the Martian soil, and setting up your pop tent so you can take off your suit and play space camper on Mars - those are all legitimately fun things at first, especially if you're a space buff, or a Mars buff in particular. There's also a level of fidelity - if that's the right word - to the game, which I really like. For example, one of the scenarios has you taking the truck to various supply drops scattered about. Once there you have to push a physical button to lower the ramp, then go and pick up various machines and crates full of supplies (which are themselves physical objects in the crates), load up the truck, stow the ramp, and then drive back to your base site watching in 3rd person mode as all the stuff in the back of the truck jostles about as you carelessly bump into rocks. There's a certain 'physicalness' to the experience which is really well done, and really enhances the simulation aspect of the whole thing. You can also control unmanned rovers, and there's a campaign mode of sorts where you're in control of a space program sending probes to Mars, gradually developing better ones as you earn extra funding. Admittedly, I haven't actually played around much in this mode, but the simulation of the rovers is very good. The little bits and pieces that swivel around on them, the way their traction system works, the way they trundle over rocks - it's all remarkably well simulated. So if you've ever wanted to just control Curiosity or Pathfinder (there are scenarios for these) for a bit and drive over some Martian rocks, this game will give you that experience, no doubt about it. Sadly, beyond the initial wow factor of playing a game that simulates being on Mars . . . it really doesn't have much going for it. Beyond the well-simulated aspects of rover movement or whatever, you can't really do anything substantial with them. For instance, you can control the various instruments on the rovers, including lasers and drills and so on, but all the samples you take and science results are just placeholders or the words "TO DO." You can take pictures too, but it's a case of "OK I did that. Now what?" (Probably a good summation of the game overall tbh). Likewise in the manned scenarios, it's very bare bones. You can set up mining machines and atmospheric processors and the like to procure resources, but none of them are necessary because you have these magical 3D printer things that can make anything you want with no resource costs. Oxygen is limited in your suit, but as soon as you go in your poptent or an airtight chamber you've made, there's unlimited oxygen available. You can grow potatoes but right now it's a very simple process: you just stick seeds in a machine and after a while potatoes grow there, which you harvest from a GUI. It's abstracted and out of whack with the other high fidelity aspects of the game. You don't even need poo. Boring. Base building is a thing, but it's very clunky and awkward. It takes a long time to get the pieces together properly, and a lot of the stuff you build isn't even functional. The game does have multiplayer and just from trying it out a bit, it could have some potential eventually since building stuff by yourself is such a colossal pain. Unfortunately it's so buggy and laggy in multiplayer that it barely works, and the game crashes or disconnects you frequently anyway, so good luck playing for more than about 20 mins or so. (I should note there are no dedicated servers, so it's just games people are hosting themselves). Also, I hate to say this as someone who has been obsessed with Mars since childhood, but Mars itself gets boring fast. Obviously the real Mars would be incredible to visit, especially if you're a geologist or whatever. But as a simulated environment, it's a bleak red desert with a lot of rocks and a lot of nothing. There really isn't much to see and do, and since there's no real structure or goals in the game, the way in which you interact with the environment kind of meaningless, and the survival elements really limited, the whole experience is just kind of ehhh? after a few hours. Right now it really does feel like a glorified tech demo. Apparently it's been in EA since 2013, and I can't honestly say it feels like there's been 2 years of development there given the lack of content in the game as is. Also its release date is coming up in just a couple of months, so the final update is going to have to add a metric fuckton of features to make this a fully-fledged game. Right now, I can't honestly recommend it. If you really want to just gently caress around on Mars for a bit in a space suit or pretend you're a rover then it will give you that experience, absolutely. But I'm not sure if it's really worth $15+ as an actual game.
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Oct 18, 2015 04:11
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I had no idea the manned stuff wasn't in it from the get-go. Makes a lot of sense, though, given how buggy, feature-incomplete and uneven the manned experienced is compared to the unmanned one. Admittedly the unmanned game appeals to me a lot less, which is why I haven't done much with it, but just from tinkering around in the rover scenarios for a bit you can tell it's designed better and works much more smoothly. It still lacks a ton of substance, though, and I'm amazed you could get 100 hours out of it. I mean, what do you do in the campaign exactly? Send a probe somewhere on Mars, take a picture, take a sample of the air. Ok here's some money. Now build a better probe and go to Mars and take two pictures and two samples. Ok now you can build a rover. Drive over to this rock and take a sample. Ok more money. Now go somewhere else and do the same thing . . . I can get a few hours tops out of that. Perhaps if science results were an actual thing and you had to use your own judgement on where to go, which rocks to study based on research you'd conducted and all the while having to be economical with the rover/probe's resources, then the experience might have a lot more going for it instead of the random, meaningless goals the game gives you now. Apparently  is going to be a thing for final release (at the end of November, somehow), so I guess we'll have to wait and see.
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Oct 18, 2015 11:10
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Just reached the summit in the new area in The Long Dark. Getting up there is one hell of a trek, but totally worth it. One of the containers I found spat about 10 MRES at me. For those who have explored the whole map: Other than the tail section at the summit, can you find any more of the plane fuselage? I know there's a wing and another engine, but I've been wondering when I'm going to stumble across a forward section with a cannibalistic South American rugby team sheltering inside it.
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Dec 20, 2015 12:24
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Bremen posted:Anyone try Savage Lands? It's Early Access, but it's cheap and they make a good looking trailer. I wouldn't mind knowing how it is too. It looks like a grittier, more survival-oriented version of Skyrim, which could be good fun.
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Dec 28, 2015 14:53
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I'm glad Subnautica took off. I got the game a year ago back when it was significantly less refined (but still pretty good) and obviously had fewer working features, and at the time they were a little bit slow on the updates and I remember there being a bit of doom and gloom on the Steam forums about whether it was going to turn into another dead game like so many other EA titles. Yet now it's being held up, along with the Long Dark, as a shining example of how to do EA right, and also seems to be one of the best-selling titles in this genre going by Steam.
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Jun 28, 2016 04:53
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This was a pretty boneheaded move on their part. Apparently there's a sandbox update coming later this month: why not make the countdown to the story-mode announcement coincide with that? That said, the overreactions on the Steam forum are hilarious.
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May 5, 2017 00:50
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For those who didn't already know, you can play the test branch of the next Long Dark update by entering the code thelongdarktest in the betas tab. It includes new features like map making, stone throwing, and snapping rabbit necks.
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Jun 3, 2017 08:48
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When you say more numerous, you mean like more items and food and so on? I'm pretty sure that is just a part of Pilgrim difficulty: if you play on the higher settings, fewer things spawn to make survival harder. To be honest, I've never actually played on Pilgrim, so I couldn't really say if the amount that spawns in the test branch now is greater than before.
Drunk in Space fucked around with this message at 04:01 on Jun 4, 2017 |
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Jun 4, 2017 03:58
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Kraven Moorhed posted:If TLD has mapping in now, though ... drat, I really need to get back to it. How does it compare to, say, Miasmata's mapping system? It's nothing like Miasmata's system. You just use lumps of charcoal taken from burned out fires and choose an area to survey. It then creates a small area of mapped terrain around you, which darkens over time to show that the information there is no longer up to date. I'm not a big fan of it, to be honest. It's a painstaking process because the area you map out at any one time is not very large, and going through the motions of stopping, surveying, stopping, surveying gets tedious pretty quickly if you want to make a proper map that doesn't have a ton of gaps in it everywhere. I would have preferred it if it had been more like Miasmata, which required you put in a bit more effort to find good spots with visible landmarks you could use to triangulate your position, but also revealed much more of the map at a time.
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Jun 10, 2017 00:15
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Yeah, the map information includes the location of temporary things like tree branches and animals and so on. EDIT: I mean, things like tree branches and mushrooms or whatever should stay there until you harvest them, but they'll remain on the map unless you survey again after using them up. Drunk in Space fucked around with this message at 04:29 on Jun 10, 2017 |
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Jun 10, 2017 04:22
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Coolguye posted:somewhat related: is it worth dinking around in chapter 1 to build up some resources before going forward? there's clearly an opportunity to get a couple days' life support and a decent bit of crafting resources from the local area. This is just for you, but I'll spoiler it all the same (it's not really a big spoiler, though): you have to climb out of town at the end of episode 1, and a fairly big change made to climbing some patches ago is that you can no longer do that while encumbered. So in other words, you're not leaving town and progressing to the next part of the story with more than 30kgs on you. And once you reach episode 2, I don't think there's a way to go back to Milton (yet). So no, don't worry about trying to ransack the town and taking everything not nailed down.
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Aug 4, 2017 05:50
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Again, spoilers: I'm a fair ways into episode 2 and I still don't have any blueprints to make stuff using animal hides, although I think I'm just starting to hit that part of the game now (it's gated behind story stuff): there's an NPC who gives you tasks to hunt and gather materials for making clothes and such, so presumably this will unlock deerhide jackets and suchlike. However these are specific tasks associated with marked areas on the map (i.e. "go to this place and hunt some deer and bring me back their guts and skin"), so for all I know, you might have to do that anyway to make the blueprints trigger properly, regardless of whether you already have a bunch of cured hides ready to go. Personally, not knowing what the journey out of Milton was going to be like, I ditched all my hides and loaded up mainly on food and fuel, but tbh it's not a particularly long journey and not especially precarious either. There's no real "haha gently caress you you're dead" moments, and while you obviously have to be a bit careful with the climbing and mountaineering stuff, as well as the ever-present wolves and unpredictable weather, it's not really very hard to get to the next area. So yeah, I guess you could try to get ahead of the crafting curve by getting the materials now (assuming there are no problems with triggers), but it'll a tight fit with the 30kg limit and the clothes on your back. Personally, I don't think it is particularly worthwhile. I mean, it's basically a case of spending time to do it now, or spending time on it later: you spend time either way (arguably less later on because you have more tools to hunt and gather stuff with). The next area will have everything you need in abundance, so I guess it's your choice which way you want to go, really. You mentioned books, for example: those things in particular seem to be everywhere now. There's tons of them around, so you're not going to miss not taking the 100 or so in Milton. You should take a few, though: they burn nice. EDIT: after doing a bunch of this NPC's dumb fetch quests, I still haven't unlocked any new clothing blueprints for the animal hides, so gently caress knows when you can actually use that stuff Drunk in Space fucked around with this message at 15:04 on Aug 4, 2017 |
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Aug 4, 2017 07:38
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Meiteron posted:And since we're on the subject lets talk about how stupid Trust as a system is as a grindy resource sink. That thing about the forge? That takes a fuckton of simple stuff like cloth, or something like 4-5 deer hides (it takes something like 8 deer hides by itself to max Jeremiah's trust, hope you weren't planning on using those for anything else). If you were wondering where all your crafting recipes went, they went behind Trust gates. Did you leave episode 1 without maxing Trust with Grey Mother because it didn't seem like a critical thing? Well, now you can never make rabbitskin gloves because the crafting blueprint was locked behind a bunch of Trust and you can't exactly go back. Yeah, I didn't figure this out until after finishing Jeremiah's questline, and now I can't interact with him anymore. Fortunately, by the end of episode 2 I had found a fair amount of nice gear anyway (e.g. the military coat), but it really sucks if I'm straight up locked out of deerskin and rabbitskin clothing completely. Amazing how they make you do all these ridiculous survival quests for an NPC to 'learn' stuff you will have already been doing for a while anyway, and yet they do a poo poo job of explaining the trust system and how it's necessary to get important blueprints. I've completed episode 2 now (after waiting 2 weeks in game for another aurora to show), and I'm honestly not impressed at all with storymode. I appreciated the change in pace from sandbox at first, and the new maps are pretty cool. Plus the first aurora sequence and following the lights to the lodge was genuinely intense and atmospheric (shades of Alan Wake). But the idiotic fetch quests, the awful dialogue, hackneyed story, weak implementation of NPCs and the torrent of bugs have really taken the shine off things. I don't even think they got particularly good performances out of two very talented voice actors. Can't say I'm particularly looking forward to episode 3.
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Aug 8, 2017 06:48
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Episode 2 has an NPC sending you on a mission across two maps, which is an adventure in itself and actually has a really cool moment in it. But after your little adventure and the hike back, during which time you will obviously have been surviving day to day, harvesting mushrooms, repairing clothes and other basic poo poo, he then gives you a bunch of lovely fetch quests to ... harvest mushrooms and berries and other basic poo poo, all to teach you about the survival basics you already loving know about by that point. It's completely idiotic. I mean, the first two NPCs basically have the same quests: "I'm old, sick and useless, so go and get all the food I need for winter, Mainlander Outsider who doesn't know poo poo about anything."
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Aug 8, 2017 12:42
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Haifisch posted:TLD's story mode was written by a non-writer, and holy poo poo it shows. I doubt he let an editor touch it, either. It's full of cliches and hyper-practical 'the player has to know this now, so we'll tell them, done' writing. "It's not about what's in here, it's about what's in here. You aren't going to kill the bear with your head. You're going to kill him with your heart." just ... lol
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Aug 8, 2017 18:02
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The whole NPC trust/blueprints thing is really poorly thought out and explained (ironic given all the tutorial-like tasks they make you do for stuff that anyone can figure out by themselves in about an hour of play). I only found out about it after completing Jeremiah's quests, so I got nothing from Gray Mother either. Hopefully when episode 3 rolls around they'll have a way for you to get blueprints that you missed before, but I'm not counting on it.
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Aug 13, 2017 10:50
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TeaJay posted:I'm doing the story mode and I'm still at the part where you bring the old hunter stuff. Are the plants finally the last part? (done hunting, fishing and crafting) It's like the game is actively trying to encourage me to stop playing it with this tediously annoying gathering resources-part. Not to mention I've even starting to run out of food myself! It's just a complete slog and feels just artificial lenghtening of an already short game. Yeah you're basically done. There's only one more quest for Jeremiah after that. However, a word of warning: as mentioned up-thread somewhere, once you finish Jeremiah's quests, you can no longer interact with him, which means that you won't be able to get blueprints from him for deerhide stuff. So if this is important to you and you don't have the blueprints already, you should probably work on grinding his trust and getting them now before triggering the next quest. I can't remember exactly, but I think when you hand in the mats for the last Survival School quest, it automatically triggers his last quest, and I would honestly advise that you avoid doing that and work on his trust first (again, if you care about getting the higher tier clothing items). Drunk in Space fucked around with this message at 05:58 on Aug 15, 2017 |
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Aug 15, 2017 05:56
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You definitely run slower if you're over the 30kg weight limit (and can't run at all over 40kg ), but I'm not sure if the sprint penalties for individual pieces of clothing slow you down. I'm think it just affects sprint time, as you say. I don't use sprint very often, though, so I could be wrong about that.
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Aug 15, 2017 06:49
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You're actually missing out on one of the few good parts of story mode if you sleep through that event, though. Following these lights that sputter to life under the baleful glow of the aurora while freaky-looking wolves stalk close by is a genuinely intense and atmospheric experience, and I would imagine especially startling for most people who have had the game for several years and are well and truly used the absence of electric lighting in the world. If only story mode had had more like it instead of the terrible NPC interaction and ridiculous fetch quests, it could have been a real winner.
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Aug 23, 2017 12:37
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Coolguye posted:yeah, that entire story piece is kind of awesome if you do the precise DUMBEST thing you could possibly do and walk straight at the wolves. yes, game, you've spent the last 10 hours drilling into me that wolves will gently caress me up and are bad news - my first idea when i see a wolf that's all creepy and glowing and poo poo is TOTALLY to walk straight toward it! I honestly didn't even think you'd be able to go back to sleep (I didn't bother trying because I'd already had some annoying bugs up till that point, and thought I'd break some important scripted sequence if I did). It seemed pretty clear to me that the devs had intended for the player to do that section at night, and they certainly did a good job piquing my interest with the aurora and the lights flickering on and off, so I just rolled with it  I'm glad I did, because aside from the work they put into the new maps, it's probably the only thing I really enjoyed about story mode.
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Aug 24, 2017 01:58
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TeaJay posted:It feels way too tutorial-ish. It's got tons of dumb busywork blocking progress, which would've probably been fine if story mode would've been released first. As an example of this: the first part of story-mode has you doing a bunch of fetch quests to collect wood and other stuff, so that you can get to grips with some of the essentials of the game. It's tedious and pretty annoying for those of us who'd already played the game inside and out in sandbox mode, but understandable for new players. Then you have a bit of a journey before you get to the next area of story-mode. While you're doing all this, you will invariably just learn the basics anyway, like how to harvest rose hips, how to make mushroom tea, how to make bandages - whatever. And yet when you get to the next major NPC, they also send you on a load of fetch quests to do all that poo poo again, like you haven't just been playing the game for the last 2 hours. So yeah, the tutorial aspect of it drags on way too long. Hopefully that's what the rework somebody mentioned is going to address (in addition to the awful writing and dialogue).
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Nov 27, 2018 00:08
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Episode 3 is pretty cool so far, much better than the first two eps imo (although I haven't tried the remastered versions). It introduces timber wolves who attack in packs and come with a new kind of mechanic where you have to reduce their overall morale to make them run off. Spices things up a bit. I also like that they've gotten rid of the whole charcoal mapmaking thing, at least for this episode. Never really cared for that.
Drunk in Space fucked around with this message at 12:12 on Oct 24, 2019 |
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Oct 24, 2019 12:10
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Last time I tried it (about 3-4 years ago), it was way, way jankier than SE (bearing in mind that SE itself was pretty janky back then too). The whole thing just felt kind of cheap and amateurish and half-assed, and I remember returning it pretty quickly. I'd be up for giving it another try, though, if people think it's progressed a lot since then.
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Oct 24, 2019 12:45
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ShootaBoy posted:(the best way to raise your toughness is to get the everloving poo poo beaten out of you.) But by the right things, not the things that, you know, eat you (which there are lot of)
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Feb 14, 2021 13:00
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TeaJay posted:Just finished The Long dark episode 4... I'd be interested to know this too. In my case, I did stash my weapons but in the guard post as usual, and the linear escape sequence doesn't take you near that area. However, it does take you through that little garage/workshop area where you could store some stuff, or you could just drop weapons on the ground by the section of the perimeter you have to pass through during the escape, as I'm pretty sure dropped items persist between chapters. I thought this episode was pretty mediocre overall, and enjoyed the previous one with Astrid more (which itself wasn't that great). The dialogue is still pretty bad (though maybe not as a dire as in episodes 1-2) and the presentation of a lot of it is just really poorly done. There are way too many parts where there's just a load of unskippable dialogue you have to sit through (especially at the start) with very little else going on in way to actually make things engaging. And as you say there's a weird disconnect between the story and the actual survival aspects of the game. I too am invested in finding out what happens, but goddamn if they don't try their hardest to sap your will to actually get through the drat thing. I hope Episode 5 is the last one, honestly, because I have a feeling that if it goes on longer than that I'll probably just Youtube it.
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Oct 12, 2021 12:28
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Been playing Zomboid and enjoying it a lot (it feels like a more accessible version of CDDA), but I cannot for the life of me use guns accurately. I'm missing at point blank range even with the shotgun. Is there some trick to aiming I'm not getting or is it just totally dependent on RNG and character skill?
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Dec 31, 2021 01:12
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