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Latest Thing: NG+ part 2 South Side Closeup Woooooooo Update 1 note: Containing as it does both the intro and a section of gameplay, update 1 is a little longer than future updates will be!              Getting this out of the way up front: SPOILER POLICY Man, I dunno. This game is kind of like walking through a big, super-impressive Christmas display. You really need to see it. Ideally, play it, but I know the gameplay and difficulty and etc. isn't everybody's cup of tea. That's why I'm here! So you could MAYBE ruin somebody's enjoyment if you're like "let me tell you in detail what all the light displays are", but it's probably fine to be like "you've gotta wait for the big light-up santa-bot. He's amazing!" I mean... let me spoil this CRAZY SPOILER for you. We go to different lands, fight some jerks, then fight a big jerk, and once we've repeated that enough, then we fight a real big jerk. So let's say you can discuss anything you'd like to, but if you're referencing some story point that we can't have known, put that sucker in spoiler tags. I know this is kind of vague, but I think you'll get the idea. Feel free to discuss any particular boss, for instance, but don't say "oh, and if you translate the runes in such and such a chamber you'll learn that the real story is __________". Make sense? If not, ask for clarification! I guess what I'm getting at is, I'd rather we be discussing what's being shown on the videos than everybody swapping final boss stories TO START WITH. We'll get there. And of course, any time anybody wants to heap abuse on the soccer goblin, man, be my GUEST. Bacter... Bacter I'm scared. What is this? What is Hyper Light Drifter? Well, in the words of the development studio, Heart Machine: Heart Machine posted:Hyper Light Drifter is a 2D Action RPG in the vein of the best 8-bit and 16-bit classics, with modernized mechanics and designs on a much grander scale. Find out more on our Kickstarter page. Kickstarter?! Man, I'm no rube, those things never work out, I'm outta he.. Wait! Hold on, this is one of the RARE SUCCESS STORIES of heavily-backed, and totally delivered kickstarter games! And it's a barrel of fun at that. Bacter, I can only understand games if they're described as amalgamations of other games! Can you help? Sure. Legend of Zelda meets Dark Souls is the usual comparison, and not to be a SNOB, but that's two swings and two misses, in my opinion. The combat is basically 100% dodging, emphasizing speed and dashes rather than letting you be a big tank, so Bloodbourne is closer than Dark Souls, and you don't REALLY go around collecting items from donjons like you do in Zelda. Instead you level up weapon and movement abilities, and the combat in SNES Zelda games is pretty drastically different. So my take is Bloodbourne meets Secret of Mana! Whatever, snob. Hey, you asked. Speaking of asking, what is there to recommend this game? Oh MAN. Beautiful, beautifully scored (my very favorite music from a boss battle in recent memory, tightly competing with The Decisive Battle from FF6, and when you're able to overthrow 90's Squaresoft Nostalgia, you're doing SOMETHING right), very tight controls, which in a Difficult Game(tm) is super important. A story that's communicated through visuals in a look-don't-tell way. Not to mention, you know, all that HYPER LIGHT. Yeah, what is hyper light? And how may one drift 'pon it? Gentle reader, simply follow along to learn the answers! Difficult game, huh? Are you any good at it? I've beaten it, and gotten pretty far in NG+, which is much more of a challenge in this game than it is in even DS/BB. I even passed what, to my mind, is the greatest hurdle the Western Boss, so it's really mine to lose at this point. Expect me to die as much as somebody playing a Dark Soulsian game would if they had beaten the game once or twice. Anything in the game that you can't do at all? It's been a few months, so I don't know if they patched it or not, but that soccer goblin. OH, that SOCCER GOBLIN! UGH. Bacter fucked around with this message at 04:46 on Mar 24, 2017 |
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Jul 8, 2016 22:26
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BONUS STUFF 800 drifts in a row challenge: SUPER INTERESTING TO WATCH:  Music is "Innocent Deception", available from OCRemix.  Music is "One hour of Chillwave", available on youtube.  Music is from 6th Sense, available on Free Music Archive Closeup looks at the history and influences of the various areas     NG+ Is a serious challenge for serious drifters - play back through the game with all dash and sword skills unlocked, but only two health!   Music: East Side: Chris Zabriske - Divider Dexter Britain - Seeing the Future Chris Zabriske - Readers, Do You Read? Silence is Sexy - Holiday Instrumental North Side: Broke for free - Golden Hour, Melt, As Colorful as Ever Bacter fucked around with this message at 04:47 on Mar 24, 2017 |
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Jul 8, 2016 22:26
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Looks interesting, but your commentary is really out of sync in this video (unless there's something horrifically wrong with my computer).
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Jul 8, 2016 23:02
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Yeah, like you'll say "Oh say we have to press E to ping the map" and then 2 seconds later the ping prompt will appear. So something definitely seems off. Also this game is great and if you want to a real fun time, then go check out the steam discussion forums for this game because it's just a poo poo ton of people whining about this not being 60 FPS. It's honestly really sad.
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Jul 8, 2016 23:09
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Man, that's no good about the audio. I've had this before, and I dunno what to say except "it sounds fine when it's an mp4 on my computer"? I'll try to work some alchemy, otherwise, just, sorry!
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Jul 8, 2016 23:28
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Got a new audio track workin', should be up later tonight!
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Jul 9, 2016 00:28
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You've also messed up a spoiler tag toward the end of the OP.
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Jul 9, 2016 04:04
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Too dang excited about that ol' HLD, I guess. I just picked this up on account of I got tricked by thinking God Eater Resurrection is a good game, so I'll be playing along to banish the foul taste of lovely anime Monster Hunter ripoffs.
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Jul 9, 2016 04:30
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Me and fast action games never quite got along, so it's much appreciated when I can just watch other people do them lest I ruin controllers in frustration. Looking forward to this. 
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Jul 9, 2016 06:30
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Oh man, I tried to watch this but the visuals are giving me a headache 
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Jul 9, 2016 07:03
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This is one of the few Kickstarters I backed, based mainly on the style. I watched a really good interview with the main dev that explains a lot about why he made the game and the major theme of the game that give it a lot more context. Your commentary seems a bit ahead of the action for some reason though.
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Jul 9, 2016 07:20
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No, it's just that roguish Bacter charm we all... love, right? Ha ha right? Anyway, here's the first video NOW WITH SOME POST that's a bit more on target!
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Jul 9, 2016 16:17
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You just posted that right after I finished watching the 4-second delay version.  I especially liked the part where you went "welp, first death!" and then died 4 seconds later. Kind of took out the suspense. This game looks interesting! Will be following these Bacter antics.
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Jul 9, 2016 18:19
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I really liked this game. I didn't know anything about it until I saw a Giant Bomb quick look. It had me at the intro. The whole game feels like you are inside an interactive prog rock album cover from the seventies (and I mean that as a good thing!) I don't normally have the patience for these type of games, but I played this to completion. Will be watching the rest of this with interest! Catzilla fucked around with this message at 14:42 on Jul 10, 2016 |
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Jul 10, 2016 11:50
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Apparently there's a PS4 port incoming "mid 2016" so thanks to this 45 minutes of video I am gonna be all over that.
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Jul 10, 2016 13:18
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The art, especially in the opening cutscene, are really reminiscent of the ol' French SNES adventure platformers a la Another World and Flashback. Really nice to see pixel art in an indie game that is actually nice-looking. Also, this game is BONKERS HARD, yo! I'm having a terrible time!
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Jul 10, 2016 16:26
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This game looks fantastic and its ambience seems to be just enthralling, but man, Bacter, you gotta shut up more. The off-the-cuff commentary isn't bad by any means, I really enjoy it, but the "music" for the water temple was this fantastic ambient track that you talked over the entire time. With a game like this, you don't have to fill in dead air at every opportunity, it's actually preferable for you to let it speak for itself more often and then just pipe in with something to note. The sound design is fantastic and it's hard to appreciate it because you've mixed your commentary track at the top without any auto-ducking to let the game audio come to the forefront. You don't have to write a script or anything, but if the other areas are anything like the water area, it'd be great to have you do some blocking on important areas of note in your post-commentary and pick a few spots to mark "(silence)", like a sweet-rear end fight or a moment similar to the cliff-face overlooking the main city from the intro. It doesn't do much to show off the sound design when your method of showing it off is to, say, activate the cinematic moment with a great camera pan and dramatic music sting and then talk over the moment about how great the camera pan and music sting was. The game's already showing, you don't have to tell too much.
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Jul 11, 2016 05:37
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Skippy Granola posted:The art, especially in the opening cutscene, are really reminiscent of the ol' French SNES adventure platformers a la Another World and Flashback. Really nice to see pixel art in an indie game that is actually nice-looking. Dang it, you just reminded me they did a modern remake of Flashback and it's as terrible as you'd expect of game that was already perfect. But yeah, the aesthetic and difficulty almost seem to go hand and hand. It's kinda funny.
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Jul 11, 2016 06:39
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Skippy Granola posted:Also, this game is BONKERS HARD, yo! I'm having a terrible time! I backed it and gave up a couple hours in for this reason. (Well, one of them.)
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Jul 11, 2016 06:56
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This game's visuals make me think Risk of Rain meets Titan Souls and it's so pretty
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Jul 11, 2016 09:59
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I'm getting Superbrothers: Sword&Sorcery vibes, myself.
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Jul 11, 2016 10:14
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I get a bit of a Fez impression, especially from the audio.
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Jul 11, 2016 13:08
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Tenebrais posted:I get a bit of a Fez impression, especially from the audio.
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Jul 11, 2016 15:40
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I'm trying to piece together what we can learn from that intro and what we've seen so far. We open with this thing, this diamond-shaped ritual carving or whatever it is, which seems to directly lead to the cataclysm. It's a really pale pink or light purple light.  Then we see our protagonist (who I suspect is some sort of robot, given the static effects and weird sort of autotuned coughing sound effect it makes when it coughs) facing the embodiment of its disease as this purple diamond-faced horned monstrosity thing.  Then we move to our hero trying to obtain this diamond thing, which looks a fair bit like the objectives we're collecting which Bacter is calling "major modules".  As we reach for it this symbol flashes on the screen.  And it's replaced by this "corrupted" diamond. There's more purple, and we see it split into the four triangle sections, just like the major modules we're collecting are. Seconds later our hero is overwhelmed by the dark tendrils.  After the tutorial section we meet this thing. It clearly seems to be the same diamond-faced horned entity from the intro. Fortunately we're saved by that knight guy. All is well. But what's this in our knight friend's house?  Huh.  They're in a few other places around town too. Notably in the sword trainer's house, where they are set up as training dummies to practice fighting against. Huh.  Later we meet our knight friend again, who talks about how he found a white diamond that looks a lot like the one we saw our hero trying to get in the intro cutscene.  But he also talks about fighting a purple-diamond-branded monstrosity, I assume he means he fought this shortly after fighting the diamond, but maybe the monstrosity IS the diamond. This diamond symbol is clearly bad news, and it's tied in with the major modules we're collecting, and the symbol that is slowly lighting up in the center of town when we collect them. All in all, I'm wondering how good an idea it is to be doing what we're doing.
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Jul 11, 2016 19:56
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You think it's like Shadow of the Colossus where the further we progress the more we invite corruption?
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Jul 11, 2016 23:44
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I'm really not sure, all I have is this one update to go off of so far, but I'm interested to see more. SOMETHING's going to happen when we collect all these modules and light up the center diamond. Also if the player character IS a robot that raises the question of who built it and for what purpose, but I've no idea whether the game ever answers these questions.
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Jul 12, 2016 01:06
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I bought this game and I'm not very far in, but I'm definitely getting a very dark vibe about what we're doing too. Given the picture driven storyline I think we aren't going to know the motivation for why were doing things, and that will lead us to destruction.
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Jul 12, 2016 01:18
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I got a "You maniacs! You blew it up!" vibe from the start of the intro. Thaumonuclear war.
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Jul 12, 2016 01:21
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The Lone Badger posted:I got a "You maniacs! You blew it up!" vibe from the start of the intro. Thaumonuclear war. 
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Jul 12, 2016 01:37
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monster on a stick posted:I backed it and gave up a couple hours in for this reason. (Well, one of them.) They patched in a few little changes to lower the difficulty a few weeks after launch (i-frames in your dodge being the big one), so if you tried it right when it came out, perhaps consider another foray? Mzbundifund posted:Also if the player character IS a robot that raises the question of who built it and for what purpose, but I've no idea whether the game ever answers these questions. Though Bacter's elegant play hasn't really shown it off, there are several situations that end in your drifter leaking what seems to be very probably blood. Also there's a guy that's blue like you in town, whose idle animation is to drink something. I'm inclined to think the mechanical sounding cough is just trying to fit a cough noise in a game where all the 'talking' came out of a soundboard. Anyway. This game! Man, i love this game. I feel that it's really a rare kickstarter gem that is exactly what kickstarting games was supposed to be for - and with several recent crashes and burns, that we're unlikely to see the like of again. I really wish I had the hardware to record Good Audio, so that i could beg for a guest slot. None of my real-life acquaintances got into Hyper Light, and i'd love someone to yammer about it with. (Although, one of said acquaintances does have a streaming setup I might be able to take over...) Also, gently caress the soccer goblin.
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Jul 12, 2016 03:48
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Ceebees posted:They patched in a few little changes to lower the difficulty a few weeks after launch (i-frames in your dodge being the big one), so if you tried it right when it came out, perhaps consider another foray?
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Jul 12, 2016 04:16
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I know they waffled on those changes a couple times but I thought that they ended up keeping them, particularly as Bacter mentioned medkits refilling at teleports. Either way it was too late for poor me, so i didn't pay the closest of attention. Perhaps excuse my poor memory.
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Jul 12, 2016 04:31
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Ceebees posted:I know they waffled on those changes a couple times but I thought that they ended up keeping them, particularly as Bacter mentioned medkits refilling at teleports. Either way it was too late for poor me, so i didn't pay the closest of attention. Perhaps excuse my poor memory. http://steamcommunity.com/games/257850/announcements/detail/594848777641334709 posted:- Health kits no longer recharge at warp pads So there are i-frames, but less so, and health kits don't recharge at teleport pads. But yeah, it was super hard to keep track of since the i-frames went in first for a weekend and then were stripped out like two days later because of all the negativity.
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Jul 12, 2016 05:18
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Considering that you can just warp point to a place with medkits, i'm kinda baffled that that's the hill the masochists chose to die on.
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Jul 12, 2016 06:19
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Ceebees posted:Considering that you can just warp point to a place with medkits, i'm kinda baffled that that's the hill the masochists chose to die on. Can you? I remember having to go manually replenish them which seemed like a colossal waste of time and not fun. They should have just added a difficulty setting that gives you health kits at landing pads so people who liked doing the Demon Souls thing of grinding health kits could continue to do it while everyone else could try to enjoy the game but whatev.
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Jul 12, 2016 06:36
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monster on a stick posted:Can you? I remember having to go manually replenish them which seemed like a colossal waste of time and not fun. This may have killed the desire I had to play the game, because nothing sounds more like a burden for a new player than having to grind health kits instead of having them replenish Estus Flask style in an already hard game.
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Jul 14, 2016 10:31
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I beat and 100% this game, excepting NG+, before any of the patches came out, and wish to confirm that soccer goblin was by far the worst part of the game. There wasn't even an achievement for it at the time, either.
Einwand fucked around with this message at 14:32 on Jul 14, 2016 |
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Jul 14, 2016 14:26
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This game is great. I agree that health kits should probably replenish during a teleport since it's just busy work to restock on them. The soccer is hell although it's possible to cheese it if you're using a mouse to aim.
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Jul 14, 2016 16:33
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thecluckmeme posted:This may have killed the desire I had to play the game, because nothing sounds more like a burden for a new player than having to grind health kits instead of having them replenish Estus Flask style in an already hard game. VVVVV Then I'm just a pro at the game cause I was able to find secrets without falling into holes. discworld is all I read fucked around with this message at 18:10 on Jul 14, 2016 |
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Jul 14, 2016 17:49
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Niggurath posted:The thing is that there's never really a need to grind them; just playing naturally through the game should allow you to have a very steady supply of them. Not really, I had to grind but that's because the pixel art made the edges of the ground indistinct enough that I kept taking falling damage, but if you don't explore the edges then you don't find things like health kits (or other goodies, lots of stuff is hidden), so
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Jul 14, 2016 17:56
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