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Kragger99 posted:Otherwise you'll get a massive backlog (or make your existing one larger), and most likely run out of time to play them all Wow, normally we get at least a few days into the sale before posters start contemplating their own mortality.
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# ¿ Jun 22, 2017 04:12 |
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# ¿ May 2, 2024 02:17 |
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Xaris posted:Just incase it helps anyone, I posted a list of the really good stuff that's new in tyool 2017 that you might want to look out for. There is of course a lot more indie games, some ok, some maybe even borderline good, but this is just (imo) the really standout games this year. In particular, Hollow Knight is a masterpiece and worth getting even if it's a weak sale. I've been putting all my time into adventure games this month but I was dead-set on getting this out before the sale, because Hollow Knight really is something incredible. I'm going to try to do it justice but the short version is that it took the metroidvania and Dark Souls formulas and made something that's better than both in a lot of ways. There aren't many games that have cast a longer shadow over the industry than Dark Souls, and much like what you'll find lurking within them it's been a bit of a curse. Too many indie games have been overtuned to provide a similarly punishing experience, narratives have been undercooked to mimic the subtle storytelling, and action has been slowed to a crawl to imitate the methodical combat. But some titles have taken the right bits of inspiration and mixed them with their own brew of mechanics, and from just such a concoction you will find Hollow Knight. And in many ways, the mix Team Cherry has come up with is a richer taste than what inspired it. Hollow Knight is the tale of a little bug in a big, dark, scary world of bugs. It's bugs all the way down, you see; the kingdom of Hollownest was once a great and powerful society, spread across deep warrens beneath the surface. But something went wrong long ago and the kingdom fell silent. Now only the tiny hamlet of Dirtmouth remains to mark its location, though recently bugs have found themselves drawn to the lost kingdom in search of something. You will follow them down there, meet them, battle them and the unknown denizens, and change the fate of the cursed kingdom forever. Pretty heavy stuff, right? Hollow Knight gets that, and that's one of its first and most prominent achievements. The tone this title strikes is both unique and flawless, an unexpected mix of charm, despair, humor, and dread. You've probably noticed already that your little dude is absolutely adorable, nipping along with his little white mask and nail. The other bugs nice enough to speak to you are often just as cute, but sometimes have sinister edges to them, or in a few cases are downright creepy. Friendly critters may crack jokes or help you out, while others relay ominous portends or warn you of the many dangers in and around Hollownest. This balance carries on to the environments in a big way. The game world is massive for a metroidvania, and each area has a distinct style and atmosphere that hits all the right notes to evoke powerful reactions. From the first area of dark caves and ruins you may end up in a lush grotto of vines and creatures, a pleasant change until you realize the water is acidic and every bush may hide terrible dangers. Or you could descend into the caverns of potent fungi, with mysterious, bulbous foes that must be approached with great caution. Later journeys take you to decaying cities, silent graveyards, bustling coliseums, desolate wastes, and two of the most horrifyingly oppressive places I have ever visited in a video game. I'm not kidding here, Hollow Knight has topped titles from Half-life to SOMA in crafting locations that give me relentless anxiety. Another achievement worth mentioning is how Hollow Knight can craft such an atmosphere without hobbling the player in how they approach it. Part of the Dark Souls experience is trundling around at a slow jog, fighting battles and dodging traps at a measured pace. Team Cherry wisely elected to ignore this aspect of their inspiration, instead making your little knight swift, nimble, and refreshingly responsive. The controls here are tight, allowing you to execute your dashes and sword swings with ease as you dance around bugs both great and small, airborne and grounded, armed and fanged. At no point was I frustrated with the pace at which I could move about, and the fluid motion made the elaborate and creative battles against bosses and larger enemies all the more enjoyable. As a metroidvania there's a wealth of hidden items and powers to scrounge up across the world as well. Some are common pieces of the genre like health and magic upgrades, weapon skills and wall climbing and such. But even here there are unique implementations, like one of your earliest powers being essentially unlimited horizontal flight. Uncovering this treasure so early on feels incredibly liberating and exciting, but also reveals to you just how important verticality is to the game. You can further augment your movement and combat with charms that can extend your sword reach, change how you move when hit or attacking, or grant you all sorts of additional effects. I will admit a little disappointment here at how essential some charms are over others and how the limited slots for them tend to keep me from experimenting much, though. I suppose I could gripe about a few other annoyances, like the rare bug I get where my charged attacks don't work, or how spread out the fast travel is. That latter one is a bit of a pain in truth, because the stations used for fast travel tend to be quite far from points of interest. You certainly won't be relying on them as much as you would Castlevania warp rooms or Dark Souls bonfire warps. The map is another aspect that could be a drag, but honestly I love it. You don't fill in new areas of the map until you reach a save point, and to get a map at all you have to locate an amateur cartographer in each area. He tends to be near one of the logical entrances and has audio and visual cues to lead you to him, so there's a bit of tension in each new locale as you seek him out. It's details like the map that make me love the game more, really. Hollownest isn't just a maze to run around, it's a functioning world with its own rules and requirements. The things Hollow Knight asks you to do are never unreasonable and fit with the dark and unusual tone of the places you visit. Nothing is out of place here, and it all works in concert to immerse you in this strange world of bugs and mysticism. The characters and locations are far more memorable to me than those of similar games, in large part because they can be funny or creepy or adorable and still fill their role in a seamless narrative. There's a lot to unpack about Hollownest, but instead of just resting on riddles this game makes you WANT to puzzle it out. On top of everything that Hollow Knight does right, it looks and sounds absolutely breathtaking. The hand-drawn aesthetic gives the enemies and environments an extra spark of life, complimenting the strong lines and flat colors with impressive animated details. The environments in particular are labors of love that bring together careful linework, bold lighting, and rich particle effects to make them feel deep and authentic. And the sound design does just as well, with appropriately subtle, melancholy melodies and impactful effects. There's so much going on here that it baffles me how it could all work together so perfectly and yet it does, on and on for easily 20 hours or more. Hollow Knight does what few games manage to do, take clear inspiration from classics and find its own way to surpass them.
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# ¿ Jun 22, 2017 07:11 |
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Plebian Parasite posted:It's worth noting as well that usually the discounts are rolled in, certain games won't be showing their discount price until like an hour in. I'll go ahead and post this now because there are invariably questions about it every big sale: Your wishlist is always the last part of the store to update. I have no idea why this is, but discount prices won't propagate to your wishlist until AT LEAST an hour or two into the sale. In fact, for the first hour or so your wishlist may disappear entirely as Steam strains to accommodate the throngs of dealseekers straining the servers.
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# ¿ Jun 22, 2017 16:21 |
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No Mods No Masters posted:It just gave me 13 trading cards for completing my discovery queue for some reason Just happened to me too, everyone should get through their queue before they fix it.
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# ¿ Jun 22, 2017 19:10 |
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strategery posted:Kind of a long list, but say I want to spend $30 max with no more than $15 per game. Hollow Knight and Hyperlight should be locks. My favorite of what's left is Gungeon, or Condemned if you feel more like murdering hobos than dying to grim reapers made of AK47s.
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# ¿ Jun 22, 2017 19:53 |
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ArfJason posted:On phone. Naissance is that cool looking game where you explore these almost fractal gray spaces, right? Ive been keeping my eye on it for years and i like walkarounds but its price always put me off, is there anything more to it than just looking at cool stuff? Not really, no. The real appeal of NaissanceE is wandering around huge, alien landscapes that don't actually stop you from wandering off into the horizon. About half the game takes place in these weird subterranean cities in enormous caverns, and when you arrive you'll see all these bright lights super far off in the distance. As you explore you'll realize that's not just decoration, that's your destination. It's pure atmosphere but the way it makes you feel like you can go anywhere despite being a pretty linear walking sim is impressive. The other thing is that's only about half the game, and the other half is solving puzzles in pretty abstract spaces. Some of the puzzles are pretty cool, but others aren't and there's a SUPER aggravating one in a monochromatic void with flickering platforms that about drove me nuts. It's a testament to how good the atmosphere is in the rest of the game that I ever got past that part, but I would say it's worth it if you want to experience some incredible level design.
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# ¿ Jun 23, 2017 18:00 |
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Tafferling posted:Stickers are awful anyways They really are the worst gimmick. I was expecting at least customizable profile backgrounds or something but nope, click on things to make a picture, hooray. strategery posted:Im only spending 30 bucks. Im only spending 30 bucks. Im only spending 30 bucks. Dead Cells is the big temptation for me this year. I don't really want to get it until it's complete but man, I've watched some streamers play it and it just looks soooooooooo fuuuuuuuun. It's like Subnautica was for me last year, I wanted to hold off until it was done but I've started like three new games of it in the past few months.
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# ¿ Jun 23, 2017 19:29 |
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To add another voice to the pile, I absolutely adore Gungeon and getting good at it has been incredibly satisfying, but I don't really care much for Nuclear Throne.
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# ¿ Jun 23, 2017 20:53 |
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take me you ANIMAL posted:Technobabylon (3.75)- This was on there for awhile and can't remember why I added it but it seemed pretty cool. I reviewed this yesterday. Short version is, it's one of the best-written and well-acted indie adventures out there. It's got a complex story running through a very interesting world that builds and builds without getting confusing or messy. The puzzles are pretty clever, but there's not a lot of exploration or flexibility; you're just playing through a very solid story. Overall it's one of the better point-and-click games I've played.
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# ¿ Jun 23, 2017 22:45 |
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Tafferling posted:I'm having difficulties keeping enthusiasm for the story because I find the cop charachter dumb as poo poo. Every time I play as him he keeps getting stupider and I want to punch him so hard. monster on a stick posted:The millennial starts deserving a punch too, so there's that. I... okay, gonna be honest, this is coming out of left field for me. I didn't think Charlie was dumb at all, and instead seemed to pick up on stuff faster than most adventure protagonists. And Latha's an unemployed orphan, I didn't expect her to be super well-adjusted and even then I didn't find her annoying. I suppose there are dialogue options where they over-explain things for the player's benefit but you don't even have to pick those if you don't want to rehash stuff or give other characters a hard time. From that perspective I guess they're not going to get any better, but since I don't see any problem I'm the wrong person to ask. Dr. Angela Ziegler posted:Has WadjetEye learned to let people adjust the window size yet or do you still have to play in a 400x400 window with literally no options menu to adjust sound or video? They did, actually, but I still couldn't play it in full screen because whatever weird homebrew engine they run over there doesn't like my PC. But no, no more tiny postage-stamp screens here.
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# ¿ Jun 24, 2017 01:48 |
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Trampy Vampy posted:The Majesty series sounds like it might be fun, but which one should I get? Majesty 1 seems to be universally loved, but would it be too dated for me to get into at this point? Majesty 2 looks great to me, but people aren't as hot on it for some reason. Would its shortcomings be apparent to a newcomer to the series? Majesty 1 is fun and challenging and just looks a little dated, so if OG Warcraft graphics don't turn you off, go for it. Majesty 2 WOULD be an improvement in every way, but the difficulty gets completely unreasonable halfway through the campaign, to the point that it really ruins the whole thing. Lethemonster posted:I adore anything with city building or similar development gameplay and am looking to find some new stuff. I have the Anno games, Cities: Skylines, Sim City, Banished and Stardew Valley. I tried the games where you run a banana republic but they didnt grab me for some reason. Imperium Romanum and its sequel Grand Ages: Rome are very chill and easy to get into. Should be cheap, too, but I'm phone posting and can't check for sure. If you're feeling something Sim Towerish there's also Project Highrise which I thought was even better than its inspiration. I reviewed a whole bunch of builder and sim games last year and linked them somewhere in this thread, check my post history. Dark_Swordmaster posted:This is a bizarre request, but are there any good "trading" games? What I mean is that I recently reinstalled the old Pirates Of the Caribbean game and have just been running back forth between islands trading goods and making profits. For some stupid reason, this is fun to me. Port Royale 2 and Patrician IV are the best pure trading games on Steam at the moment. Some say Patrician III is the best but I found IV to be easier to get into. They should all be dirt cheap right now too. Hopper posted:Question: If anything Hollow Knight is easier. Fewer spike gauntlets and no instant death.
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# ¿ Jun 24, 2017 23:09 |
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-Blackadder- posted:Goon opinions on the following? Ziggurat is about as good as FPS roguelikes get right now (which is really, really good) and Brothers is a wonderful little puzzle adventure that's going to kick you right in the emotional nutsack. Good picks, those.
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# ¿ Jun 26, 2017 07:27 |
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Man, I am a huge Fallout fan from the very first one all the way through New Vegas, and at no point have I given even the slightest poo poo about Fallout 4. It feels so entirely unnecessary, like if I really want to rummage through more irradiated 1950s garbage I already have plenty of games I can do that in already. I'm so disappointed we haven't moved past the wasteland horrors despite being 4+ games and hundreds of years past the apocalypse. Or at the very least they could have done more games in the Fallout 1 era but in different locations or something. Is it just me? Am I the only person who doesn't want to keep buying Fallout 3 but with base building or whatever?
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# ¿ Jun 26, 2017 19:34 |
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Firelizard posted:Looking for some good, goon recommended point and click/adventure games. The Last Door, Fran Bow, Oxenfree, Primordia, Technobabylon, The Dream Machine, Machinarium, The Sea Will Claim Everything, Black Mirror, Dropsy I wrote long-rear end reviews of all of them over here if you don't mind sifting through the list. Probably some more stuff too that I'm not remembering.
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# ¿ Jun 27, 2017 00:41 |
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NObodyNOWHERE posted:I haven't seen anyone recommend The Count Lucanor for this sale, so I'm going to throw that out there. Five bucks. I'm so glad I'm not the only person around here who loves this little gem.
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# ¿ Jun 27, 2017 03:47 |
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Zetsubou-san posted:Also thanks to Blackadder for gifting me The Zombiriffic Adventures of Sheva Alomar and Swole Beefshirt It took me a minute to realize this wasn't a real title that someone snuck through Greenlight.
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# ¿ Jun 27, 2017 17:52 |
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-Blackadder- posted:This sounds dope. Speaking of which what are the good Cthulhu games? I already played Call of Cthulhu. It's not strictly Cthulhu but for my money The Last Door really gets the whole cosmic horror vibe way better than any other game. For something more actiony, I also enjoy Eldritch a whole lot. I think you would really like The Room and its sequel if you haven't experienced them yet. For hidden object games, you want anything made by Artifex Mundi. I can personally vouch for Grim Legends, Nightmares from the Deep, 9 Clues, and Abyss: The Wraiths of Eden.
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# ¿ Jun 27, 2017 18:00 |
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Dr. Angela Ziegler posted:I haven't touched Radiant mode, but given the design philosophy of Red Hook, I'm guessing it tones down combat bullshit but still makes you have well over 1000 of every heirloom to upgrade your town and well over 200,000g to upgrade/heal your heroes... in a game that give 10-20 heirlooms and 1-2k gold per run, assuming you're perfect quote:RADIANT MODE:
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# ¿ Jun 27, 2017 18:48 |
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-Blackadder- posted:Thanks for these recommendations. I added Adam Wolfe, The Last Door, is this bundle with The Room a good choice? I'm gonna see if I can find some HOG bundles for the others. That's a real good bundle! I don't know Tiny Bang, Tetrobot, or Sokobond but the rest range from good to excellent. Machinarium is one of my favorite point-and-clicks, and both Spacechem and Gateways will tax the hell out of your brain in very different ways.
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# ¿ Jun 28, 2017 00:58 |
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Mister Adequate posted:Rule out Fallout 3 completely; under no circumstances get it. If you want an RPG get New Vegas. If you want action get Far Cry 4. I harbor no hate for Fallout 3 but given the circumstances I fully agree with this advice.
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# ¿ Jun 28, 2017 02:55 |
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Anti-Hero posted:I'm on the fence r.e. the latter two. I vastly prefer Hollow Knight to Guacamelee, but both are quite good. Guacamelee plays a little more like a beat-em-up with some brutal platforming, whereas Hollow Knight is more about smooth sword combat and exploration. I haven't played XCOM2 but the moment someone complains about stress and tedium, I feel obligated to warn them away from Darkest Dungeon because those are the two biggest knocks against it even among people that love it. Beating one game (on normal difficulty, there's a shorter, easier one now) takes over 50 hours of somewhat repetitive missions where you need to make a lot of very difficult decisions to succeed. Failure can mean losing hours of progress put into the characters that die, which is usually the point that people ragequit out forever. If you can deal with all that it's an amazing experience, but no matter how much you love it, you'll be glad when it's over. Plastic Goldbaby posted:Went digging for a bunch of smaller, cheaper games but I'm looking to trim the list a little. Any suggestions on what to axe? I've tried multiple times to get into Valdis Story and it just never happens. It's a very technical, unforgiving platformer that's lacking on some key quality-of-life elements like a good map system.
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# ¿ Jun 28, 2017 03:56 |
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-Blackadder- posted:Anyone ever here about this game? Devil Daggers. Just came across it browsing, reviews seem pretty good. I wrote about Devil Daggers. It's probably the greatest use of the old Quake 1 aesthetic yet and for a single-player game does an amazing job of jacking your adrenaline up. As long as you don't mind that it's one arena over and over and over again it's a rad little game. Find a bunch of friends that play it to populate your leaderboard for best results. Tulip posted:What's goon consensus on Abzu? I wrote about Abzu. There's not much to do besides swim through the levels and look at fishies but they're really pretty levels with really pretty fishies. It's two hours of perfect chill marked by the occasional creepy or emotional scene as the story comes into play. tater_salad posted:Friendly reminder if you don't own Super Hot you should and it's on sale for $15. I wrote about SUPERHOT. It's an insanely gratifying mix of first-person action and intense strategy, and shattering your enemies is one of the greatest feelings in all of videogamedom. However, it is very important to note that the story mode is not the main draw here. It's quite good but only two hours long, so if you finish that and call yourself done you're probably going to be disappointed. The real fun is in the endless arena modes and themed challenge modes which expand on the base gameplay in really cool ways. Lakbay posted:I mostly buy indie games during sales and even those seem to not have as big discounts. I had a "buy when it's $5 or less" rule but a lot of stuff I expected to be at that price point are at $6.79 or $7.50 and most of them are a couple of years old Steam has been around long enough for people to really dissect and analyze the sale culture, so discounts have most likely moved to where developers have calculated they'll make the most money. Never being on sale doesn't work unless you're a Factorio-style sensation but going to 90% off after a few months or even years seems to not have become a winning strategy for most games. I'm just speculating but price points for the last year or so have felt very deliberate among big names and indies alike. That being said, I have Deathstate, Transistor, both Rusty Lake games, and EMPORIUM in my cart right now for the kingly sum of $8 so it's not like great deals are gone forever.
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# ¿ Jun 28, 2017 16:22 |
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Havana Affair posted:Any opinions about Starbound? I remember hearing it gets tedious quickly but apparently they've just released a big update. It's contentious but I found it too tedious to enjoy. Terraria is a far better game for just letting you do whatever you want.
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# ¿ Jun 28, 2017 16:48 |
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Mr E posted:Could I get horror games recommendations? I beat SOMA a few weeks ago and loved it, and have the first Amnesia and Alien: Isolation to play. Pretty much any style would be fine since I haven't played a ton of horror games after Silent Hill 4. If you don't mind some reading, I played a gaggle of generally good horror games back in October and wrote a whole bunch about all of them.
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# ¿ Jun 30, 2017 17:31 |
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-Blackadder- posted:2. Stories Untold - Incredibly atmospheric Stranger Things-vibed text-based horror game with a twist! I played through Stories Untold in a single 2-hour sitting last night. It definitely has some very creepy parts and I really liked the text parser interface, but the story is based around a really common horror trope that I kind of hate at this point. Overall I think it's worth experiencing but way more for the journey than the destination. I also started playing Risen (the first one) the other night and it's really fun so far, though I was surprised at how fast literally anything could kill me. Feels like it was designed with the quick save button in mind. I also also logged a bunch of hours in N++ which is TOTALLY worth it if you like challenging platformers, and especially if you liked previous N games because they added a bunch of really neat new traps and level elements. I've also also also been playing Rollers of the Realm which is a cute mashup of pinball and RPG without going very deep into either. It's not a game you can really devote yourself to but it's fun for lunch breaks and such. Finally, I started playing Binding of Isaac: Rebirth at long last and yep, it's really good and pretty much fixes everything that was wrong with the original while adding a bunch of new stuff.
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# ¿ Jul 3, 2017 17:51 |
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ArfJason posted:n++ is absolutely outstanding and i invite anyone who owns it to share steamids so i can have more people in my leaderboards I don't know if we're buddies already but we can be now. Out of my 300+ friends only THREE have gone past the Intro set.
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# ¿ Jul 3, 2017 19:50 |
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Dr. Angela Ziegler posted:OK sale is pretty much over for me unless someone buys a playset of Flagstones of Trokair from me so I can get NiER, so now what to play? I've narrowed it down to a list, but someone suggest one of these. Preference is to things that can be finished in one evening to get them into my "finished" category and off my HD. EMPORIUM is microscopic, Stories Untold and NaissanceE are both 2 hour games, 1979 Revolution is a little longer than that.
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# ¿ Jul 3, 2017 23:34 |
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gmq posted:Any super engrossing game I should buy before the sale ends? Games that make me want to finish them to find out what's going on. I'm not picky about the genre, I'll play anything but the story should be part of the game, so a Bejeweled clone with story dumps between levels wouldn't really work. I marathoned the last three hours of Oxenfree because I had to know what was going to happen.
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# ¿ Jul 5, 2017 07:35 |
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ArfJason posted:im not buying the pack because i remember quake 2 being hot garbage. one of the mission packs for q1 was good tho but i cant remember which one it was. I know you're skipping this but for anyone else that needs to snap up the full Quake 2 experience in the next hour, The Reckoning was the good one, and Ground Zero was the not good one. I reviewed them all because of course people need in-depth critiques of 20-year-old FPSes and their expansion packs.
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# ¿ Jul 5, 2017 17:10 |
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ArfJason posted:was talking q1's tho. I thiiiiink the first expansion was the good one? but i cant remember without playing Ha, I can't read! I reviewed those too and yes, Scourge of Armagon is the good one and Dissolution of Eternity is the bad one, despite having an incredible title.
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# ¿ Jul 5, 2017 17:47 |
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I was just going to pick up like 6 little indie games for $10 but then I threw Dead Cells on top of the pile and I think I'm just going to play that for eternity.
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# ¿ Jul 5, 2017 18:06 |
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I think the common ground between Dark Souls and Dead Cells is more that combat is always, always, always potentially deadly. In most metroidvanias you inevitably reach a point where you have enough health or powers to just shrug off everything but the bosses. In Dead Cells, though, every enemy can wreck you if you stop paying attention for even a moment. Beyond that the actual combat is a brilliant inversion of Dark Souls, where instead of baiting out attacks and taking advantage, you've got to get in there and gently caress people up as fast as possible. If you hesitate or play it too safe enemies can tear you apart, so speed and brutality are in high demand. I think that's what makes it feel so good to play... Dead Cells doesn't want you to make measured, balanced characters to face diverse challenges, it wants you to become a blood-gargling psychopath that mulches everything in sight instantly. And everything from the synergy between weapons to the timed doors is designed to support that.
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# ¿ Jul 6, 2017 17:12 |
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# ¿ May 2, 2024 02:17 |
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Lakitu7 posted:Maybe I'm playing the game incorrectly but it seems to teach me to spam grenades and traps and stay out-of-sight as much as possible until things slowly die because getting hit by basically anything in the later stages will cost least 50% of my health. You're probably right in that I need to start playing more with the weapons instead of skills if I ever want to have a prayer of beating the final boss though. I've only logged about 2 hours but on my third ever run I got the teleport rune, killed the Incomplete One, and nearly finished the Graveyard with twin blades and a high-damage pair of grenades. I didn't even use the grenades that much, just to wipe out big groups if killing big guys attracted a crowd. If you're doing a ton of damage it doesn't matter how much the enemies do because they're dead. And even enemies you can't kill instantly get stunned at certain damage thresholds, or can be stunned by effects on your weapons. Add to that the big exclamation-point tells when an attack is incoming and the invincibility on your rolls, and there's no reason you shouldn't be right in everyone's face all the time. The harder areas in the game have more and more ways to punish caution, like the teleporting zombies and the scythe-guy's chain. Mistakes are obviously going to be painful, and flubbing a roll is what ended that run at the Graveyard. However, you can cover for a lot of mistakes through the rally system and going twice as hard when you get hit. That's what I mean about everything being built around going fast, you can avoid tons of damage and heal back tons of hits by staying in the fight. And ultimately it's just too much fun to cuisinart an entire roomful of monsters or dive-smash unsuspecting foes.
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# ¿ Jul 7, 2017 00:10 |