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Morter posted:Any thoughts on Roboquest? Even though i'm not a fan of roguelikes, it looks polished and fun compared to the other roguelike shooters I've picked up and dropped in my library. I quite like it: like you say it feels very polished, fast-paced and exciting to play and has a lot more fun verticality, guns, movement, and cool bosses compared to other shooters like Gunfire Reborn, though I've only played a little bit because it's in early access and I noticed that there were making some big design changes here and there (stats affecting guns, health management, etc) so I wanted to hold off for the complete package. As a side note, if you're on Humble Choice it was part of the November 2022 package (probably not the case for you, but you never know).
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Jan 21, 2023 19:25
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Jack Trades posted:Is Labyrinth of Refrain that one dungeon crawler where one of the bosses crushes you with her breasts? And here I thought you were just thinking of Momodora, which I feel spawned a lot of similar boob-based bosses:  I also thought you might've meant the Hakoniwa Explorer Plus, which has a lot of bosses that crush you with their, uh, assets.
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Jan 31, 2023 19:01
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The 7th Guest posted:
I just tried the demo as well based off your review and yep, feels great and looking forward to it! Getting that very polished sense I got from other cool recent retro games like Cyber Shadow. Thanks as usual for showcasing some cool games that might've slipped past my net. --- Pinging the Tales fans in here: would you say Tales of Arise is worth it? Currently sitting at around $20 on Humble, so I was a little curious. A lot of people seem to love it, but I'm also hearing a lot of people slamming it for bad difficulty (which I'm curious to see if I can figure out a way around with skill) and rushed story (which actually I feel might be a blessing since I feel most stories are a slog, like Persona 5) among other things: was hoping for a good Tales game finally after most modern ones have let me down (including Berseria, in my opinion, with its very boring dungeons/exploration and weird combat) but it unfortunately seems to have not righted the ship, mayhaps. I do have Tales of Vesperia still to play, so I'm wondering if I should just do that instead, but I actually hear a lot of people slamming it as well for a terrible back half, so hmm, maybe I should just move on from both?
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Feb 6, 2023 05:52
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Despite being based off of a...questionable series...the demo for Grim Guardians Demon Purge is up for Next Fest and provided some classic and solid character-swapping Castlevania 3/Bloodstained Curse of the Moon fun. But if you thought games like Forspoken were a bit too talkative and quippy, then perhaps stay away: the characters are absolute chatterboxes, repeating the same barks for every single action they do and I was getting sick of it fast, haha (and no quip-reducing option in sight unfortunately)
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Feb 7, 2023 07:52
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Cool (and not so cool) Next Fest demos I've tried: Radio the Universe - COOL - Very stylish and atmospheric top-down Zelda-like where you play as a surprisingly heavy robot who clunkily explores a ruined techno city, keeps jumping down pits and battles enemies while using the appropriate sequence of moves to ensure they reduce the enemies HP to exactly zero for EXP. Also features a lot of 2.5D jumping puzzles, similar to ones seen in Unsighted, Crosscode, Alundra, and other Zelda-likes.   Gestalt: Steam & Cinder - COOL - Pretty polished and cool Metroidvania with a story focus where you explore a steampunk city as a roguish lady merc, picking up misc bounties/quests while doing your main mission which has you uncovering relics of some mysterious civilization with void powers and maybe you have some connection to the past or future or something. Combat has you use sword moves to build up energy for fancy bullets that can hurt or stun while ducking or roll through well-telegraphed attacks.   Picayune Dreams - COOL - Interesting Vampire Survivors-like that, like Hades, differentiates it from the crowd with an incredible sense of style, tons of dialogue that changes every run and a mysterious story you piece together as you progress with all sorts of lore nuggets being dropped in Yume Nikki sidestories as you defeat bosses. Gives me Evangelion, Returnal or maybe Ender's Game vibes.    Oblivion Override - COOL - For fans of Dead Cells, this is a pretty polished clone with more of a focus on fancy weapons and stylish moves you can pull off on cooldowns. Nothing too special to set it apart, but the hacking and slashing felt alright.   Rusted Moss - COOL - Reminds me a lot of Momodora, if it took place in a rusty yet mossy apocalyptic cityscape where you had not only a cool charge-burst-rifle, but a grapple hook bungie cord that is used for a lot of challenging platforming and even combat during grapples.   Dust & Neon - COOL - Kinda like a combination of Borderlands (aesthetic, loot, upgrades) and Synthetik/The Ascent (fast-paced top-down combat with a focus on fancy reloads, moving behind crates for auto-cover yet shooting over them when you aim). It didn't grab me at first and I'm a bit worried about whether it has a good enough story and goal apart from just going through missions, but the combat started to feel really good: I liked how enemies use cover and have their own ammo counts and have to reload, making for some cool strategic cowboy exchanges.   Trinity Fusion - NOT COOL - Not that bad as a Metroidvania/Dead Cells-ish game: decent combat with good enemy telegraphs and variety. But it just felt like the levels were pretty boring with a real random smattering of enemies placed haphazardly, and I encountered plenty of weird bugs.  Gripper - NOT COOL - It looks stylish and I think the whole motorcycle combat where you hook onto enemy body parts and pull them off, only to chuck them right back at them is very novel. But currently the game feels really unpolished and janky, lacking any sort of satisfying punch to the combat due to sparse audio, and is overly cinematic/QTE focused. It has that kind of feeling where it was built assuming the best case scenario, and anything you do outside of that best case causes bugs (very common with a lot of these Next Fest demos, I feel)  Dad by the Sword - HMMM - As a Dark Messiah of Might and Magic fan, I really want to like this. It has a lot of cool stuff like kicking enemies into spikes, Metal Gear Rising-esque dismemberments, directional slashes and blocks/parries based on movement, and so on. But the game just feels really wonky and unfocused at the moment with all sorts of bugs, and the levels are pretty boring and repetitive. Something to keep an eye on though, as if it gets polished I think it could be great. 
FutureCop fucked around with this message at 06:27 on Feb 8, 2023 |
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Feb 8, 2023 06:19
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More Next Fest demos, but unfortunately I feel like I started out strong and now have been making bad picks: Pizza Kidd - NOT COOL - I love me a good beat-em-up, but this ain't it as despite its charming anime presentation, it feels incredibly rough and repetitive with boring recolored enemies, confusingly balanced special moves, a throw which doesn't even smash the body into other enemies, stiff controls, bad presentation, and so on. It's like a game jam game or a student project feel. Just stick with Streets of Rage 4 and Fight-n-Rage.  RAIDBORN - NOT COOL - It's pretty much an indie carbon copy of Skyrim, except missing some of the more expensive elements due to its indie budget, like world map travelling, which is replaced by mandatory fast travel. It's impressive how accurately they recreated it, including the bad combat and all of its lackluster feedback and terrible AI, when they could've done so much to improve it. Unfortunately, considering Skyrim is a game which has to be modded to be fun in the first place, I question the purpose of this game. The only thing I can say that they've changed for the better, at least somewhat, is that its a bit more straightforward and keeps the flow of action going, such as how they cut down on the clutter of thousands of items that can be picked up to just important items (though that now makes it confusing to figure out what is interactable and what is just background dressing). I guess pick it up if you like vanilla Skyrim (but again, who the hell does?)  Full Void - COOL? - Speaking of carbon copies of games, were you a fan of the old Delphine games like Out of this World, Flashback, Heart of Darkness, or if that's too old for you, a fan of other cinematic platformers like Abe's Odyssey, Limbo, Little Nightmares and so on? Well this game is recreating everything about those games and is as you expect: chase scenes where you need to think fast, careful deliberate platforming where you need to lower yourself down ledges and such, puzzles where you hack robots or pull levers or push boxes about, lots of rotoscoped child death cinematics that you'll be seeing a lot due to the trial and error nature of the game that comes from its no-HUD minimalist presentation and vague contextual actions, and so on. It ain't bad as I did love Out of this World, but the demo didn't fully sell me on it: felt a bit too railroaded and wasn't that excited at the environments (you are in a sewer for a long time).   Perseus Titan Slayer - NOT COOL - was hoping for a nice little Diablo roguelike experience, got a really terrible feeling and looking game. Avoid, avoid, avoid.  ArcRunner - HMMM - Game feels very polished and smooth overall and delivers some decent roguelike shooting fun with cool classes and such, so I want to like it. Had a good time with the Soldier for a bit pulling off quick insta-shields to deflect well-telegraphed enemy attacks while blasting them with my boomstick. However, there were some slight annoyances like how aiming was a bit unreliable and confusing, it was slow to switch between ranged and melee, and overall it just felt a little bog-standard: the combat just didn't quite spark joy for me despite all of its flashy aesthetic, fancy toys and varied enemies, compared to other third-person shooter games like Warframe, Remnant, Dead Space and so on. It's like it should be good in theory but is lacking energy somehow in its execution. Maybe something to try yourself and/or keep an eye on.   The Last Case of Benedict Fox - HMMM - It's a very pretty game where you're a detective with an eldritch entity buddy that's split between two modes - detective mode where you wander around a safe space inspecting clues, rotating objects and solving puzzles, and another mode where you're 2D platforming through a dangerous zone parrying, dodging, and attacking demons with your knife and flare gun. Unfortunately I felt like the game was very janky and unpolished feeling all-around but especially in the action sequences with odd animation stuttering and awkward input registration and confusing hitboxes/collisions and so on. Maybe it's worth a try: I just typically show very little patience for unsmooth feeling games, and this was like constantly stubbing your toe. For me, this is feeling like style over substance.  
FutureCop fucked around with this message at 02:43 on Feb 9, 2023 |
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Feb 9, 2023 02:32
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The 7th Guest posted:
Tried this out and yeah, what a bizarre game that's very charming in its weirdness. While the combat system is pretty cool, I particularly liked how whenever you're at a campfire or a shop or whatever, the camera zooms out and shows your whole party chit-chatting: really nice touch that makes you more attached to them. Unfortunately, I had a real rough time with this game: navigating the menus can be very confusing, the amount of encounters can be pretty severe and pace-killing, and I got hardlocked in combat when my cursor somehow spawned out-of-bounds and couldn't get back into the combat area, meaning I was unable to pick up any of the generated combat tokens to do any damage: wasn't even able to fix it by reloading, I had to restart completely. So yeah, hoping this can get polished up.
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Feb 9, 2023 19:55
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To be fair, as much as I consider Doom Eternal as my game of the universe, I am a little surprised at how much it forces tons of tutorials popups on you that explicitly point out enemy weaknesses: you'd think that would be something we'd figure out with experimentation! I typically hate that kind of handholding, but something about the way it was delivered made me not mind it in the slightest for Doom Eternal.AfricanBootyShine posted:Could you give a timestamp for the Skarrj discussion? I don't have the attention span to watch a one hour video and the stamps are based on the stages. He first mentions it in the beginning of "The Mines" chapter, around 14:52 (or if you're really impatient, around 15:58 is exactly when he starts talking about it) FutureCop fucked around with this message at 23:52 on Feb 9, 2023 |
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Feb 9, 2023 23:50
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More Next Fest Demo impressions! Feel like I made better choices this go around: Ravenbound - NOT COOL - Would've loved to see what this game is about, but despite being a singleplayer game, it requires you to always be online and forces you to make an account before you can access it. Maybe there's a good reason for it and I'm being silly, but I don't play indie games for this kind of nonsense. If anyone else who was more tolerant has impressions, feel free to divulge.  Boundary - COOL? - Pretty much Call of Duty In Space, aka Infinite Warfare but with an actually interesting aesthetic/style and gameplay where you can pull off some neat Ender's Game-esque moves where you outplay opponents by maneuvering around in space and shooting from crazy unexpected angles. For the most part it feels good, but I do feel like it was a bit too quiet (I know, I know, "it's in space" but still it makes the information and feedback you can sense limited and makes it confusing). Also I couldn't play long enough to see if it's well-balanced, but I fear it isn't: I thought the TTK was way too fast at first since I kept dying instantly, but after seeing how slow it was for me to kill people, I then realized that it was just me getting railed by everybody else playing sniper rifles (some things never change...)   ENENRA - NOT COOL - Kinda like a combination of standard DMC mechanics and Arkham freeflow combat, this seems like it could be a pretty neat character action game (or spectacle fighter, or cuhrayzee game or whatever the hip way to call the genre is). However, it's definitely in a rough unpolished state at the moment. I can forgive some of the aspects of the game like lackluster/missing audio feedback and some sloppy assets/effects (even though I shouldn't) since it's a work in progress. However, aspects like the incredibly bad input processing which makes it incredibly unreliable to pull off the combo you want, repetitive gameplay where you just go from arena to arena fighting the same few enemies, and lack of intention in design for a unique hook or purposeful utility of combos/moves, and just general janky flow, it's not really something I'm keeping my eye on when there's so many other character action games I need to play.  System Shock - COOL - Big fan of System Shock 2 as well as the original System Shock, and seeing it remade here is pretty darn cool. Overall the game is mighty impressive and polished and I can see myself getting it for classic imm sim fun, and I feel like they kept most of the aspects of the original while improving it with better modern features like audio logs, better maps, and so on. However, I will admit it does have some rough aspects. For one, I found the damage feedback very lackluster: shooting and especially hitting enemies with melee felt weak and sometimes I wasn't sure whether I whiffed or hit. Likewise, being hurt gave practically no feedback which led to me dying without even realizing what hit me. But more so than that, the visual aesthetic of the game felt so loud and garish that it started to give me a headache: I'm not joking when I say Cruelty Squad is a hundred times easier to visually parse than this game (call me crazy if you like). Again, I don't think these aspects are quite enough to dissuade me from it, but hrmm...   (also what the hell are these promo gifs: a little droid driving up to you and blowing up? is that really gonna sell people?) A Sisters Journey - HMMM - Judging from the art style and the gameplay gifs, I was hoping for Celeste with guns, but unfortunately that's not what I got. The game does have a decent level of fluidity and polish to it overall, but the demo gameplay wasn't really selling me: you spend a lot of time navigating a very boring-looking cave with unchallenging puzzle platforming, and you spend a lot of time fighting boring, spongy slimes with your peashooter that needs to agonizingly recharge after only a few shots, over and over. After a boss fight (against a slime, of course) which was surprisingly tough but not for good reasons, it just continued onto some simple puzzles of flipping switches and moving keys around. Maybe it gets better, but yeah, really wasn't exciting me. Didn't help that I encountered a few bugs, and I can't believe the little things they neglected like how you can't drop off a ladder midway (attempting to do so jumps you up, forcing you to have to climb all the way down)   (again, these gifs make it look like it gets good, but I wish the demo would get to that level faster!) FutureCop fucked around with this message at 05:35 on Feb 10, 2023 |
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Feb 10, 2023 05:29
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More Next Fest Demo impressions! Vernal Edge - HMMM - A pretty neat metroidvania with 2D character action combat (aka juggles, parries, combos and other fancy tech) and a focus on being free to explore islands in the sky with your airship that contain hub cities, dungeons, sidequests, and more. Uses a 'pulse' system where you throw your sword at enemies and use mana to 'pulse' it to deal damage and generate health. It is a little rough around the edges in some slight ways, such as the cliche "badass" protagonist's demeanor and some lackluster animations and sound effects I wish were better polished, but the overall feel is decent so I'm keeping my eyes on it.    Magenta Horizon - HMMM - Very similar to above, it is another game with a focus on 2D character action combat, but while the above was a exploration metroidvania, this seems more like a linear stage-by-stage game with tons of straight-forward combat and platforming challenges. In addition, it boasts a rather surreal and bizarre "prog-rock-album-cover" aesthetic. Has some weird mechanics like throwing a healing bomb at enemies to make them sprout healing orbs when you hit them. Again, similar to above, there are some slight rough edges here and there with some dropped inputs and such, but the overall feel is decent so I'm keeping my eyes on it.    Shady Knight - COOL - Like a combination of Neon White/Mirror's Edge meets Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, you quickly dash, grapple, slide, and clamber through bite-size levels while stylishly dealing with enemies by improvising with environmental props (throwing barrels at them, kicking them off ledges or into spikes or other enemies, etc). Very fun and very smooth, overall quite impressed. Only worries is whether the game will continue to vary the environments and enemies sufficiently, and dangle enough story/lore nuggets to keep motivation going. https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/256929683/movie480_vp9.webm?t=1676067543 (couldn't find gifs and didn't want to show just static images for such a dynamic game) Farworld Pioneers - COOL? - Like a combination of Terraria and Rimworld, this game not only has the standard Minecraft loop of crafting and gathering by yourself, but you also have a bunch of colonists that you need to protect and can order around to craft and gather as well. Actually kinda confused me at first since typically you're either just an explorer by yourself (Terraria) or you're a faceless god monitoring your people (Rimworld) but since this has both, sometimes I was a bit confused on what I should be doing. However, after getting used to all that the game has to offer, I started to have some good fun, but will admit I still felt incredibly overwhelmed with the controls and all the contextual clutter. I think it's overall very polished enough that it's worth a shot for veterans of the genre: I'm just a big noob so understandably was overwhelmed.    COVEN - COOL - Was a very pleasant surprise and I'd recommend it for fans of horror-esque boomer shooters like Dusk and Blood and CULTIC. You play as a witch who is burned and rises from the grave, and immediately you start your revenge by brutally chopping villagers apart with an axe and eating their body parts (spleen, testicles, eyeballs, etc) for health like you're in Cruelty Squad. Felt like the game was really well-polished and fun: big levels to explore with all sorts of charming interactable things, satisfying and explosive gore effects, powerful weapons, alt-fires and spells, and so on. https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/256906328/movie480_vp9.webm?t=1663347461 (no gifs for this one) Mortal Darkness - NOT COOL - Boring, ugly, absolutely horrendous in almost every aspect. First Perseus and now this: can I not get a top-down hacky-slashy that isn't an absolute trash fire in this Next Fest?  Edge Of Dead - NOT COOL - It isn't bad, but it isn't really that great either: just a decent Nuclear Throne/Gungeon game with a decent level of polish and juice to it, but nothing special.  
FutureCop fucked around with this message at 03:52 on Feb 11, 2023 |
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Feb 11, 2023 03:41
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The 7th Guest posted:I appreciate you just trying stuff out at random. I've mostly been looking at stream footage to see if I might vibe with a game. I'll play another batch of demos tonight after I'm done work. Looks like Coven was covered so I'll focus on ones people haven't tried. Doh, I didn't even realize Coven was on your list: sorry I keep stepping on your toes with crossover, but I'd still love to see your impressions on everything since I play these demos pretty fast and impatiently so I could be missing out on some of the deeper aspects that another perspective might have. Jossar posted:Dark Tree is a top down style ARPG that, sadly for FutureCop, is an absolute trash fire. Whew, dodged a bullet there! But still, depressing.
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Feb 11, 2023 04:39
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SoR Blaze posted:Anyone got any recommendations for simple ARPGs? I've been craving one of those PS2 era games like Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance or Champions: Return to Arms. Mostly I'm not looking to get showered in tons of lot with tiny granular %-based upgrades, so stuff like Grim Dawn and PoE and the like are right out. Here's more what I'm looking for: As a fellow big fan of ARPGS but also one who likes to avoid the pace-killing avalanche of difficult to parse loot from games like Grim Dawn and PoE: Well, they're definitely the obvious answer with the various Souls games (Elden Ring, Dark Souls 1-3, Bloodborne, Sekiro, etc) and Soulslike games (The Surge 1-2, Remnant From the Ashes, etc) since they have more simple but meaningful loot, but since it sounds like you're looking for a top-down experience, these might be out: figured I'd mention them just in case. I think games like Hades and Curse of the Dead Gods can fit this bill, unless you're specifically not looking for a run-based roguelike experience. In a similar roguelike vein but with a more story-focused progression to it, maybe try Children of Morta? Could maybe play Magicka 1-2: those have some fun action similar to those games you listed, along with a great creative spellcasting system. I suppose it's missing long-term loot and builds though. Definitely consider looking into the Y's series which are some fun and simple ARPGs, as well as other Nihon Falcom games like Xanadu Next. If you're got a Playstation 3 or 4, consider Dragon's Crown? The Monster Hunter series definitely has meaningful loot that you craft, and its cool to build your own custom armor set with skills for all sorts of hunting styles. You might also have fun with Vermintide 2? Fun to decide a class, weapon setup along with cool skill build while hacking away in good coop fun. One of my most risky recommendations: maybe try Lost Ark? I had fun with it, but I will say, it is definitely a KMMO in all the bad ways, and does take way too long to get good. FutureCop fucked around with this message at 01:15 on Feb 13, 2023 |
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Feb 13, 2023 00:06
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Thanks everyone for all the Next Fest coverage: was a lot of fun! I got tired and missed out on the last days, so I have a newfound appreciation for all the coverage everyone else kept going on. I did check out some of the weirder games like Dark and Darker, which I was somewhat impressed with due to its very precise modeling of attacks and environmental collisions, but I'm not a huge fan of PVP stuff so it's not for me. If I were to sum up my findings: "Insta-buy" Wishlists: System Shock, Gestalt Steam & Cinder, Radio The Universe, Gravity Circuit, Picayune Dreams "Very likely to buy" Wishlists: Rusted Moss, Shady Knight, Dust & Neon, COVEN, DROP, Meatgrinder "Hmm, keep an eye on it, see how it develops" Wishlists: Vernal Edge, Magenta Horizon, Oblivion Override, Dad by the Sword, Full Void, A Sisters Journey, Farworld Pioneers, Boundary "Good, but simply too anime even for me" award goes to Grim Guardians FutureCop fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Feb 13, 2023 |
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Feb 13, 2023 23:31
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Waste of Breath posted:Hoping this is as good on deck as I imagine it being. Downloading to check it out but my backlog is big enough that I probably won't pull the trigger yet even at sale price. I'm really looking forward to the next one they've got coming out, being Rabbit and Steel, closest thing to a MMO raid simulator without all the, well, horrible MMO bits. Got to play it at MAGfest and had a good time.  What was your experience like with Maiden and Spell? I was a bit more interested in Rabbit and Steel since it is coop instead of pvp, but does Maiden and Spell have a decent single player campaign (or maybe it does have coop and I'm just not seeing it?)
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Feb 17, 2023 00:16
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widespread posted:Is it the demo that ends with a fight vs Okada Izo in a gambling den The Ishin demo seems different from that: gives you two scenarios, one where you fight through a bunch of mobs as you storm the castle, and then another one where you have a boss fight against a trio. I found it quite fun, though I'm always conflicted about Yakuza combat as, while it's a nice spectacle, I always find it very stiff and difficult to determine how aggressively or cautiously I need to play as both end in unavoidable damage. Also the card abilities seem super overpowered and recharge quickly so I'm not even sure why I'm bothering to strategically fight, haha. But then again, if it's anything like Yakuza, the story is worth any potential combat frustration, most likely.
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Feb 17, 2023 01:39
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Recently finished playing Ghost Song on Game Pass. Pretty decent metroid-style experience where you go around getting your double-jumps, your missiles and so on, unlocking new combat options as well as exploration, all the classic stuff. Had an interesting combat mechanic where your gun overheats, but that heat gets applied to your melee weapon to give it extra damage, giving a back-and-forth loop of shooting and then dumping heat with melee. Story was nice as well with an interesting central cast of characters as well as a lot of mysterious lore and hidden encounters you can find if you explore more off the beaten path, similar to a Soulslike experience with all sorts of optional NPC questlines that unlock in strange ways. For its central story line, it's got you delving deep down different paths to find these ship parts. Once you find a ship part, however, you need to lug it all the way back manually: no fast travel allowed and also there are new critters that get activated around the world by carrying ship parts. This really screwed me over initially since I got a ship part right after fighting a boss with me having no healing consumables and 1 HP, meaning I had to make it all the way back not getting hit at all, which was incredibly frustrating (and it checkpoints you precisely in this initial state upon picking the part up, meaning you don't even get full HP refill after dying). I will say, though, that I found that experience memorable in comparison, as after that first time, all of the other trips back felt like just tedious busywork where I had plenty of HP and consumables and the extra activated critters were not enough to spice up the trip back. Felt really bizarre and lackluster that so many of the ship parts besides the first one could be picked up no problem: no boss fight or anything to cap off the trip. Ghost Song started out pretty strong for me, but ended up petering out as it went on. As explained before, I found it bizarre that apart from collecting one or two ship parts, most of the rest were collected without any sort of fanfare like a boss fight, making it almost feel like there was cut content. Not that I really wanted boss fights in some cases as there were plenty that felt really badly designed with awkward disjointed hitboxes and annoying patterns and sudden wombo-combo-insta-death due to the lack of invincibility after getting hit. The whole heat mechanic with the gun/melee started to get pretty annoying as well: combat in general felt a bit clunky and the gun not powerful enough to justify its rapid heat generation, and there were plenty of times where melee just wasn't a good option to switch to in combat or exploration, making it a tedious waiting game for it to cool down. Finally, the ending really fell flat for me: I didn't mind it being a downer and such, and it was kind of what I expected, but still, just felt like nothing special. I even got the secret ending with its reveal and a whole bunch of mysterious lore to chew on and such but it was just like, ok, whatever. I dunno, I feel like Ghost Song is one of those unfortunate games that are good, great even, but only in a vacuum: once you compare it to its large amount of competition, Hollow Knight being the obvious comparison, it became not good enough. I certainly like to explore these lesser-known games to see if they are hidden gems and again, this wasn't bad, especially if perhaps you've already played all the other big hits and want another decent metroid, but for me, this one just made me feel like I wasted my time as I have so many of those big hits waiting in the backlog to play instead. In a way, it really made me think about this recent video from Sakurai on competing with the past: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhcitspNMuI FutureCop fucked around with this message at 18:01 on Feb 19, 2023 |
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Feb 19, 2023 17:59
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In discussing roguelite mechanics: one thing I really liked about Hades was that, in stark contrast to many other roguelikes, is that you get to pick your main weapon/moveset at the start of a run and keep it all the way through. You can also see this in some other games like Risk of Rain with its classes, but with most roguelikes you're at the mercy of whatever they serve up. There are a lot of times I'm fully in the mood for a certain type of weapon/moveset, like sometimes my mind is in-sync with wanting to get in there and punch, and other times I'm in a ranged mood, and so on, and Hades lets me choose what I will perform best with. Yes, Hades still does have randomization in that the gods and hammers found in the dungeon can change up your weapon a lot and you might not always get the powerup you want for a specific build, but at the least the general choice was there. As much as I like Dead Cells and Curse of the Dead Gods and many others, I hate it when I have to use a weapon I'm not in the mood for because I'm not lucky enough to get the drop I want or, even if I do get the drop, the weapon I like gets outdated and I need to switch to something I don't like but has more item level power. I get that the idea for roguelites might be to keep everything feeling fresh by constantly changing the weapons you're using and encouraging improvization/creativity and tickling that gambling feeling, but my brain is already making me want to try other weapons from run-to-run just because of my shifting moods, so I don't like being forced to go against it.
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Feb 23, 2023 19:30
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Mordja posted:I have no idea if it's controversial, but by and large I don't think From-games fights against really big guys are very good. You're mostly stuck hacking away at their feet, usually barely unable to fully see when they're about to land a hit. I think that's commonly agreed-upon, or so I would hope. Elden Ring almost rectified this by having the horse available for big monster fights which gave it a fresh perspective, but then they lock the horse away from you for several big monster fights where it would've been nice, so a bit of a wasted opportunity there as you're back to clipping their toenails and trying to figure out what attack their ankle twitch signifies. Elden Ring also did a pretty good job at zooming the camera out for the serpent boss fight, but that was mostly because it gives you a big gimmick spear with super large range, so it's not the norm, unfortunately.
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Mar 18, 2023 05:42
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Recently finished up playing a game I backed a long time ago and recently mentioned in this thread back in NextFest: Vernal Edge  It's a bit of a 'rough gem' where they blend Devil May Cry/Kingdom Hearts stylish combat with island-hopping metroidvania exploration. In a lot of ways, it is quite difficult to recommend as, compared to the large amount of more shiny metroidvania contemporaries on the market, it has a very underdeveloped story with an unlikable protagonist, a general feel of being unpolished with lackluster special effects and jankiness, and combat plagued with unintuitive hitboxes and spongy enemies. In spite of this and the few times I almost dropped it, I found myself to keep coming back to explore the various islands and uncover all the secret lore and boss fights, as well as having fun mastering both traversal and combat abilities through all of the scenarios it put me through, and before I knew it, I had beaten the game almost 100% which is something I rarely do. It's probably not for everyone: if you're someone who just plays the game wanting the main story, you'll probably be left quite unsatisfied as it is a lackluster ending. However, if you're the type of person that likes checking out these rough indie gems, as well as experimenting and mastering mechanics to the fullest and making stylish combo videos and the like, consider giving it a go!
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Mar 19, 2023 21:11
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Was looking to see if I could get some quick impressions on games I was thinking of snatching up during this sale. One I was looking at was Gedonia which has reached 1.0 but is still getting post-content: any opinions on whether I could keep waiting for further development, or if it's ready to go in now? If it's good to go now, I was curious if there a certain type of build that is best-suited for the game, unless everything really is well-balanced. To clarify, I'm not looking for the most powerful or efficient build that makes the game easy, just one that feels like the game gave the most obvious design focus or depth to (like how Tyranny's magic system is so intricate you'd feel foolish missing out on it by going for simple melee), or a build you can't get in any other game (like how Mesmer is very unique for Guild Wars compared to more standard RPG classes). Another I was looking at was Warhammer 40k Darktide: from my understanding despite it being out it's still essentially in early access so I think I should wait, but I do really love Vermintide 2 and my brief demo experience with the game so am hankering to get in if recent patches have made it ready. I already got impressions on Blade of Darkness earlier in the thread: I remember playing a demo for this way back in the day and being blown away, so I'm relishing the chance to finally get to actually play it.
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Mar 21, 2023 02:08
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I was a bit curious about Wolcen combat as well, and I'd be looking to get it for just offline as well: I feel like I heard it leaned more towards active combat, such as actively dodging/blocking damage instead of handling it old-school style through passive chance or facetanking/chugging potions, but I'm wondering if I'm mistaken. Speaking of combat feel, I'm trying out Gedonia and this...this is a level of jank beyond what I'm usually dealing with. I thought this would be Elex tier or so, but it's feeling even below that. You all are braver explorers of jank than I give you credit for and I might've found my limit: I'll give it a bit more, but this might be ripe for refunding... FutureCop fucked around with this message at 07:03 on Mar 21, 2023 |
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Mar 21, 2023 06:58
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Reached the 2 hour time limit and ended up refunding Gedonia: I think I can see why people like it, but in terms of janky exploration games, I'd much rather play something a bit more polished like Outward or Elex or Valheim or a bunch of other games instead of this (or, since I was mainly looking for combat, games like Blade of Darkness). To be fair, coming off of Elden Ring recently might've made Gedonia seem that much more janky, so I probably set it up for failure. It's interesting though because part of me is still stuck and still does want to play Gedonia despite my brain knowing it's a bad idea and that there are better options: something about jank games can be so much more mysterious and enticing than popular good games. It's almost like you get two games in one with a jank game: there's the actual game itself, but then there's some overlying archeology game where you struggle to grasp the unexplained mechanics and bizarre appeal of the game, and you don't have any wiki guides to fall back on as a safety net. In a way, jank games are like playing TUNIC, in a way, which is what I've coincidentally moved on towards playing...for now. Maybe I'll revisit Gedonia or rebuy it sometime: I almost feel bad refunding because it is just 7 bux.
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Mar 23, 2023 00:21
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Pierson posted:Before the sale ends are there any other good games (indie or not) of the style of Recettear, Mystia Izakaya or the cabaret minigame from Yakuza 0? Basically running and building up a small business where you directly control the boss/employees and the gameplay is fulfilling guest/buyer requests? I dunno if I'm homing in and exactly scratching the itch you want, but in terms of nice management games, there's Potionomics, Moonlighter, Cooking Simulator, Potion Craft, the Cook Serve Delicious series, PlateUp, and...uh...Lobotomy Corporation?
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Mar 23, 2023 17:18
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Couple of rapid-fire impressions of games I've been playing lately: Dread Templar - Pretty fun boomer shooter! The most impressive aspect of the game felt like the secrets which are many and can be very elaborate puzzles at times. I did feel like it was merely above average though: good but not great. Part of that is because of my personal preferences of liking Doom Eternal-esque arena combat and resource management, more than these old-school open levels where encounters can be cheesed by backpedaling monsters into bottlenecks and can involve a lot of backtracking for getting supplies you left behind and such instead of keeping the forward momentum going. Part of that is also because it feels like there's something slightly off about the combat: in general it's nice, but something about the way the enemies are set up make combat a bit...unsatisfying. I can't exactly nail it down, maybe it's the fact that they all run and charge at you at light speeds which makes crowd control non-existent and rockets too risky, maybe it's the vague hitboxes and telegraphs where you get hit by things you don't feel you should, maybe it's the long cooldowns for all the fun abilities like slow-mo and throwing katanas which make them feel discouraging to use, I dunno. It's good, but there are a lot of games to recommend above this first and foremost, though I'd still say it's worth entry on a list of boomer shooters worth a look.  Earth Defense Force 5 - Super fun bug blasting fun, especially in coop, which was the case for me! It didn't have the greatest initial impression as it can start out painfully slow for certain classes (Air Raider) and the levels can get really repetitive at times both in that they recycle similar situations and it feels way too easy for way too long. However, the game gives you tons of fun tools to blow up bugs in crazy elaborate ways to keep you hooked, the story and characters are hilarious to witness, and the endgame levels really kick up the intensity in a way that we found ourselves really having to focus and even strategize. EDF! EDF! I find myself really wanting to play more so I'm looking at Iron Rain and World Brothers, but feel conflicted with the mixed reviews: any opinions?  TUNIC - Not really much to state beyond the obvious - this was an incredibly polished and wonderful zelda-esque adventure that had equal parts intense combat and intense exploration/puzzling. Really surprised at just how intense the combat gets and the last-minute optional La-Mulana-esque puzzles, but had a blast fighting through and solving them, respectively. Ending felt a bit lackluster, but didn't kill my vibe on it: absolutely check this game out!  Minecraft Dungeons - Bit surprised at how much I'm enjoying this! I was expecting to not like it, but it's simpleness is actually quite refreshing. Instead of loot being some sort of dizzying array of passive statistics that are of questionable benefit due to the lack of feedback and confusing calculus required, all of the loot you get here has immediately clear and impactful benefits that make for interesting choices to make any sort of build right then and there instead of waiting for endgame. It was so refreshing to so clearly see the abilities and procs my gear grants: even some of the more boring procs like 'chance to get more money from a kill' are immediately apparent with an explosive, intuitive effect upon proc, instead of it just vaguely happening in the background. Still, despite all the praise, I dunno if I'll stick with this in the long-term: the story and world aren't that exciting to progress through, and the game isn't really making the most of it's Minecraft-ness to inject any sort of unique, well, mining/crafting mechanics. Reminds me a lot of Victor Vran - maybe I'll go back and play that more!  Valheim - This is more what I expected from Gedonia - I liked the whole Monster Hunter/Minecraft looping progression of exploring to build up resources to be able to hunt a powerful monster: not only can you use the crafting and building mechanics to gear up, but you can even build an arena around where the boss will spawn to help you fight it, like building towers you can snipe from (though the monster can knock those towers down!) Combat was decent: it's a little clunky but not in a confusing, janky manner like Gedonia, more in an intentionally slow manner so you have to use other means to outwit your opponent in combat besides just dodge rolling around. Reminded me a lot of Terraria, but in 3D with a Viking aesthetic. It's only in early access so I'm not playing it beyond the first boss - just wanted to take a peek to see what it's like, but can definitely see me coming back.  Exoprimal Beta - I want to like this one as an EDF and Dino Crisis 2 fan: I love shooting tons of dinos, and I do like how slick and smooth the game felt despite me having an old clunker of a computer. The whole suit/gadget swapping mechanic was kinda neat, and I thought the little story scenes were funny and unexpected due to the multiplayer nature of the game. Something about the game felt a bit off though, particularly in the attack feedback: shooting at dinos felt really unsatisfying and vague where it was never clear I was directly hitting them, possibly due to a lack of blood or hit sparks or pushback or something. Likewise, taking damage from dinos or players seemed really vague and can sneak up on you, making you end up dying so suddenly. Finally, I'm a big PVE-only guy, so the forced PVP aspect kind of isn't my thing, and the PVE portion of the gameplay felt pretty braindead at times so it might not be worth it to deal with the PVP. Eh, it'll be on gamepass so I might give it a go then, but at the moment, feels like something to pass on.  Super Cyborg - It's Contra. If you like Contra (like me) or other Contra-adjacent titles like Metal Slug, you'll like this, as it's quite literally Contra. FutureCop fucked around with this message at 02:18 on Mar 29, 2023 |
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Mar 29, 2023 02:04
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Grapplejack posted:Coffee talk is basically a much shittier and more boring version of va11 hall-a. There's really nothing to it. If you asked me to describe it I'd call it "someone decided to make a questionable content video game based on the Valhalla gameplay" and that should give you the general idea of how good it is Wow, that's pretty damning, especially since I heard Valhalla barely had any gameplay to it already, with the bartending feeling very rote where you just follow orders with no amount of challenge: I imagined you'd have to remember patron's favorite drinks and recipes to be able to work fast, as well as maybe be able to read the mood to pick an ideal drink to solve someone's issue and so on but I didn't see any of that. How much more boring can you get from that? I'm mostly going off of this, for reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-3YhYaau4A FutureCop fucked around with this message at 15:30 on Apr 6, 2023 |
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Apr 6, 2023 15:26
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explosivo posted:Everspace 2 comes out of EA today and is already on Gamepass. Figured I'd mention it since it likely won't be bumped up to the "new releases" on gamepass so you may not remember it's on there but it does appear that version will be updated to the full release around the same time as the Steam version. Good looking out, will definitely check this out as I've been quite interested in it. I was also curious about CHORVS as well: wonder what I should hit up first!
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Apr 6, 2023 15:39
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skeletronics posted:Just how anime is Code Vein? I have a mild allergy. I like the visual aesthetic, but usually tropiness or over the top voice acting turns me off of most anime games or movies I try to enjoy. I've enjoyed some in the past, but it's like one in ten. Also, the only souls-like I really played for more than a couple hours was Elden Ring, but I liked that game a LOT. Hmmm, it's definitely pretty dang anime in some regards, what with the ridiculous outfits and cliche archetypes and being a game where your homebase has a hot spring installed despite being in a bombed-out apocalyptical city, but I never felt like it went too over-the-top in its anime levels to cause cringe: cutscenes felt few and were easily skippable and if you don't like your partner giving chatter you can go solo, among other things. Like, Code Vein wasn't Neon White levels or anything like that, which is a game that I can't play despite wanting to. Still...it's definitely the most anime Souls game. Is there an anime game that you played recently that you turned away from due to allergy? Like, if you could play God Eater or Persona or Tales of Arise or something like that it's probably fine. Though, as a person with an anime profile pic...maybe I'm not the most trustworthy, haha. FutureCop fucked around with this message at 23:32 on Apr 6, 2023 |
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Apr 6, 2023 23:27
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https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/256851777/movie480_vp9.webm?t=1631892705 Just finished playing Severed Steel and I'm about to play it all over again immediately as it was so incredibly fun. For people who love Max Payne or FEAR or stuff like that, definitely pick this up for stylish gunplay action. Some notes: *Story is practically non-existent and unsatisfying: not a problem for me as it does enough to prompt you and let you enjoy the addictive gameplay loop, but I will admit that the ending was pretty meh, so if you're someone who wants some narrative in your shooter, skip this. *Game does a pretty good job at varying the levels in fun ways with different objectives and crazy layouts while still keeping the focus on fast-paced killing: basically, you'd think the game would get repetitive, but it cleverly keeps things fresh despite being the same. There were only a few levels that were stinkers (burning the mansion, etc), but they were few and far-between and I still appreciated the variety they were going for. *While I had tons of fun and enjoy the reckless abandon and fluid, freeform nature that the game has, I felt like it was a bit too easy to be practically invincible through chaining stunts. It feels good, of course, but would've loved a bit more strategy and restrictions to the gameplay, though I suppose I wasn't playing on the absolute hardest difficulty yet, just the one before it. Can't believe that there is a modifier called 'like water' that was apparently highly requested from players that lets you wall-run from a dive and other illogical stuff: that gets rid of what little strategy there is to the movement system and would absolutely snap what little difficulty the game can muster! *While I think you can technically get loads of time in this game through New Game + and other bonus modes like Firefight, I could understand people who go for main campaign one-and-done being dissatisfied as it is just a 2 hour romp. Thus, might be a game to pick up on sale rather than full price (I feel bad that I got it for free on Epic, planning to purchase an extra copy to gift to make it up to devs). FutureCop fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Apr 8, 2023 |
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Apr 8, 2023 23:05
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Couple of thoughts while playing these games: STAR WARS Jedi: Fallen Order: Having fun, but there's something kind of...off about this game that's bugging me. It's just got a much more jankier and unpolished feel and design to it than I expected considering how polished it looks like it should feel. When everything works, it's nice, but as much as it looks like it should be some smooth and slick combination of Uncharted with Sekiro combat, it's like playing Elex or something similarly low-budget, but with triple A visual/audio polish overlaid on top, like a copper pot with gold veneer, I dunno. Wonder if other people got this feel and if there is something I should do to help: I'll stick with it a bit more to see if it grabs me, and I'm starting to get used to its kind of awkward unspoken rules for combat. Exploration is also a bit weird in how, despite how grandiose the worlds look and it all being outdoors, I feel cramped and claustrophobic, stuck on very thin paths and tunnels and corridors. Yakuza Like a Dragon: Really surprised with how much I got addicted and am enjoying this game. I really shy away from long commitment RPGs nowadays, especially ones with turn-based combat instead of real-time, so I was feeling like I'd quit this one, especially due to the long intro before they let you off the leash. Surprise, surprise, I can't get enough of it now: yes the combat is still not quite the best with the balance being all over the place, but I just love the story, characters, and all the crazy substories and games like Dragon Kart and Business Managment and so on. I guess it shouldn't be too surprisingly since a similar thing happened to Yakuza 0 for me: I felt like the combat was incredibly frustrating at first compared to other beat-em-ups and didn't see the appeal, but I just kept sticking with the game to see what happens next and loving it in the end.
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Apr 9, 2023 20:30
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Omi no Kami posted:How's Severed Steel's replayability? I've heard rad-tastic things about its gameplay, but apparently the campaign is only 90-120 minutes long? Is it just one of those mod jobbies, where the main campaign is a tutorial for the shitzillion user-made levels to follow? It is a very short campaign of around 2 hours or less, so yes, if you're a one-and-done person it can be done incredibly fast. However the core gameplay is very addictive and fun, and unlike similar stylish shoot-em-ups that I'd love to replay like Max Payne 3 but don't due to all the annoying cutscenes and loading and such getting in the way of the action, Severed Steel is very easily replayable with fast load times and levels that cut to the chase immediately with no walking or cutscenes and all that jazz. In addition, Severed Steel also has multiple difficulty levels to conquer, a new game + that actually remixes the levels with new enemies, tons of community created bonus levels, many wacky modifiers and cheat codes to unlock that can change up the gameplay greatly for both challenges and fun, Firefight mode which is a bit of a horde/score attack survival mode, Rogue Steel which is a roguelike mode where you try to make your way through random levels with modifiers changing things up, and so on.
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Apr 14, 2023 02:52
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From one movie game to another, I've switched from Jedi Fallen Order to Middle-Earth: Shadow of War and I'm loving it a lot! Love dicing up orcs and am impressed at how complex the combat strategy can be with so many moves that counter certain types and resource management through building up might/focus and recovering health through draining which needs to be carefully setup and so on: gives me Doom Eternal vibes which is great and a welcome surprise, as I was worried it might have that somewhat oversimplified Arkham/Assassin Creed combat. That being said, I attribute most of the game's great strategy feeling to starting my game out on the 'Brutal' difficulty since it reminded me in concept of games like Deus Ex with their 'Realistic' difficulty where damage is high on both ends, making it challenging but not turning enemies into annoying sponges. It really makes me consider running away and/or using every move I've got to exploit weaknesses since I can so easily die in two hits, and being able to die means more interactions with the nemesis system. A very interesting difficulty choice that I hope doesn't screw me over, haha. If I were to have one complaint, is that it is quite annoying to get used to the auto-targetting for movement and combat. Hate it when I'm trying to parkour somewhere and the character auto-corrects some other direction, sometimes flinging me into danger, and likewise hate it when I'm trying to throw knifes in combat to stun a ranged unit about to kill me and it autotargets someone else, leading to the ranged unit being free to follow through with their attack and slay me: very frustrating when the game doesn't guess what you want correctly despite my best attempts (though thankfully it just means another interesting nemesis)!
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Apr 16, 2023 01:05
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Sailor Dave posted:I've also been getting into Shadow of War, and I've found it largely enjoyable except for one thing. The orc intro dialog. Not that it's bad, but it's unskippable. If you end up in a situation where you get repeat dialog, maybe from dying a bunch before an important section where an orc (or several) gets introduced, you have to sit through their intro every. single. time. My god. And not even cheatengine's speedhack can get past it, the audio doesn't get sped up and the game refuses to move on until the actual sound ends. Ah yeah, I haven't gotten repeated dialog yet, but I was already getting slightly annoyed at how indulgent the orc intro dialog can be: you'd think they would just be rather snappy quips but some of 'em really gab on and on, and I'm not just talking about the bards where it might make sense, but even just the regular orcs. Like say there's an orc called the Crusher or some-such, I would want their intro to be like "Is that a ranger I see? It's crushing time!" but instead it's stuff like "Your pathetic frail sword will do no good here, human! You don't appreciate the beauty that a stout blunt instrument can provide, like my sledgehammer right here! Her name's Daisy: she's one of a kind, absolutely top-heavy, and me an Daisy will crush you into such a fine bloody paste that not even your fellow Gondorians will recognize you! Rarrrgh!" Such long-winded speeches can really kill the pace and make me absolutely regret triggering them by accident when I'm just trying to run through an area. I wish that for the long speeches, maybe they just have the speech continue but over gameplay, keeping the intro pause/freeze to a consistent 2-3 seconds where you have time to hit the identify button instead of dragging the pause over the whole speech. FutureCop fucked around with this message at 06:43 on Apr 16, 2023 |
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Apr 16, 2023 06:40
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Bloody Hedgehog posted:Hmm, looks like it gets some deep discounts at times. Gonna pick this up the next time it's on sale. Cheers! It's also on Gamepass if you got it! I've been meaning to check this out as well and this was a nice reminder. I think they also have a free demo/prequel chapter on steam called Ignition: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1291500/Kill_It_With_Fire_Ignition/ In other news, I've recently been going through a bunch of roguelikes to test them out: Revita: unfortunately this one really didn't grab me. Part of it was personal annoyances from me, like how I don't like that our gun is a disconnected entity that is awkwardly behind our sprite and fires pathetically weak and inaccurate bullets, and how I know the whole health=currency symbol is gonna add so much stress for me. But part of it also felt that the combat and general progression and power-ups and everything felt very bland and unexciting: room after room of these cramped arenas and boring enemies being fought with my peashooter. It is very stylish looking and perhaps gets better later on, but I think it's a pass from me. West of Dead: I like the idea of this hybrid between strategic management of cover and flanking while also being fast-paced like a top-down shooter, but it ends up being a weird Frankenstein monster where the controls feel torn between the two genres and just feels bad, like how your aiming is really imprecise since the crosshair stops short a few feet form you and you keep getting too strongly magnetically attracted to cover. Apart from that, the levels felt pretty bland and slow, and also there is so much unskippable talking that was irritating me and felt like they were just being overindulgent with their VO (though I'll admit it probably gets better, most likely just a lot for now since it's beginning tutorialization). Going Under: I actually tried this a long time ago but passed on it, only to revisit now and quite enjoy myself! There is a somewhat imprecise wibbly-wobbly chaos to the animations/combat that can make telegraphs and dodges and such vague at first which annoyed me back in the day, but once you get used to it, I found the combat to be quite fun: gives me Dead Rising feelings where you're just improvising with found weapons and chucking stuff about, smashing someone over the head with a laptop for an electric shock bonus and then wailing on them with a pot plant. Story was fun as well, though it might irritate some people with how overly, I dunno, smug? Progressive? Straw-man-ny? Cringy? It can be. I kinda lost interest in the latter half where they make you rerun the same dungeons over again for the second time, but it was nice while it lasted and I could see myself going back again later. Anyone have any impressions on Ember Knights? I'm a bit hesitant to check it out since it's in early access, but I'd love a good coop beat-em-up RPG hybrid like Dragon's Crown or Wizard of Legend or the Gauntlet games and was wondering if this would fit the bill with the way it's developing. FutureCop fucked around with this message at 01:29 on Apr 28, 2023 |
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Apr 28, 2023 01:08
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New Humble Bundle out for Striking Soulslikes $18 for Sands of Aura Loot River Aeterna Noctis Blade of Darkness Mortal Shell Salt and Sanctuary ...and apparently more coming? There's also a decent one for coop shooters that's been going on as well.
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Apr 28, 2023 23:26
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Sway Grunt posted:It seems the additional game might be Dread Delusion, which makes me a lot more interested in this bundle. Although it looks pretty decent even without it I suppose. Right you are as it just updated and turned out to be Dread Delusion. So once again, to sum it up: New Humble Bundle out for Striking Soulslikes $18 for Sands of Aura Loot River Aeterna Noctis Blade of Darkness Mortal Shell Salt and Sanctuary Dread Delusion There's also a decent one for coop shooters that's been going on as well.
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May 2, 2023 01:25
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Just finished up Prodeus: played it on gamepass and had a pretty good time! PROs: *Good ol' classic shooting fun, just get in there and blast away the demons. *Very enjoyable to reduce enemies into bloody mashed potatoes with powerful and satisfying guns like Rambo in that scene with the 50 cal turret. *Fun to search around for secrets, lots of variety. Also bonus speedrun challenge levels. *Levels are quite fancy and complex but are almost always easily navigable with the way it sets up enemy/item placement. *Very cool and impressive architecture, setpieces and arena fights. CONs: *It's pretty much an old-school Doom/Quake clone with a fresh coat of paint: nothing really new to see here. *Checkpoint system which doesn't revert time like usual checkpoints do, making it feel almost pointless to try and win fights because you can just keep respawning and whittle them down through braindead brute force with infinite retries. Unfortunately there is no middle ground: you can only restart the entire level if you want to do it proper. It takes the game until the very last level to give you a proper fight which you can't abuse respawns. *Game ends on a bit of a weak note in terms of story: felt like there was gonna be more but it just stops. *Can be a bit annoying and crowded to juggle all of the numerous weapons you get. *Combat can get a bit too cramped and confusing to parse at times, and there are some really annoying enemies to deal with. *You have to reload the guns manually: no passive auto-reload when you keep them in your pocket, so can be annoying to have to reload every single thing after a big fight. *Secrets in early levels locked behind needing upgrades from late-game (double jump and air dash). The biggest annoyance for me was the checkpoint system, but other than that, pretty fun despite being just a retread. Wouldn't say it's necessarily a must-play, but I'd say it's a safe recommendation for shooter fans. FutureCop fucked around with this message at 02:40 on May 7, 2023 |
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May 7, 2023 02:37
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What kind of metaprogression do you guys like to have in your roguelites? I feel like the usual kerfuffle happens with vertical metaprogression (like having your character get more health and power) since it can kind of feel like the game is being unfair, like your skill as a player is irrelevant until you've jumped through enough hoops till the game actually feels appropriately balanced and can be reasonably beaten, kind of like a rigged arcade machine trying to get enough quarters out of you. It's a bit of a shame since in theory, I feel vertical progression can work in a similar sense like Resident Evil 4's dynamic difficulty where it just slowly gets to a point where it is balanced for you, but some games are just unreasonably hard to start with. I imagine horizontal progression is typically preferred since it just gives you more options that could fit your playstyle better and thus get you closer to a win, but that could also annoy since it might be hiding tools away from you that make fresh runs feel rigged (though again, maybe it's doing it so it can slowly introduce things tutorial-like and not overwhelm you?) Maybe it's not exactly whether the game has vertical or horizontal or a hybrid, but whether it does it properly, as games like Hades do have vertical progression but it never really bothered me since the game was fun and felt fair in spite of it. I dunno, I'm just babbling. Currently playing Wizard of Legend and having a good time! The game is totally horizontal metaprogression in acquiring different spells, robes and artifacts for your loadout and it's so fun to create all these fancy synergies and builds: winning the game is all down to player skill in not only constructing your loadout but building your twitch reflexes and learning how to battle the enemies and monsters. Big recommend for Hades and ARPG fans!
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May 8, 2023 20:32
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So if I'm getting this right, is Darkest Dungeon 2 more like Death Road to Canada or FTL or Oregon Trail where you make a full squad at the beginning (with more starting classes being unlocked through metaprogression) and see if you can make it to the end of your journey while dealing with a bunch of random events that may help or hinder you? I haven't been paying attention to this game the whole time so I'm just trying to grasp it now. If it is something like that, that might actually be nice, though I did like the whole long-term XCOM management of the first game as well (and do still need to finish it).
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May 8, 2023 23:37
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DerekSmartymans posted:Are there any hacking games out there that are basically Neuromancer/first 2eds of Shadowrun-type hacking? Drop “looks” like that, even if some design choices differ, but I remember setting up Matrix runs on index cards-per-node for the Decker while in high school in the late 80s-early 90s. Just wondered offhand if anybody ever recreated that experience and I missed it over the last 30 years. Since we're all talking about hacking games like DROP, and I very much like to flatter 7th Guest by following his example of recommending cool stuff, one that showed up for me recently was Deadeye Deepfake Simulacrum which I've been very interested in: https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/256823420/movie480_vp9.webm?t=1663455361 Very much a top-down cyperpunk immersive-sim like Prey or Deus Ex with a heavy focus on giving you tons of builds and powers that can be used to creatively get through challenging missions. On one hand, you can treat this like a top-down shooter similar to Hotline Miami: just drive your car right through the wall of the mission building and start kicking down doors, blasting all of the guards with your arsenal of crazy weapons. When the going gets tough, use your cybernetic powers to work the odds in your favor: overload your brain to slow down time, power up your arms to eliminate recoil completely, pull up a shield to deflect bullets away from you, and so on. Once everyone is down, hacking the objective is as simple as strolling up to it, as well as picking up all of the other collectible upgrade points hidden in levels. But why work harder when you could work smarter? Instead of driving your car through the wall, just park yourself outside the building, sit down, pull out your laptop, and start camera hopping like Watch Dogs 2 to get a layout of the land. From there, start tapping in code into your laptop like Quadtilateral Cowboy and work your magic: disable all of the cameras, turn the automated turrets against them, detonate that grenade on that guard, hell if you're slick enough with your hacks you might be able to get to the server without killing a soul or raising an alarm and just drive away. But until you get that slick, you'll have to beware of counterhacks that will hinder you in rather creative fourth-wall breaking ways, like tilting your view at an angle or blacking out parts of your screen. At the end of the day you'll probably use a fusion of abilities for both combat and hacking. For example, if you slow down time in combat, you can flip out your laptop and hack that missile heading towards you and rotate it to return to sender. Or you can camera hop to disable all of the guards' weapons to give you an advantage before you go in and shoot them all with your silent pistol room-by-room. Set up some crazy Rube Goldberg machine accidents like Desperados 3 where you lure guards with sound and the like: there's so much to do. The game features a main story where you're trying to repay your resurrection debt, but you can also take tons of side missions for cash and upgrades similar to something like Uplink. It's in early access at the moment so I haven't played it for realsies yet (I like to wait for full release), but I very much enjoyed what the demo had to show. If you like to wait like me, consider playing some of the other games I highlighted here to whet your appetite. FutureCop fucked around with this message at 21:46 on May 11, 2023 |
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May 11, 2023 21:09
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| # ¿ May 13, 2024 17:30 |
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Just finished playing Midnight Fight Express and had a pretty good time! https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/256902267/movie480_vp9.webm?t=1661282049 Overall it delivers a very decent isometric beat-em-up experience, like a fusion of Arkham freeflow combat and Streets of Rage gang violence and Hotline Miami's violent and confusing storyline. Very fun to style on enemies, clobbering them with all sorts of takedowns, parries, combos and finishers, and the improvisational use of the environment was a blast, picking up anything that isn't nailed down and throwing it at enemies. The huge variety in the levels is both very good as it constantly keeps things fresh and prevents it from feeling stale with all sorts of setpieces and fantastic arenas and new enemy types, but also very annoying at times when the levels just go too far: the sudden zombie level, the jet ski/motorcycle chase levels, the snipers overwatching you while you fight, and the overabundance of gun combat later on were particular pain points. Some other aspects like the scorpion queen boss fight were just plain bad and terribly designed and I have no idea how they didn't fix it by now: it was seriously so bad it almost made me quit the game completely. Luckily, more often than not the levels are great. Controls were mostly solid, but sometimes it'd get frustrating: many a time I'd get stuck doing an action I hadn't requested because of some weird environmental context (or vice versa I want to do some environment context takedown but it doesn't happen for an unspecified reason), many a time the autotargetting for shooting/throwing would target the wrong guy and get me killed unfairly (like I'm trying to kill a gunner far away in front of me and my guy keeps snapping 180 degrees to target the melee unit close behind me), many a time the guns just wouldn't function when I want to shoot or throw them, and there were some boneheaded decisions like having the button to shoot your special gun be the same as your finisher, making it so many a time when I'm trying to finish a guy I'd shoot the gun instead and waste a bullet. Story was kind of a wet fart for me: it sets up a lot of intrigue with this whole amnesia and unreliable narrators/flashbacks and it does enough to get you pumped and enjoy the chaotic, violent journey. But in the end, there was a lack of any serious twists or development, a lack of cool boss fights to serve as a nice finish, and it all just tumbles at the end into a very unsatisfying and undeveloped blah, with some sort of awkward sequel hook or something. I do very much recommend playing it: yes some of the levels are stinkers, yes the controls can be a bit whack at times and yes the story was a bit unsatisfying, but overall it provided an excellent amount of high-energy beat-em-up action that I already want to go back and replay the levels on a harder difficulty and try to beat the special challenges.
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May 13, 2023 05:42
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