PigLick on 26/8/2020 at 13:05
you are dead to me son
Sulphur on 26/8/2020 at 13:27
To be fair, I do think it's hilarious that I'm essentially playing my uncle from that dark time in the 70s when he had a quiff and a pornstache.
PigLick on 26/8/2020 at 14:15
or from the 80's when Tom Selleck was magnum PI
Sulphur on 26/8/2020 at 15:09
Or Burt Reynolds from, uh, all of the years.
demagogue on 26/8/2020 at 15:31
Quote Posted by henke
Observation - Sci-fi thriller. Looks kinda neat.
I've played a good amount of Observation so far. It's ... well since it's set in space we can't exactly call it a walking simulator, now can we? But that's not only because we float, not walk. The first thing to know is you don't control the main character. You control the ship computer and sometimes a drone that does little tasks around the ship while the main character tools around often somewhere else. The main character does her thing as an in-world animation that plays out scene by scene, and you the ship computer / drone will do little tasks that open up her progress through the next scene. So a lot of the "game" is these little interaction puzzles in the ship, and then later it gets into more literal puzzles, like pattern matching kinds of things. I found it kind of disappointing considering the set up.
So the story itself is really interesting. The setting, a disintegrating space station, parts of it still on fire, that you have to hold together by force of will just to survive is great for drama, and then it arguably goes up from there (depending on your taste in scifi tropes). I haven't actually made sense of where it's at now yet, at the point I am in the game, but it's definitely not what I was expecting and I'm intrigued.
But all of that is just something you're watching happen around you. The actual gameplay is just these little puzzle tasks. And just to compound the disappointment, the controls for that drone are pretty unwieldy, although I'm ready to grant that controls for a drone in a Descent-style 6DOF setting are always going to be kind of unwieldy just by its nature. I mean it does what it does about as well as could be hoped for (it could definitely have been much worse), but even at its best it's just an awkward way to move around and interact in the space of the game.
So all in all I'd say you don't need to play it, and you may find the bonk gameplay isn't worth the payoff. But if you're interested enough in the story, it's not terrible gameplay, you still have to think through things, so there is still a game to be played; and you do get to watch the cool story play out around you, which is kind of interesting and unique in its own way. So I wouldn't exactly recommend it, but I'd say it's not a loss to play it. You'd get something out of it.
Sulphur on 26/8/2020 at 15:40
Yep yep, you do a lot of observation in Observation. It's pretty chill until it's not, and I'm not saying that just because space is generally pretty fucking cold.
Wasteland 3 is out tomorrow apparently, and it's on Game Pass. And it's been reviewing well - which hopefully means it isn't going to feel as tepid as I found Wasteland 2, which was borderline okay (I guess!).
EvaUnit02 on 26/8/2020 at 19:10
Quote Posted by Sulphur
Wasteland 3 is out tomorrow apparently, and it's on Game Pass. And it's been reviewing well - which hopefully means it isn't going to feel as tepid as I found Wasteland 2, which was borderline okay (I guess!).
I still wouldn't play it at launch. InXile games always seem to launch half-baked and require "director's cut" patches to polish them up.
Malf on 26/8/2020 at 22:38
Hmm, having backed Wasteland 3, I'm not sure how I feel about it being immediately available on Game Pass. I mean, it's great that people get to play it for a pittance, but it's still something of a kick in the teeth for those of us who helped it get developed.
Also, I chose GOG for my key redemption, and it's saying the game's out on the 28th. So if Game Pass really does get it a day early while backers who chose GOG have to wait, again, not the best look for inxile.
Edit: Just checked, and Game Pass says it's out on the 28th too.
Sulphur on 27/8/2020 at 03:11
Well, it says it's available 27th Aug at 5 PM PDT on Steam. So I guess Steam users get it one day early?
henke on 16/11/2020 at 15:51
Buncha new games coming to XBox game pass every day it seems like. Some are things we probably all already have and have played (LucasArts classics and Celeste),
but there's also a lot of new intersting stuff:
Streets of Rogue - Malf was all over this last year I remember. Maybe I gotta play it?
Final Fantasy 8 - Y'know... I've been kinda interested in this since reading about it in the late 90's, tho I've never enjoyed any of these older JRPG titles and it's almost certain to be underwhelming after all this time, I think I'll give it a whirl.
Commanche (Early Access) - Yeah, they're doing a COMMANCHE REBOOT, who'd a thought? I played a bit of the training missions, can't say much about it yet.
Tetris Effect - No VR support in this version yet, sadly. I loved this when I played in on the Oculus Quest earlier this year but I'm not sure if the audiovisual sensations I felt translates to the flat screen.
Deep Rock Galactic - Supposed to be a good co-op game!
Also, I just upgraded my comp with another TB of SSD so I went ahead and reinstalled MS Flight Sim. Loads noticably faster now than it did on my HDD.