Starker on 13/2/2019 at 07:50
DKC was my second game. Still one of my favourites. I also remember playing Super Mario World all through the weekend to get the most out of the rental time.
Jason Moyer on 13/2/2019 at 13:36
Tried to play Deadly Premonition again. Enjoyed it a little more this time, but I have a repeatable crash now in Episode 2 that I can't fix so I guess off it goes.
Gave Capsized and Anomaly Warzone Earth another shot. The controls in Capsized are so bad I can't be bothered, and Anomaly is boring as hell. So that's two more I can forget about.
Up next is Gat Out Of Hell.
WingedKagouti on 13/2/2019 at 16:00
Quote Posted by Jason Moyer
Up next is Gat Out Of Hell.
This is essentially Saints Row 4.5 when it comes to humour and gameplay. If you liked 4 and wanted more, this provides that. If you didn't like 4 or grew tired of it, you're likely to have the same reaction to Gat Out of Hell.
qolelis on 13/2/2019 at 17:36
Quote Posted by demagogue
@qolelis, as you're into surreal games, you might like Mu Cartographer, or anyone else into that style.
Thanks for the tip. I wasn't entirely convinced when reading about the game on Steam, but then it was 80 percent off in the latest sale, so I got it -- and I don't regret it. There was a slight threshold to get over, but once I did, it was quite captivating. The feeling of actually discovering something on your own is definitely there -- and doubly so as you explore both the interface and the world that this machine you're controlling is set to scan. The same day I played
The Novelist, which, in one route, had the father hide a beautiful seashell in the sand for his son to find. He could have just given it to him, but that wouldn't have been the same.
Mu Cartographer does the same thing, but is at the same time the seashell. I also played
TIMEframe recently and, after having finished it, I watched someone else play it, and they talked about the feeling of playing a game you quite don't know what to expect from -- or you might even expect it to be crap -- but then, once you play it, you end up loving it.
I think the reason for
Mu Cartographer pulling off what it does is that the interface is actually a functional interface. Every control has its purpose and there is feedback: just like a metal detector beeps in different ways as you scan your surroundings and fiddle with the knobs, so does the Mu instrument -- although the Mu beeps might not be as obvious and the manual is missing. The whole experience reminds me of someone I ended up working with once in an electronics course at uni: She was all over the place. Kind of hyper. She would have loved the Mu instrument.
Edit:
I wouldn't call it "surreal", more like "unreal" or... uhm... "otherreal".
Quote Posted by demagogue
GRIS
Oh,
Gris, Gris, Gris... I want to like you, but I can't. It's like that someone you've had the hots for for a while, but, when you finally work up the nerve to talk to them, they end up being kind of empty and not at all engaging. You want to like them and you try for a while, but you were just letting their looks fool you. After breaking up, you think about maybe giving it a second try, but, deep down, you know it most likely won't be any different. In Gris's case I think it's the platforming that's getting in the way, and whatever metaphor is there to tell a story is lost on me.
Quote Posted by qolelis
ProminenceOne more thing: It reminds me a little of
INFRA, offering a kind of urban exploration, albeit with the places we get to explore only recently abandoned. One difference is that
Prominence lets us restore the former functions of the facilities we find to a much wider extent than
INFRA did. One being a fully realized 3D explorer and the other being a point & click, of course makes the two very different as well, but there are similarities that might perhaps make fans of
INFRA also to some extent like
Prominence.
Renault on 13/2/2019 at 20:11
I played a little Sniper Elite 4 last night, seems fun so far. It's kind of like a World War 2 version of Hitman. Nice big wide open levels, where they pretty much leave it up to you on how to get the job done. You can be as stealthy or aggressive as you see fit. There are also some environmental hazards that you can use to your advantage to add some variety. In regards to the shooting, it's not strictly sniping, you can go close range at times and use a silenced pistol, or grab an uzi and turn it into more of a shooter. Lots of opportunity for variety. You can even avoid most of the grunt type enemies all together. There's a tactical side to the game, of course, using technical stuff like wind speed and gravity for your shots, bu you can bypass all that by playing at a lower difficulty level.
Anyway, as a Hitman clone, you could do much worse, but I would wait for sale to grab it if you're not sure (just picked it up for 80% off in the last Steam sale).
Yakoob on 14/2/2019 at 07:35
I picked up Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale recently being in the mood for a management/JRPG faire and... I can't believe the game is rated as high as it is.
The core idea is very clever and the characters are charming, but the gameplay is... bland as fuck. Go to market, buy items, sell them at 120-130% markup, over and over and over. The little girl is always whines about price being too high, the tall dude will take a higher price. Once you get the gist, there really isn't much more thought involved.
My other big groan - to keep up with the debt, you have to go dungeon crawling, which is equally bland. You see the same 5 types of enemies spread on 5 levels in dungeons that look all the same. There's no real thought in combat (approach, slash, approach, slash), there are no puzzles or mysteries, there's no real progression either (I'm on the 2nd level of 2nd dungeon and it still feels like I'm doing the same thing over and over). The bosses are interesting, but you have to get through 10mins of grind fest to get to each one.
Just not feeling it :/
Malf on 14/2/2019 at 09:27
Yeah, I got bored of Recettear real quick too, even though I loved the premise.
It's a similar story with Majesty. The idea sounds great, but then you play it and it's little more than a poorly designed RTS with an incredibly spiky difficulty curve, poor attempts at humour and little to no feeling of progression.
I think there's a gap in between those two games that someone could really exploit, scratching that management / god game itch that so few games do.
I've always loved games where you influence the AI rather than directly control them, and I find city builders to be slightly too far removed to remain personal and generate interesting stories.
Of course, Dwarf Fortress sits pretty firmly in that gap, and I do dearly love it, but until Toady spends some time seriously addressing performance, it'll always be an exercise in frustration for me.
I always wished the Black & White games had had skirmish / sandbox modes. Those would have also sat in that gap quite nicely.
WingedKagouti on 14/2/2019 at 10:13
Quote Posted by Yakoob
(I'm on the 2nd level of 2nd dungeon and it still feels like I'm doing the same thing over and over).
As far as i remember, that means you have yet to unlock any of the additional heroes. And there are more than 5 enemy types, but they're introduced fairly slowly.
Quote Posted by Malf
I think there's a gap in between those two games that someone could really exploit, scratching that management / god game itch that so few games do.
I've always loved games where you influence the AI rather than directly control them, and I find city builders to be slightly too far removed to remain personal and generate interesting stories.
I'm currently following an Early Access title called Driftland: The Magic Revival, which plays like a cross between Majesty and Netstorm. There's currently no campaign or multiplayer, but the next patch is supposed to have the first campaign and multiplayer is planned to be the last big thing before the full release. It may be too sim lite for your taste, but try looking at some ingame footage.
demagogue on 14/2/2019 at 12:29
My design doc for my French Revolution sim tries to hit that mark. I liked the idea of competing factions vying over something like the soul of their respective neighborhoods at the really local level... So when you go the clergy route, you're a local church priest really trying to keep your parishioners loyal to the church when everything around is falling apart (to the level of home visits and "serving" their needs), or you're a noble trying to hold on to the loyalty of people that can protect you, or you're a Robespierre-like revolutionary trying to keep the momentum going & destroy as much of the nobility class as you can without it biting back... Basically you're trying to push the envelope for your position while keeping your constituency loyal enough to you to protect you from the counter-reactions or themselves not turning on you. It's gaming AI attitudes, especially loyalty. It's what Crusader Kings does in the ways it lets the player engage with different characters, but I wanted to do that on a small & very personal & concrete scale of characters physically interacting, I guess like Dwarf Fortress now that you mention it. (The old game Shogun did it small scale, but not very intuitively.) Well, it's all just academic until it actually gets made anyway.
But I wanted to post about was Gris. My post up there was charitable because I like people's first impression of a game to be charitable, to give it its best chance to live up to what it wants to be doing. Then the critical stuff can come later. The impression that struck me ... well empty is one word for it. But what it reminded me of was this trend, or more like a tone and aesthetic, that's widespread in casual artistic games, a lot of mobile games have it, where they're creating this artistic "emotional" experience, but it's a little too manufactured to really sink in, and you can almost feel what they really care about (and it's not any kind of real spiritual engagement).
There are parts of Gris that make it easier for me though. One, I can connect to a game that connects with other people I care about, even if it wouldn't for me by myself. Like my mother was touched & amazed by Avatar, and even when I was watching it all the now-familiar red flags were going up for me, but I liked spending that time with her being moved and amazed, and it being a real experience for her made that a real experience for me. Gris has that going for it. The other thing is the dominant motif is grief, the kind that literally pulls you to the ground. These kinds of elemental and strong emotions, like deep grief or love or exhilaration or fear, can mean something to me.... Even if the packaging is off, a person in real grief, or the expression of that, is a real thing I can respect. The other thing is, just from an art design perspective, to someone that thinks about it for their own games, it has a really great aesthetic I like for its own sake (except the animations are a bit too pared down, which make it feel even more like a flash game).
But if I were writing a critical review of it, I'd probably knock it a number of points because it's a bit too ham-fisted and "casual" for the themes and artistry it's feigning at, and "puzzle games" are kind of fraught territory for that to begin with.
Arcatera on 14/2/2019 at 21:00
Sorry for my late reply; I haven't been around.
I am running a normal character. I couldn't care less about seasonal runs. I have sent you a friend request if you don't mind. I would also like to clarify that I have started from scratch, meaning I do not have a decent set of gear. Playing on Torment I difficulty for now.