Yakoob on 22/7/2024 at 18:24
I've been playing Dredge and it's as great as the reviews make it out. Definitely nails the "just one more trip" addictive loop and everything works so well together. My only complaint is that I miiiight be getting a bit burned out from it after ~7hrs now. I almost maxed out all my upgrades and researching nets/crab traps doesn't suuuper interest me. I guess I can start getting on the quests but they are starting to feel a bit too much like "just swim for 5 minutes to point X with item Y to solve" but idk maybe I just didn't dig deep enough.
In similar vein, I also started on Pacific Drive since the Washington state recently passed a law requiring us to play all games set in PNW. I'm only an hour in and it feels like... a lot? Maybe I'm just old and don't have the attention span, but I really wanted to just drive my car in a spooky forest and run away from anomalies and stuff. Instead I am running around a garage, collecting like 6 different types of resources scattered between 5 different containers to craft 30 different tools and parts to slap on different nooks and crannies of my car and trying to squint and it small and blurry map and make sense of like 20 different gauges and numbers and find special items to do every single thing.... it just feels like an hour of "info dump" all at once when all I wanted was to drive my car thru a spooky forest. I wish they spread the tutorialization better.
Idk maybe it's just heavy start I need to push thru for things to click in place. I might give another run or two and see.
WingedKagouti on 22/7/2024 at 18:49
Quote Posted by Yakoob
I've been playing
Dredge and it's as great as the reviews make it out. Definitely nails the "just one more trip" addictive loop and everything works so well together. My only complaint is that I miiiight be getting a bit burned out from it after ~7hrs now. I almost maxed out all my upgrades and researching nets/crab traps doesn't suuuper interest me. I guess I can start getting on the quests but they are starting to feel a bit too much like "just swim for 5 minutes to point X with item Y to solve" but idk maybe I just didn't dig deep enough.
The lovecraftian mood of Dredge is the core of the game IMO. To get to the end of the game, you need to find the items the Collector is asking for, which means going to each zone in order, then do a short questline for an NPC in that zone, in order to get a specific upgrade that helps you unlock the item you're looking for. It can get a bit samey and most of the quests are just go to spot, get item, return to NPC. The variety comes in what hazards are in each zone and how you avoid those hazards.
Depending on how far you are into the game, it could be worth powering through to see the end. If you're at the Mangrove or later, I'd personally recommend sticking with it for the final stretch, just to get closure on the game.
Thirith on 23/7/2024 at 06:41
@nicked
I also enjoyed Minishoot Adventures a lot, but what you get during the first hour or so is pretty much the whole game. While it remains fun, for me it could've gone from good to great if there'd been more variety and inventiveness (especially in terms of environments and enemies) throughout. For the most part, later enemies are pretty much the same as earlier ones, they just shoot more bullets and take more damage.
nicked on 23/7/2024 at 12:21
Yeah I know what you mean. The most variety came in some of the later boss fights with trickier patterns of bullets to dodge, would have like to have seen more of that start creeping into the normal enemies. Still a very fun diversion for a few hours.
Thirith on 25/7/2024 at 06:53
I'm done with Thief 2's "Masks" (well, almost - I've completed all the objectives other than having to get out of there), and it definitely helps this level and "Casing the Joint" to leave the third floor until "Masks". Having done it like this, I quite enjoyed the sense of already knowing 2/3 of the place I'm robbing and handling it accordingly, and then having the third floor to explore and rob on the fly.
It's probably still not the best way to reuse pretty much an entire level, and you could do more to differentiate Gervaisius's mansion between "Casing the Joint" and "Masks" - but knowing what I was letting myself in for and acting accordingly made it much easier to take these two levels for what they are.
I also felt like playing something like a Metroidvania on the side and briefly installed Guacamelee, but I find the beginning oddly obnoxious, so I got Nine Sols, having heard very good things about it, and got started on that one. I'm liking it so far, but there is that niggling feeling that I've been ruined by Hollow Knight, which is probably my perfect Metroidvania.
Malf on 25/7/2024 at 08:30
I can't do traditional metroidvanias any more, because of their linear, fixed structure (that's something I'm getting less and less patient with in gaming as a whole.)
But the well-done Rogue-lite ones, in particular Dead Cells and Rogue Legacy 2, really work for me, particularly on something like the Steam Deck during the daily commute.
Have you ever tried either of those Thirith, or are they just not up your alley?
Thirith on 25/7/2024 at 09:04
I played quite a bit of Dead Cells and enjoyed it well enough (the systems are definitely fun), but on the whole I prefer an authored, designed game, especially when it comes to environments. Take Hollow Knight: I've played that one three or four times, and while I liked the newness of the place the first time, I enjoyed the familiarity of returning to Hallownest just as much. It's not black and white, but I've played a number of games that do procedural generation or similar that ended up feeling somewhat hollow for me.
Malf on 25/7/2024 at 09:34
I can get that; I've played plenty of procedural games that do it wrong and can end up feeling, as you say, hollow. For example, No Man's Sky is a procedural game I really struggle with. And after the initial sense of awe, Elite Dangerous gets real boring, real quick.
But then there are others that do it right, where they theme different areas and utilise recognisable segments that might appear in different areas in interesting configurations (which is how Dead Cells, Rogue Legacy 2 and Streets of Rogue do things).
And in those games, I find that they can still maintain a strong narrative thread and a sense of familiarity, while providing enough variation of gameplay to remain fresh for a long time.
And that's where they overtake more scripted games for me, and almost guarantee that I'll return to them over and over, having a familiar, yet different experience every time.
I do think that Dead Cells tends to lock a lot of its more interesting lore and gameplay behind "Git Gud" difficulty systems mind you.
But otherwise, I find it a fascinating example of combining procedural content with a strong narrative; probably one of the best examples. The gradual reveal of story over multiple playthroughs, successful or not, is remarkable.
Sulphur on 25/7/2024 at 12:28
Still playing through Assassin's Creed Odyssey, and I got to the end of the Family main quest, somehow magically landing on the happiest ending where everyone's alive and more or less made up with each other. I think I'm supposed to feel joy or contentment at having got to this point, but I feel a mild sense of ennui instead. I've played Kassandra as an occasionally angry goodie-two-shoes, and while I understand that giving you dialogue choices and consequences is supposed to make you feel more accountable for the story, or give you a sense of ownership, it feels like the story happened despite me, somehow.
The funny thing is your choices do actually change who survives in the end. It's an interesting feeling, because most games either do the Raiders of the Lost Ark thing to the player on purpose (you exist, but despite what you do, the story goes on the way it will), or make you feel like the story is malleable enough for you to twist parts of it to your ends. Odyssey's obviously attempting the latter, but it feels like they didn't go far enough, so what I'm left with is some cinematic gesturing at familial angst and reunion that feels perfunctory despite being pretty involved in terms of time spend.
You can break out the :rolleyes: emojis now, because you know where this is going: the story is emblematic of Odyssey's issues overall, which is that it's a big-ass, broad-ass game that, like Origins and almost every AC before it, is too big to allow any one thing it does a proper amount of depth. This is a huge honking shame, because I believe if you took a story premise and execution as strong as Origins' first third, and shrunk it to a game that was only a third as long, it could be an all-time classic. And so, too, could Odyssey.
It's not like I'm not having fun, though. This is disposable AA entertainment in a AAA container, and I don't mind it, just that the sight of so much potential being unrealised hurts my soul the tiniest li'l smidge.
Ah, well. Ubisoft Map Game: The Ongoing Saga continues.
Malf on 25/7/2024 at 12:42
Odyssey's very much a post-Witcher 3 game, and Ubi's attempt to capture some of that feeling, while also rolling in a little of Shadow of Mordor's Nemesis system.
Of course, it's nowhere near as accomplished as either of those titles at the things it pinches from them, and as you point out, is far too big for its own good.
I still enjoyed it (although one of the DLCs forces Kassandra into a romance with a massive wet blanket, then to add insult to injury, forces a sprog on her; that really pissed me off), but I think it's the last Ubisoft game I played to completion.
Much like Breath of the Wild, Ubi's more recent games could really do with being at least a quarter the size they are.
