Thirith on 5/8/2024 at 08:45
My impression is that there's definitely some political subtext to Nine Sols, but it'll definitely be less pronounced than in their earlier games. But I'm definitely looking forward to checking Detention out before long.
Tomi on 5/8/2024 at 15:49
I've been playing Immortals of Aveum. I wasn't expecting much from a pretty generic looking FPS from EA with mediocre reviews, but I noticed that the game is single player only, so it might be worth a shot. And it's actually pretty fun! :)
I don't think I've played an FPS with a fantasy theme since good old Heretic/Hexen, so this alone makes the game feel quite fresh. Having said that, I haven't played many FPS games at all in a long time, but I'm enjoying Immortals of Aveum a lot more than Deathloop for example. IoA is fairly generic fantasy, but they've thrown in futuristic spaceships and other oddities to make things a bit... weird. Then again the people of Aveum use traditional tools and wooden carts and other medieval kind of stuff, so the world design doesn't always seem that coherent. Visually Immortals of Aveum is a mixed bag. It looks good in the Unreal Engine way - everything looks awesome and shiny from a far, but it's all just an empty shell. There are invisible barriers all over the place which can be frustrating, and 99,9% of all the objects in the world are just there for decoration - you can't interact with anything. (That's only my impression of games that use Unreal Engine, so please don't be mad at me.)
The story is nothing special and it's quite predictable, but it's just an excuse to go kill more baddies in a game like this anyway, and I like it how it doesn't take itself too seriously. I've read a bunch of reviews where they call the protagonist Jak and the humour of the game "really annoying", but I think it's quite refreshing in a way.
How about the gameplay then? Well... it could be better. It's quite mediocre in just about every way, but it's not bad! Even though the game is set in a fantasy world and you have three types of magic to use, the gameplay doesn't differ much from any other fast-paced action FPS. Red magic is for powerful short range attacks that deal heavy area damage... just like shotgun, right? So, blue magic is the (sniper) rifle of this game, and green magic is of course the machine gun magic. To make things a bit more interesting, there are some lite RPG elements with skill points and new spells, and combo-based attacks spice up the hectic battles in a good way. For me the biggest problem is that the enemies aren't particularly interesting, and they barely seem to react when I hit them, which is no fun. Your spells don't feel very powerful at all. But the combats are usually quite well balanced, and there are some light puzzles and a lot of places to explore to mix things up a bit, which is always nice.
Renault on 5/8/2024 at 21:25
Played some Children of the Sun over the weekend. It's a sniping game, where you kill a bunch of cult members. It's pretty short, I'm 5 hours in and already on the last level, but it's also got some fairly unique shooting mechanics, so completely worth it IMO. It's very dark, and loud, and you'll mostly feel bad/ugly/evil playing it. But once I started, I couldn't stay away. It's sorta similar to Superhot, where you have to plan out your strategy on who you will shoot and in what order before the level begins. One cool twist I don't remember seeing before is that you get an achievement for each level but only if you complete it in a very specific way (your shot must travel through a certain open door, or you have to kill everyone by blowing up a vehicle next to them, etc.) so it's completely logical (and fun) to play each level more than once.
Now I've moved on to Pacific Drive, which is another story. My first car in high school was a station wagon, so this shit is feeling kinda personal. Anyway, it's got it's hooks in me already, but more on that later.
Subjective Effect on 8/8/2024 at 10:23
Stardew Valley! I've only started it really but so far it's just ace. I've got two sprinklers, that's how early on I am, but I've had a good explore and it's just so... nice.
Malf on 8/8/2024 at 10:58
In the face of a bunch of far-right assholes rioting in the UK, I've felt the urge to shoot some Nazis.
So I've headed back to one of my comfort games,
Return to Castle Wolfenstein.
I still absolutely adore this game, even after all these years. And its first few levels, the escape from the titular castle, are still
incredibly well-paced; it's still one of the best starts to a first-person shooter
ever as far as I'm concerned, right up there with Half Life... although (whisper it), maybe even
better for narrative economy.
As usual, I've lost impetus since reaching the tombs, with the zombies and their poor reactivity to being shot. But I'm going to push through this time, as there's still a lot of the game I want to revisit.
And it's very satisfying and therapeutic.
It's also good to go back and play a game from this era, before progression mechanics and achievements tainted
everything, and when everyone knew that the best way to deal with a Nazi was to shoot them in the face.
I will get back to Gloomwood and CTRL-ALT-EGO at
some point. But I'm in the mood for something that doesn't require quite as much thinking at the moment. Playing both at the same time is quite draining.
I just want to know (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qT8ctKUSKsA) what I am going to do with all this cheese, and RtCW has the answer.
salass00 on 9/8/2024 at 13:15
I just beat chapter 3 obsession on Darkest Dungeon 2 despite going in completely blind against the final boss, not having a single clue what its gimmick was going to be.
After failing several runs using various B team compositions (I didn't want to risk the characters who had memories on them), none of them making it anywhere near the final boss, I decided to bring in the A team (hellion, MaA, PD, GR) who had pretty effortlessly beaten both chapter 2 and chapter 1.
Everything was going really well until I got to the second phase of the final boss. Just a few turns in and its effortlessly taking down both my frontline units to death's door even with the improved block tokens on the MaA. There's no way I'm able to keep up with this with the limited healing skills available in the game (the fact that the boss gets to attack more than once per turn definitely isn't helping) so I lose them both to deathblows quick enough (the MaA had a resolve check and went resolute at one point which helped him survive a little longer). After losing two characters, one of them being my main damage dealer, I honestly thought it was game over for this run but somehow the defiant plague doctor and stealthed dead-eye grave robber (I had her equipped with a trinket that gives stealth tokens every turn and massive +crit when stealthed) managed to both survive long enough to bring the boss down.
henke on 10/8/2024 at 06:08
Alrighty, finished Thief 2 (again) last night. The whole final stretch does somewhat drag the overall experince down. The Casing / Masks mansion is just not very fun. A lot of marble floors. Every door takes really long to pick. And the whole layout is just quite boring and repetetive. There's some hidden paths to spice things up but, eh. A mission where you case a joint is a fun idea, but here it kinda falls flat. I think a much better way to do a mission like this is set it in a space that's open to the public, ike the bank, for instance. Garrett could've gone in during daytime, mapped out the place a bit, maybe snuck into some off-limits areas to accomplish some objective, then had to come back during the night for the real mission. Sabotage at Soulforge was more fun than I remembered. A big intimidating space with lots of things that want to hurt you and no health potions. Karras has some great monologues here. The whole thing kinda drags on for a bit too long though, and I think that's why a lot of people end up disliking this mission.
Also been replaying another thief game... Uncharted 4: A Thief's End! I didn't think much of this back when it came out, but I'm enjoying it more the second time through. It's quite simplistic and on the rails, but the stealth/action gameplay is fun and the story is decent. I think back then my disappointment stemmed from high post-TLOU expectations, and a fatigue of these kinda cover-shooter games. It actually feels like these games are kinda rare these days? Can't remember the last new game I've played in this style.
Thirith on 10/8/2024 at 09:42
@henke: You might enjoy the standalone expansion The Lost Legacy. It has the strengths of Uncharted 4, but it's more compact and focused, which I think is very much to its benefit.
Sulphur on 10/8/2024 at 10:01
I replayed Uncharted 4 recently, too, and I liked it more the second time around as well, not least because it plays a lot nicer at 60 FPS on the PS5. It's still a little too drawn out, and I appreciate the story they were trying to tell, but Nate and Elena's relationship jigsaws into the fun action-adventuring awkwardly because the two halves don't really work with each other by design, which lends the entire game a sort of anti-energy that pulls it down. The surprise brother wasn't something I was a fan of either, because we've had at least 3 games without a single mention of him prior, but beyond that he exists purely as a foil for Nathan - if Elena's the angel sitting on one shoulder, Sam's meant to represent the devil on the other. This is fine in theory, but in practice I felt it was at least slightly contrived without any winning chemistry to save it.
But that doesn't matter a lot, because the action and the set-pieces still sell the entire thing, and the latter are incredible and remain best in class across the medium. The environments to this day are gorgeous to behold, and technical achievements given the hardware they were originally operating on. And, most importantly, the game's fun when it's firing on all cylinders, which isn't as often as Uncharted 2, but it's still a fine enough play.
Tomi on 12/8/2024 at 16:58
I played Shadow Warrior 3 because it's leaving Game Pass in a week.
It's my introduction to the series, and I gotta say that it isn't exactly what I expected. I didn't expect the game to be one big joke, and it took me a few hours to warm up for the protagonist who's an intolerable idiot pretty much throughout the game. Everything in the game is so over the top that it seemed annoying at first, but once I decided to just go with the flow, I started enjoying it all a lot more. The action is a bit too hectic for me, but it's fun enough for a quick gaming session. And fortunately SW3 is a fairly short game so it manages not to overstay its welcome.
Now that I've finished the game I have no desire to get back to it, but I may be interested to try one of the older Shadow Warrior games some time.
