Hey, no worries! I had some fun with it for a while, I'm just generally unpleasable so don't feel bad.
I'm playing lightspeed edition.
What are you currently playing?
- Thread starter Nick Calandra
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I'm playing lightspeed edition.
Oh man, the facial animations are so bad! It's completely hilarious. There's one woman, Sentia I think, who seems to permanently have one eyebrow cocked and looks cross eyed and I don't think it was intentional.
Hummm then I guess I'll push crying sun then, no skill tree and has you play trough the game you can change ship which modify your battle strategy (its very like FTL), although there's not quite as many ship type sadly. Game is a bit easy though.
The vestal priestess lady has a weird look on her face as well, which is a wee bit distracting considering how important she is to the story.
So here's the 411, folks. A triple threat combo of playing a 80h+ jrpg over the course of the greater part of two months, being a cheap ass deal hunter, and two pretty much consecutive sales periods, have led to me amassing like two dozen indies and other smaller games from bundles and whatnot. Not to mention like hundred freebies I'm actually starting to forget I got. But it's alright, cuz aside from a surprise release of some stuff on my wishlist, there's basically nothing on my radar for at least the first quarter of 2022. Time aplenty to do something about that sudden backlog bloat.
Long story short, I've been playing playing some games from the Jingle Jam bundle:
Valfaris
It's kind like if Iron Maiden album covers were turned into a Contra style 2d action platformer. Apparently from the same dev as Slain, another heavy metal inspired platformer I once played. Valfaris is a better game tho, albeit one that's hard as balls. Boasts a surprisingly colorful Giger-esque art style with some nice spritework. Gameplay is pretty standard run & gun, albeit with more of a focus on exploration to find extra upgrade materials to improve your weapons. You got a dinky pistol, a melee weapon for close encounters, and then your power weapon starting with a machine gun. The power weapons are by far the most fun to use, but unfortunately use energy, which does not regen, and energy pickups are fairly rare. I actually got so annoyed at this I used a cheat table to give myself infinite energy. The game was still hard as balls, but was now imo way more fun to play.
20XX
Mega Man X but a roguelite. You can play as either an X or Zero expy, and you have to go through 8 bosses in an order of your choosing earning their special attack when you beat them, then when you beat all 8 you have to go through a gauntlet of though final levels with more bosses. All that good Mega Man stuff. The main difference is that the levels, enemy placement and upgrades/money are all randomly generated. Which has its ups and downs. Sometimes you get runs where you end up overpowered and steamroll everything, but it can just as easily go the other way, where you keep running into frustrating situations because you're not adequately equipped to deal with them. Overall, pretty fun game tho.
Murder By Numbers
A sort of mix between a visual novel and puzzle game, where you're an actress who plays a detective on a tv show who by a turn of fate becomes involved in a murder and reveals herself to be a competent real detective. Gameplay consists of a number of cases where you comb crime scenes for clues and question people in pursuit of the killer, interspersed with Picross number puzzles. Strikes me as kind of a simplified version of Ace Attorney (I think, never actually played one myself). A bit too simple maybe, because despite the red herrings it likes to throw at your, it's not that hard to figure out who the killer is. The characters and dialogue are enjoyable tho, and it's got some good tunes to sleuth to.
Long story short, I've been playing playing some games from the Jingle Jam bundle:
Valfaris
It's kind like if Iron Maiden album covers were turned into a Contra style 2d action platformer. Apparently from the same dev as Slain, another heavy metal inspired platformer I once played. Valfaris is a better game tho, albeit one that's hard as balls. Boasts a surprisingly colorful Giger-esque art style with some nice spritework. Gameplay is pretty standard run & gun, albeit with more of a focus on exploration to find extra upgrade materials to improve your weapons. You got a dinky pistol, a melee weapon for close encounters, and then your power weapon starting with a machine gun. The power weapons are by far the most fun to use, but unfortunately use energy, which does not regen, and energy pickups are fairly rare. I actually got so annoyed at this I used a cheat table to give myself infinite energy. The game was still hard as balls, but was now imo way more fun to play.
20XX
Mega Man X but a roguelite. You can play as either an X or Zero expy, and you have to go through 8 bosses in an order of your choosing earning their special attack when you beat them, then when you beat all 8 you have to go through a gauntlet of though final levels with more bosses. All that good Mega Man stuff. The main difference is that the levels, enemy placement and upgrades/money are all randomly generated. Which has its ups and downs. Sometimes you get runs where you end up overpowered and steamroll everything, but it can just as easily go the other way, where you keep running into frustrating situations because you're not adequately equipped to deal with them. Overall, pretty fun game tho.
Murder By Numbers
A sort of mix between a visual novel and puzzle game, where you're an actress who plays a detective on a tv show who by a turn of fate becomes involved in a murder and reveals herself to be a competent real detective. Gameplay consists of a number of cases where you comb crime scenes for clues and question people in pursuit of the killer, interspersed with Picross number puzzles. Strikes me as kind of a simplified version of Ace Attorney (I think, never actually played one myself). A bit too simple maybe, because despite the red herrings it likes to throw at your, it's not that hard to figure out who the killer is. The characters and dialogue are enjoyable tho, and it's got some good tunes to sleuth to.
- Apr 1, 2009
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I grabbed Phoenix Point. Its like... souless Xcom. There is just something about it, its more of an indie game but really feels like its using check boxes. The story iis kinda interesting and the factions are... certainly factions, enemy design is fine, armor is fine, most of it is just fine, but something just feels souless and I'm not really sure how to put it into words aside from the aforementioned check boxes. Although, I do like that shooting calculates each shot so your not firing a burst and either missing or hitting like with Xcom.
I keep seeing on sale and every time I do I look at reviews and a lot of people saying it's just not nearly as good as XCOM for a number of reasons. Also apparently the baddies get super tanky later on making it a chore to take any of them down.
- Apr 1, 2009
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One of the key points for your fight against the monsters is that they evolve so that the attacks you always use will become less effective. But, also your guys are more tanky then in a game like xcom, even the new ones, where just 2 or 3 hits would kill anyone not well equipped. Seems like your agents in Phoenix Point can take much more damage, although they also get hit much more since spray and pray works better in this then most xcom type games. I would hope that later on there are still gaps in the armor to aim at, but time will tell.
Phoenix point has an insane difficulty ramp up at some point, in the spam of a few hours you go from fighting regular mook that can be killed in 2-3 attack to enemy that take multiple turn to finish off. The game also really want you to be asshole, stealing (especially ships) is incredibly useful but strangely lightly punished. This is really important because you want to have multiple team moving around ASAP and you need multiple ships for that.
I also found class to be a lot less interesting than XCOM, their much blander and since you can multiclass them they lose their identity.
I also found class to be a lot less interesting than XCOM, their much blander and since you can multiclass them they lose their identity.
I finished playing Daxter, which means that after 16 years I finally unlocked the Daxtermobile in Jak X: Combat Racing! Wooo!
Now I'm continuing my journey through the Yakuza franchise with 6. I feel very mixed towards the new engine and fighting mechanics. On one hand, everything looks really pretty, and attacks and movements have a lot of weight behind them, but sometimes the movement and controls feel a bit too 'heavy' and 'realistic' which can be mildly frustrating at times. I'm also not a huge fan of splitting heat actions between two different modes. And of course the addition of stamina when running around the city feels very unnecessary. But the usual goofiness, melodramatic story telling, satisfying combat, and impressively detailed world are still keeping me reeled in.
Now I'm continuing my journey through the Yakuza franchise with 6. I feel very mixed towards the new engine and fighting mechanics. On one hand, everything looks really pretty, and attacks and movements have a lot of weight behind them, but sometimes the movement and controls feel a bit too 'heavy' and 'realistic' which can be mildly frustrating at times. I'm also not a huge fan of splitting heat actions between two different modes. And of course the addition of stamina when running around the city feels very unnecessary. But the usual goofiness, melodramatic story telling, satisfying combat, and impressively detailed world are still keeping me reeled in.
I started playing Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War again. I don't really like the game itself, but I do like the story and I thought maybe playing something I didn't like that much and trying to appreciate it would help me get my groove back. And to its credit, it was starting to pick up a little heading into Chapter 2... and now that's all come crashing down at once, because 2-3 is cancer. You can't send anyone through the one and only chokepoint to the objective, because the boss has a Sleep staff with perfect accuracy and infinite uses. You can't send Deirdre to Silence him, because she'll get shredded by the ballistae - which there are five of for some reason. You can't send anyone to deal with the ballistae, because you physically can't reach the tiles where they are, except by sending a Pegasus Knight who will get instantly killed by them before she even reaches them. And even if you can deal with all of that without dying, you'll then have to worry about the army of strong, fast, able-to-double-you units surrounding the castle before you even get a chance to beat the boss up.
I feel like I accidentally downloaded a hack designed by someone who thinks that Thracia 776 was too easy. How the hell is anybody supposed to beat this without either taking casualties or getting absurd luck? It doesn't seem physically possible.
I feel like I accidentally downloaded a hack designed by someone who thinks that Thracia 776 was too easy. How the hell is anybody supposed to beat this without either taking casualties or getting absurd luck? It doesn't seem physically possible.
- Feb 7, 2011
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After promising myself I wasn't going to get any new games for a while as I work through my backlog one of my friends hit me up and wanted to play through Dying Light together in coop. So now I own Dying Light and will be playing it tomorrow.
Bought Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice on PC after seeing several streamers play it. I hadn't played it in over a year and I still had no PS5, so it was an easy purchase with 50% off. And yeah, it's very good. It has some of the best atmosphere out of any Fromsoft game. Hirata Estate especially is so oppressive and grim I love it.
The game has some serious balance issues though. Not necessarily in the sense that there's some super overpowered techniques that trivialize the game, but more in the sense that a ton of the stuff in the game feels like chaff that really struggles to justify its existence in the game. I've only played it twice through before, and even then I can completely ignore what feels like 90% of all the stuff the game hands out to me. The core systems are so good that you can get by perfectly fine using just them, and there's so little variety from playthrough to playthrough that the game isn't really forcing you to mix things up.
For example, Fistfuls of Ash. Yeah, you can use them to get a couple of cheap hits in, but it breaks the flow and rhythm of combat and the animation takes long enough that it can be a significant risk if used at the wrong moment. You can also never carry enough of them to make them a genuinely significant part of your combat tactics. Or ceramic shards: once you're familiar with the level design and enemy placement (ie. basically after a single playthrough), these become all but pointless, since you can always just lose your pursuers and retry the stealth. The game's level design is so linear that enemies pretty much never group up or mobilize in unexpected ways that would call for more creative tactics.
Or you can just not bother stealthing at all! The player character's mobility and speed outmatch that of 90% the enemies in the game so massively that it's often preferable to just sprint past every encounter. The game really doesn't provide enough incentive to fight a lot of the enemies. Money is pretty much always best used for buying coin purses, and the enemies drop enough consumables by default that you pretty much never run out, provided you even use them in the first place.
The game has some serious balance issues though. Not necessarily in the sense that there's some super overpowered techniques that trivialize the game, but more in the sense that a ton of the stuff in the game feels like chaff that really struggles to justify its existence in the game. I've only played it twice through before, and even then I can completely ignore what feels like 90% of all the stuff the game hands out to me. The core systems are so good that you can get by perfectly fine using just them, and there's so little variety from playthrough to playthrough that the game isn't really forcing you to mix things up.
For example, Fistfuls of Ash. Yeah, you can use them to get a couple of cheap hits in, but it breaks the flow and rhythm of combat and the animation takes long enough that it can be a significant risk if used at the wrong moment. You can also never carry enough of them to make them a genuinely significant part of your combat tactics. Or ceramic shards: once you're familiar with the level design and enemy placement (ie. basically after a single playthrough), these become all but pointless, since you can always just lose your pursuers and retry the stealth. The game's level design is so linear that enemies pretty much never group up or mobilize in unexpected ways that would call for more creative tactics.
Or you can just not bother stealthing at all! The player character's mobility and speed outmatch that of 90% the enemies in the game so massively that it's often preferable to just sprint past every encounter. The game really doesn't provide enough incentive to fight a lot of the enemies. Money is pretty much always best used for buying coin purses, and the enemies drop enough consumables by default that you pretty much never run out, provided you even use them in the first place.
Also finished Arkham Origins a couple of hours ago, and I have some thoughts.
Overall it's a really good game, but as an entry in the Arkham series it's merely treading water. The gadgets are basically exactly the same, the combat is the same, the stealth is the same, everything about it is just more of the same. In the case of the gadgets the pretense of having something "new" is pretty egregious: the remote claw is just the grapnel launcher except way more limited, and the glue grenade is literally just the frost grenade except called something different. As such there's basically nothing to say about the gameplay.
The interesting part of this game is the story, and in that department there's some pretty good bits, but those are outweighed by just plain nonsense and disappointment. The depiction of Batman as a more isolationist, hot-headed, downright hostile brute is somewhat interesting, and the dynamic they develop between him and Gordon is okay. Alfred having a more active role is also fresh, even if it treads some very familiar ground we've seen plenty of times before.
Where the story fails the hardest is the whole "origins" thing. The frustrating thing about it is that there was actually some great potential here, but it's just executed in a lazy, paint by numbers way and often makes bugger all sense. Like how prominently Bane features in the story. We're told that Batman is considered nothing but a myth, but for some reason Bane, a foreign mercenary leader has been attracted to Arkham, and even more inexplicably Batman already seems perfectly familiar with him, Titan and all that shit. What part of that tells any sort of "origin"? Deathstroke, Copperhead, Deadshot and a few others are just there because the formula requires filler villains, not out of any interesting reason. The most nonsensical is probably Firefly, who has no presence at all until like 90% of the way through when he nonsensically appears for a bomb defusal sequence and a boss fight, and then disappears from the story just as quickly.
But the biggest disappointment of all has to be the Joker and Batman's relationship in this. It's presumably meant to be showing them encountering each other for the first time, but there's literally nothing different about their dynamic. Why does Joker under the guise of Black Mask put a bounty on Batman's head, a guy he has never met and for all we know doesn't even know exists? Why does he react the exact same way to encountering him for the first time he does in literally every other bloody Batman story? The highlight of the game about 2/3 through is when we get a brief sequence playing as Joker inside his psyche, and get a bit of insight into why he becomes so obsessed with Batman. But it rings entirely hollow because he acts the exact same way before and after the sequence. His demeanor, manners, way of speaking do not change at all. If instead the Joker was shown as less of his wacky self at first, but then starting to go unhinged after being apprehended for the first time it''d actually have some weight to it. It just screams of "insert Batman and Joker story here" style writing despite the seeming premise of exploring the origins of these characters.
The final boss fight is quite lame too, but that's kind of par for the course in this series. Whatever, at least the gameplay's fun.
Overall it's a really good game, but as an entry in the Arkham series it's merely treading water. The gadgets are basically exactly the same, the combat is the same, the stealth is the same, everything about it is just more of the same. In the case of the gadgets the pretense of having something "new" is pretty egregious: the remote claw is just the grapnel launcher except way more limited, and the glue grenade is literally just the frost grenade except called something different. As such there's basically nothing to say about the gameplay.
The interesting part of this game is the story, and in that department there's some pretty good bits, but those are outweighed by just plain nonsense and disappointment. The depiction of Batman as a more isolationist, hot-headed, downright hostile brute is somewhat interesting, and the dynamic they develop between him and Gordon is okay. Alfred having a more active role is also fresh, even if it treads some very familiar ground we've seen plenty of times before.
Where the story fails the hardest is the whole "origins" thing. The frustrating thing about it is that there was actually some great potential here, but it's just executed in a lazy, paint by numbers way and often makes bugger all sense. Like how prominently Bane features in the story. We're told that Batman is considered nothing but a myth, but for some reason Bane, a foreign mercenary leader has been attracted to Arkham, and even more inexplicably Batman already seems perfectly familiar with him, Titan and all that shit. What part of that tells any sort of "origin"? Deathstroke, Copperhead, Deadshot and a few others are just there because the formula requires filler villains, not out of any interesting reason. The most nonsensical is probably Firefly, who has no presence at all until like 90% of the way through when he nonsensically appears for a bomb defusal sequence and a boss fight, and then disappears from the story just as quickly.
But the biggest disappointment of all has to be the Joker and Batman's relationship in this. It's presumably meant to be showing them encountering each other for the first time, but there's literally nothing different about their dynamic. Why does Joker under the guise of Black Mask put a bounty on Batman's head, a guy he has never met and for all we know doesn't even know exists? Why does he react the exact same way to encountering him for the first time he does in literally every other bloody Batman story? The highlight of the game about 2/3 through is when we get a brief sequence playing as Joker inside his psyche, and get a bit of insight into why he becomes so obsessed with Batman. But it rings entirely hollow because he acts the exact same way before and after the sequence. His demeanor, manners, way of speaking do not change at all. If instead the Joker was shown as less of his wacky self at first, but then starting to go unhinged after being apprehended for the first time it''d actually have some weight to it. It just screams of "insert Batman and Joker story here" style writing despite the seeming premise of exploring the origins of these characters.
The final boss fight is quite lame too, but that's kind of par for the course in this series. Whatever, at least the gameplay's fun.
I made it through that section of Genealogy that I was ranting about in my last post. It involved giving up a nice reward by sacrificing the green units to break the enemy's line, draw them to my guys and beat them up just outside the range of the ballistae, then having Sigurd charge in and one-round the boss (as he does). The next castle is the last in this chapter.
I still maintain that Genealogy isn't a very good game, but it's got a good story.
I still maintain that Genealogy isn't a very good game, but it's got a good story.
Finished Forgotten City last night, including all 4 endings. While it's overwhelming at first, once you get a hang of the time loop mechanic and what you need to do, it's just a matter of making it happen. the game luckily helps you out with a number of quality of life features. Notably most items you find stay in your inventory once you restart a loop and are reusable, so you don't have to go through the hassle of getting them again, your knowledge carries between time loops so the dialogue can reflect this(and this tends to confuse the NPCs because they've never seen you yet you're talking to them like you know them). The game is also nice enough to darken the dialogue options you've already used so you don't have to redo all the conversations every loop. Most importantly, there's a dude who meets you every time you reset the day and you can task him with solving a number of problems(once you've solved them the first time, that is) which means you don't need to go do them yourself every loop, so you can get straight to business. It helps you also have a "To do" list to help you keep track of everything and items will disappear when fulfilled which helps remove the clutter. And of course, you can restart the loop at any time by just stealing something(or killing the most annoying nearby resident once you have a weapon) and hoofing it back to the time portal, so you don't have to wait out the clock on every loop until someone inevitably fucks up and gets everyone dead.
There's a couple of "Dungeons" you have to traverse(only once though) and while they're fine, the gameplay is a little bit of a drag because there's combat in them. And by combat I mean it's basically "run across Zombie, Zombie runs at you blindly, shoot zombie with bow and arrow to make zombie die" while exploring and it feels like a holdover from skyrim(and it's unclear why your character knows how to use a bow considering you're from the modern era and none of the backgrounds you can pick imply experience with a bow and arrow). Luckily none of them are terribly long and you have a quick save/load available it's just there that there's little reason for combat to be in the game in the first place.
There's some nice plot twists here and there and it keeps the game interesting. The best one being when it's revealed The City you're in is the Underworld/Afterlife and the woman you meet at the beginning is actually Charon, not "Karen", but they sound almost identical. Which means you and everyone in the city is already dead which explains a lot about what's going on. The canon ending does throw the whole thing for a bit of a loop and I'm not entirely onboard with it but overall I enjoyed it and the 6 or so hours to finish it.
Looks like I'll be jumping into Tails of Iron next as it looks fun and it's one of the games I was looking forward to all year.
There's a couple of "Dungeons" you have to traverse(only once though) and while they're fine, the gameplay is a little bit of a drag because there's combat in them. And by combat I mean it's basically "run across Zombie, Zombie runs at you blindly, shoot zombie with bow and arrow to make zombie die" while exploring and it feels like a holdover from skyrim(and it's unclear why your character knows how to use a bow considering you're from the modern era and none of the backgrounds you can pick imply experience with a bow and arrow). Luckily none of them are terribly long and you have a quick save/load available it's just there that there's little reason for combat to be in the game in the first place.
There's some nice plot twists here and there and it keeps the game interesting. The best one being when it's revealed The City you're in is the Underworld/Afterlife and the woman you meet at the beginning is actually Charon, not "Karen", but they sound almost identical. Which means you and everyone in the city is already dead which explains a lot about what's going on. The canon ending does throw the whole thing for a bit of a loop and I'm not entirely onboard with it but overall I enjoyed it and the 6 or so hours to finish it.
Looks like I'll be jumping into Tails of Iron next as it looks fun and it's one of the games I was looking forward to all year.
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I got past to level 37 for the first time in Weekly Simulation, Survival Mode. The last time it was Random Simulation. I picked Blaze. Once you get up to level 29 ans above, it becomes less about skill, and more about luck, spamming blitz attacks over and over with elemental effects you hopefully have, and if you got at least 3X Rocket Star Attack Spawns. SOR4 needs an overhaul with how this mode functions.
Started Tails of Iron. About an hour in I think I'm getting the hang of it. It's essentially a 2d Souls-like Metroidvania, though without the loss of money when you die and from what I can tell enemies stay dead after you kill them and don't respawn, so it's a little less punishing then a true soulslike. Like Sekiro, there are telegraphed moved on the enemies part to help you dodge or parry in between getting hits in and you have a healing flask that can be restocked in a number of ways(notably from kegs of the stuff where you can refill)
The basic idea is that there's a medieval kingdom of anthro rats/mice that years ago fought a victorious war against anthro frogs, but the king who lead that war is old and infirm, so he's choosing a successor, especially since the threat of the frogs is looming yet again. The first bit are a series of tutorials designed to show you how the game works as you wander around the castle, you being Prince Redgi until you engage in trial by combat against your brother Denis for the Crown(Basically the first boss battle). As soon as you win and become king, the Kingdom is invaded by Frogs, the old king(your father) is killed, the kingdom is set ablaze while you're thrust into a unwinnable boss battle against the enemy leader and left for dead.
From there the game seems to be about freeing your kingdom from the frogs one area at a time, rescuing your surviving brothers(who also provide practical benefits such as blacksmithing and cooking), but it's kind of cool that as you progress, the Castle and the town get cleaned up and begin to rebuild from the flaming chaos you find them in after the frog attack, so you feel a tangible sense of progress.
The basic idea is that there's a medieval kingdom of anthro rats/mice that years ago fought a victorious war against anthro frogs, but the king who lead that war is old and infirm, so he's choosing a successor, especially since the threat of the frogs is looming yet again. The first bit are a series of tutorials designed to show you how the game works as you wander around the castle, you being Prince Redgi until you engage in trial by combat against your brother Denis for the Crown(Basically the first boss battle). As soon as you win and become king, the Kingdom is invaded by Frogs, the old king(your father) is killed, the kingdom is set ablaze while you're thrust into a unwinnable boss battle against the enemy leader and left for dead.
From there the game seems to be about freeing your kingdom from the frogs one area at a time, rescuing your surviving brothers(who also provide practical benefits such as blacksmithing and cooking), but it's kind of cool that as you progress, the Castle and the town get cleaned up and begin to rebuild from the flaming chaos you find them in after the frog attack, so you feel a tangible sense of progress.
- Feb 7, 2011
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Back to playing Disco Elysium.
I absolutely love the writing in this game...but it's a lot of writing, and I need to take breaks from playing it every once in a while to get something a bit more actiony in.
I absolutely love the writing in this game...but it's a lot of writing, and I need to take breaks from playing it every once in a while to get something a bit more actiony in.
The most distracting thing about the faces was that you can see their molars as they are talking to you and it took me a long to figure out the reason that it was so weird: they don't have tongues, or it doesn't look like they do.
The game was decent on the whole, but the writing is very definitely 'Skyrim mod' quality. There were some exceptionally stupid sections like where you find the doctor woman who locked herself in the palace and she's talking about how she peeled the statue and it caused them horrific pain and made them go insane with rage so she did it, like, a hundred more times with no variation and it still did the same thing and she's upset by that.
The final reasoning for the golden rule was kind of silly as well. So the ancient alien needs to prove that humans can live without sin for a year but doesn't realize that turning everybody to gold after one mistake is completely counterproductive to his goals. What part of the wager said that he couldn't tell anybody what counted as a sin, or that he couldn't use the same group of people again and just reset the one year counter?
And personally I felt the time travel was poorly used. It never felt very effective thematically to me, it was just kind of there. There is next to no NPC scheduling, like in Majora's Mask, where you need to do things at specific times in order to change events, you can do almost anything whenever you want and everybody else's complete lack of knowledge of who you are is completely glossed over. Especially egregious in the true ending where everybody is so effusive with thanks and friendship towards you despite never actually having seen you before in their life. The game wants desperately for these characters to have a bond with you despite it not actually being possible. The game would have been better without time travel in my opinion.