What are you currently playing?

[hanselthecaretaker2]

Half way through The Quarry. I haven’t played in a few days, but my absence didn’t really have me grow fonder of it. Most of the characters are awkward, douchbags, or assholes. Guess it might be typical for that age demographic but eh. It’s rough going when a story-centric game like this has unlikeable characters. There’s not much game here to make up for lackluster storytelling either. Walk, walk, walk, QTE, pick up some item, hold left mouse button to keep quiet during tense scene, whatever. So far it’s a step down from Until Dawn. Maybe it’ll pick up in the latter half.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

The Knight Witch

It's a twin stick shooter metroidvania. So far so mixed. It controls well enough but you tend to get lost in the bullet hell, and you're squishy as sin too - three or four hits and you get sent back to the last checkpoint, which is usually several rooms of enemies away. There's no mechanic for regaining health (other than saving at checkpoints, which respawn enemies) and drops are rare. Thank God you don't lose anything when you die, except the time it takes you to get back there. You can purchase armor which essentially woks as a miserable extra hit point, so outside of boss fights it feels like a waste of money. Or it would if there was anything else you could buy with money.

You have a mana/spellcard system that's fairly reliable and rewards you for playing aggressively, though I don't like how inconveniently laid out the UI is. Spellcards are listed all the way at the bottom right of the screen and require you to divert your attention from the action, more often than not at the expense of taking damage.

The story is fine. It's very light in tone but has a fairly convoluted lore. I like the general plotting (scrappy do has to rise to the occasion but also face off against her former heroes and/or team) and the characters but dislike the dialogue. You know it's gonna be bad when you have elders and grannies talking the way a teenager would text.

So in summary it's mostly good with some annoying that keeps getting in the way.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Most of the characters are awkward, douchbags, or assholes.

This is Supermassive's MO. Every single game they make is full of unpleasant people arguing with each other. I have no idea why they do it this way but it makes all of their games unbearable to me.

 

[hanselthecaretaker2]

This is Supermassive's MO. Every single game they make is full of unpleasant people arguing with each other. I have no idea why they do it this way but it makes all of their games unbearable to me.

Guessing it’s partly a reflection on typical social discourse among that age demographic. Maybe they still think that’s the only one that plays games or something.

 

[Dalisclock]

This is Supermassive's MO. Every single game they make is full of unpleasant people arguing with each other. I have no idea why they do it this way but it makes all of their games unbearable to me.

I understand that flawed chatacters make interesting stories. It's rule 1 of writting characters. But "flawed" and "unlikable" are very different and there's the very real risk of running into the 8 deadly words "I don't care what happens to these people"

Or as Yahtzee put it once "It's about people nobody likes doing things that nobody cares about". Supermassive doesn't seem to understand this, I think.

 

[Dalisclock]

Playing Chants of Senaar currently.

So it's an interesting mixture of "Heaven's Vault" and "Return of the Obra Din" to put it simply. You are a nameless person who has woken up at the Bottom of a massive Tower reaching into the sky and much of the game is trying to understand the people who live on the tower, because you don't start out sharing a language with them. Instead, the primary game mechanic is slowly building an understanding of their language piece by piece, by using context and simple phrases/sentences to figure out words, which are pictographic, so each symbol/letter essentially equals a word or idea and there's a logical connection/flow to the letters. For example, a certain symbol means "God" and another symbol means "Man/Human" and combined they mean "Devotee". You pick up the symbols as you go and have to type your interpretation into them, so it's hard to brute force your way through, you do have to pay attention.

The good news is that pretty much everything is repeated/repeatable so you can keep watching a sequence/conversation to figure out the symbols based on context and sentence. Also, as you go, your notebook has pages where you'll be presented with these words and concepts and if you get every word(usually 3 or 4) correct on a page, they lock in and are then auto-translated in the future. So as you go everything becomes more and more legible and understandable, including grammar and syntax.

Now for the part where it gets more interesting. The tower has several "levels" and each level has it's own language which is different. So once you leave the first (bottom) level of the tower and proceed upwards, you find a new culture and language on level 2 and restart the process of learning the language. That being said, the game gives you some help by giving you a small Rosetta stone thing near the transition of levels to help you translate some of the words from the last language(which you probably have mastered by this point) into the new language.

You probably already picked up on this from what I've said so far and if you know anything about this game from the trailer, but it's basically a retelling of the Tower of Babel story(All single Biblical paragraph of it) but in this version, it seems everyone just finished building the tower and moved in instead of scattering across the world. Thus each level has it's own culture and language living separately from each other, and it seems each culture as you go higher seems more advanced then the previous one. There's also hints that they've been living on this tower for a very, very long time, with some more advanced technology like piping and electronics, as well as canals and waterways for boat traffic. It also practically hits you over the head with it from the depiction at the title screen, because the tower looks like this

But you also get this interesting interplay between the levels/cultures of the tower in the words you translate. For example, very early on you find a picture of the Sun with a symbol in it. On the first level, the level of the devotees, this symbol is "God". On the 2nd level, the level of the warriors, the same symbol, held in the same esteem, is "Duty". Likewise, the Warriors word for the Devotees is "Impure", while their symbol for the people on the level above the warriors are "Chosen ones". So there's a very real caste/class structure going on here and it's a cool exploration of this concept using the tower.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, there are some forced stealth sections in the game, mostly in the warrior level, but they're treated as puzzles where it's fairly easy to figure out how to proceed and if you fail, you restart at certain invisible checkpoints during the section. So it's not too annoying and there's very little punishment for failing. And it seems once you've passed a stealth section there's little need to go through it a second time.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Aperture Desk Job

Valve made free game for Steam Deck, like a sort of demo thing, clearly set in the Portal world 'cause it's the same kind of vibe and humor and funny evil robot orb hanging from the ceiling. I'm glad some redditor reminder me about it because it's not really promoted even though it's a delightful half-hour that also reminded me I have more buttons on this thing than I realized (that I'll never use but still).

 

[Worgen]

The Knight Witch

It's a twin stick shooter metroidvania. So far so mixed. It controls well enough but you tend to get lost in the bullet hell, and you're squishy as sin too - three or four hits and you get sent back to the last checkpoint, which is usually several rooms of enemies away. There's no mechanic for regaining health (other than saving at checkpoints, which respawn enemies) and drops are rare. Thank God you don't lose anything when you die, except the time it takes you to get back there. You can purchase armor which essentially woks as a miserable extra hit point, so outside of boss fights it feels like a waste of money. Or it would if there was anything else you could buy with money.

You have a mana/spellcard system that's fairly reliable and rewards you for playing aggressively, though I don't like how inconveniently laid out the UI is. Spellcards are listed all the way at the bottom right of the screen and require you to divert your attention from the action, more often than not at the expense of taking damage.

The story is fine. It's very light in tone but has a fairly convoluted lore. I like the general plotting (scrappy do has to rise to the occasion but also face off against her former heroes and/or team) and the characters but dislike the dialogue. You know it's gonna be bad when you have elders and grannies talking the way a teenager would text.

So in summary it's mostly good with some annoying that keeps getting in the way.

Pretty much my thoughts on it also. Overall I enjoyed it, but its not one of those I think I would replay anytime soon.

 

[Bartholen]

I've been playing through Black Mesa and last night I finally got into the Xen levels. Half-Life is definitely showing its age today: most of the environments are simply really fucking boring to look at and navigate. Sure it was a technological marvel at the time, but today navigating endless grey and brown claustrophobic industrial corridors just makes my eyes glaze over. There's only so many ways you can try to make grey rooms with brown boxes and industrial piping look distinct from one another. Different mechanics like the railway segment can only liven up the gameplay so much when every place looks the same. That's why it's such a massive breath of fresh air whenever the game goes outside, and the remake can actually flex its graphical chops: the amount of detailing in outdoor environments and the vistas are spectacular. It's there that the game actually livens up quite a bit as the environments get more open and the AI can surprise you. Speaking of which, Half-Life's soldier enemy AI is pretty tough and can easily go toe to toe with the most modern shooters.

But when the game finally gets to Xen, it's like the graphics jump forward like 2 entire console generations. The skyboxes, environmental details, lighting and colours are just stunning. The Xen section would not look out of place being released on the PS4. I'm only like 5 minutes into it, but I have a feeling I'll enjoy it quite a bit more than on the Source version of this game.

Continuing on my current trend of huge RPGs I also played a tiny smidge of Octopath Traveler 2, which is a deliberate throwback to the SNES era of JRPGs. Though how much is yet to be seen since I'm only at the very start and have only gotten a tiny taste of combat. It has an interesting graphical style of integrating 16-bit chibi sprites within 3d environments with all sorts of snazzy effects like bloom and depth of field, and they fit together much more naturally than one would expect. Though the question of including voice acting is one I kind of question. The game's fully voice acted, but the dialogue is still written in that rather mechanical style of the JRPGs of old, which strikes a weird uncanny valley -ish note when spoken out loud. The voice acting also isn't very good, most lines sound like they were spoken aloud separately from their larger context, so the voice acting in conversations between characters have a very weird, stilted air to them. Muting the voice acting immediately made the game more immersive.

I've also been going through my second playthrough of Cyberpunk 2077 as basically a dakka-tank build. Playing sneaky with takedowns and headshots has its appeal, but double jumping into high ground, dropping a payload of grenades into the enemies' midst and spraying and praying is also really fun. I'm not yet sure how much evolution the game can offer for such a playstyle, but I'm still having fun. You definitely start to notice issues with this game the second time round though: the enemy AI just isn't very good, as they will often just stand in place and get ridden with bullets instead of taking cover even on Hard difficulty. The story sections can also take incredibly long to sit through even if you skip all skippable dialogue. It took me like 1 hour 15 minutes to get through the Konpeki plaza heist and the waking up sequence to get back into the open world, and that entire section is completely linear, sometimes literally on rails. To my memory it's the most extensive sequence of that sort in the game, but that makes it no less dull to slog through.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

But when the game finally gets to Xen, it's like the graphics jump forward like 2 entire console generations. The skyboxes, environmental details, lighting and colours are just stunning. The Xen section would not look out of place being released on the PS4. I'm only like 5 minutes into it, but I have a feeling I'll enjoy it quite a bit more than on the Source version of this game.

Black Mesa originally released without the Xen section and they spent a very long time working on it, and it shows. I do have to warn you: There is one section that is an utter slog, and you'll be tempted to quit. But it's entirely worth the effort to push through.

 

[FakeSympathy]

I started Metroid Dread, now a few hours in.

I am loving it so far! This is how I would imagine a remake of a classic 2d Metroid games be like. The controls are smooth, the wall jumps are easy to pull off, and the counter mehanic is super fun to abuse.

Although I do think the E.M.M.I robots are bit annoying to deal with. In essence, they are exactly like SA-X encounters from Metroid Fusion, but the problem is these robots are annoyingly relentless, not terrifying. And at least SA-X didn't have insta-death moves. The game seems to force me to re-tread the guarded area multiple times, and each time I have to run away from these robots.

Other than that, great game so far!

Done, took about 16 hours to 100%, and I appreciate the game delivering such a quality experience in that short time.

Except for the bosses, I think this game was rather easy compared to last 2d metroid games. The storm missile ability is broken as hell, on top of the game being really generous with how many missile pick ups it gives you. The puzzles were bit on the easier side, as the map flat out tells you general location of hidden items and you can the ability to scan the entire room.

The bosses for the most part was doable, but the final boss was really hard. I loved it because this is first time in a long time that a game outside of soulslike genre has given me a challenge with their bosses.

The story was really enjoyable, and I loved how it added lore to Chozo race.

The game has reawaken my love for this franchise, because I'm tackling Metroid Prime Remastered next. I'm only about an hour in, and it looks so crisp and atmospheric, just like how I remember it all those years ago on my gamecube.

 

[hanselthecaretaker2]

Went back and started a new game in Dark Souls 3, on PC. Much like when I did so for Bloodborne a while back, it kinda humbled me. After playing so much Elden Ring, where even starting as Wretch it’s mostly a cakewalk to get the ball rolling, but DS3 is like “Fuck You!” even after re-acclimating to the somewhat stiffer controls. The environments offer much less room for error and these bloody undead bastards are typically pretty aggressive. I did most of the stuff before the banner gate hound fight, but kinda fucked myself in true “you idiot” fashion shortly after reaching Firelink.

I’d accumulated over 7,000 souls mostly thanks to baiting the crystal beast off a cliff and ludex, but then got greedy and went after that A-Hole with an Uchi by the side gate. Died of course, and then carelessly meandered off the edge of a cliff myself not realizing where my soul stain was. I got the bastard afterwards at least by taking him down with me off the same cliff with wild club swings but yeah, lost out on probably about ten levels worth of souls. That would’ve allowed me to use both the Uchi and the Claymore I found a bit later. But hey, that’s Souls for ya.


Will get back to The Quarry tonight if I don’t fall asleep first.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

More The Knight Witch, still generally fun but getting slightly more annoying every hour. The design favors busywork and wasting of your time. You defeat a boss and a door opens ominously in a cutscene just outside the room; you can go through and down a pretty long hallway before the game says nuh uh, report back to the main hub. So you have to tread back all the way to the teleporter, through all the annoying fight rooms you cleared on the way to the boss, so you can finally teleport to the main hub, so you're told to teleport to an earlier area and backtrack through two different maps so you can fight another boss, then backtrack AGAIN to the main hub before finally being told you can go through that door that opened after you beat the first boss (which of course means, once more, having to tread there again a third time). A better design would streamline all this without making it feel like you've been put on hold (and making you work for it).

You light beacons for checkpoints every number of rooms. They're quite spaced. Wish you could fast travel between them. You can already upgrade each of them to also give you armor in addition to healing you, why not also let me pay an exorbitant amount so i can teleport to them from the main hub? Save myself the hassle.

Combat and traversal can make any game be basically viscerally satisfying and they're good enough here (boss fights are fun, horde rooms not so much) but the metroidvania part isn't as good. Exploring is no fun and I tend to rush through most rooms avoiding enemies so I can touchdown on a checkpoint before I bother looking around for collectibles. The progression part is also not very satisfying; I don't feel significantly more powerful 70% into the game, just more adept at handling the bullshit parts. Most of the game has been an uphill battle to get a fair amount of HP.

 

[Bartholen]

Making my way through Xen in Black Mesa. I don't remember too much about the section in the Source version, but enough to say that this is a damn sight more entertaining and better designed. The switch from finicky AF platforming to navigation challenges and puzzles definitely makes it go down easier. There's some pretty damn interesting worldbuilding also that definitely wasn't in the original, and bridges the gap between this and HL2 better. I still think Xen is way overlong and out of place. It should have been maybe an hour tops to serve as the finale, but instead it's like a quarter of the entire game's length. At that point there's basically no story left: the incident at Black Mesa has caused an interdimensional cascade/invasion, and you're in Xen to stop it. That's it. Beyond that there's nothing new to discover or build up to storywise, and you're just left going through the environments.

 

[Worgen]

Decided to start up Yakuza Like a Dragon again. I played it awhile ago, but only got like 8 hours in before I stopped playing. Started over, found out I forgot a lot about the plot, so, we shall see if I make it a main game.

 

[Piscian]

Decided to start up Yakuza Like a Dragon again. I played it awhile ago, but only got like 8 hours in before I stopped playing. Started over, found out I forgot a lot about the plot, so, we shall see if I make it a main game.

If I'm being honest it took me about 3 tries to really get hooked on Like a Dragon. It's charm certainly won me over, but it doesn't have the most exciting start.

 

[Casual Shinji]

If I'm being honest it took me about 3 tries to really get hooked on Like a Dragon. It's charm certainly won me over, but it doesn't have the most exciting start.

It also doesn't have the most exciting turn-based combat, like at all. I think I was 10 hours in and I was still completing fights with just basic attacks.

 

[Worgen]

If I'm being honest it took me about 3 tries to really get hooked on Like a Dragon. It's charm certainly won me over, but it doesn't have the most exciting start.

It certainly is really heavy on story at the front end, its interesting but holy crap does it mean that it takes forever to really get into the game. I think the first time I played it, I had just started really getting into the game before I ended up playing something else.

 

[meiam]

It certainly is really heavy on story at the front end, its interesting but holy crap does it mean that it takes forever to really get into the game. I think the first time I played it, I had just started really getting into the game before I ended up playing something else.

I trudged trough the story and pretty mediocre TRPG to finally get to the point where the world open up and you can do all the fun Yakuza stuff (ie, wacky minigame), then had a lot of fun. But once I hit a wall and had to go trough more story segment for more to open up, I just couldn't do it and quit. The story touch on a lot of interesting topic not usually covered in video game and has surprisingly nuance takes on them, but it just doesn't have the writing chops needed to properly handle them while keeping it interesting. And every situation always just end with the man character just making a big speech and everything magically fix itself, which really comes off as tone deaf when your dealing with stuff like homelessness.

 

[Worgen]

I trudged trough the story and pretty mediocre TRPG to finally get to the point where the world open up and you can do all the fun Yakuza stuff (ie, wacky minigame), then had a lot of fun. But once I hit a wall and had to go trough more story segment for more to open up, I just couldn't do it and quit. The story touch on a lot of interesting topic not usually covered in video game and has surprisingly nuance takes on them, but it just doesn't have the writing chops needed to properly handle them while keeping it interesting. And every situation always just end with the man character just making a big speech and everything magically fix itself, which really comes off as tone deaf when your dealing with stuff like homelessness.

I'm at the homeless section now.