What are you currently playing?

[BrawlMan]

Maybe in like 10 years when it's 5 bucks?

I think this where I differ from some gamers, including myself gamer from just a few years ago- just because I liked a thing, doesn't mean I want more of the same thing (which will almost always be a lesser version of the thing).
"Oh it's like Sekiro but... " well then it's not Sekiro, is it? You know what's Sekiro? Sekiro.

Well except PB0 is taking Metal Gear Rising' parry mechanic; not Sekiro. I get what you mean though. There are times time where I've said we don't need this many variations of X gameplay mechanic. Especially when most others do it lesser or even worse.

 

[Bedinsis]

Finished Kathy Rain. It was fine, though I made the mistake of trying to outsmart the game, thinking "Oh, how could this character come back later, with the new information changing how they react?". That did not happen, most characters were rather static. The developers were more interested in developing the titular character, which they did a good job with. And with her grandpa.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Playing Creaks.

It's a puzzle-platformer, mildly reminiscent of Braid (arcady levels, pantomime storytelling, water color paintings, jazzy soundtrack), made by Czech studio Amanita Design. Because it's Czech I'm supposed to consider it Kafkaesque and yeah, broadly speaking, the game feels threatening and darkly surreal. You play a dude (probably asleep at his desk) who crawls through a hole in the bedroom wall and ends up climbing down into a massive, impossibly overgrown underground manor populated by bird people that's being besieged by some kind of beast. You go from one puzzle room to the next and keep descending while catching glimpses of the bird people's struggle with the beast, eventually helping them (or trying to).

The puzzles are single-screen, multi-level labyrinths. You open doors, lower bridges, throw switches. A crucial aspect are the enemies, which work as obstacles as much as key parts of the puzzle. You often have to lead them and trap them, or shepherd them into each other, and turning on lights transforms them into inanimate objects for holding down floor pads or serving as step ladders. Typically you walk into a room, case what's the interactable stuff, what kinds of enemies are in there, study their patrols and come up with a plan. The puzzles grow bigger, the elements more diverse, the order becomes more strict, but you're essentially always doing a variation of the same thing. To compare it again to Braid, which develops its mechanics and expands their possibilities almost scientifically, while the difficulty here curves nicely, Creaks is a bit more stale in terms of evolution.

Having said that my god is the game beautiful. I just want to play to see what the next room looks like.

 

[Ezekiel]

Found a red tunic that further increases defense in the basement of Ganon's Tower. Appreciate all the nonessential equipment that did not appear in the dungeons of Ocarina of Time and later games.

Now I'm stuck again. The blocks down there beyond the invincible pork people don't move. If I've done a puzzle like this before, the playthrough took so long (over a year, because of one roadblock) that I can't remember. Maybe I need to move the statue between one of them. Will try later.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Now I'm stuck again. The blocks down there beyond the invincible pork people don't move. If I've done a puzzle like this before, the playthrough took so long (over a year, because of one roadblock) that I can't remember. Maybe I need to move the statue between one of them. Will try later.

Tip: By now, 'try every single item in your inventory' should be an ingrained reflex. Slightly stronger tip: The red mimics aren't invincible, they just don't take damage from the sword.

 

[meiam]

Finally finished rogue trader after 102 hours.

Overall enjoyed it, but mixed feeling. The game has a lot of problem.

Gameplay is the biggest issue, it start pretty good, but by mid game you are an absolutely unstoppable monster. There's a lot of way to give flat damage increase to individual attack, and you can pretty easily do burst shoot that hit 20+ time. You can also stack extra turn many time, and you can combine that with the ability to always act first in combat. So what end up happening for every fight is that as soon as the fight start, you give many extra turn to a character that can easily mow everything down. As a results, I'd say about half the fight are over before an enemy even as a turn. You can increase the difficulty, but then you the enemy will pretty much one shoot most character, so it only mean you have to double down on making sure they never act. And the game seems to be build with that in mind, by endgame, enemy will have thousands of hitpoint, so if you haven't been building your character well, you'll hit quite a brick wall.

Story is also not so great, there's not much of an overarching plot, its more a collection of self contained arc. Your character just react to what is happening, pretty much every big action you take was started by someone else. There's some breads crumb laid throughout that end with some big reveal, but it feel very divorced from the rest of the game. The most enjoyable part is the 40K universe, but it often deviate from it, you can ally with xeno a bunch of time and your zealous companion never really say anything about that. Its also pretty limiting in what xeno you do meet, no ork, tyrannid or T'au. The game also, wisely, refrain from having space marine everywhere, but at the same they limit them too much and the space marine that are in the game are not very space marine-ey.

The game is also pretty buggy, no big bug, but plenty of small one, corpse often T pose, ability don't always works how they're supposed to. Only crashed once so its not that bad, but it often take you out.

The game has an alignment system, roughly good, evil and religious zealot (ie lawful evil), but annoyingly if you deviate even a little bit from just taking the same choice everytime, you end up in a situation where you fall behind on your alignment and so can't pick some option, which prevent you gaining more alignement point. Its also pretty arbitrary when choice will give you point.

I kinda wish the game had been smaller in scope and more focused, I kinda was done playing at 80 hours mark and just kinda drudge along.

 

[Ezekiel]

Tip: By now, 'try every single item in your inventory' should be an ingrained reflex. Slightly stronger tip: The red mimics aren't invincible, they just don't take damage from the sword.

I looked it up. If I hadn't been blocked off from the northwest of the dark world for a year, I would have remembered that they are vulnerable to arrows. The obstacle was the skull rocks that you need to hook to from the gap on the other side of the river, the rocks that you can't see from the far side. So much time had passed that I could not remember what I used the hookshot on in maiden dungeon 2. Someone here mentioned the rocks and hookshot. I searched for the hookshot bridge that day, got bored again and, only months later, tried shooting from that gap.

Thought I would beat the game a few minutes ago. I stunned Ganon for the final blow several times, but Link was informed that he needs a silver arrow. Not in the mood to go scouring the entire map right now.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Found a red tunic that further increases defense in the basement of Ganon's Tower. Appreciate all the nonessential equipment that did not appear in the dungeons of Ocarina of Time and later games.

There was a nonessential red tunic on OoT. A blue one too.

 

[BrawlMan]

I've been playing more MvCEX and labbing like crazy. I did some more arcade runs in this version as well.

 

[Worgen]

Beat Path of Exile 2. Well, not really, just beat all the current content, it goes up to act 3. Its quite good, although the story... exists. Second act seems the strongest, its got some really cool stages... and some really dull ones, the pitfall of being a desert, but the cool stages are really damn cool. 3rd act is the longest and does have some neat moments, but for some reason jungles don't do it for me, plus clearing the maps takes a long time since some are huge and enemies are more.. spongy then the other acts. After you beat the 3rd act the game just starts over, it just puts you back at the start with all your gear on a new cruel difficulty to do it again. In the cruel difficulty, you really need to figure out your build since enemies are much spongier so you want that damage.

 

[Ezekiel]

There was a nonessential red tunic on OoT. A blue one too.

Not inside the Fire and Water temples, and not there alone like these items. I said, "that did not appear IN THE DUNGEONS of Ocarina of Time and later games." The mirror shield in Link to the Past is another that you have to go off the dungeon's main path to find.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Not inside the Fire and Water temples, and not there alone like these items. I said, "that did not appear IN THE DUNGEONS of Ocarina of Time and later games." The mirror shield in Link to the Past is another that you have to go off the dungeon's main path to find.

And if you're not a speedrunner, you 99% still need the Mirror Shield in order to finish the dungeon and the game, so it's technically still part of the intended path. Besides, you're also ignoring all the Heart Pieces that appear in dungeons in the later games, and (in Ocarina specifically) the Gold Skulltulas too. Maybe they're not on the same level as equipment items like the Blue and Red Mail, but they're still side content worth exploring the dungeon fully to track down.

Anyway, I was gonna give you a hint for Ganon too, but since you're skipping ahead to reading the guide anyway, I won't bother.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Not inside the Fire and Water temples, and not there alone like these items. I said, "that did not appear IN THE DUNGEONS of Ocarina of Time and later games." The mirror shield in Link to the Past is another that you have to go off the dungeon's main path to find.

I mean, if you are being that particular that they have to be in the dungeon, ok, but there were a bunch of optional items in OoT that you'd get for side quests or world exploration so I'm not really sure what the difference is. Fire arrows, ice arrows, Din's fire, Nayru's love, Farore's wind, all the bottles, the eye of truth (which is in a dungeon), the gold scale, the giant's knife.

 

[Ezekiel]

Aw, man, I didn't think A Link to the Past recorded my deaths.

Anyway, I was gonna give you a hint for Ganon too, but since you're skipping ahead to reading the guide anyway, I won't bother.

Think I used guides four times in the playthrough. I never "skipped ahead." Made a thread about the use of guides, thought about duplicating it here, but too dead.

 

[Silvanus]

Finished Nine Sols yesterday (true ending). That final boss is bloody hard but exhilarating to fight. Excellent game in both combat and aesthetic.

 

[BrawlMan]

Made a thread about the use of guides, thought about duplicating it here, but too dead.

Your opinion on hints and guides

So I've been going back through my backlog of Giant Bombcast as I stopped listening to a lot of podcasts because of the year we've been through. Anyway, point is, I came on an episode where they got into a debate about some kind of hint system that, I think it was Sony, would be baked into the...

forums.escapistmagazine.com

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I played Nine Sols which I loved but the game was stressing me out towards the end so I wanted to chase it with something relaxing.

So I played Creaks which is a very nice retro style puzzle platformer that stumps you just long enough but since every room is single screen (ie. all the info you ever need is in plain sight) and there are no softlocks and the game auto saves whenever you make any headway, it never gets frustrating.

And now I barely have a few days left before going away for he holidays so I'm going down my backlog of short games because I don't want to leave anything half done. I'm thinking flOw.

 

[Worgen]

9 Years of Shadows. I got it with a few other metroidvanias from humblebundle a few months ago. Its good, but not great. Has some really nice pixel art, but its done in this certain detailed style which I saw in a lot of indie games awhile back so I really wonder if there was some tool or something that made it easy to make a detailed yet similar style. Gameplay is what you expect, explore a big map, find upgrades, explore more, fight or avoid enemies. The overall story is... so forgettable that I have already forgotten it, but its got some interesting characters. There is a lot of musical theming in the game, and all the supporting characters are based on artists. Usually musical, but a couple painting artists also, I'm not sure how necessary it was to do that, but its a neat touch that made me look up the name and instrument used for pretty much every new side character just to see who they are based on. You will find new armor that is elemental based and each one has a new type of traversal that it unlocks. These mostly work, but they can also feel awkward to use. I would give this a soft recommend if you like metroidvanias.

 

[BrawlMan]

I've been addicted to Marvel vs. Capcom EX like crazy. I've tried the 10* difficulty and the game is still mostly easy compared to the arcade. Having the EX options help after beating the game first time. I'll mainly use it to get level 3 bars at the start. Makes doing and creating combos more fun. Capcom should have bundled this version as a small bonus in their MvC Collection. I got a new high score and now War Machine is my selected character for my score. I had him paired with Akuma Mode/Evil Ryu. Spamming beam or fireball supers breaking the scoring system on these games. I nearly have 2 million points.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Well no shit flOw is a short game. I already "beat" it since my last post 90 minutes ago.

It's part screensaver, part art piece, part tech demo for the Sixaxis. You tilt the controller in the direction you want to guide a spermatozoon as it floats on a 2D nether. Eat red pellets to move deeper into the nether, get bullied by bigger spermatozoon and you go back up a 2D plane. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.

Get to the final pellet and you win the campaign. Win the six campaigns with the six different shapes of spermatozoon and you win the game. And that's it.

So this is basically where the GAMES ARE ART indie battlecry began, right? Before Fez, before Braid, before Limbo, before Journey.