What are you currently playing?

[NerfedFalcon]

According to UPS, 13 Sentinels will finally be delivered today, preordered it almost 5 months ago but it took em 8 days lmao.

But alas, 8 days is nothing compared to the 3-4 years I've waited since I learned of Vanillaware making this game. Finally the wait is over. Let us go blow up some Kaijuu with gorgeous sprite artwork!

I'm about halfway and man the story is so good. It's like every detail has been meticulously placed there for a reason. Can't wait to see where it goes. Just like the artwork the game is a hand crafted labor of love. I love all the 80s hommages as well. This might be one of my favorite games of the year.

I didn't realize that had come out. I'll have to look into it, I loved Odin Sphere and Muramasa, and Pacific Rim.

 

[Dreiko]

I didn't realize that had come out. I'll have to look into it, I loved Odin Sphere and Muramasa, and Pacific Rim.

So I'm 2.5 hours in and this is nothing like their other games, but in a really good way. There game is basically a hybrid of an adventure game where you walk around and talk to people and contemplate concepts and analyze them to reach conclusion, sorta like the town areas in their other games, and a RTS-Jrpg. The combat is basically rts but you can pause and issue commands Jrpgs style and those happen instantly most of the time and you have an ATB gauge to deal with and so on. The combat honestly is the least impressive part in the visually stunning game because it's minimalistic but it happens really quick.

But yeah, where the game REALLY shines is the characters/plot. There's a TON of shenanigans happening. I'm still just doing the prologues of each char specific story, about 4 prologues in, and the story is already tossing a million concepts and events at you. I don't wanna spoil this but I'll just say it's a million times more intricate than Pacific Rim.


And I kinda buried the lead here. The game is stunning. The first scene that you can walk around in is in a generic 80s classroom and man if it's not a gorgeous classroom. The game somehow draws you to look at everything for a good minute or two and you need to do that to even analyze all the information you just were handed. Also all the characters feel fleshed out and "equal" in a sense. It's not that this one main kid is the hero and everyone else is side chars with minor plots. It may end up where he matters more in the end or something but so far everyone I've seen is treated with the respect of a protagonist. Pretty hard to have 13 protagonists but they're doing a good job so far haha.

I'm about halfway and man the story is so good. It's like every detail has been meticulously placed there for a reason. Can't wait to see where it goes. Just like the artwork the game is a hand crafted labor of love. I love all the 80s hommages as well. This might be one of my favorite games of the year.

Yeah man the references and the feel of nostalgia that compose this retro-futiristic tale (not from just the 80s either) are incredible. I'm very early in but I'm mesmerized completely. The "girl runs with toast in mouth" thing had me smiling like a doofus too. Clearly this game was a labor of love.

 

[gorfias]

Metamorphosis by Ovid Works.

If you ask the average person about Franz Kafka, they might mention something about a man who turns into a bug, if they know the name at all. So it's no surprise that whenever something draws inspiration from him, it's normally a reference to the plot of the Metamorphosis, the story about Gregor Samsa, who wakes up as a man-sized bug for no apparent reason. However, this game uses that as a jumping off point to incorporate Kafka's other notable works, such as The Trial and The Castle.

The game begins with a surreal nightmarish sequence where Gregor, the PC, wakes up in an unfamiliar room and trying to leave for work, finds himself traversing a series of increasingly bizarre rooms and hallways, unaware he's slowly getting smaller and turning into a bug. A series of cryptic notes points him towards THE TOWER, where he can possibly become human again, and the rest of the game involves a journey across an increasingly weird and unhinged series of environments in the apartment building but also a fantastical bug society hidden in the walls and floors. In the meantime, Gregors journey as a bug has him bear witness to a parallel story of Joseph K, Gregors friend, who is under arrest for an unspecified and unknown crime, which is pulled straight from The Trial. Gregor can't directly interact with this due to the scale(though there are some things he can influence), and Joseph never notices the now insectoid Gregor. What it does play out as is Gregor traverse a room where everything(including the humans) are enormous in comparison and that plot is unfolding as a form of background narration to accompany the platforming and traversal.

Gameplay is pretty basic. As a bug you can climb, jump and move and occasionally make other things move by standing on them. There are sticky substances you can walk through and gain a limited supply of....stickiness that can be used to climb vertical surfaces, but the pools you walk through are infinite and it's easy enough to go to the nearest source if you run out. A vast majority of the challenge involves figuring out where to go and how to get there, but the game does have a built in "Map" that gives a birds eye view of the current area and gives you your current objective and where to go(you'll sometimes see glowing symbols to help as well). The game is actually fairly linear so it's hard to get lost for too long and you can generally only move forward, which avoids tedious long backtracking.

Ironically, the general plot of Gregor's journey to the tower involves him getting shuffled through a bunch of goals(short term goals) given to him by other bugs(who are implied to have also been human as well), of "Chain of deals" kind, where Bug A want you to do Action B for him you need something from Location C first. It's annoying but at the same time the linearity of the game makes it a lot less annoying then it could be, because you'll always end up where you need to go next by following the path. The obnoxious bureaucracy does feel fitting thematic because Kafka's works often entail meaningless red tape that serves no real purpose but you have to do it because that's all part of a vast machine that runs of its own accord(fittingly you'll have to weave your way through laybtihs of pipes and valves and wires and such along the way). You can easily die, but sometimes deaths are basically "You fell into an area you wouldn't be able to get out of" and then you're instantly taken back to the last checkpoint(and these are fairly reasonably spaced and autosaved).

The atmosphere is appropriately surreal, much like the mans writing, though the bugs you meet only kind of work in this regard. As mentioned before, it's implied they were all human like yourself once and everyone knows of the tower but everyone else has either given up trying to get there or has become stuck along their journey, so you have pockets of a bug society, such a town built around a film projector out of discarding cans and buildings made of pieces of scrap wood with creepy soviet-eqse propaganda films shown on a regular basis, posters with art deco bug people imploring "DUTY" and a 1930's style nightclub built into a gramophone(An old-timey record player). However, beyond that, nobody really seems to care much about their seemingly permanent transformation, so then you have the weirdness of being solicited by bug prostitutes(wierd and disturbing, because they're trying to use the sexy body language on you, despite the whole insect thing) and a mad preacher who has a region for every type of insect(though all the ones in the game look pretty similar). I also appreciated how Gregors voice starts as normal human, gets more and more creepy as he becomes a bug and eventually turns into a gutteral incomprehensible alien bug talk the rest speak.

In the end, the whole thing kind of does come together in a way that feels appropriate if not particularly happy. The devs appreciation of the subject matter is on display here(though it feels like knowledge of The Trial helps a bit understanding what's going on), with some nods to the banality of evil and dehumanization in an industrialized society. It's also just about 3 hours long, so it doesn't overstay it's welcome. However, how much someone actually likes it will depend a lot on two things. Are you interested in playing a 3d surreal platformer where you're an insect and do you appreciate Kafka(or think you would)? Because if you do, this game would probably work for you. If only one or neither of these are true, you'll likely want to give it a pass.

Downloading the demo from steam but... $25 for a 3 hour game? Well. The demo may give me reason to keep an eye out for it on sale.
EDIT: I won't lie. The demo was fun. Thanks for tipping us off about this game.

 

[BrawlMan]

DMC4:SE. In preparation for 5SE, I busted this out. Legendary Dark Knight Mode is the best Dynasty Warriors game ever made not made by Koei Tecmo. Odds are 5SE is going to take that place. The best Mouso game not made by KT are: DMC4SE (soon 5SE to takes its place)> Sengoku Basara > Super Ultra Dead Rising 3 Arcade Remix Hyper Edition Ex Plus Alpha.

Vergil is fucking broken and over powered as fuck! I bet he's going to be overpowered in 5 too when Capcom released the $5 DLC.




THIS IS POWER!!!

 

[Dalisclock]

Downloading the demo from steam but... $25 for a 3 hour game? Well. The demo may give me reason to keep an eye out for it on sale.
EDIT: I won't lie. The demo was fun. Thanks for tipping us off about this game.

No problem. I remembered Bad Mojo from back in the day and this is similar but a lot more faithful to the Kafka vibe(as opposed to Bad Mojo which was "you're a bug now and trapped in a filthy apartment where everything can and will kill you. Enjoy dying all the time and hope you have a strong stomach"). Also my soft spot for to indies that look kinda offbeat and this fits the description.

$25 might be a bit steep until the whole concept really appeals to you. Wait for $15 if you're merely curious. The demo is pretty much the first 10 or so minutes, so you're getting a good representation of the weirdness and the mechanics there.

 

[Dreiko]

7 hours into 13 Sentinels and man, this plot keeps getting more and more intricate. It feels like you have a puzzle the size of a house and each piece is big enough to make sense by itself but trying to see the big picture and what the puzzle will end up looking like in the end is proving completely impossible so far. I did Jurou's story up until it allows you to go (I think 50%ish) and he alone has so much stuff going with him it's nuts. I'll try to do em in the order the prologues were made available, though since Jurou's unlock condition is 30% I'll do everyone up to that instead of all the way to 50% or however much you can until it locks you out (this is also kinda like a puzzle, where you get to pick which part to start from first).

Also I highly recommend setting the difficulty to Intense when the game prompts you. The game is quite easy either way but intense keeps you busier I feel, at least early on. You can always switch back if you need anyhow.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Reached the ceasefire in This War of Mine after 45 days of attrition. Everyone alive and well, no blood in anyone's hands. Doesn't seem that harsh in hindsight (sure, just map out an upgrade plan in order to build a self-sustaining economy from rat meat and homegrown veggies before winter breaks out... actually it's pretty harsh) but while I was playing the game it was one of the most immersive, riveting experiences I've had playing. It's a great survival game, intricate with opportunity cost, incentivises tactical tradeoffs, constantly forces you to choose between what's less bad, or right from easy. Movement can be a bit cumbersome and man do I need to be glued to the screen to make out what's going on, but overall great game.

 

[Kae]

Hades, it's pretty good, don't know what else to say, I mean like all Super Giant games it's gorgeous and it has a fantastic soundtrack, the combat is very solid and fun and I've yet to escape even once, but I have fought Hades twice, so I'm getting close.

But yeah, play Hades people it's good.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

Reached the ceasefire in This War of Mine after 45 days of attrition. Everyone alive and well, no blood in anyone's hands. Doesn't seem that harsh in hindsight (sure, just map out an upgrade plan in order to build a self-sustaining economy from rat meat and homegrown veggies before winter breaks out... actually it's pretty harsh) but while I was playing the game it was one of the most immersive, riveting experiences I've had playing. It's a great survival game, intricate with opportunity cost, incentivises tactical tradeoffs, constantly forces you to choose between what's less bad, or right from easy. Movement can be a bit cumbersome and man do I need to be glued to the screen to make out what's going on, but overall great game.

What did your biggest choices end up being if you managed no blood on anyone’s hands? I’ve only played a bit of it, but getting much needed supplies seemed to sometimes involve...also getting hands dirty (ie bloody). Maybe I missed other options though.

 

[deleted20220709]

DELETED

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

What did your biggest choices end up being if you managed no blood on anyone’s hands? I’ve only played a bit of it, but getting much needed supplies seemed to sometimes involve...also getting hands dirty (ie bloody). Maybe I missed other options though.

The worst thing I did was turn down a 4th survivor that came begging for shelter. I also stole once but was surprised when the game chastised me for it; I thought people who will shoot you on sight were fair game, and I don't recall the "theft" icon coming up when I took some of their things. But whatevs. Keep everyone fed, rested and warm and the sadness eventually goes away. Good deeds help more directly but the opportunities are up to the RNG.

It helps to get a feel for how much you can reliably push your survivors without breaking them. I was only feeding them every other day or whenever Hungry became Very Hungry; keep them Hungry and it's all good. Only heating the house when temperature went under 10°. Only scavenging when I had 2 other able-bodied people guarding at night. Crucially you don't want to depend on scavenging that much past the first 2 or 3 weeks; ideally you have a more or less self-sufficient economy by the time winter breaks.

Those rat traps (2 max) are a life saver. You get 2 raw food every 1-4 days; build them 2 days apart and you will pretty much always have guaranteed meat. Best part is they fuel themselves if you leave 1 raw food as bait whenever you go collect. Similarly the veggie garden pays for itself, though it takes lots of resources to get there and probably shouldn't try to get it ASAP. Plenty of other things are more useful more quickly. The whole game really is about trying to balance quick profit vs long term profit.

Right off the bat the priorities should be to build beds for everyone minus one, upgrade the main work bench, get 2 rat traps going and also build a metal work bench and upgrade it once. Everything else can wait. And scavenge deserted or neutral places before hitting the dicey ones. Take note of where it pays to go back with a shovel, lockpick or sawblade. And get comfy trading stuff you know will need later but don't right now.

 

[happyninja42]

The worst thing I did was turn down a 4th survivor that came begging for shelter. I also stole once but was surprised when the game chastised me for it; I thought people who will shoot you on sight were fair game, and I don't recall the "theft" icon coming up when I took some of their things. But whatevs. Keep everyone fed, rested and warm and the sadness eventually goes away. Good deeds help more directly but the opportunities are up to the RNG.

It helps to get a feel for how much you can reliably push your survivors without breaking them. I was only feeding them every other day or whenever Hungry became Very Hungry; keep them Hungry and it's all good. Only heating the house when temperature went under 10°. Only scavenging when I had 2 other able-bodied people guarding at night. Crucially you don't want to depend on scavenging that much past the first 2 or 3 weeks; ideally you have a more or less self-sufficient economy by the time winter breaks.

Those rat traps (2 max) are a life saver. You get 2 raw food every 1-4 days; build them 2 days apart and you will pretty much always have guaranteed meat. Best part is they fuel themselves if you leave 1 raw food as bait whenever you go collect. Similarly the veggie garden pays for itself, though it takes lots of resources to get there and probably shouldn't try to get it ASAP. Plenty of other things are more useful more quickly. The whole game really is about trying to balance quick profit vs long term profit.

Right off the bat the priorities should be to build beds for everyone minus one, upgrade the main work bench, get 2 rat traps going and also build a metal work bench and upgrade it once. Everything else can wait. And scavenge deserted or neutral places before hitting the dicey ones. Take note of where it pays to go back with a shovel, lockpick or sawblade. And get comfy trading stuff you know will need later but don't right now.

So looking at your description of the game, it sounds an awful lot like Sheltered. If you've played that game, how would you compare them in basic premise? I know graphics and other details they are significantly different, but the self-sufficient aspects, and the resources used sound a lot like Sheltered to me. Which I loved, but I always kind of shied away from This War of Mine.

But then I really loved Frostpunk, so I might check it out. It just seemed, from the overall reaction to TWOM, that it was this uber-depressing, all is misery, all will end in ruin kind of mood. And frankly I don't really want to play something like that.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

So looking at your description of the game, it sounds an awful lot like Sheltered. If you've played that game, how would you compare them in basic premise? I know graphics and other details they are significantly different, but the self-sufficient aspects, and the resources used sound a lot like Sheltered to me. Which I loved, but I always kind of shied away from This War of Mine.

But then I really loved Frostpunk, so I might check it out. It just seemed, from the overall reaction to TWOM, that it was this uber-depressing, all is misery, all will end in ruin kind of mood. And frankly I don't really want to play something like that.

I don't know Sheltered so I couldn't compare them. TWOM is definitely grim, but even when my first run ended at day 12 with everybody killing themselves I was more annoyed at my failure to fully understand the gameplay than depressed by it. In many ways making the game *not* depressing is part of the objective. There might be some kind of real life basis for this but the impression I got was if you can weather the brunt of the first couple of weeks squeaky-clean you're set for the war. Day 6 I would've never imagined myself having so much food I'd be selling the surplus by Day 34. By the end of it I was staying in every night not having to bother scavenging because I had a self-sufficient thing going on, and only ever went out to buy bullets to withstand the nightly waves of raiders (which all it does is bill you X bullets in the morning, you're not actually killing anybody).

 

[SilentPony]

Ive been trying my hand at that Hades game. Its good, for a rougelike. I never liked the whole RNG BOOM -15 health the Binding of Issac or Hands of Fate pulled, and thankfully all the boons and gifts for completing levels seem to be upgrades, of various usefulness sure, but upgrades.

 

[happyninja42]

I don't know Sheltered so I couldn't compare them. TWOM is definitely grim, but even when my first run ended at day 12 with everybody killing themselves I was more annoyed at my failure to fully understand the gameplay than depressed by it. In many ways making the game *not* depressing is part of the objective. There might be some kind of real life basis for this but the impression I got was if you can weather the brunt of the first couple of weeks squeaky-clean you're set for the war. Day 6 I would've never imagined myself having so much food I'd be selling the surplus by Day 34. By the end of it I was staying in every night not having to bother scavenging because I had a self-sufficient thing going on, and only ever went out to buy bullets to withstand the nightly waves of raiders (which all it does is bill you X bullets in the morning, you're not actually killing anybody).

Cool, I might check it out then. I really enjoy games about taking something that is shit, and making it better. So post apocalypse city builder-esque games are a personal favorite. This seems in the same theme, if different set dressing.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Ive been trying my hand at that Hades game. Its good, for a rougelike. I never liked the whole RNG BOOM -15 health the Binding of Issac or Hands of Fate pulled, and thankfully all the boons and gifts for completing levels seem to be upgrades, of various usefulness sure, but upgrades.

I don't really like Isaac's reliance on the RNG either; I prefer Enter the Gungeon and Spelunky, because skill in those games is able to do a lot more to overcome bad rolls, and good rolls don't give you a free victory. Also, Spelunky came out three years before Isaac did, so if there was any influence involved it was from the former to the latter. Do your goddamn research, Yahtzee.

Haven't tried Hades yet, but I've been meaning to since early access.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Cool, I might check it out then. I really enjoy games about taking something that is shit, and making it better. So post apocalypse city builder-esque games are a personal favorite. This seems in the same theme, if different set dressing.

It's about making the most out of a horrible situation, so it's stressful by design, but I recommend it. And you do have the option to customize the game with various modifiers affecting the difficulty and harshness to the point you can create your own easy mode.

There's also a bunch of in-game exploits that can make things even easier. The game autosaves at the beginning of every new day but in between you can quit and reload to reset the current day if things aren't going the way you want. This also means you get to reroll the results of the preceding night, albeit cycling through a limited number of possibilities and all of them tied to your own decisions anyway.

Having said that I prefer to just roll with the punches. Game in a nutshell really.

 

[Secondhand Revenant]

Been playing a fair bit of Hades. I've finally burned through my tens of thousands of darkness upgrading my status shit, am on my way to trying to buy every single upgrade possible. Upgrading my relationship with a certain character who comes later in the game has been rather difficult, they don't show up often enough to get through the required number of conversations, and many times when they do appear they're talking to other characters making it not count for chats with me, I believe. But it's quite fun!

 

[BrawlMan]

I got Crash 4, but I most likely will play it either Sunday or Monday. I am on call for the week, so I rather enjoy it when I know I have the time and uninterrupted. I already got the game installed. When I am ready, I can just pop the disc in and play. I traded in all of my Uncharted games and Doom Eternal (plus my $10 pre-order), and used a $5 coupon. I only had to pay $19.49.

 

[Trunkage]

Also doing Hades. About to crack 20 escapes.

I like the synergistic boons you can get. One god's boons are kock-back, then double, wall slam damage from knockback, splash damage from hitting walls and rupture (damage over time due to knockback). They really lean into boons piling into each other. Then you have duo boons like knock back causes lightning or sending ice whirlwinds out

Each run is so different and almost any build can be fun.

I don't think the music is quite as good as Bastion or Transistor. Some of the flagging for conversations dont make sense especially with all the info they give you. But the conversation are still going after seeing them 70 times. And it's all voice acted. This is extremely extensive

Great game