What are you currently playing?

[BrawlMan]

More Speed Brawl. I am starting to see some of the flaws with the levell design and combat. The game is still good, but it definitely could have used polish in some areas. certain stages have a habit of spawning enemies very far away from you when you're clearing the opposite side full of enemies. Any other drag yourself all the way back ther to kill this one or two scrubs. t wastes with your time and can risk not getting a gold medal. I also don't find a heavy set characters fun to use. Even when you get them properly upgraded. I find a lightweight or faster characters better. I locked almost all the characters, I still got to get the robot. The RPG elements are nothing special, and boil down to switching out loadouts and perks when you get better rewards by getting gold medals or just buying them. Thankfully you can sell items, to get better perks in case you're not that good at the levels. Or finding a level too tough. I do love the upgrade system. It's simple and to the point.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

Finished What Remains of Edith Finch. One of few games to give me goosebumps by the end. Some stories were better than others, but they really knocked it out of the park with Lewis, and Barbara. The former has a very clever use of dual controls with their own objectives, almost breaking the fourth wall within the game in a way. The latter was an unexpected trip in terms of presentation and really made me smile as a horror movie fan.

If I could gripe about anything it’s that sometimes the walking speed - especially on steps - was excruciatingly slow. Also there was one moment on the way to Barbara’s room where you can take a side path back to the main hall, but can’t get back in, forcing a complete game restart from the console dashboard. I’ve read complaints online too so pretty sure it was an oversight that should’ve been patched out.

Other than that the game does what it set out to do exceptionally well. I like the thoughtfulness put into the mechanics and progression. Just really felt like a hand-crafted title with zero filler, and that to me is highly appreciated and in today’s game climate.

 

[Dalisclock]

Finished What Remains of Edith Finch. One of few games to give me goosebumps by the end. Some stories were better than others, but they really knocked it out of the park with Lewis, and Barbara. The former has a very clever use of dual controls with their own objectives, almost breaking the fourth wall within the game in a way. The latter was an unexpected trip in terms of presentation and really made me smile as a horror movie fan.

If I could gripe about anything it’s that sometimes the walking speed - especially on steps - was excruciatingly slow. Also there was one moment on the way to Barbara’s room where you can take a side path back to the main hall, but can’t get back in, forcing a complete game restart from the console dashboard. I’ve read complaints online too so pretty sure it was an oversight that should’ve been patched out.

Other than that the game does what it set out to do exceptionally well. I like the thoughtfulness put into the mechanics and progression. Just really felt like a hand-crafted title with zero filler, and that to me is highly appreciated and in today’s game climate.

Yeah, it's one of those games where I feel they understood how to do a "Walking Sim" right, by showcasing the tragedy of the Finch family, their weirdass family home and doing it in a fairly interesting and economical way.

 

[XsjadoBlayde]

Did a look back in to No Man's Sky after another big update, cause why not.

Spoiler: And found some stuff!

A goddamn bubble planet with bubble rocks and bubble lifeforms!


Fragments ?


With a cute little spinny lifeform that doesn't like being scanned..aww!

Shit i ordered Doom Eternal and Outer Worlds yesterday just cause i had a voucher to use, i literally can't help myself. Where's the seppuku spoon? This life is shame.

 

[wings012]

Started Spiritfarer. The gameplay loop is essentially just busywork, but it's got enough charm that I can just chill to it then get the feels.

Beat Halo 3 ODST on Legendary in one sitting.

Looking to start Disgaea 4 sometime.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I'm thinking of buying Darkest Dungeon but then how tortuous is the experience, in terms of permadeath and RNG?

 

[Terminal Blue]

I'm thinking of buying Darkest Dungeon but then how tortuous is the experience, in terms of permadeath and RNG?

For me, it's fine. Most of the time, when things go horribly wrong it feels like you didn't prepare properly or used the wrong strategy. It does that roguelite thing where, even though you're losing party members, you're also gaining permanent rewards through upgrading the town. Later on, for example, you can get building upgrades which let your new recruits start at higher level.

The only negative I will say about darkest dungeon is that there's a lot of padding, particularly at the end of the game. It doesn't always respect your time, and I've never finished it for this reason. That said, I don't regret buying it at all and if you enjoy this kind of roguelite experience or turn based party combat you'll probably get something out of it.

 

[sXeth]

Did a look back in to No Man's Sky after another big update, cause why not.

Spoiler: And found some stuff!

View attachment 991
A goddamn bubble planet with bubble rocks and bubble lifeforms!

View attachment 992
Fragments ?

View attachment 993
With a cute little spinny lifeform that doesn't like being scanned..aww!

Shit i ordered Doom Eternal and Outer Worlds yesterday just cause i had a voucher to use, i literally can't help myself. Where's the seppuku spoon? This life is shame.

Anomaly Planets, they've been around at least since Next though.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

I'm thinking of buying Darkest Dungeon but then how tortuous is the experience, in terms of permadeath and RNG?

Darkest Dungeon is great, and you can tweak pretty much everything about the difficulty to make it play exactly how you want, so if you find a particular element of combat too frustrating there's a pretty good chance you can make some changes in the settings to your liking.

Permadeath is a thing and you will definitely lose characters, but it's really not that much of a big deal. If you feel like you're not going to make it through a dungeon you can always choose to leave (as long as you're not in active combat), so when a character dies it's usually because you got too greedy and didn't pull out when you had the chance, or it's because you misunderstood a mechanic in the boss fight and didn't plan around it properly.

 

[Dalisclock]

Started Spiritfarer. The gameplay loop is essentially just busywork, but it's got enough charm that I can just chill to it then get the feels.

On the bright side there's no penalty for taking your time. Nobody on your boat will starve, they'll just complain until you feed them(granted, some will complain even when you feed them, and some are really fucking picky about what they will and won't eat LOOKING AT YOU BUCK!). I think I've seen food spoil all of once and that was because I left it in the cellar too long(I didn't realize food could be ruined, I've left shit in the oven long after it was done and it was fine).

It does help one appreciate the more emotional bits by having more mundane grind in there, and they helpfully put in ways to farm resources such as the turtles can grow any trees or minerals(other then comet rocks) and ways to make the food grow faster.

Darkest Dungeon is great, and you can tweak pretty much everything about the difficulty to make it play exactly how you want, so if you find a particular element of combat too frustrating there's a pretty good chance you can make some changes in the settings to your liking.

Permadeath is a thing and you will definitely lose characters, but it's really not that much of a big deal. If you feel like you're not going to make it through a dungeon you can always choose to leave (as long as you're not in active combat), so when a character dies it's usually because you got too greedy and didn't pull out when you had the chance, or it's because you misunderstood a mechanic in the boss fight and didn't plan around it properly.

I remember Jim Sterling once saying the best way to make progress was "Turn'em and Burn'em". As in, use your guys until they're nearly useless, get as much treasure and such as you can while doing it, abandon them and grab the next poor sods off the stagecoach to repeat the cycle. Is that really the best method? Or are there less cynical ways to play the game and still make decent progress?

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

I remember Jim Sterling once saying the best way to make progress was "Turn'em and Burn'em". As in, use your guys until they're nearly useless, get as much treasure and such as you can while doing it, abandon them and grab the next poor sods off the stagecoach to repeat the cycle. Is that really the best method? Or are there less cynical ways to play the game and still make decent progress?

Yes and no.

Since you get new characters show up at your town every week that is definitely a strategy you can employ to maximize how much treasure you get and how quickly you build up the town. Having characters to burn can also be a good idea if you're going to face a boss for the first time and don't really know what it does or how you're supposed to beat it. That really only works up to a point though, because if you're constantly burning through characters you won't get them to a decent level to do the later Dungeons.

What I usually do is have 3 squads (12 characters) who are badasses. Each squad has a different synergy so that they can be used in different areas to maximize their success. I go out of my way to keep these squads mentally and physically healthy and keep them coming back. They get the best equipment. Every other character that I get is basically a burn character (these are my red shirts). They're the explorers who get to venture out and college money if I'm low on supplies, they get to scout bosses I've never tried before, and they get to be the testers of new strategies. They also get to fill in if someone from one of the other squads has to spend too much time recuperating or dies and needs to be replaced.

You definitely do want to have some burn characters, but you really don't need very many. Especially toward the end of the game you'll need to really build your characters up to get anywhere.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Yes and no.

Since you get new characters show up at your town every week that is definitely a strategy you can employ to maximize how much treasure you get and how quickly you build up the town. Having characters to burn can also be a good idea if you're going to face a boss for the first time and don't really know what it does or how you're supposed to beat it. That really only works up to a point though, because if you're constantly burning through characters you won't get them to a decent level to do the later Dungeons.

What I usually do is have 3 squads (12 characters) who are badasses. Each squad has a different synergy so that they can be used in different areas to maximize their success. I go out of my way to keep these squads mentally and physically healthy and keep them coming back. They get the best equipment. Every other character that I get is basically a burn character (these are my red shirts). They're the explorers who get to venture out and college money if I'm low on supplies, they get to scout bosses I've never tried before, and they get to be the testers of new strategies. They also get to fill in if someone from one of the other squads has to spend too much time recuperating or dies and needs to be replaced.

You definitely do want to have some burn characters, but you really don't need very many. Especially toward the end of the game you'll need to really build your characters up to get anywhere.

Would you say the game is fair about the bs then? I'm just suspicious of roguelikes in general, but I know DD by fame.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

Started Spiritfarer. The gameplay loop is essentially just busywork, but it's got enough charm that I can just chill to it then get the feels.

Beat Halo 3 ODST on Legendary in one sitting.

Looking to start Disgaea 4 sometime.

I don’t care for Halo much but that’s pretty impressive from what I hear.

 

[meiam]

I remember Jim Sterling once saying the best way to make progress was "Turn'em and Burn'em". As in, use your guys until they're nearly useless, get as much treasure and such as you can while doing it, abandon them and grab the next poor sods off the stagecoach to repeat the cycle. Is that really the best method? Or are there less cynical ways to play the game and still make decent progress?

Unless they fixed it, the best way to play it (but most boring) is to be a giant coward and not finish any mission. You start a mission that you can control when you finish it (ie collect 4 of x), explore 90% of the map and then just run away. You still keep all the loot you've found, but your character don't get any exp. This is really important because when you're character level up they'll eventually refuse to go to low level dungeon and will only start going to high level one. The problem with that is that the loot you get in high level one aren't any better than low level one, so it just make things worst. By just running every time you can keep using the same teams that you decked out with the best gear for their level, which mean you can easily complete low level dungeon and get tons of loot for almost 0 risk. In the process there's a bunch of way to make your characters marginally better that end up adding up, so by the time you got all the loot/money/upgrade you could want you'll have a bunch of really good character to easily go trough the harder dungeon.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

For me, it's fine. Most of the time, when things go horribly wrong it feels like you didn't prepare properly or used the wrong strategy. It does that roguelite thing where, even though you're losing party members, you're also gaining permanent rewards through upgrading the town. Later on, for example, you can get building upgrades which let your new recruits start at higher level.

The only negative I will say about darkest dungeon is that there's a lot of padding, particularly at the end of the game. It doesn't always respect your time, and I've never finished it for this reason. That said, I don't regret buying it at all and if you enjoy this kind of roguelite experience or turn based party combat you'll probably get something out of it.

That’s the main thing preventing me from truly sitting down with it and digging in. Of course, a few other games I’m playing do this too in their own ways, but I can only spread my time around so much. Once I’m done with these open world games (RDR2, Witcher 3, Kingdom Come, possibly the back half of MGS5), I’ll probably give it another go. I think I had four or five dungeons down so it’d be disappointing to abandon it.

 

[happyninja42]

I'm thinking of buying Darkest Dungeon but then how tortuous is the experience, in terms of permadeath and RNG?

It's not too bad really, and this is from someone who isn't a huge fan of super hard games that focus on being punishing. The key thing is that certain champions are better suited to certain regions of the map, as the types of enemies (and thus their strengths/weaknesses) tend to go along zone lines. One zone will be Beast heavy, so things like bleed attacks will be ideal, but things like stun or poison won't be as useful, as they have high resistances, etc etc.

Some teams work well anywhere, or at least don't really suffer. My favorite combo was 2 of the paladin type character up front, and 2 clerics in the back. Lots of holy smiting, excellent healing, AND (what I feel most important) a way to consistently remove STRESS. Stress will kick your ass harder than anything in my opinion. There are lots of enemies that can generate it as an attack, the environment generates it, not equipping the right items to help traverse the traps and dangers generates it. It's just...WAY more methods to gain stress than damage in my opinion, and it's WAY harder to remove. So you will often have a team that breaks, and it's all downhill from there. So I found focusing on sufficient Stress mitigation, via champion abilities to be key to having a good run.

It's a really fun game though, but yeah it will kick your ass if you make a mistake, or don't go in prepared.

 

[Dalisclock]

It's not too bad really, and this is from someone who isn't a huge fan of super hard games that focus on being punishing. The key thing is that certain champions are better suited to certain regions of the map, as the types of enemies (and thus their strengths/weaknesses) tend to go along zone lines. One zone will be Beast heavy, so things like bleed attacks will be ideal, but things like stun or poison won't be as useful, as they have high resistances, etc etc.

Some teams work well anywhere, or at least don't really suffer. My favorite combo was 2 of the paladin type character up front, and 2 clerics in the back. Lots of holy smiting, excellent healing, AND (what I feel most important) a way to consistently remove STRESS. Stress will kick your ass harder than anything in my opinion. There are lots of enemies that can generate it as an attack, the environment generates it, not equipping the right items to help traverse the traps and dangers generates it. It's just...WAY more methods to gain stress than damage in my opinion, and it's WAY harder to remove. So you will often have a team that breaks, and it's all downhill from there. So I found focusing on sufficient Stress mitigation, via champion abilities to be key to having a good run.

It's a really fun game though, but yeah it will kick your ass if you make a mistake, or don't go in prepared.

It does sound like a really interesting game and I've had it in my library for a while but It also sounds like quite a commitment, which is why I haven't played it yet. Also, the super hard reputation it has. But then again, I ended up liking FROM games so maybe thats not as big a deal as I think it would be.

Also, I watched the Darkest Dungeon Gamumentry produced by the escapist this summer and really enjoyed it, so that's another mark in it's favor.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

It does sound like a really interesting game and I've had it in my library for a while but It also sounds like quite a commitment, which is why I haven't played it yet. Also, the super hard reputation it has. But then again, I ended up liking FROM games so maybe thats not as big a deal as I think it would be.

Also, I watched the Darkest Dungeon Gamumentry produced by the escapist this summer and really enjoyed it, so that's another mark in it's favor.

From the few hours I’ve played it’s more or less the same kind of time commitment as a Souls game, but managing your heroes more or less replaces the traveling and exploring aspect. It’s a change of pace and focus more than anything. Also, it has great personality via the narrator to keep it from feeling too grim.

 

[happyninja42]

It does sound like a really interesting game and I've had it in my library for a while but It also sounds like quite a commitment, which is why I haven't played it yet. Also, the super hard reputation it has. But then again, I ended up liking FROM games so maybe thats not as big a deal as I think it would be.

Also, I watched the Darkest Dungeon Gamumentry produced by the escapist this summer and really enjoyed it, so that's another mark in it's favor.

I dunno about a commitment, I mean the fights are pretty self contained, so you can finish a dungeon run, go back to town, and stop for the day if you want. You can also put it on an easier mode (which I do, and it's still pretty difficult), if the amount of difficulty is a problem. I usually play it in spurts, with a specific goal in mind, usually getting a particular hero to their next level, or unlocking the next upgrade in town, which means farming for the upgrade materials. But you can stop it pretty much whenever you want. It's not like Souls where you can only save at a campfire and anything after is lost if you quit. The autosave in the game is pretty generous, though I can't recall offhand if you autosave while in the dungeons themselves? I think if you camp it counts? So in theory you could camp mid-run, and then stop for the day.

It's really not that bad. Seriously I fucking HATE FromSoft games, and I enjoy DD just fine.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Would you say the game is fair about the bs then? I'm just suspicious of roguelikes in general, but I know DD by fame.

Fairish.

I don't think any rogue-likes can actually be completely fair since enemy composition and map layouts are randomized, so you can end up in a really unfavorable situation. Also the game doesn't really explain much so every new enemy that you face has to be figured out on your own and you may not realize what the optimal strategy is until you fight them with a specific character and realize that character has a specific ability that's really useful against that one enemy type.

With proper planning and knowledge the game is mostly fair and if you do end up having a full team-wipe it's usually because you were greedy or stubborn rather than because the game put you into an unwinnable situation.