Harvester on 16/2/2024 at 21:49
Thanks demagogue and Aja. I’m playing my current game, The Last Of Us Part 2, on Light difficulty because Light has aim assist, I can’t aim very well without it with a controller like I can on KB&M. But Outer Wilds doesn’t seem like a game where such fast, precise aiming is required so a controller will probably be fine. For the PC I have a wired Xbox One controller. But I only have an early generation i7 and a 1060, so I doubt I’d hit 60FPS on PC. And I very much like my couch and my 55 inch OLED TV with soundbar and subwoofer. I’ll think about it.
Aja on 17/2/2024 at 04:01
I have a 1060 and I was able to hit 60 consistently. But it's true, the game doesn't require much precise movement. A giant OLED would actually probably be better because of all the blackness in space. I vote for OLED.
Thirith on 19/2/2024 at 08:21
Just wanted to say that I really enjoyed your posts here, Sulphur. They very nicely highlight why Tunic gave me a lot of those old-school feels, even though I wasn't a console kid and don't have any nostalgia specifically for the games that Tunic riffs on.
Malf on 19/2/2024 at 09:48
This got me thinking of Phil Fish and Fez.
I only ever played a little of it, but I seem to remember that it similarly had hidden depths and a whole world behind the one initially presented on screen.
I still think he copped a lot of unfair flak, but the social media campaign against him at the time seems positively quaint in these post-Gamergate/MAGA times.
While this specific sub-genre isn't necessarily my thing, I still enjoy reading people's thoughts on the games!
Harvester on 19/2/2024 at 09:51
Quote Posted by Aja
I have a 1060 and I was able to hit 60 consistently. But it's true, the game doesn't require much precise movement. A giant OLED would actually probably be better because of all the blackness in space. I vote for OLED.
Thanks Aja, I think the black levels of my screen will look good on a space game. I'll get it for the PS4 then and play it from my comfy couch.
Sulphur on 19/2/2024 at 12:22
Thanks, Thirith! That's part of the reason why I didn't focus too much on that area, because the game works perfectly even if you didn't relate to its (laser-targeted) evocation of that feeling for the demographic of players who had knew what it was doing. The childhood nostalgia it evokes is a singular feeling, halfway between trepidation at being lost and joy at pushing through, but it's very much additive to the core experience. I also didn't focus on the story because, well, it's evocative enough when you get to the translation, but also somehow a bit slight despite clearly having a good amount of thought put into it; it's ultimately not going to reveal a new emotional core to what you experienced, but what you experienced was very fine anyway.
Malf: that's exactly it, really. Fez and Tunic are very much in the same school of thought. And while being a person on social media isn't the best experience, I think Phil Fish took it a bit too far when he renounced gamedev entirely. It's a shame that it went down that way.
demagogue on 19/2/2024 at 14:22
I think part of that is GenX & the first half of Millennials grew up on games that were made under increasingly strict memory constraints as you go back in time. The first Legend of Zelda might be a case in point, but especially some of those RPGs like Bard's Tale, Wasteland, and of course Ultima. They packed a lot of lore in a seemingly modest package at first. In the very early days, they'd actually put it in an accompanying manual. Then later they'd put hidden things into the game itself, interactive things, to hint at a much larger working world, and to give the player secrets or things to look for.
I think that fostered the spirit that later went into immersive sims, but also a game like Fez once the indie game scene became a thing, and it looks like Tunic is tapping into that. Well I think I'm saying things that were already said or implied. I'll have to play Tunic to say anything about it specifically.
Anarchic Fox on 27/2/2024 at 23:46
This thread got me to stop waiting and play Tunic. I had been waiting for the right mood to strike, but that mood might no longer be part of my repertoire. Thankfully, the game is as good as Sulphur says, and can establish its own mood.
I'm currently progressing through the "golden path," and I feel the comparison to Fez is greatly in Tunic's favor. In Fez, the lategame puzzles required an order of magnitude more effort than the main game, and while observation played a large role in solving them, intuition helped little. Tunic's lategame puzzles take a more reasonable amount of effort, and reward both observation and intuition, as a puzzle game (which it kinda turns into) should.
Anarchic Fox on 1/3/2024 at 03:23
Another thought: this is definitely an auteur's game, but unlike most such ones (like Fez and The Witness) it respects the player's time. Even my beloved Rain World can't claim that.
Anarchic Fox on 22/3/2024 at 17:22
Okay, so what do you do when you're smart enough to avoid Tunic spoilers, wise enough to realize what's going down with the basic ending, and not clever enough to figure out the "golden" ending?
...If you're me, you order the game on Switch to start from scratch. Apparently it comes with a physical manual! :D