PigLick on 25/11/2025 at 06:50

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Stop lurking and post more Ducky boy!

Aja on 25/11/2025 at 19:37

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I've spent a full one of the last 10 days playing Arc Raiders. I can't stop. I bought a headset to properly talk to other players and get positional audio cues. I'm at work right now thinking about Arc Raiders. It's so good. I've had more adventures and emergent gameplay in the last week than I have in the last decade playing imm sims. Maybe it's because I've avoided multiplayer games for so long that I'm a bit naive about what they've become and what they can be. But Arc Raiders feels different than most multiplayer games I've played.

For one, the player base has been overwhelmingly friendly. Playing solo I can't count the number of times a stranger has offered to adventure together or split the loot or give me a rare item or just offer advice. I haven't even killed a single person yet, partly because my gamer reflexes are slow but also because I haven't had many hostile encounters. Granted, the few that I have had, I've lost, but I seem to be doing okay by mostly playing stealthily, trying to be aware of my surroundings, and offering the olive branch first, either by calling out my intentions on the voice chat or helping someone in trouble. It feels terrible when someone betrays your trust or kills you on sight, but some of that is necessary to keep the tension up. I still can't bring myself to shoot first although I admit whenever I can see someone who can't see me, it's thrilling. In fact, it's bringing back a lot of the old Thief feelings, partly because the sound design is phenomenal and partly because of the slow pace. Hiding in bushes, crawling through corridors, avoiding loud surfaces, seeking out dark corners: it's the best stealth experience I've had in recent years.

Levels are sprawling and open (and pretty, too) but with distinct sections that are interesting to explore. Guns feel and sound great, and the enemies are satisfyingly reactive to getting hit, especially the little drones who can't fly right after you blast off their thrusters. I love how the proximity voice chat makes people sound like they're in the room with you, and whenever I hear muffled voices or looting sounds through the walls I'll have to decide whether to engage or quietly sneak away. The game is also conducive to role playing. A few times I've gone into a night raid with only a flute and played haunting music for strangers from the shadows. Or loaded up on medical gear and offered healing to anyone who needs it.

Anyway, I could go on and on, but suffice it to say that I love this game and I hope it stays fun for another couple dozen hours. Again my username is Sleepmute, and if anyone else is playing, feel free to add, and we can squad up.

Yakoob on 28/11/2025 at 04:51

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Finished two first episodes of HROT and having a blast, but decided to take a break with Clair Obscura: Expedition 33. The premise is intriguing, the production values are top notch, and the story is keeping me wanting to find out what is going on, but..... I'm finding the whole experience really tiring.

For all the nice visuals, the game looks kind of, uuh, muddy? Everything is kind of monotone and foggy, and the fact the Low settings defaulted to me godawful upscaling just makes it worse. At times it feels like watching a 360p youtube movie on Dial-Up, and quick camera changes in cutscenes lead to noticeable graphical glitches. I feel like I need to stop moving and look around, straining to parse out the fine details of each area. It just makes the exploration feel kind of cumbersome.

Then the combat - I really like the whole systems so far, the Parry/Dodge is killing me. I don't know if I'm just really bad but I can't dodge or parry for SHIT. I'm convinced the game is either not registering my input or the window is punishingly narrow. It doesn't help that for majority of attacks, there is no incremental telegraphing - for example, instead of the enemy swinging a big sword so you can anticipate when it will hit and dodge in time, the enemy just pulls the sword back, waits 1-2 second, and INSTANTLY stabs you. Or the enemy will raise it's hands and some VFX will play above it and suddenly - bam - you take damage.

It's less skill and more rote memorization. You need to memorize every enemy and every attack pattern, and just press it at the arbitrary correct moment in the attack. And it really feels like parrying/dodging is non-optional - regular attacks can take 2-3 turn to kill an enemy while a parry kills them instantly. It's such a massive advantage it's almost comical. I don't think I could even beat the first boss without dodging most of its attacks.

Anyway, I'm just 3 hours in so I'll keep going, but for all the artistry there's just a lot more "friction" to the experience than I expected (there's other factors that add to it besides visuals and combat). I'm really considering dropping the difficulty down if I don't develop the muscle memory to "git gud" soon.

EDIT: turned off the scaling and the performance drop is noticeable BUT at least I can see stuff now !

EDIT 2: ok now that perf is a bit lower I noticed sometimes menu presses in combat (like X - skills) won't register first time I press it soooo... that probably confirms the parry/dodge buttons aren't registering sometimes as well, WELP T_T

EDIT 3: ended up dropping the difficulty to "Story". Between the poor attack telegraphing and the dodge/parry not registering my button presses, it's been way too frustrating to play the game as normal.

henke on 28/11/2025 at 12:26

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Yeah the combat in Clair Obscur was a turn-off for me too. Don't really have a problem with the way it looks tho.

Played a good chunk of Don't Nod's latest, Banishers: Ghost of New Eden. Ghost hunting in 1690's New England. I like the world building, characters, and all the ghost-lore. It's like there's this whole paranormal world that even our ghost-hunting protagonists only know parts of. in that respect it feels like a more linear The Witcher. The combat is a Soulslike-knockoff, and not a very good one. Feels bad. Also the the game is running surprisingly choppy on PS5. Think I'm almost halfway through, but don't think I can be bothered going on.

Also played a couple cheap Steam indiegames with strong "obscure DOS games" vibes.

(https://store.steampowered.com/app/3656660/Deep_Space_Exploitation/) Deep Space Exploitation is a 2D space mining game with fun physics gameplay and a surprisingly engrossing story. Had me hooked for its short 4h runtime. Got the bad ending. Not that I'm sure there are any good endings in this future capitalist dystopia. Very Hardspace: Shipbreaker.

(https://store.steampowered.com/app/897800/Arcane_Golf/) Arcane Golf is 2D wizard golf game. It's a lot of fun and only 89 EUROPEAN CENTS right now! Get it.