Aja on 26/10/2022 at 21:14
Henke I sent you a friend request ages ago but you never answered it! Don't you want to enter into a Strand Contract with me?? (one of the NPCs told me that's what I should do)
(username is dimedancing in case you didn't know who it was)
demagogue on 27/10/2022 at 02:19
Ah yes, the Death Stranding Director's Cut, because the original just wasn't quite pretentious and self-indulgent enough, Kojima had to double-down on it. :joke:
Pyrian on 27/10/2022 at 03:26
Wasn't he "final call" all along anyway? It's not like the original release was some kind of producer's cut.
Aja on 27/10/2022 at 04:46
One odd thing is that the Monster energy drink references have all been removed. And somehow it actually feels more out of place that the protagonist is always drinking energy drink instead of water when there's no product placement deal. Also there are some Half Life themed quests because apparently Sam is a fan of the game.
catbarf on 27/10/2022 at 14:28
I've been playing through the Mechwarrior 4 trio, having not touched them for over a decade. At the moment, I'm near the end of Black Knight, the expansion pack to the original MW4:Vengeance. And it's... weird.
Vengeance is a classic Battletech story through-and-through, with the player as the son of the planetary duke killed in a sudden coup, tasked with taking back the planet and throne. Black Knight goes in a direction that would be expanded by the subsequent MW4:Mercenaries, with the player as a mercenary taking jobs for money and with no greater call to action. The voiced protagonist is consequently more pragmatic and cynical than the bright-eyed duke's son of Vengeance. But the most surprising element is that the antagonist of Black Knight is actually the player character from Vengeance, revealed to be a power-hungry despot after taking back the throne.
So I've just gone from a campaign where I played as the heart-of-gold rightful heir alongside a small cast of NPC friends, to a cutthroat and downright amoral mercenary killing off those same NPCs (now lieutenants in the Duke's regime). On top of that, the dialogue has a more military feel to it, and the radio calls are terse and sprinkled with appropriate jargon. It sells the idea of the Black Knight Legion as professionals, but it also feels like the product of a different writer. These elements combine to make the expansion pack seem almost like a deliberate and mean-spirited counterpoint to the first game, critiquing Vengeance's straight-faced restore-the-monarchy theme. I've played a lot of sequels that retconned or ignored previous games to do their own thing, but this is weird. I'd love to know more about how it came to be.
Whatever it is, it's tonally bleak, and also probably the most difficult mech game I've played. I'm looking forward to Mercenaries, which I remember being the best of the three.
henke on 29/10/2022 at 17:46
The first thing that happens in
Endoparasitic is that monsters rip both your legs and your left arm off. You then spend the rest of the game dragging yourself around, and fighting monsters off, using just your right arm. You'll have to do
everything with just one arm, reloading guns is a real sonufabitch. This has to be one of the most unique survival horror games I've ever played, and I'm digging it a lot. Currently 2 hours in, which might be the midpoint since it's apparently quite short. Cheap too! Just came out last Monday, and (
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2124780/Endoparasitic/) still on sale for 2 more days. It's a good one!
Tomi on 29/10/2022 at 23:02
That might be good but daaaaamn it also looks so creepy and disgusting. :D
Sulphur on 30/10/2022 at 03:27
I remember seeing the dev for that release a youtube video with the prototype, and people were all telling him to make it a full game. Gotta say there's no way someone without a pelvis or three limbs wouldn't just die from blood loss and organ failure, but that's just insufferable pedantry, innit. How's the bones of the game beyond the gimmick, henke?
henke on 30/10/2022 at 07:42
It's good! It keeps introducing new enemies and challenges at a steady pace and never gets dull. There is some in-game explanation for how this guy didn't just bleed out right away: he's also got the parasite that turned everyone else in the lab into monsters, which gives him superhuman strength, but is also constantly trying to kill him. You need to keep pumping yourself with vaccine shots since each shot only grants you 3 minutes of reprieve from death.
edit: finished it. ~3.5h length. Some quite frustrating sections towards the end, buuut overall, yeah, my verdict of "it's good" remains! Engaging story and surprisingly good voice acting as well.
Sulphur on 30/10/2022 at 15:09
Sounds pretty good to me! I like the creativity of the health bar being a gauge of how far the parasite's taken over, that's something I was hoping Scorn would be creative with. Now hopefully I'll get to it sometime.
