What are you playing? (2022 Edition)

henke on 31/10/2022 at 18:46

Just played through Day of the Tentacle for the first time in... oh... 25 years? And y'know what? Still funny as hell, and the puzzles are good. Having 3 different characters with shareable inventory is a fun mechanic, one I'd totally forgotten about. I usually always end up using walkthroughs in any adventure games these days, but I didn't need one for this. Although some of the solutions are pretty wacky, they still make sense! Or maybe my memory really is just that good. Anyway, Day of the Tentacle! It's a good one! :thumb:

Renault on 31/10/2022 at 20:37

Anyone playing scary games lately, given the season? I picked up a few in the recent Steam sale. Blair Witch VR is really good. It's not much of a game, as far as things to do, but it's got amazing atmosphere and it's freaking me out with its environments and audio. There's nothing quite like walking around a dark forest with a flashlight in VR. Super creepy. The story has my interest too, not sure how it will all turn out though. Played a little bit of Visage as well, which is seemingly an homage to P.T., exploring an empty house with a bad history. I found it really unsettling, and it had me on edge to an uncomfortable level, and to the point where I'm not in too much of a hurry to get back to it (but I will).

There's also The Mortuary Assistant, which has you initially doing all the detailed dirty work with cadavers and such. I thought I'd be OK with it all, but it's actually pretty disgusting the first time through, and had me cringing a few times. The scares have been subtle so far (a window closing, a voice behind me, etc), but I'm sure worse things are coming. Seems worthwhile to continue on. Last, there's Nightmare of Decay, which is kind of a low res throwback Resident Evil inspired thing, basically a haunted mansion romp so far. It's fairly light and fun, I'd definitely recommend it for 5 bucks.

Edit: Forget to mention that I did another playthrough of SOMA before all of this, one of my favorite horror games of all time. Really wish Frictional would put stuff out quicker, seems like they're on a "one every 5 years routine" these days.

Sulphur on 2/11/2022 at 07:53

I intend to, got a bunch of horror-inflected games to try like Wattam, DEEEER Simulator, and Genital Jousting (can you think of any other game that presents you with the prospect of someone fucking your penis? Yeah, I thought not).

I would be remiss in not mentioning that I finished Exo One about a month and a half ago. It was always something I'd had my eye on, and I can say I'm glad I played it. It's not a great game by the conventional rubrics with which we gauge this sort of thing. For starters, it's a sort of vehicular exploreathingy with a mildly inconvenient gimmick - you control a sphere that's an alien spacecraft with a 'gravity drive' that can increase its weight at will, which means you slam yourself into slopes to build enough momentum to fling yourself off the lip of the valley you're in, and then you can flatten out into a disc that zips through the air until its energy runs out. At this point you repeat the process on the next patch of ground, because picking up momentum increases your energy. That's it, it's an intuitive though very minimalist concept for a game mechanic, but it does attempt some creative things with that mechanic via forcing you to negotiate the environments you're slung into with either a limitation or an additional boost to the mechanics depending on what's going on. It's not extremely fun, because there's no puzzles in the conventional sense, but it's deployed with enough of a light touch most of the time to be engaging, though always just skirting the edge of imminent tedium.

There are also some story bits bookending each level; technically, you're a rebel space mission commander that stole the ship from the space agency (IIRC) to find the crew of a prior Jupiter mission that presumably perished in an accident, and you spend each level navigating towards a glowing waypoint that barrels you to the next area, or chasing what could be their vessel. In practice, this means very little for the game as you could separate the story entirely and it wouldn't make a difference - you never really see the people involved, including yourself. Still, it's a decent idea, and I think presenting it in vague, fractured snippets was a good decision, as it does fuel what you see and do with a slight bit of mystery to go along with the wonder.

To summarise, it's sort of a walking sim (without the walking) smashed into a sedate marble-y madness structure (without the puzzles) slung into an open-world Sonic (without the platforming or combat; gotta go fast... to fly?), with a vague story. Like I mentioned, by conventional standards, this isn't a great game.

So why did I finish it? Because, well, two things: one, the places it makes you visit are wonderful. They're strange, beautiful rolling landscapes with odd bits of architecture or tantalising structures to head towards, none of which is ever explained, so you're free to make sense of them on your own. Often enough I couldn't really piece together a story for why a planet was the way it was, but that didn't matter because I was just having a good time skimming its jagged mountains with lightning singeing a peak off in the distance, or slinging through its golden cloudbanks during an alien sunset; and two, the most inspired mechanical bit of the game is that when you hit an updraft or puncture a cloud layer, you pick up an immediate burst of speed that flings you onwards through the mist and fog to hopefully the next rain-laden swell of cumulonimbus, so you can just keep flying like some sort of forever frisbee. It's an instant dopamine hit every time. There's also a bonus third reason: the story makes sense on an emotional level, as vague as it is, when it dovetails with the build and climax of some particularly beautiful environments towards the end.

Put all of this together with its short run time (a few hours - 3 at most), and it just about doesn't outstay its welcome. It's a fairly relaxing game to chill out to, if that rocks your roll, and I had a lovely, meditative time with it. I'd recommend it if you need something engaging but soothing at the same time.

nicked on 6/11/2022 at 13:45

Picked up Cyberpunk 2077 in the sale, in the hopes it's nicely patched up now. So far so good - 10 hours in and just finished the prologue. One crash and an AI T-posing randomly, but otherwise pretty stable so far. As for the game, well it's what I expected - GTA with Witcher DNA.

denkmal on 6/11/2022 at 19:36

Quote Posted by Sulphur

I believe the idea for Genital Jousting was copied from a B-game by Jazzuo (him of the Sexy Hiking game which was the inspiration for Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy). I won't link the game in question here though.

Yakoob on 7/11/2022 at 05:54

I've been playing Death Loop and just got past the whole tutorial part when you learn about infusing. So I set out to get the Blink slab, I sneak thru the whole level to get to Charlie's playground, kill like 40+ enemies in the whole area to get to him, finally get the slab, then go all the way back thru the whole level to the entrance but - oh wait its locked? And now I need to hack a satellite on the _other_ end of the map? Errr ok, I try to get to it but someone spots me and now the whole map is chasing me, I get killed for first time. I respawn in the middle of an open plaza with like 15 people around me, and almost immediately get killed again, ugh. I respawn manage to escape somehow with barely any health, I get to the satellite and hack it (woohoo) and now I just need to make it back to the other end of the map (again). But then Juliana appears on a roof above me out of nowhere and kills me. I'm dead, I lose all my weapons, AND the Charlie's slab because I didn't manage to get back to tunnels to infuse it, and basically lost 1.5hrs of gameplay.

Yeah I pretty much rage quit at that point. I don't know if this game is for me...

WingedKagouti on 7/11/2022 at 07:38

Been playing Amid Evil the last couple of days and have made it to what looks like the final area (The Void). So far it's the best FPS game released since 2000 IMO.

Jason Moyer on 7/11/2022 at 07:41

Yeah, that's going to happen. Part of what I think makes Deathloop so good is while Colt is gathering leads and gear, the player is learning the levels and mastering them. After a few times through a level at a certain time of day you start anticipating where people are going to be and how to deal with or avoid them. Which is kind of where Julianna comes in, because she makes you drop what you're doing and deal with her.

Anyway, I wouldn't sweat too much about losing gear after an hour or two of play. Gear is super plentiful, and gets better as the loop stress increases, and in those two hours you were learning the level. That's the big difference between Deathloop and a roguelike (like Mooncrash); when you go back to Updaam at noon, things are going to be where you remember them. You don't have to explore the entire level to gather intel or find sidequests or alternate paths again, you can beeline towards your goal and get out of there. I'm generally a "sneak around and explore the entire level" person in games like these, and Deathloop manages to accommodate that playstyle while also pushing me towards trying other things which is awesome.

Edit: And Amid Evil was awesome. Best retro shooter I've played, I think.

henke on 7/11/2022 at 18:14

Finished Signalis. It's a fine survival horror game. Gameplaywise it's fairly by-the-numbers, nothing as innovative as Endoparasitic. But it looks great and the story was quite engaging. Pretty easy on normal difficulty, I had a ton of ammo and health items by the end. The biggest obstacle in the game is your UNREASONABLY TINY 6-slot inventory. You'll want to carry at least a healing item, a weapon, and a secondary item, so that's half your inventory gone right there. Forget about bringing spare ammo, you'll need the space for picking up mission items and ammo/health and bringing it back to the storage box. This all just results in a loooooooot of running back and forth to the storage box. Thankfully the enemies are quite easy to dodge, but I really feel like this could've been balanced better. Anyway, despite that, I enjoyed this 12-hour nightmare-trip. Good game!

Quote Posted by Sulphur

I would be remiss in not mentioning that I finished Exo One about a month and a half ago.

Sounds like you got more out of it than I did. It was certainly beautiful, and the movement was fun, for a while. I could've used more challenge and varity in the levels. Story didn't really do anything for me.

Tomi on 7/11/2022 at 18:27

Still busy with Witcher 3, and I suppose that it'll keep me busy for quite a while.

I'm really starting to like the game, but I doubt that that would be the case if I hadn't done two little things:

1) I started playing the game with the normal difficulty (or whatever it's called, Story & Sword or something) but decided to change to the hardest difficulty a while ago. It really doesn't even seem that hard (at least not yet), and the game is so much better now. Before this all the crafting and alchemy and potions were just a big waste of time, because I was able to beat pretty much everything and everyone by bashing random buttons on my controller. Now I have to make at least a little effort before a bigger fight, and I like that, even if I still don't usually really need to do anything special.

2) I found this setting called "Enemy upscaling" buried in the options menu and turned it on. Why the hell isn't this enabled by default? Beating level 5 bandits when I'm level 20+ was getting so tedious, now even the "normal" enemies are potentially dangerous, especially on the hardest difficulty level.

So yeah, I'm starting to see what all the fuss is about. The world is pretty big and full of little things to explore. I still wish I could at least explore it in first person though, I think it'd be so much more immersive. Then maybe switch to 3rd person cam for the fights? Oh well, wishful thinking. As for exploring, I can't believe I'm saying this, but there's almost too much going on. Just about every time I set on a quest and head for the destination, I find like three buried treasures and four bandit camps on the way, and of course I can't just leave them there. Finding a hidden treasure should be something exciting, but when every single hollow stump in the forest has a pile of coins hidden inside, and every little island in the sea has a treasure chest on it, it's no longer that exciting really. Especially when the loot is usually not that great.

Which brings me to looting and crafting. It all feels a bit pointless, and sort of stupid really. I'm carrying a thousand bottles of alcohol in my inventory, enough crafting materials to build a goddamn castle, and so much food that I could feed all the starving kids of Novigrad for a decade. I wish I didn't bother rummaging through all the crates and barrels (etc) that are scattered all over the world, but I can't resist it - what if I'd miss out on something? There really should be some kind of a thieving/pickpocketing system at least - it's just silly that I can go to someone's house and go through their cupboards and belongings and take whatever I like, and the people will just go on with their ordinary chit-chat.

Anyway, I'm enjoying the story, and some of the sidequests especially are really fun. The "points of interest" scattered all over the map bring a nice change to the questing, even though there are so many of them that they're no longer that interesting. The cities are well designed and actually feel like real cities - it'd be even better if the citizens had a proper day/night cycle. The countryside is also fun to explore but it's a bit less interesting. It never gets dark at night and the nature doesn't feel... natural. But in this case quantity beats quality, I guess.

Right, I'm off to Skellige now. Seeya!