Malf on 6/3/2023 at 13:57
KB&M, but remember, I'm also playing through Linux, so my experience isn't going to be 100% comparable to that of someone playing on Windows.
Linux has its own issues dealing with multiple monitors at differing refresh rates, and I also realised that my taskbar set-up was also interfering with Returnal.
I run my secondary monitor to the right of my primary one. It's a 60Hz monitor, while my primary's a 144Hz one.
My "task bar" equivalent ran vertically down the right side of my secondary monitor, so I could easily see time, date, the usual task bar goodness.
But even though Returnal is set to run in exclusive full screen, I was finding that when panning to the left, the mouse position was triggering application peak previews and labels, which in turn were affecting frame drops.
I've since moved the task bar to the left side, which is less convenient, but FPS dips seem less frequent.
I still get the occasional room where FPS tanks, but going to another room and back is usually enough to sort this out. I suspect from what I've read that the new Unreal engine isn't the best at caching, and Returnal suffers as a result.
Of course, you're running one of those nifty ultrawides with a more up-to-date GFX card than me, and on Windows to boot.
But just be aware that the benchmark isn't representative of actual gameplay at all. The game told me that I could run it at highest settings (sans RT; DX12 RT don't work on Linux) and get 40FPS, but that was exposed as being ridiculously over-ambitious as soon as I started playing.
Anarchic Fox on 6/3/2023 at 19:31
My obsession with
Rain World continues unabated. The (
https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=147939) thread has a full review. I timed my first playthrough to coincide with its DLC's release, which may have been a bad idea.
Each DLC character interacts with the world at a different point in the timeline, so while the world will largely be the same, certain portions of it will vary widely. Each character also gets a huge, bespoke new area. In the base game you witness a late stage of a very long tragedy, and in the DLC you witness other parts of the tragedy. The ending for the Rivulet character, in particular, had me on the edge of tears.
nicked on 7/3/2023 at 18:59
Continuing my Gamepass investigation led me to Prodeus, so as a retro shooter fan, I grabbed that straight away. And it's... fine, I guess. Some great level design and tight combat let down by bland yet excessively noisy visual design, and a handful of odd design choices.
Enemies viscerally explode into showers of goo when shot. I'm sure the intention was to make the gunplay feel really juicy, and it does, but it also means that most of the time your screen is completely obscured by splattering particle effects to the point where it significantly negatively impacts readability, and you can't always tell if you've killed something until the wall of blood three times bigger than the enemy dissipates.
The early game feels so derivative of Doom that it takes some time to bring anything new to the table. There's direct equivalents of all your classic Doom enemies, just with a samey art style that reduces their impact. These levels look nice but are nothing we haven't seen before - barren wasteland and sci-fi industrial prefabs as far as the eye can see. Later you get to another dimension which looks like the generically edgy metal and red lights of a mid 2000s graphics card box.
The combat is fast, frantic and responsive, and the level design is top notch, with classic-style coloured key loops and linked combat arenas but without ever feeling too mazy, and without being overly repetitive either, which is impressive given the very generic visual style.
The biggest flaw in my opinion is the save system. It uses checkpoints instead of quick save, but rather than these being points you can reload from if you die, they're points you can respawn from if you die - with all your kills and progress intact. This single-handedly renders the whole game challenge-free and undercuts all tension. If you die in a difficult fight, you just respawn and keep going. It's the exact same problem Prey 2006 had, just without the annoying shoot-birds-in-the-spirit-realm minigame.
It also has a baffling story - no prior backstory or any context at all is given for the unfolding events, yet there seems to be quite a complex narrative going on, with two different warring factions of monsters and dimensional portals and all sorts. Maybe they wanted to do the Dark Souls obscure lore thing, but it just comes across as half-finished.
So on the whole, decent enough to pass the time, but not jumping into my retro shooter replay bucket any time soon.
Sulphur on 8/3/2023 at 07:49
I played the first level last night, coincidentally. While that's not enough to have a complete opinion of the game, my experience of the gameplay lines up with everything you said. It's a pretty decent oldschool FPS, and while the gore is gratifying, being able to know whether something's being lobbed at you while you're in the middle of exploding raspberry jam showers gets interesting fast. The gunplay feels juicy all right, and getting to dual wield in the first five minutes is an excellent design choice. In terms of level design, the first map was... okay? It's the standard old abstract FPS toolset of rectangular corridors and platforms and open areas, lava or radioactive goo, doors, and some sort of lab facility setup. I can't say I was impressed, but maybe the design gets better further on.
I will note that while it's a very competent shooter, it's missing something, a certain je ne sais quoi. For comparison, I booted up Dark Forces (on the new reverse-engineered Force Engine), and while the components are similar, DF just feels more compelling. There's a very clear purpose to the way the levels are designed, which integrates with your objectives in the levels that fuels the running and blasting towards something, and Prodeus has none of that, at least at the outset. For all the focus on feel and tuned combat, there's no character to it. It just feels anonymous and oddly empty despite however many enemies are exploding onscreen.
---
Meanwhile, I finished Hi-Fi Rush, which was great. I love rhythm games that don't punish you too harshly, and Hi-Fi Rush just wants you to have a good time (until you get to a boss fight or face-off section that needs you to get 100% of your inputs correct to proceed, anyway). All of the game's levels move to the rhythm of the current track, there's an onscreen indicator you can pull up for beat assistance, there's combos up the wazoo, and all of it feels super intuitive and correct, even the heavy attacks that have a slightly different timing/pacing, and all of this is with the help of a robotic cat named 808 (a la the famous kickdrum; the game's loading screen has her tail shaped into a heart, and her butt farting out musical notes, which is adorably stupid). The music's pretty good, but the game does use its trump card of popular music acts mostly in the beginning and the end (which are great choices, from The Black Keys to The Joy Formidable), with the rest being soundtracked by punchy if somewhat anonymous rock and electronica. There's a decent helping of mechanics added over the first third to the halfway point, so you're not overwhelmed with options right off the bat. The overall pacing does sag in the middle, unfortunately, from extended trips through offices and whatnot, but it picks up again towards the end.
While the story itself isn't much to write home about, the characters are fun (except for the main character, who's basically Callum from The Dragon Prince with the annoying stupidity turned up to 11), and it's winsome at least 65% of the time; the rest of the time, when it comes to the side characters and the collectable logs, it's mostly comments on corporate culture, which can be chuckle-inducing at best and mildly inoffensive/annoying at worst. There's a very standard rock album story of taking down a corporate conspiracy, and while it's not very fleshed out, the structure does give you quite a few showdowns where there's the simple, primal satisfaction of taking down corporate goons and bosses (yeah, literal boss fights, very cute, etc.) by bashing the crap out of them with your scrap metal guitar. The overall narrative does hit enough of the basic character notes that you end up caring a little about what happens (Peppermint and 808 are always easy to root for; Chai, the protagonist, not so much), so in the end while the narrative isn't too compelling and the game feels more like a light jaunt than an epic journey, it still leaves you with a warm and fuzzy feeling of having experienced something satisfying and entertaining.
All of this is predicated, though, on whether you can stand the fact that the entire game is basically an 00s animated cartoon, from the aesthetic to the throw-awayness of its Saturday morning vibe. I loved it because of that, not despite it; so if you're not a fan of that sort of thing, it may be a difficult one to like.
Malf on 8/3/2023 at 08:52
Quote Posted by Sulphur
...and all of this is with the help of a robotic cat named 808
(a la the famous kickdrum):tsktsk:
The 808 was/is a drum machine.
Stand in the corner facing the wall, Sulphur. Your homework will now be an analysis of phat beats from the late Eighties / early Nineties, overdubbed by nauseatingly enthusiastic MCs.
Dropping a pill for added gurn is optional.
nicked on 8/3/2023 at 08:59
Quote Posted by Sulphur
I will note that while it's a very competent shooter, it's missing something, a certain je ne sais quoi.
Yeah I can't quite put my finger on it - it's like everything in the game is slightly over-designed to the point that nothing is especially memorable.
The other problem with combat readability is the use of colour - enemies, projectiles and blood are all the same colour, meaning it's always hard to distinguish what you're looking at.
Hi-Fi Rush is also on my list to try, glad it's not punishing; I have the rhythm of a brick.
Sulphur on 8/3/2023 at 09:04
Quote Posted by Malf
:tsktsk:
The 808 was/is a drum machine.
Stand in the corner facing the wall, Sulphur. Your homework will now be an analysis of phat beats from the late Eighties / early Nineties, overdubbed by nauseatingly enthusiastic MCs.
Dropping a pill for added gurn is optional.
Ha! Consider me schooled! I'm gonna do a 'but actually...' here in that all most people really remember about the TR-808 is, in fact, the kick, but sure, I will listen to Run DMC and others from my childhood that make me gurn involuntarily on loop as penance, pills unnecessary.
Quote Posted by nicked
Yeah I can't quite put my finger on it - it's like everything in the game is slightly over-designed to the point that nothing is especially memorable.
The other problem with combat readability is the use of colour - enemies, projectiles and blood are all the same colour, meaning it's always hard to distinguish what you're looking at.
Overdesigned sounds exactly right.
Quote:
Hi-Fi Rush is also on my list to try, glad it's not punishing; I have the rhythm of a brick.
Same. You get graded at the end of each encounter, but Chai will still hit things regardless of whether you're on-beat or not for an attack. Getting the rhythm right hits harder and keeps combos going, so it's always good to aim for, but the game won't usually punish you for being a bit sloppy. Except for those aforementioned bits where you have to enter the correct inputs, though they're usually (with one large exception) mercifully brief.
PigLick on 8/3/2023 at 12:57
It's not all people remember of the 808, but the kick was certainly its most iconic sound.
demagogue on 8/3/2023 at 15:32
Somebody was talking about Vampire Survivors a page or few pages back. I think it's safe to say it's as addicting as advertised. To me it has the oldschool Diablo 2 vibes of monster hordes, but with no mouse clickfest...
I thought the lack of click response meant it was bugged for the first few seconds or just for that one weapon, but it turns out the clicks never mattered. You were always going to rate-max them no matter what. And in getting rid of them, they didn't only save your carpels, it gamifies how you have to move in strategic ways according to the timing of your weapon bursts, which is satisfying.
So the hook is it's a rougelike for this genre, and you upgrade weapons that add with each other to push you into a play style. The levels seem to go on forever. I feel like there should be a boss at some point to "beat" the level. There might be and I haven't seen it yet, but I got to like level 98 and didn't see one.
There does come a point when you're like past level 50 when you're so buffed the game falls apart, because you can't be hurt no matter what you do. Then the only thing is to try a new level and repeat the cycle. So I don't think this ride can last as long as, e.g., Shattered Pixel or FTL, where I'll be damned if I don't keep pushing to beat the final boss. But until I've milked it past the point of no return, in the meantime it's got a pretty perfect gameplay loop for what it is.
Malf on 8/3/2023 at 16:37
Ah, sweet, sweet dema.
Vampire Survivors is deceptively deep.
Put it this way... there's a soft cap of 30 minutes to any run. But then there are ways to push past that soft cap as you unlock more stuff.
The latest thing I realised: those weapons littered around the map? They can be picked up AFTER you've maxed out all of your normal slots, so each level really has an optimal build, as the littered weapons will dictate your upgrades if you want to maximise your power.
