WingedKagouti on 10/4/2023 at 09:48
Quote Posted by Brethren
I think the breathing mechanic in Subnautica gets in the way too, because you could be adventuring around and suddenly you're forced to leave what you were doing and go to the surface, which is a boring place. Then you're sort of just starting all over again. I want to like the game, I completely do, but it just hasn't clicked with me so far.
The game expects you to find the fragments to make a Seamoth, after you do that the exploration side of things really opens up since you can just re-enter the seamoth to fully refill your air supply. And to get to those fragments you'll want an improved oxygen tank. The game doesn't really tell you this, nor where to search for scannable fragments, which is an easy to understand source of frustration.
henke on 10/4/2023 at 10:14
I actually managed to build the Seamoth in a little over an hour this time, but the sheer scope of everything up ahead puts me off. Building bases, farming stuff, so many resouces to gather. Eh. Subnautica and The Long Dark are my fave survival games and I think the custom made worlds (rather than proc gen) do much to make them more interesting the first time through, but it definitely hurts replayability too.
One last word on Metroid Prime: while I was luke-warm on it, I did find it kinda inspirational! Remember that Tyre game prototype I made ages ago? Where you play as a tyre? Back then I started turning that into a game where you're a robot on a tyre, but Prime's morph ball makes me think it should be a platformer where you transform between a tyre and a (more easily controllable) robot with legs. Having to switch between a high-speed but hard to control tyre, and slower but more easily controllable robot would make for some fun gameplay. I've got 1 commecial game and 3-4 other prototypes I'm working on at the moment but I wanna get back to this at some point.
Malf on 10/4/2023 at 22:49
Having recently upgraded my graphics card (I went from a 2080 Super 8GB to a Radeon RX 7900XTX 24GB), I've been playing the big threemakes, Resident Evil 4, Dead Space and The Last of Us.
RE4 and Dead Space are superb, featuring excellent combat and massively impressive visuals. With both games, I immediately started another run after completing them.
The RE4 remake adds a little more survival horror to the mix and is no longer an exercise in round-housing everything, then slashing wildly while they're on the floor.
Knives have been given durability, so choosing to use them has more weight and consequence behind the choice, and Leon's roundhouse, while still powerful, is a bit harder to set up and doesn't take down as many enemies, making encounters a lot more tense than they were in the original.
Resource management is also massively important, and because things are a bit tighter, it encourages you to vary your weapon use a lot more, as well as making you seriously consider using the bolt thrower (crossbow), which is a new addition.
While they generally don't do as much damage as bullets, bolts can be recovered after taking an enemy down, and are more likely to stagger enemies than regular bullets.
The new animal-headed enemies are an excellent new addition too; they are choreographed to appear just at the right moment and fuck your shit up. Generally, you'll be saving your shotgun ammo for these bad boys.
As far as I'm concerned, this is the new, best way to play RE4 :thumb:
Dead Space meanwhile is similarly brilliant, but that's not really a surprise considering it's pretty much "RE4 in Space".
The new zero-g sections in particular are a massive highlight for me, as Isaac now has full control instead of just launching from surface to surface. I love zero-g in games, and wish there were more games that explored it.
At first, I didn't know what to make of the fact that Isaac is now fully-voiced, as I'd gotten used to the silent protagonist, but the voice actor does a fantastic job, and they've even recorded different delivery of lines based on how much health Isaac has. Stunning work.
Much like RE4 Remake, a lot of work has obviously gone into encouraging the player to switch between weapons, although it does still have that loot system whereby ammo for a particular gun only drops if said gun is in your inventory, so you can metagame the system.
Still, that would be a shame to do, as the guns and their alternate fires are all really interesting and fun to use.
If there was one criticism I'd level at the game, it's that enemy variety is a little low.
The Last of Us however is a complete shitshow thanks to bugs and poor performance. I've actually had to stop playing it recently, as the last patch completely broke the game, and now it won't launch, instead saying "Unknown String!!!"
Still, I got it free with the card, and what little of it I have played reminded me that gameplay was never really the game's strong suit (especially when directly compared with RE4 / Dead Space.)
When it is running, it does look good, but better than RE4 / Dead Space?
Nah mate.
Definitely not enough to justify the framedrops I'm seeing.
Yes, I'm playing on Linux through Proton, but Windows users are seeing the same issues.
Oh, and the card has also meant that I can turn everything up in Returnal, so I've been playing that again too.
I'm also playing Sifu, but that hasn't as obviously benefited from the new card, thanks to its stylised graphics.
Renault on 12/4/2023 at 14:05
I guess now I'm playing Subnautica! The tipping point was getting the 1st improved oxygen tank, and from there I just focused everything on getting the 2nd level one too, and now I can stay underwater for over 2 minutes (as opposed to 45 seconds). Makes all the difference in the world when trying to explore or collect resources. I've been pretty much just ignoring the main story and just focusing on crafting cool stuff and building bases. Such a gorgeous game world, and I'm playing in VR, which is just incredible to experience. In fact probably close to the best VR experience I've had overall, period. There's a VR thing that people have complained about, where you can only move in the direction you're physically looking at, but this feels fairly realistic to me. When I'm almost out of air, and heading for the surface, I'm literally staring up at the ceiling in my room, just hoping I make it in time.
WingedKagouti on 12/4/2023 at 15:09
Quote Posted by Brethren
I guess now I'm playing Subnautica! The tipping point was getting the 1st improved oxygen tank, and from there I just focused everything on getting the 2nd level one too, and now I can stay underwater for over 2 minutes (as opposed to 45 seconds).
Something else the game doesn't tell you is that you can carry a full oxygen tank in your inventory and then swap it for a used one to replenish your oxygen. You do need to refill both in a (powered) base, a vehicle or on the surface.
nicked on 12/4/2023 at 20:32
Finished Terra Nil. It's not that long really, which is a shame. The whole game feels just a bit shorter and more simplistic than I would like. It's left me craving some kind of SimEarth simulation-style thing with emergent ecosystems. Fun and relaxing while it lasted, just not very long and not very deep.
Harvester on 15/4/2023 at 18:13
Upgraded my aging rig with a GTX 1060 (enough for the video card to not be the bottleneck of my system anymore) and my RAM from 8 to 16GB. Titanfall 2, renowned for its short but sweet single player campaign, was 75% off so I played that first. That was a lot of fun! The game recommended Regular difficulty based on my performance during the tutorial, but for most of the game that was on the easy side, except for some boss fights. I didn't mind though, it felt good to play such a powerful bad-ass character, both on and off the Titan. I was always swimming in ammo and felt free to really try out all the weapons (most of which pack a satisfying punch) instead of limiting myself to a couple of favorite weapons like I tend to do when ammo is kept scarce. The wall-running was a neat mechanic and I especially enjoyed the chapter where you had to switch between two time periods. The most difficult battle was the one against Viper on top of the plane, but that turned out to be more of a matter of choosing the right loadout for the Titan. At 75% off for less than $5, I got more than my money's worth, and this good-looking game never would've run this smooth on my old video card.
I also bought Doom 2016 and Prey, they were on sale on the Humble Store and also would've been too much for the old video card. Looking forward to playing a newer generation of games, although I know my system still isn't powerful enough for stuff like the Dead Space remake or The Last Of Us Part 1 (but I recently played TLoU on the PS4 anyway, and the PC version is still buggy as hell in its current state).
Malf on 15/4/2023 at 22:47
Yeah, the Dead Space remake is a beast if you run it native, but runs well and looks surprisingly good if you utilise scaling tech. While you can't run DLSS on your 1060, somewhat ironically, you can run AMD's Fidelity FX equivalent.
But then, I don't think there's a demo for Dead Space, and I wouldn't recommend buying it on the off-chance you might get it to some playable state.
I've been diving back in to Hitman 3 recently, and it's still a compelling world to exist in. I still think it's best to approach one level at a time however, as gameplay can get a little wearing if you play if for extended sessions.
But when it's good, it's spectacular.
And needing a bit of an RPG fix, but realising that replaying big RPGs no longer really appeals to me, I fired up Tyranny for the first time tonight. And wow, it's grabbed me right out of the gate. Really good stuff, with a decidedly Myth / Black Company feel to it.
I've also recently started breaking from playing my traditional rogue as my main character and have gone for a mage. Although I am playing here with some sneakiness.
Oh, and it runs natively on Linux :D
Even so however, there's part of me that wants more RPGs that allow you to field a full, 6-member team of custom characters. Stuff like Icewind Dale, Wasteland 2 & 3 and NWN2: Storm of Zehir.
To me, those sorts of games hew closer to what an RPG should be, rather than forcing a set of pre-defined characters on the player with pre-defined personalities (yes, I know the Wasteland games feature pre-defined characters too, but they feel less essential to the story there.)
You could argue that DOS2 and the Pathfinder games allow you to field custom teams, but they're heavily influenced by the pre-defined characters and their stories, and you lose out massively if you play without those characters.
henke on 16/4/2023 at 07:22
Remember when I said I wasn't gonna play any more Subnautica? I LIED
WingedKagouti on 16/4/2023 at 09:26
Quote Posted by Malf
And needing a bit of an RPG fix, but realising that replaying big RPGs no longer really appeals to me, I fired up
Tyranny for the first time tonight. And
wow, it's grabbed me right out of the gate. Really good stuff, with a decidedly
Myth / Black Company feel to it.
I've also recently started breaking from playing my traditional rogue as my main character and have gone for a mage. Although I
am playing here with
some sneakiness.
Oh, and it runs natively on Linux :D
Even so however, there's part of me that wants more RPGs that allow you to field a full, 6-member team of
custom characters. Stuff like
Icewind Dale, Wasteland 2 & 3 and
NWN2: Storm of Zehir.
To me, those sorts of games hew closer to what an RPG
should be, rather than forcing a set of pre-defined characters on the player with pre-defined personalities (yes, I know the Wasteland games feature pre-defined characters too, but they feel less
essential to the story there.)
You could argue that
DOS2 and the
Pathfinder games allow you to field custom teams, but they're heavily influenced by the pre-defined characters and their stories, and you lose out massively if you play without those characters.
Tyranny is great and the spellsystem is more interesting to me than the basic spell list stuff you find in most games.
The characters being premade makes them connected to the world, which is important to the story and feel of the game. It also means they pull your character in different directions, since each of them have their own agendas and you need to rely on them if you want to make it through (unless you turn down the difficulty a lot). Barrik and Verse being the most obvious examples of having opposite desires, but working really well together (even moreso if you can get them to stop bickering).
A big part of the game is getting your party to function, which mirrors your given task of getting the conquest on track, bringing order to the Tiers. The game isn't as long as stuff like DOS or the Pathfinder games, but it is a more contained experience where choices do have consequences, your choices in the Prologue shapes the world as a whole and some of your choices in Act 1 alter what you can do in Act 2. But the lenght of the game makes it not as arduous to replay it to see what a different set of choices makes possible (and impossible).
