WingedKagouti on 20/4/2023 at 13:03
Quote Posted by nicked
When I played it, I somehow missed the Cyclops parts and didn't figure out how to make one at all until long after I had discovered the prawn suit and reached the deepest parts of the game. By that point I just never really found a use for the Cyclops.
If you manage to properly pilot it, the Cyclops is useful for ferrying around the Prawn, as well as functioning as a mobile base since it not only has several storage compartments built in, but you can install additional storage as well as a Fabricator and Modification Station. And if you find the Thermal Reactor module for the Cyclops, you can even use it to recharge your Prawn (if you don't have the Prawn version of that module) when you go down near the end zone. There's also a repair module for the Cyclops which makes it automatically repair any docked vehicle.
There are places where you certainly can get out using just the Prawn with a grapple arm, but the Cyclops makes it so much easier. Still, you technically don't
require either of them, if you really wanted to you could just build a lot of bases within swimming (+Seaglide) distance of each other.
In related news, I just started a run of Below Zero yesterday using the ingame customizer, tuning the day/night cycle and other small things. The changes to crafting recipes compared to base Subnautica is noticable, as is the resource availability. There are also so many Oxygen Plants that you can spend 10+ minutes underwater with just a basic O2 tank at the start of the game. Leaving the water is much less about getting air and more about "my inventory is full and I need to craft stuff".
Thirith on 23/4/2023 at 14:47
After finishing my replay of Hyper Light Drifter a few days ago, I got started on Citizen Sleeper, which I just finished (well, one of the endings). It's interesting, but it didn't altogether work for me. The game mechanics do a good job of representing especially the game's themes, but at the same time they distanced me from the story and characters to such an extent that I ended up not really engaging all that much. Obviously you get dice rolls in many RPGs or RPG-adjacent games, including Disco Elysium (which I absolutely adore), but here they felt less like a metaphor or a tool for storytelling. They made some numbers go up and others go down - again, in keeping with the theme, but I ended up seeing mainly the numbers going up and down, and all the narration felt like flavour text rather than something more essential to the story the game tells.
I can imagine Citizen Sleeper working much, much better for others, but after reading especially stuff about the game written by those who loved it, I can't help but feel somewhat disappointed. However, I ended up feeling similar about this as I did about Sunless Sea, so anyone who enjoyed that one and likes sci-fi (especially when it's critical of capitalism) might want to check out Citizen Sleeper.
Malf on 24/4/2023 at 09:46
I'm still lightning-zapping my way through Tyranny, and having a whale of a time.
I know I shouldn't be surprised because it's Obsidian, but the quality of the writing is so good, and it's refreshing to be playing something morally ambiguous after a few years of a few too many "goodies vs. baddies" scenarios.
It also does "power fantasy" incredibly well, and at the stage of the game I'm at at the moment, despite not min-maxing, I really do feel like a force to be reckoned with, which, thanks to the writing, enhances the complexity of the story.
I don't think I want a sequel, but I'd love more RPGs in the engine written by the same team.
If it falls down at all, it's in the fact that there's little to no simulation going on, and that every map feels like a set-piece,. But that's also part of the game's strength. While I'm not finding it short, it's definitely lean, with no fat on its bones and just enough to get me invested in the story.
Thirith on 25/4/2023 at 11:29
Thanks to the 'lesser known games' thread (I think that's where we discussed this) I started playing Legend of Grimrock again. At the time I enjoyed it but stopped playing on the fifth level of the dungeon for some reason. I think something must've happened at the time that meant I didn't play it for a long time, but I can't remember what it would've been.
Gotta say I'm quite enjoying the dungeon crawling, and I don't mind that it's less complex than Dungeon Master, which I briefly played way back but never got very far in. While I would've called RPGs my favourite genre at the time, I got started with Bard's Tale 3 and then quickly got hooked on the Ultima games, starting with Ultima V. Mind you, one of these days I will want to play Eye of the Beholder, which always sounded intriguing.
Malf on 25/4/2023 at 11:52
Quote Posted by Thirith
...and I don't mind that it's less complex than
Dungeon Master, which I briefly played way back but never got very far in.
You're dead to me :mad:
WingedKagouti on 25/4/2023 at 14:23
Quote Posted by Thirith
Mind you, one of these days I will want to play
Eye of the Beholder, which always sounded intriguing.
In case you don't have them yet, the GOG versions run well: (
https://www.gog.com/en/game/forgotten_realms_the_archives_collection_one)
As far as what I've been up to, I finished my recent
Subnautica: Below Zero playthrough and it's a mixed bag compared to Subnautica to me. Having a voiced protagonist as well as someone else to talk to helps the story a lot. The underwater environments of Sector Zero are a nice change compared to the Crater, but the surface is vastly less interesting. In large part because it feels like three (you could argue for 5) very samey areas stretched across half the map, whereas the Aurora, floating island and enforcement platform are quite different to each other and relatively small compared to everything below the surface. And beyond mucking with the sattelite, the stuff you do on the surface in BZ could just as easily have happened underwater.
Then there are the creatures. The Reaper Leviathan still scares me, as does the Crabsnake, and the Sea Dragon Leviathan is always dangerous. But the Chelicerate is just the "Oh, stop chewing on my truck and go away you fucking annoying twat"-creature to me, despite being seemingly set up to be the Reaper equivalent, and during my last playthrough the Shadow Leviathan turned into "You're in the area, so I'm going to chase you down and zap you with a fully charged Perimeter Defense blast so you go further away". And after thinking about it, it all comes down to the overall sound design of
the other creatures you encounter in each game. In Subnautica you can hear a Reaper from a very long distance and it will still be louder than any non-Leviathan. Since the Brute Shark and Cryptosuchus are a bit louder than the Chelicerate, make noise far more frequently than the leviathan and is found close to the same locations, they effectively drown out the impact of the Chelicerate.
As far as the vehicles go the PRAWN is still the PRAWN. The Sea Truck being a mix between the Sea Moth and Cyclops is both good and bad. The good parts are not needing to swap between vehicles as much, the truck being less cumbersome to steer and the ability to take it down to the deepest parts, the bad part is feeling like the PRAWN is the end goal in BZ when it was merely the midway point in the original. And the Snowfox is terrible, despite being a dedicated land vehicle it's not really as useful as the PRAWN on land. And since the Snowfox can't do anything underwater, it comes of as if they filled (not quite) half the map with surface zones just to show it off and then it fails to be a good option there.
Many improvements to base building originally added in Below Zero were added back into the original, except the Control Room which was a great addition. Other than that, they reshuffled the order which you get access to a lot of the tools and base elements, as well as shifting costs for several items. The cost changes mostly reflect the different plants you have in the two games, but some things also got a bit cheaper in BZ which reduces the tedium of hunting for (some) resources.
As a whole, I like the original more than Below Zero, the oppressive atmosphere (including the feeling of dread/terror) and sense of progression as you dive deeper and deeper is better. But I would also not hesitate to recommend BZ to someone looking for more Subnautica, especially to someone wanting a more story based approach.
Renault on 25/4/2023 at 14:46
I tried out Playstation Plus for a month, at the middle tier ($15/hr) - it's a pretty good value, and their library of games is excellent, almost comparable to Gamepass. My main issue is a lot of the premiere games they offer, I already own, (like Returnal, Demon's Souls, Deathloop, Outer Wilds, Death Stranding, etc.). I was able to finish three very good games during the month, namely Tchia, Deliver Us The Moon, and Stray, which made it all worthwhile. Stray in particular stood out, I was expecting to not like it and figured it was an overly cutesy game for cat people, but it turned out to be a very unique experience, and now I'm hoping they make a sequel.
There are quite a few other games I wanted to get to (Horizon Forbidden West, Ghosts of Tsushima, The Medium, & Bloodborne come to mind), but I'm cancelling for now because I've got so many other things to play atm.
So...back to my Subnautica obsession I guess...
WingedKagouti on 25/4/2023 at 21:11
I don't have a VR headset, so I haven't tried that mod.
