Sulphur on 13/6/2023 at 17:25
Shadow Fall is as shallow as you expect it to be, so yes, a good way to waste a bit of time when you've got 20 minutes.
I played the Lies of P demo, and lemme tell ya, that loading screen is on the nose. Literally! Anyway, P's the silent, stoic type. Like Timothee Chalamet if you gave him fencing lessons and a prosthetic battle arm and a lack of verbal skills. He also controls very smoothly until you get him to dodge, at which point it's a toss-up as to whether he'll do what you want (this depends on what you're trying to do with the right thumbstick and whether his current animation has finished). He also has a long-ass secondary attack animation you can't cancel out of, which is great, because that's what I really want out of my dex build Italian balsa woodchild, to be locked into poncing back and forth with his rapier like a marionette having a grand mal. Also, if you haven't noticed it from the trailer or screenshots (or any marketing material, really), P's Italy seems to be a dead ringer for Bloodborne right down to the sound design and gothic environments drenched in permanent nightfall.
If I seem down on it, I'm not, actually. Beyond the cringey title and premise, it's silky smooth on my rig, plays decently, and is pitched slightly easier than Bloodborne. The story looks like absolute tosh, and it really is essentially a slavish Soulsborne knock-off, but it's just about okay overall. Can't see why you'd want to play it if you still have Bloodborne on your backlog though, which I do.
Aja on 13/6/2023 at 18:56
I played P for about 20 minutes, and my conclusion is that it is aggressively okay. I know Soulslikes are a thing now, but I've never tried one till this, and I was put off by how blatantly they copied From's formula, like, down to pretty much every detail other than interesting art and level design or combat that's nuanced and satisfying. Same control scheme, same HUD, same shortcut unlocking, same font even. It's an interesting illustration of how a great studio like From really distinguishes themselves in their work, and I maybe don't have all the words for it right now, but it's in the details. Similarities aside, Bloodborne's world design is more striking and inviting of exploration; its characters tragic and fascinating; its sound design probably the most chilling and unnerving of any of their works; and, probably most importantly, its combat a brilliant balance of risk and reward that forces you to paradoxically be more careful and aggressive at once.
Anyway, Bloodborne is a masterpiece which I recommend you play immediately after uninstalling this demo.
Malf on 13/6/2023 at 22:13
Aja, glad you're liking Doom 2016; I too absolutely loved it.
But I bounced hard off of Doom Eternal. They gamified it a little too much for my liking, and the story (what little I played of it) was nowhere near as tongue-in-cheek as 2016's.
But hey, you may love it. One thing it really promotes, even more so than 2016, is constant movement and weapon swapping, so I can appreciate the skill a good player exhibits.
Thirith on 14/6/2023 at 08:56
Having played some more Sable, I find myself oddly reminded of Ultima. Obviously it's a very different game than my favourite Ultima titles, but playing this brings back some memories: exploring a world, sometimes finding people or ruins or goodies, but often just getting more of a sense of what this world is; discovering settlements and talking to people and doing things for them. The game is designed to develop a connection between myself, the place I'm traversing and the people that inhabit it. What's missing is more of a sense that this world is alive: if there was weather, perhaps, or the settlements were a bit more than just a handful of buildings and some static NPCs. But exploring and inhabiting a world for the sake of doing so is wonderful.
(By the way, since my last post about the game I've switched to 30 fps, and my impression is that the game's systems - animations, physics, traversal - were designed to work best like this. I've had fewer of the glitches in climbing or just walking across inclines than I had when playing at 60 fps.)
demagogue on 14/6/2023 at 14:22
Sable has been my favorite game from the last few years. I still drive around the landscape now, even after having finished it long ago, it just to cruise sometimes. The exploring part connected with me too, especially finding scenic scenes (I took a lot of screenshots!), and I get the point that it's not a procedural world but kind of socially static. But one thing that helped make this game pop for me is the climbing gameplay, kind of like the parkour did for Mirror's Edge. I'll just cruise around looking for climbing challenges. I think if you can see it, there's a way to climb it, but for some of them you have to be really creative. Since climbable things are everywhere, that's one way the world became more alive to me.
--
I had my longest ever run on
Cultist Simulator. I've basically cracked the game now, so I know how to survive the long haul and make it to the end game. But after like maybe 12 hours spread out over a week or so, I was right on the cusp of total victory and total defeat. I'm not going to spoil what's going on or anything, but the timer on this thing is the margin by which I lost everything right at that moment. Just look at it!
Inline Image:
https://i.ibb.co/k9M7Lvk/how-much-I-lost-in-CS-by.jpgIf I could have just had this extra 0.1 sec, I would have won everything, but the Very Bad Thing slipped in to end my game just in that nick of time. I was taken a bit back by that, after all I had put into that playthru.
Overall ... if you want to play this game, I personally think the way to do it is watch a spoiler-free tutorial about how to survive the basic mechanics for the long haul, and then you have the freedom to explore the lore and other mechanics. The game was made for you to figure out what's even going on. That's part of the charm and it is really fun when you make a connection. But it's important to get over that first level of understanding just to survive, and I think getting a little guidance is okay for that. It's fun to grope around in the dark for the big mysteries; not so much for the little ones.
I don't know if I can do another run soon, although maybe it'd be a lot more efficient the next time around. I was really close to winning though, and it'd be nice to cross the finish line at some point.
Sulphur on 16/6/2023 at 15:29
Posted this over at Ars, and I'm too lazy to reword it for the TTLG-exclusive experience, soz. (I'm lying, of course - I'm not sorry at all.)
I played a few demos, because they've been sitting around for a bit.
Alone in the Dark Prologue lasted about 0.5 seconds and told me nada about the game itself, except that there's at least one annoying QTE and navigational obstacle. It's set in ye olde AitD's Louisiana mansion (or at least it appears to be), and you play some widdle girl who's uncomfortably at ease with the fact that doors don't always lead to the same place in the house. Then it ends, and that's it. I know it's supposed to be a teaser, but c'mon guys, a teaser's gotta titillate, tantalise, tumesce... er, pump me up about the main event, not give me a card that reads 'I.O.U. 1 (one) dry hump constituting exactly 1 (one) hip thrust and a sultry wave goodbye'.
It's apparently written by the fella who did the story on SOMA, so that's a decent promise of a fat load of something, anyway.
En Garde: now this is the good stuff. Immediately likeable, bursting with charm, lots of fun sword-based duelling gameplay (heavily derived from Sekiro's stance breaking and parrying, but easier), and colourful enough in palette to give me a slight eye-ache. There's lots of opportunities to Dark Messiah of Might and Magic around by booting people into things, or booting things into people, and clearly everyone's just having a gas, from the protagonist and her quips, to the enemies and their one-liners as they pretend to be slain dead, to seemingly the devs themselves. I adore games where there's a sense of joy to the proceedings, and this has it in spades. Wishlisted.
I will note that a bunch of En Garde's environments were oddly spare/empty, but since it's all tutorial areas, I'm not overly concerned about that, though some people might be.
EvaUnit02 on 16/6/2023 at 16:24
Borderlands 3: Bounty of Blood DLC. This ally NPC is allegedly a woman.
Inline Image:
https://files.catbox.moe/d0ak1e.jpgInline Image:
https://files.catbox.moe/udvwhr.jpgI wouldn't be surprised if there's a consciously malicious/post-modern effort to wokewash this series. The Siren in Borderlands 3, Amara, is a buff body builder woman. Meanwhile the more conventionally attractive Sirens from BL 1 + 2, Lilith and Maya, both get killed off in the BL3 campaign. Both BL 1 + 2 pre-date the woke co-opting of the mainstream Western game industry from 2014 onwards. There's also the fact that they took Hammerlock, a character who conforms to the highly masculine stereotype of the colonialist British hunter and made him gay. (RE: the examples:- personally I like Amara and don't care about the Hammerlock stuff as it felt naturally executed, but was bothered by the killing off of Lilith and Maya.) If Borderlands 1 had come out in more recent years I highly doubt we would've gotten the likes of the Mad Moxxi character.
That aside BL3's campaign is noticeably inferior to its predecessors. The writing is definitely lamer in this game. Also whoever designed the Sanctuary hub level in BL3 needs to be waterboarded. I'm stuck playing this game cuz it has crossplay with Xbox, my mate's primary platform. I did buy Handsome Collection for Xbox One, but it's WAY down on my priority list as I don't like playing shooters on clown sticks + the thought of paying for online play.
Jeshibu on 16/6/2023 at 16:58
Oh my god, I'm so sorry you had to endure a gruff woman in your videogame. Do you want a little kiss to make it better?
henke on 16/6/2023 at 17:31
EvaUnit, I'm sad to hear the ladies in the latest Borderlands aren't giving you a boner. My thoughts are with you in this difficult time.
demagogue on 16/6/2023 at 19:44
I saw Robert Yang was asking people yesterday what game he should make out of the gay biker model he recently bought or fixed up, and I'm thinking a woke fairy tale of unrequited forbidden love between Gay Biker and the EvaUnit02 robot is definitely the pick-me-up game Eva needs to lift his spirits in these trying times. :D
