What are you playing? (2023 Edition)

Thirith on 14/8/2023 at 19:56

Yeah, Oxenfree is likeable, it's nicely atmospheric, it's fine, but it could be more. From what I've heard, the sequel is rather less than more, sadly. Though I liked the handful of moments where it surprises the player (such as with those ghosts that turn out to be messages from other players).

Tomi on 17/8/2023 at 16:37

Quote Posted by Sulphur

So I finished Planet of Lana, and I liked it plenty. A lot of that is because of the small details more than anything spectacular it does with gameplay (to be clear: there is no spectacular gameplay, but the art is sweeping and lovely when it wants to be, which is often enough), like Lana stumbling at the edge of platforms in an animation very reminiscent of the Prince from PoP 1989, the five-note tone of acceptance from the robots as you take over their programming, the way Lana whispers to Mui when they're in the company of enemies, and the small, unnecessary, but very-appreciated option to pet Mui when you're crouched next to him/her.

But also, one overriding reason I feel positive overall about the game is because of the aforementioned Mui, your cat-hamster animal companion, loyal to a fault, and just incredibly goddamn cute. I mean, Mui even does that little butt-wiggle cats do when they're about to jump on something - the fact that they managed to give a blob with ears just enough personality from animation and a few sounds for me to care about deeply, I want to say it's masterful - but it depends heavily on how much your own experience with and affinity towards animals can project warm, fuzzy feelings on top of Mui. Let's put it this way: I can't imagine the game being half as worthwhile if it weren't for the timeworn (but vital!) trope of the loyal, faithful pet. You know the game's done it right the moment you feel separation anxiety when you can't see your pal on the screen any more.

Obviously, Mui is the key to most of the puzzles, and there's artificial gating to ensure you don't leave him/her behind. The puzzles, as mentioned in an earlier post, don't progress in very inventive or clever ways as often as they should, and a fair few are just going through the motions. It's a simple game, and it doesn't do a lot with a little, but it does just about enough. And even if it can't wow with ingenious mechanics or an inventive story, it doesn't have to, because in the final analysis, it does something a wee bit better: it is, very simply, heartfelt.

I also just finished Planet of Lana, and while I agree with almost everything that you posted earlier, I don't think I liked it anywhere as much as you did. I mean, it's not a bad game at all, but there's nothing that makes it particularly good either. Yes, some of the puzzles are quite clever without being too difficult, Mui is a cute little pet, and the visuals are quite nice in some areas, but that's about it. The actual gameplay is tedious and I never felt any kind of a connection between Lana and the friend or the villagers that you're supposed to care about.

Sulphur on 18/8/2023 at 09:11

That's fair. I think it comes down to how much of an emotional connection the game's able to forge with you via Mui, as mentioned; without that, it's a lot harder to forgive it for being a bit tedious and even slightly empty where there could have been more interesting things to do, more detail and filigreeing. Negative space in terms of environmental design was masterfully done in Inside, where even if you're not doing anything important, the atmosphere let the game breathe; Lana doesn't quite have that level of sheer craft, so in contrast it feels a tad hollow in spots.

Anarchic Fox on 18/8/2023 at 17:27

Book of Hours, by the makers of Cultist Simulator, removes the things I didn't like about that game (the early-game tedium, the stress of too many timers, the vague setting) and kept the things I did like (learning game mechanics by experimentation, an unearthly tone, and genuine mystique). In Book of Hours, you play a librarian restoring an old library, complete with many books to catalogue and read. I live in a one-bedroom apartment with nine bookshelves. It feels like this game was made for me.

Prior to that, a game of Caves of Qud ended when my head exploded, and a long, slow Dark Souls game with a Faith/Chaos build neared its end. Manus is a tricky boss though.

Harvester on 19/8/2023 at 14:05

Point & click adventures can be easier or harder and have puzzles that make sense or puzzles with moon logic. I prefer those games where you can't die or find yourself in a position where you have to start over again (like many old Sierra adventures had) and where the puzzles make such sense that even when I look at a walkthrough the solution is something I could've thought of myself. Though I prefer not looking at walkthroughts at all. Thimbleweed Park was such a game where everything made some sort of sense and I was able to finish it without a walkthrough. Very enjoyable game.

I just finished Broken Age and that also was right up my alley. A lot of lighthearted humor, fun quirky characters, nice looking environments, good voice acting and puzzles that don't require moon logic (although I finished the infamous knot puzzle more by luck than by skill). Felt pretty good to solve all the puzzles in the game myself without needing a walkthrough. What I also liked was that I could try really weird things and there was usually a custom written and voice acted response to everything I did instead of a generic 'That doesn't seem to work' or 'I can't use this with that' type response.

Just don't expect because it's written by Tim Schafer that the characters are as tough as in Full Throttle or as suave as in Grim Fandango. You have to be able to tolerate cutesy and offbeat characters. But with that caveat, I recommend it (and Thimbleweed Park).

Jason Moyer on 24/8/2023 at 07:08

I'm playing Borderlands 3. It's probably the best Borderlands game in every way by a massive amount. I guess I prefer the tone of 1, but it's definitely not as silly as 2 was. The writing is probably bad, it's a videogame and I don't care so there's that. At least it's not constantly doing the thing 2 did where it thinks that referencing something that's funny is funny. The antagonists are annoying pricks, which everyone seems to dislike but I don't really feel like they're anywhere near as annoying or tiresome as Handsome Jack was and it wouldn't surprise me if it were revealed they were his kids at some point. Some of the side quests and companion chatter actually made me laugh which I don't think happened in 2 or TPS.

At the end of the day though, a game like this is about the gameplay and that's the part that actually makes me laugh. BL2/TPS were annoying as fuck with the exponential damage scaling and loot scarcity, by the end of the first playthrough they're basically cover shooters because lingering in the open will get you whacked and you basically need to hope the RNG gods are good because the exponential scaling means all of your gear is completely useless every time things go up a level. And I think in a typical 3 playthrough run to the level cap, i.e. 100+ hours of gameplay, I probably found a dozen legendary weapons/gear. BL3 is back to the BL1 thing where I'm finding guns I like and just rolling with them for 5-10 levels because I found something that works with my playstyle and has a good combination of parts. And I've been finding legendary gear, often from completely random chests or enemies, probably once every 2-3 levels. The other thing that always comes to mind when I think of BL2 are the areas that are just not remotely fun to go through, like Sawtooth Cauldron or The Fridge or Caustic Caverns or basically half the maps. I haven't had a map, enemy, or mission that pissed me off yet. That doesn't mean there haven't been areas where I ate shit, but I'm not getting pissed off just fighting trash mobs trying to get to the next interesting part.

There's also some other fun stuff, like proper boss fights with stages instead of just having enemies with bigger health bars that you face tank. You can fast travel to any fast travel station or a spawned vehicle from anywhere at any time, like a normal Diablo clone, which means there's SIGNIFICANTLY less backtracking. I guess the only thing I'd improve there is having the ability to fast travel back to the last place you teleported from like isometric hack and slash games. The maps fill in to show where you've explored, and there are a few collectible type mission items on each map that you can discover although it's not crammed full of the shit like an Ubisoft style open world game. I dunno, I'm having fun, and I couldn't see myself replaying previous games without all of the good bits they've added to 3. Oh yeah, there's MANTLING now. Like there should have been in every first person game since 1998. So yeah, I'm still doing the main content and it feels like Borderlands Greatest Hits++ to me. It definitely has me more interested in playing Wonderlands now than I was previously.

Thirith on 28/8/2023 at 08:42

I'm definitely more into Divinity Original Sin 2 than I was to begin with. It helps to have arrived at Driftwood, where there's simply more to do. I have to admit that I'm still finding it difficult to gauge the freedom the game affords its players; it's certainly true that DOS2 has systems in place that let you do more things, so that puzzles and situations can be solved in more ways than in most RPGs, but my brain doesn't seem to think well in terms of those systems. One example: I wanted to search an unconscious character while he's being watched by another NPC, but whenever I got close to him the NPC would attack me. So I tried to distract her by having one of my party members talk to her while another would search the unconscious dude behind her back. Didn't work, nor did doing the same thing while in stealth mode. Whatever I did ended with combat, and with me having to kill the NPC.

I'd heard a lot about how DOS2 lets you do things that otherwise you can only do in pen-and-paper RPGs, but if I was playing such a situation with friends I would have so many possibilities of how to approach the situation that wouldn't require combat. Does DOS2 have these options? Perhaps, but since the obvious ones didn't work I gave up... but at the same time I was more frustrated *because* the game obviously offers more freedom. Having three or four different systemic solutions to a problem is nice when CRPGs usually only offer one or two (typically: fight or talk), but I'm finding it hard if not impossible to distinguish between what's possible within the game's systems and what isn't, so I usually end up not even trying. It feels like the equivalent of interactive fiction and parsers whose main response is "I'm afraid you cannot do that."

Meanwhile... I also got started on Oxenfree 2. It plays more smoothly than the first game, in particular the dialogues and interruptions work better - which is important when 90% of the game is about the conversations. It's also still written well and the main plot feels better paced to me than the early game (Oxenfree took forever to get going properly). They've obviously learned from the first game in various ways - but they don't really seem to have much of a new story to tell. With Oxenfree the characters immediately had more things going on, if perhaps in a somewhat teen soap opera way: the main character was still mourning for her older brother who'd died, while the brother's former girlfriend blames her for what happened, this guy was in love with that girl, that guy is new to the group and doesn't know how to fit in. All of this drove the character interactions in parallel to the spooky overarching plot, so your choices of what to say when were both about the relationships between the characters and their predicament on Edwards Island.

So far, Oxenfree 2 hasn't done much in terms of character motivations, added to which there are only two main characters that interact regularly Which means that everything is almost entirely about the plot about interdimensional aliens and rifts in the space-time fabric etc. - and we've already had that. If Oxenfree 2 was more immediately about its characters, it'd be okay to have more or less the same overarching plot - after all, zombie stories also keep telling the same two or three plots, but at their best they have strong, interesting characters that make things feel different. I'm sure that Riley and Jacob will become more important later on, but so far I'm kinda thinking that I'd almost rather play a remake of the first game that had all the improvements and tweaks that Oxenfree 2 has, because what's missing so far - the strong characters and the way their interactions are coloured by their personalities - leaves a real gap, while what's in place largely feels like a retread. I'm hoping this will change later, but so far Oxenfree 2 comes across like Oxenfree with some of the rough edges sanded down in ways that I appreciate, but also with less personality.

Edit: Okay, having played another hour or so, let me add something: the map of this one is much more messy than that of the first game, and not in good ways. I spent most of this hour trying to get somewhere to continue the plot, and there are more dead ends, which simply isn't fun. Oxenfree had a map that was clear enough so that it was usually simple to get to a new location without much frustration. The sequel feels in this respect like they thought they had to go bigger and more complex, but instead they've simply lost the clarity without adding anything interesting.

Jason Moyer on 30/8/2023 at 23:43

Finished the main campaign of Borderlands 3. I find it super odd that people seemed to be 50/50 on liking it, because it's literally my favorite parts of every previous Borderlands game smashed together with all the parts I hated fixed except for the UI, which is still ok I guess. The only thing I wish they'd add is a return portal when fast travelling like most isometric action RPG's have, so you could go somewhere and teleport back to where you were without needing a car. But jesus, the gameplay is so good. I honestly don't know what they could do to make the next game much better. Releasing it on Steam on launch day would be nice I guess, although I'm not averse to letting Epic and console users beta test it for a year before I get to it.

Thirith on 4/9/2023 at 06:33

I finished Oxenfree 2, but I can't really say more than I already have. It's engaging, the dialogues are well written, and the dialogue system has improved, so that interruptions flow more naturally and conversations can continue across screens. At the same time, the map is frustratingly unclear, the game has fewer interesting character relationships (and at the beginning the two main characters have no relationship), and the plot feels like more of the same while also being less, because you don't have the overarching plot and the character relationships interweaving. If you really liked Oxenfree, you're likely to like the sequel, but you're also likely to find it disappointing because all in all there's just less there to engage with.

Also, my obligatory Divinity Original Sin 2 gripe (again, nothing new, but yesterday's session brought it home again): I'm now at the point of liking the game, but I could love it if the party actually acted as a party. Yesterday I came across a situation that, if a character who's got the Scholar tag had been the active character, I could've resolved without violence. I have a scholar in my party, but no, he has to be active, even though it's literally a situation the entire party encounters. Larian's RPG game would be so much improved if the other characters piped up when it makes sense, and very, very rarely they do, but as it is it feels unfairly random: am I supposed to walk around with one character active, reload, select another character, reload, select the third character, and so on, just to make sure that I don't miss out on things? The way Larian implements these options simply doesn't lead to interesting decisions IMO, because the implementation is boneheaded and restricts agency rather than increasing it.

I'm perfectly okay with RPGs offering situations and decisions you might miss based on your party, skills etc., but it is ridiculous how Larian handles this, especially when RPGs have been doing this better since the days of the original Bioware games. Sure, it's more work - but IMO it's what makes a party-based RPG: to have a party that acts as a party.

WingedKagouti on 4/9/2023 at 09:15

Quote Posted by Thirith

I'm perfectly okay with RPGs offering situations and decisions you might miss based on your party, skills etc., but it is ridiculous how Larian handles this, especially when RPGs have been doing this better since the days of the original Bioware games. Sure, it's more work - but IMO it's what makes a party-based RPG: to have a party that acts as a party.

This could be due to the 4-player co-op design of the game, where they wanted to make it immersive for 4 players and forgot to properly take solo-players into account.