Anarchic Fox on 11/10/2023 at 16:06
Quote Posted by qolelis
The detailed customization and different play styles is what I like the most about Dishonored. I can even almost play it as something out of my absolute favourite genre, puzzle explorers, games in which the challenge is about exploring and navigating unknown territory. There aren't a lot of these being made, and even fewer good ones, but
Eastshade and
INFRA come to mind (and, I'm sure, now soon also
The Talos Principle 2). Many promising exploration games in development also tend to get cancelled or delayed indefinitely (seemingly more often than other types of games!?). I can do some action, but a lot of the time these days, I just want to experience a game without stress.
Ooh. I love such games, so it's good to see another to add to my wishlist.
As usual, I'm playing multiple games concurrently. (
https://lloyd-delacroix.github.io/omsi-loops/) Idle Loops is an incremental game themed around being stuck in a time loop. Unlike most incremental games, it has an actual ending; however, you're better off editing yourself lots of offline time, which gives 5x speed. The game is just paced better that way. In
Book of Hours I had started renovating the prison and underground areas, but then hardware problems led to an OS reinstallation, and I dread opening up Steam and seeing whether my saves have been retained. It's an engrossing game, but don't play it unless you occasionally fantasize about being a librarian.
Spiritfarer keeps delivering emotional blows that make me leave the game for long periods, and I've now returned after the fourth such blow. I've learned not to frantically bounce around the ship doing tasks, but instead chill out and only do the tasks that are fun or urgent.
Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is, um... a game that I'll get back to at some point. It's good but exhausting. Finally, I started up a game of
Dragon Warrior VII, one of the few Dragon Quest games I haven't finished, only for my PSX to putter out.
Yakoob on 12/10/2023 at 19:28
Been playing
Cassette Beasts past few days and it's pretty solid. Pokemon-like with a bit more focus on world exploration and platforming/movement. It has some darker/creepy undertones in the story I am very much digging. And the soundtrack slaps.
My only beef is the actual beast design, something about it just really bothers me... when I look at them all I see is "clump of pixels." I feel like I have to really put effort into making out what these creatures are meant to be. I don't know if it's because of the chonky pixel, or being "too busy" or what, but they just don't feel particularly distinct or memorable. Especially the starter ones, I can barely tell wtf they're supposed to be even.
Inline Image:
https://wiki.cassettebeasts.com/images/7/7a/Adeptile.pngtake this thing for a minute. is it tentacles? is it fabric? does it have pink tentacles coming underneath the fabric? or is it one big piece of cloth? what is going on with the head? what is the blue thing on top? what is the yellow thing (is it a tail? is it a flame? is it more cloth??)
I feel you just really need to stare at it for a few minutes to make out wtf it actually is
WingedKagouti on 12/10/2023 at 22:38
Quote Posted by Yakoob
Inline Image:
https://wiki.cassettebeasts.com/images/7/7a/Adeptile.pngtake this thing for a minute. is it tentacles? is it fabric? does it have pink tentacles coming underneath the fabric? or is it one big piece of cloth? what is going on with the head? what is the blue thing on top? what is the yellow thing (is it a tail? is it a flame? is it more cloth??)
I feel you just really need to stare at it for a few minutes to make out wtf it actually is
Looks like a dark grey/black cape with purple trim, a purple scarf covering the "face" & tailing behind, and a tricorn hat with a yellow feather.
If it was a pokemon, I'd expect it to be a ghost type, possibly ghost/dark or ghost/psychic, due to the missing body and colour scheme.
Sulphur on 13/10/2023 at 01:39
It's very obviously a cape monster wearing a hat. Not sure what the readability problem is. I suppose when it's animated, the cape's edges could look like tentacles, but I don't really see it.
Aja on 13/10/2023 at 20:24
I'm with Yakoob; that's a nonsense monster. Some kind of squid ski wizard? It's impossible to tell.
Starker on 13/10/2023 at 20:28
They probably just ran out of pixels for the lower half.
Sulphur on 14/10/2023 at 02:56
Oh, you're correct, I see it now. It's like Orko from He-Man if he was subtly implying Lovecraftian body horror exploding out of knots of fabric, all twisting appendages coruscating with otherworldly ichor extruded from a face dripping malice like an inky black hole that had recently graduated from Tony Hawk college where everyone could only access the campus by grinding on funicular railings every day.
qolelis on 14/10/2023 at 14:42
Five years after finishing the main part of
Road to Gehenna, I'm now playing the so-called "star world". It took forever to collect the necessary stars to be able to enter, but it's done now; I'm in. The first puzzle was mind-melting, but also satisfying once I figured out the trick. I've used the same trick before, but now it was tenfold in complexity. Elegantly symmetrical, but nerve-wrecking to set up. I really had to think through every step beforehand, so as not to make a mistake and have to start over again. I even left in an ugly part—that I would otherwise have cleaned up—because I didn't want to mess things up. I imagine the rest of the puzzles in here will be more of the same.
I also played a demo for (
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2248330/Backrooms_Break/)
Backrooms Break. I don't play a lot of action games, but this was too much fun to pass on. I liked how easy it was to quickly get into it. You just start with a sledgehammer and go from there. More weapons can be found along the way. No upgrades or skill trees, just me and a good set of weapons. I'll be enduring a lot of stress, I'm sure, but I'll be playing it eventually—whenever the full game comes out—just for the joy of demolishing things. It will be the one stress game I play this year. I'm kind of committed now. I just hope the devs don't feel the need to complicate things or add annoying boss fights (can't stand those).
Edit:
Damn it, it says right in the description that there will be boss fights. I'm out. Oh well, the demo was fun anyway. Or should I still play it!? I'm tempted, but I also hate boss fights. They're never fun, just tedious grind, like doing household chores.
Edit 2:
I could play
Teardown instead—which has been on my wishlist for a while now—if I just want to destroy things.
Edit 3:
But I also want to kill things with a sledgehammer like it's a boomerang... Maybe this is the real reason I don't play as many action games these days. Once I get started, I go insane with the urge to slaughter my enemies...
samIamsad on 18/10/2023 at 10:37
System Shock Remake. Bought in June and played it all the way up to ca. research/engineering, just not finished it then as I wasn't much in the mood to play games all year until now. Now I'm all the way up on the bridge and still enjoying things. The AI isn't the best in business, and I'd have liked a feature to make your own map entries. But it's a showcase how engaging a 1994 game can still be if simply "overhauled". At least a game that was as ahead of its time as Shock was.
Simultaneously and inspired by that, I've given in and picked up
Bioshock 2 at a heavy discount. Never considered buying it upon release, if at all. And that's not because Bioshock wasn't as faithful a SS successor as PR had anyone to believe upon release. It's mainly because Bioshock, when all the release thrill and hype had settled, is really a rather mediocre corridor shooter saved by setting, art and plot. We now know why they tuned the game that way (being scared chicken after testers didn't "get" what they tried to do). But that doesn't change a thing.
And whilst the level design in part deux at least tries to incorporate the spells, er, plasmids a tad better -- it's still more of the same average. And gets old just as fast. Ex-Irrational just wasn't id or nearabouts -- and it shows. Whereas Doom³ may have just one "monster in the closet" trick up its sleeve, Bioshock has none. Outside of scripted sequences, it throws armies of splicers at you, going aggro and screaming all over the place the moment they sniff you anywhere near. The gunplay also still doesn't have much weight. But then in fairness, had Shock 2 focused as much on combat as Bioshock did, it would have fared even worse.
Speaking about which, all that goofy screaming and fast arcade play is still completely at odds with the mood the game is trying to convey. The game's plot and themes are completely at odds with the "run and gun" play too, but that's another matter; as if "Rambo 2" had been in equal parts a movie about a guy blowing the shit up, all the while offering subtexts about politics, terrors of war and the meaning of life. As a former editor in chief of Germany's biggest gaming mag put it in a podcast: "Bioshock is a game made by clever people probably meant to be played by dumb people." Yeah. I'm going to finish BS2 once to experience the story, and that's it.
After the "on rails" shooting gallery Infinite, I'm fairly certain that Ken Levine is fare more interested in narrative than in game systems in general. What he mainly learned from Looking Glass was how to tell stories without prolonged movie cutscenes taking you completely out of the experience. However, I don't think he's quite as invested in their other pursuits, which were best summed up by LGS alumni in a recent retrospective on Shock:
"We were trying to build the holodeck."
(
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/system-shock-the-oral-history-of-a-forward-thinking-pc-classic)
PS: Also still stuck in my playthrough of
Shadow Gambit, bought upon release. However, the news just a week after release that Mimimi were going to shut down killed my enthusiasm kinda. There's a clear influence of ImmSim/Dishonored in this one, as there was in Desperados 3 in parts already. Whilst going more sandbox all around has its flipsides in Shadow Gambit, I would have liked to see where they had taken this next. Desperados 3 is currently to be had at a heavy discount. Buy it. It's hellafun. It's storytelling is also the complete opposite to Bioshock. The story itself is Western movie cliché. But the game's serviceable tale of a guy teaming up with friends and taking revenge -- it's interwoven with the gameplay and mission design right to the last "shot".
demagogue on 18/10/2023 at 17:28
I finally finished off Prey last night.
When I first started it, I felt some of the magic was back. It has a cool opening few scenes. Then I somehow lost steam as I got into it. And after a long hiatus I started playing again and it took some time to get back into it... I suppose that may be from some of the post-Bioshock tropes like screen bling, wordage on the hud, etc. But bit by bit it still won me over as it became clear that the devs were from my world and they know how to make these kinds of games. There was a lot of System Shock 2 DNA in it of course, but not even in the obvious ways. It was there in ways they'd create a mood or certain scenes or subtle references.
The gameplay and level design was all well thought out for a good balance of pacing between action and story, which is what I'd expect from Arkane. Some gameplay confrontations and scenes were very memorable, and I'm glad I barrelled on to experience them. The one thing modern games can do is create really epic and stunning scenery and scenes, and just capture the epic scale of the entire station and what's happening on it, which is something SS2 or Bioshock couldn't have done. They made some decisions matter to the story, which was well designed. Some people didn't like the back tracking, but I played it in smaller sessions over a long period, and there was a lot of dynamic & environmental storytelling. Areas meant different things over the course of the game. So I even appreciated it, being immersed in this world and story.
I liked the story. I liked how much backstory they gave to all the crew and bodies you found. Even the smallest character often had some little piece of backstory. Some of the side stories felt like they were speaking to a generation or two under me, which is fair. Games should be made first for the kids. But they were conscious of players that'd been there on the immersive sim train from the start.
Well overall I was happy to play this, and it's the best immersive sim type I've played since I think the first Dishonored. To give another reference point, Control was the other best exploratory shooter I'd played in a long time. I'd say Prey had just as good action as Control, they're maybe tied on that -- Control has levels built for action; Prey is more open ended and has a greater scope for variety and emergent scenes. Both are good in their own way. But as an immersive sim Prey was leaps and bounds better. Control had a lot of surreal elements for the sake of being surreal, but Prey was really thought out as a station under siege with NPCs and the player all playing their part, with the action and mechanics all fitting the story and situation in very big and very small ways.
