henke on 22/11/2023 at 08:20
I got an XBox Series X on Monday night! Haven't had an XBox since the 360 and I was glad to see all my old 360 digital games in the library. :) Got the game pass, natch, and have been playing some of the latest additions I've had my eye on.
Cocoon - Well this certainly has very nicely designed and fun puzzles, but I have a hard time really caring about it and getting invested. One of those "more brains than heart" games.
Jusant - while not as mechanically deep as the other climbing games I've played this year (New Heights, Peaks of Yore), this game does have a wonderful atmosphere and vibe. The game it reminds me most of is Grow Home. I'm enjoying it a lot.
Forza Horizon 5 - played a bunch of this on PC, and was glad to see my progress carrying over. Hopping in my Porsche 911 and powersliding around the first corner it felt like I'd never left. This game feels so damn good!
Guess I'll play Starfield at some point as well? Though it seems like the hype around that died quickly. Did any of you guys actually finish it?
Sulphur on 22/11/2023 at 09:15
Quote Posted by henke
Cocoon - Well this certainly has very nicely designed and fun puzzles, but I have a hard time really caring about it and getting invested. One of those "more brains than heart" games.
Perfect description. It's probably 2023's high point in accessible puzzle design, and its world is gorgeous despite (or because of?) its chitinous, biomechanical qualities. It does something where it sands off the edges of the insectile and replaces them with something similarly otherworldly, and I really love that - but you're right, it's more of a head than heart sort of affection. Having said that, it's clear from its qualities that this experience is from one of the minds that developed Inside, and it's pretty great to work through its puzzles, even if your reward for solving a puzzle usually is... another puzzle.
WingedKagouti on 22/11/2023 at 10:51
Quote Posted by henke
Guess I'll play
Starfield at some point as well? Though it seems like the hype around that died quickly. Did any of you guys actually finish it?
It's basically Fallout 4 in space. I've completed it with two different characters (picking different traits/backgrounds to see alternative dialogue) and done 4 or so NG+ runs with one of them.
The main quest is mostly there to push players towards NG+ IMO, but the questlines for the major factions are fairly entertaining, with some minor shortcuts available in NG+ if you've completed them in a previous iteration.
I'd say it's worth a go if you have Game Pass, the worst that can happen if you don't like it is you waste some time downloading the game and playing it.
Aja on 23/11/2023 at 20:07
New Steam Deck arrived last night, and it's awesome. So far I've got Thief Gold up and running (and with all the button configurations and macros, I've even got buttons to spare!), Fallout New Vegas at 90 FPS, and Sekiro at 60. Mucking around in the Linux part of it is tedious, but it's great that you're able to tinker to get unsupported games working. The OLED is perfect for Thief, and the joysticks and buttons feel great although some of the bumpers are a bit of a reach.
I'm most impressed with the user interface, though. Feels very console-like, with good overlay menus, but with much greater customizability, even staying out of the desktop mode. As someone who became tired of the maintenance of being a PC gamer, this feels like a perfect balance.
Yakoob on 23/11/2023 at 21:29
Perusing the Autumn Sale, there's some good discounts hitting my wishlist. Just bought the Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1+2 Remake, Spyro, and Cities Skyline. Installing now!
Aja on 26/11/2023 at 16:37
Quote Posted by MasterFlaw
How's the black crush in those fumbling, dark unlit areas? I remember OLED always having a stubborn problem with almost-black.
After using it for a couple days, I can say it's not perfect after all — the grain of the OLED is visible in those almost-black areas, and I've noticed there's a kind of odd ghosting effect in very dark but not pitch black scenes when you swing the camera. But I haven't noticed crush per se. As long as I'm not playing in a bright room I can see in those almost-black areas just fine. It's the closest thing since I used to play in my parents' basement on an old CRT and stuff the windows with pillows to block out all the light so that I could turn the gamma down to the absolute minimum.
Thirith on 27/11/2023 at 07:43
I've said it before, but there is a lot in the modern Assassin's Creed games (Origins, Odyssey and especially Valhalla) that I think could translate well onto a modern continuation of the Ultima series. I'm mainly thinking of the world design and aesthetics: I could totally imagine a Britannia that looks and feels much like Valhalla's England, though ideally I'd want it to be a fifth of the world size at most. The world is where Valhalla excels, the larger cities, the towns, the small settlements, the nooks and crannies. I also think there's something to the underground environments that would work for Ultima, even the environmental puzzles (though Assassin's Creed makes the typical Ubisoft mistake of repeating the same tricks until you're sick of them, and then repeating them ten times more).
Obviously there's a lot that's different or missing that makes an Ultima: as always, the NPCs feel like animatronics, which would have to change. In addition, for me an Ultima has to have a party of characters that accompany the player character. Most of all, though, it's the writing: if I'm generous, I'd say that Ubisoft's recent games have 10% good writing, 50% mediocre writing and 40% bad writing, which is amplified by their worlds being too damn big. If they could make a smaller world (as I've said, I'm thinking of a world that's perhaps a fifth of the size of Valhalla's England), so there's enough in-between landscape to explore, with shrines, mysterious copses, ruins, lakeside huts and the like, then perhaps two cities, a half-dozen towns and a few smaller settlements, and use their resources to people these places with interesting characters that have a life (though not so much and so varied of a life that you'll never find them!), I could see this working.
Obviously I'm making this sound much easier than it is, and with Ubisoft's writing being what it is they'd definitely not be the right ones to cover that aspect - but even after all these years, I would love to explore a Britannia that looks and feels as real as Valhalla's world but that brings the strengths of the original series to the present day. It'll never happen, but an ex-Avatar can dream...
Edit: Also, I'm slowly ready for Assassin's Creed Valhalla to come to an end.
nicked on 30/11/2023 at 17:57
For anyone who doesn't also frequent the FM forum, The Black Parade just released and it's the greatest thing to ever happen to Thief: (
https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=152429) https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=152429
mxleader on 30/11/2023 at 18:26
Whaaaaaaaaaat?
henke on 1/12/2023 at 07:57
This announcement made me realize I don't actually have Thief Gold on Steam! :o I mean I've got it on CD-ROM, but alas, no disc drive. Guess I'll have to buy it again.
What I have been playing:
ElecHead - great lil puzzle platformer, played through it in one sitting, tho there's still secret locked content to find.
Cocoon - Yeah I finally finished this. The Inception-esque dimension-within-dimension-hopping is certainly neat and the puzzles are enjoyable enough. It's fine. It's no ElecHead though!
Black - played the first couple missions of this original XBox FPS last night, and it's pretty fun!
The Long Dark - managed to survive for 35 days, before I foolishly just froze to death, not far from my shelter.
Also played a bit of Metroid Prime 2, MGS: Twin Snakes, and Super Monkey Ball 2 on the office GameCube. Prime 2, meh. Twin Snakes is harder than I remember MGS being. Super Monkey Ball 2 is incredible you guys. The bowling game in particular is a hoot.
edit: oh geez I literally forgot that I played several hours of Starfield as well. Did the first 2 Constelation quests. The space travel quickly just devolves into "Fast Travel everywhere and never even see space". Run around shooting dudes in lacklustre combat. Stealth don't work. Become overencumbered. Don't give a hoot about artifacts. Get bored. Stop playing.
