Tomi on 2/1/2024 at 01:28
Hey everyone, it's 2024! And time for a new thread, of course! If you feel like digging in the archives, the older threads can be found here: (
https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=150278) 2020 / (
https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=151007) 2021 / (
https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=151603) 2022 / (
https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=152033) 2023
I started this year by finishing
Red Dead Redemption 2 at last. It's a decent game and I loved the story (even if it was quite predictable), but I found the actual gameplay a bit disappointing. The whole thing took me around 100 hours, and I'm sure that I spent about half of that just trying to find something interesting to do. The gunfights aren't much fun, the controls feel quite sluggish at times, and the random encounters and activities start repeating themselves at some point. I wish it had been more of a cowboy imm-sim, but it turned out to be more "GTA w/ horses" than I first thought. Especially the story missions. My favourite part of the game was the epilogue with John Marston, and I wish that there had been more things to do after the main story ended.
I uninstalled RDR2 to free space for other games, and decided to buy
EA Sports WRC after all. I'm not regretting the purchase, but the performance issues are really starting to annoy me. I feel that there's a lot of potential in this new game, but they've still got quite a bit of fixing to do. Also, I hope that the WRC series doesn't become yet another annual release/milking cow for EA.
nicked on 2/1/2024 at 07:02
I picked up Elden Ring in the Steam sale despite being somewhat intimidated by soulslikes these days, but so far having a blast. It's certainly a lot more immediately accessible than previous From Software games - the open world does a great job of softening the inevitable brick walls of bosses you get stuck on, because you can just bugger off and explore and do something else and come back later. Also going into it knowing full well I'll probably never finish it, but that's ok, is undoubtedly helping me enjoy it.
Only problem I'm having is that using LB and LT on an xbox controller is starting to give me serious tendon pain in my left hand.
demagogue on 2/1/2024 at 07:14
Well I just finished off Cocoon. Sulph has already given it a good little write-up.
I think if you want to play it, you should play it first and then come back to this or any review. I think it's good to play it fresh without really knowing what you're getting into.
It was from the Inside people (Geometric Interactive), Inside was a really special game to me, and reading that it had some magic to it made me think it'd have some of the same magic as Inside. So that was some of my motivation to play it. Long story short, I don't think it has the same kind of magic as Inside, at least for me for the sessions I played it. I mean Inside came with a story that the environment told that built up to a thing. Cocoon does in a way too, but different; I guess the scales of the stories are different, and that changed their alchemy.
But never mind anyway because what Cocoon has in spades is a really great concept to build a game around, and it builds it with this surreal packaging that has its own kind of wonder. I guess the feature it carries over from the past games were the puzzles, which were never too difficult, the "rules" were really well developed over a series of increasingly imaginative sequences, and figuring one out made me feel good and really in touch with the game's vibe. I guess that's something it does share with Inside. But really, the core concept is mind bending and has such great potential by itself, where the game levels are objects of the game itself that do stuff... kind of like Baba is You if you squint enough. I got really into it like I got into a good Baba is You puzzle, and it built up to some really inspired concepts in a very satisfying way.
So it was a different brand of magic, but still a pretty compelling game. The aesthetics and surreal wonder were still really top notch too.
Malf on 2/1/2024 at 11:22
I'm finishing off WH40K Rogue Trader, while also playing Jedi Survivor as a palate-cleanser when the former's endless combat encounters become a bit much.
For the most part, Rogue Trader has been really enjoyable, and has a lot smoother difficulty curve than Owlcat's previous Pathfinder games. I think that's partly because the core classes are quite well designed, and all, to some extent, provide passive support options. It took me a while to adjust, but I've ended up really enjoying the mechanics.
There are a few characters in the roster that get a lot less use than others, purely because they don't bring as much utility to the fight, and Cassia, even after being "nerfed" is still massively overpowered when compared to every other character, with possibly the exception of Argenta.
But it's REALLY. FUCKING. LONG.
My playthrough is currently sitting at around 160 hours. I mean, yes, I tend to try and explore everything when playing an RPG like this, but this still feels unecessarily long.
It also suffers from a rather irritating Chapter 3 which has a massive focus on probably my least favourite 40K faction, the Dark Eldar or "Drukhari".
In the history of RPGs, tabletop and CRPG alike, I don't think there's ever been a race that's ever been quite so edge-lordy as the Dark Eldar. And a whole chapter dedicated to them just gets wearing real quick.
The Dark Eldar companion didn't last past our first warp jump with him on board.
I've been playing pure Iconoclast, which is the closest to a "Good" playthrough you can get when you're essentially a Space Nazi, but even I wasn't going to put up with his shit after that event.
So the Inquisitor companion got a chance to purge the xeno.
And I think that's one of the problems with the game; look, we all know that WH40K's Imperium of Man is supposed to be a satire of fascism; but I'm not sure Owlcat fully get that, and as a consequence, they rarely play it for laughs, meaning the overall narrative comes across a bit... distasteful.
That there's not a single Ork to be seen anywhere in the campaign doesn't help.
Orks are very much the anarchic, comedic foil to the Imperium, and subsequently their absence removes a lot of the opportunity to point out just how obnoxious the space fascists are.
Instead, you are left with the alternatives to the Imperium being Eldar (po-faced blue-rinse conservative racists), Dark Eldar (sado-masochistic racists whose existence depends on torturing others) and Chaos (WIBBLE WIBBLE KILL EVERYTHING BLART!)
I think it also suffers from Owlcat trying to force their Classic Bioware Era template onto a game world that doesn't really support it. So you've got romance options, the ability to recruit a party member from every represented faction and all sorts of other little touches that while they fit in a less polarised RPG setting, stick out like a sore thumb by their very presence in WH40K.
So, I have really enjoyed my time with it, but I'll be glad when it's all over. I'm hoping that they use DLC to fix some of the more glaring problems with their interpretation of 40K.
As noted, Jedi Survivor has been doing sterling service as the perfect palate-cleanser for when Rogue Trader gets a bit too much.
There are still some signs of instability (such as the second planet crashing the game unless you turn off RT or download a fan-made fix), and some other infrequent CTDs.
It's also got that really fucking irritating "Feature" of contemporary games where unless you're paying attention, it's going to super-sample and render the game at 4K by default even though you're playing on a lower resolution, and that can REALLY impact performance.
Why the fuck triple-A games keep doing this is beyond me, and I really wish they'd stop.
But gripes aside, this is a fantastic refinement of the formula introduced with Fallen Order.
It's a nice composite of Souls-lite and Arkham Asylum-style Metroidvania. The collectibles have mostly been dialled back to cosmetics that don't affect gameplay, and progression is very smooth, with even short sessions leaving you with a feeling of accomplishment.
Respawn's expertise in movement is also front and centre, with further additions to how Cal traverses the world. Wall running, double jumps and air dashes are all present and all serve to create a very satisfying loop so that traversal never ends up feeling dull.
There's also a lot of humour in the game, mostly in the various low-power mooks you face off against. The conversations between B1 and B2 droids are a great early example, with Stormtroopers later adding to the comedic cast. Rick the Door Technician in particular had me howling with laughter.
I'm glad I waited to get this on sale once a lot of its more egregious problems had been resolved.
Much like Fallen Order, I've been pleasantly surprised by how much I've been enjoying it. And unlike Fallen Order, the difficulty spikes are nowhere near as spikey.
The over-arching story doesn't really light my world on fire and is a generic nothing-burger. But it serves its purpose, and the narrative is well-delivered.
And after giving him long hair and a beard, my Cal is a lot more agreeable to look at and doesn't trigger my uncanny valley reflex as much as he did in Fallen Order.
Edit: Oh, there's also a really cool minigame a la Gwent in Survivor's Holotactics. It's basically the game that you should let the wookie win, and you get to field a side based on enemies you've defeated and scanned.
It feels like there's less player agency than in Gwent, as it's basically an auto-battler, but it's still really cool and a neat way of implementing some lore into gameplay.
Sulphur on 5/1/2024 at 13:59
I've been playing Jedi Survivor a bit too, and it looks great, but I get the same feeling I did with Fallen Order - something's missing, and I can't quite put my finger on it.
My guess is it has something to do with that the game exists only because Sekiro and Dark Souls do, and the structure doesn't suit the experience it's trying to be. In the Souls games, at least, enemies respawning kinda makes sense - they're all monsters, demons, spirits, and you're some hollowed husk trying to end a blight that's causing them. That doesn't really work when it's storm troopers and droids, for starters. But the real issue is for a game about being a Jedi on the run, taking the time to fuck around and bisect animals with a light saber and kit out yourself with ponchos and learn light saber combat and stances through what I presume is force osmosis via encounters just causes a large and immediate disconnect between what you're supposed to be doing and what you are doing. Another thing is that it's all just a bit by the numbers. Like there's a checklist of Star Wars bric-a-brac being quietly ticked off with every place you go to.
All of that together makes it seem a bit conflicted - does it want be Jedi Knight Sekiro, or does it want to be a Force Unleashed 3-style adventure? Because trying to be both at the same time means it's not really great at either. It's a competent game (PC port aside), it's graphically quite pretty, there's some good ol' prequel droid humour, and the story seems interesting, but it's still hitting 7/10 vibes because I get the feeling that it's not sure what it wants to be.
Malf on 5/1/2024 at 14:47
Yeah, graphically it's right up there with the prettiest games available at the moment, but I agree, it's a very 7/10 game.
I'm getting relatively near the end I suspect (I think I have one more power to unlock), and I'll be glad when it's done.
In Rogue Trader, I'm in the final chapter, but I'm really struggling (not difficulty-wise). Exploration has dropped off a cliff and just consists of single maps with single encounters, and all against the dull auditors of the 40K universe, the Necrons (I would compare them to Vogons, but Vogons are at the very least inadvertently funny. Necrons aren't.)
Having to kill enemies twice in a row is _never_ an enjoyable mechanic.
And if there's a strong through-line to the narrative, I'm struggling to find it. It's been very bitty all the way through.
There's still a lot to like about the game, but it could do with being at least 2/3rds the size, especially as so much just seems to be unconnected filler.
And I'm still not convinced Owlcat get 40K.
WingedKagouti on 5/1/2024 at 15:13
Still playing Against the Storm, at the 4th seal now and the difficulty has certainly increased. It's still my pick for 2023 GotY over the alternatives I've played, despite Remnant 2 being a close second.
Aja on 5/1/2024 at 17:32
I've been playing the demo for
Dreamcore, which sounds like a TikTok shovelware game but is actually an interesting and immersive walking sim with pretty stunning visuals. I knew about liminal spaces, but I had no idea there was a whole community devoted to them, with a wiki that describes hundreds of fictional liminal locations. One of the more popular levels is the poolrooms, a series of interconnected tiled rooms with pools of water, and that's the environment for this demo. It's maze-like and arbitrary, with an odd tonal balance of tranquility and unease. It immediately struck a chord with me because I have dreamt about places like this in the past; I just never knew other people have as well. The game has a heavy camcorder filter that, combined with the surprisingly detailed lighting (I guess it's Unreal 5) gives it a very realistic look that makes exploration more compelling. There are some minimal interactions and there was an end goal in the old version I played, but the demo was recently updated, so I'm not sure what's changed. Anyway, it's free, so I highly recommend it to a certain subset of this forum who enjoys weird nongames.
Here are some lo-res screenshots. It looks better in motion and on my small screen, but you get the idea.
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/P2WbdEJ.jpgInline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/VXW6WlD.jpg
henke on 6/1/2024 at 11:52
That does look great, Aja. Guess I gotta give it a play.
Finished Wolfenstein Youngblood. And y'know what? It was good! I liked the stealth gameplay in it. Normally having X-ray vision and invisibility cloak would make a stealth game too easy, but that combined with no quicksave/load (due to it's co-op focused nature) balanced it out nicely. I was able to slip through several areas undetected towards the end. The final bossfight was tough. Almost too tough to be fun, and I kinda feel like I just beat it cause the boss eventually kinda glitched and got stuck in one section of the level. The game is light on story, with most of the cutscenes being relegated to the start and end of the game, but what story is there is good. MachineGames Wolfenstein games have always had good character writing, and this is no different. In my ranking of the MachineGames series I'd place this ahead of The Old Blood, which I didn't even finish, and The New Colossus, which I barely remember. Is it better than New Order? Hmm... kinda think I need to replay that one.
Sulphur on 6/1/2024 at 12:10
Jesh and I played Youngblood in co-op. It's... all right. There's nothing about it that's particularly standout, and I'm including the story in that assessment. It's fun though, a decent enough romp to kill some time in, even if it gets heavily repetitive and in the end is sort of forgettable, and this is keeping in mind that co-op usually makes a dull game better. Pretty much would have left it halfway in single-player, I'd think.
Edit: oh yeah, the Dreamcore demo. I saw those screenies on Steam, and I have all those hot bytes of data waiting to be spun up. Eventually. Might play it today even. I like the idea of liminal spaces, though I slightly dislike the zeitgeisty-ness of them because they follow on from the SCP craze, and it's not a very new idea. But as an experience mining the uncanny on its own terms, why not.