henke on 14/5/2024 at 08:51
I was listening to XCOM lead designer Jake Solomon getting interview on the (
https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes/episodes/jake-solomon-part-2) Designer Notes podcast recently and he said the backlash to The Bureau helped Firaxis' XCOM reboot a lot. People were so ready to support and hype up a more traditional XCOM just to spite the bigger budget "wrong" version.
Anyway, it's a great episode. He also talks a lot about the 2 failed XCOM prototypes he worked on before they figured out the winning formula.
Malf on 14/5/2024 at 09:36
I ended up playing that XCOM game a while after release and really enjoyed it. It had some stunningly pretty graphics for the time too. An unfairly maligned entry into the relatively small single-player, squad-based shooter genre.
henke on 16/5/2024 at 04:55
I played through Crow Country. Survival horror game with an endearing chunky aesthetic that's very PS1 but also doesn't look like any particular PS1 game I can think of. You're a young lady investigating a disappearance at an abandoned theme park. It's very compelling, in a survival horror adventure kinda way. You piece together the story and what you need to do from written notes and documents, and the storytelling and puzzles are both quite good. The combat is pretty easy, compared to most games in this genre. In retrospect the game might've been balanced more towards the retro tank control scheme, I used the modern one. Fairly short too, 7 hours total, tho I didn't find all the extra secrets. Anyway, if anyone's in the mood for a cozy and spooky survival horror game to loose yourself in for a weekend, this is a good one!
[video=youtube;1h5qe8eY3wE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1h5qe8eY3wE[/video]
Renault on 16/5/2024 at 22:11
Gamepass continues to be a really good deal. I saw this month they added Chants of Sennar and Open Roads, and soon we'll also get Hellblade 2 and also Humanity. These are all games I had/would consider buying.
henke on 19/5/2024 at 17:39
Played a session of Escape Simulator today with Thirith, Jeshibu, and Sulphur. It's a polished and well designed escape room game. Collaborating on cracking the puzzles is fun.
Also got back into Kingdom: Two Crowns. Picked up the Norse Lands DLC. I continue to be impressed by the minimalism of this game's controls. A strategy game that can be played with 3 buttons. Left, right, and a "toss coins" button. It's beautiful and engrossing and occasionally quite frustrating. Seems like every time I die I shout "oh so THAT can happen!?". A lot of trial and error. But I still have a hard time putting it down.
Also, got a hankerin' to play the original Tomb Raider. So what did I do? Pick up the remastered version? That would've made sense, but nope. Instead I bought a €45 external DVD drive, downloaded DOSBOX, dusted off my original Tomb Raider CD and started playing that in all it's low-res warped-texture keyboard-controled glory. Feeling like a real gaming hipster right now. I'm on level 7 now. Surprised at how much of this I still remember. The only modern convenience I'm really missing would be a quicksave feature.
Malf on 20/5/2024 at 08:26
I tried playing some Far Cry 5 recently but got pissed off with it snatching me out of what I was doing just so it could do an exposition dump at me, before dropping me back in the world miles from where it had grabbed me.
I did get as far as beating the Faith boss battle, who the game had done a great job of making me hate, but for all the wrong reasons.
But that forced exposition was so out of kilter with the freedom of the rest of the game, I just ragequit.
I've started playing Cult of the Lamb on the Steam Deck, which seems quite interesting so far. Not sure how long it'll hold my attention, but it's entertaining enough at the moment.
I've rinsed Streets of Rogue about as far as I can, having completed the Big Quest for most characters. The remainder have mechanics that are just irritating, with no built in traits to offset them. Roll on Streets of Rogue 2, currently my most anticipated game.
There were two characters I'd left quite late which I thoroughly enjoyed and had awesome mechanics, the Robot and the Alien. The robot needs to disable power boxes and has an EMP attack, while the alien needs to salvage space ship parts from vendor machines while having the ability to mind-control people, which is ridiculously overpowered and hilarious fun.
I also picked up Ghost of Tsushima on Friday, and I'm enjoying it so far, playing on the Lethal difficulty, where everyone dies in a couple of hits, including me. I may change that though, as it can feel a little unfair sometimes, especially as there's a long-standing bug that's carried over from the PS5 version where Standoffs occasionally don't work, meaning you have to eat the first hit.
But other than that, it's a very pretty game, with solid combat. Maybe a little too Ubigame openworld formulaic, and maybe a little generic, but set in an interesting point in history. Kinda makes me want to learn more about the Mongol invasions of Japan.
There are plenty of ways to approach outposts, making it feel very much like an Assassin's Creed or Far Cry game, with surprisingly robust stealth options. But as the "Leaders" of outposts are generally tougher and more unpredictable than the average mook, you can patiently clear every last enemy using underhanded assassination techniques, only for the Leader to beast you, because unlike everyone else, they're immune to one-hit assassination takedowns. Meaning that on Lethal difficulty, you will be attempting the outposts over and over and over until you get that perfect run.
Thankfully, the combat's engaging enough and the loading fast enough that it makes multiple attempts more tolerable.
Thirith on 20/5/2024 at 08:33
Escape Simulator was fun, and I like how they combine different types of puzzles, though I do wish they'd made some of the rooms a bit bigger - or at least had a couple of variants depending on the group size. Already with four people, some of these rooms are rather cramped. (I wonder how this felt for Jesh, who was playing in VR.) I imagine it's quite a bit worse if you've got up to eight people playing.
Renault on 20/5/2024 at 17:11
Quote Posted by henke
Also, got a hankerin' to play the original
Tomb Raider. So what did I do? Pick up the remastered version? That would've made sense, but nope. Instead I bought a €45 external DVD drive, downloaded DOSBOX, dusted off my original Tomb Raider CD and started playing that in all it's low-res warped-texture keyboard-controled glory. Feeling like a real gaming hipster right now. I'm on level 7 now. Surprised at how much of this I still remember. The only modern convenience I'm really missing would be a quicksave feature.
So you spent more on the DVD drive than it would have cost you to buy the remaster. Hmm. You know you can "downgrade" the visuals in the remastered version to the original's low res version, right?
henke on 20/5/2024 at 18:07
I know this.
I've also just been wanting to get an external DVD drive for a while to eventually take a trip down memory lane through all the old CDs I got sitting on my shelf. This was just what finally pushed me over the edge.
Renault on 20/5/2024 at 19:21
Yeah, actually I've thought about picking one up too, I have a few older game like Cryostasis and Heretic II that I'd like to play which aren't on Steam or gog.
