Jason Moyer on 8/1/2024 at 03:19
Every time someone mentions Cocoon, I get disappointed that it's not a tie-in to the Ron Howard movie.
Sulphur on 8/1/2024 at 03:47
I think I last saw that, and its sequel, when I was 12. I have good memories of the first one - might be time to dig out those nostalgia goggles and have myself a rewatch.
Thirith on 8/1/2024 at 10:30
I very much see what you mean about "negative space", Sulphur. To some extent, there's a tension for me between the wonderfully tactile look and feel and the extreme 'gameyness'. I constantly feel like there's a puzzle designer standing next to me, nodding their head approvingly at their design, which is at odds with the wonderful tactile quality of the game's aesthetics. I kinda wish they'd placed these puzzles in a more Zelda-style world, letting you just explore and enjoy the vibe - the way that, say, Tunic and Hob did it, but that's very much not what the game does in terms of game design, added to which quite a few people praised it exactly for the way the game doesn't let you wonder around all confused but guides you throughout.
Sulphur on 8/1/2024 at 11:57
That's an interesting POV. I don't think I've felt the tension between the design and the tactility, but that's possibly because I don't see the gameworld as something with much in the way of either explicit or implicit stories to tell apart from just... existing, as it is, as an alien space. The tactility collapses to a function of playful immersiveness in my perspective, a sort of added fillip to the experience of navigating it.
I see what you're saying about feeling like the designer's hand is guiding you whether you want it to or not - and I've thought about it a bit, but I in the end I'd say they went with the right choice. As the puzzle variables keep expanding, the stuff you have to keep track of and various permutations possible to experiment with would quickly get out of hand, and you'd run afoul of a whole host of dead ends before you figured out the right path/pattern/worlds to use. I can't think of a way to keep the design as non-frustrating as it currently is while allowing the experience to be more free-form. The confusion, I posit, would not be worth that freedom.
Maybe there's a different game it could have been that tells a story through a hub and spoke design as a puzzle metroidvania, but we had that with Prince of Persia 2008, but that has its own issues with a linear story trying to be jigsawed across a non-linear framework. PoP 2008 was also a terrible game, in general, but that's neither here nor there.
Thirith on 8/1/2024 at 13:15
Oh, I'd definitely agree they made the right decision for Cocoon, but it's also a decision that some (like me) may find somewhat alienating because of its perfectly polished artifice. This kind of thing works better for me with games that posit an in-game puzzle maker, an 'intelligent designer' of sorts, as is the case with The Witness or even The 7th Guest with its hoary old puzzles (everything but Towers of Hanoi...), or obviously with Portal. Cocoon's aesthetic makes it seem like a strange (mostly) organic world, but its design is the opposite of organic, and I find myself wishing they'd done something with that discrepancy. But most likely it would've lost something in the process that makes it work so well as the thing it is.
catbarf on 8/1/2024 at 18:42
I recently finished Days Gone. I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of writing, and in addition to the impressive horde AI (being chased by 300+ zombies at once while maintaining a stable framerate is pretty cool) it's a good-looking game just in general, with some of the best facial animation I've seen in a AAA title. It's a little disappointing, then, that the gameplay is basically The Last Of Us transplanted into a cookie-cutter Ubisoft open world (complete with outpost markers), and that once I hit the 8-10 hour mark I'd experienced pretty much everything I'd be doing for the remaining 40ish hours it took to complete the story and sidequests. The story and characters were interesting enough to carry me through it, but I can't see myself replaying it anytime soon- the moment to moment gameplay is good, but it's just the same set of things over and over and over again.
So, on to True Stalker, a standalone Stalker mod. Unlike most of the currently popular ones it is (a) story-focused, and (b) not trying to be an obnoxiously difficult survival sim, making it less Tarkov or DayZ and more like the original games. It has a massive UI facelift that I quite appreciate, and incorporates a bunch of gameplay additions from more modern mods that are generally light touch and appreciated, on top of new models, animations, and effects. I'm only a few hours in, but I've already run into some fun new Roadside Picnic esque anomalies and weird mutants; there's a lot of new content here besides the usual thirteen million new guns. I'm all the more excited for Stalker 2, but in the meantime this is so far a seriously impressive fan sequel.
Aja on 8/1/2024 at 21:22
Quote Posted by Sulphur
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.
I find the wiki kind of endearing, but Dreamcore I think is more heavily influenced by the (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4dGpz6cnHo&t=2s) Kane Pixels Backrooms videos (the way the camera tumbles to the floor and the title card are obvious tributes). It feels slick and confident and I was surprisingly engaged; normally with walking sims I get bored after a few minutes, but I played Dreamcore for a couple hours. Another thing it does really well is create tension through ambiguity. Many times I'd see a blurry shape at the end of a long corridor and assume it was something malevolent, only for it to resolve as another doorway or a plant as I got close.
Jason Moyer on 9/1/2024 at 03:42
Quote Posted by Sulphur
I think I last saw that, and its sequel, when I was 12. I have good memories of the first one - might be time to dig out those nostalgia goggles and have myself a rewatch.
The sequel is bad, but I like the original quite a bit. Ron Howard is kind of an underrated director I think. I wouldn't put him on the level of the greats, but I think I've enjoyed nearly every movie he's made. Out of the flood of sudden revival racing movies the one he made, that arguably started the trend (Rush), is easily the best one.
Edit: Maybe I should put him on that level, at least as a craftsman. Splash, Cocoon, Willow, Parenthood, Backdraft, Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind, Rush. I should probably go watch the other stuff I've never seen like Frost/Nixon.
Edit 2: I keep seeing those screens you've been posting of Dreamcore on Steam, Aja, and it looks amazing.
Tomi on 13/1/2024 at 08:53
I've also been playing some Cocoon, but it's not really my cup of tea, I suppose. It looks pretty cool and some of the puzzles are quite satisfying, but I think it's all too "abstract" for me. I don't really care about the little bug or the game world at all. It feels like I'm just doing one puzzle after another, without understanding what I'm actually supposed to do and why.
The new game in the SteamWorld series, SteamWorld Build, is alright. I've loved all the previous Steamworld games (apart from Steamworld Quest that was merely okay) so my expectations were quite high. SteamWorld Build is a city builder game that doesn't really bring anything new to the genre, apart from a rather unique setting with the steam-powered mining bots and their funny machines. I haven't played any city builder game for years, but this one is very simple and you'll learn the rules as you play. Or actually, I'm still not certain how everything is supposed to work, but it doesn't seem to matter. Playing Steamworld Build is quite a relaxing experience, and you can't do much wrong, at least not on the normal difficulty.
I don't even know why I like Steamworld Build as much as I do. There's something quite satisfying about its simple gameplay loop that keeps me going. I wish the little steambots and their fun personalities played a bigger role in the game though, but apart from some short text dialogue here and there, you barely even notice them. All the buildings and the machines are very steamworldy though. The gameplay is starting to feel a bit too repetitive after around 10 hours in, and so far I've only played one of the five different maps in the game. I'm definitely going to try the others, but I doubt that I'll make it through all of them.
henke on 14/1/2024 at 07:48
The only thing I'll add to the Cocoon discussion is that since you play a little fly guy they should've played Pretty Fly For A White Guy over the end credits. Then it would've been good.
Played through Wolfenstein: The New Order. Fantatastic. The storytelling and the gameplay are great.
Playing Dead Space Remake right now. It's all predictably good stuff. I miss the zero-G system from the original tho. Sure it was slow and clunky, but also so different from zero G in any other game.