SD on 22/1/2024 at 23:14
Sticking with the Prison Architect aesthetic, I gave Rec Center Tycoon a whirl. The title is pretty self-explanatory I should think. It's okay. Quite unpolished, a few annoying bugs, and it doesn't really give you much guidance. I had some fun with it though. And the achievement for banning a patron for no reason is called "Reddit Mod", so props for that. For genre fans on discount.
Still, Rec Center Tycoon is positively hand-holding when compared to Kingdom Two Crowns. So far as I can gather, because the game gives you negligible hints, you need to run around getting gold coins to upgrade your base like some 2D tower defense game, although again, the precise purpose for doing so remains a mystery. The pixel graphics look nice, but I played for about an hour and I'm still not sure what's going on. A negative review on Steam (very much a minority opinion) refers to it simply as "Walk left to right simulator", which I think falls under the banner of "harsh but fair". I'll play a bit more, but I can't see this grabbing my attention unless it does something soon.
[EDIT: looking into it, and it seems this is the third game in a series; perhaps I'm missing something by not playing the first two, which are also in my library of shame]
Thirith on 23/1/2024 at 09:35
Tunic's melancholy worked for me, but it's definitely more of a vibe than anything else. There is definitely an underlying sadness to the story and world, but it's a relatively shallow sadness. With Hollow Knight, the melancholy is much more pervasive. Though weirdly - since I never played console games as a kid and therefore missed out on the games that Tunic riffs on - I still felt this melancholy for a past that I wasn't really a part of.
Anyway: after Islets, I got started on Thief mod extraordinare The Black Parade... and I realise that it'll take me some time to 'learn' Thief again. I had the same problem in reverse with Dishonored: I played it too much like Thief, expecting the world and especially the guards to react the same, and while there's obviously a lot of affinity between the two games, the systems do feel different in practice. I love what I've seen of The Black Parade, but I'll have to relearn things - when and how to move, how best to blackjack, how long to hang around in the shadows to observe - before I'll truly enjoy the game.
@Aja: Did you ever get to play The Entertainment in VR? (If I'm not mistaken, that option no longer exists, since the VR code was never updated.) Sadly, I never did, but I liked the idea a lot, and I would've loved to experience the lofi-but-stylish KRZ world in VR.
DuatDweller on 23/1/2024 at 12:03
Well is not a game is two games into one.
Yes is Tale of Two Wastelands, gotta admit it has a cumbersome install with Mod Organizer 2, once the merge is done you can start either game (Fallout 3 or Fallout New Vegas) from within New Vegas, Fallout 3 is acting like a super mod (since you can start a new game from NV), includes all DLCs for both games (you must have them for it to work).
You can even play some non TTW (Tale of Two Wastelands) mods of course they must be for NV else you couldn't play it, since all FO3 mods need to be converted to TTW.
I was having a blast with the D.E.I.M.O.S. mod for NV (non TTW), a little time travel and there you go.
henke on 23/1/2024 at 12:55
My office buddy Ville and I have been taking turns playing through MGS: Twin Snakes on the Game Cube over the past few weeks/months, and we finally reached the ending.
I'd only played the original up till the Sniper Wolf hallway bit previously, so it was fun to finally see the whole game. Kinda wild that this series became such a mainstream hit. Everything about it seems destined for cult classic status. Endless, self-indulgent cutscenes. Gameplay which is at once very arcadey AND too realistic. Hostile level design. Take that opening room. A nice introduction to stealth gameplay might simply be to have a couple guards patroling in a circle around the containers. With how sensetive the walk speed is, simply sneaking up on one of them (without accidentally running and letting them hear you) and knocking them out would be difficult enough. But instead the guards patrol in weird criss cross patterns. And there's 3 of them! And there's puddles which make you leave footprints so they can track you. Everything about the room feels designed to trip you up. It's hostile, and much of the game that follows feels the same. It's like they didn't want people to have fun playing this. Still, there's stealth bits later on which do work ok. It's constantly throwing unexpected twists at you. It's never boring. A very interesting game.
Sulphur on 23/1/2024 at 14:29
I've never played Twin Snakes, but what I remember is fans being critical of it when compared to the original MGS. Certainly the original had its flaws, and being a Kojima game, of course it was going to be self-indulgent, but I don't remember it tripping you up right from the off. In fact, the opening where the guards could see your footprints in the snow was kinda fun in the original MGS, because I certainly wasn't expecting that kind of detail - still, it was quite manageable.
Also, I hear the cutscenes in TS were... a bit much. Which is saying something when you're in Kojima town.
Anarchic Fox on 23/1/2024 at 14:56
Yeah, the action cutscenes were much less grounded in the Twin Snakes remake. I particularly remember one scene where Snake does parkour off a missile fired at him.
Aja on 23/1/2024 at 15:24
Quote Posted by Thirith
@Aja: Did you ever get to play
The Entertainment in VR? (If I'm not mistaken, that option no longer exists, since the VR code was never updated.) Sadly, I never did, but I liked the idea a lot, and I would've loved to experience the lofi-but-stylish
KRZ world in VR.
No, but I agree, the ending especially of The Entertainment would've been incredible in VR (although I've played it twice flat now and both times it genuinely did give me chills, even when I knew what was coming). There are some (
http://kentuckyroutezero.com/the-entertainment/vr.txt) goofy instructions on how to play it in "VR," but they mostly amount to putting on the play with a group of friends.
Quote:
Cost of this version varies with the price of bread and bricks, but it should be less expensive than an Oculus Rift headset.
Yakoob on 23/1/2024 at 22:12
I bounced off of Tunic after I realized it's basically a soulslike with a single one-time use health potion that only restores 1/3 of your health. I heard they added easy mode in the full game, but the demo I played before release was brutal.
henke on 24/1/2024 at 08:39
Quote Posted by Sulphur
In fact, the opening where the guards could see your footprints in the snow was kinda fun in the original MGS, because I certainly wasn't expecting that kind of detail - still, it was quite manageable.
Well we eventually managed to get past it so I suppose it was managable. Can't say it was fun tho.
And yeah Twin Snakes' cutscenes go on forever. I did some googling and someone had figured out the (
https://mgsforums.com/gameplay-cutscene-ratio-t27674.html) gameplay-to-cutscene ratios of the games by comparing HowLongToBeat time VS length of "All cutscenes from... " YT compilations.
Quote:
MGS1
Total play time = 11h 32m (692 minutes)
Gameplay = 8h 17 m (497 minutes)
Cutscenes = 3h 15m (195 minutes)
Gameplay/Cutscene = 2.5487
Cutscene Proportion = 28%
MGS2
Total play time = 13h 08m (788 minutes)
Gameplay = 7h 44m (464 minutes)
Cutscenes = 5h 24m, (324 minutes)
Gameplay/Cutscene = 1.4321
Cutscene Proportion = 41%
MGS3
Total play time = 16h 11m (971 minutes)
Gameplay = 11h 13m (673 minutes)
Cutscenes = 4h 58m (298 minutes)
Gameplay/Cutscene = 2.2584
Cutscene Proportion = 31%
MGS: PO
Total play time = 12h 36m (756 minutes)
Gameplay = 10h 39m (639 minutes)
Cutscenes = 1h 42m (102 minutes)
Gameplay/Cutscene = 6.2647
Cutscene Proportion = 13%
MGS4
Total play time = 19h 27m (1,167 minutes)
Gameplay = 10h 59m (659 minutes)
Cutscenes = 8h 26m (508 minutes)
Gameplay/Cutscene = 1.2972
Cutscene Proportion = 44%
MGS: PW
Total play time = 34h 08m (2,048 minutes)
Gameplay = 31h 11m (1,871 minutes)
Cutscenes = 2h 57m (177 minutes)
Gameplay/Cutscene = 10.5706
Cutscene Proportion = 9%
MGR: Revengeance
Total play time = 7h 47m (467 minutes)
Gameplay = 5h 28m (328 minutes)
Cutscenes = 2h 19m (139 minutes)
Gameplay/Cutscene = 2.3597
Cutscene Proportion = 30%
Twin Snakes isn't on the list, but lemme do the math...
Total play time = 10h 14m (614 minutes)
Cutscenes = 3h 23m (203 minutes)
Cutscene Proportion = 33%
Huh, not as bad as MGS2 and 4, but still pretty intense. I honestly felt like MGS3 had the most cutscenes, but I guess not.
Sulphur on 24/1/2024 at 10:20
MGS4 took the biscuit for cutscenes, in my experience. And I see that's borne out - it had an almost 1.5 hour epilogue, for crying out loud.
I also don't remember MGS2 having cutscenes that long, but they're probably counting the codec conversations, which definitely could go on for a bit.
Anyway, re: MGS: TTS, I'm fascinated by the idea that it's hard. I'll have to compare it with MGS 1 someday, maybe, but in my experience of MGS1-5, I'd say 3 was more challenging, but it also gave you way more options. MGS 1 had some boss fights that pissed me off a little, but they were fun to work out at the time. I don't remember dealing with the guards being particularly difficult in the PSX version at least.
