henke on 27/11/2024 at 17:32
Quote Posted by Tomi
I am, or
was playing
Kona. It's a very short game, and if I hadn't just wandered around searching for things that didn't exist or that I didn't need, I suppose it'd be possible to finish the game in like two hours. I absolutely loved the first half of the game; the atmosphere was fantastic and solving the mystery was really exciting. I felt like a proper private detective, trying to put together pieces of the puzzle and figuring out what's going on. I could almost
feel the cold wind while playing Kona, so it would have been nice to see some more survival stuff in the game. Now I never felt that I was in any danger, as there's plenty of food, firewood and campfires (etc) all over the place.
Towards the end the game unfortunately turns into a poor man's
Alan Wake. Things turn a bit too weird for me, and the way how the plotted up in the end just feels so rushed. I was expecting the game to last a few more hours (at my slow pace) but suddenly it just... ends.
Yup, that pretty much sums up my thoughts on Kona as well. I liked the sequel (which is in the game pass btw) more.
I've mainly been playing Stalker 2 lately, but I'll save my thoughts on that for the proper thread in the Stalker subforum. Yes, that's right, we still have the Stalker subforum.
Tomi on 29/11/2024 at 09:37
I've played Nine Sols for about three hours right now, and I can now remember what I can't stand about soulslike games. The goddamn boss fights. Yeah, they're supposed to be challenging and epic, but I just hate this kind of game design. Even the normal enemies in this game provide a decent challenge, and some mini-bosses can be pretty tough, but I'm now at my first proper boss fight and it feels like I've been banging my head against the wall for like an hour. I know that I only need to git gud, but it's all about memorizing the attacks, trying to figure out at which frame of the attack animation to hit the parry button, and just getting better a little by little through lots of attempts.
Finally I think I've managed to beat the boss and as I drain the last pixels of the boss health bar I celebrate wildly, only to find out that it was only the first stage of the boss fight. F*CK OFF :D I've used all my health items already and my health bar is almost empty, so the boss kills me with one strike. Now, to learn how the second stage works, I first have to run from the latest checkpoint, kill some normal bad guys on the way, watch a short cutscene as the big boss appears, and then play the first stage of the battle over and over again. I can beat the first stage without too much trouble now, but it's all so dull. I like(d) Nine Sols but if the rest of the boss fights are going to be like this, I'm not sure if I want to waste my time on this game.
Thirith on 29/11/2024 at 13:40
I know how you feel, and I probably felt some version of that myself. Nonetheless, I came to enjoy the boss fights, partly due to Stockholm Syndrome (which I know isn't a real thing, shut up), but largely because they're the kind of boss fights where I genuinely feel that I'm getting better, albeit very slowly. There are games where I come to enjoy that sense of progress of the game teaching me its skill set. But yes, this and especially Sekiro did make me wonder repeatedly whether it's really worth it, and even if I finally answered that question in the positive, it is still a question whether it's worth putting myself through it when I've got a growing backlog of games where I wouldn't have to work so damn hard.
Tomi on 29/11/2024 at 16:24
Yeah, I couldn't just stop playing Nine Sols. Just one more try... and then another... and another... until I managed to beat that damn boss. :p As tedious and frustrating the learning process is, that feeling of satisfaction when you finally win is something else! Not only I can actually enjoy the game again for a good while now (until the next boss fight), I think I also actually learned something that makes me better at this game. And in some twisted way I think I may have enjoyed the challenge of the boss fight, even though it certainly didn't feel like it at the time.
Starker on 29/11/2024 at 17:06
Somewhere along the line I feel like the whole genre has become more and more about challenge and less about careful exploration and steady progression. And yes, overcoming a challenge can be rewarding in and of itself, but for me, it just feels like the game throws up arbitrary "must be this good to continue" road blocks that you must power through. And yeah, Sekiro was a prime example, mostly because it lacked any kind of RPG elements that would have given you different options for improvement or a summoning system to assist the player (though you can enlist one NPC for a miniboss fight).
demagogue on 29/11/2024 at 19:08
It's not the genre for me.
I know that feeling, but in a different context I guess.
The masochistic kick that I get from games is more in the line of Shattered Pixel, DROD, Caves of Qud, and FTL, where you're navigating through some environment one move at a time. You've got all the time in the world to plan each move, but when it's a tough situation, every move really matters a lot, and if you make the wrong move everything can start crashing down quickly and completely, or that could start happening naturally, and you really have to think hard to just squeak your way through it alive.
I guess the difference is that I get more into the mental & tactical side of it, less the twitch and technique side.
Jason Moyer on 30/11/2024 at 18:36
Finished ME3LE which was actually better than I remembered. The opening hours don't leave a good impression but once it gets going it's a good time. The 3 DLC packs are excellent as I'm sure everyone already knows, and are somehow more polished than chunks of the base game are. Started replaying as bitchy redhead/green eyes pixiecut Shepard which is funnier than I remember. Calling the Hanar a big stupid jellyfish. Encouraging Garrus and Wrex bloodlust. For this playthrough I installed what seem to me to be essential mods, and the difference in ME1LE is pretty stunning. Running the community patch, the lighting restoration patch, and the mod that removes weapon slots from character classes that don't have those skills which is a godsend with how bad micromanaging inventory is. The game looks amazing with the unified models/textures from Legendary Edition coupled with the original post-processing effects, I'm not sure why it didn't ship that way. And while it's still a somewhat janky game at its core, the community patch really polished up much of the experience. Looking forward to seeing what the unofficial patches do to ME2LE and ME3LE, glancing at the changelog for the ME3LE one it seems to fix the weird lighting and model/texture bugs that make the early parts and the Citadel areas seem so jank.
PigLick on 1/12/2024 at 03:43
Yeh I thought ME3 was the weakest of trilogy when I first played it, but having replayed the LE I agree with you. The dlc (which I didn't have the first time) are great especially the citadel one. The thing that I hated was the stupid dream space boy sequences, even more infuriating 2nd time around.
Jason Moyer on 1/12/2024 at 04:02
I don't mind the AI manifesting itself as the boy and still think that was more clever than most angry internet men give them credit for, but any time the game makes you sit through cutscenes and/or walk in slo-mo I want to smack someone. The dream sequences and the entire final level are just infuriating from a wasting my time standpoint. Idea wise they're fine, but jesus. And if you want to see the other endings you have to play like an hour where you're just pushing the W key and watching cutscenes with no save points after the mission starts even though the game ends with a Deus Ex Machina.
nicked on 4/12/2024 at 08:05
I've been replaying through Half-Life 2 with the new developer commentary, which has some really interesting stuff - lots of reminiscences and explanations of the tech and level design processes.
Also running through the Episodes because they're all bundled together now, but I might have to drop Episode 2. Now I remember why I've only ever played through Episode 2 once - the big battle at the end where you have to defend the base from dozens of striders. It's an overwhelming, stressful and incredibly unfun difficulty spike that, for a Valve game, is uncharacteristically unfair. A brutally punishing Tower Defense section was definitely not the direction I ever wanted Half-Life to go in.
I've also been sinking many hours into Streets of Rogue, which is best described as an arcade immersive sim. Everything is systems-driven, and the simple pixel art style and fast, responsive actions provide a framework to very easily allow for an insane variety of playstyles and emergent chaos.
