henke on 29/1/2020 at 15:24
Recent gaming roundup
Euro Truck Simulator 2 - On the road again! Drove through Poland, Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, France, England and Scotland. Think I'm good for now.
Trackmania Turbo - I like it, except for a couple things. The campaign has you switching between 4 different car-types, but only 2 of them are really fun, the drifty Canyon-type and the F1-style Stadium-type, the other 2 are kinda fidgety and not much fun. Also, some of the UI stuff kinda sucks. You can instantly reset to the startline at any point during a race, unless you finish it in which case you gotta click through several screens just to get back to the startline. Anyway, it's Trackmania. It's fun.
Snakeybus - It's ok.
Frog Detective 1 - 48 min to play through the whole thing. Had a few laughs. A fun lil adventure.
Prey Mooncrash - Yeah this was good, but it's not grabbing me the way Prey did. Played it for 4 hours, not sure I wanna play it any more.
Jigsaw Puzzles HD on iPad - now this is the stuff. My GO-TO toilet-gaming as of late.
Beppo's Hole In One Golf - I am very good at (
https://whilefun.itch.io/beppos-hole-in-one-golf) Beppo's Hole In One Golf. I even got Par on Super Expert Pro once. Here's a video:
[video=youtube;Nebk9eUAF00]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nebk9eUAF00[/video]
Malleus on 2/2/2020 at 19:59
I don't watch (or particularly like) anime, so when I first heard of Code Vein, I thought I won't touch it with a ten foot pole. But later I watched streams, and tried the demo (there's one now on Steam), and it convinced me to give it a try. This turned out to be a good idea.
The gameplay is pretty much standard souls-like, but the rpg system is slightly different. Your stats are leveled equally and you alter them and customize your build entirely with various items. So you can change builds on the fly. Important part of the combat are 'gifts', which are basically spells, buffs, and special moves for weapons. There are a lot, and all playstyles can make use of these. There are some pretty interesting ones, like the buff that significantly increases your combat numbers, but when its time runs out, you die. :) These cost ichor, which is the third character resource (after hp and stamina). You can restore ichor by hitting enemies, as opposed to healing, which you can only get at 'bonfires', as per classic Dark Souls tradition. I don't know, I prefer soulslike games where we are somewhat independent of bonfires (like Dark Souls 2 with lifegems, and Surge 2's energy system).
As for difficulty, the game is friendlier than DS, since you get an AI teammate who can distract enemies and even revive you. This doesn't make it too easy, in fact, the game seems to be balanced around this, but it's nice to able to start at a lower difficulty, as opposed to having no options. You can of course leave the AI partner, if you desire more challenge.
The visuals of the game are a mixed bag. The weapons, enemies and characters can only be described as "over the top". This took some time for me to get used to, but at some point I just accepted that things here can be just silly. The environments however are kinda bland apart from a few cool areas. The level design is nice though, based around shortcuts, and having decent exploration. I also have to mention the character creator, which is amazing. So many options. I can safely say that it was one of the main reasons I started playing this game.
As far as the story goes, I didn't know what to expect, but I liked it. Based on the silly aspects of the presentation I though it's going to be like that, but then it threw character drama and hard hitting moments at me. I wasn't ready for that! :) But it was a pleasant surprise. It was interesting to discover and kept me interested till the end. Also shout out to the great soundtrack.
I was afraid to dive into this, but ended up loving it. I'd recommend this to anyone who isn't burned out on the Souls gameplay loop. I thought about creating a topic for this in the Soulslike section, but not only noone have played this game here, but it hasn't even been mentioned ever...
Starker on 2/2/2020 at 20:34
Yeah, I've been playing it too. It's a solid soulslike so far. I thought writing about it, but I don't think it really stands out all that much, except perhaps for style and presentation. If you're into Fashion Souls, this game definitely has you covered.
reizak on 3/2/2020 at 12:51
I've also been playing Ys 8 and enjoying it a lot. Never really got into these games even though the first game on Master System is a cherished childhood memory (I never really got anywhere though since my English was lacking as an 8 year old) and I've dabbled with a couple since then. This one seems to have a lot more of stuff other than just combat compared to the others, although it's still most of what you get up to. The story is pretty good and there's some decent characters and as you mentioned the music is super catchy. I've had the (
https://youtu.be/PfWYlVQPY7Y?list=PLzFTGYa_evXi6iVzAPRg4_kkNphkGXG7c) night hunt music stuck in my head for the past week.
Alas, I got to chapter 6 and what seems like the very final stretch, and then I made the mistake of giving this Breath of the Wild thing a try on Cemu and promptly lost interest in everything else. What an awesome game. I'd almost be willing to buy my first console in 30 years just for that if it didn't run better on an emulator.
Thirith on 3/2/2020 at 13:29
I've given Doom (2016) a second chance to win me over, but I think it's not managing. I'm probably a bit less than halfway through the game, but while I don't actively hate it, I'm not getting much enjoyment out of it, and I doubt that will change massively. It's definitely not the game, though, it's me: I don't particularly enjoy shooters where I constantly have to be on the move. I like being able to rest, reassess the situation and replan - or, if a game tries to keep me constantly moving, then I want the game to focus on traversal rather than combat, such as Mirror's Edge, for instance. I thought I'd enjoy Doom well enough in short, half-hour bursts, in the morning before going to work, but unless something changes drastically, It's Just Not For Me. I'll probably try to finish the level (Kadingir Sanctum, I think), but otherwise that's it and I'll focus on the rest of my backlog instead.
henke on 3/2/2020 at 15:25
DOOM 2016 goes on for so long that even a lot of people who like the game don't make it to the end, so don't feel any pressure to finish it.
I don't have much new stuff to play at the moment so I'm going through my backlog. Currently playing Driveclub, on PS4. It's a decent enough racer, somewhere between arcade and sim. The drifting events are the best.
Judith on 3/2/2020 at 16:16
Finished Plague Tale recently, and it's not a good game. It reminds me of Velvet Assassin, although it's not downright broken, but it's rather poor stealth game with great graphics and dramatic storyline (that holds up only thanks to engaging French voiceover; other versions are rubbish). Binary stealth, failure means reloading a checkpoint, artificial (and mostly linear) map setups, im-sim design ignored completely.
Renzatic on 3/2/2020 at 18:59
Quote Posted by henke
DOOM 2016 goes on for so long that even a lot of people who
like the game don't make it to the end, so don't feel any pressure to finish it.
Doom is not too long, they are too weak. I care not for their mewling prostestations. :mad:
Sulphur on 4/2/2020 at 06:21
Rip and tear until it is done :mad:
Malf on 4/2/2020 at 10:33
The Surge just got too crashy for me, and combined with its Souls-like approach to difficulty, I'm never able to build up the momentum to power on through and see it through to the end, so I've stopped at the bio-labs.
I spent some quality time with Hitman 2 this weekend, clearing up some challenges in Hawke's Bay, after solving crashy behaviour in that too. It had somehow changed the renderer back to DX11 from DX12 and was crashing within minutes of loading a level.
Still one of my favourite games of recent years, and the content's still coming.
I also got sucked back in to playing Witcher 3 over the weekend, but finally had to put it down last night, as the mods I was using, combined with the fact that my NG+ Geralt had reached level 100, meant the attribute point system had broken and I was no longer able to respec. I could just power on through with my current build, which is fun enough, but I want to be able to experiment, and this was enough to take the wind out of my sails.
So last night I plonked down the cash for RDR2 on the PC, as I never got around to finishing it on the PS4, and I figure long-term, some of the TTLG crew will probably end up getting it too, which opens up the possibility of co-op cowpokery.
While waiting for it to download (IT'S FECKING HEEEOOOGE), I saw that Dawn of Man was on sale, aaaand next thing you know, it's in my library.
I started playing it while waiting on RDR2, and so far, this is very much my jam. I think this may be taking up my time for the foreseeable.
This kind of indirect-control city-builder / management game ticks a lot of the same boxes that Dwarf Fortress does for me, and it also gives me strong Populous vibes.
Plus, compared to RDR2, which is well over 100GB, this is tiny at around 1.7GB. The juxtaposition tickles me :)