Mr.Duck on 22/2/2020 at 08:00
Currently playing...
* Spider-Man + DLC (PS4).
* Blasphemous (PC).
* Invisible Inc. + Contingency DLC (PC).
* Fallout: New Vegas UE + a buncha mods (PC).
* Stardew Valley (PC) - Co-op mostly atm.
* Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime (PC) - Co-op only. God bless remote play on Steam.
Tomi on 22/2/2020 at 22:19
I've tried to keep my
Trine 4 sessions short so that the game lasts longer, so I took a little break from it, and started another fairytale kind of a game instead:
Mages of Mystralia. I was going to rush through it, but I just can't seem to be able to play games that way... so in the end I got all the achievements. :erg: It didn't take too long though, and it was a fun little adventure. The game is like some sort of a
Zelda / Little Big Adventure / Magicka crossover, and a pretty good one at that. The graphics are colourful and cute, nothing terrible happens to anyone, there's a little bit of harmless humour, and it's all very nice and charming.
The best thing about MoM is without a doubt the magic system. It's simply magnificent! There are four different types of spells, but during the game you'll find lots of different kind of runes, and by combining those you can create some
very imaginative and complicated spells. Coming up with your own spells is really fun, even though at one point I semi-accidentally invented a proper killer spell that got me through just about every fight in the game. I don't think that the system is very well balanced; there are some rune combinations that are ridiculously good, but hey, at least it's fun! It's a shame, however, that the game wastes a lot of the potential of this incredible magic system. You don't really
need to create those complex spells, at least not for combat. There are puzzles where you need to use your imagination a bit, but even those are often quite simple.
Inline Image:
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/794260431789129564/061AFCB205EE1EF962D2D4768B87D217411B6046/
Thirith on 23/2/2020 at 12:27
That moment in Kentucky Route Zero Act III is still one of my favourite moments in games, but really in any medium - not least because the game borrows so well from a range of media.
Does anyone here know if the interlude between Acts II and III still works in VR? I doubt that it'd really be for most VR aficionados, but for someone like me who's into theatre as well, it'd be fascinating.
Sulphur on 23/2/2020 at 19:17
Since QD finally fixed Detroit: Become Human on PC so it doesn't max out every single CPU thread you throw at it, I've been playing a bit and... yeah, it's a David Cage game. So far the story is like if you slammed bits of Fahrenheit, Heavy Rain, and a random android awakening together. I'm not warming to it, but I'm not cool on it either - not yet, at least. Much of the story is hammy, and yet a lot of the scenarios could work if there were actually, like no words. None. Just make it silent theatre with Cage's ham hands nowhere around any speaking parts and it'd be 100% more compelling, though it still appropriates the history of slavery in America to tell a
science-fiction robot story*. But, this is also keeping in mind I'm only halfway through. We all know Monsieur Cage's games are these confections that tend to deflate at the end like the world's most overbaked souffle.
So it has this menu girl named Chloe in the background who's an android that keeps looking around the screen at random and comments on shit you do - if you're booting up the game after a day, she'll say it's been a while. If you don't do anything for a bit, she'll quote random trivia. If you go into the options section, she'll explain you're at the options section, which lets you select various options - gee, thanks Chloe. Is there an option for you to go stick your fingers in a light socket and hum the theme song to
Short Circuit? No?
She just asked me a question. 'Are we friends?' And I'm like, 'Listen, you're basically (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLy-AwdCOmI) I Feel Fantastic but marginally more horrifying because there isn't even a synth track in the background to take the edge off.' So I click on 'No'. And she doesn't say anything, but she continues looking around at the screen with a quivering lip and sad eyes and is just very actively distraught.
I suddenly catch myself feeling bad about this for a second. Like, actually considering what I would have lost if I'd just said 'Yes' to this random digital assemblage (modelled after a very gorgeous person, no doubt) instead of being
the man in black realistic. And y'know, that's actually this game's biggest triumph: it's not the story and its granular choice->consequence flowchart, it's the ability to weaponise performance capture. I mean, I still feel like I need to go back and make this stupid menu android happy, even though I can't now; I made my choice. It's gonna stay with me. And that's a good thing.
*This can actually be done right if your treatment isn't all blunt riffs off history or general asspulls, and has been attempted by not just Asimov or Clarke. There's an old IF game called (
https://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=frfoh6e7hur2beiu) LASH that made a better fist of it, and while it still fails, it's the kind of failure that points the way instead of circumscribing the entire territory as an irradiated no man's land.
Tomi on 23/2/2020 at 19:44
Quote Posted by icemann
You better be playing that with the New California and Autumn Leaves singleplayer mods. They will forever be part of any NV play through I do from here on. Fallout - Fronteer is on the horizon too.
What do those mods do then? It's the amount of "essential" mods that has always put me off the game, but I think it's about time I gave New Vegas a try after owning it for about eight years.
Sulphur on 23/2/2020 at 19:47
They're both additional, fan-made campaigns. Quality-wise, I don't know if they're up to snuff with the rest of NV, but I hear good things about New Calif at least.
Starker on 23/2/2020 at 21:46
Oh, that's right, Detroit did actually come out on PC, didn't it? Must keep an eye out for a sale.
David Cage gets a lot of flak, some of it deserved, but I have never come away from his games with the feeling I have lost something. Omikron, Fahrenheit, Heavy Rain -- they've all had something memorable, something interesting, whether it was in a good or a bad way.
Omikron was clunky as hell to play and had a somewhat cheesy premise and looked like a budget Blade Runner rip-off, but the high concept was actually pretty cool and IMO it nailed the weird alien feel of the world pretty successfully, not unlike some far better games, such as Outcast and Morrowind and perhaps Beyond Good and Evil.
Fahrenheit is actually pretty damn good in the beginning. It had me completely hooked for maybe a solid third of the game, even if the completely bonkers latter parts are just The Room in video game form.
Heavy Rain is probably the most boring of Cage games (though, as Yahtzee suggested, it does get a bit more interesting if you headcanon the FBI agent into being a visitor from the future suffering from the effects of time travel when he changes the future), but it still has its moments and again, the high concept of how far someone would go to save their child is a potentially interesting one to explore -- would you kill someone, would you kill yourself, etc... It's not always executed well in the game, but the
finger scene did make me flinch, it was just that brutal.
Sure, his games are all about taking an interesting premise and not doing anything interesting with it, but he sure as hell fails in an entertaining way.
As an aside, every time I read the words "I feel fantastic", (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zidiWe9yq88) this is the song that plays in my head.
froghawk on 24/2/2020 at 00:00
I couldn't make it through Fahrenheit. I tried, I really did - I didn't even make it to the bonkers stuff, which is a shame. But the thought of those quicktime events makes me shudder. Omikorn seemed cool to me but I didn't manage to get past the clunkiness on that one, either.
Starker on 24/2/2020 at 00:17
Maybe watch it on Youtube or something. It's probably worth it for the reactions alone.
bob_doe_nz on 24/2/2020 at 01:47
Tried out the Dying Light Free Weekend.
This is what Dead Island should have fucking been.