Sulphur on 19/5/2020 at 15:57
Quote Posted by qolelis
Heh, well, I'm trying. I finally wrote (
https://maskinkultur.com/2020/05/13/trackless/) a proper review, hopefully the first of many again.
Thanks, by the way, for reminding me of SOMA. I claimed my free copy on GOG some time ago, but never played it.
Good review! I'm not sure Trackless is the kind of game I'd play, but I appreciate the perspective anyway. :thumb:
And you're welcome. SOMA's a game anyone who's interested in sci-fi horror that explores questions of identity by throwing players down into the bottom of the lightless deep should play. It's a masterclass in dark, melancholy storytelling.
Tony_Tarantula on 19/5/2020 at 16:15
GTA V is free. Which is great because I got locked out of my old Rockstar account.
If anyone wants to play online I totally will NOT wait until you least expect it and then launch a rocket up your backside ;)
Nah I totally would. GTA V is perfectly suited to that kind of thing. And I'd totally expect you all to do it too and start an entertaining revenge back and forth. Had a fun game like that on 360 when me and some other dude got into an air to ground war where he kept blowing up my cars and I kept blowing up his planes.
Jason Moyer on 23/5/2020 at 02:56
I realized recently I probably hadn't replayed either of the good Thief games since the run-up to TDS. So I'm currently doing a mission a night in Thief Gold, and I'm about to start Undercover. I dunno what has changed since the last time I played it, but I can honestly say I've enjoyed the hell out of every mission so far. This game has to have the best mission design of anything I've ever played. Basically every mission until you get the sword is a tutorial-but-not-really, teaching you how to be better at the game so you can tackle the harder missions that come later. And within each mission things are generally laid out so that things like making noise or avoiding patrols or dealing with monsters starts out relatively basic and by the end you're just owning every obstacle being thrown at you. And they did it by training you to play it while you play it, instead of shoving some half-assed RPG system in there. God it's good.
Tony_Tarantula on 24/5/2020 at 00:48
Quote Posted by Jason Moyer
I realized recently I probably hadn't replayed either of the good Thief games since the run-up to TDS. So I'm currently doing a mission a night in Thief Gold, and I'm about to start Undercover. I dunno what has changed since the last time I played it, but I can honestly say I've enjoyed the hell out of every mission so far. This game has to have the best mission design of anything I've ever played. Basically every mission until you get the sword is a tutorial-but-not-really, teaching you how to be better at the game so you can tackle the harder missions that come later. And within each mission things are generally laid out so that things like making noise or avoiding patrols or dealing with monsters starts out relatively basic and by the end you're just owning every obstacle being thrown at you. And they did it by training you to play it while you play it, instead of shoving some half-assed RPG system in there. God it's good.
No half-assed RPG system? So how does the game make money on microtransactions to boost your skills?
DarkForge on 24/5/2020 at 09:44
Quote Posted by Malf
@Darkforge, having been on a bit of a Dishonored binge recently, I though I'd give Mankind Divided another go too, but quickly ran in to framerate issues and the inability to invert mouse. My system's no slouch, so the tanking FPS on that first level is massively disappointing, and was reminiscent of the last time I tried to run it; that was with a GTX1070, this time was with an RTX2080 Super. I honestly can't remember performance being this bad the first time I played the game on release, but I think I did turn lots of stuff down to get it running.
The invert mouse thing however seems to be an ongoing problem, and as the game's not really being developed any more, probably unlikely to get fixed.
It was enough to make me think "Yeah, I can't be arsed with this."
Just on the off-chance you still gave a damn, I'm almost done with the Mankind Divided DLC now. I played through all of "System Rift" and most of "A Criminal Past" with pretty much every setting as high as it can go ("Ultra" and so forth) and everything was stable and smooth aside from two brief lags on the opening cutscene of "System Rift". However I'm up to what I think is the last part of "A Criminal Past" and have now starting experiencing some random crashes to desktop - why it's only just started doing this now is beyond me.
Still, big improvement over my experience with the main game a few years back, so I guess it's still a win.
EDIT: Turned off the DirectX 12 setting and that seemed to solve the crashing problem for the rest of the DLC. Still no idea why I only started getting troubles near the end but, hey, all's well that ends well.
henke on 24/5/2020 at 17:49
Been playing a buncha things.
Cloudpunk - Finished it! And yeah I stand by my previous assessment of "interesting characters, poor voiceacting, so-so flying, pretty visuals." Overall, it was ok.
Kentucky Route Zero - Finished this one as well, the last chapter is very short. Yeah, this one is good n sad. Gorgeous visuals and music. It never really completely pulled me into it's world or really made me care about it's characters tho. It's one of those subtext-heavy things, and I'm not a SUBTEXT GUY.
Mutazione - Only just started this one last night when I couldn't sleep. After KRZ this will be my new "I can't sleep"-gaming. It's about a girl who goes to a monster island and talks to the monsters. It's nice and mellow and twee.
Snowrunner - I've pretty much wrapped-up Michigan and Alaska, and I'm about to get started on the Russian region. I mean... it's great. It's more Spintires y'know. Get some country music playing on Spotify and boot up Snowrunner and I'm in my comfort zone.
Desert Golfing - Dunno why but I've found myself drawn back to the desert. It's good podcast-gaming. Specifically I've been listening to How Did This Get Played? and Doughboys episodes while playing it.
The Outer Wilds - I dip into this now and then and there's always new discoveries to marvel at.
Days Gone - Haven't played this in weeks. I haven't finished it. It's too damn long.
Shadow Of The Collossus Remake - I've taken down 3 collossi, but I'm not really feeling it. I think once through this game(or its original, to be precise) was enough.
Thy Sword - This neat lil' hack n slash platformer just got released on consoles so I picked it up for Switch. It's good! Also I'm biased in saying that since it's developed by some local boys so who knows maybe I'm actually lying! The only way to know for sure is to pick up a copy of THY SWORD today! Out now on PC and consoles!
Sulphur on 24/5/2020 at 18:57
I'm glad to see that the universe has some sort of equilibrium. If you can't be engaged by the likes of KRZ and Shadow of the Colossus, then I don't have to feel particularly bad about telling Dark Souls 1's ponderousness to stick it where the sun ain't grossly incandescent.
Malf on 24/5/2020 at 19:22
Quote Posted by henke
Thy Sword - This neat lil' hack n slash platformer just got released on consoles so I picked it up for Switch. It's good! Also I'm biased in saying that since it's developed by some local boys so who knows maybe I'm actually lying! The only way to know for sure is to pick up a copy of THY SWORD today! Out now on PC and consoles!
Read this and got excited for a minute thinking someone had made a game out of the excellent Luna Brothers graphic novel "The Sword".
henke on 25/5/2020 at 06:14
Sulph, I was engaged enough to finish both those games once. Dark Souls had me hooked with its gameplay and worldbuilding, tho I never made heads or tails of the story.
Sulphur on 25/5/2020 at 06:35
Sure, I was engaged by Dark Souls enough to admire its overall design, but the story was too diffuse to really care about.
