Fingernail on 17/2/2021 at 10:52
Quote Posted by PigLick
Hey Fingernail, nice to see you are still kicking around. :)
Sure am, often lurkin'! Thanks, good to be around!
I should also mention that everybody should play
Divinity: Original Sin 2, finished it co-op with my husband last year, it's well written and often hilarious (the quests are interesting, I can't say the main story was the most original or gripping), engaging, entertaining turn-based elemental combat system, amazing you can play couch co-operatively all the way through. Took about a year of playing on-and-off to finish. Wish there were more deep RPG/adventure games you could play like that, most couch co-op stuff tends to be light games like Overcooked and stuff (those are great too).
Thirith on 17/2/2021 at 14:11
After finishing Fallen Order, I decided to play something very different: Rusty Lake Roots, the second of the surreal, eerie Rusty Lake games, a series of point-and-click puzzlers. The puzzles are pretty standard stuff, but the aesthetic and tone of these games are great, if you're into this specific unsettling, dreamlike atmosphere. The games are also short enough not to overstay their welcome, so for me at least they work tremendously well as eerie little tone poems where you solve puzzles to make strange, bad things happen.
[video=youtube;u4qvU92rBlQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4qvU92rBlQ[/video]
faetal on 17/2/2021 at 14:13
Quote Posted by henke
Speaking of which, should I bother with AC Rogue?
I really liked it. It is basically just a spin on Black Flag, but with colder climate (which I think they pulled off really well) and a few new mechanics (which I rather enjoyed).
The ending segues nicely into a key event in Unity, so maybe worth considering if you want a bit of extra continuity in the overall "plot".
faetal on 17/2/2021 at 14:14
Quote Posted by Shoshin
I am gonna goddamn finish Black Mesa. On Interloper chapter now, think I'm close to the end but who knows. The Xen chapters have been a mixed bag for me. I liked the design of the earlier Xen stuff, though there wasn't much actual gameplay, just moving through a psychedelic alien landscape. But Gonarch's Lair onward has been a slog. Still, gonna finish and then move it to my done pile.
I bounced off it during the extended Gonarch slog. May have to jump back in and finish at some point though.
Shoshin on 17/2/2021 at 14:23
Quote Posted by faetal
I bounced off it during the extended Gonarch slog. May have to jump back in and finish at some point though.
I had the same trouble initially, then I think they patched down the difficulty level in Gonarch and I was able to get past it. But at this point it's just sheer bloodymindedness on my part to finish. I'm so close to the end I don't want to leave it unfinished. These last chapters haven't been enjoyable though. Which is a shame because the entire rest of the game was so well done.
nicked on 17/2/2021 at 16:43
Yeah, it's like they knew they had to make Xen better than the original, but somehow also decided that that meant it had to be longer too.
By the end, it felt like a whole other game tacked onto the end, and stuffed up some of the pacing.
Briareos H on 17/2/2021 at 17:14
I must be the only one who ever liked Xen :/ It gets a super bad rep because of the platforming but I thought it had a lot of cool abstract geometry and interesting texture choices. Some tight combat challenges too.
In any way I appreciate a lot of what they did in Black Mesa, I loved the human settlements and loved the idea of interpreting some of the abstraction into Vortigaunt architecture. Less convinced about the wilder, jungle-like parts, and about the slog of the factory. Overall I prefer the original but kudos to the team.
henke on 17/2/2021 at 18:26
I played
Stowaway, which is a game Piglick recomended a while back. Short first person sci-fi horror game. Very cool minimalist aesthetic, tho the character animations are a bit wonky. The story isn't especially original, but I like the way it's told. This game is free on itch, and I'd recommend it to anyone who liked Alien Isolation and is in the mood for a short story you can play through in one sitting: (
https://dirigogames.itch.io/stowaway)
PigLick on 18/2/2021 at 08:07
haha yeh forgot about Stowaway, I really loved the vibe of it. So, is anyone playing Vallheim? I plunged in and its actually very good if you enjoy survival games with rpg elements and pvp.
nicked on 18/2/2021 at 08:31
Quote Posted by Briareos H
I must be the only one who ever liked Xen :/ It gets a super bad rep because of the platforming but I thought it had a lot of cool abstract geometry and interesting texture choices. Some tight combat challenges too.
In any way I appreciate a lot of what they did in Black Mesa, I loved the human settlements and loved the idea of interpreting some of the abstraction into Vortigaunt architecture. Less convinced about the wilder, jungle-like parts, and about the slog of the factory. Overall I prefer the original but kudos to the team.
Yeah I never hated Xen - the way some people talk you'd think it ruined the whole game. Aesthetically, original Xen was always great - it's so uniquely weird in a way that the Black Mesa remake didn't really capture - the new Xen feels more like a bizarre but believable ecosystem, whereas the original feels like a dying and shattered reality. But with the exception of a setpiece or two, Xen gameplay was a big step down from the rest of Half-Life, cranking up the annoyance factor with a lot of tiresome trial-and-error stuff.
It's much easier to know where to go and what to do in Black Mesa's Xen, and if you mess up, it rarely feels unfair. But by that point in the game, the difficulty has already ramped up to peak levels, and Black Mesa just sustains that level for way too long. Playing it felt like listening to a good piece of music that gradually ramps up in intensity, but then inexplicably holds a single note for a whole minute. If there had been one somewhat-obtuse plug puzzle in that Interloper factory, it would have been a fine challenge. But the game throws like ten of them at you.
However, I will say that it redeemed itself after the slog with a much improved final boss fight.