General gaming superthread

Ooh, I love fun things! (Games, both video and traditional, discussion. looser posting styles allowed)

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Re: General gaming superthread

Post by Jill (?) » Fri Jun 05, 2020 11:47 pm

diribigal wrote:
Sat May 30, 2020 1:20 pm
And there were a lot of points where I thought "modern game design would have fixed this".
I think this is true of just about every game from the NES and SNES era.

LttP is where Zelda games were headed by a new director, stopped being as open-ended and exploration-y, and instead began railroading the player along a mostly predetermined path instead. They went on to make some extremely fine games in spite of this model, but it took them until Breath of the Wild to really think about the kind of potential that Zelda games used to have before LttP resigned them to a stricter "keys and locks" format.

Otherwise, LttP can be considered a first draft of its kind as it's very rough around the edges in general. The most glaring thing to me is that they didn't think at any point to use the L and R buttons on the controller for anything, when they could have been used for quick-swapping or binding more items or any other potential convenience.

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Re: General gaming superthread

Post by Gloomy Rube (?) » Sat Jun 06, 2020 1:58 am

If you wanna feel really weird, play Ancient Stone Tablets. It's the official sequel to LttP that was released for their satellite addon for the SNES. It's -off-. It's like LttP but not. And it even has improvements like being able to turn while dashing.
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Re: General gaming superthread

Post by DaikatunaRevengeance (?) » Sat Jun 13, 2020 5:10 pm

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Re: General gaming superthread

Post by DaikatunaRevengeance (?) » Sat Jun 13, 2020 5:16 pm

Don't fuck it up, 2K :twonk:
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Re: General gaming superthread

Post by Princess Flufflebutt (?) » Sat Jun 13, 2020 5:47 pm

DaikatunaRevengeance wrote:
Sat Jun 13, 2020 5:16 pm
Don't fuck it up, 2K :twonk:
2K: :amazing:
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Re: General gaming superthread

Post by DaikatunaRevengeance (?) » Sat Jun 13, 2020 6:18 pm

:negative:
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Re: General gaming superthread

Post by Pocket (?) » Sat Jun 13, 2020 11:40 pm

They fucked up the BioShock remakes pretty bad so
Every jumbled pile of person has a thinking part that wonders what the part that isn't thinking isn't thinking of...

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Re: General gaming superthread

Post by Aria Genisi (?) » Sun Jun 14, 2020 1:26 am

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Re: General gaming superthread

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Re: General gaming superthread

Post by DaikatunaRevengeance (?) » Sun Jun 14, 2020 5:15 am

Pocket wrote:
Sat Jun 13, 2020 11:40 pm
They fucked up the BioShock remakes pretty bad so
They already massively fucked up the Mafia 2 remaster :-I
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Re: General gaming superthread

Post by Mechanical Ape (?) » Wed Jun 17, 2020 11:53 am

I’m a Klei fan so I’m excited to be trying Griftlands early access. I’m liking it! Playing a bounty hunter on a grungy, seedy planet; nice worldbuilding, art & dialogue; deck-based combat/negotiation system seems fine. Seems to be a cast of 100+ NPCs you can interact with and change your relations with; some alien dockworker might be a quest giver in one mission or an opponent in another mission, and the game tracks your history with that person for why they love or hate you now.

Also I fell back into the Frostpunk hole. I finished the main scenario when I first bought it, set it aside, and recently came back with the goal of Getting Good and trying the other content. And I kinda can’t stop playing now. Also the “Last Autumn” DLC really shows off the versatility of the engine since the scenario doesn’t even take place in winter; there’s green grass and liquid water and those look great too.

People talk about the tone and mood of Frostpunk and This War of Mine, but these pieces are built on actual games with game mechanics, and the mechanics are good, and ultimately that’s what keeps me coming back.
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Re: General gaming superthread

Post by Madeline (?) » Sat Jun 20, 2020 6:27 pm

My video game Plague Diary: hidden for holy shit wall of text

I’ve put 180 hours into Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which is more than what I put into the original game and New Leaf combined. I agree with many of the criticisms I’ve seen (poor online, locking an island and save to a piece of hardware being a serious dick move, the RNG being seriously out of whack—I have never had a single meteor shower, Celeste and Redd almost never show up, but I’ve caught four coelacanths and five whale sharks, what the heck is up with that?). but the core of it is still soothing enough that it’s been my go-to stress reliever since March. Still like fishing, still feel obligated to catch bugs even though I only really like the butterflies, still enjoy building a ludicrously massive wardrobe and changing clothes often. The crafting is pretty dull and just there for padding, but it only takes a few minutes a day to get enough stuff in case my tools break or I want to build some DIY stuff, so whatever.

Timespinner was also a pretty good time. I’m impressed by the way a relatively small team came close to perfectly nailing the feel of Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia. There’s a bit of a hitch when you try to turn back and forth sometimes, and that’s the biggest complaint I have about the controls. It feels really good to play. experimenting with orb and ring loadouts and figuring out how to break the game after you’ve done everything else is good fun. Nice to see LGBTQA+ representation that isn’t about being miserable or murdering dogs *cough.* You do have to do the sidequests or Lunais’s character arc makes almost no sense at all, a problem compounded by having multiple ending choices. Does she want revenge or justice? By making that a binary choice it kinda hobbles her character. The writing in this game really needed another draft and another pass through editing. But if you get bored with fighting minor enemies you can chuck a sun at them 11/10

I liked it enough to do all the achievements twice and play on all the difficulties across multiple runs, which took a nice 70 hours for probably 10 or 11 playthroughs (you can seriously speedrun this when you know where all the mandatory bosses and abilities that don’t carry into NG+ are, a 100% run at that point might take 2 or 3 hours depending on your level and equipment).

Enter the Gungeon: I watched multiple streams and an LP of this and convinced myself I’d love it based on enjoying watching other people be good at it. Put an hour into it and was done forever because I will never be good at bullet hell games. :smith:

Rogue Legacy: I got five hours out of this before I realized that I was in the 2100s, had enough abilities to make it through the entire map, and still couldn’t beat the first fucking boss at level 40 because I lack basic pattern recognition or something :smith:

Momodora: Reverie Under The Moonlight: a Dark Souls Metroidvania sounded neat until I realized that your build revolves around the leaf, the bow, the dodge roll, and whatever modifiers you can find/buy/earn. I still don’t know what I think of it or whether I like it.

SOTN: I bought this for my old iPad because it is my mission in life to beat this game on as many different devices as possible, I guess :-I

Little Inferno: see above

The Missing: JJ Macfield and the Island of Memories: Oh boy. I understand why this game kicked up a debate in trans communities. Trans stories told by cis people are often misery porn. But this game mirrored so many of my own life experiences that it hit a raw nerve. Being forcibly outed by “friends,” depression, unhealthy self-hatred... I was pretty close to saying “fuck this game, why did I do this to myself.” But then the ending happened and I started ugly crying. This totally is a game about healing, and regeneration, and rebirth, and never giving up. For me, that made a crucial difference. But if anyone feels the opposite way, and despises this game, you are 100% valid for feeling that way and I won’t argue with that.

Really wasn’t expecting that from a Swery game, considering how awful Deadly Premonition is at handling both women and queer-coded characters.

GRIS: This is an incredibly beautiful puzzle-platforming game about grief and it made me cry a few times. It’s short, sweet, and isn’t too awfully difficult (which might be a minus for some people). But I think the experience of going in blind and being overwhelmed by the art, music, and design is well worth it. To heck with whatever Naughty Dog puts out, I am very comfortable considering this game to be both art and good. I don’t think you could get the same experience from watching a movie or reading a book. You need to have the interactivity for many of the game’s set pieces to work as intended.

This has been showing up on sale and in bundles a lot lately, it’s well worth checking out if you haven’t already (or don’t like these sorts of games).

Super Mario Maker 2: I.... kinda don’t like this game. I loved the first one but I’m sick of the mix of Kaizo troll levels, levels that basically amount to an empty room with a flagpole, and those automated Rube Goldberg machine levels. I tried the story mode and gave up when I got to a level where the gimmick is not jumping, ever, and 40 years of muscle memory fight me and want to make Mario jump. :negative: I already know I can’t design levels to save my life, so why did I want this when it went on sale back in March? It’s a well-made game that does what it says it will do and if you’re into it, you’ll really be into it. I’m just not into it anymore, I guess.

Yoshi’s Crafted World: 100%ing this looks like something I don’t want to do but it was okay enough. My brother gave it to me, as with SMM 2, so I might have felt a lot differently if A) he had paid $60 and especially B) if I had paid $60. The soundtrack was not that great and I was a little disappointed that this was the successor to Kirby’s Epic Yarn and Yoshi’s Wooly World, but it was still fun to unlock ridiculous costumes and cruise around levels dressed up as a sheep or a milk can.

A Robot Named Fight!: I watched several old streams of Vinny playing this game, and, you know, it looked really unpolished, with ugly sprites (that sometimes look a lot like they’re ripped straight from Super Metroid), but he kept saying he enjoyed it a lot despite that. So I figured, well, I have nothing better to do with Turmpbucks other than charity, bills, and some savings, I can spare $13 for a game.

I wish I hadn’t spent that $13 on a game. I don’t want to be hard on the guy who made it, because he seems like a good dude on his Twitter. He keeps updating the game every so often for free when he could have charged for the expansions he added. It’s a passion project and I feel bad for unloading on those. Games are fucking hard to make. But the writing is basically the same thing as Spec Ops except much more nonsensical (“The robots are fighting for freedom from the flesh!” “NO ROBOT YOU ARE THE FASCIST” and then the robot was a fascist... take note that this game was made by a guy who despises the fash, so I don’t think he was trying to glorify anything).

Also, the physics engine is identical to Super Metroid. This is kind of a bad thing, because precise platforming is a thing in this game (surprise! It’s a roguelite Metroidvania, like seemingly every other big indie game since Dead Cells hit it big), and Super Metroid’s physics... look, I love Super Metroid to an unreasonable degree, but its physics are floaty and awful. None of the original Metroid games have great physics or feel that good to play compared to Zero Mission, Igavanias, Hollow Knight, Timespinner, etc. I don’t want to platform over randomly generated spike pits on tiny platforms with those physics. I don’t want to play “Super Metroid but your robot is a mindless fascist [as far as the very thinly written world building goes—there’s “Fuck Robot Fascism” graffiti everywhere in a later area] and everything explodes into bloody gibs.” I had misgivings, I didn’t listen to them, and, well, I should have. I managed to complete a run because it’s far easier than Rogue Legacy or Gungeon, but I’m done with this one, I guess.

Puzzle Quest: I revisited the original Puzzle Quest! I’d forgotten how obnoxious the RNG can be when you lose an entire match without moving because the enemy moved first and got to stunlock me for 13 turns, draining my entire HP bar! Ditto when I did the same to a boss, because it feels so rewarding to blunder into complete victory from making one match! /s After 5 hours I realized that I was just playing a version of Bejeweled that pissed me off so I went back to Bejeweled Classic instead. There’s probably more polished iterations of this idea out there somewhere at this point.

Namco Museum: Sometimes when you’re old, you just want to go back and play Pac-Man, Galaga, and Dig-Dug at random. Also I found my DS Lite and replaced the battery and it still works! :yay:

Sundered: Eldritch Edition: What I’m currently playing. I wish the maps weren’t procedurally generated, because as with most proc gen games I’ve played, the asset reuse quickly becomes obvious. Also it’s a roguelite Metroidvania (sort of). I am having trouble thinking of inexpensive things to play after three months and change of quarantine and this seems to be on sale a lot. But the animation is hand-drawn and looks gorgeous. It’s so fluid. And the combat system is so much more fun and fluid than the other games in this genre I’ve tried so far. You have a shield, to take hits for you, which starts off quite small and recharges slowly. You have a really good dodge, but your stamina meter only allows you 3 dodges at first, so you’re pretty squishy and liable to take damage and die if you don’t keep moving. And you will take damage, because eventually you will be fighting hordes of enemies that number from “three or four” to “dozens” to “infinite if you don’t get the hell out of there.” I am not joking, you will get swarmed at regular intervals and the number of enemies increases as you progress through areas. You get one health elixir, like an estus flask, but enemies and crates do drop these at random, so you’re not obligated to return to the beginning to recharge it.

So you’re probably thinking “it sounds like you have to level up these abilities,” and you’re right. Every time you die, you get returned to the Sanctuary and get ye olde Skill Tree, which looks an awful lot like the Sphere Grid from Final Fantasy X. We’ve all seen these things before in other games, most likely. Because this is riffing on Lovecraft, you will initially get your abilities and perks from the Shining Trapazohedron, who is basically a really catty teenager who likes to sneer at everyone with its deep sinister voice. It’s what you get when the Elder Gods like to gossip about their neighbors. Because you play the game as a WoC (hell yeah) I see this as a deliberate slam on Lovecraft. :-I Anyway, you spend the shards you get from beating enemies and breaking stuff on stats, perks, etc.

But the Metroidvania element comes in as you beat both minibosses and regular bosses. That’s how you earn your movement (or sometimes combat) upgrades, e.g. the ever popular double jump. You also regularly unlock shortcuts inside each area or between areas as you progress.

I can’t stress enough how good the combat feels. It’s what single-handedly won me over because initially, I was very afraid to play a difficult game with huge numbers of enemies in it. (yes, it’s because I have anxiety, I’m sorry :( ) Standing still and button mashing is like the worst way you could play this game. Dodging is great for emergencies but you really want to at least be running back and forth and jumping to dodge basic enemy attacks. The controls are very responsive and there’s very little lag, which is crucial for a game where one mistake could result in your entire lifebar being drained in seconds by lasers, exploding satellites, and hordes of weird-ass monsters. In particular, you want to start learning air combos, because you can attack up, down, forward or back, and it’s pretty intuitive to chain these attacks. You can unleash some serious hurt on even boss enemies once you start to get good at this. I was able to take off a third of the first boss’s health with one air combo, which won me the fight and saved me from dying and having to do it again. The up-slash in particular is good, because it carries you up vertically a little bit (which can also be used for sequence breaks and finding hidden items). You can reach enemies that are above you or move out of the way of another attack while setting something else up to be smacked in the face mid-air.

Anyway that’s a lot of words for a game I haven’t even beaten yet! So far I think it hits the sweet spot of “high but manageable difficulty,” because death is never a penalty when it gives you an opportunity to level up a bit every time.
tl; dr: holy shit I’ve played a lot of video games this year and I have opinions. Next on deck is Firewatch which will be a nice break from all the sidescrollers.

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Re: General gaming superthread

Post by Strangething (?) » Sat Jun 20, 2020 6:54 pm

I started playing Mewnbase yesterday, and it is super cute. :-D
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Re: General gaming superthread

Post by SlateSlabrock (?) » Sun Jun 21, 2020 12:07 am

I was enjoying XCOM: Chimera Squad until I got to the Gatekeeper mission in Sacred Coil aaaaannnnd I guess I need to start the game over on baby mode difficulty?!

Like, every suggestion people have online is, "You should've recruited character X a month ago."

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Re: General gaming superthread

Post by SlateSlabrock (?) » Sun Jun 21, 2020 7:28 am

Hardspace: Shipbreaker is pretty fun for an early-access busy work kind of game. I'm sure I'll have my debt paid off in just another... 993 ships or so.

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Re: General gaming superthread

Post by DaikatunaRevengeance (?) » Sun Jun 21, 2020 8:48 am

The ship designs remind me of Homeworlds. Then again, these are the devs that made Deserts of Kharak.
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Re: General gaming superthread

Post by W.T. Fits (?) » Sun Jun 21, 2020 12:28 pm

SlateSlabrock wrote:
Sun Jun 21, 2020 12:07 am
I was enjoying XCOM: Chimera Squad until I got to the Gatekeeper mission in Sacred Coil aaaaannnnd I guess I need to start the game over on baby mode difficulty?!

Like, every suggestion people have online is, "You should've recruited character X a month ago."
You can lower the difficulty mid campaign, if that helps. And if you're on the mission with the Gatekeeper, then good news, you're basically done with them if you can power through that one! What's your squad look like? People generally recommend having Patchwork because her kit is basically built around wrecking mechanized units, but in theory you should be able to pull it off even if you didn't recruit her. Also, are you doing Sacred Coil as your first, second, or third investigation target?

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Re: General gaming superthread

Post by SlateSlabrock (?) » Mon Jun 22, 2020 5:35 am

W.T. Fits wrote:
Sun Jun 21, 2020 12:28 pm
You can lower the difficulty mid campaign, if that helps. And if you're on the mission with the Gatekeeper, then good news, you're basically done with them if you can power through that one! What's your squad look like? People generally recommend having Patchwork because her kit is basically built around wrecking mechanized units, but in theory you should be able to pull it off even if you didn't recruit her. Also, are you doing Sacred Coil as your first, second, or third investigation target?
It's my second target, which means I get the full three rounds, which is the real problem.

I didn't recruit Patchwork or Axiom. I have Godmother, Cherub, Terminal, Verge, and Torque somewhere near max level, and Shelter, Blueblood, and Zephyr not leveled up enough to be very useful. Masterwork armor, advanced weapons. Everyone has tranq rounds except Cherub, who has my lone set of AP rounds.

But by the time I get to the third round, I'm low on life, and I've used at least some of my once-a-mission abilities/items. And there are just too many beefy enemies. The MEC to murderize everyone, the Andromedon to acidify everyone, the ronin causing trouble, the guardian basically doubling everyone's HP, the purifier to burn them, and, of course, the Gatekeeper.

If it was even one less of them, I could maybe pull through, but I'm pretty much guaranteed to get set on fire before my fourth teammate can even move, and there's almost no room to take cover.

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Re: General gaming superthread

Post by W.T. Fits (?) » Mon Jun 22, 2020 12:04 pm

I'd say for your current set up, probably your best bet is swapping the AP rounds from Cherub to Godmother so that she can kill the hard targets more easily. If you have a reflex grip, pass that to her also, since being able to shoot first without ending her turn opens up a wider variety of options for her in combat.

If your first takedown was Grey Phoenix and you have them researched and the supplies to buy them, load everyone up with Regen Weave (seriously, that stuff is a godsend for sustaining through fights where the enemy has a lot of damage) and give everyone who's not Godmother Venom Rounds. They won't be that useful against the mechanized units, but they'll still put a decent hurt on the Coil's organic targets, and the aim penalty from being poisoned might also make it harder for the non-Ronin units to hit you when shooting at you. Gas Grenades are also useful against the organic enemies if you can spare a slot for them.

If your first takedown was the Progeny, give everyone who's not Godmother Talon Rounds for boosted crit chance and damage, and outfit them with Mach Weave for the dodge; it's not as good as it was since it was nerfed, but it's better than most of the other options you have available for armor at this point. And if you have Turncoat Grenades, absolutely spam those at the non-mechanized enemies if you can. Every enemy that spends a turn berserked and attacking its buddies is a turn they're not turning your squad into swiss cheese.

I realize there's the urge to want to bring as many of them in alive as you can, but if you're genuinely struggling against them, you're better off going for increased damage output to take them down faster; no point in keeping them alive for the Intel bonus if you can't finish the mission.

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Re: General gaming superthread

Post by SlateSlabrock (?) » Mon Jun 22, 2020 1:16 pm

W.T. Fits wrote:
Mon Jun 22, 2020 12:04 pm
If your first takedown was Grey Phoenix and you have them researched and the supplies to buy them, load everyone up with Regen Weave (seriously, that stuff is a godsend for sustaining through fights where the enemy has a lot of damage) and give everyone who's not Godmother Venom Rounds.
I'll have to check whether I have Venom Rounds researched yet. I wasn't prioritizing them because Sacred Coil has so many robots and other units that are immune to basically everything that would hurt an organic.

Also, I forgot to mention how infuriating it is watching Godmother waste all her ammo on thsoe close-quarters reflex shots against Ronin who dodge every single one of them with Lightning Reflexes.
I realize there's the urge to want to bring as many of them in alive as you can, but if you're genuinely struggling against them, you're better off going for increased damage output to take them down faster; no point in keeping them alive for the Intel bonus if you can't finish the mission.
Actually, I was using them because someone suggested the Gatekeeper will try to revive them and fail, but it doesn't help that much. I just don't know if I have the option to buy anything that would hurt more.

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Re: General gaming superthread

Post by W.T. Fits (?) » Mon Jun 22, 2020 2:19 pm

SlateSlabrock wrote:
Mon Jun 22, 2020 1:16 pm
Actually, I was using them because someone suggested the Gatekeeper will try to revive them and fail, but it doesn't help that much. I just don't know if I have the option to buy anything that would hurt more.
You're actually probably better off killing them, because the Gatekeeper will end up spending its turn reviving them as psi-zombies (which will just end up dying as soon as you finish the Gatekeeper off), and a turn it's creating zombies is a turn where it's not blasting you into next week with its other powers.

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Re: General gaming superthread

Post by W.T. Fits (?) » Tue Jun 23, 2020 7:12 pm



Two words, my friends: MECHA CORGI

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Re: General gaming superthread

Post by SlateSlabrock (?) » Thu Jun 25, 2020 1:21 pm

W.T. Fits wrote:
Mon Jun 22, 2020 2:19 pm
You're actually probably better off killing them, because the Gatekeeper will end up spending its turn reviving them as psi-zombies (which will just end up dying as soon as you finish the Gatekeeper off), and a turn it's creating zombies is a turn where it's not blasting you into next week with its other powers.
I finally finished this mission. There wasn't much I could do about inventory without rolling back to a save from at least a week prior, but I discovered there's an option to change how much health you get back each encounter, which defaulted to "half." Setting it to full was enough of a boost that my team wasn't on death's door at the start of encounter 3.

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Re: General gaming superthread

Post by Dal (?) » Thu Jun 25, 2020 10:10 pm

I'm eight hours into Octopath Traveler and I am at 5/8 people recruited. This is going to a fairly long game.
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Re: General gaming superthread

Post by Angel Beat (?) » Fri Jun 26, 2020 1:03 am

Finished Dark Souls Remastered. I mostly enjoyed that.

Unfortunately, I didn't like the fight against the final boss, Gwyn. He's one of those bosses that can be parried, which is something I'm terrible at on a good day (due to fine motor skills not being up to snuff). Today was not that day.

The downtime between his attacks is juuust too short for me to get a heal in without being hit for the trouble. Then the run back to the bossfight from the nearest bonfire was just too long, especially when I came up on my 10th attempt.

In the end, fed up from the above, I summoned the NPC Solaire on my 12th attempt, who trivialized the fight.


Sooo... that Dark Souls ending that was supposed to be epic for me, was at first hellishly frustrating and then super underwhelming. :/
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Re: General gaming superthread

Post by Dal (?) » Fri Jun 26, 2020 4:44 am

Sounds like Dark Souls to me. I’m serious. I’ve heard and seen so many people say the same thing. I figure the main enjoyment of that game is exploring the world and enjoying the thrill of the good bosses.
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Re: General gaming superthread

Post by Angel Beat (?) » Sat Jun 27, 2020 3:16 pm

Yeah, that's exactly it.
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Re: General gaming superthread

Post by Gloomy Rube (?) » Sat Jun 27, 2020 3:50 pm

the best thing about dark souls is the multiplayer and yet it's the part that no one tries to emulate. It's hecked up imo
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Re: General gaming superthread

Post by Perpetual Motion (?) » Sat Jun 27, 2020 4:17 pm

Dark Souls 3 at least has pretty amazing final bosses, for both the main game and DLCs. Heck, half of Soul of Cinder's fight is just a big old Gwyn reference, but balanced correctly.

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Re: General gaming superthread

Post by Angel Beat (?) » Sat Jun 27, 2020 5:31 pm

Yesss, do love me some DS3. Finished that one twice!
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Re: General gaming superthread

Post by Mechanical Ape (?) » Mon Jun 29, 2020 2:05 pm

I finished all the Frostpunk scenarios, getting the best ending in all but The Last Autumn! :party:

WAS IT WORTH IT

Yes. It was.
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Re: General gaming superthread

Post by Madeline (?) » Mon Jun 29, 2020 5:24 pm

Finally got to the last boss of Sundered and all I can say is, I highly regret recommending this game because the enemy swarms get so fucking old really, really fast. The combat only gets a little bit deeper than it was in the first area, depending on which morality path you follow, so you end up being constantly overwhelmed and killed, at which point you buy more stats, and then go back and start swatting the exact same enemies like flies because they aren’t nearly as challenging anymore. All you’d have to do is make the combat turn based instead of real time and it would feel like a generic late ‘80s/early ‘90s “grind to win” type jRPG.

The devs seem to realize this, so the third area of the game is based around A) bottomless pits and B) large enemies who can knock you into said pits, which happens a lot when there’s 40 different enemies on screen and you start losing track of what you’re even fighting because your sprite is the size of an ant. You don’t even have to be playing badly for it to happen. Your shield and health can be absolutely fine, but, whoopsy-daisy, you just got pushed into the black nightmare goo by a giant brown blob that shoots out spiky cucumbers or something. Now you have to climb back to the top of the area all over again, so you can unlock a shortcut, so you don’t have to climb back to the top of the fucking area again and can use the elevator to save time. It’s not even difficult, it just feels like it’s wasting my time.

The bosses aren’t much better, considering that the big ones all revolve around “hitting the pink weak spot over and over again to either win or make another weak spot appear.” Like... a lot of the hard bosses in Hollow Knight are fun to fight because you don’t fight them by looking for weak spots and just smacking them over and over again. Hornet, the Mantis Lords, and the Broken Vessel are all wildly different fights with very different patterns to learn, for example. These Sundered bosses do have differing patterns, but it doesn’t matter because most of them are just dps races. The final bosses are the only ones that really require you to dodge and learn rudimentary patterns, and even then, if you do enough damage quickly enough, you can still eat several hits without losing. They just take so little damage from your melee or cannon attacks that it takes several minutes for them to die. Maybe if you maxed out every stat you could do it much faster, and just taking two round trips around the three main areas would probably get you enough shards to do that, if you really wanted to do some grinding.

Also the minibosses are all just recolors of normal enemies, so there’s that. And since I never cared for Lovecraft thanks to his very extreme racism and old-timey prose, the lore and story ended up not meaning much to me. Play through the entirety of the Valkyrie base, and you’ll have seen most of what the game has to offer you, outside of a few fun traversal mechanics you unlock later. It’s very pretty and very repetitive.

Anyway, there’s no way I’m playing through this multiple times to see all the endings. I YouTubed the alternate endings and called it good, and now I’m going to play something that isn’t a roguelite or a sidescroller.

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Re: General gaming superthread

Post by Aria Genisi (?) » Tue Jun 30, 2020 11:57 pm

ZeroRanger, the really fantastic shmup game that I've recommended here before in the past got updated:



White Vanilla is a new mode that is more of an arcadey score-attack focused affair. It's shorter than the main mode, and you get graded on how fast and efficient you are at clearing sections of the levels. It's really fun! Also the game is currently on sale on Steam.


I'd be playing it more, but I'm currently sidetracked with playing a new megaman fangame:



Episode Zero is a fangame that's part of the Make A Good Megaman Level contest series. Some fangames were kind of obsessed with including Zero in the classic series just to connect the classic games and the X games, so as a riff on that, the MaGMML series also includes Zero! But he's actually just a shitty robot that Wily used to distract Megaman while he tried to escape. In Episode Zero, you play as Zero in events that take place between the first two MaGMML games, and it's pretty rad.
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Re: General gaming superthread

Post by DaikatunaRevengeance (?) » Sat Jul 04, 2020 2:18 pm

the evil within is a series that utterly confuses me as people seem to like it

but having watched an lp of the first one and abanoned an lp of the second one when it came out, i gotta say

it blows
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;) ❤️ :twasnothin: ❤️ :fancyhat:

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Re: General gaming superthread

Post by Perpetual Motion (?) » Sat Jul 04, 2020 2:38 pm

The Evil Within 1 is an game with neat ideas that's bogged down with annoying mechanics and a dull, overly serious story that thinks dream realities are more clever and original than they actually are. It also treads so close to Resident Evil 4 in terms of environmental progression that I'm pretty sure that Mikami felt that he had to do it for financial safety and to satisfy the expectations of his fans.

EW2 isn't amazing, but it at least realizes some of the problems with the first game and rectifies it with more open level design and an actual sense of humor.

I don't care for either game, but I respect a willingness to try again and embrace not being so damn serious all the time :pinkieshrug:

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Re: General gaming superthread

Post by Aria Genisi (?) » Mon Jul 06, 2020 10:32 pm

Evil Within 1 was an interesting idea bogged down by just a lot of issues, and it feels like it never really succeeded at what it was trying to do. It was alright, but nothing that was ever gonna set the world on fire.

EW2, I know was at least better. It saw the problems with the first game, saw where it could improve, and actually succeeded at being a more fun, better game than it's predecessor. Still maybe not the best, but it seems like it actually got somewhere after the multitude of problems the first had.

I haven't played either game, but I've seen all of EW1 and part of the sequel, and the second game honestly feels like something that I wouldn't mind trying out.

Also, I feel obligated to post this:
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Re: General gaming superthread

Post by Aria Genisi (?) » Wed Jul 08, 2020 11:36 pm

Aria Genisi wrote:
Tue Jun 30, 2020 11:57 pm

I'd be playing it more, but I'm currently sidetracked with playing a new megaman fangame:



Episode Zero is a fangame that's part of the Make A Good Megaman Level contest series. Some fangames were kind of obsessed with including Zero in the classic series just to connect the classic games and the X games, so as a riff on that, the MaGMML series also includes Zero! But he's actually just a shitty robot that Wily used to distract Megaman while he tried to escape. In Episode Zero, you play as Zero in events that take place between the first two MaGMML games, and it's pretty rad.
I beat MaGMML Episode Zero the other day and hot damn I loved this shit. Some of the levels are a bit spicy, but thanks to unlimited lives, it wasn't a huge deal. The actual MaGMML games are kind of a celebration of mega man in general, but it kinda tends to take a backseat to the actual contests that they originated from. Meanwhile, Episode Zero, being just a collaboration fangame, doesn't have any contest getting in the way. It's just a straight up love letter to the entire mega man franchise in general. I'm the sort of nerd who loves lore shit, and this game (and the magmml series in general) sets itself in a world where not only are the official games and the archie comics canon, so are various fan games and all sorts of shit. It all can be quite silly and weird at times (you can call Wily on an ingame phone for advice, and a lot of his calls involve his exasperation regarding the crazy shit you run into in each of the levels), but it's very clear that the whole thing is a labor of love. Zero controls very well, and the weapons + chip system makes things feel pretty unique. I heartily recommend giving it a shot if you like mega man nonsense
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Re: General gaming superthread

Post by Pocket (?) » Sat Jul 11, 2020 7:53 pm

Pocket wrote:
Fri Feb 14, 2020 9:41 pm
I impulse-bought a backward-compatible PS3 today :modesty:
Update: At some point during the past few months, the controller stopped wanting to work with my computer and I have no idea why. I'm positive I was able to at least get it to bring up the Windows installing-new-device popup and go into the Steam Input settings for it, and played a little Slime Rancher with it on my Linux install, but now all it does when I plug it in is flash its lights at me, although it still pops up the Steam alert. What the hell did I do?
Every jumbled pile of person has a thinking part that wonders what the part that isn't thinking isn't thinking of...

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Re: General gaming superthread

Post by Adiwan (?) » Sun Jul 12, 2020 3:58 pm

This weekend I have spent with friends developing a game for the GMTK game jam in 48 hours.
And this is the result:
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https://hastilyassembled.itch.io/mmc

You are a hacker and have to enter encryption keys as fast as possible.
The twist is that your keyboard layout is RANDOM!
:ponynet:
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Re: General gaming superthread

Post by Jill (?) » Sat Jul 18, 2020 10:43 pm



i'm enjoying this game quite a lot tbh. if you'll permit me to gush a bit:

it's basically story of seasons/rune factory but even more laid back, sandbox-y, and has this breath of the wild-esque feel to it. (there is even a glider you can unlock pretty early-on) i also feel like there's a little bit of DNA from Don't Starve and Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale, as foraging and running a shop are both fairly significant aspects. a big point in its favor is that unlike the typical farm-running game, most of the game's objects and structures can be built and then placed nearly anywhere you want, and the game world itself is very well-suited to this mechanic

for instance: if you want trips between your house and the campground area to take less time, the body of water between them is mostly shallow enough to build wooden platforms in without completely submerging them, which allows you to create a more direct jumping/gliding route through the body of water. otherwise you'd have to go around it each time, on account of your limited swimming range and slower swimming speed. similarly, you can build such platforms on the side of mountains to extend your glide distance and have to spend less time swimming to other islands, perhaps enabling you to reach new ones and all sorts of things like that. none of such construction elements are scripted so you have to come up with such optimizations on your own and decide how best to execute them yourself

because this game's days are at most 18 minutes long, and because it's so tempting to cram as many activities as you can into each day, finding ways to make the environment easier and faster to navigate feels rewarding in a very organic way. it's something i haven't really seen much of in other games, as they either offer you too little freedom and you have to unlock something to improve your efficiency, or they offer too much freedom and you can just tunnel-and-bridge terraform straight to places you'll visit often. Garden Paws managed to land itself somewhere in the middle, in a sweet spot that happens to really click with me

the game is otherwise, well, an indie game. it's still got a fair share of bugs and rough edges (and the white outline around item sprites bugs me to no end) but it's still quite sturdy for how ambitious it is. most of the bugs i've encountered are actually of the "fun and charming" variety while only a few really diminish the enjoyability of the game.

another thing that may be worth mentioning is that there are no NPC relationship meters and marriage and stuff like similar games usually have, but i guess if you like that kind of thing the trade-off here is that you get to have things like dress-up and online multiplayer and some more room for creative energy. (disclaimer: i have never played multiplayer and don't know how well it functions)

if you ask me though, it's a real standout among its niche. it's both relaxing and engaging and also cute af

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