Author Topic: What are you playing?  (Read 4476015 times)

0 Members and 11 Guests are viewing this topic.

Nintex

  • Finish the Fight
  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38820 on: December 18, 2022, 06:25:46 PM »
More Live A Live.
Kung Fu story finished. One of the better chapters.
Present day completed too. Very creative use of the games mechanics but quite short.

Unlocked a new chapter which is cookie cutter medieval RPG syle but looks beautiful.
🤴

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38821 on: December 19, 2022, 02:55:25 AM »
More Live A Live.
Kung Fu story finished. One of the better chapters.
Present day completed too. Very creative use of the games mechanics but quite short.

Unlocked a new chapter which is cookie cutter medieval RPG syle but looks beautiful.

Need the 6-12 month exclusivity to wear off on this one so can get it on PC already.

Though, going by Triangle Strategy, then I'll wait another 12 months for the price to get anywhere near reasonable  :lol
Gonna be a while.

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38822 on: December 19, 2022, 04:26:32 AM »
Got to the final act in Pentiment. Started liking the game at the end of Act I. The intro is just really slow and the game takes a while to click (at least for me). Dig the game now but for all the choices and reputation, I'm surprised how...not a branching game it is. The plot does not feel like Alpha Protocol or Pillars/NV questing. It feels really set in stone, more like a visual novel and the choices you can make are very minor in the overall scheme of the story. Like a Telltale adventure game but even less impact.

The story's good, so it's fine, but doesn't seem like it'll have much replayability.

Polident Hive

  • Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38823 on: December 20, 2022, 02:24:22 AM »
High on Life is pretty fine. I’ve never watched Rick and Morty to get the main draw of the game. Frankly, if this is a sample of what Rick and Morty offers, I’m good not watching it. But the gameplay is fine. It‘s giving a reserved first person Ratchet and Clank. After the first hour it calmed down on the Matt Hazard jokes and opened up. It’s been a surprise how many mobility options it adds on.

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38824 on: December 20, 2022, 03:50:49 AM »
I'm not surprised people like it. Trover Saves the Universe was a good game and pretty funny. Will play High on Life at some point.

MMaRsu

  • Administrator
  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38825 on: December 20, 2022, 12:39:38 PM »
Dark and Darker is amazing and you should try it on Steam

Its like an old school first person medieval fantasy dungeon crawler but its like Tarkov where you have to extract, and there are other players in the dungeon. There's like six different classes like Rogue, Wizard and all the usuals.

Also its hard as fuck so prepare to die.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2016590/Dark_and_Darker/

But the playtest ends this week so be sure to try it before its over.
What

BIONIC

  • Virgo. Live Music. The Office. Tacos. Fur mom. True crime junkie. INTJ.
  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38826 on: December 20, 2022, 09:40:52 PM »
After finishing Crisis Core Reunion (played OG version back in 2011) and having lots of fun with it, I got the itch to do a replay of Remake. Sweet Baby Jesus this game is so fucking good :lawd
Margs

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38827 on: December 20, 2022, 10:14:18 PM »
Damn, now you're making me want to replay Crisis Core. CC was great even back in the day. And yeah FF7r is fantastic. One of the best jrpgs since we entered HD towns are hard era of consoles. Totally down to replay it when the third part comes out.

Unless part 2 is shit and totally kills my interest. Never know with SE.

Nintex

  • Finish the Fight
  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38828 on: December 21, 2022, 05:57:55 PM »
Still Live A Live

Some interesting twists and turns in these last 2 chapters  :whew
🤴

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38829 on: December 21, 2022, 10:13:07 PM »




Ok, finished up Josh Sawyer's Pentiment at 14 hours. Final thoughts:

Pros:
+Amazing art! This grew on me and by the end the close ups with families were just totally amazing. The insane amount of book borders were awesome.
+Tons of details. All the polish that went into drawing and animating little things like making wreaths and stuff adds a time.
+Great usage of passage of time
+Colorful cast of characters that you get to know and interact with, game is more a town/family line simulator with branches to affect the families than anything.
+Neat fonts! Scribbling sound and font effects are cool.

Cons:
-Skill checks are too strict. Not enough opportunities to interact with some characters and sometimes vague as to whether a response will help or hurt. Pretty much nonsense. Might as well have excised this system and just left the dialogue choices in.
-Not knowing if there is missable stuff out there so it's like "it's time for bed" but the game lets you go outside and run across the entire game map just in case there's some secret missable but then there isn't and boy that was a waste of time. If there's nothing to do the game should just be a cutscene until the next playable bit.
-The "routine" does get a bit repetitive by Act III of basically going through every screen again and talking to every person to activate any new dialogues/events and hold off on the ones that advance the time until you've talked to everyone else.
-Given all the time spent running back and forth a fast dash button would've been nice.
-Single save system is stupid given the length and that the game isn't really very replayable. Who cares if people would save scum choices in a single player game. Allow lots of saves so you can experiment around if you want.
-Would also be able for when the game doesn't warn you that talking to this person will advance to the next time sequence and you have just missed every other optional conversation and the game just overwrote your save, whoops.

Neutral:
+Music is great, but not much of it
+Main story is ok. It's good, not great, but serves more as a narrative mechanism for the town history and characters and family lines to shine.
+Act III is extremely linear and it's the longest Act. It just becomes a visual novel at that point with a couple of choices.

Overall, I think it was a very neat experience. Could've been a bit better but boy is it gorgeous and probably the best slice of life medieval town simulator over a period of time I've ever played. Had some good feels at spots. Some fun dialogue choices. I'm not sure where I'd even clarify the genre as. It doesn't really have puzzles like an adventure game, it's not much of an rpg and it's more interactive than your average visual novel. Plus it's sort of a town sim. Just a mashup of all those. I'd give it a strong 8/10. Would love to see a sequel taking place in a different era and part of the world. One of the hard parts for me was figuring out what kind of game it was, even when playing it. It took about 4 hours for the gameplay concept of it to click in. Would be more exciting for a new game in a similar style since I'd know what I was getting into from the start.

Potato

  • Senior's Member
  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38830 on: December 22, 2022, 04:53:00 PM »
Had a real aching for simple old school RTS gameplay. Loaded up Warhammer 40K Dawn of War.

Got what I asked for 

 :delicious
Spud

tiesto

  • ルカルカ★ナイトフィーバー
  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38831 on: December 22, 2022, 05:27:57 PM »
Beat Star Ocean 6, including the Ethereal Queen. Great game with some issues here and there. But overall, a return to form for the series. Nice cast of characters, some cool environments, some of the best traversal in an RPG. But some shitty sidequests, terrible tiny font, some UI issues, and a story that takes a while to go anywhere were a bit of a downer.
^_^

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38832 on: December 22, 2022, 10:00:27 PM »
Finished the main story in Super Robot Wars 30 after...1 year and 2 months straight of playing  :lol
Still have like 15 hours of post-game missions to grind.

This game is like 3-4 times as many maps as your normal SRW game. Waaaaaay too bloated. Not doing this again. Next SRW better go back to normal length.

Otherwise it's a solid SRW game. It's just way too fucking long.

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38833 on: December 22, 2022, 10:07:49 PM »
Now I'm finally caught up with all the games I've been actively playing. Thinking I'll knock of some of the games that I dropped midway because I got distracted before starting anything new.

My semi-active backlog of stuff I'm midway but haven't touched in a year is:

TWEWY2 (like 10-12 hours of 20-30 in)
GG Strive watching the story mode including DLC story mode (probably like an 8 hour thing). Also I haven't even tried any of the DLC characters despite owning the season pass. I need to mess around with them, at least do their arcade story.
AC Valhalla (~70-80 hours in out of ~150)
DQ7r (~30 hours in out of like 70-80, but it's going to be hard to remember where the fuck I am. Last time I came back to it and did a few arcs I had to read a summary of all the previous arcs to refresh to where I was. Plus I don't remember the jobs I was learning and stuff. Feels like I'll never finish this one)
Bravely Default 1 (~30-40 hours in out of like 50-75, but also been years and hard to pick up again and remember how to play and what's going on)

I didn't dislike any of these, just they weren't important enough to stick with while playing newer shiny things.

With some time over the holidays, I think I may try to refresh on TWEWY2 and finish that one out, maybe watch the story mode in Strive and maybe do another arc or two in AC:V before starting some new games. Really doubt I have the patience to actually finish Valhalla. Maybe if I could get myself to not 100% every land area, but I still end up doing that and get burnt out by the end of an arc or two.

Luckily AC Valhalla is a game you don't have to remember how to play because it's the usual brain dead AC and you don't have to remember the story besides "go to different areas and do their arc" so it's easy to pop in between every few games and do an arc or two. I think I'll one day finish Valhalla. But I don't think that time is now.

For new stuff I want to play Romancing SaGa Minstrel Song remastered, finally get around to playing Inscription and play through Ex Troopers. But two of those are pretty lengthy so feeling like clearing some stuff out first. Might sneak in Inscription before the year ends since it's <10 hours. Also Spookware Episode 2 now that it's out and Spookware rocks. Maybe Metroid Dread...
« Last Edit: December 22, 2022, 10:11:54 PM by Bebpo »

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38834 on: December 22, 2022, 11:26:04 PM »
One good thing for the backlog though is 2023 feels like the first year in a long time where there's very little I care about playing day 1 for new releases. Which means it should be a good year for backlog stuff. 

Like if Eiyuden Chronicles ends up good I'll play it, but with these kickstarter games by devs that haven't made a game in forever it's always a 50/50 it'll be bad. Or maybe 75/25 that it'll be bad/good. If it's Yu Suzuki it goes up to like 85/15. If it's Yuji Naka it's 95/5 with the 5% mostly being based on reformative jail time improving his game design. Anyhow I digress...

RE4 remake probably play it, but it's like a finish in a week and move on kind of thing.

BoTW2/FFXVI/Spider-Man 2 will be the big time eaters in 2023 but I don't expect the latter two to be more than about 60 hours max. BoTW2 might be long as fuck though. Maybe Baldur's Gate 3 if it's not a mess at launch and doesn't need another 6-12 months of post-release polish first.

I don't expect FF7r-2 to make it and Ys X' lol, I'll wait until it's discounted.

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38835 on: December 23, 2022, 09:56:55 PM »
Started playing Stray. I might be with demi on this one, even though I like walking sims/adventure games/cats.

It looks real nice, and I'm fine with the way it auto-platforms, but it just seems...pretty boring a few hours in. From the intro I was expecting something more like Ico but it's not that at all. Also why did they steal the Half-life headcrabs and why is text advance mapped to the square button. What kind of insane person does that.

May still finish it since I hear it's short.


On the other hand, getting back to TWEWY2 I'm still not with demi on this one. The combat is shallow, and it's a bit padded each day, otherwise the art/music/writing is awesome and it's just as stylish and fun as the original. The combat isn't the worst, but it definitely feels a step down from the original (which didn't have amazing combat in the first place) and too button-mashy. But I really like the characters in this.

demi

  • cooler than willco
  • Administrator
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38836 on: December 23, 2022, 11:49:23 PM »
Stray is CATSHIT spread the word
fat

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38837 on: December 23, 2022, 11:59:14 PM »
Stray is CATSHIT spread the word

It's just weird how the environments (at least the Slums) are kind of sandbox, but like...there's absolutely nothing to do in them besides pick up some music sheet collectibles or something. Feels like they built out the environment and forgot to fill it with stuff to do.

If it was going to be a linear Limbo kind of thing the stages should've been linear. Sandbox environments don't make sense for the type of game it is.

The game just feels...off.

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38838 on: December 24, 2022, 01:15:38 AM »
Wait, this won best indie game of 2022 at the Game Awards?  :doge

I mean I got a bit further (sewers) and enjoying it a bit more but this is like a 6-7/10 just ok-ish adventure game with pretty art direction/textures. Considering how many quality indie games come out every year that seems crazy for it to win.

Looking at the nominees, it looks like they picked mostly mixed reviewed games wtf. I didn't play any of them, but my general impressions from word of mouth were that Sifu is eh, Stray is eh, Neon White is supposed to be fuck awesome, I think people generally liked Tunic and Cult of the Lamb came and went in a week so seemed another eh game. From that group sure seems like Neon White should've won. But like, I'm sure there were 5-10 great indie games better than some of those released this year. Just weird picks and weirder that Stray won.

PC Metacritics for example:

Neon White - 90
Tunic - 85
Stray - 82
Cult of the Lamb - 81
Sifu - 79

Which is about in line with the word of mouth I've heard about all those.

HardcoreRetro

  • Punk Mushi no Onna
  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38839 on: December 24, 2022, 03:05:41 AM »
Here's the reason it won.

Cute cat.

archnemesis

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38840 on: December 24, 2022, 04:31:13 AM »
I really enjoyed Stray. It's more fun if you don't try to collect everything. Aim for the critical path.

Svejk

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38841 on: December 24, 2022, 12:02:26 PM »
Find myself juggling between Witcher 3, CP2077 and Rise of the TR.  With the exception of Rise, CDPR is nothing but the finest, top shelf Eurojank.  :delicious They somehow make open world games still fun and enjoyable to explore with the meatiest of content. 

Been sticking with RTX/30fps mode in Witcher 3.  It just looks too beautiful to not play that way.  Console speaking of course, but I've been weaning myself from being spoiled by Performance mode and accepting the fact that the later half of this generation will probably be stuck in 30fps yet again, but I'm ok with that.  Still the best bang for the buck.  I may go back to Horizon 2 in graphics mode.  Just loving the clarity of it all of late... And I love having the option to choose.

Other than that, I really wish certain devs would at least unlock framerates for older titles, like Dragon's Dogma, Dragon Age Inquisition, Shadow of War, Kingdom Come, Arkham games... I'm sure it's not like a switch they can just turn on/off, but it can't be as complicated and requiring the testing and hours than adding lighting techniques, no? Because uh... I dunno...
spoiler (click to show/hide)
But I do like the ladies though... I do like'em...
I like a them and they like a me.   :betty
[close]

Joe Molotov

  • I'm much more humble than you would understand.
  • Administrator
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38842 on: December 24, 2022, 09:37:36 PM »
I said I was going to play Trails from Zero, but I lied. I'm just playing Cold Steel 4.  :preach

Finished the first third-ish of the game yestereday.
spoiler (click to show/hide)
Saved Rean, got the airship.
[close]

Got some 3D Estelle. :lawd



And Joshua and Renne.  :dice



And Gilbert. :lawd



And some randos.  :idont

©@©™

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38843 on: December 26, 2022, 05:42:20 PM »
Abzu







WTF, this game was GOOD. The soundtrack is insanely good. Like top5 OSTs of the decade. Feels like a full orchestra Mitsuda kind of thing. Gorgeous game, fun enough minimal gameplay with a few nitpicks. Doesn't overstay it's welcome.

Journey never did much for me. This hit much better.

Basically a playable Fantasia. About the same length too.

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38844 on: December 26, 2022, 05:42:53 PM »
I also like that when you're going so fast all your screenshots are just a blur. Game was definitely fuck awesome at parts.


Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38845 on: December 27, 2022, 06:26:19 PM »




Mini Ghost by the guy that did UnEpic and UnMetal. He did a metroidvania called Ghost 1.0. He also did a mini-metroidvania prequel called Mini Ghost. A tight 3-4 hour metroidvania sounded appealing. Beat it in one day.

UnMetal, outside lots and lots of writing which could be cringy, was generally pretty good MGS gameplay with some annoying frustrating bits that aren't well designed.
Mini Ghost has no writing (yay!) and is pure gameplay and it's a pretty solid metroidvania with some annoying frustrating bits that aren't well designed (mostly bosses, a couple room designs, some backtracking and platforming has a bit of lag).

Probably the most unique aspect of the game compared to other metroidvanias is there are no heal/save rooms outside the starting room which heals you. Instead you can quicksave in any room as long as there are no enemies currently alive in that room. So the game is all about quicksaving and quickreloading. You also can heal 1 HP everytime you fill up the XP bar from killing enemies. So like every 10 enemies you kill gives you 1 HP back. It's kind of an interesting flow that's a bit different.

There's also a couple of different subweapons that enemies drop and you can only hold one so you have to choose what you want and hang on to it for spots.

Is it worth the 99 cents? Sure.
Is it worth spending 3-4 hours of your time vs playing a different metroidvania? Eh...maybe. It's solid but nothing too special.

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38846 on: December 27, 2022, 11:54:04 PM »
Tried out Critters for Sale. Seems like a neat visual novel. Extremely SMT influenced.







Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38847 on: December 29, 2022, 01:37:25 AM »
I’m liking Stray more in the backhalf, but I still hope the entire art department walks out on this dev and goes and finds a better game designer to team up with. This game has some of the best art direction, visuals, textures I’ve ever seen. A game this average should not be allowed to look this good.

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38848 on: December 29, 2022, 03:24:06 AM »
Finished Stray

Back half is far better than the first half. It's like they figured out how to make a game that mixed narrative and gameplay. The headcrabs in the first half suck and the Slums is an unfocused area with lots of verticality and sandbox area to cover with very little to do. Midtown is way more focused and linear.

I enjoyed the environmental storytelling. The story was a solid short. The graphics were insane, the stealth was basic and ok and the ending was dumb. First half is like a 6/10, back half is like an 8/10, so about a 7/10 overall. Hopefully their next game is more like the back half for the whole thing. Stray actually feels kind of too short since by the time it gets good there's only 1-2 hours left.

spoiler (click to show/hide)
Robo dude shouldn't have died.
[close]








Nintex

  • Finish the Fight
  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38849 on: December 29, 2022, 11:17:17 AM »
Completed Live A Live.

It had like 6 different endings but I think I found them all.
The game has some balancing issues but overall it's amazing especially considering this is just a Super Famicom game with a coat of paint. It doesn't just break the 4th wall it demolishes it.

The Kung Fu and Steel Titan story are still my favorites. The final chapter was great too but quite grindy at times. Such a unique game sort of a mix between Chrono Trigger, NIER and Earthbound. You could do a lot more with this concept if you made a sequel with current technology.
🤴

Pissy F Benny

  • Is down with the sickness
  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38850 on: December 29, 2022, 01:50:51 PM »
Played a little bit of FF13 on the steam deck (docked)

Pros: yo this shit is crisp as fuck even at 720p on big screen.

Cons: it's stuttery as fuck even with the FF13 fix installed (supposedly down to it being a shit port more than anything).
« Last Edit: December 29, 2022, 01:56:12 PM by Pissy F Benny »
(ice)

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38851 on: December 29, 2022, 02:24:53 PM »
Played a little bit of FF13 on the steam deck (docked)

Pros: yo this shit is crisp as fuck even at 720p on big screen.

Cons: it's stuttery as fuck even with the FF13 fix installed (supposedly down to it being a shit port more than anything).

FF13 always looked gorgeous thanks to that FF great art direction and nice picture image quality techniques.

It's too bad the game is such a stinker in terms of fun gameplay, good characters and good story, because otherwise it'd be a nice FF to replay since it looks so good.

Pissy F Benny

  • Is down with the sickness
  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38852 on: December 29, 2022, 04:59:57 PM »
I wish i still had a ps3 and knew where my copy was just to see how it holds up there, very well I expect. The character models are pretty much a console gen ahead, I'm not even sure naughty dogs late gen stuff holds up to them.

The trade offs will have come in the environments, which are pretty basic but pretty.
(ice)

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38853 on: December 29, 2022, 05:07:05 PM »
You can do a lot low poly with great art direction though. Japan devs have been king on that for generations.

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38854 on: December 29, 2022, 09:35:37 PM »
Continuing my xmas break backlog marathon of finishing 1-2 games a day, cleared two games about getting murdered constantly.

Long Live the Queen







This game is kind of great, but also frustratingly flawed. You have 40 weeks to survive and every week you can train stats, do things that affect your mood (modifier for stat learning) and make choices as they come up. The events each week are fairly set and there's constant skill checks.

The game is cool in that the runs are pretty short after the first run with dialogue skipping (~15-20 mins) and it's really addictive to try to go different directions and build towards certain skill checks.

But it's also frustrating in how tight the skill checks are and how all the events and skill checks of the story are mostly set in stone at certain weeks so you very clearly need to build towards certain skills and other skills are mostly useless. There are so many freaking skills, it's a shame a lot are mostly useless. Also the first couple of runs are tough until you get a feel for what skills are actually important.

The game also doesn't give you #s on the skill checks so even when doing a new run you don't know whether you need to waste another week getting Lore to 90 or if Lore at 60 will be enough to pass the check. It makes the trial and error of it annoying after a point.

Here is an example of an hour I wasted:

Week 27 - I go to a party with a character and they tell me about a castle in a forest 
Week 28 - We go to the forest to explore and we get tentacle attacked, we die because my HERBAL KNOWLEDGE was not high enough



Attempt #2 - (reload a few weeks back and focus on getting herbal knowledge up), this time at week 27 I don't get the trigger to invite the character to come over to go to the forest because my lore isn't high enough to know about the castle in the forest.

Attempt #3 - (reload further back and get lore and herbal knowledge up), I pass the skill check to invite the character to the forest, I use my herbal knowledge to defeat the tentacles. Alas! It only buys time, now I have to run and there is an athletics skill check which I fail because my athletics are 0.

Attempt #4 - Start over from scratch, focus on getting my Lore, Herbal Knowledge and Athletics up. Get to week 27 to go to the party and get attacked by bandits on the way to the party and die before even getting to the party. Turns out I needed my Intrigue at <40 at week 18 to have a conversation about assassination and hire guards but I'd neglected my intrigue to spend time on my lore, herbal knowledge and athletics.

Attempt #5 - Start over from scratch and focus on Intrigue, Lore, Herbal Knowledge, Athletics. At week 18 hire guards to prevent assassinations, at week 27 make it to the party, have the conversation about the castle in the forest and invite the character, week 28 the character comes over....but there's been a civil war because I've neglected raising the town morale enough and so instead of the forest adventure options my only two choices are to use the character who came over as a hostage or let them go and skip to the next week.

At this point I completely give up on trying to make it out of the forest adventure alive. The skill checks are just brutal and layered and layered in the game. Though to be fair apparently this is one of the harder challenges to make it through.

Because there are so many stats and skill checks there's a lot of branching and a ton of ways things can end up going which is neat. The quickness of the runs, the silliness of the story and constant death, the challenge to try to make it to week 40 and be coronated as an actual queen, the satisfaction of passing skill checks all add up to a pretty engaging and fun game. But yeah, if the skill checks weren't so tight, if more skills were useless and if it told you numbers for the skill checks when you pass/fail them it'd be a great game.

I also think it would benefit from some RNG in the scenario to change the order when skill checks are so you aren't always focused on building certain skills quickly because you need them for a check in week 5 or 8 whereas other skills you can backend because you don't need them for checks until week 35-30 or something.


« Last Edit: December 29, 2022, 09:42:14 PM by Bebpo »

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38855 on: December 29, 2022, 09:41:39 PM »
Murder House







I'd known about Puppet Combo's retro throwback mini-horror games for a while and people seem to love Murder House, so I finally played through it.

On the positives it has a great retro look and there's various video filters which work really well. I stuck with the VHS filter and it was great. The music was cool and the game had some good creepy tension. The cheesy budget/exploitation horror voice acting is awesome.

On the negatives the camera and controls are pretty goddamn awful tank controls with swinging cameras. I often found myself struggling to run in a straight line and most of my deaths were not being able to see/control what the fuck I was doing. This was annoying. The extremely cramped spaces of the murder house really doesn't help this. The puzzles were pretty weak, the story was just ok and it's super short and there's not much of a map to cover.

The general game design of finding one key to lead to a room to the next key to the next key item...etc... was ok, but not very interesting. The ending was dumb but the post-credits was good.

Overall it was an ok game. Didn't love it and didn't make me want to check out any of their other games. Signalis this year was a far better retro horror throwback that actually played well and had a good story besides just capturing the visual look of PS1 horror games. Murder House just felt like a weak Clock Tower to me.

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38856 on: December 30, 2022, 04:43:31 AM »
Started playing Northern Journey. Omg this game is really good crazy. Like Swery Norwegian Folk Horror Linear Morrowind. Howlongtobeat says 10-12 hours...might stick with it and knock it out over the next week. Seems really good and heard great things about it over the last year.




HardcoreRetro

  • Punk Mushi no Onna
  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38857 on: December 30, 2022, 05:02:48 AM »


The devlog made me love the game even more. Bow down to our Reverend Space Priest.

MMaRsu

  • Administrator
  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38858 on: December 30, 2022, 09:02:15 AM »
Some Escape From Tarkov

New map just released with a fresh wipe, so that means everybody is back to lvl 1 and has shitty gear, which makes firefights more interesting.
The Streets of Tarkov map is one of the biggest they've done so far.

What

Svejk

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38859 on: December 30, 2022, 10:17:34 AM »


The devlog made me love the game even more. Bow down to our Reverend Space Priest.
That was actually kind of inspirational... Time for me to quit thinking about my concept and just fucking do it.

Pissy F Benny

  • Is down with the sickness
  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38860 on: December 30, 2022, 12:48:28 PM »
Played a little bit of FF13 on the steam deck (docked)

Pros: yo this shit is crisp as fuck even at 720p on big screen.

Cons: it's stuttery as fuck even with the FF13 fix installed (supposedly down to it being a shit port more than anything).

FF13 always looked gorgeous thanks to that FF great art direction and nice picture image quality techniques.

It's too bad the game is such a stinker in terms of fun gameplay, good characters and good story, because otherwise it'd be a nice FF to replay since it looks so good.

Playing some more and being reminded how much pretty much everyone besides Sazh fucking suuuuuuuuuucks.
(ice)

Polident Hive

  • Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38861 on: December 30, 2022, 03:13:14 PM »
Been playing Signalis since it's free in the humble app if you're a subscriber. It's quite good so far and the reviews are great.

One of the few games that really hits that RE1 style PS1 fixed camera survival horror gameplay feel. Like it doesn't feel like some indie imitator, but actually like a good PS1 survival horror game. Gameplay feels like RE1, story/atmosphere-wise feels like Dead Space w/some anime.

Inventory space is a bit too small so I'm constantly running back to the item box and the first time I used the lockpick mechanism it was so unintuitive I had to look it up after like 15 mins of getting nowhere. But otherwise it's really good so far.

Late reaction. Went back and forth on whether to play it a second time to get the secret ending. Ended up passing. Really liked my time with it but the inventory space thing mentioned is a tedious choice. I understand the intention, both from a gameplay and story perspective. It manifests as backtracking in an otherwise tight and well crafted game. There’s one moment where I quit out and reloaded a save as it’d be quicker than backtracking. Especially as enemies respawn. Permanent kills require flares, and going back to the inventory, I never carried them as it’s taking up a slot.

Complaining a lot, but it is the one negative I had with it.

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38862 on: December 30, 2022, 06:17:23 PM »
Also on Northern Journey, this game has the best fog since Silent Hill. Dunno how he got it just right. Perfect grainyness.

I also enjoy games that encourage rapid scumsaving. Putting quicksave on 5, not even F5 basically tells you to keep saving every minute or two and easily quickload if you fuck up severely.

Been playing Signalis since it's free in the humble app if you're a subscriber. It's quite good so far and the reviews are great.

One of the few games that really hits that RE1 style PS1 fixed camera survival horror gameplay feel. Like it doesn't feel like some indie imitator, but actually like a good PS1 survival horror game. Gameplay feels like RE1, story/atmosphere-wise feels like Dead Space w/some anime.

Inventory space is a bit too small so I'm constantly running back to the item box and the first time I used the lockpick mechanism it was so unintuitive I had to look it up after like 15 mins of getting nowhere. But otherwise it's really good so far.

Late reaction. Went back and forth on whether to play it a second time to get the secret ending. Ended up passing. Really liked my time with it but the inventory space thing mentioned is a tedious choice. I understand the intention, both from a gameplay and story perspective. It manifests as backtracking in an otherwise tight and well crafted game. There’s one moment where I quit out and reloaded a save as it’d be quicker than backtracking. Especially as enemies respawn. Permanent kills require flares, and going back to the inventory, I never carried them as it’s taking up a slot.

Complaining a lot, but it is the one negative I had with it.

Yeah, I just youtubed the other endings.

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38863 on: December 30, 2022, 09:34:09 PM »
I'm a decent way into Northern Journey (halfway?) and this game is super good at the field exploration but the boss fights and trial & error bits really counteract it and are frustratingly difficult and tedious. Mostly because the jank (combat controls, getting stuck on the environment when moving, etc...) which is fine during normal exploration but in small gated area boss fights with bosses with a ton of HP and you die quick it's a pain in the ass. Aiming is very difficult with moving objects with these controls/weapons.

Also the game suffers from the "really small unknown game" syndrome where there's literally not a single guide on the entire internet which I didn't think was possible for any game, no matter how small, and the only infinite health trainer for the game comes up a high risk virus .exe so I'm not gonna roll the chance on that.

The dev did listen to feedback about this a bit and included a difficult scale on the title screen from 1.2-.6 which basically just modifies the speed of the bosses. Dropping it to .6 has gotten me past the bosses I was stuck on, but I still come out of the fights with like 23 health and no ammo because it's hard as shit. Definitely a bit concerned I may hit a stonewall eventually and just need to watch a youtube run of the rest of it. Will see.

I've probably died more times than most souls games already.

The exploration is so creative and original it's fantastic, I love exploring these maps out and the difficulty is fine in them. I just wish you could debug cheat codes for the dumb bosses.

Joe Molotov

  • I'm much more humble than you would understand.
  • Administrator
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38864 on: December 30, 2022, 10:27:48 PM »




I've finally hit my limit of Trails, my brain is melting. Thank God I'm finally at the at the end of CS4. Zero can simmer in the backlog for a bit. 
©@©™

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38865 on: December 31, 2022, 01:49:39 AM »
Phew, making good progress in Northern Journey. I figured out why I like this so much. It's pretty much just a Souls game without the souls xp/money/retrevial mechanic and less focus on combat, more focus on exploring. But it's a metroidvania in a dark fantasy world where everything is dangerous and trying to kill you and you have to take it a step at a time and there's lots of cool vistas and the boss fights are hard as shit.

It's incredibly impressive how this game is like the length of Bioshock and just as varied and made by ...one guy.

Might finish it tomorrow at this rate.












Potato

  • Senior's Member
  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38866 on: December 31, 2022, 02:11:03 AM »
What level of jank is there?
Spud

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38867 on: December 31, 2022, 02:35:57 AM »
What level of jank is there?

Bad jank - you get caught on geometry and can't move until you jump to shake out of it sometimes, usually when surrounded by a bunch of stuff murdering you, and the aiming is slow and clunky

Good jank - the animations and character models are awesomely goofy and add flavor


The main standout though is the level design. This shit is like Miyazaki/Miyamoto tier level design that's layered, varied and paced really well. That someone can pull this off on their first indie game and solo is something on the level of like Hollow Knight where it's a once in a decade level of genius. Game also has really nice visual design, music, dialogue to flavor the level design journey. It's super creative, well executed and flies by in pacing (you also run at the speed of a superhero which keeps it brisk. Game could have easily been double the game length just by reducing the run speed in half but the dev didn't thankfully).

That said, because the level design is so incredibly good, the super jank mid combat and bosses jar and feel pretty amateur in comparison. Might do better to hire someone for their next game who handles the combat and boss fights.

Potato

  • Senior's Member
  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38868 on: December 31, 2022, 03:04:33 AM »
Having grown up on a steady diet of Nintendo, I am very sensitive to euro jank.

Game looks right up my alley, but I don't think I'll put up with controls and movement that fight against me.

For reference, Red Dead Redemption 2 was too janky for me.
Spud

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38869 on: December 31, 2022, 03:46:44 AM »
Having grown up on a steady diet of Nintendo, I am very sensitive to euro jank.

Game looks right up my alley, but I don't think I'll put up with controls and movement that fight against me.

For reference, Red Dead Redemption 2 was too janky for me.

Hmmm, yeah, probably best to just skim a vid of what the movement looks like.

The controls are usually smooth FPS controls, but it just hiccups sometimes with geometry snags and sometimes you accidently fly off a cliff because momentum.

But you also can quicksave every minute and quickload with no loading so it's pretty painless outside of boss fights and certain rooms where you have to clear all the enemies (but even then you can quicksave every few enemies killed).

Here's a vid of someone who doesn't seem terrible at the game:

Nintex

  • Finish the Fight
  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38870 on: December 31, 2022, 02:06:02 PM »
I started playing Stranger of Paradise

The angst is even more real in the game than it is in the trailers.  :whew
🤴

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38871 on: December 31, 2022, 06:04:00 PM »






This fucking game, man.
 :lawd

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38872 on: December 31, 2022, 11:46:28 PM »
Finished Northern Journey at 12.5 hours. Such a great game, but also this was easily the most difficult game I've played all year. There's some huge fucking difficulty spikes towards the end and a lot of the difficulty comes from the jank like trying to strafe around an area where shit kills you quick you're constantly getting tripped up on geometry. Plus this dev has a hard on for fighting bosses on extremely narrow platformers with barely any room to maneuver, tons of boss HP and easy to fall to your death mid-fight.

It feels kind of hard to recommend because the difficult is the kind for people who like really DIFFICULT games. Not like mainstream Souls stuff, but like endgame Super Meat Boy kind of die 50 times make you sweat.

Which is too bad because the first 1/3rd of the game feels really chill adventure with rpg combat. And the rest of the game still has great level design, and the story's cool and atmosphere is great. But the last 1/3rd is just super fucking fight for every inch and checkpoint hard and it took a lot out of me to clear this and I was relieved when I was done.

Also out of the 17 zones in the game, the game almost maintains a perfect zone record, but the last two levels kind of suck (especially the 2nd to last level which is a really shitty underwater diving level with minimal combat but really restricted view and easy to get stuck on geometery underwater and lose direction and end up where you started), so it has that From Soft thing where the game quality has a severe drop at the end. Still, the bulk of the zones are amazing. Lots of great moments in this.

If you can handle some frustrating difficulty spikes that may mean 30 mins of retrying one checking point over and over 40-50 times, it's absolutely worth a play. But if that kind of stuff is gonna nope you out, then it's hard to recommend because the beginning will grab you and make you want to see the rest but you'll get frustrated you can't.

I think the game could've used some god mode cheat stuff to make it more accessible for people that just want to experience the adventure of it. And they should've cut out the diving level.
« Last Edit: December 31, 2022, 11:50:45 PM by Bebpo »

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38873 on: January 01, 2023, 01:07:47 AM »
Ok, now breathing a bit from the intensity of those last few hours. I'd say the game is just that good that even with the frustrating shit, it's worth a play. Or at least play half or 1/3rd and enjoy those zones and maybe youtube the rest if you don't want to deal with some of the stuff.

I really think this same game, with better combat, better boss fights, no difficulty spike spots, would be a perfect 10 and one of the best games of all time. As is, it's an 11/10 with some severe enough flaws that it's probably a 9/10.

Svejk

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38874 on: January 01, 2023, 08:37:53 PM »
Metro 2033 Redux - This is ticking a ton of boxes on what I was in the mood for.  I caved and bought that trilogy bundle.  The atmosphere and immersion is great, and the gunplay is relatively solid... Moreso with the human enemies than the mutant ones.  They seem to be too fast sometimes, but it makes it intense.  Loving the linearity of it too.  Up to chapter 4 last night.. couldn't put it down.

Coax

  • Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38875 on: January 02, 2023, 09:50:26 AM »
This fucking game, man.
 :lawd

In the second video of that streamer you linked the dev appeared in the chat and mentioned they were inspired by photos they took while hiking. It's funny how it completely bucks the typical "Unreal Engine look".

paprikastaude

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38876 on: January 02, 2023, 11:38:14 AM »
I'll put it on my wishlist.

Nintex

  • Finish the Fight
  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38877 on: January 02, 2023, 01:38:01 PM »
Started Dragon Quest XI because I don't have enough RPG's on my plate already.

Don't recall playing many Dragon Quest games, never got any on DS or 3DS so I must've last played any DQ game years ago when it came out on PS2 and one of my friends picked it up.
It looks and runs great on the Switch, better than I expected because Trials of Mana didn't run so well. Overall it's fun but not very challenging yet. The orchestral music is incredible though really gives the whole thing a more epic vibe.
The 2D Mode wasn't very impressive after playing Live A Live, a novel gimmick but overall I prefer 3D.

This game does feel like the polar opposite of Stranger of Paradise. A very simple battle system, bright graphics and an overall positive brave adventurer vibe.
🤴

BIONIC

  • Virgo. Live Music. The Office. Tacos. Fur mom. True crime junkie. INTJ.
  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38878 on: January 02, 2023, 02:35:05 PM »
The DQXIS is like one of the most boring and sterile games I’ve ever played. I like the classic/simple battle system and the graphic style (which is compromised because the lazy fucks decided to port the Switch version to stronger systems). That’s about it.

Everything else is the most generic cookie cutter shit in existence. The story and characters are like a shitty cartoon for babies. Just absolutely no bite to anything. Music is horrid. The level design is completely uninspired and is hamstrung by the stupid idea of making a parallel 2D version. Even stuff like menus feel completely archaic like there hasn’t been 35 years of advancements since the original game.

I might hate myself enough to beat it one day just to get my money’s worth, but I can’t stomach more than a few hours every time before shelving it again.
Margs

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #38879 on: January 02, 2023, 02:58:38 PM »
Eh, for a DQ I think it's really great until Act 3 and then it kind of falls apart. Still a great DQ, but the story could've been a lot better if Act 3 didn't go all stupid.

The music is definitely the game's biggest weakpoint.