Recently Played Games

Gnuffi · August 22, 2017, 11:52pm

Good weekend, lots of play, (and continuing so far this week, nice to get to indulge)

The Room 2 simple, but good, and despite the ease of the majority of puzzles, still somehow satisfying. Too bad the series seem to end here on PC, would have loved the sequels to follow, might just buy the apps to get to continue. Here’s to hoping they get ported eventually

Machinarium, really loved this one, reminded me of the childhood puzzle adventure games aimed at children or with “learning” elements in mind, just way more intriguing, another game i couldn’t help but play in 1 full sitting. Real cute.

Belladonna An “interactive story”, weird, and very short one (1 hours), though not totally bad. It had some overly cheap feeling elements (damn did the VO make me laugh and cringe at times), but simple easy “puzzles”. First game that deliberately asked me to kill the house cat, -sooo, thumbs up?

The Flame in the Flood alrighty i gave this one another go, and a more thorough chance this time
and omg is this one of those love/hate games…
i despise the real-time off menu interface(menus are good enough), how you make some abstraction of a radial wheel, then frankenstein it to make it worse, i don’t know.
and omg the rng… holy shit is this the prime example of how bad rng can get, how possibly not to do it, and how fast and easy it can kill you from the get go, (or ridiculously reward you)
of the tons of elements that can kill you in this game, random procedural generation has to be the biggest

“need tons of stuff to survive more than 10 days? -well too bad, you get nothing!, here have some grubs and moldy bread and 1 building material but no chance for tools so you can use it”

“have a decent, close near perfect, passive resources for survival? -well sucks on you, we’re gonna throw some boars and wolves at you real early on before you get a chance to arm up!”

“have everything finally going for you, even managing to survive the bad encounters? haha just kidding, we’re gonna give you 0 means to repair and give you unavoidable river hazards, so your boat gets completely wrecked!” (ps having what would have undoubtedly been a lifesaving camp, get spawned inland/out of reach, was just a perfect touch, thank you so much)

and it’s grindy and repetitive, and god is the time speed and weather ridiculous at time. Possibly the worst idea for camera limitation i’ve experienced in a while for me to be able to recall worse camera controls when it wasn’t “needed”.
and still with all these and many more flaws, it’s a good game, and i utterly love parts of it.

The soundtrack is amazing, and seem to fit so perfect at moments when navigating down the river, and the folk/country music hits so right with the game. I actually got disappointed that it wasn’t for sale on steam with the game, but found it elsewhere and considered buying i. (if it wasn’t for that it costed more than i paid for the game)
The sheer numbers of ways to die is actually a plus for the game (even if rng seem to “highlight” this aspect). And it becomes sorta a game in itself just to find “alternative death options”. Boars, wolves, even bears is a given will kill you, but did you ever consider that looking at a thorny bush could give you a prick that would end up killing you from sepsis?
The crafting is satisfying, the survival aspects are better than some other games, and there is enough variety to keep getting motivated to make it further, -for a while.
I’d say i 80% love this game half the time, but i 60% hate it ¾ of the time
how that adds up or even makes sense i can’t tell you, but my stance on this game just fluctuates overall all the time lol , oh well, -back to dying again,
i wonder if fire ants are lethal in this game?

Whitishmink · August 23, 2017, 3:44pm

I was one of the Kickstarter backers for The Flame in the Flood, and the number one reason was that soundtrack.

Sometime in my past, I angered RNGesus, so I’ve never gotten past the first few islands (like 10 miles in?)…always with the wolves.

Gnuffi · August 23, 2017, 4:58pm

i know what you mean about those first 10’ish miles
didn’t even realize you could “cheat” and save stuff in the pet for the next run until after 3 deaths lol,
and oh boy did i die soooo many times, and then eventually doggo had full bags
funny how the right kind of “stick” really helps with the freakin boars… and wolves…
aaaand of course after you learn to survive that, -they just throw a bear at you … because why not… oh and snakes, -snakes!
(nothing better than those islands where you get all at once. You run in, look at it and it’s just one of those “Oh Heeeeell No! ” moments)

DanosaurJr · August 24, 2017, 7:03pm

I finally got around to trying Terroir, the wine making tycoon game I bought on Chrono a few weeks ago. It’s a pretty fun game but can be quite challenging at times. Properly managing one’s foliage is not as easy as it may seem. I made a few 5-star bottles but still managed to go bankrupt after my first few years.

Just bought Sky Rogue, which came out of Early Access and is currently on sale for 25% off. Also picked up Flinthook, which is on sale for $10. Both games have been on my wishlist for some time. Should have time to play at least one of them tonight. Which should I play first

Whitishmink · August 24, 2017, 8:53pm

Sky rouge.

DanosaurJr · August 24, 2017, 9:34pm

Thanks for cleverly pointing out my typo
Fixed.

Fraggles · August 25, 2017, 10:45am

Tried to play PONCHO a little while ago as it was so generously given to me by @Gnuffi sadly it turned out to be one horrendously boring game. They had a neat idea, puzzle platformer where you’d work with 3 planes of depth and could phase between them mostly at will. This made for some interesting traversal of space but there wasn’t really much else to it.

So I started playing Owlboy instead.
This game has been pretty over hyped, it’s not bad… exactly. Very pretty though, the pixel art is amazing and it’s clear that’s where the passion went. Game play is functional, I’d say. A good platformer, especially one with exploration involved, needs to be fun to just move around in. Flying in owlboy is not fun, it’s utilitarian, just the process through which you move the character sprite from one edge of the screen to the other. Since you do fly there’s very little the game can do to throw interesting platforming challenges at you and there’s no real advancement on movement abilities, you have a dash and eventually you get a hookshot but that’s it.

The story is kind of threadbare but serviceable. There’s hints to a rather deep lore though and I would have loved to see the corruption of the owl people explored deeper. The world could have been interesting.

It really is very pretty though, it’s not by accident that the graphical style has been the center of it’s marketing. There is one thing I found rather amusing in it though, but it’d be a spoiler so.

Spoilers

It’s always kind of cheesy but fun when a media uses it’s title in some manner within it. Often a title is also the name of a character and almost always that would be the main character. That is not the case in this game and it amused me quite a bit when the one character that ever gets called Owlboy is NOT the player character… who just also happens to be an owl and a boy so you might have made the assumption that he would be the titular character.

Anyway, this game was still an ok time. Better than discussing politics in the Philippines.

Gnuffi · August 25, 2017, 1:06pm

aaaaand of course there is a god damn achievement in the game just to really hammer it in

and for some reason i haven’t even managed to unlock it yet, which is actually quite worrisome lol

yes…, -yes they are… … (of course)

man… this game

Gnuffi · August 28, 2017, 9:27pm

i was about to go through and play a couple of games remaining from my list
-then this happened
Daily Deal: Grim Dawn
https://206.81.1.216/t/grim-dawn-8-26-17-10/5743/2?u=gnuffi

and i have not been able to put it down since…
it just blows everything else away
only because Kingdoms of Amalur utterly spoiled me in how varied hybrid class could be and relations done to combat do i want “more”. Because Grim Dawn would implode the universe, had it added more variations to this approach, than what they did
and yet at the same time; what they did and how they did it manage to not only be “enough”, but a little extra, well enough to satisfy despite of KoA(which lacked in so many other areas, where as Grim Dawn lacks none so far).
My biggest concern is how much i’m gonna get sucked into this game, 'cos oh boy, i’ve been lost down this arpg path before
and Grim Dawn already made me forget there was GoT, yesterday , -warning sign mebbe?

DanosaurJr · August 28, 2017, 10:27pm

I didn’t even consider buying Grim Dawn because, like you, I’ve already spent a lot of money on games this month. But after reading the reviews and watching a few gameplay videos, I kind of regret not buying it . Will definitely have to pick it up the next time it goes on sale.

Not just any episode, but the season finale. Grim Dawn must be pretty damn engrossing

Gnuffi · August 28, 2017, 11:59pm

you have no idea
if a person liked Diablo 2 (etc), they are gonna love this, as it’s a good improvement and superior on every single level
if a person loved Diablo 2 (etc), well, -better have someone on standby call to pull you back into the real world(once in a while)

games like this make you realize; arpg/gaming addiction is no joke

s e l f c o n t r o l, , wuts dat? ¯\_(ツ) _/¯

Fraggles · September 3, 2017, 12:05pm

I finished Dex yesterday.
Cyberpunk platformer RPG, really quite a good game. Though it is a smaller indie title so it is not fully fleshed out in every aspect as you might expect. The melee fighting system is pretty fun and as you level your melee skill up you get more combo hits and a few additional abilities. Though amusingly enough actually using your full combo makes the fighting take a lot longer. You start knocking enemies down and for some reason you’re not allowed to kick a man when he’s down, you hit him 4 times, on his arse he goes and then you have to just stand there waiting for him to get up.

Hitting them a few times to get them staggered so you can get in a kick without them retaliating and then continuing to punch without getting to that 4th knockdown combo hit makes the fighting involved even though still pretty simple.

The world is interesting enough, though not anything really new, it’s your average dystopian cyberpunk future. Cities ruled by companies and their private armies with the wealthy living in amazing luxury in glittering towers while the poor are downtrodden and exploited living in ruins and slums.

The story is… fine. I’m of course not going to spoil anything. The writing is good, not exceptional by any means only had the occasional point where things seemed kind of stilted and weird. I have to say though they made a way better ending than many far higher budgeted games have managed. At the point when I thought this’ll be the last 20 minutes, just head down this way talk to some fellow and that’ll be it surely. They threw me at least 2 curve balls further than that, twice more I thought this really will be the last 20 minutes.

In the end it does finally come down to a couple of choices, though you get a sort of branching part over the last 2 or so hours and you can get about 6ish different conclusions, though maybe only 3 ending cinematics.

All in all took me 22h to complete and then spent another ~2h mopping some missed stuff up and attained two more endings. Well worth the price of admission in my opinion and it’s half off on steam at the moment.

Gnuffi · September 13, 2017, 7:39pm

alright, so i had to take a break from Grim Dawn (i was beginning to theory craft in my sleep lol)
but, after some 150hours i did at least manage to finish the game(on normal), still missing Elite and Ultimate but that will have to wait (expansion coming soon too, amg amg)
dang that game is fantastic

took a stab at
Life Goes On, a cutesy “puzzle” platformer where you win when you suck , a platformer where dying is not a punishment but the whole point
only 2 buttons, move and jump, and it’s fun, cute and strangely doesn’t get old as fast as i thought, and probably one of the few games with actual good and fun and fitting achievements
(i nearly choked when a couple popped from trying to stifle a laugh while snacking)

Shadow Puppeteer
another “puzzle” platformer, tho the puzzles are more in the controls than than the gameplay.
It’s the “a tale of two brothers” scheme where you control 2 chars simultaneously, tho this one seem much more like they really wanted it to be done in coop.
The difference is the 2 chars controls are not the same, one plays in 2d and the other inhabits our 3d realm. But combined with slight differences in how that behaves, fixed camera angles, (at times poorly) makes me hate the controls completely
the game itself is absolutely gorgeous in aesthetics and theme, gameplay sorta average simplistic, but i just can’t get over the controls (might be a left-right brain thingy issue lol) damn do they frustrate me.

and Warp
damn is this a cutie, and so surprisingly fun and satisfying
they call it a “strategic stealth-action puzzler”, tho again i think puzzle deserves to be in air quotes lol
it plays more like a different than usual stealth action game, since the puzzles are so simplistic and are more like an obstacle course to traverse instead
with an awesome cute little alien that blinks/warps around as movement for you to get in all sorts of hilarious situations
didn’t even realize it was rated pegi18 until a bit through, but despite how cute and innocent Zero might be, that rating might have been there for a reason then lol
but when dispatching your enemies is so hilarious how can you resist not to
best thing was, the fundamental mechanic of the game lets you “break” it, and skip steps, play it out of order.
I mean, when your skill is you can literally go through walls, what could possibly go wrong, if you decide to go left when told to go right?

Gnuffi · September 15, 2017, 11:45am

so i done did a little bit more of dat Grim Dawn thingy. Then, after promptly slapping my wrists for falling back in and being so naughty, i did a bit of

Adam Wolfe, and no, just no. By the 3rd episode i felt like i was about done and over it, and by the 4th episode i was so desperate for a game over screen i was begging for my protagonist to die (pretty hard to die in a point 'n click apparently )
Holy hell does it feel like they are trying ever so hard on the narrative side, yet are about as b movie and cliche as it could get. Frustratingly so to boot…
and the puzzles… omg… at one point i actually told my protagonist to pull out his gun and just shoot himself… ranging from so tediously simple, trite doesn’t even describe it, to utterly ridiculous where the prompts are just useless… 1 second you are all but spoon fed the solutions, and the next you are handed puzzles where you ofc not only have to figure stuff out for yourself, but also without having had 0 connections at any point in the storyline to hint at what might be the proper/correlated solution. To others where you have to backtrack to a previous area, despite having already exhausted every possibility, but now voila, magically changed and stuff has unlocked, with no warning/prompt or even slight semblance of reasonable sense that an entire area would change after the fact… did i say contrived doesn’t do it justice in terms of description already? jezz
and god damn fetch quests… that shit just gotta stop in all games now, period
i really should have have stopped at episode 2, -boy did this get old fast…

then
Solar 2
i get a feeling this one is a bit misleading, as it’s anything but casual or relaxing, (unless really trying and want it to )
probably the first game i’ve ever completed twice in 3 hours yet somehow managed to get 0 story progression lol.
Who knew “delivering” a planet from one sector of the universe to another quadrant would be so difficult, without getting shot up by alien spaceships, running into rogue asteroids, or mean competition planets or systems
and when you’re a fledgling planet; ya probably shouldn’t pick a fight with a twin star system, that has rocket ships that one-shot you. Guess even as a rock you have to pick your battles
intriguing how much content is fitted into something that seems simple in concept
you’re a rock, gather more rocks until you’re a bigger rock, gather enough until you can be a planet and continue trying to stay alive while you absorb enough to become a star, a black hole then big enough to swallow the entire universe… seems simple enough
but a rock still gets smashed by a bigger rock, lol

Gnuffi · September 17, 2017, 2:05pm

the order on the menu today was Maize (probably not worth 20bucks tho, but on sale for sure)
maybe because i had popcorn yesterday, maybe because i’ve been doing the whole point 'n click or puzzle thingy lately, or my body needed something simple for the palate that had faint notes à la “Stanley Parable on the cob”-apply butter and salt.
What i expected is what i got. A game that seems liked it wanted to ape the Stanley Parable a bit, with less depth and satire, but still managed some okay humour, but with more interaction compared, in terms of being an adventure game/interactive “walking sim”
a couple of hours spent on a decently enough silly fun story.
Well, to be honest, -probably one of the (most) stupidest stories, in a stupid place with stupid “plot” and equally stupid twists and notes.
But don’t let Vlad get to you, you stupid idiot
Nap time!
-Cordially Gnuffi

(ps. no offense meant, if you’ve played the game it makes more sense)

Fraggles · September 17, 2017, 2:29pm

I wish more people would contribute to this thread. I find it interesting to hear what people think of games and other media they’ve consumed.

I’ve been playing mostly Vermintide and Verdun lately. Neither really that great. I have a friend who’ve been playing Vermintide for quite some time already and was real excited about getting me into it. First impression was a solid meh. But it’s still “fun with friends” right so I played a little more and eventually tried all the classes and weapons available and came to rather enjoy the bright wizard with a fireball staff. Still it’s mostly fun to play because I do so with someone I enjoy spending time with. The game is alright. Wish the loot progression was a little faster though.

Verdun on the other hand is really hard to like. The game just throws a menu of 50 weapons at you and gives you 15 points and tells you to unlock shit. No info other than the name of the guns. They DO have statistics though, stopping power, reload speed, magazine capacity and the like but they’re secret, don’t get to know anything until you’ve unlocked them. Even the guides on steam and wikis makes no mention of them. So get fucked Verdun, how am I supposed to make these decisions?

Of course being such a niche game it has a very small and very dedicated user base so you’re thrown into the game against people who’ve played nothing else for 3 years. But the game once you’re in the field is pretty good.

Enki · September 19, 2017, 8:38pm

Recently I’ve been enjoying the gift from @Gnuffi that I won in his giveaway, Renegade Ops. It’s quite a fun game, it takes some time to get used to the controls, specially because it recommends a controller but I’m too lazy to grab mine. hehehe

And I’ve been re-visiting Ragnarök Online with some friends after a 7 year break from it. There’s a lot of new things for me to explore and have some fun. Here’s a pic of my Arch Bishop sitting around doing nothing.

I also intend to play some Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee soon just to remind the good times (and bad) I had with this gem.

Fraggles · September 19, 2017, 8:45pm

Wow, ragnarok online sure brings some memories back. That was probably my first foray into a real mmo, got into it back when the korean servers were in beta with the help of a couple of friends from the Philippines. Connecting to korean servers with a 14.4 dial up connection was not the most stable of experiences but it was a lot of fun anyway, even though I had no idea what anything was or did or what anyone said… I was happy exploring such a vast colourful world and killing a few birds while at it.

Amaryllis3121 · September 20, 2017, 2:30pm

I’ve been playing quite a few games recently. I finally got around to Bayonetta. It’s actually very fun. I’m not sure if I was really expecting to enjoy it because I don’t get on with DMC and that sort of thing, but the whole attitude of it is so enjoyable I can’t help but get swept up in its campy absurdity. It’s something I can only really load up when I feel good and a little silly or I bounce off, but those moments when I can get into the right mood for it are really enjoyable.

Salt and Sanctuary is another one. It was on my wishlist for so long I don’t really remember when I first became aware of it. It was so worth the wait. I know that kind of grindy, Souls-y, punishing game isn’t for everyone but there’s something kind of pleasing I think in repeating the same bits over and over for progress’ sake. I also like the level of control that kind of combat gives you. I like to know it’s entirely my fault if my character takes a hit because it encourages me to play games less sloppily. I also quite like the art style although it reminds me of the online 2D Artix game DragonFable and then I feel fourteen again .

I tried to get back into DOOM the other day but I failed kind of miserably. It’s such a fun game but it’s been a while since I’ve played it and there’s a specific type of floaty-jumping-smashing-in-demon-skulls goodness that I’m not very good at any more. So faced with the option of starting again or picking something else, I went with the latter and decided to play Tomb Raider. That’s the remake/reboot (I forget which is which), not any of the old ones. It’s been sat in my library since the Steam Summer Sale '16 so I thought I’d give it some attention. I’m honestly not sure if I’m glad or not. I mean, I wasn’t expecting great things but I wasn’t expecting it to be as awful as people said it was and I was right on both counts.

Warning: Serious Griping Ahead

The Uncharted comparison has been made a lot with the new Tomb Raider games and I totally understand why. But whereas I’m really, really enjoying working my way through Uncharted 3 on the PS3, I wouldn’t be enjoying it on the PC. It wouldn’t be a bad game at all, but the controls and gameplay are designed around the console and its controller and I think it would feel underwhelming with mouse and keyboard. There would be a ton of untapped potential that you could have on PC that the game wouldn’t explore. It wouldn’t have to be so linear, have so many quick time events, you could have more satisfying combat. For me, the new Tomb Raider falls somewhere in between this idealistic PC Uncharted and the actual console version. Which should be a really good compromise but sadly it feels a little lacklustre in effort on the PC part and it has none of the draw or charm of Uncharted for the console. It fails at spectacle- the set pieces are a bit crap and mostly annoying- and the characters have all been very unlikable so far. And all that’s without considering the old series and how vastly different they are. It’s pretty much only a Tomb Raider game by name. They may as well have made any old game about a whiny young universal punching bag.

All that being said, I didn’t hate playing it. It was actually very enjoyable in parts. I think it made me grin a bit during one of the platforming sections because it was designed very well and I was having fun. That’s why I find it frustrating enough to rant about- there are so many hints that show where the game could shine but you blink and they’ve gone. It’s definitely worth a play, but spaced out and with plenty of breaks, preferably to play a much better game of a completely different genre.

Gripe Complete

Anyways, I’m either gonna start Oddworld: Abe’s Odyssee next or Thomas Was Alone paired with a bit of Stardew Valley where appropriate. I have a ton more games on the go at the minute as I like to play several at once and bounce between them but none of them are striking me off the top of my head.

Fraggles · September 20, 2017, 2:45pm

Your take on Tomb raider is very similar to mine. I did enjoy it from a mechanical standpoint. Just sneaking around and shooting people is solid enough to warrant playing the game, though it could probably be harder. I also took a bit of a cynical entertainment out of it thinking about all the horrible ways she should already be dead counting by the terrible wounds she accumulates and never properly treats.

Sure every video game hero takes impossible wounds on a minute to minute basis pretty much, but few games really goes into the details of it the way Tomb raider chose to. I’m thinking of course particularly of the cutscene injuries,

I certainly agree all the big set pieces are lame and stupid. Especially climbing that big radio tower, they’re trying to convey some sort of threat and danger in it, but the whole thing is so obviously scripted that it’s laughable that I’d be the least bit concerned about anything. There’s not even danger of player mistake as all you CAN do is hold the up button/push the stick up. Then at the end of it they’re trying to make it seem like it’s some sort of major achievement, which for the character maybe and for the story sure, but absolutely not for the player. We did nothing!