AI52487963's recent activity
-
Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
-
Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
AI52487963 LinkRecently played the DS version of Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer for our podcast on roguelike games. While my cohosts and I didn't grow up with Shiren and didn't have much nostalgia factor...Recently played the DS version of Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer for our podcast on roguelike games.
While my cohosts and I didn't grow up with Shiren and didn't have much nostalgia factor for it immediately, the game grew on us over time as the complexity and depth of its mechanics were slowly revealed. Emphasis on the slow, as in typical JRPG fashion, talking to NPCs and sorting out questlines can take a while.
But wow the production value for a mid 90s roguelike game here is very welcome. Great art, great sound, just a joy to play really. Some of the gameplay aspects haven't aged super well in 30 years, but I'm willing to give a bit of a pass on things like hidden traps and such.
So overall: definitely worth checking out, even on an emulator. I played it entirely on my Steam Deck and was pleasantly surprised how well it worked once I got everything configured. Thank goodness for save states!
-
Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
AI52487963 LinkPlayed Inscryption for our podcast on rogue games I wouldn't say this is a "true" roguelike/lite, but enough of one and impactful enough to warrant inclusion in the conversation at least. It was...Played Inscryption for our podcast on rogue games
I wouldn't say this is a "true" roguelike/lite, but enough of one and impactful enough to warrant inclusion in the conversation at least.
It was very interesting coming back to Inscryption after a couple years, having had mixed thoughts about it the first time I beat it. I think coming back to it the second time around gave me more appreciation for its mechanics and theme that I didn't fully get the first time around. Which is interesting, since some of my podcast co-hosts had the opposite experience!
Inscryption is truly a magnificent game, and the standalone roguelike experience of Kaycee's Mod shows off just how good the first part of it really is by itself. The mod isn't as deep as something like Slay the Spire, but it's still very good for the experience it's going for. Certainly better that some of the other deckbuilding rogue games we've played for the podcast.
-
Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
AI52487963 LinkThis week we played the fps looter shooter Void Bastards for our podcast on roguelike games. VB has a great aesthetic going for it. All the art design is on point from the cool comic book...This week we played the fps looter shooter Void Bastards for our podcast on roguelike games.
VB has a great aesthetic going for it. All the art design is on point from the cool comic book animation take on 2.5D, to the high level of spaceship revurb, to stealthily listening in on eny footsteps to avoid. Narrator is from the Stanley Parable as well, which is fun.
But that's about where the charm wears off I think. The gameplay loop of boarding a ship, frantically looting it while your oxygen runs out, and avoiding monsters is generally fun, but its the only gameplay loop available.
There's a lot of promise from the Immersive Sim genre that could have helped add some depth to the gameplay, but I wonder if the studio ran out of time or money to implement. The ending to the game is also legitimately bad and frustrating.
I do have high hopes for it's spiritual successor Wild Bastards, though. From what I remember of the nextfest demo I played, it may have solved a lot of issued we had with Void Bastards.
-
Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
AI52487963 LinkThis week we played the turn-based colony sim dotAge for our podcast on roguelike games. I think there's a lot to like here from the graphics to the writing. A solo dev effort, you can really tell...This week we played the turn-based colony sim dotAge for our podcast on roguelike games.
I think there's a lot to like here from the graphics to the writing. A solo dev effort, you can really tell a lot of hard work went into the systems in place. There's a lot of clever UI/UX design here which is much appreciated.
It feels very much like a solo PVE board game similar to Agricola or Keyflower. Population as a resource that you place on things is very meeple-inspired. It is very nice to not have to micro all your units around.
I think my cohosts and I were mixed on the late game though. dotAge is LONG. It takes maybe 10 hours or so for a run by default. There are options to shorten the game length considerably, but the games curses you have to overcome become crazy punishing in the end, many times in an unfun manner.
One of my cohosts put it that the game is very fun to beat once, and after that you've sort of seen everything. dotAge hasn't been out for a super long time though and I could certainly see how the infrastructure in place would allow for all sorts of new elders, systems, and wacky writing.
If you're a fan of Against the Storm, you'd likely be a fan of dotAge as well.
-
Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
AI52487963 LinkThis week we played Slice & Dice for our podcast on roguelike games. Overall: we liked it, but there were some nitpicks. There actual gameplay itself is very straightforward: you roll dice and use...This week we played Slice & Dice for our podcast on roguelike games.
Overall: we liked it, but there were some nitpicks. There actual gameplay itself is very straightforward: you roll dice and use the abilities to attack monsters. But the synergies between heroes and items you get is where the real complexity is at. There's over 100 heroes and over 400 items, so understanding the interplay between all of that can be pretty overwhelming.
There's a big number of different styled game modes that, while all having the same core gameplay, really mix it up in terms of how you approach that gameplay. Simply adding one global debuff curse to your run completely changes your strategy and how you plan around it. Let alone other game modes adding additional curses after each boss or after each fight!
I think we were all relatively bad at the game, but could still appreciate its design. At our skill level the runs go for around 60-90 minutes, but talented streamers can finish Classic Hard mode in about 30, which completely blows my mind. There's a very high skill ceiling to this game that will be extremely rewarding for those that take the time to invest into the symbology and synergies of everything it has to offer.
-
Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
AI52487963 LinkMy co-hosts and I just reviewed both DoomRL and Jupiter Hell for our podcast on roguelike/lite games and thought you may enjoy the listen. DoomRL: I was pleasantly surprised by how high quality a...My co-hosts and I just reviewed both DoomRL and Jupiter Hell for our podcast on roguelike/lite games and thought you may enjoy the listen.
DoomRL: I was pleasantly surprised by how high quality a freeware game from 20+ years ago this still is. There were a lot of mechanics I totally missed like dodge and assemblies, but careful perusing of the wiki has helped me beat the cyberdemon twice now (only to get bludgeoned immediately on Hell 1). Love the boss fights in DRL, the audio design soundscape, and the plethora of challenges. I even got it running on the steam deck and it works amazingly well.
Jupiter Hell: You can really tell how much love and effort went into the remaster here. I wish more traditional roguelikes had the simultaneous move-action sequencing that JH does, and I still laugh every time a bunch of reavers go ragdoll flying when rocketed. The art design of Jupiter's moons and different environments here are great and well thought out. Only beat the Harbinger's Throne once, barely, with the aid of a supernova, armor piercing assault rifles, and zillions of grenades. Love playing this on the steam deck, as well as jumping between it and the desktop when I get home from the bus.
Overall: many kudos to the solo dev for his work on these games, they're truly special and you can see the impact they've had on the tradRL landscape. Crossing fingers for Ganymede!
-
Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
AI52487963 LinkThis week we reviewed Holocure: Save the Fans! for our podcast on roguelike/lite games. My cohosts and I aren't super familiar with the VTuber scene, but one of our friends and fellow VTuber was...This week we reviewed Holocure: Save the Fans! for our podcast on roguelike/lite games.
My cohosts and I aren't super familiar with the VTuber scene, but one of our friends and fellow VTuber was kind enough to be a guest and walk us through all the lore around Shubangelion and Spiderchama.
Overall: we really enjoyed it. We just recorded an episode on Vampire Survivors prior to Holocure, so it was interesting to compare the differences between them. I think the baffling amount of creativity and character that Holocure has really separates it apart from the rest of the Survivor-like games. You can really tell how much work the solo-dev Kay Yu has put in, and I'm excited to see what further updates bring!
-
Comment on What gaming genre could use a renaming? in ~games
AI52487963 LinkTo be honest, I think to some degree genre theory is dead and tagging helped nail the coffin shut. In ages past, you used to have very well defined gaming categories between action, platformers,...To be honest, I think to some degree genre theory is dead and tagging helped nail the coffin shut.
In ages past, you used to have very well defined gaming categories between action, platformers, racing, etc. But inevitably people will want to cross boundaries between genres and incorporate novel gameplay mechanics from other types of games. So if you combine platforming and racing to get the game Speedrunners, does that necessitate an entire new genre? Hard to say.
Roguelikes are a particularly stand out example for this topic. They've gone from ascii-tiled, grid-based, turn-based, terminal-based games to something completely different. Part of that is because of the shift in the genre after Spelunky, Binding of Isaac, and Rogue Legacy. It's worth noting that the genre has been constantly evolving since the late 80s and, despite some attempts, is nearly impossible to nail down what exactly constitutes its definition. For my podcast on roguelikes, we did an almost two hour long deep dive on the topic specifically, not that our intent was to actually settle the question, since it's effectively impossible.
Part of the broader discussion here is what exactly constitutes a genre of gaming, movies, literature, etc? In some sense, it's similar to cooking. How are desserts different than savory dishes? What constitutes a cake exactly? How are those ingredients different than getting a soufflé at the end? How much chocolate do you need in a cake to make it a chocolate cake? These questions are disturbingly similar to things like "how many of the 1980 rogue game mechanics need to be checked off for a game to be considered being labelled as a roguelike?" Is one enough? Two? Do we start descending in to a debate about Sorites Paradox for every discussion like this?
Genre is helpful for broad classifications so casual folks know how to distinguish a racing game like Forza from a platformer like Mario. Tagging systems like with Steam, or Itch, or even for products on Amazon help to break those broad categories down into more atomic elements, so you can find the base ingredients that you like the most. I feel that if a game wants to market itself a certain way by calling itself a "roguelike" or "metroidvania" or "sim racer", that's perfectly okay. If a game winds up not being in that category, then the collective wisdom of time and people's feedback will reflect it as such.
Tagging is problematic with many platforms, because they blend marketing materials with gameplay mechanics in an all-or-nothing inclusive selection mechanism. For example, with Steam if you hunt by "roguelike" you get games where the tag has been applied so many times it's in the top 5 that describe it, but you also get games that have the tag applied just once in the same result set. There's no good way to search by tag volume to eliminate those stragglers, yet. So when Steam says "ah you're looking at Caves of Qud, might I suggest Don't Starve? They're both tagged 'roguelike'", despite one of them being of a far different proportion than the other.
Prior to 2010, roguelikes were basically all turn-based, grid-based, permadeath RPGs with tile (not sprite) based graphics. Spelunky and Binding of Isaac changed a lot of that by taking some of those elements and applying them to other genres (platformers, twin stick shooters). Is that enough to warrant an entire new genre by swapping out one board on the Ship of Theseus? As the gradation of replaced gameplay elements increases, I think we walk more from the originalist, "Traditional Roguelike" sphere of influence, towards "Rogue-lites".
The term "Rogue-lite" was coined by the first Rogue Legacy game to mean the presence of a metaprogression aspect that made the game easier over time. But I think it's better suited for games that borrow some elements from traditional roguelikes. Effectively making games like Rogue-FP a "Rogue-lite", since it ticks all the traditional roguelike boxes, except possibly for the Superhot-style "real-time" vs "turn-based" difference.
All in all, I think the term "Roguelike" is fine as a super-genre that encapsulates the originalist formula of games like Cogmind, Tales of Maj'Eyal, and Caves of Qud into a category of "traditional roguelikes", and things like Vampire Survivors and Hades into a category of "rogue-lites". It's a sliding scale that no one would be happy with, which is likely the best compromise. It establishes the difference between restrictive design principles that the naming was originally designed for, but allows room for remixes and new creative design choices.
-
Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
AI52487963 LinkWe recently played the roguelike deckbuilder Lonestar for our podcast. It has an interesting mashup between FTL style events and card-driven combat, where you have to go through 3 rounds of 4...We recently played the roguelike deckbuilder Lonestar for our podcast.
It has an interesting mashup between FTL style events and card-driven combat, where you have to go through 3 rounds of 4 bounties in ever increasing difficulty.
The battle system in Lonestar is interesting, as you have to match your opponent's laser strength with yours. And then it effectively becomes a chess puzzle if sorts where you are figuring out what sequence gives you the number you need.
The card draw system is also unique in that you assemble "cards" as a combination of random draws from a numeric point pool and a color pool. Each round you assemble 3 "cards" this way and need to figure out where to put your orange 4, blue 6, and white 1 to ensure victory for The Showdown.
Overall I thought it was neat, if a little raw from Early Access. The ship unit descriptions are extremely verbose and some of the terms see can easily be confused for other things. At least in my experience, one of my co-hosts had non-issue with it, seemingly.
The idea behind Lonestar is interesting but I'd probably wait for the full 1.0 release which should be sometime later this year.
-
Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
AI52487963 LinkThis week we played Barony for our podcast on roguelike games Overall: its...okay? The youtube community loves this game and for a while I couldn't figure out why. Barony is brutally difficult,...This week we played Barony for our podcast on roguelike games
Overall: its...okay? The youtube community loves this game and for a while I couldn't figure out why. Barony is brutally difficult, even in its tutorial section, to the point of being frustrating I feel. There are a lot of accessibility options you can turn on to help with it, luckily, but much of the core gameplay loop feels like the difficulty is masking the lack of gameplay options available.
Case in point: melee in this game feels objectively bad. Now first-person melee systems are hard to do in general, but in Barony you can't backstep at a fast enough speed to swipe-retreat from your enemies like you can in Minecraft. Instead, the idea is you attack, turn, run, turn, attack. You can shield, but your shields can be broken and raising a shield feels like it doesn't really do much to stop the onslaught of rat attacks.
I think the appeal here is largely with co-op. Playing with more people makes the game substantially easier from a firepower perspective, but also being able to heal allies, and generally having more combat options open. Split-screen co-op is particularly fun, giving the game an old-school feel that I haven't felt since maybe the N64 era.
Barony in co-op is just on the verge of managed chaos constantly and I think that's where it shines best: a bunch of friends on the couch with maybe a couple spectators cheering in bemusement when a boulder rolls over someone unexpectedly.
-
Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
AI52487963 LinkWe recently played Returnal for our roguelike game podcast and boy do I have some thoughts. Playing on PC can be a gamble if your system is going to be buggy or not, but if all the stars align and...We recently played Returnal for our roguelike game podcast and boy do I have some thoughts.
Playing on PC can be a gamble if your system is going to be buggy or not, but if all the stars align and you're able to run the game relatively okay, then I'd say give it a look when it's on sale.
I don't think I've been as locked in and focused during combat sequences in a very, very long time. Returnal is a game that I actually woke up early to play before going to work, and was the first thing I'd do when I got home. It's such a captivating experience, it's just a shame that the PC port is pretty poorly optimized. I'm sure it plays just fine on a PS5, though.
Story and ending spoilers
The story is very interesting, but I don't like the direction it went about 2/3 of the way through the first act. There's one cutscene that sets the direction for where the story is nebulously headed, and I was really hoping that it wouldn't truly be it, but my fears were confirmed.
My enthusiasm for playing through a second time really got the wind taken out after rolling credits the first time. I get there's more to the story, but now it feels like all the cool stuff in the game is effectively worthless. I hope I'm wrong and that a NG+ run here will serve as an interesting spin on all the assumptions I made the first time through, possibly with some monologue references to the bosses and major objectives, but I really don't want to go on a big fetch quest for another unresolved ending.
In a way, I'm reminded of Hollow Knight and it's ending. Top notch gameplay with a "bad" default ending, but a "good" ending you can unlock after via a harder sequence. That sort of system really bugs me and is the principal reason why I haven't finished Hollow Knight multiple times. I would hate it if Super Metroid had a similar ending.
The more I reflect back on Returnal's story the more I think about Metal Gear Solid 2. Maybe the first ending is my Raiden moment that I haven't fully come to appreciate yet, but MGS2 had a similar feeling of massive disappointment only to be slowly won over throught the years. Now MGS2 is in my short list of all time favorites specifically because of that. Maybe Returnal will share a spot once I fully complete the rest of the story?
-
Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
AI52487963 LinkThis week we played the shmup Star of Providence for our podcast on roguelike/lite games Overall: we really enjoyed it! I played a lot of it years ago when it was previously titled "Monolith" and...This week we played the shmup Star of Providence for our podcast on roguelike/lite games
Overall: we really enjoyed it! I played a lot of it years ago when it was previously titled "Monolith" and always had a great time playing it. Unlike traditional shmups, Star of Providence has a lot of room-based cover that you can hide behind which I think helps a lot with the difficulty curve for people like me who are somewhat green to the genre. My co-hosts and I typically play more "bullet heck"-level games like Enter the Gungeon or Binding of Isaac, but Star of Providence provides a nice bridge for us to get our toes wet into shmups without getting too deep into stuff like Touhou.
There's such a brilliant mix of NES aesthetic visually and in the sound design that would feel really at home on a CRT or in an arcade cabinet even. If you're a fan of Gungeon or Isaac you should def give Providence a look. Should be coming to the Switch soon as well.
-
Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
AI52487963 LinkGot to revisit the classic puzzle game Into the Breach for our roguelike podcast episode this week Such a lovely game, from the animations to the a-ha moment you get when you finally see the...Got to revisit the classic puzzle game Into the Breach for our roguelike podcast episode this week
Such a lovely game, from the animations to the a-ha moment you get when you finally see the solution to a mission you've been puzzling over for 30 minutes. I think if you're a fan of any kind of tactics game, you'd be well served to play it and will get a lot of enjoyment even out of just grinding easy mode missions.
Also there was a content update a couple years ago, so if it's been a while since you played it at launch, there's a few new mech squads, pilots, items, and bugs to take into consideration. I kind of wish there was more stuff for Into the Breach, but it's such a streamlined experience that any additional story or mechanics would just get in the way of what's already a great, near perfect experience.
-
Comment on It annoys me that so many PC games feel like they're intended for consoles in ~games
AI52487963 LinkYou may be interested in Cataclysm' Dark Days Ahead if you're into survival horror crafting sandbox games built explicitly for PC. Open source and with more keyboard commands than you can shake a...You may be interested in Cataclysm' Dark Days Ahead if you're into survival horror crafting sandbox games built explicitly for PC. Open source and with more keyboard commands than you can shake a stick at.
-
Comment on Titanfall is still EA's most innovative shooter ten years later in ~games
AI52487963 Link ParentI'm hoping for a game that takes the combined arms gameplay of Squad and somehow adds a mech angle. Were almost 20 years on from the original release of Chromehounds which was way ahead of it's...I'm hoping for a game that takes the combined arms gameplay of Squad and somehow adds a mech angle. Were almost 20 years on from the original release of Chromehounds which was way ahead of it's time.
A similar game was being solo developed for a while but I think it may have fizzled out.
-
Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
AI52487963 LinkPlayed Balatro this week for our roguelike podcast I was a little skeptical when people were saying this was going to be the next best roguelike deckbuilder since Slay the Spire, since that was...Played Balatro this week for our roguelike podcast
I was a little skeptical when people were saying this was going to be the next best roguelike deckbuilder since Slay the Spire, since that was being said about Cobalt Core last year. CC is a fun game in its own right, but Balatro has somehow captured the entire gaming world by storm in less than a month.
Overall: we really liked it as a group, but I've been having a tough time with it myself. It's fun, but sometimes feels punishingly random with not as many strategic outs as you can get in Monster Train or Luck Be A Landlord, even. That being said, every time I've sat down to only play 20 minutes, at least 90 have gone by. There's a great balance of visual aesthetic to its hard brained math puzzles where I can just sit at a round to play and think for ages.
It's such a great game to play on the Steam Deck, that I imagine anyone with a Switch is also playing it nonstop. It will be interesting to see how a mobile port shapes up and compares. I'm personally looking forward to expanded content, as I think there could be more obvious synergies to build up as a run progresses. That's maybe the toughest area for me to grok at the moment, but I've only put 12-ish hours in, versus 100+ that some of my social circle have already.
-
Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
AI52487963 LinkMy three podcast co-hosts and I recently played the very popular roguelite city builder Against The Storm and were very mixed on it. I found the city building part to be very interesting once you...My three podcast co-hosts and I recently played the very popular roguelite city builder Against The Storm and were very mixed on it.
I found the city building part to be very interesting once you get over the learning curve of how all the systems operate. The game does take a very long time to play each run, though, averaging between 45 to 90 minutes even on triple speed. There's a lot of interesting choices to make with how to win each settlement between fulfilling orders from the Queen, cracking open supply caches on the map, or focusing on your population specifically.
The major hinderance to Against the Storm is everything outside of the city building part. It feels like there's been a tremendous amount of energy put into the art direction and bits of story and lore throughout, but it's never connected or capitalized on. The titular Queen you're serving is someone that no one knows anything about and you never see during the game. The meta-goal of "what am I building these cities for exactly?" isn't really explained or rationalized. And I think the worst part is that there doesn't seem to be any kind of victory or catharsis in the game at all. You beat a settlement and you move on to the next one. You beat the seal and finish a full run, but you hit a button and start it all over again?
I like a lot of the flexibility and systems design in Against the Storm, but the rest of the game, including the hard-to-grok tutorial really makes for a hard headwind even for people who are big fans of other similarly complicated games like Rimworld or Factorio. I feel like those figured out tutorialization and emergent gameplay or victory conditions in a more straightforward fashion.
Given the furious pace of development, it wouldn't shock me if Against the Storm had some kind of major overhaul or refactor or content update to smooth out all those things. I think the game has some good foundations to it, but just needs some more time to bake.
-
Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
AI52487963 LinkPlayed the highly influential Tales of Maj'Eyal this week for our roguelike podcast. Reviews were generally positive with me really liking it, two other co-hosts being a light recommend, and one...Played the highly influential Tales of Maj'Eyal this week for our roguelike podcast.
Reviews were generally positive with me really liking it, two other co-hosts being a light recommend, and one with a light not-recommend. Different strokes for folks, as we have a pretty wide diversity of preferred play styles among the group.
Overall: the graphics are bad, but can be modded to be more palatable. There's a lot of fun experimentation and good design decisions to be had in a genre that's notorious for tedium and overt complexity. TOME is much easier to get into than, say, NetHack, ADOM, CDDA, or others of its time and type. It's much closer to Diablo than it is any of those games and all for the better IMO.
That being said, I think there's a fundamental clash between run-based permadeath games and long time-investment RPGs. It feels really bad to lose a character you've invested a lot in, particularly if you have to re-tread the same campaign all over again. TOME is fun, but I could totally see more casual roguelite players getting tired of doing the same quests over and over again. I think a game like Path of Achra (or other, coffeebreak-length traditional roguelikes) does this in better in a more straightforward fashion, but our coverage of that is still sitting in the production pipeline.
-
Comment on Steam Next Fest: what have you been playing? in ~games
AI52487963 Link ParentI haven't had a game like that make me so physically uncomfortable to play in a very long time lolI haven't had a game like that make me so physically uncomfortable to play in a very long time lol
This week we played Terminus: Zombie Survivors for our podcast on roguelike games.
One of my cohosts LOVED this game. I think the rest of us were mildly positive on it for different reasons, but he is very drawn to the zombie themed open world survival horror base building genre. For me, the complete opposite.
One aspect of Terminus I liked was that there are multiple victory conditions, so I was always focused on just bee-lining straight to the end, which was fun enough.
It feels like there's a lot of potential with Terminus and that future content updates will add a lot. Something to keep an eye on over time for sure.