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What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them?
What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.
Finally started Indiana Jones and the Great Circle over the weekend. It's a blast. Everything everyone is saying is true.
My only gripe, and this is minor, is the lack of action scenes. I'm maybe halfway through Egypt and there is a distinct lack of them compared to the films. I guess the combat is meant to fill that itch but I was hoping for more set pieces, like in Raiders with the convoy, or the plane fist fight.
It's mostly been solving puzzles which is fun, they did an excellent job with that, and the combat is pretty good too, just a little sad we don't have more big action scenes with the Indy music booming heroically. Maybe there will be more later in the game
My wife and I have both picked up a copy of Monster Train over the weekend to scratch our StS and Balatro needs. I have been loving the combinations between the clans and the strategy between unit placement on the different floors.
A great game with rounds lasting 45 minutes to an hour. I really should get some lawn and yard chores sorted before I turn my computer on today...
Hell yeah, great games. Those three are my holy trinity of roguelike deckbuilders.
Note that there's a speed option somewhere in the settings that makes the attacks and effects run way faster than normal. It doesn't affect the gameplay at all since you still can take as long as you want with each turn, it just speeds up the animations.
Lets you get more runs per play session, or shortens your play session, as long as you're okay with the speedy animations. I find my runs usually lasting between 20-30 minutes, but I've been playing for a while and am used to the cards/effects/enemies, plus I like going fast in these types of games.
What's your favorite clan? I love the play pattern of the Umbra. Specifically the one unit that creates two morsels per turn. Always results in having one super overpowered dude (cuz he just got fed 2+ morsels per turn for like ten rounds) that just wipes the floor with everything, lol. Add something like trample or multi-attack and baby you've got a stew going.
For the first few rounds and for the new clans, I played on slow but have increased this as I learned! I did the same with StS.
Umbra is awesome, I paired a penumbra champ with two morselmakers. One which created two morsels and the other copies any morsels created on the floor. This sealed the deal with a unit which gained protect after every gorge on the floor above. I think they ended with over 20 stacked protects...
I decided to give Fortnite a chance, on a whim. It's actually a lot of fun. It's kind of funny that it's often maligned by a certain cross-section of gamers, who are likely to have played Team Fortress 2, when I see it as kind of a spiritual successor to the silliness of TF2 with the gameplay of PUBG. I've been mostly playing the zero-build battle royale mode, but it also basically has Rock Band in it too.
It fits the chill, lower-engagement shooter game niche I haven't had a game for in awhile. I used to just put on a podcast and deathmatch in Quake type games, years ago, and Fortnite seems to also be good for "I don't want to think about the game too much right now" moods.
Someone gifted me Witchfire and its exactly the type of challenging FPS I was looking for. The best way I can describe it is if Destiny was a single player extraction shooter set in the 1800s. They pulled off a really atmospheric Gothic Christian theme from the over-the-top environmental design and the type of diction used. And I wish we got to see the playable character more because the outfits and weapons look incredible.
I'm very much into the story. You have a home base where you gear up and then you have to teleport to a few sandbox maps on a haunted island to kill a witch. There was major campaign that preceded your arrival but they were all wiped out and you're left to piece together what happened with environmental storytelling and lore drops, all while waging a one man crusade against hoards of undead and demons.
And the way the story unfolds can get pretty trippy. Maps have a very general objective to kill a boss creature in the area. And no real indication on how to do it like in the first map it's a Zombie Pirate and he's hanging out by his crashed ship. But if you explore a bit, you find a gauntlet run to a treasure room. And if you solve a weird puzzle, you can access a sanatorium under the map and curse yourself by performing a profane ritual which allows you to access a mirror dimension where you can harvest Divine Essence that can be used to somehow weaken the witch. There isn't exactly any instructions that you can do this and when you stumble into it, they throw really objectives to hint you in the right direction.
The gameplay is very inspired by Destiny, but with practical RPG mechanics and not bogged down by grindy MMO bs. There's actually quite a lot going on between spells, passives, movement, specials, in run powers and upgrades. But the highlight is that you leveling up only empowers you and the enemies are not scaling to match. They are pretty strong already and you are catching up. Even weapon upgrades dont give more damage, but adds more utility to make your raids more effective. Leveling up stats does randomize spawn locations and enemy composition to keep maps fresh. Difficulty only ramps up by progressing the story and it unlocks stronger enemy types, harder regions and spawns bigger groups. But in the end, you should be able to kill an end game enemy as a new character without it feeling artificial.
I'll probably put it down in a few days and wait for the Early Access period to end.
I'm also playing Awaria on the Deck. It's a short and free little bullet hell puzzle. You're a repair girl in some underground complex and you need to run around to repair shield generators. And you're constantly being attacked by cute ghost girls. Your character volunteered for the job because of the cute ghosts (and a tragic backstory) and it's all pretty cute and wholesome.
Its free. The art is very Newgrounds. Music is fire.
Wow Witchfire sounds pretty cool. Great description!
Question though: the second tag on the Steam page for it is 'roguelite', right in between 'FPS' and 'Souslike'. The other two make total sense, but how does the roguelite fit in? Like you mentioned a home base. Do you branch off from that base and each run/life you discover more and more of the world? Is it sort of expected that you'll die at some point in the run, or do you return to the main base each time? It sounds really cool, I was just curious about this detail.
I don't think Roguelite is a very good description of the game. I'd say the structure is more like the original Demon Souls if you played it. The better tag would be a Raiding Game, where your knowledge of the map is just as important as your gear and powers.
From the home base you go to a level select screen and each option is an area with a consistent map. I think the roguelite tag is simply because loot placenent is semi random, the temp passive power ups you find in a run are random and the location of encounters shuffle when you level up. I don't think it's the best tag, but probably some peoples only frame of reference.
The new player experience gives you only a single weapon and runs on the first map are a few minutes before you are overwhelmed by enemies, info and roadblocks. And as you unlock weapons, spells and gear you eventually clear the map and beat the boss. There are things that you still can't do on the map and hints at deeper secrets but it's best to move on. (Its possible to unlock it with a guide but trust me, working out the deep secrets by yourself are pretty fun)
So you unlock the next chapter, jump to the next area and are immediately humbled by overwhelming force, new enemy types and an unnerving countdown to the Calamity. It can get very overwhelming, very fast but each run makes you a little better until you're flawless navigating across the map.
If you can find a gameplay video from the first level, it'll better communicate just how all these systems work.
Still playing a ton of Victoria 3 if anyone wants to chat about that. Finally got back up to speed to the point where I feel comfortable doing anything and everything I'd like in the game, and understanding what's causing my problems and what steps I can do to resolve them. (There are A LOT of game mechanics and numbers to know about).
But I'm about to go away for a couple weeks, so I'm sure I'll have to re-remember it all once I come back, lol.
I have my eye on that one, but have been on the fence whether I want to spend on it without a heavy discount. Can you give a summary, maybe comparing to other games? Maybe "If you like ___, you'll like V3. If you don't like ___, you won't like it."
Two games have really occupied a lot of my time this week, but I'll start with the one I've played a bit less.
Armoured Commander II is a great little ASCII-Style World War 2, Tank-based Roguelike. I'm not sure how else to describe it, but that's the basic gist. You'll command a tank of your choosing, in a campaign of your choosing, of which there are a huge amount to choose from; I chose to start with Operation Torch, the American invasion of French North Africa in 1942. From there you can choose your vehicle, which again is vast. For my opening choice, I could have chosen an M3 Half-Track with an AT gun, M3 Stuart tank and variants or an M3 Lee tank. You get more victory points depending on your choice, the Half-track and Stuart awarding more, given their smaller armament and armor. I chose the Lee, which was frankly overpowered for this particular campaign, as I'm facing tanks built in 1918 and other French tanks from the 1930's. Here's a screenshot of my Lee destroying one of those 1918 Tanks with my .30 Caliber machine gun. In addition to other tanks, you'll also be fighting Armored Cars, motorcycles, infantry and even the occasional transport vehicle.
You get to manage every aspect of your tank, things like whether your crew is buttoned-up, what weapons you're shooting (many tanks have Coaxial machine guns in their turrets next to their main guns), what the Loader is doing, whether the Driver will focus on driving or trying to spot enemies, etc, etc. I generally have my Commander open up his hatch so that he's more effective at spotting enemies, but this opens him up to danger. I haven't had it happen yet, but your crew can suffer injuries, as well as become fatigued, causing them to perform worse; however, the longer you have any given crew member, the more skill points they're awarded for pumping up their stats or buying them new skills. You also get to choose what kind of ammunition you're firing and whether it's in the ammo storage or ready rack for quick access with your Loader. You can also have your tank in a hull down position to help mitigate enemy shots, but so far that's really only happened on accident to me and I haven't figured out yet if I can read the terrain to spot hills and the like yet so I can actually deliberately choose to go hull down.
I've only played about 5-hours now, but I absolutely love it, especially as a big fan of WW2 and Tanks in general.
I've also been putting an absolute load of time into Dishonored 2. I last played it in 2017 and had stopped when I got to the Grand Palace, always meaning to return, but never have; I even played Prey completely before going back. But the last week something clicked for me and I decided to get back into it and I've been absolutely enjoying the hell out of it. I'm just playing slowly and really taking my time to fully explore levels, knocking out all the guards so I have free reign and it's just been absolutely delightful. Though I'm realizing I don't remember anything about it, which is weird. I mean, my memory is crap, but there are some amazing levels like The Clockwork Mansion and Dust District/Stiltons Mansion you'd think would have stuck with me, but they somehow didn't.
Yesterday, I managed to get about 4-hours of Dishonored 2 in, which is very unusual for me. My kids were playing with a friend part of the day, my wife took them to a birthday party and later went over to her sisters house in the evening, so between all these I had this solid chunk (if disparate and broken up) of time to just play and really get absorbed into the world. It's quickly becoming one of my favorite games of all time, which I suppose isn't a surprise for me, given how much of a revelation Deus Ex and Thief were for me 20 years ago.
@BeardyHat I got you to try Drova a few weeks back and after reading "ASCII-Style World War 2, Tank-based Roguelike" you might have got me in return.
I'm gonna check this out! Thanks for your post, it sounds very much like what I'd enjoy playing.
Haha, good! I hope you like it! It feels very unique in the space, I'll be curious to hear your thoughts about it when you get around to it.
It runs on a potato as well, which is awesome and I forgot to mention, it plays exceptionally well on Steam Deck/with a controller, probably better than it does on a keyboard. On my Deck, I cranked the wattage down to 3 or 5 watts, whatever the minimum is and locked it to 20fps to get extra battery life. And for shits and giggles, I tried to run it on a Windows 98 VM with a 233Mhz Pentium II, though it wouldn't start as it wants a newer version of Windows.
Anyway, too many words, so I'll add some more with this sentence. Hope you enjoy!
Heading into the holidays I've felt more driven to hit up the smaller games I've missed.
Ballionaire: Think Balatro + Pachinko. You have a pegboard on which you place triggers. Examples of triggers are a "pinball bumper" that bumps a ball away from it, you have triggers that bounces a ball up, or a teleporter that teleports the ball to a teleporter placed higher. Your ball scores points while bouncing down the pegboard in order to beat you Balatro style blinds.
But as you may guess it doesn't stay simple. Triggers start adding "items" to the ball that it carriers. Or begin spawning in elemental balls that interact with other triggers in different ways. Very early into the game you will be building boards that build up tomatoes, cheese, and bread carried by your ball, with the goal of landing in a pan to make a pizza, and scoring points by getting the pizzas into mouths.
Kill Knight: A difficult combat focused, twin shooter, swarm shooter, rogue-type. The aestetic is pretty cool synthwave inspired. Combar feels good, tight and efficient but punishing. Your primary weapon is a gun with an active reload trigger, so if you time a sword swing correctly during reload it does more cleave damage. Right trigger has a heavy weapon. And once your vacuum up enough special shards you have a ultimate that causes killed enemies to drop healing shards. Obviously there is a dodge, it works well but I haven't quite figured out the i-frames. I haven't quite firugred out progression. There is equipment you select before a run but it so far has unlocked very slowly. It is a perfect podcast game for me though.
Minishoot' Adventures: LTTP-like bullet hell twinshooter but you play as a little Protoss type probe? This is a lot of fun. It's what it says on the box. I find it enjoyable.
Indika: This is a game I kept wanting to play but then I'd forget about it. The story concerns Indika, a young nun that has something else going on. I was surpised because this game looks amazing for a small studio. Graphics are 3d realism which I didn't expect. But then 16-bit sections represent flashbacks to other times in Indika's life. A lot of discussion on determinism, free-will, faith. Anyone who grew up religious will find the topics and themes very resonant.
I've seen some discussion on the game having some "highs and lows." I hope I'm not giving the game too much of a pass, but based on how competent the good sections are and the story being told. I read these "lows" as extremely intentional. This is a very good game and I highly recommend it. If I get around to it I might write up a discussion thread because there's a lot I want to process.
Next up: Mouthwashing.
I spent this week playing another 15ish hours of Uncle Chop's Rocket Shop, which I initially posted about last week.
As a reminder, it's a new (but complete) release rogue like where you are a space ship mechanic. The main stickt is you get a massive manual and you've got to try and diagnose complicated issues either against the clock in the default mode, or you get all the time in the world but your jobs are way harder and therefore easier to make mistakes.
I gotta say I resonate a lot with the Steam reviews for this one. It's ALMOST a brilliant game, and they might fix it in post launch patches, but as of writing there's a lot of frustration to be had.
The game is has classic "pay your rent every x days" and it keeps getting harder. After every rent it introduces more mechanics.
Seems most people, myself included, master the early, easier jobs pretty fast. But there's huge spikes in difficulty at some of the rent payments, where you pick a job after sleeping and just instantly die, sometimes without understanding why, then you're forced to play through possibly hours of game again to get back.
And I think it would be fine if it was one or two things, but it's a wild combination of fatal modules and mistakes which will get you.
What I mean is, you might master how fatal module A can fail in various ways and feel comfortable, but then 2 or more of those failures happen at once, or a failure chain happens that means you have to fix X to fix Y to fix the fatal one and that's it, you're done. And the only way to learn this really is experience then use re-rolls or avoid the job.
All that said, there's a really good game here. The core game design is great, the writing is good, the art is wonderful. I'm sure I'll crack the ending soon, but man it does not respect your time well right now if you don't have patience for changing oil 50x!