24
votes
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.
This week I played out the grand finale of my Bannerlord campaign. The screenshots are scattered throughout to enhance your reading experience. When it hit me, "this is it, we ball" I moved to my home PC so they'd look a bit nicer. I also split this into two sections - the end of the story, and then some talk about the game/mods/etc.
-Finale-
Where I last left off, Mallgoth had been crowned king of the Grandis Larcennae and began accumulating both territory and followers, in the year 1103. From 1103 to 1107, we fought a series of defensive wars, first against Vlandia, then the Western Empire, then both together, and then just Vlandia. Each time, Mallgoth led an army to defend against their invasions and then pushed into their territory - every conflict resulted in wrecked armies and some form of territorial loss for the attackers. By 1105, they were both getting beaten so badly they were made to pay tribute. Eventually the Western Empire just quit trying. Vlandia though would not stop, because they hated Mallgoth too much. By 1105, every Vlandian noble clan had maximum distaste for him, a "-100" relationship.
Across the same stretch of time, in between wars Mallgoth traveled the region and convinced his former rebel compatriots to join him. In total, 11 more clans joined his kingdom, for the low price of [like 30 million total] denars. He awarded fiefs to his two most loyal companions, which grew the kingdom by 2 more clans. Yanagoth, despite being in her early 40's had two more children, Plibbert and Petunia. The wars were opportunities; they helped our military grow into an elite fighting force and drained the enemies of their resources. We picked up shitloads of gear, goods, and
prisonersstone mine professionals.In 1109, after a temporary peace King Erdurand (the fourth ruler) of Vlandia declared war again, and this time instead of defending Mallgoth gathered an army and headed straight into their territory. He beseiged and took one castle, then headed out for a second, named Hongard. Hongard was tougher than most, with a strong garrison, upgraded walls, and lots of militia. We'd pushed Vlandia westward, which meant the campaign actually got a lot harder, because the westward settlements had been upgraded/improved quite a lot.
Mallgoth charged ahead on his trusty horse Scrotecrusher (a mod lets you progress/name your horse), and chopped the outer gate open himself. He is that fast and that strong; before the ram could get to the gate he'd broken it open. With his men he chopped open the inner gate, and then himself accrued over 100 kills. His skill with the zweihander had reached a point where playing as him felt like some sort of B movie - I could just mash the button, wave the sword around and everyone in front of me got killed/dismembered. If they had a wooden shield, it would shatter on the second hit and dude would just die, every time. Eventually we fully breached the castle, and the survivors fled to the keep.
In the keep, we ran down halls and up circular staircases slicing through knights and crossbowmen. Mallgoth led the charge, racing ahead to get to the lord's bedchamber. As he cut down the guards on one end of the last hall, a crossbowman leaned out at the other end, fired, and hit Mallgoth in the neck. He was killed instantly, and because he was an older character, this time it was for real. Mallgoth was dead. His wife Yanagoth led the squad from there, massacred the remaining Vlandians and laid Mallgoth to rest. With unanimous support from the clans, she was crowned the first Queen of the Grandis Larcennae. Here is a photo of them together.
Overcome with grief and vengeful bloodlust, Yanagoth disbanded the army after the castle was seized, gathered the most elite of the elite, and went on a rampage through Vlandian lands, burning villages and beheading every noble she could catch. Eventually, she found Erdurand along the western coast, bested him in combat and took him prisoner. Vlandia offered peace - she refused, and beheaded him.
This happened in the summer of 1109, just one season out from Tyranae's coming of age. After beheading Erdurand, Vlandia pled for peace and this time were heard, because Yanagoth needed time to build her forces for what would be a three year total war against Vlandia. Tyranae, Bolverkr, Porg, and Kalevala all came of age during this time, and so joined Yanagoth on her quest for vengeance. The began at the southern end of Vlandia and just worked their way up, pushing them into the northwestern, coastal town of Ostican. When Ostican fell, they had no choice but to retreat to their final hold, a castle far to the south called Hertogea. This was her goal: To force a retreat across a wide swathe of our territory, so that many of the surviving nobles would get scooped up by guard patrols and our other noble war parties.
At Hertogea in 1113, Yanagoth deployed four trebuchets and destroyed the castle walls. 2200 troops flooded in from two directions and massacred everyone. Exhausted, and with support for the war seriously waning, they conquered Hertogea and eliminated the kingdom of Vlandia from history.
With her mission complete, Yanagoth returned to the highlands, assigned her troops out to her companions' war parties, gave Tyranae Mallgoth's zweihander, and then the two of them headed for The Retreat, a cave high in the mountains where hermits live. There, Yanagoth bid her daugher farewell, and left the kingdom for a life of quiet contemplation. Tyranae, at 22, became the second queen of Grandis Larcennae. She, Bolverkr, Porg, and Kalevala, accompanied by two of Yanagoth's former companions, strapped up and set out for the southern desert, to live as Mallgoth did and train their combat skills against brigands and highwaymen.
There was actually a bit of an epilogue with that. We traveled south to the desert, and visited King Unqid of the Aserai (think Saracens), one of the original rulers (he is 74 years old) and the only king who actually liked Mallgoth. We fought in a tournament with his family, and then ventured out, where we were ambushed by none other than a remnant of a Vlandian clan, dey Rothad. Dey Rothad in particular had been a thorn in Mallgoth's side, as their leader, Dagunic, had successfully murdered more than one of his companions back when Grandis Larcennae was just starting out. We defeated Dagunic, beheaded him and camped in one of the Aserai villages.
And that I think is where I will declare the game is over. For now, at least. I archived the mod pack + version of the game so I could come back to it at some point. Theoretically, I could let the game just go on its own, abdicate leadership and let Grandis Larcennae go its own way. I could pick it back up as one of Plibbert's children and develop a new campaign from there. Warsails comes out next month so I know I'll be playing more Bannerlord. Perhaps when the mods catch up to it I'll load this save and see how that works out. Here is a final little collection of fun shots.
-Mods-
I have to give some credit to folks too, the mods made this what it was. The unmodded game is great for what it is, but enough people made enough things that you can touch just about everything it does, from the combat camera up through what kingdoms and armies do. I went for expanding on the game's systems, like more meat on the existing bones sort of thing, and making combat look like 300.In particular, I think these contributed the most to that experience: Diplomacy, Fourberie, War & AI Tweaks, Immersive Battlefield, Reinforcement System, Open Source Armory (all of it), Realistic Battle Mod (and the "Smart Patch"), Dismemberment+, Artem's Lively Animations, Cinematic Combat, Xorberax's Legacy (for the shoulder camera), Realistic Weather, and of course Zweihanders.
Putting those together I think would give you like 85% of it. If you go through doing that you'll be able to pick the other 15% and have a really fun time. Mods are easy to get and install, you just put a folder somewhere and check a box 95% of the time. The other 5% is just load order/organizational stuff, nothing huge. Folks put out good enough instructions.
Also have to give some credit to the youtube channel Tactical Enlightenment. I think his approach, of micromanaging divisions and intentionally raising stakes made the game tremendously more fun to play. Being able to comfortably win a 3:1 or 4:1 encounter in the field means blasting through the early game, and being able to successfully defend 5:1 and 6:1 in sieges means doing the same with the early years of having a kingdom.
In this campaign, the hardest battle I fought was a defensive siege in which I was outnumbered 7:1. I organized my troops similar to what TE does - squares of infantry at the bottom of staircases and near the gate, with divisions of archers behind and off the walls. For the opening minutes of the siege I'd man a catapult to take out their siege towers, then hurl big rocks at folks while they rammed the gate. When the gate was breached, an infantry square just next to the open door would pull the enemy into it while archers shot at the enemy's back. When the enemy would try to rush us, I'd move the square through the enemy's advancing units to plug the gate, and when I could not singlehandedly keep them from flowing in I'd have archers draw steel and charge in for support. We never lost a settlement, either to enemy armies or to rebellion, and pretty much every major battle was amazing.
Obviously I very much love Bannerlord and would recommend it to anybody even remotely interested in medieval stuff. The modding community has produced really good work, and the game is continuing to develop despite being around for many years. The expansion, War Sails comes out next month and introduces naval warfare along with systems for stuff like blockades and ship-to-ship combat. It'll probably break like 90% of the existing mods, but one good thing is they do provide prior game versions to roll back to if you want to (I did my campaign with 1.2.12).
I have no point of reference for this game at all, but you had me at:
This is an excellent name for a horse, especially one that is prone to sudden stopping (ask me how I know)
In my head canon, this game is what happens if you play Stardew Valley to year 1109, and no one is going to convince me otherwise.
Yes I want to know the horse story, please tell me the horse story lol
I was riding bareback, galloping (in retrospect, very foolish, but I was young), when the horse suddenly pulled up short. So I basically slid forward and crushed my man parts into the horse's neck/shoulder blades. It was a miracle I stayed on the horse while also trying not to double up in pain and not to throw up. That horse's name was Frank, but Scrotecrusher would have made a good middle name.
Doom: The Dark Ages (PC Game Pass): Released last week and available on Game Pass; I actually played this launch night because I saw I could pre-install; did so, then an hour later I noticed it was available to play. While I've never been a big Doom player, it is a series that's always been in my lane. So I was excited to check out this latest installment.
What I like about this game is that it feels like Id is just riffing and trying things out. Relative to Doom Eternal it feels mechanically trimmed and slowed down. I think Doom Eternal is a more impressive game, but I taped off when it just felt like I had to juggle and think more than I'd like in a Doom game. This game is making me want to go back to Doom (2016) and maybe go back to Doom Eternal; because Doom: The Dark Ages really delivers on vibes.
What this game really nails is the power fantasy of Doom-guy. Leaping off a cliff, shield bash a demon into the group and explode everything around. Rush from target to target, parrying, swapping weapons and just ripping through crowds of demons to a djenty soundtrack. In particular, I love the melee aspect; you start off with punches but soon get a massive flail. I've always wanted a flail to feel this way. Where Doom Eternal wants the player to approach challenges in specific ways, this game give the player much more room to execute how you want.
They also mix in some neat set pieces; giant mecha v kaiju fights, a dragon with lazer wings and a mounted turret and afterburners you can throttle. These are pretty cool but are probably the weakest segments as they are a bit too simple. But it provides a nice way to mix up gameplay and they aren't overused.
So far I have two criticisms:
- The soundtrack could be better. Its cool, but because of my next points there are segments where the momentum drops off and you're just kinda wandering around.
- There are these larger non-linear areas. I like the idea, but the game really slwos down when you're trying to find that last collectible, or you find a key card when backtracking somewhere else, and then have to decide if you wantto cross the map again hoping to find the secret doors you missed. The map does a decent job and helping you find this stuff but it just is a weird "okay everything is dead I guess Doom guy is just gonna walk around now."
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (PS5): I'm at the boss fight of Act II. I swapped in Sciel to my main party, I was using the 5th character for a long time. I like his game play but wanted to mix it up a bit with more support. And damn, Sciel has some really sick synergies. The story continues to be strong. Hoping to finish this game off in the next couple days.
The Slormancer
(it's on sale until tomorrow)
If you've played Doom 2016, you probably remember the opening when the Doom Guy just rips the computer screen while someone begins to explain the lore. Basically, "idgaf about your story, I'm here to kill demons". And that's what The Slormancer is to ARPGs. Screw your eternal conflict in Diablo, your spacetime-eating god in Last Epoch, your eldritch horrors in Grim Dawn. All these games are taking themselves way too seriously for how they actually play.
Slormancer is pure arcade, it is a game that knows it's a game.
What do you want from an ARPG? Grind levels and loot fat stuff. Good news, that's all this game is about: there are diegetic levels on your gear, your weapons, your skills, your expeditions. You can and must grind everything, and you can tailor the difficulty to make it as smooth as you want.
The campaign is just an excuse to tell a dumb story full of silly jokes and puns, and once you're done with it, you have a checklist of things to grind before having the right to fight the evil Slormancer. And then there's more grind to do and different places to clear. And you're welcome to do it again with the 2 other classes. And there are like 500 in-game achievements, because what's better than get a "good job" popup when you've killed a million mobs.
Does it remind you of Diablo 3, which also leaned hard into its own silliness of billions of damages and seasonal checklists? Yup, The Slormancer takes a heavy inspiration from D3's "Adventure Mode", makes it more fulfilling, more satisfying, and removed everything no-one cared about. It strikes a good balance between being a dumb dopamine delivery system that makes numbers go brr, and being deep enough if you want to spend hours minmaxing your stuff efficiently.
I'm in love with this game, it's exactly what I needed right now. The truth is, I want more people to buy it because I want to see a long-term support for it. It's cheap, and if you remotely like ARPGs, you won't feel robbed.
It's also less shallow than it seems, and has some interesting ideas that makes it stand out from other ARPGs:
Oh hell yes. That solves my number one complaint about the ARPG genre.
Thanks for this great writeup! The game looks fantastic.
I just bought this, it sounds great! I really needed something to distract me from POE2 and oblivion
I bought it because of your post and having a lot of fun with it so far. Kind of overwhelmed with all the progression systems, but seeing how I can respec everything, makes spending slorm(?) less intimidating.
If you have build tips, feel free to share!
(I’m playing the archer now. )
No build tips exactly (and I'm playing the knight), but the loot filter and selected stats are super useful to choose your gear. Don't outright discard green and blue items either: it's easier and cheaper to add good stats on a passable green item (possibly with a perfect
!stat) than it is to fix a yellow.Thank you, bought it on gog, and have a blast with it. Story is funny, not serious at all and that's good. I love it. Definitely scratch Diablo itch without introducing unnecessary complications. Possibility to respec anything (?) without losing completely removes unnecessary doubts about ways of upgrades and I just love it.
I played the first couple of levels of the new Doom game and it's incredible! The devs really have the movement down, you feel like a tank steamrolling through crowds of enemies espeically with the shield. I really feel like the 3 games even though they're kinda similar, all feel so different. Would recommend especially if you have Gamepass because *free!
Still playing through The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, just got through the first big dungeon -
Mild spoilers for one of the main questlines -
The Wind Temple. And I gotta say... Goddamn was that an underwhelming experience. First problem: I randomly found the temple while exploring. The climb to the temple is really, really fun. 10/10 all round. Unfortunately once getting there I discovered that there is no way to progress, and I assumed that I needed to continue the main quest in order to unlock some ability, so I left and went onto the main quest again. Which was a bit annoying, I wish the game had told me in some way that I couldn't progress without the thing, or at least made the thing necessary to get there in the first place, but whatever.
The Rito questline was shit. I don't know if I accidentally sequence-broke some essential section of it or something, but in the span of 15 minutes the game throws a random child character at me, tells me that this kid is super important, I defeat like 1 enemy for him and the kid goes "wow, I just learned the power of friendship and working as a team, look that's my character arc completed", and that's that. I'm not expecting incredibly in-depth characters or worldbuilding or whatnot from a Nintendo game, but... This story was nothing. It was "here's a character I forget the name of, they're arrogant and stuff trust me, oh look now they've grown and developed as a person, okay you're done". Incidentally, it was this questline that made me realise just how much I dislike the voice acting in this game. I was fine with it in BotW but all of the voice lines in this game remind me of the dialogue in Bethesda games, where it feels like the voice actors were just given a list of lines in alphabetical order and went through them all in an afternoon.
Then the game finally tells me to go to the temple with my new sorta-useless ability. However, I've already been to the temple, and now rather than the really fun 10/10 climb I had before, it's a slightly frustrating 5/10 climb up since I'd done it before. Still fun, but I just wish they'd let me fast travel or something. As for the actual temple, I completed the entire thing in, like, 15 minutes. It was "click the 5 buttons stuck around the map and you win, don't worry we've marked exactly where each one is just so you don't have to think about it you're welcome". Then the boss fight was trivially easy, had it done in literally 2 minutes with no damage taken. Maybe I'm just old now, but didn't these dungeons used to have even a slight bit of challenge? The game literally gives you a full map and the exact locations of the quest objectives. You just walk to each location and do the thing.
All in all, I did not like this questline. Worryingly, I looked it up online after the fact to see if other people thought the same, and apparently people think this is the best part of the game??? And now I'm wondering if I even want to play the rest of the game if it's all somehow worse than this. It's weird, I was really enjoying the game up until this section, but I'm getting the sense that the novelty is wearing off now. Hoping it's not all downhill from here. I may just end up ignoring the main quests and just do sidequests until I get bored and play something else.
It's been a while since I played TotK, but it does sound like the way you broke sequence made the Rito quest line less fun than it should have been (of course, it would be better if the game accommodated alternate sequencing better).
I do think the Wind Temple is actually the weakest temple design, the others feel much better to explore and traverse IMO. So I would encourage you to give the other main quests a chance.
I finished Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 this week. On the one hand, this is a pretty great game! I recommend most people play it -- it's decently well-written, stylish, and extremely fun. I bought it full price on Steam -- despite it being available on Game Pass, and I don't regret it at all.
That being said, I have a lot of frustrations with this game. I think it's very obviously a debut game by a new team, with a lot of obvious issues and rough edges stemming from that. Stuff like how annoying it is to adjust builds in endgame, or how clunky the movement system feels, or how easy it is to get overleveled and trivialize climatic story encounters. For me, though, the biggest issue with Expedition 33 was the narrative. I have seen a lot of critics and punters hold up this story as one of the best they've ever seen. And while it's certainly a good story, and I can see why people love it, I found that I wasn't really affected by huge portions of it, as, in later acts the game raises thematic questions it doesn't bother to explore, and the character writing goes massively downhill.
Spoilers follow.
My biggest issues with Expedition 33's story all start cropping up in Act 2, but they arguably stem from the prologue and the stylistic choices that are central to the game. A focus on naturalistic dialogue, and a reliance on subtext to convey themes, emotional beats, and character all work when the characters are acting realistically, and when the information being conveyed is broad and inherently emotionally charged. But with the death of Gustave, and with Verso taking the role of main character, the game begins to overload itself with questions, lore and narrative nuances that it never really deals with well. A big part of the problem is that Verso is, from frame 1, obviously a liar and a manipulator who all the other expeditioners are unbelievably credulous of. Since the game's relationship system is mediated through him, that means that from the start of Act 2 onwards, the vast majority of camp scenes -- previously home to the game's best writing -- are rendered flat and affectless by the fact that one of the scene players is a scumbag who refuses to open up (and by the way, it doesn't get much better in later scenes when he does open up). Apart from misogyny, which I'm loathe to accuse the (female) lead writer of, I can't understand why Verso becomes the playable protagonist at the act turn instead of Maelle, the real main character of the story, who also would have made for a much more compelling scene partner for the relationship system.
Not that the issues end with Verso. In general, all of Act 2's main story is composed of scenes that made me go "well, I'll bet this will be really affecting in my second playthrough when I know what The Twist is." Maybe it will be, but for a huge portion of the game the primary emotion I felt was confusion: regarding both plot beats -- "I wonder what's really going on here" -- and character beats "are they really buying this?"
Act 3 brings answers, but the big "it was all a painting" twist doesn't actually improve the story -- instead, it complicates it, and drags us further than ever from a compelling emotional core. This whole time (it's revealed) the whole game has been about grief, and the divine struggle of a family of gods (well, artists, but to their creations, gods) to grieve in their own way, regardless of who gets hurt in the process. This is so interesting, and I was instantly excited about what could be said through this twist. Not so much about grief, as religion, and power, and the creative process. But these depths go entirely unexplored. No character ever even brings up the fact that the main villain, who we're supposed to view as sympathetic, is literally committing genocide to 'protect' his family (aided by Verso, who by the way can fuck both of the adult playable female characters, who get over his numerous betrayals as soon as they learn of them). I was shocked to discover that all of this juicy thematic material was left on the table in favor of a played-out story about family; I was disappointed to discover that most of the playable cast (apart from Maelle and Verso) had essentially no arc, no compelling character moments outside of the opening act, and no real input in the ending (which hinges on a choice that only has weight if you pretend that the lives of everyone in the painting are worthless).
These and other issues essentially killed the story for me. Despite it mostly being well written on a scene level (apart from a few REAL stinkers), despite the thematic depths it suggests and despite the uniquely naturalistic dialogue, the game ends up being pretty shallow and, by the end, emotionally dull. I'm kind of mad about this because the writing in the first act seemed so strong, and I'm left to conclude that this is largely a story with a lot of flash but very little substance -- just another video game story, first buoyed by its stylistic choices, then arguably sunk by them.
I actually had similar feelings about Baldur's Gate III's main story, by the way, and like that game I still feel very positively about this work as a whole. Even the story isn't all bad, and the gameplay and buildcraft and world make up for its shortcomings. But it's a shame that I can't love this game like I wanted to.
WARNING: Major spoilers for the end of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
WARNING Major spoilers for the end of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
I understand your points except for one thing that I feel you've missed. Maelle is not the main character and she, her mother and father aren't the real paintresses. The real painter is the soul fragment of Verso, represented as a child, painting. One ending is painted Verso finally freeing his true self from the burden of painting forever and the other is Maelle trapping both painted Verso and soul fragment Verso forever in the painting. So it's not that the lives of the painted are worseless: it's that they're being actively painted by a soul that's desperate to pass on.
I'm not sure about Lune but Sciel makes it clear to Verso that their hook-up is casual and when questioned later she has no romantic interest in him. I recall her even saying before the betrayl that she'll do anything to get her husband back and, if you pick the ending where painted and true Verso are trapped, then she's reunited with her husband.
Spoilers
So, I didn't miss all the soul fragment stuff. I do think it's interesting, for sure. I think it's another instance, though, of a game implying something without exploring it. Like, you say "the real painter is the soul fragment." To what extent is that true? We know, explicitly, that the Nevrons have been painted by the Maelle's mother (is she ever named? i don't remember) and Clea; that Renoir is responsible for the Gommage. Now, no doubt Lumiere was originally created by the real Verso. But I don't think the Verso fragment has much creative power at this point. When we meet a lot of that same faceless boy model all throughout the map, and he gives us side quests, I figured (before even seeing the ending!) that "maybe this is Verso's soul fragment, trying to use what influence it still has to bring about the ending it wants -- among other things, a healthier dynamic for its family." It is, I think, a massive knock against the game that by the end of all the main and side stories I still am not sure whether that's true, or whether Verso's soul fragment is just the one faceless boy we see at the ending fight (even that one is only Heavily Implied, by the way), and there's some other explanation for all the boys. But maybe I missed something.
When I say that the ending choice only has weight if you treat the lives in the painting is worthless, what I mean is that this family's desire to stay in one place or move on is utterly irrelevant in the face of the human cost that choice would have. They created the citizens of Lumiere -- as far as we can see, fully conscious beings -- and are now wiping them out, on a whim, causing massive trauma and stress for, at minimum, thousands of people. Their grief or trauma or whatever absolutely cannot matter in a utilitarian sense in the face of this. However much suffering they endure is worth it, in order to keep these people alive and happy and safe. Now you might say, "but wait, Evie, isn't that the premise of the famous LeGuin short story 'The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas?' Couldn't you contend that actually, if the survival of Lumiere depends on the suffering of Maelle, or this soul fragment, then it's not worth it?" And you know, you might have a point if the game actually raised and explored this question. It doesn't. It merely implies it, very vaguely, and whatever thoughts I have as a result of that implication I can't credit to the game. I have literally seen gacha games explore this exact topic with much more depth and weight, which is perhaps why I'm so frustrated.
That said, I don't think it makes sense to call Verso, or what remains of his soul, the main character in light of all this. Maelle is still the protagonist, which is the sense in which I mean this claim: she's the only playable character with true agency -- the ability to paint -- and the one around which the entire story we play revolves: her presence in the painting, her journey of self discovery, of finding a sense of belonging, and her choice to stay in the painting is the primary driver of conflict for the entire game.
I'll talk about the Sciel-Verso relationship specifically here, because you mentioned it, and it's the angriest the game made me. OK. So that these characters hook up is, in isolation, actually kind of fine as a character beat, I agree (even if me personally I find the age and power imbalance gross). Sciel really seems like the live-in-the-moment type and is never really bothered by Verso's lies (even if I think she SHOULD be). My issue with this more comes from the fact that a). Verso can also hook up with Lune, where it absolutely does not make sense for her character -- so, in combination, it starts to feel a little bit like heterosexual wish fulfillment rather than a grounded character choice. But, b)., the worst of this relationship comes not when Verso and Sciel hook up, but in their final relationship level scene, where Sciel magically gets over her trauma.
Sciel's fear of water in wake of her suicide attempt is an example of Expedition 33 using subtext, and its naturalistic dialogue, extremely well. Literally the first time we meet Sciel at the prologue farewell party, she hints at her fear of water. Later, in an excellent camp scene, she expresses solidarity with Gustave over his own suicide attempt at the start of Act I. Her fear, and the event it stems from, keeps cropping up occasionally, always in subtle, organic, and exquisitely painful ways. As someone who has attempted suicide myself, I really loved the writers' depiction of it, how it affected Sciel, and how she talks about it to this day. This even ties in very nicely with Esquie, who, in a rare non-Verso camp scene, tells Sciel that he was the one who saved her life. It's a really sweet moment, one that fully contextualizes Esquie's character, and neatly sketches in some information about the real Verso (that he was self-destructive enough to need an Esquie), without beating us over the head. It's all good stuff. Subtle, emotional, and excellent.
Unfortunately, in one single Verso relationship scene, all this work is esssentially rendered moot. The scene were Verso takes Sciel swimming first implies that this whole thing is just a setup for Verso to get her undressed. Then, there's this infantilizing scene where all it takes for Sciel to essentially get over her fear of water is Verso explaining that you have to walk into the water slowly. "It's about control," he says, and he's maybe not wrong, but it's crazy that the game treats that as enough, as if trauma is that simple. When I was four years old, my family went on a vacation to the ocean, and my dad used this technique to get me to stop being scared of the water and be willing to go deeper and try swimming for the first time. Sciel is not four years old, but this scene treats her like she is, like all she needs is a man to explain that water can't actually hurt you. It is the most insulting scene in the game: completely unbelivable, for one thing; for another, it takes a character trait that has been subtly built up for the entire runtime of the game and obliterates it so that Verso (and we) can stare at Sciel's thighs for a bit. If that's what all that buildup was for, I don't think it was worth it.
I almost quit the game after this scene, and even now I can only say positive things about the writing by pretending it doesn't exist, or pretending there's some reason it makes sense to include it in the game besides misogyny. And after writing this I do have to remind myself that I did like the game generally, and I want to play it again in NG+, and maybe there's some (probably implied) narrative beats that I'm missing that makes all of this come together and work. But huge amounts of the story, for me, do not stand up to the slightest bit of scrutiny, or maybe don't it's better to say they don't justify that scrutiny.
Further Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Spoilers
Thanks for sharing - I wasn't familiar with the swimming scene. I must have missed this and all further "relationship stuff" with the climatic focus of act 3. So I looked it up and I agree that it's very odd scene. I also don't understand why they had any further relationship scenes with Sciel at all in act 3 when things had a clear ending. Up until seeing this I felt that, with Maelle's ending, Maelle and Sciel effectively sacrificed both Versos to return Gustav, Sciel's husband and the rest of Lumiere showing that they had the real power and emphasising that Verso was ultimately meaningless to Sciel.
Whilst I agree that the age/power imbalance in earlier scenes isn't generally acceptable I think we need to remember that it's a French game and France doesn't have the same stigma around age and power in relationships that the rest of the west does. That doesn't make it okay but I feel like it's something we have to put to one side when consuming French media.
Workers and Resources: Soviet Republic
I've restarted my game a few times on this one. I tried a "random map" with a lot of the realistic settings turned on and found it was too boring. The map was pretty dull and a lot of the game was just drawing straight lines between all the buildings.
I downloaded a map off the workshop and I turned off some of the realistic stuff (demolition, sewage and construction) which helped a lot.
I like a LOT of the things you can do in this game. Like the power, logistics, healthcare, transport, city services, industry.... It's all really fun! I could give or take water, it feels a little time waste-y.
Sewage feels like just drawing a line from a building to a lake somewhere over 1km away, it's like just annoying.
Construction I think I would really enjoy but I want some more experience before trying it out.
Demolition is the same boat too, I like being able to move stuff.
I love that you can turn this stuff on and off depending on what you like to play! It's really customisable.
I'm having fun with the more hand crafted map. I've been drawing roads around the countors and terraforming around local peaks and valleys, it looks great!
I do wish you could turn on realistic imports/exports but still let you autobuild with money. But that's like a small complaint, I'd happily just play with the little self constraint on that one if I want to.
Tipston Salvage
Again calling out this great little up to 4 player couch coop game. Would recommend it, it's good fun!
You drive little cars cleaning up a scrap yard and crushing cars to export on trucks and boats.
It's got great polish and the levels are pretty tight. It's got plenty of levels of medals (you unlock harder levels later) as well.
I have finished Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward.
It's a pretty ambitious expansion of what the first game tried to do and overall I enjoyed the story quite a bit despite some shortcomings.
The main plot twist is much better explained (with diagrams!) than in the first game. It's still bananas, but the player is primed by conversations throughout the game to buy into the ideas and setting, so by the time it's revealed, it lands much better. In particular, I really liked how some of the puzzles turn out to be little microcosms of concepts used in the story, so you get a little 'aha' moment when those ideas get brought up later.
In contrast, some of the smaller plot twists feel a bit tacked on / logically inconsistent and probably could have been cut without any impact to the main story. The revelation about
Spoilers for a couple of those plot twists
where the game is set and everyone being infected right from the startA big part of the game is that the player can choose to 'ally' with or 'betray' other characters in each round of the game, with a kind of prisoner's dilemma payoff grid. This works fine from a narrative perspective, but I found that it really didn't make a difference to the gameplay since you end up having to see both routes anyway just to get the whole story (and in many cases, the game expects you to do this so you can get key information from one route to use in another).
I'm now playing Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma, the final game in the trilogy.
The setup and gameplay is once again very similar to the first two games, but this game has non-linear storytelling. You have to select random segments of the story to play through from a menu instead of making choices as you go through 'routes' in a story like a classic novel game. In addition, the memories of the characters are erased every 90 minutes (each story segment), so the characters start off each segment just as clueless as the player about what happened previously.
To make things even more confusing, each segment takes place in one of several different timelines, and it's usually not obvious which timeline the current scene is a part of until you finish the segment and check the flowchart. The end result is that moment to moment, it's really hard to get invested in the overarching story because you don't know what impact (if any) the events you're currently watching have on it or what the current stakes are beyond just surviving. Even when characters get killed off (which happens a lot), there's no real impact since they may well just show up again when you play the next segment (which could take place earlier in the same timeline or in a different one).
The game also physically splits up the cast into 3 groups of 3 characters, each of which is locked in a separate part of the setting and unable to communicate with the other groups (other than by very limited and uncertain means). This dynamic of character teams playing against each other is something the second game played a bit with, but fully isolating the different groups in this way feels like a wrong turn because it doesn't let the full cast of 9 characters play off each other. As a result, you don't get that complex web of motives / relationships / deception forming between the characters which in turn fuels the player's speculation about what everyone's hidden agenda is and who is secretly the masked antagonist.
The actual death game comes down to the characters being forced to make a life or death 'decision' at the end of each story segment. However, unlike the first two games which had very clearly defined rules and challenges right from the start, this 'decision' is not known in advance and seems to be whatever the antagonist feels like putting the characters through at the time. A lot of the time, the decisions are pretty unfair (i.e. not something the characters can get through except with blind luck) and it just comes off as contrived in a goofy horror movie kind of way. I guess there's an upside in that you're not just seeing the same threat every round (something which really drags the pacing in the second game when you've seen the same round play out a dozen times in different timelines), but the downside to this inconsistency is that there's none of the 'who do I need to get through this door?' or 'how do I vote so that I won't die, but no one else will win? meta-gaming among the characters which really drove alliances and conflicts in the first two games. Everyone's always just focused on surviving the immediate threat, but it's impossible to form any kind of larger strategy because the threat is unknown until the last moment and the ability to directly interact with / sabotage other teams is usually just not available.
I'll still keep playing since the puzzle solving part is still fine and I'm invested in how they resolve the overarching story that the second game sets up, but at this point the second game is still my favourite of the three.
I'm still working my way through Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. I am not sure how far I've progressed in the story (I'm sure there are folks who would have already beat it in the 28 hours I've invested so far) but I'm taking my time and enjoying the story immensely. Perhaps it's still a little early to say but I think this is my GOTY winner. I love the quick-time events during combat, I love the characters, the overall aesthetic of the game, not to mention the music! Everything feels lovingly crafted and well executed. This game has been a delight.
I spend quite a bit of time testing out demos so here are a few that I tried recently:
The Royal Writ: a roguelike deckbuilder. Shockingly fun! Charming art and an impressively polished demo that allows you to get a sense of what to expect in the full release. There aren't any major missing features that would drastically change the experience I think. Overall, a really fun demo; I enjoyed the hour and a half that I spent in it (even though it kicked my butt a number of times).
Gameplay Spoiler
Interestingly, the cards you play during a battle can perma-die which I haven't experienced in any previous roguelike deckbuilders I've played.Twinkleby: a decorating sim. I'm not sure what to make of this one. On the surface, it's a very cute game where you're decorating what I would describe as one-room dollhouses. There are a number of items available in the demo and playing the demo allows you to unlock a few colorways and decorations to try out. Stylistically it seems to be a major departure from previous games that this developer/publisher has released including an unfinished early-access game called Book of Travels from 2021. There were a number of discussions on Steam about the unfinished state of BoT, one discussion noting the style similarity to Toca Boca Days so I'm...hesitant to recommend this particular game. I enjoyed the 30 minutes I put in - the dollhouse aesthetic is very cute and unique compared to other decorator sims I've played but I'm not sure I'll pick this up on release. As an aside, one minor gripe I have, that this sim commits (and many other decorating games besides) is the scale of items not quiiite matching up. So the NPCs end up a little mismatched, the decor ends up a little mismatched...ugh. I understand that making items small yet manageable when selecting/dragging/moving, etc. is a challenge but the weird ratios are deeply annoying to me. Apologies to all the underappreciated asset creators out there - I know you're doing your best.
I have many more that I could write about but I have work to get back to so last one. Ship, Inc.: a job sim where you're in charge of packing up seemingly random orders in boxes and shipping them off to customers. There are a number of charming mechanics like needing to bubble wrap the fragile items, make sure boxes with fragile items get a warning label, and cleaning up dirty items before they're packed. The demo had a few minor bugs like:
They weren't huge dealbreakers in the overall demo experience, just minor annoyances which I'm sure will get resolved. I think the gameplay loop (open a box, sort the orders, pack the orders, ship them off) was overall enjoyable but I think the difficulty scale might be bugged unless the devs have updated the demo since I last tested it. I think you're meant to get more orders over time but I only ever had 2-3 even after many in-game days. I'd like to try it out again after some of the bugs have been fixed.
As the perpetual patient gamer, I'm currently making my way through The Talos Principle 2. I really enjoyed the first game. Fun gameplay, interesting and sometimes (often?) challenging puzzles, and an engaging lore.
The second game is more of the same. And I mean this in the most positive way. It's more of the same that made the first game great, but with enough differences to make it feel new. There are enough new devices in the puzzles to make them challenging and fun to explore (although generally I feel they are a bit easier, but perhaps that might change later in the game). While the story/lore was never the main point in the games, the concept and philosophical aspects of the first game were engaging, and the second game builds on that in a very interesting way without feeling repetitive.
All in all, if you enjoyed the first game, you'll enjoy the second!
so I have a question, some of the puzzles in the later parts of the first game were terrible. you had to place the lasers in weird places and it wasn't fun for me at that point. do you feel like talos principle 2 has puzzles like that too? I guess what I'm asking is, are the puzzles designed well ?
two examples I just found of bad puzzles are Circumlocution and Egyptian Arcade.
Well, I'm about halfway (I assume) so I cannot say for sure, but for now I'd say I haven't encountered any bad puzzles.
I had to look up the puzzles you mentioned to know what you meant, and I (slightly) remember them. It looks like it is more based on trial and error and luck to find the correct placement, rather than logic. That's not the case currently in Talos 2. They all seem to have a good balance between challenging enough (albeit on the easier side), without being frustrating.
But, as I said, I still need to do the harder puzzles.
One thing that you didn't mention about The Talos Principle 2 is that it's so dang pretty. The first game was alright on the eyes but, personally, the historical-ish settings didn't really excite me. In 2 the way that the puzzles and paths blended into the natural environment was so satisfying. When I played I would just kind of walk around and gawk at the scenery. They really knocked that aspect of the game out of the park.
Yes, you're absolutely right! I often find myself finding the highest point in the environment and just looking around.
Currently working my way through The Blue Prince. I've been streaming to my normal gaming partner as we work through it as a pair. I have silverbullet going to keep notes as I alt tab away from the game. I'm not typically one to work my way through puzzle games and often get frustrated with too much repetition. For example, I really enjoyed outer wilds but didn't make it too far due to not enjoying the repetition in places, I still have it installed and wish to get through, but it's been collecting dust for a bit. I didn't make it very far in the witness, or curse of obra din, also great puzzlers that didn't hook me.
That all said I really like the TYPE of puzzles so far that I'm running into in blue prince. I think perhaps the introduction of the roguelike videogamey activates the 'gamer' part of my brain to lay down the rooms and work my odds on rooms coming up, but at the slow deliberate pace of a puzzle game.
I am worried about the concerns some people have written about where I am at the point now that I do need to explore some combinations of rooms but haven't been able to get them to land right, though I do suspect there is more I can learn to do to greater my odds.
All in all I think this is a wonderful game that if you a person that likes well designed games, it is worth trying this one, even if you don't finish it. I can't comment myself on the arc of it as I'm not done, but I do know that I have about 20 hours or so and am enjoying discussing and playing with a friend over stream as we puzzle everything out.
In the background we went back into V Rising as a 2 person server and I have been enjoying working through the bosses. The last time we played was years ago and I feel like they have made a lot of additions to keep the game really interesting in terms of builds and skill usage. It is really hard to function in a survival game where you don't have craft for chest now a days and it is nice they have added this functionality in along with all the new skills and ways to alter your build. Looking forward here to pushing through to the end boss, we are at about level 70 but took pause for blue prince and don't want to stop fearing we'll forget everything.
Keeping notes is so important for this game. I'd err on the side of logging stuff that doesn't feel important because there's a surprising depth and even bits that feel like just lore can be relevant. The puzzles in Outer Wilds felt much more straightforward which may be why you bounced off it. (And then Obra Dinn is just a straight logic puzzle presented as a stylistic video game. I loved it, but also I get that it's a somewhat niche experience.)
There's definitely stuff you can do to influence your odds of seeing certain rooms, some on a per-day basis and some more permanent, but it's still best to have a few different irons in the fire at any given time so you can work with what is given to you. Having a second person to Sherlock/Watson with seems like a really fun way to play.
I was just starting to talk about the RNG control with my friend last night when we found something to drastically affect some of it portion of it while also solving a room we hadn't for a while that will affect almost every run now that we go through it. I like the idea of the multiple things going and I'm going to add a list to the of our notes of room combos we have yet to play out to keep it fresh as the runs go.
This game is really an amazing onion to peel back layer by layer!
Same here, it's such a nice streaming-co-op game. Having 4 eyes really helps, and there's never any time pressure so you can take breaks whenever.
I made a topic on it, but my general advice is that if you feel like you're forced to wait for things to line up then you're probably missing a ton of other content and puzzles. There is a LOT in this game and if you're only focusing on one thing, you will likely be missing the plethora of hints and puzzles at other things. It has been very very rare i've had a run that didn't accomplish something new.
This has become apparent as I've progressed farther in the past few days! I think there is a period where it's easy to be deceived into thinking you see the whole scope of how you can affect room layouts and stuff but as I uncovered new things and looked back at early things with more 'awakened eyes', I started seeing and opening up more options to target goals. Of course, the game keeps offering more things to want to do too...
This is a truly brilliant puzzle game!
When I replied last time I was digging back into Fantasy Life through 3DS emulation.
By pure chance I was on steam and saw that, more than 10 years later, they finally released a new one! “Fantasy Life i”. It is on all platforms it seems and from my playtime with it and the reviews of others it’s basically the 3DS game but massively upgraded in only amazing ways.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2993780/FANTASY_LIFE_i_The_Girl_Who_Steals_Time/
If you liked the 3DS one this will immediately feel at home and the QOL upgrades stand out starkly. It’s such a pleasure to play. New lives, new giant area, you can jump, graphics upgrade, gameplay upgrades, skill trees. It’s just awesome.
If you never played it then it is fair to say it’s a mix of Zelda, Animal Crossing, and Final Fantasy. You can pick between 14 jobs (or lives) and seamlessly switch between them. They are combat, gathering, and crafting. You can dungeon crawl, explore, craft, decorate homes, reconfigure your island like AC.
If you think of animal crossing but without the “meaningless” chores, and you are Link and fight but can change classes like in Bravely Default… that’s the gist! It has very robust systems but don’t expect anything groundbreaking or severely challenging about the combat. There are combat bosses and “gathering” bosses, and all the crafting skills are little timing mini games .. but it all just works.
My friends and I recently picked up "The Headliners." It was <$6 on Steam, so we gave it a go. The idea is that we, the players, are photojournalists when the world is ending, for lack of a better term. There are aliens, dinosaurs, Mothra-lookin' creatures, and other weird monsters just roaming around various cities. So each of us, equipped with a camera, has to take pics of this craziness. Each photo has a monetary value associated with it. The value goes up depending on how close we are to the "subjects." And how dangerous the situation is. Also, if you're doing like "content creator poses," that pays more. Like the soyjack pointing one, for example.
But the players can get maimed and killed by these creatures -- which if someone else takes a pic of the moment of the maiming/killing, can be quite lucrative. The overall goal is to collectively make enough money to get to the next round, and that goal goes up each round. I think there are like 16 rounds. So we have to get more and more brazen in order to meet whatever the goal is. At the start, it's like a $1000 goal. But after 6-7 rounds, we might have to sell $10k worth of pictures. Also, each player can only take about 10 photos per round (though each of us can delete photos that are duplicates or low value and then take more pics). Additionally, since players can die if they push their luck too much, it can get difficult for the remaining players to hit the goal and advance the group to the next round.
It's definitely a party game. We played for a couple hours. It's not something I'd play all the time, but it was definitely worth it for the laughs. And honestly, for $5.59 (through May 26; regular price is $7.99), even if I never play it again, hard to say it's a bad value. Maybe we'll give it another go this weekend.
Otherwise, still playing "Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero." I'm like ~35hrs in. Yet I'm still only in Chapter 2. Admittedly, I'm taking my time, doing all the side quests, grinding characters levels, etc. Sometimes I'm even AFK or doing other things while I have the game open. But I'm enjoying it still. I think the pacing is pretty decent and the story is starting to get interesting.
I've played a few games of Headliners with my gaming pal, but with 2 players, this game is hard. I see the devs have added difficulty settings, but we haven't had the time to try that yet.
I'm thinking the same thing, it's fun while we're discovering the game, but it's becoming stale fast. We'll probably play a few more games and then never touch it again, and we got our money's worth.
Still cracking through Blue Prince, now at 75 hours. Progress has definitely slowed and I have a lot of mostly unhelpful runs mixed in while testing some specific things. I feel like I have a handle on the whole story but uncovering new details sporadically has been fun.
Pretty much everything is late-game spoilers now
Aside from that, I've mostly been playing tabletop RPGs and more traditional games.
D&D5e with a long-running group, a turbo-leveling campaign as a kind of last hurrah for the edition. Our group does a good job of glossing over the weaknesses inherent to D&D and I'm excited for high-level wizardry (I haven't had a character past 11th since 3.5 in like 2008)
My other group has been playing MCDM's Draw Steel and it's interesting to compare it side-by-side. It's not just Dungeons and Dragons with the serial number filed off (though it wears that inspiration on its sleeve), it's not exactly an OSR (but has some similar goals), it's a Heroic Fantasy written to lean into high-stakes tactical combat and the RPG experience without getting bogged down in a ton of rules for dungeon-crawling and resource management or drawn-out slugfests. Things move fast. It's most like D&D4e so if you thought that didn't get a fair shake you can give MCDM Production's Patreon $8 and look at/download everything. Final release is still being worked on the but the playtest build is very functional.
And I play Magic: the Gathering. Pretty much just Commander but some pre-releases and FNM booster drafts tossed in. The upcoming Final Fantasy set has some interesting things I'm excited about but I understand the crowd that is principally against this Universes Beyond cross-marketing stuff and it's hard to ignore the power creep since I started playing way back in 7th edition.
Oblivion Remaster: I've done the MSQ, so I'm just goofing around, hitting things as I find them and am interested. New rule, though: I will clear any gate I find as a priority, and won't fast travel to new locations. My one caveat: If I just, say, ran from Bruma to Skingrad on the road, I don't need to run back, because nothing has changed if it was back and forth (like when I went to Kvatch from Bruma, up to the Priory, to Cloud Ruler Temple).
Oblivion did something I didn't expect, and I hadn't played it mindfully my first time three years ago: It gets interesting at like level 15. The enemies are hard but defeatable, and strategy becomes important. I used the in-game Monk class, and emphasized hand-to-hand as my combat style. I just pivoted to sword + shield plus spells (Absorb Fatigue to keep my attacks going/rock the enemies), and am really getting the hang of the combat loop in a way I hadn't expected. It feels like I'm playing Barony: Block, strikestrikestrike, block... repeat.
Aotenjo: Infinite Hands, which is sort of like Balatro but Mahjong. I don't entirely understand it:
You play a sequence, then a pair. Then another sequence and a different pair. The sequences can stack synergistically, like in Mahjong (which I don't understand anyway), and in unique patterns. You unlock major patterns as you progress to play more and more powerful hands as you go, using gadgets and statues (like tarot cards/jokers in Balatro) to enhance your play. I want to spend more time with it since it seems to be clicking into place.
NOTE: Just did another run and the above is pretty much it. It's like Balatro in that you will lose, but it has a similar "number go up" vibe that makes Balatro so fun. If you liked Balatro but got bored of it I'd recommend Aotenjo.
The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim: Special Edition: GOG Release: I wanted to play Skyrim but didn't want the AE stuff, and wanted to mod it. Mostly I added an alternate start mod and a mod that makes Legendary equalized: You match enemy damage, so everybody does 3x damage, making combat faster-paced. It's pretty fun! I want to add "Open Cities," but it needs the Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch, which I don't want to use as it makes too many non-essential changes.
This is actually one of the most controversial points of Oblivion: that the enemies scale in level with you. People have complained for two decades now about bandits and other basic enemies that show up to fights in Daedric Armor later in the game. One side says that as you get stronger, you should be able to mow down weaker enemies with ease, while others agree with you that it remains interesting for longer if you can't just mow down everything in sight easily.
I've been trying to play Expedition 33 and by the end of Act 1, I decided to just give it a bit of time before carrying on. Wonderful game but I'm not in the best head space for it.
So I decided to get obsessed with Skin Deep.
I've been a massive fan blendo games since Gravity Bone. I remember someone describing their work as turning Freeform Jazz into a movie genre and making it interactive. I'm also a sucker for the pop art style and 50s film motifs.
Anyway, I didn't really see much buzz about this and not really a surprise given the Anna Purna publishing lable. So please bare with bare with me if I shamelessly try to sell you this game.
The main selling point is that this is an b-movie inspired action comedy. Nods to Die Hard, Rambo, a-team and more that I'm yet to apreciate. And the way Blue Prince managed to hit my exact taste in puzzles, Skin Deep does the same for my style of humour. It's very cerebral absurdity, while being completely sincere and straight faced in its execution. Think Monty Python meets Red Dwarf with the narrative shaninigns of a David Lynch story, all wraped in the stylistic commitment you see with Wes Anderson. (Like I said, the studio is very film inspired).
To list out some of the things that had me hooked in the tutorial:
The main character is named Nina Pacedina. (And that comic book rhyming name was enough for me. 10/10 GOTY)
She in an insurance enforcement officer and is hidden in chryo a crate on spacecraft, ready to go commando when the ship is under attack.
Nina works for a company that specializes in insurance for cat crewed space ships (meowcorp).
Shaving cats as torture is against the Geneva convention.
Most items have informational stickers, often explaining exactly what game systems they employ.
The cats talk English but have a wide variety of convincing cat-like personalities.
There's a brand of deodorant called Dignity.
Nina can survive the hard vacuum of space because why not. (She's practically Jhon Whick crossed with a budget Space Marine)
The Meow fanfair when saving a cat.
The game itself is a series of micro immersive sim of unassuming locations that happen to be space ships. Early ones include laundromats, libraries and a lighthouse. And each mission has 2 parts: rescue and escape.
You start off emerging from deep freeze in a hidden part of an unfamiliar craft and need to stealthily subdue pirates, eject their skulls into space before they respawn and rescue the crew. You then call in an mini escape craft. And then there's the reinforcements.
This is where you use the map knowledge, and all tools and resources on the map to go ham on the enemy. It's something I really appreciate in this game because a lot of immersive sims strongly imply that resorting to open combat is a failure on your part. Think the chaos system in Dishonoured or the bad endings when being violent in Deus Ex or Prey. I often find that Immersive Sims have some truly challenging but satisfying combat systems but I'm rarely incentivized to engage and master them.
This game pits you against extreme odds and it would probably be better to keep using stealth and pick apart the enemy. It's actually trivially easy when using optimal strategies and working around the poor enemy AI. But I realized that it's actually a lot more fun to play the game badly. Your explosives as just as likely to kill you while enemies constantly die to friendly fire. The healing system demands you treat individual wounds while weapons are wonky and require you to learn their little oddities mid combat. And there are just so many ways a fight evolves in and outside the ship.
But it is far from perfect. Too few enemy types. Enemies rarely develop good counters to your stealth. Later game secrets become stupid. And by the end, I'm really just playing for more comedy, narrative sections.
I personally love Extraction Shooter's and sadly have spent way too much time on Escape from Tarkov (around 10k hours). But since last year where I started with school and just generelly have been playing less games. I have trouble with finding a new game or a new obsession to sink all my time into it.
This week I tried Arena Breakout Infinite. And it doesn't really scratch that specific Itch that I had with Tarkov.
It has really nice QOL stuff that tarkov simply does not have and also it seems just more of like a "mobile game" with all the daily rewards and stuff.
Other than that I need to find a new project or something to do on the minecraft server. So I can just play Minecraft...
Oblivion Remastered. It's actually so great that it makes me lament the state of AAA games of the previous 2 decades. Things have really plateaued or even become worse.
I had an amazing jank moment yesterday, when I was being hunted by two faded wraiths in a crypt. They float, so it would seem like they're not vulnerable to certain things in the environment, however when I side stepped one of those spike traps, they didn't and somehow fell down with the floor. Then after a moment, the trap reset and the wraiths float back up. Then we look each other for a while and the trap springs again and down they go. This would go on.
I should've probably recorded this, it was hilarious.
This week we played two short ones for our podcast on roguelike games: Forty-Five and Buckshot Roulette.
Forty-Five I’m conflicted on. It’s a student project game and it shows but the steam reviews catapulted it into a category that I don’t think it’s ready for at all yet, largely driven by the YouTuber effect. I want to give the student devs credit, but I simultaneously feel bad that it’s in the same “Overwhelmingly Positive” review category as Slay the Spire and Monster Train.
It’s a free game, so there’s a low bar to clear, but I feel like there’s already an amazing swath of free roguelike games on steam that do deserve their reviews. Holocure, Moonring, and Disfigure come to mind.
I think we tried hard to constructively criticize the game instead of just dunking on it the whole time, but it’s tough when the store page sets the expectation that “this is so good I wish I could pay for it”. It’s not, but it’s not the fault of the devs.
Buckshot Roulette I had a lot of fun with. Great atmosphere, design, aesthetic, and gameplay. I just wish there was more depth to it to some degree. For under $5 you can’t really go wrong, and it’s maybe more fun to play with friends, but it is absolutely more of a tabletop game than any roguelike or roguelite despite being tagged as such.
I do think the issue with multiplayer is the player elimination aspect and just sitting around waiting for the round to finish. There’s a lot of other tabletop games on steam that do this better I think. But also physical board games maybe? If there was a Buckshot Roulette 2 that had the same gritty, industrial theme but played more like Cash n’ Guns and had some kind of more in depth single player mode, maybe my cohosts would have rather it better. I’m happy to be the positive outlier in that case.