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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.
Not sure if it deserves its own post but Rimworld is getting a new 1.1 update in the near? future. RimWorld 1.1 available on unstable Steam branch
I recently added Combat Extended: FastTrack edition (wanted to see if the new mechanics were as fun as other people say) to my modlist and have been trying to work out what other mods it breaks. My game is still playable but I have a few red errors every so often. I unfortunately probably have too many mods and not enough modding knowledge, so it'll be some time until I get everything right. The new update will likely break so much stuff, especially since it duplicates functionality of a bunch of QoL mods I have, so I'll be sticking with 1.0, at least until modders update everything.
Seems like a big update! I've tried to read the changelog but I haven't played Rimworld enough to understand most of the changes. What are your main takeaways?
I haven't tried out the 1.1 branch yet but I would say the major things I noticed from the massive list are:
I think it's also always great to know that even after the game was officially released, the developer(s) continue to improve the game for free.
Take this as rumor, but the line:
as well as a comment by the author of the RimPy Mod Manager tool saying, "Oh, Tynan moved Core in separate mod folder for 'official mods'. We should expect DLCs." Plus I recall Ludeon was recently actively looking to hire more developers/other employees.
Makes me wonder if they are planning on releasing additional major content in the future, just working on a new game, and/or something else like porting the game to consoles.
I started playing Undertale because it's had quite a lot of hype. So far I'm not really enjoying it, although I'm maybe only an hour in. I don't miss the crappy graphics and annoying music of yesteryear because I remember them from the first time around, also I have an insanely powerful modern computer and I like things to look nice. Doesn't have to be full 3D photorealism by any means but super-retro pixel/chiptune stuff annoys me. However, a lot of people - including Yahtzee Crowshaw who has rarely if ever led me wrong - say it's great game so I am going to persevere a little more.
It sounds like you don't enjoy retro 2D style games at all, in which case Undertale may simply not be for you. It's made by one person so it's made of that way out of necessity as much as style. The real appeal is in story and how the game makes interesting, subversive use of many gameplay tropes during its combat sequences to get its message across. I'm not much of a retro 2D person myself, and Undertale is definitely in that camp more than most other modern 2D games, but I was able to have a great time with it once I got interested in seeing how it handles every battle.
It's not a long game by any means, so an extended sitting may be your best way to tell. But if you've done a handful of battles and still aren't feeling the game by that point, I think it may be time to drop it.
I was wondering about how necessary pixel art is for a low-resourced project, and I don't think it is. Very low pixel artwork is not significantly easier to make than slightly better looking stuff (think Monkey Island or something), just like how the movement could easily be smooth rather than obviously on a grid of squares. I've played plenty of 2D games over the years that have been perfectly enjoyable and had a basic art style, but not many this basic. Heck, I've put hundreds of hours into text-based games. Undertale is, to my eyes, distractingly ugly though. Nobody made the dev choose those colours. 16 colour CGA looked bad enough when it was the only choice and it looks even worse now.
I didn't know it was short. I thought when I reached Torial's house I'd only done the tutorial level and the game proper was going to come after that. I'm still waiting for the supposedly good story/writing to start, because so far there hasn't really been anything (good or bad), and combat is currently feeling somewhat boring and repetitive.
I don't really want to put it down because it was my one gaming treat I allowed myself to spend money on since probably November and I don't know when I'll have enough fun money spare to buy another game. Ho hum. It's how it goes I guess. Maybe it will get more enjoyable with some more time.
I think more than anything the game took people by surprise when they first played it without all the hype, and it FAR exceeded anyone's reasonable expectations at that time, especially since it's entirely the work of one person. Having had years of rabid fandom, however, you might find it doesn't live up to all their praise... but it's still a charming, very well-written, and challenging (if you want it to be) game.
Also, if it makes any difference, the creator has said he didn't set out to make a retro-looking game or anything, it's just that he isn't that great with graphics so that was the easiest route.
I've played Oxenfree, which I hear is similar to Kentucky Route Zero, so you might like that as well.
The last 2D platformer I played was Ori and the Blind Forest; it was just so incredible! I have been eyeballing Celeste and Hollow Knight but I can't choose. Hollow Knight seems to be more bang-for-my-buck but Celeste keeps calling my name, I can hear it when I sit in my chair, when I brush my teeth, when I go to bed, when I wake up.
But then, I just finished watching Boss Keys on Gamemakers Toolkit (go check him out on youtube if you're not familliar) and the way this guy talks about Hollow Knight, my heart starts racing.
I guess what I'm looking for is this: has anyone played both? Help!
Well, Celeste is a much shorter game. Hollow Knight can be a 20+ hour playthrough. Celeste is also a dedicated platformer whereas Hollow Knight is more of a combat-focused Metroidvania (with plenty of platforming).
They're both very highly regarded games though, so you can't go wrong with either of them.
Thanks, I hate it.
No, really, this helps. Now I'm thinking I want to play Celeste first and then go for Hollow Knight.
They're both stupid good. Hollow Knight is on Gamepass for Console and PC of that changes your opinion at all, but both are A-Class games. Hollow Knight has more depth and collectable, but Celeste is more streamlined and has a killer assistance mode that can adjust speed, your dash ability, invincibility and stamina on the fly which is super helpful if you want it or buried in the menu if you don't.
So I just completed the first chapter of Celeste, including the B-side. HOT DAMN this game is awesome!
Also, I played a little Risk of Rain 2 and I will be playing that tomorrow with 2 pals.
last: I tried Hyper Light Drifter, it looks really really awesome but I don't think it's for me.
As soon as I'm done with Celeste I will buy Hollow Knight!
Thanks for convincing me guys! @Deimos @moocow1452
I'm not any of the previous people who commented, but I hope you really enjoy Celeste. First time I played it, I played up through all A-sides and part of the B-sides before I moved on to other things.
I eventually got the platformer itch back, returned to it and 100%'d (in achievement form, not true 100% everything) it and it was a very very very rewarding experience. I love that game, I hope you love it as well whether you pursue all the extra post-game stuff or not. :)
Are you playing on either PC or Xbox One? If you are, I'd highly suggest getting Xbox Game Pass for at least a month. They usually have some extremely cheap intro deals for your first 1-3 months.
Hollow Knight is available on there, so you could try it out, and the sequel to Ori will be available on its release date, which is March 11. That would be a good and cheap way to play both (as well as potentially a bunch of other games, there's a lot on there).
To be honest, and this is in reply to you too @moocow1452, I don't like what game passes like that are representing in the gaming market and I don't want to support it. I usually prefer buying the game to support the devs, especially for smaller titles.
Not a problem though, I feel like I can buy and enjoy all three (the third being Ori2) without wasting a cent.
Yeah, that's definitely understandable, and I think it'll take a while before we can start seeing what effects they have on the game industry. I've seen both negative and positive opinions about it from game devs.
You can also treat it as something more like a "demo service" too though, where all the demos are the full game. I've ended up buying a few games that I initially played on Game Pass because I enjoyed them so much that I wanted to support the devs more and still own the game once I stop my subscription.
Hey! I do that too! Just not as legally as you xD.
Seriously though, microsoft betrayed me by cancelling Fable after I bought the Xbox One in stead of a ps4 for Fable alone. And then I was stuck with the lesser of the two, imo.
I just realized the sequel, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, finally has a release date and is available for pre-order on Steam! I never preorder anything, but I was totally ready to throw my wallet at my screen over here until I saw you need Windows 10 to play it. Fuuuuuuck that.
I also stopped preordering as well as buying on release. It has helped me save hundreds of moneys.
As for Ori, I hope it'll eventually release on Switch. Maybe a little later which will be fine, that way we can see if Will of the Wisps lives up to its predecessor.
Magic: the Gathering Arena is still the game I'm playing consistently, even if the rest of my video gaming is in kind of a lull. I really like the newest set!
This past weekend I helped DM at a local shop for some young kids. Fun, but... draining. :p The kids were all preteens or younger, and there were six of them at the table, so we just barely got through a bunch of spiders (one room out of a five room dungeon I had planned; those usually go much faster). I think they had fun, but they might be a biiit young to take the game seriously. The table behind me, with kids in their preteens-early teens, seemed to actually have a proper D&D session. A good chunk of what I was doing was babysitting.
And my entertainment budget is kind of tied up right now in the Trophy RPG Kickstarter. Spooky fantasy setting, with rules inspired by Blades in the Dark, with rules to support both campaign play and one-shot adventures. Super easy decision for me to back that one. I'm also considering the Swords & Wizardry Box Set, which is a functional reprint of Original D&D, but I don't know. I've got Old School Essentials, a functional reprint of Basic D&D, and while there are some differences between the two, there's a lot of overlap.
It amazes me how much Kingdom Come is still broken. I sank 40 hours into it, but I had to give up at one point. It's just too broken for me and not in a funny way (although in a funny way too, come to think of it).
I've never finished any of the Zachtronics games, but I love them dearly.
At some point in the game the puzzles begin to demand a lot of attention in one session from me, and if I take a break for a few days I forget all of the context and have to almost start again. I have a dream to finish Shenzhen I/O and Opus Magnum one day :^)
Wow I'd never heard of this one. I loved TIS-100 (though I'm sure I didn't beat it), so I'm eager to give this one a shot.
Supraland continues to be great. The game is way larger than I expected it to be, and way more involved too. I've loved gaining new abilities which have reframed the way that I see things in the game. Stuff that I previously thought was mere set-dressing turns out to be important. Backtracking with my new abilities opens up possibilities I didn't even know I was missing. It's very smartly made. Plus, it does a good job of requiring lateral thinking for some of its puzzles. The game gives you a lot of pieces for how its systems work, but it's often up to you as the player to put those pieces together in ways the game hasn't explicitly told you about. I'm in the last area of the game (I think) but I'm only about 40% done according to the in-game completion counter, so I'm going to have plenty of post-game exploration to do once I've unlocked all the abilities.
I also finally started up The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. I've not played the first two games (nor read the books or watched the Netflix show), so this is my first exposure to the series. The game has a very good onboarding that introduces you to necessary information piece by piece, and a lot of the introductory sidequests feel like they're there to reinforce game systems (which is a good thing). I'm only two hours into the game and am excited by the prospect of really sinking into it. Once Supraland is done this will get my full attention. I'll also mention that it's by far the most impressive game I've played through Steam's Proton compatibility layer for Linux. Despite it being a Windows-only title, it's running flawlessly on my machine, and the game is outright gorgeous. Proton continues to amaze me with how good it is.
Checking back in to note that I beat Supraland and plan to fully finish it to 100% tomorrow.
I give it an enthusiastic recommendation should the idea of a first-person metroidvania puzzle platformer sound good to you. The game exceeds expectations in both scope and execution. Even more impressive: it was made by only one guy. In fact, you might know him from his last hit game.
One thing I like about Supraland is that it's very, well, "gamey". Sure, the story gives nods to this (the goals you're working towards are literally called MacGuffins), but it's embedded into the design as well. If you've ever looked at a gap and thought with my double jump I can just barely make it to that corner sticking out or you've ever tried to climb an in-game hill by jumping onto its least-steep polygon faces one by one, then this game is for you. The dev has hidden tons of secrets accessible like this all over the game -- more than you could possibly expect. He wants you to try cheesy game-logic solutions.
Moreover, some of the puzzles are actually solvable this way too. I missed a puzzle concept early in the game that wasn't actually necessary to advance but helped you get to some secret areas. I ended up cheesing my way into those same areas. I knew I wasn't doing things the intended way when I was trying my less-than-optimal-but-still-ultimately-possible method for the 20th time, but the game is cool with that.
I also appreciate that it's a very clever metroidvania. It has the obvious markers where you know you're missing out on something, but, without getting too spoilery, it also has some game-changing mechanics that it introduces which completely transform how you view the game world and your ability to navigate it or interact with it. It's a comment on its richness that I, as previously mentioned, missed an entire mechanic until after I'd beaten the game.
I'll also say, now that I've unlocked all the abilities, that backtracking is legitimately enjoyable and not at all a chore. I was worried I was going to burn out trying to chase down everything, but, again without getting too spoilery, the game gives you some great QoL stuff on the back end that makes it fun and fulfilling.
For anyone interested, the game has a demo out, which is a big chunk of the first part of the game. The demo's enough to tell whether you'd like the full thing. If it doesn't grab you, the game's not for you, and if it does, it only gets better from then on. As for me, I'm someone who plays most games about the length of a demo, putting in an hour or two at most. Supraland, contrastingly, has eaten up 16 hours from me so far (and most of those in lengthy, multi-hour sessions), and I'm going to continue playing so I can 100% it.
I'm glad you ended up enjoying it as much as I did! Not sure if you're aware but Supraland 2 is in development!
Yup! I'm excited for it. The dev is also planning on releasing two DLCs for the first game. According to him:
Wolcen - Isometric hack and slash, D3 graphics, PoE attribute tree, D2 character class customization, WoW "don't stand in the fire" environmentals, pretty good cinematics. The skills you can use are based on the weapon(s) you have, the class you choose at the start will just decide what weapon and weapon specific skill you start with, any character can learn any skill. Unlike all Diablo games and PoE, you can get skills to have an actual support class build. Bosses present an actual challenge. Uber skill thing is a nice twist on the genre. Overall mostly fun, but still buggy. Don't use channeling skills as the game likes to freeze when you do so and you have to blindly call up a command line in order to kill it.
Retrobowl - Android game, Tecmobowl call back football game, not a bad time waster when on the train, wish I could have some control over defense beyond just hiring players and hoping their stats plus RNG keeps the other team from scoring.
I've really been enjoying Prosperous Universe. It's a complex economics MMORPG. It's very much a long-term game in that you log in in the morning, set up your trades/production and then leave it all day and come home after work and check in. The game itself is free to play with currency trading and a couple of bits locked behind a paid key. I bought it because I think it's worthwhile! It's also helped my Excel skills which is always a nice perk!
Hm, this is kind of up my alley. I'm actually working on a game that has an economy focus, so this could be a good look into how others have achieved this.
However, I'm wary of F2P games as they often sacrifice enjoyable mechanics for the purpose of driving you towards spending money. I'd rather pay $30 for a game that I can enjoy than be pushed towards spending hundreds just to overcome artificial obstacles.
How is it on that front?
The only features you need to pay for are local markets (which are basically player message boards where you post an ad saying "I want to sell 100 silicon ore for 4,000NCC pick up within three days". You still get the centralised commodity exchanges where the lions share of trading in the standard buy order sell order and it matches you style happens though) and the currency exchange.
I believe they intend to move to a subscription model for the premium stuff when they do a full release but that won't be for a good time yet as far as I'm aware.
I'm sure they're going to add further content that isn't free, but they do state "Realism will not be sacrificed to pay-to-win shenanigans – your money is no good here." on their website which is actually kind of what enticed me.
I obviously can't comment on how it'll go in the future but I think the devs are doing this because they want to make an amazing spreadsheets in space game first over money.
TL;DR give it a try and see what you think.
My Verdict:
I am curious where this goes, and will play around with it. I'm interested to see if I can't script some part of this to make QoL features myself, and to export some data that I can play around with to make my own manufacturing tree calcs.
The critical stuff
I see it can be bought, though this is not a friendly statement:
You buy it now, and then you get to buy it AGAIN when it's out of first release? That's off putting.
I do UI development as part of my day job, and there are a LOT of basic UX violations and misleading user interfaces here... Seasoned users wouldn't have a problem, but it does pose a significant barrier to entry for new users.
There is very little in the way of "quality of life" when it comes to the games interfaces and functions.
Question for you:How the heck do I actually buy a sell order? Ie. someone has a sell order up on the exchange, but I don't see any way to accept it for currency? I can only create buy orders, and then hope someone fills it eventually.Figured it out! I have to create a buy order at or over the price of the market sell order.
The game uses websockets, which is good. Though it makes me sad because I cant as easily script some data scraping (Ie. Running API requests & exporting all market prices so I can automate a table of profitable manufacturing trees).
I'm more intrigued on reverse engineering the game than I am playing it TBH, which unfortunately happens when I feel like the game is needlessly tedious and in need of basic QoL improvements. I'll just build my own QoL tools to play it comfortably.
Bear in mind the automated scraping is against the rules and frowned upon
Hm, I see why it is against the TOS. Since it's only a few more steps from there to a functioning bot, though those are BIG steps. It's a blanket rule to cover botting.
However, I don't see why it would be frowned upon? Most games that have in-depth economy sims that I've played provide APIs to retrieve market data so you can build out spreadsheets and tools based off of it (Eve Online, as an example).
It permits a whole other level of gameplay depth, that would otherwise be artificially laborious to perform, and artificially tedious gameplay isn't fun IMHO.
No Man's Sky.
Watching the Internet Historian's video on No Man's Sky really made me view the game differently. The team faced countless struggles that ultimately lead to the negative reception the game got when it first launched. The game now is super fun: flying spaceships, trying to get cooler and faster spaceships, setting up an awesome base, seeing the varieties of planets and creatures, pirate battles. I played 6 hours consecutively when I first got the game, and I have 25+ hours on it right now. I would highly recommend it.
Conan: Exiles.
Holy shit this game is addictive. To me it's like World of Warcraft meets Rust/Minecraft. I've spent 20+ hours on it over my four-day weekend and have never felt pulled into a game as much as this one. I splurged and bought a second copy for my wife, I can see it's going to be a HUGE time-sink for us both. I've already built a nice cozy cottage and have a whole assortment of furniture.
I have almost no interest in progressing further into the story at this point, other than to just find more shit for my house. It feels like it was advertised as an action RPG, but lands in accidental Sims.