it’s a very ymmv thing tbf. the one unabashed thing i’d say is not to go keyboard only for penalties since they’re much harder than they strictly need to be if not impossible. but i encourage trying it out just to see,. caveat part of why i’m alright with it is my chosen match difficulty and the fact that i have no interest in online play
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Final Fantasy X is, imo, a good next step as a game that feels largely intuitive, has good characters (in spite of some hellish voice acting at points), the themes are better executed than most big budget AAA games and has a good gradual escalation of difficulty and some really good post-game content with its superbosses.
I am also a big FFX stan though.
Although the chaos side of me wants to say FFXIII
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I just replayed Portal 2 for the first time in maybe a decade. That game’s still absolutely gorgeous, maybe the best-looking Valve-developed Source game, a format of bitesized chambers that work in concert with the engine’s limitations. And while some deep-rooted familiarity made the puzzles a breeze, I’d also forgotten half the shit that happens in it.
The writing still has killer pacing, and it’s got some very funny moments, but in hindsight it’s wild to experience a script that is so… I dunno, rooted in how people spoke on the internet in 2010. A game that’s very much aware of how much its predecessor was meme’d into ubiquity.
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My renewed interest in Warhammer and the announcement of the next Total War game has led me to download Total War: Warhammer 2. I’ve always sucked at Total War games, when it comes to the battles I just get overwhelmed and it’s always really depressing to see all your troops flee the battlefield. The onboarding for this Warhammer 2 is marginally better, keep your archers back, let your melee infantry go forward, flank with cavalry, but as soon as it starts introducing new units it goes beyond what I know and I just get trounced. I started okay but it’s such a mix of systems, and I hate controlling my regiments as they always seem to go at an angle and get off to the wrong start.
It’s lucky that the game and battles look so good then. Like I don’t think there has been another RTS that captures that LOTR mass battle thing which you see in so much Warhammer artwork. When Cavalry charge in, people go flying. It’s just amazing to watch.
Then there’s the world map view, which also has a habit of alienating me. I never know what I should be doing. Capturing cities I guess? Making allies? I ended up focusing all my efforts on this one city by beseiging it which took about 10 turns, and all my allies nabbed the cities around my area…
Seems like there is a massive learning curve, I would love to master.
But then I could just bash rats in Vermintide 2, which is also amazing. Boy, I can’t wait for that new Darktide game.
Outside of Warhammer, I’ve been persevering with Ori and The Blind Forest. Okay, it get it now. That game is really good. I like the way the movement and platforming has a little degree of freedom in it. Like you can double jump or use an enemy to propel you further upward. The only thing I dislike about is the regular lightning attacks, which you just spam at enemies until they bust open. Sometimes I just want to jump on a goomba… At the moment it all just feels vey spongey and imperfect against the beautiful flow of movement. Like why have those enemies that spit three globs of area of effect goo at you? It just doesn’t suit the game.
Am I the only one? Everything else about the game is great but the combat really holds it back. Maybe I’m just underpowered.
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It’s a very rich and complicated game. I’m not very skilled, and I still struggle with lots of the strategic decisions. I have no useful guidance, since it depends very hard on your race and your location. Mess about, and don’t be afraid to mess up. Also, bother anyone who doesn’t hate you for trade deals if they’re available. Those really add up.
The battles are a tough micro challenge for sure, and it’s OK to pause a ton. That said, there are a lot of useful controls that the game doesn’t try to teach you- how to quickly and easily position formations rather than individual units, for example, or how to use monsters or monstrous infantry (in among regular infantry- so your line infantry soak hits and prevent your bigger bois from getting surrounded).
The following is a playlist of information, tips and tactics made for Warhammer 1 battles, but totally applicable here. They’re concise and well made. No need to watch all of them, but anything involving controls (number 4, number 8) and anything describing basic mechanics like morale and fatigue will help a ton.
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Thanks! I will watch these. For the Warhammer. Playing as High Elves the only monster I had was a big phoenix bird.
Watch those ranged units. Big targets are hard to miss, and all those arrows add up, even from lower tier ranged units.
I’m playing though FFXIII at the moment. It’s my second attempt. It’s… man. There are a bunch of really core ways it’s bad, but there really is something there. It’s so beautiful. I love the look of having technology incorporated into everything, even the weird magical stuff. There’s something so compelling about these disparate characters turned into the thing they fear the most, and given a quest they can’t understand, with a seemingly bad outcome for success or failure.
…and some of those characters are insufferable (the less screen time Hope and Snow get the happier I am), and the levels are super linear, and each go on for far too long, and rarely have the kind of authored fights a linear structure should give you, and the interesting systems are introduced so gosh darn slowly and…
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I finished up Submerged: Hidden Depths and really liked it! It was nice to just explore this world, sail around, and climb on stuff. It’s a very relaxing experience. If anyone, for some reason, has Stadia Pro I’d recommend checking on. If not, well, I hope it isn’t Stadia exclusive for too long because I really really would like to see more people play it.
While I still have my Stadia free trial I also checked out two other games. Ary and the Secret of Seasons was interesting but a little bit janky. The combat isn’t terribly frustrating but there’s not feedback as to when you get damaged so it was frustrating to die more often than I’d expected because I almost never had as much health as I thought I did. I might go back to it before the trial runs out but I won’t be bothered if I don’t get around to it. The Gardens Between has a really interesting central mechanic of controlling time but it is just way too slow. Each level feels like it has so much waiting between thinking of a possible solution to a puzzle and actually testing it out. Another “maybe I’ll go back to this but probably not” situation. It was neat to get to try them both out though, since I probably wouldn’t have if they weren’t included with the trial for free.
Finally, for no particular reason, I felt like doing a point and click adventure game and so I looked through my Steam library and found Stasis. It’s a horror game but most of that comes from gratuitous gore and generally gruesome or edgy writing and art. It’s not actively unpleasant to look at or play but it sure is trying to be. The actual design of the game isn’t great either because it has a lot of moments where the game will kill you if you use an item incorrectly or walk into a room before you’re supposed to. I wouldn’t really recommend this to anyone, there’s about a trillion better point and click games. But I did find it compelling enough to finish so who could say if it’s truly bad or not.
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It’s been 14 years since the start of the trilogy, so I’m throwing Mass Effect back into the ol’ 360. I would like to think I’m the type of person that could play these back to back once before May 14’s Legendary Edition launch. But if I’m being honest with myself, something else will come along to interrupt this playthrough.
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I’ve started playing Suzerain after hearing Rob talk about it so positively on the podcast, and wow. Damn. This game is incredible. A great hybrid of visual novel and political strategy/intrigue that genuinely has me doing Gendo-esque poses as I consider what to do next. I’m sticking to my ideological believes as best I can, and it’s going okay for now… but I can definitely see issues being caused in the future/getting blocked. The level of detail that has gone into describing everything within the game’s codex is impressive. I clicked on a random small town and was met with a five paragraph description of the region’s culture, history, population, etc. I can absolutely see myself doing multiple playthroughs of this game to see where limits are drawn with different ministers & countries. Still really early, the game defines my position as “Turn 3 in Chapter 1”, so I’m still not sure if it’ll follow through on a lot of what it’s setting up. Regardless, it’s absolutely worth checking out if Rob’s description caught even a bit of your interest!
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So, playing Moose Life developed me a hankering for other 3d trancing scrolling shooters, so I’ve been playing a bit of Llamasoft’s other recentish release, Polybius [which really needs a freeride mode like Moose Life - the game itself is much more chill than Moose Life in general (despite being super fast if you get enough acceleration, since it’s intended to be trancey), but the limited shields mean that every run will come to an end at some point].
I also reinstalled Audiosurf, which is actually a lot of fun despite being 12 years old now! Interestingly, it still seems to have a reasonable number of people in its community - there are relatively recent music tracks which have high scores on them. (Reading the Steam forums, it seems that a lot of people bounced off of Audiosurf 2, which is probably why the original is still getting updates every so often…)
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Played some of the Square Enix Go games for some nice puzzly goodness.
Hitman GO has a great aesthetic; the worlds on the level select screen are presented as different board game boxes, and the characters are presented as low detail playing pieces, and when someone dies their piece gets knocked over. You’re moving along a grid on a level that looks like it was crafted out of real world materials, trying to find the route to the end of the level. Actual assassination levels are just rare treats, with most of the game just having you move from A to B in a level and killing enemies is something you can avoid. There are sub-objectives for every level so you can find alternate routes and more efficient paths through levels, using the objects found in levels in different ways. You steadily are given more mechanics as you progress, such as a trenchcoat in the airport world which allows you to walk past enemies, but is instantly discarded when you make your first kill. I did get stuck at times but managed to get through the whole thing in 7 hours.
Lara Croft GO was my favourite out of the three. While it still keeps much of the low poly look and flat textures of Hitman, Lara is a natural moving human rather than a playing piece. I loved the animations when you’re killing giant snakes, and Lara even does her signature handstand when climbing from time to time. The bulk of the gameplay is the same as Hitman, although the game treats the levels as 3D rather than the previous game where everything is taking place on one plane. The puzzles are more of the moving-blocks-and-pulling-levers kind since you’re not avoiding guards at a mansion like in the previous game, and the enemies that do appear are usually ones you have to kill in a certain order to progress, although in some instances they have to be kept alive and manipulated to actually beat a level. I feel like the mechanics are sort of Mario Galaxy-esque where they bring you something new, expand on it in ways you weren’t expecting, then discard it, only to bring it back a few levels later when they combine it with a different mechanic. While the first 4 or so chapters are part of a story, the last two are comparatively stand-alone adventures, with the final one having some great puzzles in it. Interestingly, the last world is made by an indie studio called KO_OP, who made GNOG and are working on Goodbye Volcano High, and I wonder how that collaboration came about, but also I liked that area so much that I’m gonna try their other stuff. But most importantly, you can play the entire game with Lara dressed in Agent 47’s iconic suit, so maybe one day we can get 47 to dress up as Lara.
Deus Ex GO is the worst of the bunch. Part of this is that there isn’t any sub-objectives to do on the levels like Hitman or collectibles like Lara Croft, so it’s a pretty quick playthrough at 3 hours and only there were only a handful of levels that I really needed to think about (one of which included a new ability that is not explained at all). The other part is there is a technical bug where all the white text becomes smeared across the screen when moved, rendering it unreadable. So there is a story but I couldn’t read it, nor could I see the menus properly. The levels don’t really introduce new elements that often so it falls into the “more of the same, but worse” category for these. Also should point out that the game has microtransactions, which include the ability to undo a turn rather than start the level over when you make a mistake, which is so bizarre to me. I couldn’t see all the options in the shop because of the visual bug I mentioned earlier, but it all seems to be things that are unnecessary. Another thing that is just weird to me is that this game can connect to your Square Enix account, and doing so can allow you to get skill points for Deus Ex Mankind Divided which makes me imagine suits in the boardroom were chanting “synergy” for an hour straight when the game was pitched to them.
3 games complete in the first week of Feb, I think I’ll continue this trend of short games before I move on to something larger.
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I don’t have the vocabulary to really dissect the politics at play in Skyrim, but I find it fascinating that they set the set the racist-coded faction against the religious supremacy faction.
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Wrapped the base levels of Umurangi Generation absolutely incredible game, can’t believe I slept on it this long. Cant wait to start macro very soon.
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I’ve been playing Street Fighter II Super Turbo on Fightcade along with reading From Masher to Master by Patrick Miller. The Vice reset video made me realize how much I miss fighting games, so I’m glad to be back. I’m playing with keyboard which is fine, I miss my hitbox. Luckily I’ll have it back in a few months! I’ve been using Fightcade, and the netcode is amazing. I’ll never go back to delay based. I’ve read a lot about Fightcade being toxic, but honestly it’s been fine for me in ST. People have been helpful because they can tell I’m new. I really like Super Turbo and I’m glad to be getting back to the basics.
I’ve also made some headway in SMT Persona 2 Innocent Sin for the PSP. It’s neat! I was feeling the need to play another JRPG after FFXIITZA, so I decided to give it a shot. I have 3 thoughts: the story is really interesting, and starts off strong! Wow, the encounter rate sure is high in this game compared to JRPGs I’ve played recently (although, I was led to believe it was worse than it actually is?)! Ugh, the transphobia in the armor store is the telltale sign that this is a Persona game, and I wish the series would drop it!
For the first time since I got my switch I don’t have a game I’m playing on it. I’ve put down ACNH except for when my mom wants me to visit her island/pending the March update that might be Mario themed? And nothing else I have on there is really calling to me at the moment.
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I’ve been playing a game, not sure if you’ve heard of it, especially on this forum. It’s called Dark Souls?
Jokes aside, I played that game for the first time a decade ago, and started it up on a whim a week or so ago. Turns out, it’s still great! I just wrapped up Sen’s Fortress, so on to Anor Londo, which I remember in a very fuzzy way as being real eye opener. It’s been long enough that I don’t really remember why it felt so important, so I’ll be really curious to see how it lands after so much time playing different Souls games.
I’ve been running a Dex/counter build, which is super different than how I’ve ever played these games before. It’s actually how I initially tried playing the game back in the day but got completely destroyed, and fell back to a “cower behind the biggest shield I can” strategy. It’s really fun to go back and play this style after having played Bloodborne and Sekiro.
I’m enjoying it enough, I think I might try some of the bigger game-changing mods. I’d be really curious if folks here have tried either Daughters of Ash or Prepare to Die Again, of Ash and Dust, and have thoughts or suggestions. I’m really loving my time playing this game again, and would love to have a way to extend it. But I’m worried that without FromSoft’s particular touch, these remix mods may end up just feeling hollow (pun definitely intended)
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started the ice cream truck demo from the steam festival and am really enjoying it. I forgot until i started this how much i enjoy this sort of loop generally
still touhou mystery dungeon touhou genso wanderer reloaded.
i think at this point i have cleared all, or almost all, of the main storylines, and what i have learned from them is thus:
balancing a dungeon so that it will still at least require attentiveness of a player bringing in high-level equipment seems difficult.
being able to make approximately everything you need for any circumstance makes many seemingly unfair obstacles entirely reasonable.
it’s nice to be able to do so, but it’s not really as interesting as hacking together a solution from what you’re able to get.
there’s definitely a sweet spot, a middle ground where you pick up a random material that lets you gain a single critical seal on your equipment, giving you a much-needed answer to problems where previously you might have had to just run like hell for the exit.
and, the inclusion of bosses, like rpg-ass final bosses, kind of does not work in a genre where they can set you back the entirety of the dungeon for not knowing every move in their repertoire, especially when they function so differently that even the toughest max-rank enemies do nothing at all to prepare you for them.
anyway most of the story’s a lot of fun and i find myself smiling a lot playing this game and i actually can’t think of another right now that i’ve had this kind of experience with.
since at this point i have multiple endgame-nethack-level sets that slay everything and resist everything, more or less, i’m not finding dungeons super compelling that let me bring anything, so my interest at this point is primarily in the various wells, which don’t, along with having unidentified/cursed/dangerous items, and being 99+ floors. why are they wells? i don’t know.
so far i have cleared three. i want to clear all of them! especially that mysterious dimension that opened up in rei’sen’s room for no apparent reason, where nito fusion is disabled, so you can’t really just melt everything down for scrap and construct that endgame-nethack-level set every time.
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I played Depanneur Nocturne last night and it was kind of cute, but it didn’t really grab me. The basic gist is that you wander into a shop looking for a present for someone, and the core gameplay involves you walking around the store picking up various items, asking a clerk about them, and then deciding if you want to buy them. The vibes are great, but it just felt very weightless and meandering in a way that didn’t work as well as I think it was meant to.
