Author Topic: What are you playing?  (Read 692323 times)

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Offline Order.RSS

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1675 on: February 12, 2019, 11:50:29 AM »
I found LocoRoco incredibly dissapointing. It's bright, colourful, and the music is appropriate... But the gameplay feels like an unpolished, extremely turgid attempt at Sonic the Hedgehog or something. Jump is never quite as springy as you need it to be either, and even the whole build-your-own-house stuff outside the main game is uninspired at best.

No idea how it routinely scored 8/10 and higher and why it's still prevalent on 'best of PSP' lists. Although I gotta admit most of the PSP stuff I played has been a bit underwhelming, so maybe it's just me.

Offline broodwars

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1676 on: February 12, 2019, 01:23:34 PM »
I finally got around to playing through Outlast 1 (+Whistleblower) and 2.

You shouldn't. Both are incredibly tedious and repetitive, and 2 is ridiculously long for what little there is to do.
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Offline ejamer

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1677 on: February 17, 2019, 04:19:36 PM »
I found LocoRoco incredibly dissapointing. It's bright, colourful, and the music is appropriate... But the gameplay feels like an unpolished, extremely turgid attempt at Sonic the Hedgehog or something. Jump is never quite as springy as you need it to be either, and even the whole build-your-own-house stuff outside the main game is uninspired at best.

No idea how it routinely scored 8/10 and higher and why it's still prevalent on 'best of PSP' lists. Although I gotta admit most of the PSP stuff I played has been a bit underwhelming, so maybe it's just me.

I tend to agree with your opinion overall, although am maybe a bit more sympathetic to the game.
It's not terrible, just not great either. Although I like the idea, the execution and level design was a let down. If I hadn't played Fluidity first, this would probably get a better reception. The different challenges and minigames in Fluidity were both big improvements also, even if the art style wasn't as quirky.
« Last Edit: February 20, 2019, 12:31:00 PM by ejamer »
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Offline kaijugamer

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1678 on: February 18, 2019, 10:24:14 PM »
I'm not really sure if I wasted my day-off playing Tetris 99 the whole day and the best place I got is only Top 4.

Offline lolmonade

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1679 on: February 20, 2019, 08:05:34 AM »
I'm not really sure if I wasted my day-off playing Tetris 99 the whole day and the best place I got is only Top 4.

IMO it's only a waste if you didn't enjoy playing it.  I'd measure my fun  on that rather than if you got the win.

Offline broodwars

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1680 on: February 20, 2019, 08:10:08 PM »
Inbetween sessions of Resident Evil 2R, I decided to replay the original Dead Space via my Xbox One. I haven't played it in probably the better part of a decade, and I have to say...it really holds up, better than its inspiration (RE4) does, IMO. That's mainly due to the controls, but there's just a superb sense of "place" in the original Dead Space. The Ishimura is just a spectacularly well-realized horror game location, just lit perfectly with all sorts of secret nooks & places for Necromorphs to jump you.

Dead Space is notable for its best weapon being the 1st one you ever get, the Plasma Cutter, but I've always had a fondness for the Ripper. It just feels immensely satisfying to dissect a necromorph in seconds with a well-pathed Ripper blade.

The game does have a problem with very formulaic encounter design (i.e. "walk forward, Necromorph drops in front of you, and then turn around because there's one behind you, too."), but the game ends before that formula starts to get annoying.

I still don't care about the whole Unitology story I always felt was a noose around this series' neck, one that gets drawn to full tautness in Dead Space 3. It's also funny how wildly inconsistent this series is when it comes to the purpose of the markers. In Dead Space 1, it's a device that acts as a deterrent to the necromorphs.  In the spin-off animated films Downfall & Aftermath, it creates Necromorphs. In Dead Space 2, it also creates Necromorphs. In Dead Space 3, it both creates AND is implied to stop Necromorphs, with the real threats coming from the Necromorph planets.  :rolleyes:

Unfortunately, like RE4 Dead Space is REALLY starting to show its age now. Characters and environments are a LOT blockier than you probably remember, and there are some really low-res textures by modern standards. After a little time for adjustment, though, it holds up fine. I feel like the load times are a little shorter now via Xbone BC than I remember the PS3 version being, but overall this pretty much is the game I remember.

I'll probably replay Dead Space 2 in the future as well, another horror game I'm quite fond of.
« Last Edit: February 20, 2019, 08:13:41 PM by broodwars »
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Offline ejamer

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1681 on: February 21, 2019, 10:54:01 AM »
PlayStation Classic might have been a bit of a flop... but I'm spending a bit of time revisiting the PS1 library anyway thanks to my PSP Go.

First off, PSP Go is far better than than PlayStation Classic. This incredibly small system has a large screen and bluetooth connectivity for headphones/controllers. It can be connected to an external screen via RGB or component video cables. With my charging cradle beside the TV, it's like a very early Switch precursor that allows me to easily swap between playing at home or on the go.

Anyway, with about 35 PS1 titles on the system, I've been skipping around quite a bit. The Castlevania games make me wish more 2D games were made for PS1 since they have aged better than early 3D efforts. Playing through the Strike series of games again is a lot of fun, although I'm not sure the design holds up without some nostalgia. Speaking of which, Tomb Raider requires quite a bit of nostalgia to be palatable. Klonoa makes me appreciate the Wii remake - although the original is still very playable. I have quite a few RPGs on the console, which are harder to dive into without more time commitment.

Does anyone know if the Oddworld series of games has held up well, or if they are better forgotten? The recent(ish) revival of the series has me curious.
« Last Edit: February 21, 2019, 10:57:49 AM by ejamer »
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Offline Order.RSS

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1682 on: February 21, 2019, 12:27:58 PM »
Does anyone know if the Oddworld series of games has held up well, or if they are better forgotten? The recent(ish) revival of the series has me curious.

Abe's Oddysee and Abe's Exoddus are interesting games, but they're quite difficult if I recall correctly. Gameplay was very much a trial & error affair. Your character is very weak, and minor mistakes basically always lead to instant deaths. There's far too few savepoints too, so there will be sections you'll have to repeat several times. On the upside, the cinematics hold up in that PS1 CG kind of way, and the games have a dedicated fart button. Plus, mind-controlling bad guys off of ledges never gets old. I think the aesthetic is unique enough, and the story continues to have appeal in a similar way as Soylent Green does.

Abe's Oddysee was remade into Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty! in 2016; it has a Wii U release for sure, don't think it's on Switch (yet). 2 Years ago the word was that Abe's Exoddus would be remade by the same team. Reception overall seems pretty positive, except by some of the stauncher Oddworld fans who dislike the bloomy aesthetic - they prefer Oddworld to be dark and grimy. Here's a long, but well-argued video comparing the orginal and the remake.

One general thing you see people annoyed about when it comes to Oddworld, is how the series has been handled. From the outset the plan was to create an 'Oddworld Quintology' - 5 games set in one universe. Oddysee and Exoddus are the only 2 which the creators say truly count though, basically relegating Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee (original Xbox 3D platformer) and Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath (FPS also on OG Xbox) to bonus/side games.
There's a disgruntled share of the fanbase which continuously insists the developers should focus on finishing the planned Quintology, rather than develop 2 full side games, remake the first 2 games, and trying to get a movie/TV adaptation off the ground. I don't think the Quintology will ever happen really; there was a lot of drama following EA's handling of Stranger's Wrath, when the studio basically cancelled all future projects and withdrew from the games industry entirely to focus on film/TV.

Offline ejamer

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1683 on: February 25, 2019, 09:53:21 AM »
... Abe's Oddysee was remade into Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty! in 2016; it has a Wii U release for sure, don't think it's on Switch (yet). ...

Thanks for the overview! I'm still left undecided, as it sounds interesting but maybe not super compelling when I already have a big backlog. Will keep them in mind though.  A bundle of the first two games are available on PSN for $10, so there are a couple of options if I do take the plunge.

Currently playing Crimson Gem Saga (PSP). Still early on, so hard to comment too far. But the game seems like a very pleasant, old-school RPG so far. It made me realize that the vast majority of games I've enjoyed on PSP were published by Atlus... Too bad they didn't put Dokapon Kingdom on the system though, as I've been kind of missing that game after selling my Wii copy for a small mint a few years ago.

Progress on Cursed Mountain (Wii) has been limited as I just haven't had much free time in the evenings
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Offline broodwars

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1684 on: February 28, 2019, 06:20:47 PM »
Thought I'd give Hollow Knight another shot after it was severely discounted on PSN recently. I've played through about 5-6 areas at this point, and I'm still not fond of this game. It just feels aimless and wandering, with no real signposting or clever level-design tricks to steer players through the game world. I could be halfway through the game right now or nowhere close. I have no idea based on the upgrades I've gotten (dash, lantern, wall jump, cyclone spin, dream sword).

So far, the only guidance I've seen is discovering a few secret bosses & getting 3 big bosses actually marked on my map. The Dark Temple also got marked on my map, but when I go there there's nothing to do. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to kill the bosses 1st or not, given that there's a trophy for killing the final boss without obtaining the Voidheart 1st and I could have sworn those 3 bosses were named as keepers of the Voidheart.

Meh. It feels like someone tried to create a 2D Dark Souls game with Metroid elements without understanding how those elements work in Dark Souls or Metroid.  And seriously, screw the way this system handles the mapping system. I've cleared entire areas without ever finding the map guy, leading to me just fumbling around until I stumble across a station so I can go back to the surface and buy the goddamn map, which still only updates when I sit at benches. It's so needlessly anti-player.

Also, just what is EVEN the point of the whole Dark Souls-esque loss of geodes when you die, leading to you having to reclaim them from your corpse? This isn't the most difficult game, but it does love its enemies gauntlets & beginner's traps. And you don't get geodes back anywhere NEARLY as quickly as Souls in that series. I lost 900 geodes once because I died in a particularly tricky area, and I nearly turned the goddamn game off.
« Last Edit: February 28, 2019, 06:28:40 PM by broodwars »
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Offline NWR_insanolord

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1685 on: February 28, 2019, 11:15:12 PM »
The awful map system is what led to me putting down the game. I'm not sure I'll ever go back to it considering everything I have to play on Switch.
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Offline Adrock

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1686 on: March 01, 2019, 09:26:03 AM »
My friend keeps trying to get me to play Hollow Knight since I really like Metroidvania games. It just sounds like a bad time for someone with my particular lack of skills and patience with games. There is definitely a difficulty line I don’t cross which is why I won’t even be in the same room as Dark Souls or Bloodborne. Everything I read/her about Hollow Knight puts it in the same realm. Broodwars said he “nearly turned the goddamn game off.” If it isn’t a game or series I’m super invested in, I won’t hesitate to smash the power button and eject the game from my console forever.

I’m cautiously optimistic about Hollow Knight: Silksong, and I may consider it if Team Cherry introduces some quality of life improvements to things that I’m skeptical of in the original, namely the difficulty and map. I want to have fun playing video games, and I’ve reached a point in my life where if a game doesn’t bring me joy, I just stop playing it.

Offline broodwars

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1687 on: March 01, 2019, 10:42:41 AM »
To me, what separates the Soulsborne games from their imitators when it comes to death is that its punishing but not demoralizing. Yeah, it sucks that you just forfeited those 1,500 souls, but in the area you're in, a dozen or so enemy kills will get you those souls right back.

Hollow Knight, though, awards geodes from enemy kills at a rate of 2-5 per enemy kill. Anything worth buying costs hundreds of geodes. There IS a bank to store your geodes, but I didn't find it until WAY into the game. So when you die, you know you're going to have to spend hours grinding it all back up, and some enemies don't even respawn unless you sit at a bench, which are few and far between. Combine that with random difficulty spikes far away from the nearest bench, and it's just needlessly tedious.
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Offline Luigi Dude

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1688 on: March 01, 2019, 11:32:36 PM »
It's nice we're talking about Hollow Knight because I've spent the last month playing it and I'm about to break my Switch trying to fully complete it.  I actually agree with every thing Broodwar says but I still really overall enjoyed the game for the most part.

But if you want to fully complete the game and get the best ending, get ready for major BS.  Seriously, I want to know who thought it was a good idea to lock the true final boss behind a boss rush of EVERY SINGLE BOSS in the game, including some new ones made for the DLC as well.  Now if your fully upgraded like I am, the majority of bosses aren't that hard but there's so many it takes over 45 minutes just to reach the final set of bosses which are hard and can kill you in just a few hits if your not careful.  So if you die against the actual challenging bosses, you now have to waste another 45 + minutes just to get back to the final ones again.

I'm so close to just watching the true final boss and ending on Youtube because this is just so ridiculous.  But I've spent so much time on the game my pride just won't let me stop until I beat it myself, which is driving me insane.  Seriously, for something that was advertised as the Final Chapter to this game, it's a terrible way to end it.
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Offline MagicCow64

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1689 on: March 02, 2019, 07:57:22 PM »
Y'all are crazy, Hollow Knight is one of the only Metroidvanias that gets into the same league as the best Metroid games. It has actual open progression/exploration and feels transformatively different as your skill set expands and you approach space differently. It's tough at points, but it's not Souls-level stuff, and it has great "game feel". Mapping system is good, it put some skill back into it after the genre got overly hand-holdy. I mainly agree with the geo thing; I could have done without that trend infecting the game, but it also didn't affect me much. Don't use that bank, though!

But here's a caveat: I played the game on release and got whatever the "true" ending was at that time. I remember thinking that the game is already huge and extremely well-designed, and did not need a bunch of DLC jammed in willy nilly. But it sounds like that's exactly what happened with that boss gauntlet nonsense. Interesting in terms of preservation. Can you even opt in to a DLC-less release on any platform?

I believe they fucked Toki Tori 2 up as well and you can't get the OG version anymore.

Offline broodwars

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1690 on: March 02, 2019, 09:02:34 PM »
I took a break from Hollow Knight for a few days and then put some more hours into it today. I am enjoying it more as the game's starting to run out of areas I can wander into so the ability-gating has funneled me into certain areas. I've obtained the double-jump, the crystal heart (which enables you to blast across areas ala the speed shine from Super Metroid), and the item that neutralizes the acid pools. I'm getting through areas a lot faster, and with the health & soul upgrades I've gotten along the way I'm definitely living longer.

The music really is quite lovely, and the game has some great atmosphere. This really is, though, the definition of a game that takes way too long to "get good".  Everything this game does was done better in Salt & Sanctuary, a game that's probably half as long and twice as good.
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Offline broodwars

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1691 on: March 03, 2019, 05:31:35 PM »
OK, I'm pretty sure I just hit a completion-killing bug in Hollow Knight, and if it remains that way I may be done with this game now: after finding the 3 nailmasters, I had enough Geo to purchase the remaining 1,500 geo mask fragment the shopkeeper Sly had for sale so I went back to him. He had the whole sequence with awarding me the nailmaster charm, and now he won't sell me either the remaining mask fragment or the remaining charm I hadn't bought yet. He just says I bought everything from him, so now it's impossible to 100% the game.

I sent a tweet to the developer informing them of this bug, so we'll see what they do. If it's not fixed? ****. This.

Edit: Well, I beat the Hollow Knight, and from my perspective this game is over and good riddance. I just can't be bothered to put any more time into this thing. Got all the Grubs & Soul shards, though.
« Last Edit: March 03, 2019, 11:04:16 PM by broodwars »
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Offline broodwars

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1692 on: March 05, 2019, 06:25:09 PM »
When I picked up Hollow Knight last week, I picked up another Indie game on sale along with it. Now seemed as good a time to play Everspace, so I thought I'd give it a shot. I'm playing it on PS4, but it's on just about everything at this point, including the Switch.

This is actually not the 1st time I've played this game, as I attempted to play it while it was in Early Access on Xbox One and didn't care for it. My issue at the time was that the game seemed really eager to kill me with little explanation as to how I was supposed to play it. In the tutorial area, I ran into a group of friendly craft. This being a space game, I was scrolling through my controls trying to find a way to hail them and ended up shooting them instead by accident. They immediately killed me, and I deleted the game. Playing it now that it's in final release, I still think the game doesn't do enough to explain how you should play it in a timely fashion. All the explanations ARE there, but they're dolled out over a long period of time rather than up-front so it's not clear in the early going just what you're supposed to do.

Everspace is a Roguelike arcade-ish space combat game in the vein of something like a Rogue Squadron. You play as one in an infinite series of clones of a scientist-turned-fighter pilot. Each "run" consists of warping into a system, flying around scavenging for resources, and fighting squadrons of enemy fighters (and eventually capital ships) that warp in after you. You can usually leave the system whenever you want. You just fly towards the marker on your screen until your hyperdrive finishes charging, and you're out of there. However, if you're not scavenging for new weapons, cash, weapon & equipment blueprints, and fuel for that hyperdrive, you're not going to get very far. You also can't stay in any system for very long, or else a spawn of killer enemy aces will just annihilate you.

The combat is actually very accessible, as the controls are basically Rogue Squadron with some tweaks. You steer your ship's on-screen position with the left stick, your ship's orientation with the right, and you use the triggers for your weapons. It takes some getting used to, but you'll eventually find that you have full 360 degree movement available to you at pretty much any time. Pretty much all weapons have some amount of tracking on them, so so long as your cursor is within a close approximation of your locked-on target, you're going to be hitting the enemy (though you have a smaller cursor that you can use to lead targets for better efficiency). Just about the only thing the game doesn't let you do is roll your ship, which is pretty much automatically done to keep you from inverting yourself. In my experience, this is only really an issue when navigating wreckage.

I wasn't expecting this game to feature more Sim-ish elements, but there is a surprising amount of them here. When you lose your shields and take damage, you can start taking damage not only to your hull but also your individual ship systems like engines, life support, sensors, etc. You have to use rare-ish crafting resources to repair them, the same resources you also have to spend to upgrade your weapons & shields.

What I'm finding really smart about this game, though, are the quality of life improvements tied into the progression system. For instance, there are quests from various NPCs along with the typical roguelike "challenges" ("kill X number of enemies", etc.). While the challenges have to be completed in a single run, the quests do NOT. You can even fulfill the conditions of a quest and turn the quest in on separate runs. Also, when you die, you can spend any cash from your previous run into permanent upgrades to both your pilot and ship. However, you don't purchase the upgrades in one lump sum, but instead in smaller installments. This is very smart, as it ensures that even on bad runs there's a good chance you'll be able to dump that cash into SOMETHING. You're ALWAYS making progress (at least early on), even on runs where you die in the 1st area.

On the subject of death, the game's difficulty options are wildly different, and the game encourages you to jump between them. I've found Medium to be fairly punishing, but Easy is almost insultingly breezy. I only died on Easy because I didn't know that the game didn't want me to fly through a black hole that generated after I killed a strange enemy around an alien marker (trust me, it sounds less stupid in context).

I don't usually care for Roguelikes, but this one is clicking with me and the controls are certainly a large part of that. I like arcade-style flight combat games, but after Rogue Squadron they all went in a more "realistic" style that didn't work for me. Like, Ace Combat made the right stick rotate you instead of tilting your orientation, which instantly confused me.
« Last Edit: March 05, 2019, 07:30:32 PM by broodwars »
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Offline azeke

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1693 on: March 11, 2019, 01:18:53 AM »
Finishing up Assasin's Creed: Origins (already have long notes about the game for "what game did you beat" post). Only have endgame stuff left (got 100% on main map already) and doing DLC.

And of course daily sessions of Binding of Isaac, Slay The Spire with some Tetris 99 sprinkled in. I dug up my old 3DS Tetris gamecart to practice on my combos and t-spins.

Last weekend was all dedicated to Devil May Cry 5. This game... is weird. New character, V kinda sucks but massive progress on both Nero and Dante redeems it.

They finally made Nero fun -- on third attempt, after two stubs of a game (DMC4 and DMC4SE). I didn't even dabble into arms movement at all but overall improvements to movement are very big deal. Air taunt, divekick are great.

Dante... I am at the point in the campaign where the game goes full-on anime JRPG and i don't know if like it. Combat kinda devolves into watching bars getting filled up and then pressing the win button.

Still, because of general improvements to moveset i am actually getting to be somewhat okayish with Dante which is a major progress after DMC4 where controlling him felt like writing a PhD every time you had to do a move.
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Offline Luigi Dude

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1694 on: March 11, 2019, 10:28:56 PM »
After two weeks I've finally beaten Hollow Knight's Godmaster DLC and got the true ending.  I think it's finally time for me to stop my Hollow Knight journey.

But here's a caveat: I played the game on release and got whatever the "true" ending was at that time. I remember thinking that the game is already huge and extremely well-designed, and did not need a bunch of DLC jammed in willy nilly. But it sounds like that's exactly what happened with that boss gauntlet nonsense. Interesting in terms of preservation. Can you even opt in to a DLC-less release on any platform?

I believe they fucked Toki Tori 2 up as well and you can't get the OG version anymore.

Well the original true ending is still in the game, but the new ending basically turns it into another Bad Ending storywise.  If the upcoming Silksong sequel staring Hornet isn't a prequel and takes place after this ending then it's kind of a dick move making something this important locked behind something 99% of the players will never get to see.

I mean I feel proud that I was able to accomplish such a task but what they did is something more people really should have been able to see.

Major Hollow Knight Spoilers

In the new ending The Knight becomes an actual God and destroys Radiance for good.  The thing is this battle with Radiance took place in a different characters body, the Godseeker who the DLC added instead of the Hollow Knight from the main game.  Because of this the Hollow Knight gets to live since you freed it from the infection by destroying the source at a different location.  It ends with the Hollow Knight approaching Hornet at the Black Egg since she was already there waiting for The Knight to arrive but they never did since you once again fight Radiance at a different location if you do Godmaster.

So if the Hollow Knight shows up in the upcoming sequel Silksong and anyone is wonder how it's still alive, yeah, the new DLC ending that required 45 minute boss rush and an insanely cheap final boss is why.
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Offline MagicCow64

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1695 on: March 14, 2019, 09:56:00 PM »
Huh. I mean, in truth I had no idea about any of that story stuff, it just really felt like it did not need another layer of cryptic **** to "complete" on top of the palace thing. As another example, I played Environmental Station Alpha last year, and was liking it a good bit, but there was so much try-hard stuff layered on to it after release that I couldn't really tell what beating the game even meant and wasn't going to chase down the super-silly stuff that got put in for people with uh, certain cognitive perspectives.


Unrelatedly:

Super Mario Odyssey (Switch):

This was the game that I was most excited about getting a Switch for. I'm a Mario die hard, and hold 3D World in very high regard, as well as the Galaxy games, and also think Sunshine is the best of its generation despite its flaws.

With Odyssey, it's a little weird. I feel like I'm being torn three ways at all times because I just want to feverishly dig out the challenges. This vaporizes time for me in a way that a game hasn't for years. I feel freed from the labor that so many AAA western games entail at this point.

But at the same time, I have some inchoate reservations about it. The levels are surprisingly small so far, and while the density is very satisfying in some ways, it ifeels like a more free-form spin on Mario 64 with less platforming skill involved. And I'm not sure if I'm totally sold on that as an approach. I've got like 1/8th of the moons, however, so I imagine my reception will evolve for better or worse.

My impression so far, though, is that, unlike any 3D Mario game, I think they might have missed the fundamental mark. The cap possession stuff is a clever evolution of power-up gameplay, but the deployment is very segmented, and seems to cry out for a more genuinely open design philosophy. I'm thinking of a better version of Banjo Kazooie, when in reality it seems more like a somewhat ungainly mish-mash of Mario 64, Galaxy, and 3D World. I suppose I was expecting a new paradigm, and I'm not feeling it so far.




Offline Khushrenada

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1696 on: March 15, 2019, 12:41:49 AM »
I've finally been playing Mario Odyssey myself. Just beat the game a couple days ago and have 609 power moons. I'm feeling a lot of what you are feeling as well. Despite the push/pull of attraction to the game you are sort of describing, I find that I find it hard to walk away from the game and just want to keep playing and getting those moons and exploring the levels. So, I can't deny that the game has still been compelling to play even if it hasn't been an instant love and level of amazement like Breath of the Wild was for me. That compulsion to keep playing means the game is clearly doing something right.
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Offline ejamer

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1697 on: March 22, 2019, 11:14:32 PM »
The first few "board games on DS" carts have arrived, so I've been wasting the evening with Catan and Carcassonne on my handheld.

Both of these games had mostly mediocre reviews... and I can understand why. 

Carcassonne doesn't include any of the board game expansions, which is disappointing. Playing only the base game is clearly the worst version of this game, and normally I'd choose to play something else (if playing an actual board game).  However, the game includes download play so that you can enjoy multiplayer without others also owning the game, which is a nice feature, and the game still plays well.

Catan includes the Seafarers expansion and a bunch of scenarios to play through, which is nice, but doesn't offer download play and has a fwe minor interface oddities (for example, I can't find a way to erase existing save files).

However, overall I'm thrilled with the purchase of both games! They both play well and will see a lot of love at our house between me and the kids.
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Offline Order.RSS

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1698 on: March 24, 2019, 10:29:41 AM »
The first few "board games on DS" carts have arrived, so I've been wasting the evening with Catan and Carcassonne on my handheld.

[snip]

However, overall I'm thrilled with the purchase of both games! They both play well and will see a lot of love at our house between me and the kids.

Nice! I remember renting Catan for PC from a library many Moons ago. My friend has a version of it on their phone, where you just pass the phone around for people's turns. A bit clumsy when it comes to trading, but it does work. Carcassonne has a Switch version too now, but I don't know about expansions for that either. Without expansions the game is much easier to introduce to people I think, so I can sorta see the logic. Would've been nice if they had been optional inclusions, though.

Offline broodwars

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1699 on: March 24, 2019, 11:25:46 AM »
Been playing a couple of games lately, but the one I'm going to talk about at the moment is Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice since I've been playing a ton of it the last few days.

I've probably put about 12-16 hours into it so far, and honestly my impressions are pretty mixed. I like that this plays VERY differently than Souls & Bloodborne did. With the ability to grapple to many raised surfaces, there's a big emphasis on stealth and zipping in and out of bad situations once they get hairy. I like how the grappling hook makes you think about alternate approaches in the environment that result in you reaching an enemy unseen for a backstab or death-from-above instant kill.

The combat is...frustrating. This is easily the fastest combat system From Software's ever made, even faster than Bloodborne. It's very satisfying to pounce on a dude and rip him to shreds in seconds, with no stamina meter to get in your way. Breaking an enemy's posture and delivering the killing blow feels great. However, doing all this is reliant on you blocking, dodging, and parrying an enemy PERFECTLY, and Sekiro is an exceptionally difficult game even by Souls standards. For the life of me, there are certain enemy types I just CAN'T figure out, like spear dudes.

For all the hype surrounding their difficulty the Souls games are actually relatively forgiving. This is because the games use RPG leveling systems, so as hard as the games are you can usually grind your way to victory if you really need to. You can also just bash your head against the metaphorical wall over and over again as you learn the bosses' attack patterns. You can also summon aid in the Souls games if you just can't get a boss down.

Sekiro, though, has none of that. There is no leveling system, and dying repeatedly carries a penalty in the form of locked NPC quests that can only be resolved with the use of a rare item. The only way to raise your character's stats is to kill 4 bosses or find 4 of the VERY rare upgrade items hidden in the environment. And even if you DO get 4 of those items to raise your Vitality & Posture, you'll raise that stat a whole...1 point, on a 100 point scale. Beating a story boss also allows you to raise your attack a whole...1 point, on a scale I'm not sure of at this point. It's sadistic.

I'm finding the environments pretty "meh" so far. I'm sorry, but all these areas look the same and there isn't very good signposting as to where you need to go to proceed. Often, progress is locked by needing to find a new upgrade for your grappling arm, and several of the bosses I've run into so far are designed to go down easier if you find certain upgrades for it. It's still a From Software game, though, so exploration is very richly rewarded and easily the best part of the game.

Yeah, so far I like Sekiro, but I don't love it.
« Last Edit: March 24, 2019, 11:30:24 AM by broodwars »
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