Hey [%target] Whatcha Playin'?

[Niku]

so dauntless is monster hunter if monster hunter was fortnite, and there is a big slow fuckoff hammer, but it is doc ido’s hammer and has a giant goddamn rocket on the back of it and if you push the ROCKET button after you swing but before you hit you will rocket hit and if you push the ROCKET button after you hit three times you will ROCKET HAMMER JUMP SLAM and get all your ammo back to keep fucking up a turtle’s day with a rocket hammer in conclusion we live in a society

[Mongrel]

So in ever-more-laughable Tanks news, WG decided they were going to finally balance gold shells (a round which costs a lot more game credits than your standard round, but which has higher penetration. They used to be sold for real money, but that was abolished years and years ago) because the game has slowly become balanced around them instead of regular ammo.

Only, instead of actually rebalancing gold rounds, they decided that it would be better to pump the HP of every tank in the game and buff all standard shell damage. By a flat percentage. Which, given the game has dozens of different playstyles and several widely disparate tank classes, is uh, not a great idea.

Obviously this brilliant move has not been particularly well-received on the test server, and is - mercifully - almost certain to be dumpstered. But I did have quite the laugh at what was basically the game balance equivalent of "How many Russians does it take to change lightbulb, Yuri?" "However many are need to pick up and turn house, Pyotr!" *laugh track*

:V

[Thad]

Went all-retro/indie and bought Messenger, Iconoclasts, and Tanglewood.

Tanglewood is a Genesis ROM bundled with an emulator. I copied it to my EverDrive and it plays on my Genesis.

I've spent a little time with all three of them.

Tanglewood is a lovely and charming puzzle platformer, of the "don't hold the player's hand but lay the early levels out intuitively enough to let them figure out how everything works" school. I've been pretty impressed with how well it's balanced those early stages; objects you're supposed to interact with stand out, and if it's not immediately apparent how to interact with them, it's not long before you find some other piece of the puzzle to backtrack with.

I got a Mega Man Zero vibe from the graphical style on Iconoclasts. There are some similarities -- you've got a blaster and can power it up to fire stronger shots -- but so far it's more of a puzzle platformer. The main mechanic in the early going is that you've got a giant wrench you can use to interact with environmental puzzles -- turn this screw here and it makes that object move over there. Traversal's not very Zero-y; there's no dash (at least not yet) or wall-jump. You can hang off ledges and climb up them, though, like in later Metroid games.

The Messenger is a Ninja Gaiden/Shinobi homage. In the early going it's broken up into individual stages and has an NES graphical style, though I gather that later in the game it changes up the graphics and gameplay.

It's from that Shovel Knight/Undertale school of not just being an homage of a classic game but an irreverent deconstruction. Some of the fourth wall-breaking jokes work for me and some don't, but that's window-dressing. The gameplay feels good, and the level design is smart; it does a solid job at creating a tough-but-fair challenge. Hazards and enemy placements are devious but I haven't hit any NES-style "enemy comes from offscreen and knocks you into a pit in the middle of a jump" memorization cheapness yet. Waypoints are maybe a little farther apart than I'd like, but more frequent than I'd expect in a real 8-bit game. The death mechanic is modern; there's a penalty for dying but it's not very harsh. (An imp resurrects you at the last waypoint; he follows you around for a little while and confiscates all the money you pick up until you pay him back.)

I haven't spent much time with any of the three so far, but The Messenger is the one that's grabbed me the most, and I expect I'll be spending more time with it in the near future.

[Niku]

I liked Iconoclasts enough to finish it, but never fell for it as much as I wanted to. Still a gorgeous game and there are some good puzzle bits.

I liked The Messenger much less the longer I played it, but overall feel just tipped to the side of positivity toward it. I think there’s some free DLC now, might check that out.

[Mongrel]

The entire Banner Saga was on sale today for like $6/game, so I grabbed that... have to give it a try soon. Be good for a change of pace.

[Newbie]

If you have PC or Xbox One, I would advise in the strongest possible terms that you acquire and play Outer Wilds. Go in as blind as possible, but if you need a description: the first half-hour is in the well-crafted tutorial village, but don't let the tweeness get to you because it's nothing like the rest of the game, which feels like the answer to a hypothetical question: "What if Mario Galaxy were about exploration, archaeology, and dying in space? Also, I loved the bleakness of Majora's Mask; how much of that can we borrow? Now take out all the weapons and 98% of the items."

Ah, but I hear you asking: "Uh, hey, isn't Outer Wilds only available on PC through the Epic Games Store?"

Yeah, I'm afraid so, but even with that significant disadvantage, I'd still consider this entirely worth the sacrifice. It will eventually also be on Steam, but I couldn't wait, and my time with the game felt like a vindication of that choice.

[Niku]

I was clean and sober off of League of Legends until FUCKIN' AUTOBATTLERS existed. you goddamn assholes.

[Rico]

TFT is a fucking temporal black hole

[beatbandito]

Remnant: From the Ashes of The Generically Souls-Esque Titles Still Remaining has actually been pretty fun in my short time with it, despite my sassy title.

Originally I thought "soulslike" meant "frantic, heavy combat with high risk, except without the tight tuning that makes it fun and not frustrating", but the horror mood with most of the threat coming from misleading noises and layout was limited to the tutorial. Turns out it just means "individual stages with one hub area and a teleportation system, oh and an estus flask".

I only got an hour in, which was enough for the actual 'tutorial area' and the first real combat experience in the hub. The movement is okay, didn't seem to be a lot of hitbox issues, and the enemies hit hard but they have forgiving tells and are made of paper themselves. I'm not crazy about the 'archetype system' that basically just decides which of the three armor/weapon/skill sets you get for free. I've heard that equipment is very limited outside of these items which would be... not great.

The story super sucks and all the characters are hilariously one-note, but gods help me if I wouldn't bury my face in the tsundere engineer. Character creation is fine, but you don't seem to be expected to ever see your face after getting your first helm... and that's basically it so far.

I haven't seen too much about the end game, some people make it sound like it's intended to go on forever with the generated layouts and added content, but the people that have grinded so far make it sound more like it's about restarting with alts. Either way, I expect multiplayer to be very similar to a Warframe / Vermintide / ME3 room-clearing horde rush, but with more objectives and destinations to make it feel like a dungeon crawler in spirit.

[Thad]

I'd heard a lot of recommendations for CrossCode, and I sure like the SNES-throwback graphics, so I finally gave it a shot.

So far so good. Early gameplay feels like a Mana game crossed with a twin-stick shooter. The most interesting hook is that the "silent protagonist" trope is integrated into the plot of the game -- you're controlling an avatar with a limited vocabulary, only able to give a handful of preprogrammed responses.

I've had some weird and inconsistent behavior with Steam Play, issues that happen on one of my computers but not the other. (Both are running Arch-based distros, but not the same distro; living room computer is running Antergos, and office computer is running Manjaro.)

Sonic Mania really likes to lock the living room computer up. So far I haven't had any issues with it on my office computer.

And for some reason the controls are wrong on CrossCode on the living room computer. It doesn't matter if I remap them in Steam's controller configuration; CrossCode seems to be ignoring those settings entirely. It works fine on my office computer.

[Thad]

The gamepad thing may be because Linux 5.3 has an issue with Steam gamepad support; my living room PC is running 5.3 but my office PC isn't.

Then again, it only seems to be affecting CrossCode; if it were a problem with Steam communicating with the kernel, I would expect it to affect more than one game.

(ETA: NM, I checked and my living room computer is still on 5.2. So nope, not that.)

[pacobird]

I'm pretty sure my first ever thread in this community 17 years ago was dumping on Grandia in the Bad Video Game forum, but I'm replaying it via the Switch HD Remaster and it turns out what I really needed to get the game to click for me was the the ability to turn off the English voice acting.

It's such a cliche but they really don't make games like this anymore. The skill system is the right mix of grindy and rewarding (you actually need to give a little thought to how you're going to skillup!), the pacing's a lot better than I remember, Justin and Feena are hilarious balls of hormones, and Noriyuki Iwadare's really at the height of his powers here.

[beatbandito]

I almost let Code Vein blow right past me since I was still not playing the last two soulsbornes I picked up and I didn't need another one, but this time with embarrassing anime tiddies. That said, it's probably the best soulsclone to date from what I've seen so far.

Firstly, and most importantly for me, is that character creator is insane for a mostly singleplayer(more on that) RPG. It's similar to PSO2 in ability to customize, there's a point purchase for accessories so you don't get too overloaded, and no fake tits equips, but I was able to give my character a jughead crown that glows orange and make actual wings into little hat wings like Arale so I'm happy.

The combat is fun. There's five main weapon types and multiple movesets inside those groupings. There's basics souls equipment upgrading and transforming, character levels (but it's flat stat growth, no build diversity here), and a final fantasy job system where you unlock classes through plot and exploration, unlock abilities for those classes with XP, then use them with that class to 'master' them and mix and match abilities to other classes. There are a TON of classes. Based on the best measure I've got in-game I'm about half way through and have ~14 unlocked. Your class determines your base stats for everything, and also your ability to equip weapons, which determine attack damage, believe it or not, and armor, which not only has defenses, but determines the attack of your backstabs, parries, and another attack this game has that works similarly. All attacks, but especially those last three, give the resource you use for the job active abilities, or "gifts" that act like magic, support, or combat skills.
You also always have an NPC companion which ties into the main reason this game works well as a soulslike: it's not frustratingly hard. I've had one boss so far that feels like it was designed to ignore the npc and be a dick, but otherwise it's more about staying in control of the situation than mastering it. Bosses have pretty basic routines and, as is common in the genre, some that are way too fast, track a bit too much, or are otherwise bullshit. Having a partner to take the heat, buff you, or even res you makes those things mostly very manageable. Even just the mooks in the stages are less about being jumped or confused, and learning exactly where things are, as much as knowing there's a fight coming up and making sure you have any kind of plan before running in.

Tying in to the above, I really like the level design. There are maps, but you need to unlock them. The game tracks your footsteps on the map even when it's not filled in, making it easy to give yourself notices of where paths or halls are, that you can check when you unlock that part of the map. Map unlocking is one by this game's version of bonfire activation, though not all are actual rest points. These are also really well put together so I don't think you're getting lost as much as you're spending time figuring out where you are. You can see when one path clearly leads you into an area that would be covered by another mistle, and usually there's either an obvious single path between areas to explore, or a nice shortcut loop. I would not want to spread any single area across multiple play sessions, but if you clear one map area and sit at the edge, it would be easy to see where you are again, and where you were already. There's only been one map so far that was really confusing and I noticed going back after clearing it I had actually missed a couple items and paths, and that felt like a clear design choice.

The main plot is... fine. There's a lot of 'nakama' videogame character friends talking about how happy and friendly they all are, but that's not too bad. The actual story was fun at first. They have a double-dystopia which I think works for these things. "well, you woke up in this mysteriously changed world, so let me tell you how it's different from the world that was already mysteriously changed from anything the player might recognize as earth" makes it easier to handwave weird inconsistencies, of which the game has done a great job of not having. The few plot points that seemed like they were filled for before the player knew the truth ended up making sense even in the extended context. There was a point pretty early on where it seemed like everything you knew about the plot had tied itself up nicely and the story going forward would have to be some contrivance, but it's quickly extended by just explaining "yes, that character who you saw in this context is the person they're referring to." Which made the next series of events actually immediately make sense with the reveal.
There's also a mechanic about your character seeing other people's lost memories which was interesting at first, but quickly became just showing your companions scenes from their old friends's lives they didn't know about to bring the comfort. Some of the individual stories, especially that don't play into companion stories are nice though. And the actual presentation of the memories for the main story ones can be cool.

The only real gripes are 1) the embarrassing anime tiddies and overall female outfits, obvs. My biggest complaint with the plot is that all the characters are essentially 'Undead' with a 'Hollow' mechanic and the plot revolves around securing sources of 'Humanity' to rebuild society, but it has absolutely no impact on the mechanics. You and your companions die and come back endless times without any loss or impact. Lastly, I don't think multiplayer even works. There's just a menu with 'get help' and 'give help' and I have never gotten any response from either in any area, completed or not. Other than that though, good game, give it a play.

[Newbie]

Disco Elysium is a funnier Planescape: Torment in a near-Earth setting with all the busywork combat removed.

Character creation uses a four stat system that governs success in 24 skills, and how you build your version of your forgetful detective determines precisely which combination of tropes on the noir cop/gonzo gop spectrum you're going to inhabit for this playthrough. Sure, there are plenty of working-man stats like Endurance for health, Volition for morale, Perception to notice things, but then there's stuff like Visual Calculus to make sense of crime scenes, Authority to detect and project power, Inland Empire for creativity and the sort of self-constructed intuitive leaps that Dale Cooper relied so heavily upon, Esprit de Corps for extranarrative interjections in which you learn what's going on with your partner and precinct, Electrochemistry to know about (and be compelled to use) drugs--and for how esoteric these skills get, they become relevant with surprising frequency. Even the more physical stats play a huge role in dialogue and non-combat encounters: the devs pointed out that Conan the Barbarian has no interesting interiority, and so they spent a lot of effort to ensure that even the most meatheaded, socially stunted characters have surprising options and choices during your interpersonal interactions.

More importantly, every skill is a voice in your head, suggesting or demanding you indulge relevant desires. Failing skill checks can sometimes be more beneficial than succeeding. Having a good score can help you solve problems, but having a great score will introduce new ones. Too much Logic makes you arrogant; too much Rhetoric makes you an insufferable ideologue.

Ideology brings us to the game's most obvious design flaw, which is that we're very much in "every system will fail, punch in every direction" territory. Some of the ideologies at work in Revachol are necessarily worse than others, but the game is willing to let you try to adopt any of them, right up to and including being a flag-waving fascist or a eugenics-supporting racial supremacist. I think they intended this to be a joke, since your protagonist's past already necessitates that he's something of an awful loser and so any undertaking he embarks on should also be colored by that context. It's hard to take these options lightly, considering how often media intended to satirize or criticize an idea is subsequently lauded as a celebration of that idea. There's just a little too much for racists, sexists, homophobes, and fascists to get excited about here.

[Friday]

It took humans a really long time to learn that making racist/sexist/whatever jokes with "people will understand I'm not serious" in mind is wrong.

It turns out that everyone takes everything literally, all the time. The human mind, for all its vaunted complexity, is in reality the simplest possible machine.

[Upthorn]

Noita is a "This is Fine" dog simulator.

Ostensibly an action roguelite about exploration, magic, and alchemy (think Terraria minus building) most of my experience with the game so far consists of finding newer, more interesting ways to accidentally douse myself in oil and light myself on fire over and over again.

That said, it's extremely fun until it makes me ragequit.

[beatbandito]

I'm back on my bullshit with ArcheAge: Fresh Start, Not P2W, Attempt 3. It's been good, so far (other than a major flub with a new daily quest system that was hardcore exploited, lead to mass bans, then mass unbans for streamers, and the devs have since removed from the game and promise they'll let us know some day what they plan to do with it. I'll never be able to keep my attention on a post long enough for the massive amount of rambling I would need to do to include everything about the game that keeps bringing me back despite it always leading to heartbreak. So instead please enjoy this short story of an average ArcheAge version of my least favorite part of mmos: endgame grind.

Now first off, in ArcheAge there really is no endgame. You unlock access to all content at a certain point, but you can keep getting more character experience and gear progression basically infinitely. As such (and due to some XP share mechanics and difficulty levels) one of the main endgame activities is grinding mobs in small parties in a specific late game area, Aegis Island. It's always a pain to find a good spawn spot here since it's so active, and today wasn't any different, it was worse. Peace in the area had just ended and everyone just wanted to level. So while there isn't much PVP, each faction is bunched up even more not wanting to leave their side and lose farm time to it.
One particular group that moved out of the other side's area set up a few feet from the pug I was with, slowly, but clearly, taking over the spawn pulls with their mostly ranged group. I make some comments in local chat about it, they reply "there's enough for all of us" while targeting a fresh spawn across our group from them. I met up with these the group I was in and don't want to make their live's hard, but they're not doing anything about it so finally in party chat I ask them "mind if I purple?" "go for it".
"Purpling" not quite red and not quite blue, is akin to a pvp flag in other games, but inter-faction. Next pull that has my team on the other side of the area and the others all grouped up on a mob I divebomb in with an AoE and start swinging every CC and AoE (which is basically my entire class) I have. While I disappointingly did not compensate enough for my inability to tab-target through them efficiently, I still took one out and bruised up the rest of the team while they had to blow CDs to take me out. While I was walking back to the grind they report my actions and all jump me. This time I rez in the faction courthouse.
A group of player jurors look at the charges and ask me what happened. "Aegis Island, we had a farm spot and they set up right on top of us." "Why'd you only get one kill with 7 assaults?" "it was two groups in the middle of a pull and suddenly everything was a target and I couldn't tab fast enough." "use your mouse idiot" "nah". Verdicts are decided and I'm let go innocent because they all agree that defending your farm spot on Aegis is not a crime. The jurors announce that I'm free to go right back to Aegis to continue doing whatever I need to do, and nation chat (who can read what we're saying in the trial but can't interact) are losing their minds and shouting warnings to the (to them nameless) victims I'm heading back to while my party is laughing and congratulating me in chat. I get back to the farm spot and the other team is markedly further away.

(They did keep sliding back and the rest of my team continued to do nothing. I didn't want to keep fighting but they also seemed to feel that way and at least stopped trying to pick fresh spawns off of me specifically, but I left after my next ding when more room opened up and both groups continued being passive-aggressive instead of taking over the real estate.)

Anyway, that's an example of the most boring part of the game.

[mharr]

There is nothing else out there like ArcheAge, not really. EVE has some of the same thing where the other players are the game you're really playing, but EVE's a third person RTS and you can't abuse grappling hooks to try taking a pirate galleon mountaineering. What's your read on probable time-to-heartbreak for this new instance?

[Newbie]

Disco Elysium

I gave the game too little credit. The flaws I described exist somewhat, but I overestimated their prominence over the duration of the experience, and there are such sublime and surprising moments that I find myself not caring.

This was a marvelous experience, even if I did miss stuff during the autopsy, forget to recover my sidearm, and fail to adequately prepare humanity for the Apocalypse I made up.

Game should be played for Lt. Kim Kitsurugi alone. He's the perfect counterpoint to Detective Drugs-and-Booze Hobocop, and I'm not sure if I'm really going to be able to exasperate him in my next play-through just for a Steam achievement.

[pacobird]

Trails of Cold Steel 3 is good.

Well, it's more accurate to say the whole Trails series is good, and Cold Steel 3 (actually the 8th game in the larger series, which has taken place on a single continent over the course of about 4 in-game years, which is the special sauce) lives up to it. Anime fanservice isn't showing T&A; it's bringing out random second-tier characters from 4 games ago at the end of a missable sidequest for no reason other than to let you know they've been doing just fine. :)