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[starsrift]

I picked up Massive Chalice while it was on Steam Sale. I'm blown away.
It's a good tactical RPG, but it doesn't beat X-Com or FF Tactics. It does so many things right, and then a few glaring things wrong. It's a game similar to one I'd want to make. Or remake and fix. Maybe. If I didn't already have other projects on the go.
Interestingly, I've noticed - at least so far - the tactical portion is pretty much modelled and balanced on par with X-Com: EU, after being taken down a notch for ease of play. Well, good artists create, great artists steal.

Pros:
- I love artifact weapons that level up, especially in a fantasy TRPG. Putting them in a generational game is a no-brainer, it's great.
- I like the idea of noble houses that consistently produce a base class of different variants for you.
- Research, tactics, levelling, all good stuff.

Cons:
- The game is too hungry for heroes, especially at the start. And getting more, even the mass 'get heroes' research function, is insufficiently rewarding. The hero scarcity problem could've been simply fixed by allowing you to marry not just your noble house leaders, but every hero. That would've fixed it, right there. And it would've solved the later-mentioned inability to choose your class problem, too. I get that you can make resource scarcity part of the difficulty, but it's just not fun.
- the timescale is too massive. Playing generational heroes is a lovely idea, but the combats occur every 5-10 years - and given how hungry the game is for heroes for your other tasks, like marriage, research, et al, especially at the beginning, you might only take a hero through 3 combats before effectively retiring him to another job. It's the game's biggest weakness. Honestly if the scope was more like 6 - 8 generations but more intense/frequent combat (more like Agarest: Generations of War), it'd be fantastic. (Agarest's problem is that the combats are TOO frequent and they become boring, on the other end of the scale.)
- You can't pick character class, only kind of design by elimination with noble houses. It's a crapshoot.
- The random events are way too punishing. You're given no warning of what could be a good choice or what to expect, they just pop a box of text at you and say "choose an action". You may as well roll a die, as you have absolutely NO IDEA what action might result in what. It could be a permanent loss of territory, an injury, or a minor buff to a hero; you have no hint of anything. The random event system really sucks. It's impossible to say how much I hate it. God, I hate it.
- Insufficient depth of character classes and growth. Of course, this goes along with the timescale and lack of choice thing. There's three classes, and three variants (pure and mixed 1:1 with one of the other classes) for a total of nine. The subvariants make some difference as to how they play out, but it's not sufficiently significant.

It's like, another two months of work could've turned out to be an awesome game, but instead, there's something that's just kind of there and it's not too bad. Typical of Double Fine, I guess.

[MeshGearFox]

I picked up Raiden 4: Overkill on Steam but it's crashing on startup for me Could be cause I have integrated graphics, although the game doesn't really have high system requirements and crashing on startup with Intel HD stuff is usually "phone port that uses exotic version of OpenGL."

Bargle.

I need to get back to Nanatsu Kaze and G-Darius for some inspiration. The art direction in those games make me feel like being creative. Still can't work up the motivation to game thooough.

... Also dear lord I bet my Japanese has lapsed the fuck out as well so that's some additional overhead to partaking of import pleasures.

[saturdaymorning]

We tried out the Abyss Odyssey last night. It felt pretty clunky at first, but then I realized the combat plays out a lot like Smash. Still having trouble separating enemies and avoiding the friendly fire, but it feels damn good when you execute as a team. It's free on Steam for another day, though I think I'm going to end up buying it.

Oh, and La Mulana is on the PS+ free collection thing too. Damn, it feels good to be a gamster.

[Cobralad]

Red Faction Guerilla DLC is the best fury road game

[s0]

i played red faction gorilla and found it mediocre as heck so i dont belief u

i mean the official mad max game looks mediocre too so theres that

[Cobralad]

its unlocks really late at the bonus mission sequel and has better pacing
although base game gets old since all combat is gta cop waves and you just shot brown duds all the time

[Türbo Bröther]

The best bits in Red Faction Gorillaz are the challenge missions where you're given limited ammo to take down an entire structure. But the rest of the game suffers from the same problem that Just Cause 2 later did in that you have to use hit-and-run tactics all the time or you'd run out of ammo and get overrun in seconds but at least in that you could hijack planes and the game didn't look like arse.

[ｂ∀ ｋｋｕｓａ]

god help me, i can't stop playing wow

[Egberto]

I'm playing "Elder Scrolls: Arena" right now. An old game that I never played in their time.

[Nillo]

My conclusions about Armello so far:
-It's fucking gorgeous (but you knew that already), especially the combat animations.
-However the overworld map is too foggy and it's hard to see what's going on if you zoom out with the camera.
-Good variety of victory objectives means that you can adjust your strategy according to your own taste and the current conditions.
-But some of the objectives are too hard compared to others (Prestige win is easy mode, while Rot is very difficult)
-Game has a lot of RNG. Think Battle for Wesnoth or XCOM in terms of the WTF situations that can happen sometimes. Get used to it.
-The RNG balances out over time, so I don't think it's a huge deal. You have to accept that you sometimes lose a fight with perfect preparation. The strategy is in maximizing the number of situations where you are likely to have a good outcome.

There are some technical problems at the moment (mainly with the scrolling) but I'm sure those will be eventually fixed and I think the core gameplay of Armello is solid. I like that you can finish a game pretty quick compared to many other turn-based games. This should make it especially suitable for multiplay (but so far I've only played it solo).

[Nillo]

I checked the official forums to see if there was a response to the fog issue and apparently the developers think that the fog is "thematic" and they want you to play it zoomed in (!?). So yeah... make of that what you will. At least they're passionate about their creative vision for the game, I guess?

[Dragonmaw]

playing mad max, and i'm really enjoying it, although it's difficult to reconcile the two things the game wants to be

1) it wants to be a survival sim. water, food, gas, etc, all to be gathered
2) it wants to be a modern open world game. factions, regions, threat, etc

the first game is what mad max looks like it's gonna be, until you unlock the first stronghold. once you have a stronghold, all resource concerns - gas, water, health, ammo, etc - go out the window, as you can get projects that make everything automatic. scrap collection after vehicle combat, passive scrap collection, refilling all your major attributes, revealing every location on the map, etc

it's disappointing, and i think the primary cause of complaint, as people are unable to make the transition from the game it looks like it would be to the game it ends up becoming

[J-Snake]

I picked up Raiden 4: Overkill on Steam but it's crashing on startup for me Could be cause I have integrated graphics, although the game doesn't really have high system requirements and crashing on startup with Intel HD stuff is usually "phone port that uses exotic version of OpenGL."

It is probably core Opengl, usually 3.2+. It is a standard since 2008. Looks like your integrated graphics solution only supports DX9 (Opengl äquivalent 2.1) or something below Opengl 3.2 (or Intel just doesn't care that much about proper core opengl support). I hope you represent a tiny minority with your specs.

[s0]

My conclusions about Armello so far:
-It's fucking gorgeous (but you knew that already), especially the combat animations.
-However the overworld map is too foggy and it's hard to see what's going on if you zoom out with the camera.
-Good variety of victory objectives means that you can adjust your strategy according to your own taste and the current conditions.
-But some of the objectives are too hard compared to others (Prestige win is easy mode, while Rot is very difficult)
-Game has a lot of RNG. Think Battle for Wesnoth or XCOM in terms of the WTF situations that can happen sometimes. Get used to it.
-The RNG balances out over time, so I don't think it's a huge deal. You have to accept that you sometimes lose a fight with perfect preparation. The strategy is in maximizing the number of situations where you are likely to have a good outcome.

There are some technical problems at the moment (mainly with the scrolling) but I'm sure those will be eventually fixed and I think the core gameplay of Armello is solid. I like that you can finish a game pretty quick compared to many other turn-based games. This should make it especially suitable for multiplay (but so far I've only played it solo).

sounds good!

what would you say about their claims of "revolutionizing digital boardgames"? because u know, im a fan of physical boardgames who doesn't enjoy most digital adaptations of them so this part is pretty intriguing to me.

[gimymblert]

How would you call physical board game with embedded computer?

[s0]

semi-digital? computer-assisted? idk

[Nillo]

sounds good!

what would you say about their claims of "revolutionizing digital boardgames"? because u know, im a fan of physical boardgames who doesn't enjoy most digital adaptations of them so this part is pretty intriguing to me.

It definitely feels like a board game inside of a video game, with everything that implies. I could see myself playing this with some friends over Skype and getting roughly the same experience out of it as if we had gathered around a table and pulled out cartoony miniatures and a bag of dice.

There are some elements that are more reminiscent of video games than board games. For example, there is a real-time aspect in some parts of the gameplay (which exists in board games, but is uncommon), and there is also a Stealth system that can obscure the location of other players at night. I don't know if I can say that it revolutionizes anything, but it's a pretty unique blend of videogamey and boardgamey mechanics and I'm certainly hoping there will be more games like this in the future that simulate the "tabletop experience".

[ThemsAllTook]

I just finished Legend of Grimrock 2. Beautiful game. A number of people advised me not to play on hard difficulty, and I'm glad I ignored them; combat was just challenging enough to be fun while requiring me to use all game mechanics to my advantage. I never had to grind at all (unless you count the couple of times I ran out of food and had to go hunting/fishing, but that's kind of different), and although I made some questionable skill point decisions early on, they didn't ultimately harm me too much.

If you haven't played it yet, I'd highly recommend it, along with its predecessor. Both are a really good time.

[baconman]

Here's the short answer, plus a bit of Lenna's Inception:

http://steamcommunity.com/id/D34DM34T/games/

[MeshGearFox]

I think I might go clean the Vitamin Water bottle pyramid off my 360 and force myself to credit feed through some shmups.