next »

[Cobralad]

Nobody plays Planescape and crpgs in general, and they have open worlds so diverse that companies that made them filled for bancrupcy.
Thats the problem with modern rpgs: game designers should establish some sort of game loop to produce content easier.
For example Nev Vegas dialogs are all this:
-Get Quest> three lines of dialog > Accept/kinda accept/decline>get x items
-Trivia
-Trivia
-Goodbye
In case of "peaceful" solution its just
-[use skill]Solve quest
-Trivia
-Trivia
-Goodbye
Its really bad how linear and limited it compared to originals. I cant even put dynamite into people pockets.

[starsrift]

Rebel Galaxy is what I wanted Elite: Dangerous to be.

It suffers from the flaw of being a procedurally generated open world that consequently feels dead and lifeless, but that's okay. It does the open universe spaceship thing right.

[MeshGearFox]

I've been playing Doukioki and DeltaZeal. Copy of deSPIRIA came the other day so I'm gonna give that a checksies.

[SirNiko]

ultimately, i think arkham asylum benefitted from being in a very narrow location and the more open world the later games got, the less i enjoyed them.

This. I really liked how Asylum had smaller areas with more detail.

[s0]

Mistfall (board/cardgame)

Have you ever wished the Lord of the Rings LGC or the Pathfinder card game had much deeper decisionmaking? Then you'll probably love this. This is basically the Mage Knight of co-op adventure card games. It's not as heavy as MK, mind you (thought it IS heavier than the 2 other games i mentioned). But it has the same thing where it takes the basic premise of the genre and makes a surprisingly deep strategy game out of it. It's also similar to MK in that it uses "limited" deckbuilding, i.e. your deck is going to change over the course of a session, but not radically.

It's basically a game of threat/aggro management same as LoTR, but it has a separate clock and aggro counter (the latter is unique to each character) which makes things a lot more flexible. Also almost every card has multiple functions, discarding cards works in a unique way (a lot of cards aren't discarded at all in fact) and you also have a lot more control over your deck (and hence the game) than in the average card game. The deck is not reshuffled when it's used up, the order is kept intact. There are also lots of opportunities to stack cards in different ways and etc.

I'm very pleased with it. The only negatives after 2 sessions are 1. lots of repeated card art, 2. too many symbols used in card text, making rules harder to memorize and 3. compounding this issue, a pretty bad rulebook. I had to watch a video of the designer demoing the game to understand how to play lol.

[triceratopnotch]

Just finished Far Cry 2 again last night. I seem to replay it every year or so since it came out. I know it gets a lot of hate and the game definitely has some genuinely poor design choices, but IMO the negative far outweighs the positive. Particularly when you compare it to the friendlier, more 'gamified' sequels that really seem to rely on making every part of the world feel open to the extent of pointlessness and every encounter seems like organised (scripted) chaos.

Instead FC2 has these tight corridors of terrain and occasional, seemingly random alternate paths for the player to explore that may or may not punctuate with a new-found route to an objective, an interesting discover or location, or perhaps even just a beautiful vista to take in. I'm similarly taken in by the HUD, which is possibly the best thing this game does. Information is only shown at moments of relevance (ammo when attacking, health when taking damage, etc.) meaning that any quieter moments in-game have 100% of the screen space. That moment when you've lost a buddy in a firefight and you have a quiet moment walking back to the nearest campsite near a coastal bridge at sunset - I really recognise this game as a true testament to the whole games as art thing.

Cannot recommend Far Cry 2 enough to anyone with even a modicum of patience enough to endure it's shortcomings. 2007 was a golden year for videogames.

[Tanner]

started pandemic legacy with my chums last night. it's already so frickin' cool. i'm so excited to continue, even though we lost haha.

[gimymblert]

Not playing, but I amazed how undertale melt even the most jaded and cynical let's player

[MeshGearFox]

I thought Undertale was good but then later I found out it was just a meme and doesn't even exist.

[gimymblert]

you had to look below, not above

[Türbo Bröther]

Is it different to The Underside, apart from being finished?

[gimymblert]

It had no chainsaw

[Battlefrog]

I'm playing Rust.

It's stupidly brutal, the performance sucks MASSIVE balls, the grind is worse than mining in WoW, and people KoS so hard it's almost like you're play CoD. 

But goddammit, is it not so FUN.

10/10. 

[jeremiah]

Been playing Mushroom 11. It's beautiful, has a really compelling world, and the early gameplay is great. But as time goes on, the puzzles are getting more annoying. Oftentimes, you don't find "solutions" so much as just get lucky. I'm hoping it gets better after this chapter...

[Nillo]

I looked for Mistfall at the shop where I buy most of my games but they don't have it. I guess that means it's Too Cool for me.

Oh, I wanna say, "No Thanks!" is a fantastic family card game. I've brought it to the table many times and everyone loves it. It's a really simple bidding game where you don't want any of the cards. At the end of the game, the winner is whoever has the least total value on their cards. But if you have an unbroken chain of cards (for example 25,26 and 27) then you only need to count the lowest card in the chain.

[s0]

I looked for Mistfall at the shop where I buy most of my games but they don't have it. I guess that means it's Too Cool for me.

yeah idk, i was surprised my local shop had it. looks like the german version actually shipped out before the english one. back in september they said "november at the earliest" when i asked them.

btw, some other things about the game

1. there are 7 characters that each play completely differently and seem decently balanced from what i've played.

2. not only do you not reshuffle your deck after you use it up, you don't restore it at all. the only way to restore cards to your deck is by gaining "healing points" or through certain card abilities. the game uses a deck-as-health mechanic similar to PACG, but more complex. basically whenever you take damage your cards are "buried" (moved to a special separate discard). you can freely choose to either bury cards from your hand, your discard or the top of your deck. once all of your cards have been buried, you die. you can also use healing to restore cards from your graveyard to your normal discard. like i said, lots of deck control in this game.

3. combat is entirely deterministic (again kinda mage knight-esque). no dice rolls or anything.

4. it's not a campaign game. there are only 4 "adventures" (one of them being a tutorial) but theyre more like "game modes". there's a lot of possible variation in each adventure. the most important fixed thing is the final boss battle. most everything else, from enemy encounters to the tiles that make up the modular location board, is randomized. you can play the adventures as a campaign but it's not great from what i've heard.

5. it has pretty good gameplay/theme integration. the setting is some kind of nordic fantasy thing and theres actually some lore behind it that i haven't read yet. but it really does feel like you're a band of adventurers going up against beastpeople and zombies and shit. character and enemy abilities also make a lot of thematic sense once you get a hang of the rules.

[starsrift]

I can't enthuse enough about Rebel Galaxy.

It's as if AC: Black Flag and Freelancer had a baby and raised it solely on stories of Firefly / Serenity.

I think the most surprising thing is that it came it out with no hype or prerelease. At this rate, I'm not even going to get to my preordered copy of FO4 until January (which will be about when all the bugs are fixed anyway, amirite!?) nevermind X-Com 2 next year.

[SirNiko]

Puzzle Depot's doing a thing where they have a different demo level every day up to the end of their kickstarter. I'm pretty pleased with the variety and difficulty of the puzzles.

I picked up Triforce Heroes and it's really fun, although your enjoyment is really conditional on what you like in a game.

The matchmaking is quick and easy, and I've been really pleased with the random players I meet. The costumes have a wide variety of skills, and the challenge mode levels make good use of them. The challenges are really well varied, and range from time trials, to staying within the radius of an orb to avoid damage, to beating a level without hitting any inconveniently placed balloons. The challenges don't feel repetitive. Everything is completely cooperative in the adventure mode, everyone shares rupees and the game never ranks you against the other players.

One downside is that there's not a lot to the game outside of running the levels to complete all the challenges. Levels are not randomized, so once you've beaten all four variations of a level there's no incentive to go back. Costumes don't take many materials to make, so doing all the challenges is likely to net you enough to make everything. There's a little town with a couple of shops, but aside from letting you spend rupees to buy materials outright, there doesn't seem to be anything in town for you to do. The game has a Colosseum mode for competitive battles, but it's pretty boring. Victory is decided by the player who takes the least damage, so the most effective strategy is to avoid the other players until they each take damage then run out the clock. You can get rare materials from arena victories, but you can also get them from challenge mode. The best I can say is at least you aren't obligated to play it to unlock things.

The game rewards meeting up with players for local play by giving you coins for two special costumes, but since the game can only be played three player, it's really impractical. Some sort of streetpass mode would have been better. The game has a single player mode, but it's slow and plodding moving three characters one at a time.

If you're looking for a couple of weeks of multiplayer coop action, it's pretty fun. If you're looking for an enduring game, this isn't it.

[yeahjim]

I can't enthuse enough about Rebel Galaxy.

It's as if AC: Black Flag and Freelancer had a baby and raised it solely on stories of Firefly / Serenity.

I think the most surprising thing is that it came it out with no hype or prerelease. At this rate, I'm not even going to get to my preordered copy of FO4 until January (which will be about when all the bugs are fixed anyway, amirite!?) nevermind X-Com 2 next year.

More details. Good single-player experience? What's the pacing like?

[MeshGearFox]

Okay DeltaZeal's cool as hell. I appreciate it when shmups have alternate paths through the levels that you can stumble into.



Also I like weird japanese mystlikes :]