[Obdigore]

Malankazooie, on 09 December 2021 - 12:12 AM, said:

So, I read that Halo Infinite multiplayer is really solid, except for the universal complaints about the battle pass, progression thing.

But I read the story/campaign knocks it out of the park. Anyone play the story yet? initial thoughts?

I played through the first Mission. I believe the campaign is more open-worldish, and I haven't gotten there quite yet.

Good so far, setting up strong 'boss' enemies to fight, we'll see where we go.

[Mentalist]

[Malankazooie]

huh, The Expanse getting the TellTale Games treatment? I thought TellTale Games went belly up.

whoa, Babylon's Fall. Haven't heard about this one is quite awhile. Coming March next year... double whoa. I gotta say though, the footage didn't impress me all that much.

heh, Merry Shitmas? What was that?

Evil West looks like a bitchin' mash up of cool stuff.

Main show proper now. Geoff Kegel exercises. Over/Under he mentions, in a fawning way, Hideo Kojima.

Hellblade II: Senua's Saga. Beautiful.

Star Wars Eclipse. ^ditto

huh, Wonder Woman. Just a short tease. Interested to see what the end product will be.

Alan Wake II. It's been awhile.

Horizon Forbidden West new trailer. Big snake/cobra machine looks cool. The addition of going under water is going to be fun to try.

Sweet. Dave and GaTa from the show Dave. You guys should really give the show Dave a try. It is sooooo good.

Destiny 2: The Witch Queen. Dang, it looks good. Will I break from tradition and finally buy an expansion for Destiny 2? It will be hard to resist.

Nightingale. Another really cool looking game. "Realmwalkers".

Oh yeah, Slitterhead before Nightingale (didn't quite catch that name a first). Another bonkers game.

Oh yeah! Gollum! Nastee Orksises! Brief vid, but fun.

Somerville. It's got pedigree that was behind Limbo and Inside. Yes please.

Cuphead Delicious Last Course. heh DLC, I see what they did there. Was planning on playing this but haven't got around to it.

huh, Hideo Kojima introduced a trailer for del Toro's new movie - Nightmare Alley. Did he work on it? Heh, de Toro likes Silent Hill. No surprise there.

Warhammer Vermintide Warrior Priest. It's a thing... I guess. I know zero about Warhammer, but I thought they used guns in Warhammer? Like the chainsaw guns in Gears of War, weapons of that flavor.

Ahhhh, Tchia. A meditation on serenity, with crafting and exploration tacked on.

Suicide Squad. Looks ok. If your trailer has to keep running the line "holy shit" you may be a little desperate to get a point across.

Forspoken. She will rise. hahahahahaha!

Warhammer Space Marine II. That's more in the style I thought the Warhammer stuff was on about.

Saints Row. Is this one of those remakes for latest tech? I never played any of the Saints Row games. Remember reading they were GTA, but everything amped to to be 1000x more absurd and offensive. Which is right in my wheelhouse (love GTA). but never got around to playing any of the games.

Dune Spice Wars. Not much shown except a tease.

Tiny Tina's Wonderlands. I mean, when Mr. Torgue makes the scene and says "This isn't a blessing, it's a blasting!" I became theirs.

Steelrising! And oh man, it looks weird and sweet! link: https://www.youtube....h?v=oChmrUNy1v8

A Plague Tale: Requiem. There were rumors the first one was coming to PS+ monthly free games. It never happened. I hope that changes.

Dying Light 2. Slick trailer. Man I hope the sequel lives up to the awesome sauce of the first one.

CrossfireX. Looks like a COD-like shooter.

Cool, Blood Hunt. It looks like a lot of carnage can be dealed out.

GTFO. blerg.

Elden Ring! Holy effin' poopsnacks!

Arc Raiders. Pretty slick.

Here we go, unabashed Matrix advertising.

This post has been edited by Malankazooie: 10 December 2021 - 03:59 AM

[Malankazooie]

Jef Kegel Exercises has something here. The Game Awards said to E3 2021 - "hold my beer." Then it turned to Microsoft Summer of Games & Sony State of Play, and said "hold my other beer, yeah you got that right, I double fist it baby!" "I got something to show you." And then promptly blew anything they did over the past year out of the water.

Also, It Takes Two won GotY. I feel embarrassed to say I don't know anything about that game, except it's a co-op game I think.

This post has been edited by Malankazooie: 10 December 2021 - 04:12 AM

[Mentalist]

No Darksiders 4, but my fave publisher (Focus) killed it.

Evil West, Plague Tale, and MOTHAFUCKING SPACE MARINE 2??????

Steelrising looks.. fun. But not sure how it'll stand out from the torrent of soulslikes we're getting in the next 2 years, so.... I'm actually feeling slightly less enthused?

Monolith DID tease a game... though I doubt anyone would've expected Wonder Woman. Since WB went through the trouble of patenting the Nemesis System, I gotta wonder how that'll work in this context. I admit I know next to nothing about any DC heroes who aren't Batman.

Horizon 2 beasites look cool. Gonna be a good time when we get that PC port.

Hellblade is.... weird. Interesting, but weird.

Gonna have to rewatch the Dying Light 2 trailer, was distracted during that.

Alan Wake 2 teaser was neat. Survival Horror- so maybe not open world, bucking the trend? should be neat.

Toyama's new game looks unhinged.

Tunic has a date, and Cuphead DLC has a month. Both impressive.

PC GamePass commercial was cringe. And the 4 secret games are... meh?

I'm happy Guardians won best writing. Eidos Montreal have amazing writers, and hopefully this convinces Squeeenix to keep them on single-player games.

Speaking of Squeeenix: Babylon's fall continues to look like it's being sent out to die; and BWaHAHAHAHAHAHAH at the pricing for Forspoken and FFVIIR (EGS only).

I expected Deathloop to win GOTY, but can't be upset at Josef Fares celebrating.

That Nightgale game looks interesting, but, ugh, crafting/survival.

Too bad Psychonauts 2, didn't get anything; other than that, Microsoft cleaned up with Forza, Deathloop, AoE4, and Halo winning the People's Voice award on its MP alone.

Neither Saint's Row, not Suicide Squad are doing anything for me. SS trailer didn't really give me a good idea of what the game will play like; and Saint's Row is just not really my thing.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 10 December 2021 - 04:28 AM

[Malankazooie]

Malankazooie, on 09 December 2021 - 12:12 AM, said:

So, I read that Halo Infinite multiplayer is really solid, except for the universal complaints about the battle pass, progression thing.

But I read the story/campaign knocks it out of the park. Anyone play the story yet? initial thoughts?

Full weekend now of rolling on with Halo Infinite. Any nuanced annotations to initial reactions?

[Aptorian]

I've played 5-10 hours or so. Not that far into the story yet, I've been exploring the open world. What little there is to explore.

So far I'd say Infinite is a great Halo game and a subpar open world game. It's like they took a look at the Open World games on the market and decided Assassin's Creed's copy paste content was perfect for Halo.

Everything in the world can be boiled down to story area, usually some big complex, then bigger and smaller camps, and the rest of the maps content is armor upgrades, cosmetic multiplayer stuff, bounty missions where you go kill a named Banished officer and squad rescue missions. They're all exactly the same with a little variation in enemy types.

The game is fun to play though. Very satisfying combat and good weapon variety.

[Obdigore]

I'm on the same train as Apt.

Gameplay is great. Story Missions are fun, the open world is... ok. Have a few beers and tooling around just smashing Brutes without any objective is nice, but it isn't something that is going to hold my interest for a long time.

I've finished the campaign. Maybe the best Halo campaign since Combat Evolved. It felt a bit short due to, I think, reliance on the open world stuff.

I did want to mention there are some small RPG-mechanics in leveling up shields/abilities with Cores you find in the open world, and while I've missed a few of them I'm pretty sure you can't level up all the abilities you end up getting. The grabbling hook (I'm sure its not named this but I can't remember what it's called) is super fun, and when leveled up it is even more fun.

This post has been edited by Obdigore: 13 December 2021 - 02:18 PM

[Mentalist]

Here's your gaming white whale, Kazooie

Looks all right, for a AA action game.

[Malankazooie]

Mentalist, on 13 December 2021 - 03:06 PM, said:

<media snipped>

Here's your gaming white whale, Kazooie

Looks all right, for a AA action game.

eh, yeah, it looks just ok. My excitement has dropped a bit.

Dialog is cringy, but I think they are embracing that and it's intentional.

The "gunk" is foul goo you vacuum up looks like. I anticipate there will be variations that will require you to have the correct configuration of your gunk vacuum to progress. Which probably means farming resources to upgrade your gunk vacuum.

Yeah, seems like it's a big time resource farming deal. Which can be tedious. Making the resource gathering a dominant feature is not really my thing (if it is overdone). Balancing that with interesting story and other gameplay elements would be top priority in order for me to play.

I would be interested to see reviews about the story though. If the story was rock solid and woven into the gameplay elements to make it rewarding to do a lot of farming, then that would go far in doing right by me.

The design and style is pretty cool. Nothing groundbreaking or eye popping, but the direction they went is fine. It sort of reminds me of that game (never played it myself), where you "brush" color into the world, except here you vacuum up the gunk and grow flora to bring vibrancy to the world. Seems like the couple are looking to mine stuff they can bring back to sell and get out of financial burden. Also, heh, Curt the Robot.

[Mentalist]

Malankazooie, on 13 December 2021 - 07:05 PM, said:

Mentalist, on 13 December 2021 - 03:06 PM, said:

<media snipped>

Here's your gaming white whale, Kazooie

Looks all right, for a AA action game.

eh, yeah, it looks just ok. My excitement has dropped a bit.

Dialog is cringy, but I think they are embracing that and it's intentional.

The "gunk" is foul goo you vacuum up looks like. I anticipate there will be variations that will require you to have the correct configuration of your gunk vacuum to progress. Which probably means farming resources to upgrade your gunk vacuum.

Yeah, seems like it's a big time resource farming deal. Which can be tedious. Making the resource gathering a dominant feature is not really my thing (if it is overdone). Balancing that with interesting story and other gameplay elements would be top priority in order for me to play.

I would be interested to see reviews about the story though. If the story was rock solid and woven into the gameplay elements to make it rewarding to do a lot of farming, then that would go far in doing right by me.

The design and style is pretty cool. Nothing groundbreaking or eye popping, but the direction they went is fine. It sort of reminds me of that game (never played it myself), where you "brush" color into the world, except here you vacuum up the gunk and grow flora to bring vibrancy to the world. Seems like the couple are looking to mine stuff they can bring back to sell and get out of financial burden. Also, heh, Curt the Robot.

There's a longer (90 min) gameplay video on YT as well, but didn't watch it yet, so I didn't post it.


Some of the trailers DO show "gunk monsters", so presumably there's going to be some sort of combat as well later on.

Some of the previews implied that there's gonna be a dynamic where your character wants to save the planet, but the partner wants to strip-mine it to pay off their debts, and this dilemma is going to play into the story/mechanics in some way, which could be interesting.

Definitely one to check out if you have GamePass- it's not releasing on Steam, so I'll probably wait until I've cleared my backlog somewhat and wanna dabble with that service.

[Mentalist]

Reviews on Gunk are mixed- from "bland" to "amazing" (that's coming from Gaming bolt, though, and they can make some weird choices).

Ubi announced yest they're remaking Splinter Cell at Ubi Toronto. And today they're tweeting that there's be Settlers news in January. That reboot kinda went dark once the lockdown kicked in, good to see the project might be back on track?

GSC announced NFTs for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, and Steam users have gone ballistic. I don't prove of NFTs, but I can't join the angry mob, b/c I realize that GSC is a pretty struggling Uki dev and not a major AAA publisher- so obviously they'll jump onto a chance to milk some whales for digital stickers. It would be pretty catastrophic to Ukrainian game industry if GSC was to fold due to this; so I'm still in the "wait for reviews" camp on this one.

[Aptorian]

I think The Gunk's score was predictable. Based on the footage shown the past week it looked decidedly budget indy/middle tier production.

Apparently it's only around 4 hours long which is a plus for me and it's free with Gamepass.

This post has been edited by Aptorian: 16 December 2021 - 08:09 PM

[Malankazooie]

Mentalist, on 16 December 2021 - 05:45 PM, said:

Reviews on Gunk are mixed- from "bland" to "amazing" (that's coming from Gaming bolt, though, and they can make some weird choices).
...

Yah, the reddit review thread indicates the same: https://www.reddit.c..._review_thread/. The story seems to be getting some good remarks, which is encouraging. It just seems like the general game play is getting the 'meh' reaction.

It would be cool if they brought The Gunk to the PS5 eventually and took advantage of the haptic controller capabilities. Seems like a perfect game for that.

[Mentalist]

Aptorian, on 16 December 2021 - 08:09 PM, said:

I think The Gunk's score was predictable. Based on the footage shown the past week it looked decidedly budget indy/middle tier production.

Apparently it's only around 4 hours long which is a plus for me and it's free with Gamepass.

Some say 5, some say 6 hours.

Not touching GamePass right now, got way too many games I own to pay for a sub service with a few games I might not feel like playing.

Epic Games Store Sale is on, and the coupons are back. Some good deals there. Contemplating grabbing Kena and Eternal Cylinder. Maybe F.I.S.T., unless that gets a good discount in next week's Steam sale.

GOG pulled A Hat In Time's 70% discount before I grabbed it,
That upsets me somewhat.

"Praey to the Gods", the Shadow of the Collossus-like kickstarter project finally made it out of Early Access (one of the devs had a major family health issue). That's been on my wishlist forever, so will probably grab that game, unless it shows up on GOG next week.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 17 December 2021 - 04:31 PM

[Mentalist]

Dad of War 4 port appears to be solid.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 delayed to Dec 8th,

Elex II pre-orders are up, and the game is still sensibly priced (50 CAD), with a launch discount, which is nice.

Considering I'm binging HARD on Age of Kings DE right now, Kratos and Boy will have to wait.

[Malankazooie]

Aw man, jump on GoW, stat! You won't be dissapointed.

[Malankazooie]

Anyone play Wordle? What is it? Why is it so popular?

[Aptorian]

Is this what you're referring to?

Seems cool enough. It's like an app version of a board game I played as a kid called Mastermind.

https://www.powerlan...e.co.uk/wordle/

[Malankazooie]

So like a crossword puzzle mashed up with a dart game where you throw a dart at a cork board of possible words and building from there?




How come there is only one word per day?