[Malankazooie]

Malankazooie, on 20 June 2020 - 04:19 AM, said:

An ooey gooey, warm out of the oven chocolate chip cookie to the first forum member who guesses correctly what video game I just started playing.
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FUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK! And I had to stop it there because I have to hit the hay. Damn, I think I might have some fucked up dreams. That shit was brutal!

[Malankazooie]

Malankazooie, on 20 June 2020 - 06:52 AM, said:

Malankazooie, on 20 June 2020 - 04:19 AM, said:

An ooey gooey, warm out of the oven chocolate chip cookie to the first forum member who guesses correctly what video game I just started playing.
<img>

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK! And I had to stop it there because I have to hit the hay. Damn, I think I might have some fucked up dreams. That shit was brutal!

The music/score will absolutely floor you and take your breath away... leave you emotionally stunned. It will win awards on that, for sure.

Had to say that before forging ahead. Back to your regularly scheduled programming.

[Aptorian]

Is it Katamari Damacy?

[Aptorian]

Started up Last of Us part 2

I got lost in the options menu for a time. Total Biscuit would have been proud of what Naughty Dog did here. 10 years ago you'd never had seen anything like this on a console.

Flipped on all kinds of help and useful little modifiers. Hopefully that'll make the combat smooth. I dread survival ressource management.

[Malankazooie]

Okay, gonna give you guys another shot. This time I'm upping the stakes. Not only will you get an ooey gooey, warm out of the oven chocolate chip cookie, but I will also throw in a peanut butter cookie as well and an ice cold glass of milk to wash it down. These yummy treats are there for the first forum member who guess correctly.

Spoiler

Also, well played Naughty Dog, I see what you did there. You cheeky little sausages

[Aptorian]

How far have you got in Last of Us, Kazooie?

I think I've played around three hours. Something very bad just happened and I feel I need to take a break. This game is tense as hell. Even in the calm moments I have this strong feeling of tension.

This game is going to get dark.

[Malankazooie]

I don't want to spoil anything, but lets just say I've seen things that can't be unseen.

I've tried my hardest to avoid the internet outcry surrounding this game, but I've seen that feelings are very strong towards The Last of Us 2. I'm attempting to keep it away so I can decide for myself. That being said, with where its taken me so far I can definitely see how this game will have strong reactions.

[Mentalist]

I've been sampling the various demos from the Steam Festival of Games. fortunately they haven't been removed from my library even though the festival is over.

Eastern Exorcist is a game set in a mythological China that's basically a 2D Sekiro. It's pretty awesome.

[Aptorian]

Played a few more hours of Last of Us 2 yesterday. I think I'm finally getting into it.

For the first 4 hours or so I had a hard time playing for more than 20 minutes because I was playing TLOU2 as though it's a horror game (it is). Even though the game was signaling that the coast was clear, even though Ellie's mutant hearing was saying there was no baddies, I was still on edge, expecting every room to contain an infected.

Now I've been in some big scraps and murdered a villages worth of enemies and feel more comfortable. I've got some upgraded weapons and lots of medkits. It's actually a pretty forgiving game on normal difficulty. Getting shot or mauled by a zombie isn't that bad. I'm still reloading check points and hoarding ressources like a maniac.

[Mentalist]

Still messing about with them demos...

-Lamentum is a cool pixel-art top-down Resident Evil. With Lovecraft instead of zombies. not the biggest fan of combat balance (it's the 19th century, so your pistol is a flintlock that requires reloading each time), because as soon as I got a gun, the mansion was swarming with enemies. later I found a butcher knife and that made things more bearable, but the difficulty spike felt uncalled for.


Omno is a non-violent platforming/exploration game where you traverse a new world, activating ancient ruins. Really chill, nice pastel-looking environments. Jumping puzzles are pretty basic, but I can see things getting more complex from these systems.


went back and gave Gestalt: Steam & Cinder demo another try. it was patched to show you the weird keyboard controls early on. Not a fan of them (J to hit? L to dodge?), but the gameplay's pretty fun, and as long as I can remap them in the final version, this is a buy.

Seed of Life is a more intense puzzle-platformer, because you have limited resource and once it runs out the air start to kill you. So it's more about figuring out how to move from checkpoint to checkpoint. kinda Metroinvania-y in the powers, but the final platforming challenge is a bit much.


Relicta is a 1st person physics puzzler. Kinda like MagRunner: Dark pulse, but less cthulhu, more aliens. And the magnets work like real science (opposites attract), as opposed to MagRunner's "same colour charges attract" It feels like it's the full game, but it just shuts down after 1 hour. Game has really nice visuals, and most of the cast is South Asian, with very authentic accents, so that was different.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 08 July 2020 - 03:35 PM

[Aptorian]

Planning to play TLOU all weekend.

Just got to flashback of younger Ellie exploring with Joel. I'd forgotten what a foul mouthed teenager she was in the first game. She's hilarious.

Edit: This Birthday flashback is a phenomenal bit of video game storytelling.

This post has been edited by Aptorian: 27 June 2020 - 10:17 AM

[Aptorian]

I think I may be playing The Last of Us 2 too cautiously. According to How Long To Beat the average completion time is 20-26 hours. My play time so far is 13 hours and if I am to believe IGNs guide, I'm only a quarter of the way through the game.

So many ressources!

This post has been edited by Aptorian: 27 June 2020 - 04:47 PM

[Aptorian]

Okay, I'm more than half way through TLOU2 now and I now know why there are people complaining about the story. I've stayed away from all the spoilers and I won't spoil the game here either but there's a plot element and narrative choice that's honestly just a bad idea. It's all well written but I don't like the decision. Feels like DLC injected into a main game.

[Malankazooie]

If any you lunkheads have the stick-to-itiveness to finish The Last of Us 2, read this. But ONLY after you have finished the game. We'll high five after.

https://www.washingt...llie-evolution/

[Aptorian]

Just finished The Last of Us 2.

Some spoiler free thoughts.

I'm very conflicted about this game. It's very well written, the characters are great, the animations are next level, the attention to detail is crazy, in general this game already looks like a PS5 game. And it just plays phenomenally. It's got a perfect feel to the exploration and the combat.

It's a truly outstanding video game.

But, boy do I hate the plot and the narrative structure of this game. It's got great moments, scenes - character interactions that are worthy of some kind of actors award but the overarching telling? The games direction I guess you'd call it? Neil Druckman's directing. The way it's cut or perhaps not cut at all, is baffling to me. It's so clunky it's hard to believe giving the otherwise brilliant grasp of video game storytelling on display. It's like there was meant to be a big DLC expansion. Or a part 3, maybe even 4, that got moshed into the middle and end.

The game is so so so very long and that's not a good thing when you're creating a narratively grim and tense telling of vengeance. And without giving anything away, what it choses to do throughout the game, with the characters POV, just ruined the experience for me.

In a way part of my dislike echoes the feeling I had upon completing Part 1. I just hated what the writer made the characters do. Maybe that's a kind of success. That you can write a modern revenge story, that's not like Charles Bronson or Clint Eastwood on a rampage, but something more complex and dark. Where the hero isn't much of a hero at all and the act of vengeance has terrible consequences. Maybe it's good that I played through this game and thought Ellie was a horrible fruitloop.

I don't know but I didn't finish the game with any real feeling of satisfaction. It felt sour to me. And I can't tell if that's because I dislike the storytelling or I just don't like how ambiguous the notion of justice gets.

I'm gonna have to ruminate on this game a bit.

This post has been edited by Aptorian: 05 July 2020 - 09:53 AM

[Aptorian]

Besides finishing TLOU Part 2 I've also been playing Astroneer the past week.

For those unfamiliar it's a casual survival ressource collector set in space. You're an astronaut who lands on a planet and have to collect resources by exploring and digging down through the planet to find the necessary elements to build your base and develop new technology.

It's an excellent game to relax with in the evenings when you're too tired to read or do much else. Just put on a podcast and go collect some resources and build your base.

Just made it off the first planet and landed on a medium difficulty planet in the middle of the Solar system. Having to restart your base with few resources is jarring. Can't find any resin anywhere. May have to fly back and resupply. Landed right next to an enormous Alien artifact that I've yet to take a look, I know that they can function as teleporters so maybe I'll try and set up some teleportation network.

[Maark Abbott]

A mate persuaded me to pick up No Man's Sky on game pass. As a co-op game it's actually kind of fun.

[Aptorian]

Is it full co-op now a days?

Considering how much fun I'm having with Astroneer, I think it could be a gateway drug to try out NMS again. I keep saying that though. Unless there's a second wave lock down in the fall, it's unlikely I'll find time.

[Obdigore]

Aptorian, on 06 July 2020 - 01:19 PM, said:

Is it full co-op now a days?

Considering how much fun I'm having with Astroneer, I think it could be a gateway drug to try out NMS again. I keep saying that though. Unless there's a second wave lock down in the fall, it's unlikely I'll find time.

It is. Cross-Platform too.

[Traveller]

Not a Sheep, on 06 July 2020 - 04:06 PM, said:

Maark Abbott, on 06 July 2020 - 12:33 PM, said:

A mate persuaded me to pick up No Man's Sky on game pass. As a co-op game it's actually kind of fun.

It’s purrty.

You can also run about in mechs now...