[Mentalist]

Finished Kingdom Shell.

Laika: Aged in Blood is out tomorrow. Probably gonna play some more "Transiruby" to pass the time, as it's got level-based progression (I think, from the demo)

[Cause]

Mario wonder.

I don’t like it very much which is a huge shame. The levels all seem short, easy and aimed. It also seems to have a Mario odyssey like focus on collecting things and finding secrets, which to me isn’t Mario. Platforming challenges are almost non existent.

Instead of a few new mechanics polished to perfection it’s all over the place with tons of new enemy types, a gimmick unique to each stage and a 30 or so badges that all change how mario plays.

Elephant matio looks unique but doesn’t play very interestingly at all.

[Avatar]

Baldur's Gate 3, over 60 hours in, still in Act 1. So far, I would say, this might be even better than Dragon Age and Mass Effect. Amazing game.

[polishgenius]

Shame to hear you don't like Wonder much, Cause. I'm loving it. I get the criticism- it's not very difficult- but in what it is aiming to do I think it's great.

I've been describing it as a comedy routine with game mechanics as the lines. So many of the levels are basically 'setup/punchline' in design. Whether that will work for many replays I dunno but on a first play it's adorable.

Also adorable: the online multiplayer aspect, with players journeying levels together and helping each other out with secrets and stuff.

[Cause]

It’s looks beautiful, and plays beautifully. I just wish there was more substance. I seldom if ever die, seldom if ever feel challenged. The challenge seems to be more about a self imposed one to collect every wonder seed and 10 coin.

I think the best thing about wonder will be when they put its engine into Mario maker 3 l.

Also I feel like just maybe when they brainstormed ideas they should have said no to some of them. Trivia? Rhythm mechanics?

[Mentalist]

Laika is super cool when you're doing bike combat, doing backflips to reload.

But the stop and go nature of the actual "platforming" isn't quite as smooth.

I think that GhostRunner 2 (which is a very different flavor of "die until you get this sequence right" ) will be a great change of pace after this game.

[Maark Abbott]

I bought Suika Game on Switch and can't stop playing it. Please help.

[TheRetiredBridgeburner]

Avatar, on 22 October 2023 - 06:13 AM, said:

Baldur's Gate 3, over 60 hours in, still in Act 1. So far, I would say, this might be even better than Dragon Age and Mass Effect. Amazing game.

I'm also in Act 1 still, and as much as I'm really enjoying it I don't feel like I've settled with it yet. So far for me it's very good but it's not knocking Dragon Age off top spot.

According to the wildly thirsty posts I see in my Facebook feed, I think I might be the only person in the world who doesn't find Astarion at all interesting though

[Avatar]

My male Tav is finding Shadowheart very interesting. Like Astarion's dramatic manners, and need him as a rogue in my party.

[Cause]

I realised that mario wonder is set in the flower kingdom and not the mushroom kingdom last night because trippy wonder mushrooms would advocate drug use. Wonder how far in development they got before they realized or if they saw it right away,

[Mentalist]

Laika has a grappling hook, but its use is sadly situational.

The game's platforming has a bunch of odd quirks and trying to figure out what else you should try isn't really intuitive. But in order to upgrade your gear and max out weapon capacity, there's a bunch of scrounging to be done in already explored areas, b/c rare resources respawn each day/night cycle.

[Maark Abbott]

Tried out Starfield. Got up to the point just after the first dogfight and decided to bin it off and uninstall.

It's somehow taken the worst bits of games I like and jammed them together. The aiming reticule from Deus Ex (I found out later it has Aim Down Sights which was not made clear, but had I known I wouldn't have touched it anyway because I loathe ADS in games) which means you get XCom accuracy a bunch, the power management from FTL, and the ship controls of No Man's Sky if your spaceship was drunk and had no steering wheel (also trying to slow down to pick up loot crashed the game by way of StickyKeys). Also, who the hell thought it was a good idea to have the lock-on button (E) be the same button that makes you get up from the ship controls???? The combat was not hard but it was so ridiculously unfun that I saw pretty quickly that a game built around this was not going to be one I wanted to put more time into.

Disappointing, but I sort of expected a non-Morrowind Bethesda game to not be very good. Oh well. At least I got a good benchmark for my new PC.

[Mentalist]

GhostRunner II isn't as great as the original. Solid, but not amazing.

Edit: the setpieces and boss fights are quite good, though. They've put a lot of work into those.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 31 October 2023 - 06:49 AM

[Maark Abbott]

Finally got around to playing Dead Space 2023. Some thoughts:

1) the glow up wasn't needed, but it's still nice and looks real crisp.

2) the Zero-G mechanic is now MUCH better. I like that the Ishimura now feels like one huge continuous spaceship, more in line with the Von Braun it's based on (even if the Von Braun was separated by elevators for height, it had trams for length).

3) I still ran the wrong way around the fucking centrifuge

[Mentalist]

Another timed Challenge in GR2 that kinda sucks. This time in the "Elevator Maintenance" level. Spent a few hours trying to do better than Bronze, but no luck.

Really wanna check out the new Age of Empires II DLC, but they tend to be glitchy on launch, so gonna wait until the weekend.

EDIT: roguerunner.exe is eating my soul.

EDITagain: okay, this thing is starting to stutter and glitch when I'm finishing Stage 3. Not gonna keep trying when a stutter can cost me a 20 min run.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 04 November 2023 - 04:08 PM

[Mentalist]

I DID IT.

I BEAT STAGE 4!!!!

We shall never speak of this roguelike thing ever again.

[Maark Abbott]

Was playing more of Dead Space 2023 yesterday, got the line gun, was immediately disappointed. This thing is wank pal. OG could one shot a slasher with a shot that took both arms out. The new one can't kill a slasher in THREE shots - a full rack!

Contrastingly the force gun feels very strong now, and the contact beam got a ridiculous glow-up.

[Mentalist]

Messing with AoE 2 DE some more. (Naturally, since I just bought a 4060, I'm gonna spend all my time playing a game from 1998). Basically grinding out a bunch of achievements (played the AoE I campaigns), and started poking at the the new DLC.

EDIT: the new campaigns are fun. Especially Queen Tamar.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 21 November 2023 - 05:29 PM

[Mentalist]

Decided that for the month of December I'm going to put AoK on the backburner.

Instead, been on a bit of game-finishing binge.

-Finished Ghost Runner 2. My GOTY so far. The last level introduced a wing-suit, which was pretty cool. Liked the final boss battle as well, they really did a lot of work on this aspect of the game.
Kinda want to replay the Avatar boss battle with the new GPU, because that level was visually rough, due to all the crazy cyberspace visuals.

-Finished "The Turing Test". A bit of an abrupt ending, but neat puzzles. Introducing the machines as an extra element to toggle switches was pretty neat.

-Beat the second-last boss in Blasphemous 2 last night. Been hoovering up the few remaining things to collect, only thing major is the last altar- but I need the Confessor to die to get that. Also, need 5 more Talent points to get the last 2 weapon skills, but The game's telling I'm maxed out. Would hate to need to do an NG+ run just to finish this.

Still need to wrap up Laika. Then probably will move on The Last Faith.

[Mentalist]

Started The Last Faith.

Pretty neat, though I'm incredibly underleveled for some of the places I'm allowed to get to.