Roguelikes: I never met@progression I didn't like

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Roguelikes: I never met@progression I didn't like

Harminoff: Oct 24, 2005; ð½

Anyone else pick of Claustrophobia on steam? It's pretty good for the $4.99 price tag! Early access but pretty active development and really nice controls (either mouse or numpad) so it's easy to jump in and play without needing to learn much.

Did a little gameplay as well if you want to see what it's like

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuS4VXVNkPU

# ? Nov 6, 2014 08:19

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# ? Apr 26, 2024 14:31

madjackmcmad: May 27, 2008; Look, I'm startin' to believe some of the stuff the cult guy's been saying, it's starting to make a lot of sense.

Harminoff posted:

Anyone else pick of Claustrophobia on steam? It's pretty good for the $4.99 price tag! Early access but pretty active development and really nice controls (either mouse or numpad) so it's easy to jump in and play without needing to learn much.

Did a little gameplay as well if you want to see what it's like

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuS4VXVNkPU

I played about an hour of it on stream, I enjoyed it, though I haven't really dove into it hardcore. Feels great for 5 bucks.

Harminoff if you like doing roguelike Let's Plays, you should sign up here for a Dungeonmans key! https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1R0oZ6b1cn9hmSNMkV-U-fqPY-WwJdJBKA6tUEYyIjjY/viewform

# ? Nov 6, 2014 08:45

Bloody Hedgehog: Dec 12, 2003; 💥💥🤯💥💥
Gotta nuke something

ToxicFrog posted:

.... and the levels are all huge key/switch mazes, except the key or switch might actually be for a completely different level (that you may even have already explored, but now it's different! Good luck finding out where!)

I have a serious hate on for games that feature a lot of backtracking and mindless maze hunts. Almost a phobia, where if I play a game and suddenly I'm back in the same spot I was before, I'm beyond pissed, and if I happen to come across that area a third time, it's an immediate close game and uninstall.

Hexen is the game that did that to me. I've had nightmares where I'm playing Hexen again, going through the same area (but oh so slightly different) for the tenth time in a row. I don't even know why I played so much of it back in the day, but I guess I was holding out hope that it might get as good as Heretic at some point. Nope!

# ? Nov 6, 2014 09:00

TOOT BOOT: May 25, 2010

I remember liking it at the time but perhaps it didn't age well. Games were full of stupid bullshit in 1994.

# ? Nov 6, 2014 10:27

ToxicFrog: Apr 26, 2008

Protip for people playing Tower of Guns: when you complete Sanctum, there are two elevators. The one you can see when you enter the room wins the game. The one at the back of the room takes you to the secret final bullshit boss. Dying to this boss does not count as a win and doesn't unlock anything that normally unlocks on a win.

Before taking on the secret boss, you will need a way of crossing large fields of lava (the All-Access Pass or a fully upgraded Motivator are good ideas here) and a great deal of confidence in your asskicking ability.

TOOT BOOT posted:

I remember liking it at the time but perhaps it didn't age well. Games were full of stupid bullshit in 1994.

If you only played the demo, that was front-loaded with the only good parts of the game, so that's probably a large part of it.

It doesn't fare any better if you only compare it to its contemporaries, either; by 1994 we had, off the top of my head, System Shock, Marathon, Pathways into Darkness, Doom 1 and 2, and Heretic, all of which thoroughly kick the poo poo out of Hexen.

# ? Nov 6, 2014 15:15

Thyrork: Apr 21, 2010; "COME PLAY MECHS M'LANCER."

Or at least use Retrograde Mini's to make cool mechs and fantasy stuff.; Slippery Tilde

FirstPersonShitter posted:

...

Apart from Hexen. I do not like Hexen.

Heretic was my first ever FPS. It was awesome. My parents let me play it and not doom because doom had real guns and you shot people in it. The closest heretic got to people was yellow michelin men full of ghosts. But Heretic was and is pretty great, nostalgia aside.

Naturally I was just super jazzed when my dad got Hexen. It was like Heretic, but it had all this crazy new poo poo. Open world! New monsters! Three roided up todd mcfarlane badasses to choose from! Powerups out the rear end!

I thought it was awesome at the time, mostly cause I just cheated and warped around the levels, but playing it again now, all that stuff is the reason it sucks.

Hexen is not gritty, it is just ugly. Quake gets poo poo for being brown. Brown is a feature Quake lifted shamelessly from Hexen and ruined with the occassioanl brightly lit section. Hexen is muddy, foggy, dim, not even as interesting as dark. When I was a kid I found the game a little unsettling, I thought this was because of the scarier monsters and hanging corpses, but no. The game was just giving me seasonal depression. The art style is like something a van-airbrusher or metal album cover artist did in their off time using the colours they had left after they had used up all the colours that make people feel excitement.

The class system sucks too. More choice! More playstyles! No. 4 weapons per playthrough. gently caress you. And if the repetition of using 1 or 2 weapons all the time wasn't bad enough, those weapons suck.

The fighter's weapons suck. He doesn't get a ranged weapon till episode 2, so his extra health is offset by all the getting hit in the face he does. That ranged weapon being the hammer bros hammer from mario. Which I guess is cool. His ultimate weapon is a sword. A sword that you aren't even allowed to hit people with. It shoots green poo poo in a big wave, I guess because it's magic.

The mage's default grandma brooch is his best weapon, which means you'll spend ages plinking away with the most boring effect in history. His ultimate incorporates the exciting design elements of redness and skulls but its main power is using all your mana to shoot stupid fire grappling hooks into the wall either side of your enemy.

The cleric gets the best weapons, but they make no sense. A snake staff? I've not been to church many times but I've seen at least half of Witchfinder General and there was no snake staff in that. And Witchfinder General was awesome. His second weapon is I guess a spell the mage didn't really want. It doesn't even shoot holy beams out. Just basic fire. His ultimate is extremely rad however because it is a heavy metal crucifix that shoots ghosts. Angry ghosts with a lust for wrecking dudes. Sometimes they even turn around and wreck you. But you will never get to use it because it uses too much mana.

The hub system is terrible. Maybe it's just me. Maybe at the time there were a hell of a lot of dudes writing in to Raven saying "Heretic was AWESOME but what would really kick it OFF THE CHAIN (it was the 90s) is if you had to revisit each level three times to unlock one extra room with 3 imps in and a switch you will not see.". But that's what most of the game is. They don't even tell you what the switches have unlocked. You just have to blunder about. The levels are poo poo too. Nobody wants to go to a cave once, never mind three times. It's not even a cool cave with like, lava and skeletons and a hidden demon temple. It's just a regular cave. The monsters all wear northface clothes and want to talk to you about stalactites and quartz.

I guess to themeatically mirror the weapons, the enemies are poo poo too. There are like 5 of them and at least three of them are lifted from Heretic and made less fun. I guess they still had some lovely mechanics left over after they were done converting the Heretic monsters so the main other new monster is a fleshy centaur looking thing that blocks for like 2 seconds straight every time you hit them. It takes two hits to kill them of almost any weapon, so killing them is like being a cashier waiting for a senior citizen to find something in their purse then put it away again. There are 100 of them in every level and they all queue up behind the one that is currently wasting your time. Again like old people at a checkout.

That is the whole game. Killing inconvenient, boring enemies with inconvenient, boring weapons to find a switch nobody gives a gently caress about.

This post came out way spergier than intended so I guess i'll be chased out of here being whipped with model trains, but seriously gently caress Hexen.

FirstPersonShitter, putting Hexen in its place better then any of us could.

You know, in the defence (Heh) of Hexen, when i played it using the mod Psychic, it got significantly better. Not perfect, but at least i didn't feel bored with my character. But hey, we have a FPS megathread for this. :getin:

# ? Nov 6, 2014 16:03

Jordan7hm: Feb 17, 2011; Lipstick Apathy

Hexen would be more fun if you had access to more weapons and such, but the core gameplay is a blast so whatever. It's also not a roguelike though.

# ? Nov 6, 2014 16:56

victrix: Oct 30, 2007

How do you deal with those purple backstabbing assholes on the third floor? The only way I can see to attack them normally is digging into a wall so they chase you and get into range, but that's too slow when you're dealing with a screen of other monsters.

# ? Nov 6, 2014 18:54

Tax Inductions: Jul 9, 2007; I carry refreshments to the good guys
I made the good guys some home fries

victrix posted:

How do you deal with those purple backstabbing assholes on the third floor? The only way I can see to attack them normally is digging into a wall so they chase you and get into range, but that's too slow when you're dealing with a screen of other monsters.

You're talking necrodancer right? IMO those are the trickiest enemies in Zone 3. You generally have the right idea of how to kill them, see this vid: http://youtu.be/gR1lZUmHTIQ

If they're in back-stab mode, any beat-using move will bring them closer to you, that includes digging any wall, hitting any enemy, using war drums, switching holster weapon, etc. As you said, this can be hard to pull off with a bunch of other monsters on screen. The safest thing to do in that situation imo is to move in their direction so they move away from you, then deal with the other monsters, and clean up the goblins after.

# ? Nov 6, 2014 19:07

TooMuchAbstraction: Oct 14, 2012; I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.; Fun Shoe

Yeah, goblins can be jerks. The only safe ways to kill them are either to chase them into a corner and then use a weapon that can hit them without requiring you to stand adjacent to them (since then they'll hit you), or to lure them into stepping next to you by ramming your face into a corner or otherwise passing time without turning to face them. Note that grey goblins can only be safely killed with the lure method if you have an attack that does at least 2 damage.

However, it's usually possible to convince goblins to leave you alone while you deal with other enemies. They won't turn and start chasing you unless you move away from them; turning in place to attack a monster doesn't count. So you can keep them in "hide mode" most of the time and only deal with them once the rest of the level is empty.

The enemies in zone 3 that give me the most trouble are the beetles, which are tricky to approach with any non-dagger weapon, and the skeleton riders, which just take way too many hits to bring down. But really zone 3 is an excellent example of the game using lots of different enemies to get you to trip up. Individually they're all pretty straightforward to deal with; it's when they team up that you get into trouble.

# ? Nov 6, 2014 19:16

Tax Inductions: Jul 9, 2007; I carry refreshments to the good guys
I made the good guys some home fries

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

But really zone 3 is an excellent example of the game using lots of different enemies to get you to trip up. Individually they're all pretty straightforward to deal with; it's when they team up that you get into trouble.

Yep, and add to that the ice/coal tiles everywhere, plus the level gen that often favors generating swarms around you, Zone 3 can be pretty tough. I think I read on their forums that they're planning to tone down zone 3 a bit when zone 4 comes out. I personally hope they don't tone it down too much, but getting rid of those big swarms surrounding you at level start would be pretty nice.

# ? Nov 6, 2014 19:24

Harminoff: Oct 24, 2005; ð½

madjackmcmad posted:

I played about an hour of it on stream, I enjoyed it, though I haven't really dove into it hardcore. Feels great for 5 bucks.

Harminoff if you like doing roguelike Let's Plays, you should sign up here for a Dungeonmans key! https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1R0oZ6b1cn9hmSNMkV-U-fqPY-WwJdJBKA6tUEYyIjjY/viewform

Nice, sent you my info!

# ? Nov 6, 2014 23:03

ToxicFrog: Apr 26, 2008

What the gently caress, I did not know that DoomRL had cursed items :psyduck:

RIP my first Ammochain marine, it was starting to look like he might be my first HNTR win but if I can win with this thing shackled to me it'll be a goddamn miracle.

Spoilers in case anyone doesn't want advance warning about this.

The Cybernetic Armour has great stats at the cost of a movespeed penalty, but cannot ever be removed. It does not self-repair, but also can't ever be fully destroyed. So once it gets down to 0% durability, you have a movespeed penalty, no armour, and can't take it off to replace it with something that isn't actively harmful.

# ? Nov 6, 2014 23:37

TOOT BOOT: May 25, 2010

It's too bad DoomRL seems to have been shelved in favor of Jupiter Hell which seems to be complete vaporware.

# ? Nov 6, 2014 23:39

cock hero flux: Apr 17, 2011