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Shadows of the Damned's personality is obnoxious beyond belief, imo. I'll take TEW's cliched-rear end horror tropes over that wacky randomness any day.
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Oct 3, 2017 08:35
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al-azad posted:It's not always a positive change, though. I could do without all the chase bosses. Yeah, every thing is really visceral in Evil Within. I was surprised that enemies that survived a headshot would have most of their head missing. And man I got hit with that chainsaw a few times too. woodenchicken posted:Shadows of the Damned's personality is obnoxious beyond belief, imo. I'll take TEW's cliched-rear end horror tropes over that wacky randomness any day. I the personality of Shadows kept me going through the game, repetitive "Big Boner" callouts aside. Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9e34sAhddg
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Oct 3, 2017 09:15
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Wamdoodle posted:I the personality of Shadows kept me going through the game, repetitive "Big Boner" callouts aside. Also:
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Oct 3, 2017 09:34
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Oh hey, yeah, this made me remember I received my demo key too. I wonder if my poor pc can handle it.
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Oct 3, 2017 09:51
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 SPOOKY G4MES: The Ghost Dimension 1. Stories Untold 2. Rusty Lake Hotel 3. Rusty Lake: Roots    I wasn’t expecting a whole lot after Rusty Lake Hotel. As interesting as the premise and setting were, the strange little puzzle box rooms of irritating brain-teasers didn’t give me much hope. That made it all the more surprising when Rusty Lake: Roots appeared to take all the lessons I had hoped they would from the prior game. It’s not a perfect genesis of the series, but the improvement is so dramatic I think it makes Rusty Lake Hotel a stronger recommendation by association. The year is 1860 and James Vanderboom has just inherited a house from his late uncle. Arriving in the spring, he finds a seed and a note with instructions to plant and tend to it as he looks after the estate. From this humble beginning blooms the tale of the cursed Vanderboom family, tracing the lives of three generations of unfortunate souls. As their lives take their tragic turns, the story weaves everything back to that original seed and their unifying curse, and ultimately one of the dark secrets of Rusty Lake. Much like the previous game, Roots is heavily steeped in the macabre. None of the people whom you guide through these stories will meet kind ends, and many will suffer significant agonies before their lives are allowed to end. It’s not as gory or gormless as its precursor though, and does a much better job of living up to the macabre label. Most of the horror here comes from witnessing the inevitable, from seeing a scene build to an obvious tragedy and being powerless to stop it. Some of the best plotlines here involve lost children or love triangles that give the sinister events a more grounded base. The drama unfolds in short vignettes, arranged chronologically along the lifelines of the players in question. These vignettes are single scrollable scenes which contain a handful of puzzles to solve in the course of reaching a generally obvious result. It might be as charming as getting a gentleman to propose to a lady, as painful as sending a young man off to war, or as nefarious as dropping a young boy down a well. Scenes should take about 10-15 minutes to complete, during which you’ll uncover more clues to the overarching mystery and perhaps a few hints as to the nature of Rusty Lake itself. The big improvement here for me is the quality of the puzzles, which are all far more sensical and thematically consistent than those in Hotel. Having single scenes focused around a central puzzle or puzzles helps limit potential flailing and allows each puzzle to do more in service to the story. I only found myself stumped in a few places, and this time I didn’t feel like it was because the puzzles were badly designed. Everything had a purpose and a logic to it, and that gave the game a more cohesive feel overall. The only aspect I found weaker this time was the ending, unfortunately enough. By the third generation of characters it should be clear what the ultimate goal of the game is, and when you reach the end it just kinda happens and then fades to black. There’s no real revelation aside from the immediate result of your actions, and it falls a lot flatter than the insane reveals at the end of Hotel. I did play through the New Game+ style continuation to see the secret ending and while I liked that one more, it still didn’t do much to satisfy my curiosities. While there are obviously links between Rusty Lake Hotel and Roots, they’re minor enough that you wouldn’t miss much by skipping Hotel. It’s unfortunate the story doesn’t take more advantage of the otherworldly weirdness of its predecessor but Roots is a strong enough game to stand on its own and command your attention for a few hours. The disturbing scenes and thematic puzzles do an excellent job of gripping the player as they uncover the secrets of this sad family, and only fail to completely pay off at the very end. As long as you’re not expecting something mind-blowing in the conclusion, though, this one definitely succeeds where Rusty Lake Hotel stumbled.
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Oct 3, 2017 16:21
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oh god
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Oct 3, 2017 17:52
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Did anything more ever come of that retro-future sci-fi horror game Routine that was in development before Alien Isolation? I can't recall hearing anything new about it in a while now.
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Oct 3, 2017 18:14
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Xenomrph posted:Did anything more ever come of that retro-future sci-fi horror game Routine that was in development before Alien Isolation? I can't recall hearing anything new about it in a while now. Not yet. Last update was March of this year. I know there was a point where they were stalling a little since Mick Gordon was doing the music and got tapped for, like, three AAA titles in the middle of development. Not sure what's the holdup now.
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Oct 3, 2017 18:25
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Anybody play Dusk? It looks like Quake with the level design of Blood. The first episode is available now with the full game released on Halloween.
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Oct 3, 2017 23:17
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Dusk owns.
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Oct 4, 2017 02:38
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Lube Enthusiast posted:oh god I have no idea what this picture is supposed to be and i feel like i'm missing out
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Oct 4, 2017 03:52
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andrew smash posted:I have no idea what this picture is supposed to be and i feel like i'm missing out https://www.mariowiki.com/Mad_Piano
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Oct 4, 2017 03:57
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Huh, somehow having played a whole lot of mario 64 as a child i had forgotten that entirely
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Oct 4, 2017 04:59
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al-azad posted:Anybody play Dusk? It looks like Quake with the level design of Blood. The first episode is available now with the full game released on Halloween. 
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Oct 4, 2017 08:15
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Xenomrph posted:Did anything more ever come of that retro-future sci-fi horror game Routine that was in development before Alien Isolation? I can't recall hearing anything new about it in a while now. Last I saw one of the devs threw a fit over A:I "stealing" their look and they haven't updated in quite some time. I'm assuming it's dead at this point but I'd be overjoyed to be wrong.
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Oct 4, 2017 09:14
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Wow, I just checked and yeah, it's been seven months since their last update. I still love the look of what they showed, but yeah, starting to think this is more and more another kickstarter/greenlight vapour title.
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Oct 4, 2017 09:34
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Improbable Lobster posted:Last I saw one of the devs threw a fit over A:I "stealing" their look and they haven't updated in quite some time. I'm assuming it's dead at this point but I'd be overjoyed to be wrong. Really? Wow, that's some pretty breathtaking arrogance. "They stole our look (which we borrowed heavily from 70s sci fi)!"
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Oct 4, 2017 10:02
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Fil5000 posted:Really? Wow, that's some pretty breathtaking arrogance. "They stole our look (which we borrowed heavily from 70s sci fi)!" Routine could have very easily forged its own visual identity within the very broad art style of "1960s-1970s sci fi aesthetics", in the same way that Alien, Silent Running, Logan's Run, 2001, Dark Star, Solaris, The Black Hole, and Star Wars each have their own visually distinct aesthetics. At best, Routine was the victim of poor timing by having Alien Isolation enter development at the same time, but I highly doubt that was a conscious (let alone intentionally malicious) decision on the part of Isolation's developers.
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Oct 4, 2017 12:18
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Xenomrph posted:Yeah, Alien Isolation at most cribs heavily from its own source movie, to the point that it almost doesn't make sense if you stop and think about it in the context of its own internal timeline. There's like a 0% chance they consciously cribbed from Routine. The whole point of Isolation is that it's faithful in the extreme to its source material, to the point of throwing out almost everything that Aliens and future films added (like how pretty much every game before it was about the Colonial Marines) in favor of making something directly based on the first film.
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Oct 4, 2017 15:23
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I thought Alien: Isolation borrowed equally from both Alien and Aliens. The basic gameplay of running away from a singular xenomorph on a spaceship definitely aligns more with the first movie but aesthetic choices like the save consoles and fog machines everywhere for whatever reason owe a lot to Aliens as well.
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Oct 4, 2017 15:26
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I always do a hidden object game or two during these things and I assumed Artifex Mundi would be a safe pick for my first one, but it's bad enough that it'll be my only one. SPOOKY G4MES: The Ghost Dimension 1. Stories Untold 2. Rusty Lake Hotel 3. Rusty Lake: Roots 4. Left in the Dark: No One on Board    A lot of hidden object games play at horror to hold their player’s attention, throwing up spooky faces behind windows or jamming items to find in skeletons. Left in the Dark leans harder on these tropes than most, electing to base its plot around a mysterious slasher villain and a derelict ship full of his victims. It feels like a premise that’s hard to foul up (at least by hidden object standards) but that’s one challenge accepted and slam-dunked here by a distant, poorly-defined plot. Despite the persistent efforts to startle, I found the hardest part of this one to be staying awake. You play an unnamed detective (which should be your first red flag) summoned to Port Providence over the appearance of said derelict ship. The vessel went missing years ago and has suddenly reappeared with nary a sign of its crew or cargo. Once aboard you find your nameless self at the disinterested whims of a hooded killer brandishing a meat hook. Solving the mystery of the ship and the killer will take you from the bowels of the boat to a distant deserted island, collecting dubious junk and solving simple puzzles along the way. Do I sound a little down on the game? In retrospect it seems hard to pick out parts that were really worth any sort of attention. Design-wise the game follows the template of so many other hidden object games, with a network of scenes to traverse and click for inventory items, HOG scenes to click for more items, and roadblocks to use those items on to pass. The HOG scenes are a good encapsulation of what you’re getting in this game, as they task you to find 12 items with no gimmicks and can be passed almost entirely through random clicking. This is no exaggeration, out-of-place objects are obvious and few enough in number to just click on one at a time until you clear the scene. There’s an achievement for solving a HOG scene in under a minute, and I think I fulfilled that requirement with every single one. Don’t expect the puzzles to do much for you, either. All you’re getting here are the tired old rotating ring picture and swapping fuses and such. I’ve seen plenty of neat gimmicks in HOGs at this point and Left in the Dark doesn’t borrow any of them, placing it much closer to your average budget offering than what Artifex Mundi normally puts out. That just leaves the story to carry your clicking, and that’s probably the worst part of the game right there. Aside from some sparse notes about an old family and a tragic fire, you’re not going to get any kind of explanation about the ghost ship or its shrouded killer. The various parts of the mystery don’t actually seem to be connected at all, and the big killer reveal at the end basically has to explain why you would even care about who it is. They don’t even make much of a case for it, either. The graphics are certainly adequate for a game of this caliber, featuring enough detail and color to keep me from ever missing anything of note. The sound is fine as well, aside from the normally awkward voice acting. So that’s about as far as you can get with this one, an adequate hidden object game that doesn’t do a single thing to excel in any way. It’s not bad, certainly not as bad as some HOGs I’ve downvoted, but in a field as crowded as this one being just OK really isn’t OK. Left in the Dark is one of those better-than-nothing HOGs, the kind you only resort to once you’ve played everything else. That’s about as nice as I can be to a game that nearly put me to sleep more than once.
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Oct 4, 2017 16:23
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exquisite tea posted:I thought Alien: Isolation borrowed equally from both Alien and Aliens. The basic gameplay of running away from a singular xenomorph on a spaceship definitely aligns more with the first movie but aesthetic choices like the save consoles and fog machines everywhere for whatever reason owe a lot to Aliens as well. Both of those were present in the first movie - the save consoles with their "punchcard" things were like the Mother access hallway on the Nostromo, and the Nostromo starts filling up with smoke and steam during Ripley's countdown after she primes the self destruct. 'Aliens' shares a lot of overarching aesthetics in the sense that both movies have a tactile, lived-in feel that you don't really get in most sci-fi today, but Aliens owed a lot more of its design work to Syd Mead than 'Alien' did, so it's got a more military-industrial feel. 'Alien' has a lot of greeblies on the spaceships, octogonal shapes, padded walls, and use of white, 'Aliens' is a lot more angular, function over form, smooth edges on the vehicles, and heavy use of blues. The two styles work well together, but they give a valid sense of the passage of time - it's nearly 60 years between movies, and the design choices reflect that (just as it would comparing, say, the 1930s to the 1990s). From a design standpoint, compare the aesthetics of Isolation and Colonial Marines - for all the things CM did wrong, it nailed the 'Aliens' aesthetic. Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 17:58 on Oct 4, 2017 |
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Oct 4, 2017 17:24
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I wish to share something interesting with you, thread. I'm sure it's not much of a spoiler to say that Silent Hill 2's endings are determined by your actions over the game. What you probably did not know was just how absurdly intricate the system was for determining what the outcome is, because someone went through the game and worked out in exact terms how it figures that out and it's kind of a nightmare. https://github.com/JokieW/SilentHill2Endings/blob/master/README.md Behold, more than you could ever want or need to know about how an old-rear end horror game derives what ending the player should get.
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Oct 5, 2017 05:59
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SuccinctAndPunchy posted:I wish to share something interesting with you, thread. I'm sure it's not much of a spoiler to say that Silent Hill 2's endings are determined by your actions over the game. What you probably did not know was just how absurdly intricate the system was for determining what the outcome is, because someone went through the game and worked out in exact terms how it figures that out and it's kind of a nightmare.  I don't think any other game goes this deep into what kind of ending you could potentially get. Usually just "push button, get x ending."
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Oct 5, 2017 06:15
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Its me I'm the guy who read all that poo poo and did multiple playthroughs to see all endings. Same with SH3&4. I miss videogames that could inspire such deep sperging. More reason to appreciate Consortium, cause I ran through that poo poo to hell and back trying to see everything.
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Oct 5, 2017 07:11
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Loved the secret ending in Duck Season that was a Silent Hill 2 Dog Ending spoof. Only saw it on youtube but still laughed me little head off at it.
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Oct 5, 2017 08:49
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SPOOKY G4MES: The Ghost Dimension 1. Stories Untold 2. Rusty Lake Hotel 3. Rusty Lake: Roots 4. Left in the Dark: No One on Board 5. Daily Chthonicle: Editor's Edition    Horror games usually stick to a few basic genres. First-person, adventure, and puzzle are all well-worn trails for spooky titles to travel down, but management is definitely an outlier. That’s right where you’ll find Daily Chthonicle though, a management game about sending reporters to dredge up and vanquish the dark forces afoot in your city. And it works, less as a horror game and more as a management title, by giving you a team to work with and mounting challenges to pit them against until either they or the horrors break. Just bear in mind that while you’re learning the ropes, it’ll probably be your team that falls first. You’re the editor-in-chief of the titular Daily Chthonicle, hometown chronicle of the strange and spooky. Cultists, ghosts, and infernal machines are making life hell in your city, and the only way to stop them is with the mighty pen. Researching stories and publishing the truth is the goal, with every story you run earning you new funds and putting a dent in the eldritch forces that hold your fate in their ashen hands. You’ll need the right tools to defeat monsters and pass mundane and mystical barriers in search of the scoops, and if you don’t look out for your reporters well enough then madness and death can end your print run. The interface for Daily Chthonicle boils all this down to the bare essentials. You have six reporters, and a city map of up to nine locations. Assigning a reporter to a location has them turn up new clues, contacts, investigations, and obstacles so long as they remain there. Everything you find gets published periodically and earns you money based on how much you uncovered, and once you turn up the entire story you can close the case in your files. Closing every open case wins you the game, and the only way to lose is to get all six of your reporters incapacitated at once. Most of the gameplay here is in deciding what to do with what your reporters turn up. Clues and leads really don’t require any input from you, they’re just part of the stories and are assembled automatically in their cases. Sometimes you’ll come across a new lead and have the option to follow it, or continue in the track you’re on. The significance of this choice isn’t entirely clear to me but it seems like following can trigger more dramatic results, or nothing at all. Investigations and obstacles are the two big ones, both offering different tactical choices like equipping special items or taking risks like snapping pictures. The results of investigations hinge on how well your reporter is equipped, while obstacles can leave your people injured, insane, or incapacitated if they cannot overcome the challenge. The money you make from running stories mostly goes into stocking up on weapons, forensic tools, bibles, whisky, and dogs to help get past obstacles. You can also mix and use potions from the lab at your office, providing potent bonuses at the cost of keeping a reporter off the streets to do the mixing. In the mid and late game you also get side funds to purchase upgrades and discounted equipment based on how much good your investigations have done the different parts of the city. On top of all this are your contacts and allies who can provide backup, special services, and perhaps other things I haven’t fully worked out yet. There’s a great deal of strategy at play here, and on the lower difficulties you won’t need to worry about most of it. Keeping your reporters busy, saving up funds to splurge on equipment, and rotating people out when they get hurt or crazed is enough to close out all your cases. On Normal and above, however, the evil has ways of fighting back. Leaving certain threats unanswered for too long or failing key challenges can cause new ones to arise, potentially spiraling the situation out of control. You’ll have less margin for error and need to use all your resources intelligently to keep ahead of your eldrich antagonists, and the strategy is plenty fun to work out as you learn which descriptors call for which pieces of equipment. What complaints I can level against Daily Chthonicle are mostly in the realm of polish. You can probably tell from the screenshots but it’s not a terribly attractive game, stuck with simple, overly-chunky graphics throughout. I don’t know if it’s an aesthetic choice or artistic limitations but it just doesn’t look good, and there’s very little sound design at all to even critique. The game feels very bare-bones because of this, sealing away the action of vanquishing undead mastodons behind static, blown-up scans of old pictures and poorly-formatted text. And speaking of mastodons, the randomized stories can have their moments but are mostly unimportant and unintelligible since the articles assemble themselves from the disparate pieces you find. The core of Daily Chthonicle is extremely solid, building a compelling management sim that pits you against fantastic evils with only journalism (and a little magic) on your side. Were it more attractive or polished it would be an instant classic, but as it stands the aesthetic brands it with a pretty strong caveat. Assuming you aren’t put off by the poor graphics there’s plenty of random adventures and bizarre encounters to work through, with a decent learning curve that carries an equally decent sense of accomplishment. If you’re looking for a new take on old themes, Daily Chthonicle puts a load of strategy into eldrich horror and spices it up with creative flair.
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Oct 5, 2017 16:33
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Too Shy Guy posted:
 This is EXTREMELY up my alley
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Oct 5, 2017 16:35
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Too Shy Guy posted:
This feels like something that could really use a narrative LP.
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Oct 5, 2017 16:47
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The_Doctor posted:Gone Home is one of the Xbox Gold games this month, and while not being out and out scary, certainly has an eerie atmosphere. Let me tell you something about gay people with more than I have! 
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Oct 5, 2017 16:49
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Too Shy Guy posted:
Wow this looks interesting but I'm terrible at these types of games. I'm reminded of the board game Elder Sign. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elder_Sign_(card_game)
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Oct 5, 2017 16:54
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chitoryu12 posted:This feels like something that could really use a narrative LP. It would be pretty amazing. The random story generator likes to string together stuff like "A. Dominguez spent 3 weeks in South America. A. Dominguez inherited money from G. Smith. G. Smith was killed by a hellhound summoned by A. Dominguez. A. Dominguez was killed by a lich." And the challenges can be hilarious if you're like me and don't fully get how the game works... I've never lost a fight with an undead mastodon, but my reporters keep getting hospitalized by locked doors.
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Oct 5, 2017 16:59
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I missed the contest, but still wanted to share my paint attempt. Not sure if how "iconic" it is, but man the image has certainly stuck with me all these years.
GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Oct 5, 2017 |
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Oct 5, 2017 18:37
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Owns.
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Oct 5, 2017 19:02
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Hot drat I miss those games.
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Oct 5, 2017 20:04
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GlyphGryph posted:I missed the contest, but still wanted to share my paint attempt. Not sure if how "iconic" it is, but man the image has certainly stuck with me all these years. gently caress me, that shading
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Oct 5, 2017 20:05
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I can just see a editor at his desk, smoking like a chimney, on his fourth cup of coffee shaking his head over how his reporter spends an entire paragraph describing the indescribable abomination, in great detail even though they could've just said it looked a bit like a really gnarly squid except not, or how another kept writing up to the very moment he was torn to shreds by ravenous revenants even being kind enough to write "AAAAUUUGhhhh". Also shaking his head over the insanely long run on sentences and the gross overuse of commas.
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Oct 6, 2017 11:15
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Its depressing as hell that Jurassic World didn't inspire a reboot of Dino Crisis. Hell, you can even tie it back to zombie ideas by just making it not only loving with DINO DNA, but genetic manipulation with humans involving Denisovan giants Boskops, Lizard people and outright bird as hell looking raptors. Or just actually utilize a team of commando Raptors.
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Oct 6, 2017 11:32
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Fil5000 posted:Really? Wow, that's some pretty breathtaking arrogance. "They stole our look (which we borrowed heavily from 70s sci fi)!" Routine is more "Space:1999, but lived-in, filthy and a bit hosed up" rather than Alien, from my brief look at it.
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Oct 6, 2017 13:17
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It's not horror in the usual sense, but I did like The Surge's "used future" style. Everything was blocky and heavy, clearly built to last and be recycled quickly. Even the highest grade of technology (except nano-technology which kicked in at the end game) was unreliable and had been through a lot of knocks. It made the jump to sterile environments and living machinery much more jarring.
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Oct 6, 2017 13:29
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