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A quick look at Routine makes me think, yes 70s/80s retrofuturism, but more things like Silent Running or 2001.
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Oct 6, 2017 15:55
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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 6. Eleusis    Sometimes you really want to believe a game is good. Maybe it has a particular look, maybe it has a great hook, or maybe you just want to see an indie succeed out there in the big, scary world. Eleusis was just such a game for me, rising out of the mire of Amnesia clones years ago to offer something new and exciting and maybe even complimentary to the horror walking sim that launched a thousand Unity projects. It bore a haunting style, a mysterious story steeped in folklore, and a promised mix of exploration and frights. At last, years after my fascination with this tiny indie title began, I have finally played it and discovered that hope is indeed a lie. You play some guy summoned to his childhood village in Greece, but that hardly matters because it’s just an excuse to get you to a scary place and you KNOW it wasn’t his mom that sent for him. On arrival you find the place dark and spooky (you specifically arrived at night to avoid traffic out on all those rural Greek roads, y’know) and begin searching for answers. The village is nestled up in the mountains with some equally spooky graveyards and cliffs and temples to search, all with their own parts in the overall mystery. What you find, then, is a woman in peril, a hooded figure at work in the shadows, and lots and lots and lots of item fetching to do. This is absolutely a walking simulator inspired by Amnesia: The Dark Descent, all the way down to the trusty lantern and the grasping hand icon moving objects in the world. Eleusis features an open map to explore rather than discrete areas, however, and so to gate off progression in the village the developers used literal gates. Your first hour with the game is going to be scouring the cottages for keys to other cottages, eventually gathering enough items to reach the more exotic cottages to get the more exotic keys. The story isn’t really going to kick in until you get to the text dump textbooks at the mayor’s house, and those are just going to give you a more expansive scavenger hunt to work on than the breadcrumb trail that led you there. Since the game lacks achievements, I’m terribly curious how many players ever made it that far. Eleusis has a severe flaw in that your objective at any given time is painfully hidden. Your journal helpfully fills in what task you’re on but it’s always going to be finding something, and those somethings are almost never clearly visible. Key items rarely look like key items, like the one sack of special grain in the room full of sacks or the one bottle in a house full of bottles that is an inventory item and not a world item. I imagine the first puzzle in the game will stump most people, wherein you need to grab a bit of hose from a tiny faucet by some stairs and a gas can floating in the middle of a river to siphon fuel out of a Vespa tucked away on the far side of the village. If you intend on getting through Eleusis, get a walkthrough ready unless you’re willing to traipse back and forth over the expansive map just to experiment and click on everything. Some solutions are needlessly complicated and illogical, like how you have to take items from the mayor’s house to the blacksmith to use them on each other to make a lockpick for the mayor’s house. And then there’s a fetch quest near the end of the game where you have to find items buried in the ground at distant points in the world, with essentially no visual cues for where they are. The game is lousy with puzzles that feel like they were never tested with actual players, instead being tuned to challenge the people who themselves designed them. Ostensibly this is a horror game, and the atmosphere isn’t bad at all on its own. The Greek countryside is dark and moody, with moonlight streaming in between ferns and bushes rustling at the worst times. Darkened doorways feel like they could hide anything, and you never feel quite safe until you meet the other inhabitants of the village. Eleusis apparently didn’t ship with enemies but they were added in later as an optional toggle, and it shows. There are two, with the first one being a hooded figure who wanders the roads in search of you and can be easily spotted and avoided. The second is a wolf who spawns right on you after certain cutscenes, requiring you to escape across the countryside or chuck rocks at him until he gives up. Escape is always the better option as the throwing mechanics are pretty fiddly, but the last time I had to deal with him I got stuck in some terrain geometry and had to reset the encounter. Whee. I wanted to like this one, I really did. I like the way it looks, I like the simple premise, and I’ve seen the ending and it’s got a neat little theme to it. Greek mythology figures in a little here but in an effective way and the environments are great for setting the right mood. Unfortunately, all that’s done with this promise is an interminable fetch quest and some awkward, uninteresting encounters. More than anything Eleusis is boring, the one thing a horror game should never be. There’s no amount of benefit I can give this one that would make it a recommendation, because anyone who plays it is going to either be bored or frustrated to death by the end.
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Oct 6, 2017 16:24
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Hey Resident Evil historians, how the gently caress is Umbrella still active? Last numbered RE I completed was 5 where Wesker kills the founder then gets blown up by boulder-punching-Chris-Redfield but in Revelations and RE7 they're still apparently a thing? As far as I can guess the series' world is one where every dotcom has a
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Oct 6, 2017 16:31
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i'm pretty sure the one in re7 is explicitly a reformed version that chris redfield works for, that aims to clean up all the dumb bullshit the company did before. it's umbrella but mostly in name only.
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Oct 6, 2017 16:46
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The original Umbrella corp has fractured and gone under possibly an endless amount of alternate names, under Wesker or otherwise, and its likely easy to assume the new mold virus is the work of some Umbrella offshoot or someone else taking their data into a new direction. The one that showed up in RE7 is either one of the dumbest things ever done, a "clean" remaking of Umbrella Corp as Zombie virus or no, they still have a lot of lucrative copyrights like the medical spray; or a much more humorous attempt at hiding literally in plain sight by a more malicious organization.
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Oct 6, 2017 23:36
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So apparently Lucas is immune to mind control but has been doing Jigsaw poo poo for years despite Jack defending his son's credibility when he pleads to Ethan. I don't know where they're going with this guy but this is a game coming from the company that made a big deal about this character only to kill her off screen in the opening chapter.
al-azad fucked around with this message at 00:32 on Oct 7, 2017 |
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Oct 7, 2017 00:29
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Lucas doesn't get explained in a satisfactory matter, unfortunately.
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Oct 7, 2017 03:12
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At times RE7 feels like they had a couple slightly different drafts of the same script and swapped between them at random.
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Oct 7, 2017 05:41
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al-azad posted:So apparently Lucas is immune to mind control but has been doing Jigsaw poo poo for years despite Jack defending his son's credibility when he pleads to Ethan. I don't know where they're going with this guy but this is a game coming from the company that made a big deal about this character only to kill her off screen in the opening chapter. Was there really a big deal about Rachel other than skin tight, open front wetsuit and ridiculous hair?
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Oct 7, 2017 06:00
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Wamdoodle posted:Was there really a big deal about Rachel other than skin tight, open front wetsuit and ridiculous hair? They gave her an entire trailer for some reason. The scenes from the trailer aren't even in the game.
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Oct 7, 2017 07:17
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al-azad posted:They gave her an entire trailer for some reason. The scenes from the trailer aren't even in the game. Oh yeah I forgot about that.
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Oct 7, 2017 07:21
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al-azad posted:Hey Resident Evil historians, how the gently caress is Umbrella still active? Last numbered RE I completed was 5 where Wesker kills the founder then gets blown up by boulder-punching-Chris-Redfield but in Revelations and RE7 they're still apparently a thing? As far as I can guess the series' world is one where every dotcom has a Umbrella as the crazy bat poo poo BOW company is dead after Code Veronica. Everything after Code Veronica is basically some random BOW manufacturer who may have started with their data but isn't actually Umbrella. Its basically the post MGS2 Metal Gear universe but with zombies.
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Oct 7, 2017 16:31
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It's not exactly RE but I do have a pair of zombie shooters to talk about this weekend, both of them featuring spaaaaaaaaace zommmmmbies. The first one kinda sucks but the second... well, we'll get to that tomorrow. 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 6. Eleusis 7. Dead Effect    Turns out “zombies in space” is not much of a revelation unless you’re playing Space Pirates and Zombies. There’s potential for revelations, like zombies with alien powers or zero-g zombies or sci-fi guns to mow down zombies, but Dead Effect realizes none of them. Instead it opts to have you blast the same grotesque hordes with the same assortment of guns as you always have, just in front of shiny spaceship walls instead of alleyways or sewers. If the action was competent I could at least give it a pass, but as we’ll go into it can’t even shamble over that bar. Go ahead, guess how this space zombie game starts. Close your eyes and form an image of the most generic opening to a sci-fi zombie joint imaginable. Got it? Was it you being awakened from cryosleep to find the ship overrun with the living dead? Of course it was, and of course it is. Once you get your bearings and bullets, a mad scientist contacts you over the intercom and orders you around IF YOU WANT TO LIVE and all that. I assume they explain why the ship is full of green zombie gas eventually but I didn’t get that far, so let’s talk about why. Each level of Dead Effect is a sequence of corridors connecting small rooms and occasional large ones. A couple of these areas have zombies in them, and you have to blast your way past to make it to the exit. These are Romero zombies for the most part, slow-shambling husks that really take a slug to the brainpan to stop, though they sometimes get excited and lunge at you with a sudden burst of speed. Even taking that into consideration, their animations are canned enough to line up perfect headshot chains with little effort. The only real threat they pose is in numbers, and it turns out that’s enough to not only be deadly, but aggravating. You have your choice of male or female character going in, which also determines your primary and secondary weapons. Dudeguy has an assault rifle and pistol while Ladyperson has a shotgun and revolver, so of course I went with a feminine touch. She’s got no problems chewing through hordes at first but her reloads are absolutely glacial, spanning several seconds for the shotgun. Literally the only thing that kills me in this game is having to reload that god damned shotgun while cornered (which happens all the time because of the tight levels and locking doors during fights). You can find credits to upgrade your guns but I wasn’t able to get enough to really make a difference in 40 or so minutes of play. There’s a bit of stuff to find when you’re not spilling corpse juices, like extra ammo and credits. Lockers require a little button-mashing game to open and there are holographic signs you can shoot as a collectible challenge. You’ll also find gold on rare occasions, used to buy new guns or unlock permanent bonuses. Dead Effect would probably be a better game if not for that, because it’s pretty obviously a holdover from a free-to-play model on other platforms. You’ll never find enough gold yourself to get anything worthwhile, and I don’t even think there’s a way to buy it if you DID want to throw money away. Beyond the generic structure and questionable progression, the game feel just isn’t there with this one. Zombie-mashing needs to be rich and visceral to compete these days but everything in Dead Effect feels stiff and canned. Even one-shotting enemies just makes them slump over with poorly-modeled blood sprays out of their neck stump. The weapons don’t feel powerful and there’s very little feedback to scoring hits. The graphics and sound are all serviceable if generic, which is no way to sell a zombie game in this day and age. You’ve got a wealth of better zombie shooters to take up over this one, ones without boring levels, stiff zombies, and loads of other poor design choices.
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Oct 7, 2017 16:47
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Found a copy of survival horror game Lifeline for $6 but apparently the PS4 wired silver headset isn't compatible with the ps2 so now I gotta get a lovely USB headset to actually play it ):
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Oct 7, 2017 22:19
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Lifeline suffers from basic unplayability. The voice commands don't work most of the time and I don't think anybody's ever beaten it.
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Oct 7, 2017 23:10
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Jukebox Hero posted:Lifeline suffers from basic unplayability. The voice commands don't work most of the time and I don't think anybody's ever beaten it. That matches my memories of when a friend had it
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Oct 7, 2017 23:39
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That's the game that has a list of dirty commands the mc shames you for trying or something, right?
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Oct 7, 2017 23:45
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HIT. HIT. OH GOD HIT NOT USE YOUR HEALING ITEMS YOURE AT FULL HEALTH
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Oct 8, 2017 01:20
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Or the puzzle where you have to both say a password at the same time but you and her cannot talk simultaneously and it doesn't read your voice as you speak so you have to say it when she opens her mouth but before she says the actual word.
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Oct 8, 2017 01:38
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I enjoyed Dead Effect well enough*, enough to be interested in the sequel but not enough to buy the sequel at full price (even if it's only $12), one thing you have to remember is that it's a phone port, which makes some of the QTEs make so much more sense. *I got it for free though, so you know.
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Oct 8, 2017 02:58
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did that game that was like friday the 13th or dead by daylight BUT IN A SCHOOL ever come out? I don't remember its name
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Oct 8, 2017 03:13
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Sea Sponge Run posted:did that game that was like friday the 13th or dead by daylight BUT IN A SCHOOL ever come out? I don't remember its name White Noise 2?
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Oct 8, 2017 03:18
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Sea Sponge Run posted:did that game that was like friday the 13th or dead by daylight BUT IN A SCHOOL ever come out? I don't remember its name Last Year? I don't believe it has.
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Oct 8, 2017 03:28
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catlord posted:I enjoyed Dead Effect well enough*, enough to be interested in the sequel but not enough to buy the sequel at full price (even if it's only $12), one thing you have to remember is that it's a phone port, which makes some of the QTEs make so much more sense.  I enjoyed it like one would enjoy a trashy sci fi novel. The second is better but not by much. Also, I got them when they were bundle fodder so my view is biased. Definitely would not recommend at full price.
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Oct 8, 2017 03:29
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catlord posted:Last Year? I don't believe it has. that's the one. it looks really good too...
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Oct 8, 2017 03:30
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Sea Sponge Run posted:that's the one. it looks really good too... Their Reddit claims their having a Beta for backers October 27th. Who knows though.
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Oct 8, 2017 04:01
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Wamdoodle posted:
I'll explain this tomorrow but the character customization and loot they added to 2 tickled the lizard parts of my brain enough to keep me playing it even now. It's not much better than the first outside of that and it's not like a real ARPG/Borderlands thing but it made all the difference for me.
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Oct 8, 2017 04:08
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So it turns out Walmart no longer sells dirt cheap usb headsets. Looks like I'm going to have to use my Get On Da Mic mic to play Lifeline. This'll be interesting
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Oct 8, 2017 04:29
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Didn't lifeline have that fun thing where to be understood the best you have to speak with a thick Japanese accent?
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Oct 8, 2017 04:37
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Morpheus posted:Didn't lifeline have that fun thing where to be understood the best you have to speak with a thick Japanese accent? Yeah I think so.
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Oct 8, 2017 08:11
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You should definitely read Doki Doki Literature Club.
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Oct 8, 2017 14:06
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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. Xenomrph posted: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. Yeah, the use of smoke and light to obscure detail is used heavily by Ridley Scott in his films, to the point of becoming noted as a directorial trademark. Bladerunner is another good example. The vast majority of the aesthetic choices in Alien: Isolation can be linked back to the original Alien film. Two notable exceptions I can think of where the game is cribbing from Aliens rather than Alien: The design of the motion tracker is the one from Aliens, which just looks cooler and works much better from a gameplay perspective. (Late game spoilers) The reactor core and alien nest section. They also gave the alien digitgrade feet instead of human-style ones, I think the Alien queen might have been the first xenomorph design to have those.
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Oct 8, 2017 14:26
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Dave Angel posted:
I like that it's next to useless in the latter section as it basically just goes haywire.
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Oct 8, 2017 16:09
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i think he meant those were the other sections influenced by the sequel
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Oct 8, 2017 17:49
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Blattdorf posted:You should definitely read Doki Doki Literature Club. I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to substantively review Doki Doki Literature Club without spoiling what's so special about it, but for now it's enough to say that anyone in this thread would probably like it a lot. 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 6. Eleusis 7. Dead Effect 8. Dead Effect 2    I was not expecting much here after the first Dead Effect. The stiff animations, clunky action, and constrained upgrade system all turned me off to more zombie shooting in space, which is exactly what this one promises. But Dead Effect 2 also promises a much broader progression system, filled with randomized loot and upgradable powers and an open mission structure. This, it turns out, was enough to hook me, and the minor tweaks and improvements made elsewhere in the game were enough to keep me mowing down space zombies despite my misgivings. I don’t know how Dead Effect The First ended on account of how miserable it was to play, but the second picks up there and catches you up right quick. You can choose to play the same shootman or shootlady as before, or a third ninja-ish fellow if you’re feeling less shooty. The evil scientist antagonist is dead but the giant colony ship you’re on is still filled with zombies, you’re still stuck on it, and now there are soldiers gunning for you. A mysterious lady with mysteriously pert nipples rushes to your aid and helps you set up a base of operations, from which you recruit other survivors, work to take back the ship, and learn more about your own unusual past. The hub is at the heart of the key changes to the formula, offering you a place between missions to talk with characters, buy and upgrade equipment, and pick what kind of zombie-mashing you’d like to partake of next. The open mission structure is a huge boon here, doing away with the stock standard linear progression of the first game in favor of story missions, repeatable missions, survival, wave assaults, and other modes that can be attempted at any time. You can tune the experience through mode selections and difficulty options to exactly what you want to be doing, and make progress doing it by scoring more experience, items, and money that can be used to help you advance in other areas. In terms of character progression, the two games are barely comparable. The first Dead Effect offered you different weapons at exorbitant prices and small upgrades to each. Dead Effect 2 has character levels, skill trees, randomized weapons, armor sets, cybernetic upgrades, and a crafting system. Leveling up gets you points to unlock new powers, both active ones that function like Mass Effect biotic powers and passive ones that let you carry more ammo or switch weapons faster. These powers give some much-needed variety to the combat, allowing you to ragdoll zombies en masse or shield yourself from annoying commandos. They also feel tuned to address some of the complaints I had about the first game, such as the slow pace of your actions. As for the rest, this is very much an ARPG-style loot game now. Gear drops in different color grades and has its own levels, which can be raised in weapons by purchasing upgrades for that weapon. There’s a wide variety of guns and melee options now, everything from chainsaws to flamethrowers to railguns to revolvers. They drop like candy in missions and can also be purchased with your giant stacks of currency, if you don’t need to spend them on other upgrades. Codex items can be slotted into gear to provide additional effects like improved accuracy or movement speed. Effects like that are also found on armor pieces and cybernetic upgrades, which are their own vast realms of randomized, color-coded loot. You may have noticed I haven’t even gotten to the actual gameplay yet, and that’s because it honestly feels secondary to all the customizing and collecting you can do. Dead Effect 2 is built around essentially the same core as the first, which means gunning down shambling zombies in samey sci-fi corridors. Enemy variety and animations have been punched up a little, but it still feels like a low-budget shooter that’s lacking in variety. That variety is supplied this time by the loot you get and the mission options you have, and that’s enough to make me look past the actual combat but it might not be enough for you. Definitely don’t come for the story either, because three hours in very little has happened and the voice acting is terrible in a way that fails to wrap back around to funny. At this point all I really want to know is why Danette is so conspicuously cold all the time. Dead Effect 2 is an absolutely fascinating way to do a sequel, because it sticks closely to what (little) worked in the first game and went far afield for everything else. While not everything has grown by the same leaps and bounds the important parts have, and they keep me coming back for more gore and goodies. The character progression is the star of the show here and only gets better as you find more exotic guns to upgrade and more armor sets to collect. It all still feels very low-rent and unpolished but it doesn’t try to hide what it is, a zombie grinder that constantly rewards you with new trinkets to play with. And if you don’t ask more of it than that, you definitely won’t be disappointed.
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Oct 8, 2017 18:10
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I made a makeshift microphone stand out of the vacuum. Time to see if this game is as gimmicky and poorly executed as I remember Edit: even if the game is bad and not really horror like it's supposed to be the cats are terrified because the vacuum is being touched. Len fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Oct 8, 2017 |
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Oct 8, 2017 20:13
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It just seems like an awful lot of effort to go through for Lifeline.
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Oct 8, 2017 22:11
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Bogart posted:It just seems like an awful lot of effort to go through for Lifeline. It isn't like I've got much else to do today 
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Oct 8, 2017 22:14
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Playing Lifeline is an active negative experience on your life. You'd be better off knocking holes in a wall with your head, at least you'd be building up scar tissue and have a thicker skull to show for it.
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Oct 9, 2017 02:33
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Dave Angel posted:Yeah, the use of smoke and light to obscure detail is used heavily by Ridley Scott in his films, to the point of becoming noted as a directorial trademark. Bladerunner is another good example. The vast majority of the aesthetic choices in Alien: Isolation can be linked back to the original Alien film. What's funny is that the adult xenomorphs in the movie 'Aliens' did not have digitigrade legs, but in 'Aliens: Colonial Marines' they did.  I get why they did it, though, and it's the same reason why Alien Isolation (and most games featuring Aliens) did it: it's easier to convey the Aliens as being otherworldly and enhance their nonhuman silhouette with digitigrade legs, as well as mitigating the "guy in a suit" problem - the films could "cheat" it by selective use of lighting and camera angles, something a video game has a much harder time doing. It also makes it easier to put them in "running on walls" poses, and you can vary their height for dramatic effect a lot more easily.
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Oct 9, 2017 03:02
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