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Oh poo poo, that guy has cost me a ton of money on Steam.
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Oct 22, 2019 12:27
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I do what I can!  You're safe today, though. This one was rear end. SPOOKY GAMES 6: Hellseeker 1. Apsulov: End of Gods 2. Conarium 3. TAMASHII 4. Apparition 5. Secrets of the Maw (DLC) 6. Bad Dream: Coma 7. They Breathe 8. The Final Station 9. Love, Sam 10. Pacify 11. Return of the Obra Dinn 12. Silver Chains 13. Bad Dream: Fever 14. DISTRAINT 2 15. Pamali: Indonesian Folklore Horror 16. Tormentum - Dark Sorrow 17. The Light Keeps Us Safe 18. Kalaban 19. Verde Station 20. Evil 21. Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones 22. Watch This!    I’ve been sitting here for about ten minutes trying to come up with some profound insight to start this review with, as I do with pretty much all my reviews, but you know what? This game is just dumb. Dumb games exist, and I even like a few of them, but others are just so profoundly stupid that they don’t really deserve a complex, in-depth takedown. There’s a seed of a good game buried in the manure of Watch This, a germ of an idea that could make a pretty entertaining romp, and since its release other games have built on the whole “deadly game show” concept. I won’t give Watch This credit for that, though, because it’s really not intelligent enough to have spawned anything in its wake. In the dystopian hell future that Trump is surely dragging us all towards, the hottest new game show in the world is a sort of murder maze take on The Running Man. You are deposited into a twisting labyrinth of pipes, catwalks, spikes, grinders, and more, and are tasked with finding your way out alive. There’s money tucked away all over the place though, and the more you score the more fabulous prizes you can escape with. But you’ll also need to find keys to reach the exit, and finding them may put you in the path of the maze’s deadly denizens. With a little bit of luck and some help from magic powers, you just might walk away with a grand prize or two. All of this is explained up front in a corny, awkward, and possibly racist animated sequence that also features the likenesses of Vladimir Putin and a triple-breasted alien. Trying to make a game funny with memes and edgy humor is almost always worse than playing it straight, and the “jokes” in Watch This just sap my patience for the rest of the game. And that’s a problem, because the randomly-generated mazes you scoot around are claustrophobic messes of confusing chambers and boring hallways. I found it impossible to keep my bearings or any sense of direction at all, which led to wandering around until I stumbled across a key, a door, or death. None of the traps are any more interesting than crushers or conveyors over spike pits, yet somehow the enemies are the weakest part of this package. There are a couple flavors, like the naked green mutant, the random ninja guy, and the genuinely cool TV brute, but they all follow roughly the same pattern, which is chasing directly after you. They can’t climb or jump, which is a real problem in levels with so many ladders and platforming challenges. Really if you can hold out until you reach a vertical room, you’ll leave your foes impotently pacing while you hustle off to other parts of the maze. The only things that will kill you are spiked floors if you flub a jump, and crushers if you’re not paying the least bit of attention. So that’s it, running through boring, confusing mazes and collecting junk. It’s not scary or challenging, and it sure as hell isn’t funny, which doesn’t leave much reason to play it at all. I honestly expected a bit more from Watch This, considering how clean and detailed the graphics are, but that’s literally the only place this game isn’t terrible. The developers might have realized this, which is why the store screenshots are all just boring scenes of rooms and halls. It’s a sad truth that meme games are often only as fun as their memes are, and the garbage that this one is built around isn’t enough to prop up a Flash game, much less a full product like this. Too Shy Guy fucked around with this message at 18:21 on Oct 22, 2019 |
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Oct 22, 2019 16:25
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AI War 2 just dropped out of early access and holy poo poo that launch discount, Arcen games must be desperate for some cashflow.
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Oct 22, 2019 16:26
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StrixNebulosa posted:AI War 2 just dropped out of early access and holy poo poo that launch discount, Arcen games must be desperate for some cashflow. In the Kickstarter announcement a few days ago Chris Park, the creator of Arcen, mentioned that he had one cash-positive month in 3-4 years. There will be DLC, so he's probably banking on those sales for the real cash.
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Oct 22, 2019 16:31
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bbcisdabomb posted:In the Kickstarter announcement a few days ago Chris Park, the creator of Arcen, mentioned that he had one cash-positive month in 3-4 years. There will be DLC, so he's probably banking on those sales for the real cash. Arcen games is my favorite disaster indie dev, they will always make weird interesting games and they will always be in dire financial straights. On the bright side Thotimx is doing an LP of 2 so I'll be able to learn how it plays before I dive in.
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Oct 22, 2019 16:35
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StrixNebulosa posted:AI War 2 just dropped out of early access and holy poo poo that launch discount, Arcen games must be desperate for some cashflow. Oh wow, forgot about this. How's the game itself?
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Oct 22, 2019 16:49
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It's a much better version of AI War 1, minus some of the more weird DLC stuff like the aRPG mode that took place on entirely different maps with entirely different mechanics. Gameplay wise it's a more streamlined but also deeper version of the first game, with the little gimmick subfactions expanded into actual full blown factions that can conquer systems, build units and have their own agendas. The AI is still nasty as hell, but the UI is better and it's less fiddly. The art is still kinda awful, but now at least it's not a mixture of fantastic hand drawn Tyrian sprites and ultra-high-res model converted sprites. Now everything is a mix of odd things that don't look like there's any coherent connecting thread - which oddly actually means there is a coherent artstyle of "no coherent art style".
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Oct 22, 2019 17:23
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DatonKallandor posted:The art is still kinda awful, but now at least it's not a mixture of fantastic hand drawn Tyrian sprites and ultra-high-res model converted sprites. Now everything is a mix of odd things that don't look like there's any coherent connecting thread - which oddly actually means there is a coherent artstyle of "no coherent art style".
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Oct 22, 2019 17:24
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Hwurmp posted:My top results come from Salvo+Battery. Salvo is one of those weapons that benefits from literally any weapon perk and Battery is the frame that's best suited for it. Salvo doesn't actually benefit in any significant way from additional projectiles, actually; the extra projectiles get applied only to the first fraction-of-a-second burst of missiles, so it's like ten extra missiles at most.
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Oct 22, 2019 17:39
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anilEhilated posted:Yup, there's the Arcen we know and love. I don't know how they managed to make Last Federation because that one looks legitimately good.
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Oct 22, 2019 17:45
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DatonKallandor posted:I don't know how they managed to make Last Federation because that one looks legitimately good.
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Oct 22, 2019 19:01
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I can't figure out how to build lust in breeders of nephelym
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Oct 22, 2019 19:41
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very carefully
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Oct 22, 2019 21:00
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I've been posting a ton of reviews in here so I hope I can be forgiven for just linking this one, but I've been playing The Surge 2 in the background of Spooktober since getting a review key from the publisher and I finally put together a review of it.
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Oct 22, 2019 21:14
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I would disagree with you that Dark Souls offers a stronger motivation than The Surge 2 does. If anything, I would say it is TS2 that feels stronger - instead of being already dead, the world is still very much alive and you can see it break down all around you. Instead of only finding snippets and hints at the people who used to live in the world you explore, you get to see the suffering caused by the catastrophe as it happens, which makes the need to solve the problem feel much more immediate. There's less in the way of a clichéd "prophecied hero, go save the world" plot to it, certainly, but whether by simply escaping or by finding a way to cure the nano-plague, you have plenty of motivation for what you do.
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Oct 22, 2019 21:29
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If you need more Idea Factory games and more Nep in your life, the latest humble bundle has got you covered.
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Oct 22, 2019 22:10
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That bundle is weird. Far as I know Fairy Fencer F Advent Force is a straight upgrade to the original so you are getting the exact same game twice.
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Oct 22, 2019 22:34
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Well, its free. Can't argue with that!
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Oct 22, 2019 22:36
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Pathway is on sale and just received a big update that appears to solve most of the issues it had at launch. Does anyone have an opinion on the latest patch?
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Oct 22, 2019 22:43
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RVWinkle posted:Pathway is on sale and just received a big update that appears to solve most of the issues it had at launch. Does anyone have an opinion on the latest patch? Oh cool! the reviews have gone from mixed to very positive, which is a good sign.
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Oct 22, 2019 22:56
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Older games tend to have more positive recent reviews in general, so I'd wait for the trend to keep up for a week or two before deciding to buy.
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Oct 22, 2019 23:12
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My favorite thing about Arcen games is their weird-rear end tutorialization which involves the devs basically writing their own Gamefaq guides
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Oct 22, 2019 23:19
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I picked up Freeman: Guerrilla Warfare again after not having played it for... oh, a year? It's still a janky FPS-lite version of Mount and Blade. Maybe too janky. Still, having fun getting my little army together and popping dudes in the dome with a sniper rifle in combat. I'm liking it overall, though. The FPS gameplay is decent enough while still making it feel "tactical." You might be able to set an ambush if you really tried.
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Oct 22, 2019 23:53
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two bad games for story-BOO-ktober today. gonna spoil the one of them because no one has ever played this garbage: STAIRS - this one i come to after INFRA, a similar walking sim involving photography.. but this one is a few years older and a few years worse. for starters, you can only photograph 8 things per 'area' whereas INFRA has dozens in each chapter. also the story is bizarrely bad and has a "twist" at the end that is not set up at all. has shoddy stealth with lovely looking creatures that are not remotely scary looking. game is poorly lit as gently caress too. and there's an awful "follow the light" puzzle that is purely trial & error when it starts splitting up into multiple lights. the error kills you Lust for Darkness - this one has an actual budget to it but is still bad. here we have lovecraft by way of hedonism, an erotic cult creating a portal to the elder ones' realm, specifically the elder god that is about lust or something. the game starts with your girlfriend being kidnapped and raped, and then at the end she shouts at you about how she actually loved being given a forced abortion, raped, and then giving birth to the rapists child, and that she deserved it. cool writing, game devs. real cool. this one is also mostly stealth where being caught is an insta-gameover, and the enemies only sometimes have a listening range, and sometimes you can run loudly right by them if they're facing another direction. whatever!
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Oct 23, 2019 00:15
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Oct 23, 2019 00:44
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Trip report! I'm playing AI War 2 right now and I'm really, really impressed. The tutorials are simple but efficient, and then you can just jump into a quick-start and get into the roll of stomping the AI and figuring out which path you want to take through the galaxy. They did an absolutely fantastic job of removing basically all the busy-work and cruft: my fleets replenish themselves, engineers automatically repair and claim things, etc. AI War 1 bogged me down with this to the point that I never played it properly, but in this one I'm actually playing it. And so far I'm having fun. The choices I'm making are along the lines of "do I claim this corner of the galaxy? eh I don't need what it has, I'll go up through this middle region instead" and "ooh I want these kinds of turrets because I have tech invested in them" and "what do I research next, I have 70x v-wings but do I want to make them better? or should the other ship-types get them? hmm"
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Oct 23, 2019 01:56
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The 7th Guest posted:two bad games for story-BOO-ktober today. gonna spoil the one of them because no one has ever played this garbage: But if she got an abortion then how oh never mind
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Oct 23, 2019 02:11
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RBA Starblade posted:But if she got an abortion then how oh never mind it's just so loving dumb, also the new baby has eldritch 'essence' in it or some poo poo
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Oct 23, 2019 02:45
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I just finished a couple games that I think are worth checking out. FutureGrind: quote:Nail the perfect line in the future's most challenging stunt sport! Grab your bike and hit the rails in this stylish stunt-racer all about tricks, skill, and speed. Chain together huge combos on tracks made of floating rails, but watch out: touch the rail of the wrong color and you'll explode! The Journey Down: quote:In a shady corner of Kingsport Bay, at the outskirts of St Armando, Bwana and his trusted sidekick Kito struggle to make ends meet at their run-down gas station. Little do they know that they are about to be thrown into a spine-tingling adventure that will take them far from home and right into a twisting plot of corruption and danger.
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Oct 23, 2019 03:01
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Video games were a mistake
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Oct 23, 2019 03:03
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I hadn't checked this thread in a while and wondered if I had stumbled into the "Bad Steam Games" thread. Ironic considering how many people wandered into that thread thinking it was the normal one
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Oct 23, 2019 03:46
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StrixNebulosa posted:Trip report! I'm playing AI War 2 right now and I'm really, really impressed. The tutorials are simple but efficient, and then you can just jump into a quick-start and get into the roll of stomping the AI and figuring out which path you want to take through the galaxy. They did an absolutely fantastic job of removing basically all the busy-work and cruft: my fleets replenish themselves, engineers automatically repair and claim things, etc. AI War 1 bogged me down with this to the point that I never played it properly, but in this one I'm actually playing it. And so far I'm having fun. The choices I'm making are along the lines of "do I claim this corner of the galaxy? eh I don't need what it has, I'll go up through this middle region instead" and "ooh I want these kinds of turrets because I have tech invested in them" and "what do I research next, I have 70x v-wings but do I want to make them better? or should the other ship-types get them? hmm" I bought AI War 2 immediately since it's Arcen and they're weird and I want them to live and I've been waiting for a successor to AI War for years, but I won't have time to play until the weekend. They'll probably have a couple good patches by then anyhow. It was nine bucks on GOG (maybe b/c I have AI War on there).
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Oct 23, 2019 05:13
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ultrafilter posted:I just finished a couple games that I think are worth checking out. I played Future Grind on the Switch and I was reminded of Uniracers if anyone is familiar with that title. I also give an endorsement for FutureGrind
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Oct 23, 2019 05:59
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I got an extra discount for AI War 2 for owning the first game, so I hopped on that right away. Wound up less than half price, so there would be no point waiting for a half off sale somewhere down the line.
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Oct 23, 2019 09:48
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Hmm, I've got one of those, too, but if the first game is any indication, there is going to be a metric shitload of DLC down the line. Might be better to wait for a bundle again.
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Oct 23, 2019 10:33
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Man, if any one was thinking "I'd really like to go back and play the exact same almost-decade-old game except now it has more identifiable enemies, more perks, can use music from basically any source, but also has procedurally generated spaceships to hunt and collect like hit playstation game monster rancher - each with their own equippable item to unlock to further customise any ship" then Beat Hazard 2 has you covered in spades.
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Oct 23, 2019 11:44
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Yakuza 0 is amazing. Oh my gosh.
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Oct 23, 2019 12:10
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Cardiovorax posted:Hmm, I've got one of those, too, but if the first game is any indication, there is going to be a metric shitload of DLC down the line. Might be better to wait for a bundle again. There's one DLC announced (it contains the rest of the Kickstarter rewards that didn't make it into release and is free for backers) - after that they're out of money and the developer shuts down the studio unless he can get some cashflow. Waiting for more DLC is probably not the best plan.
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Oct 23, 2019 12:19
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Jamfrost posted:Yakuza 0 is amazing. Oh my gosh. its a pretty great game!
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Oct 23, 2019 12:31
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singateco posted:My favorite thing about Arcen games is their weird-rear end tutorialization which involves the devs basically writing their own Gamefaq guides  lol
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Oct 23, 2019 12:59
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