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Awesome!
Oct 17, 2008

Ready for adventure!


wow kentucky route zero is actually getting finished.

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Mordja
Apr 26, 2014

Hell Gem
Has anyone played early-access ARPG Wolcen? Hits 1.0 in a few weeks and it sure is flashy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FdEMGMxtco
The skill system sounds kinda like a more-approachable POE if I'm getting it right.

Shit Fuckasaurus
Oct 14, 2005

i think right angles might be an abomination against nature you guys
Lipstick Apathy
I bought the Straya bundle and I already had two of the games. Let my failure be your success!

Satellite Reign
9NDCD-9ZKNW-K96X7

Machinarium
932D9-7I76M-HABCD

Mr. Fall Down Terror
Jan 24, 2018

by Fluffdaddy

Plastik posted:

Machinarium

thanks! this fills out my aminata collection, i'll play it with my kid!

Artelier
Jan 23, 2015


Plastik posted:


Satellite Reign
9NDCD-9ZKNW-K96X7


Was just thinking of reinstalling XCOM but managed to nab this, I believe it'll scratch the same itch, thank you!

goferchan
Feb 8, 2004

It's 2006. I am taking 276 yeti furs from the goodies hoard.

wafflemoose posted:

Maybe it's the anti-capitalism cynic in me but I feel like the console manufacturers don't really want to push for backwards compatibility anymore is because it's much more easier and more profitable to just make remastered versions of the popular games. After all, you make more money by getting people to buy the same game twice.

It's a fair point, but the optimistic cynic in me says that hopefully the numbers even out to where enough people are stoked about true backwards comparability & able to be converted into console buyers because of it that they find that a worthy feature to pursue. I'm not very hopeful regarding that when it comes to Sony but I'd be really pleasantly surprised if they followed MS's lead on that next-gen

Kevin DuBrow
Apr 21, 2012

The uruk-hai defender has logged on.
Picked up This War of Mine on Green Man Gaming for $2.50, normally $20 on Steam. In my opinion a lot of reviewers went a bit overboard describing how this game truly lets the player experience the horrors of war—but it’s a very fun survival experience with a very gripping story, even if each game is randomized.

Would you recommend the DLC? I’m still having plenty of fun with the base game.

orcane
Jun 13, 2012

Fun Shoe

goferchan posted:

It's a fair point, but the optimistic cynic in me says that hopefully the numbers even out to where enough people are stoked about true backwards comparability & able to be converted into console buyers because of it that they find that a worthy feature to pursue. I'm not very hopeful regarding that when it comes to Sony but I'd be really pleasantly surprised if they followed MS's lead on that next-gen
If you want to sell your new generation of consoles to as many people as possible quickly, the launch line-up has historically been important. I can see it not matter as much this time, because exclusives are less important now vs. big cross-platform titles, and the new consoles are somewhat direct upgrades to the old ones. This makes it easier to have big third-party games lined up for your console launch. On the other hand most of these games are likely to be coming out on the old consoles, too.

Backwards compatibility would increase the number of titles playable on the new console, possibly convincing a sizeable enough number of people to buy it right now instead of in a year or two. It's all about whether that effect is big or important enough to the manufacturer. Remasters work too, but I think they mostly work if the game has already aged some on the old console. It might not work as well at launch because again, people could keep playing the old game on their old console, unless the improvements over the old release are huge (and then most remasters are down to the third-party devs/publishers).

Jamfrost
Jul 20, 2013

I'm too busy thinkin' about my baby. Oh I ain't got time for nothin' else.
Slime TrainerS

Kevin DuBrow posted:

Picked up This War of Mine on Green Man Gaming for $2.50, normally $20 on Steam. In my opinion a lot of reviewers went a bit overboard describing how this game truly lets the player experience the horrors of war—but it’s a very fun survival experience with a very gripping story, even if each game is randomized.

Would you recommend the DLC? I’m still having plenty of fun with the base game.

I can still recall the desperation when I was down to one survivor because my female one couldn't handle witnessing the death of the injured male one that had a gunshot wound which resulted in her suicide.

One old man, scavenging at night for only what's needed and sleeping during the day, because sleeping at night meant violent conflict with looters. Place was ransacked constantly until I managed to recruit others eventually to join me.

And that gunshot wound happened when I botched a robbery for some supplies.

:smith:

Bad decisions haunt me. That was over 5 years ago. I also accidentally killed some innocent people.

Cardiovorax
Jun 5, 2011

I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.
I could never play that game. It always sounds so incredibly depressing.

Leal
Oct 2, 2009
In This War of Mine I went to scavenge at a house that had a man and a woman in it. While sneaking around the lady caught me and she rushed off to get the man, who came down and stabbed my guy. I ran off empty handed with a seriously wounded survivor. While he was resting I had another survivor scavenge elsewhere and we found a broken gun buried in the ground and fixed it up. The original survivor healed up and I sent him back and walked right up to the front door, the lady saw and got the guy again. When the guy showed back up shouting "I THOUGHT I TAUGHT YOU A LESSON LAST TIME" I shot him. The lady runs to his body and starts crying as my survivor wordlessly walks past her and proceeds to take anything of worth.


Then upon coming home


ToxicSlurpee
Nov 5, 2003

-=SEND HELP=-


Pillbug

Cardiovorax posted:

I could never play that game. It always sounds so incredibly depressing.

That's the point, really. It's also what makes it so drat good. It isn't a game you play for fun.

Synthbuttrange
May 6, 2007

You can loot with a clean conscience when its occupying soldiers’ throats you’re slitting in the dark.

If you want even more trauma though theres a dlc that brings kids into the mix

Jamfrost
Jul 20, 2013

I'm too busy thinkin' about my baby. Oh I ain't got time for nothin' else.
Slime TrainerS
Completely unrelated, but I just noticed you can filter reviews by playtime now.

I like.

Cardiovorax
Jun 5, 2011

I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.
Might not be as useful as it sounds. Filtering out low playtimes will probably bias any reviews you read towards people who liked the game, because people who don't like a game don't usually play it for 10+ hours just to tell you how much they hate it. Filter out anyone with two hours or less and you don't get reviews by anyone who disliked the game enough to return it, which is often really useful to know.

HenryEx
Mar 25, 2009

...your cybernetic implants, the only beauty in that meat you call "a body"...
Grimey Drawer
I also have a couple hours of playtime each on a lot of games i've never even installed, because i idled the steam cards ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

DatonKallandor
Aug 21, 2009

"I can no longer sit back and allow nationalist shitposting, nationalist indoctrination, nationalist subversion, and the German nationalist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious game balance."

Mordja posted:

Has anyone played early-access ARPG Wolcen? Hits 1.0 in a few weeks and it sure is flashy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FdEMGMxtco
The skill system sounds kinda like a more-approachable POE if I'm getting it right.

I played through the various pre-release versions a few times. It's really hard to tell how it'll end up when it comes out, because the devs make massive changes between versions. If they manage to actually finish what they've got, it'll be a really neat ARPG. But considering they've struggled with putting in stuff like loot filters over the course of several years, I'd except the UI and controls to be utter jank and that's kind of a problem, especially for this genre.

It does have some really great ideas when it comes to skills though, especially how they made regular left click auto-attacks an actual thing that you might want to do rather than something that you replace the first time you level and then ever use again for the rest of the game. And the boss fights are very good - enemy damage output for telegraphed attacks is very high, so it's got the kind of very active, dodge heavy playstyle that so many current ARPGs aim for, but because active dodge is built in by default it actually works. Not as well as it would if it was direct control rather than click to move, but certainly a lot better than stuff like PoE which is shoehorning that playstyle into a system that really isn't built around it.

DatonKallandor fucked around with this message at 17:36 on Jan 22, 2020

Barry Convex
Sep 1, 2005

Think of the good things, Pim! The good things!

Like Jesus, candy, and crackerjacks! Ice cream and cake and lots o'laffs!
Grandma, Grandpa, and Uncle Joe! Larry, Curly, and brother Moe!

Ugly In The Morning posted:

The one in the TV zone where you have to dodge some rockets and jump on the others was awful.

yeah, that one took a while

I gave up on the boss of Metallic Madness Act 1, with the pillars that constantly try to crush you. cheap poo poo

Shrecknet
Jan 2, 2005


Hey so super-late to the party but in Where the Water Tastes Like Wine, how do you actually do the whistle minigame? I hold down CTRL, the whistle wheel comes up and shows a direction, then I press.... what? Arrows? WASD? Swift Mouse gesture?

Call Your Grandma
Jan 17, 2010

I have ~100 hours in TWoM and it's definitely a unique experience that's worth playing, but it's pretty deeply flawed and I'm hoping that either a sequel or spiritual successor comes along and develops its incredibly strong premise further.

There's loads of content in there, like ~20 scenarios and somewhere around 30 scavenging levels to explore, so you do have to treat it as a game and not a wartime depression simulator if you want to experience all the content, and it just misses a lot of opportunities to reinforce the themes in many respects:

There really aren't any moral grey zones: you meet NPCs you should help (or at least not bother) and NPCs you should kill. Events are always scripted (though several levels can have two different events but the levels will be described differently in the scavenging screen) and the morally good resolution almost always rewards you with the happy person showing you a secret cache of booze or food or something. So you end up with designated "stay away from people and just scavenge on your own" levels and also designated "every one you encounter here is a bad hombre so kill them all and you will have enough guns and ammo that you will never have to worry about looters ever" zones.

Scavenging events always play out the first time you scavenge a level, and a few of the "early game" scenarios require you to go in with certain things to get the good outcome (eg. the supermarket: bring a weapon and you can stop the soldier from raping the other scavenger and now you have an AR that can trivialize all the other bad guys + loads of ammo, or don't bring a weapon and feel bad or one of the early bombed houses: there is a homeless person, if you bring food you can give it to them and they will show you where some items are, if not then you find out they starved the next time you go there. Either you've encountered the scenario before and you know how to resolve it and you are rewarded, or you haven't and you get to feel bad.

The economy is really out of whack, with scavenging items that are basically not worth it at all (eg. sugar, teddy bears (the war child DLC has them as a crafting item for toys for the kids but a handful will last you the entire scenario)), while other items you will want to take regardless of whether you need them or not (eg. medicine and alcohol) because you can trade them to the door-to-door trader for the wood and nails you need for basically everything, and then you're evaluating scavenging material's value not on whether you need it or not, but whether there is a full "stack" available in the level and what the size of the stack is.

The daylight cycle is interesting for the first few days but you rapidly run out of things to do so you just make sure some people go to bed and then wait until they're no longer tired so you can let someone else go to bed. There are lots of crafting things that take time, but they don't take a meaningful amount of time and all the random events take place in the morning so there's little meaningful engagement during the daytime cycle. Here, there's a glimmer of specialized crafting playstyles/strategies (becoming an alcohol trader or an herbalist or a gardener) but they take such a massive material investment that you can't really get to them until the game is over.

Pretty much all of the game's tension comes from the risk of losing your scavenger (and the way the characters are built you end up with one dedicated scavenger because you're going to need six or so scavenging slots per run just for subsistence and running a character with less than ten slots is barely sustainable) and it can happen from one overconfident mistake. But the sense of desperation loses its edge well before you've seen all the content so it ends up being hours of plodding monotony and inventory-swapping puzzles punctuated by "oh gently caress, she died..."

With 100 hours I definitely got a lot out of TWoM, but there is a lot of room to develop a better game from its concepts.

ShootaBoy
Jan 6, 2010

Anime is Bad.
Except for Pokemon, Valkyria Chronicles and 100% OJ.

Shrecknet posted:

Hey so super-late to the party but in Where the Water Tastes Like Wine, how do you actually do the whistle minigame? I hold down CTRL, the whistle wheel comes up and shows a direction, then I press.... what? Arrows? WASD? Swift Mouse gesture?

Arrow keys to follow along with the notes, yeah. When done right, it lets you walk faster.

Mordja
Apr 26, 2014

Hell Gem

DatonKallandor posted:

I played through the various pre-release versions a few times. It's really hard to tell how it'll end up when it comes out, because the devs make massive changes between versions. If they manage to actually finish what they've got, it'll be a really neat ARPG. But considering they've struggled with putting in stuff like loot filters over the course of several years, I'd except the UI and controls to be utter jank and that's kind of a problem, especially for this genre.

It does have some really great ideas when it comes to skills though, especially how they made regular left click auto-attacks an actual thing that you might want to do rather than something that you replace the first time you level and then ever use again for the rest of the game. And the boss fights are very good - enemy damage output for telegraphed attacks is very high, so it's got the kind of very active, dodge heavy playstyle that so many current ARPGs aim for, but because active dodge is built in by default it actually works. Not as well as it would if it was direct control rather than click to move, but certainly a lot better than stuff like PoE which is shoehorning that playstyle into a system that really isn't built around it.

Oh yeah, the fact that different weapons have different attack strings sounds cool. It looks like the devs are taking a few elements from character action games tbh. I *might* have played a very early build of it thanks to :filez: or there might have been a KS demo and I remember it being real janky, but the version I've seen in recent footage looks incredibly different.

Ugly In The Morning
Jul 1, 2010
Pillbug

Artelier posted:

Was just thinking of reinstalling XCOM but managed to nab this, I believe it'll scratch the same itch, thank you!

I would recommend still reinstalling XCom.


Satellite Reign is, uh, not great.

Nordick
Sep 3, 2011

Yes.
I think Satellite Reign is a neat little game, but it is absolutely not an XCOM-like.

Too Shy Guy
Jun 14, 2003


I have destroyed more of your kind than I can count.



Yeah it's a really cool attempt at a modern Syndicate, and it's got some great ideas that all kinda fall apart when the shooting starts.

J
Jun 10, 2001

I liked satellite reign :mad:

But yeah it's not like XCOM at all.

K8.0
Feb 26, 2004

Her Majesty's 56th Regiment of Foot

Too Shy Guy posted:

it's got some great ideas that all kinda fall apart when the shooting starts.

So it's exactly like XCOM.

RBA Starblade
Apr 28, 2008

Going Home.

Games Idiot Court Jester

K8.0 posted:

So it's exactly like XCOM.

Sounds like someone panicked

Ugly In The Morning
Jul 1, 2010
Pillbug

Too Shy Guy posted:

Yeah it's a really cool attempt at a modern Syndicate, and it's got some great ideas that all kinda fall apart when the shooting starts.

I really wanted to like it but it just didn’t do it for me. I can’t even put my finger on exactly why.

Sulphagnist
Oct 10, 2006

WARNING! INTRUDERS DETECTED

Ugly In The Morning posted:

I really wanted to like it but it just didn’t do it for me. I can’t even put my finger on exactly why.

Ditto, I played it for maybe five or six hours and then just stopped playing and never picked it up again. It just didn't have pull for me to make me keep playing it.

Sudbina
Mar 17, 2009

Jamfrost posted:

Completely unrelated, but I just noticed you can filter reviews by playtime now.

I like.

It sounds like a good change.

ponzicar
Mar 17, 2008

Cardiovorax posted:

Might not be as useful as it sounds. Filtering out low playtimes will probably bias any reviews you read towards people who liked the game, because people who don't like a game don't usually play it for 10+ hours just to tell you how much they hate it. Filter out anyone with two hours or less and you don't get reviews by anyone who disliked the game enough to return it, which is often really useful to know.

I guess you've never seen those hardcore players with hundreds of hours played who get irrationally angry at a recent patch, nerf, update, or dlc package. Mainly an MMO thing, but they exist for most genres.

"Unbalanced poorly designed garbage!!1! -BonerGoku69 10,000 hours played

Hwurmp
May 20, 2005

ponzicar posted:

-BonerGoku69

please don't doxx me

Artelier
Jan 23, 2015


Ugly In The Morning posted:

I would recommend still reinstalling XCom.


Satellite Reign is, uh, not great.

Yeah...I booted it up yesterday, and I managed to soft lock in the tutorial. Got my guys stuck behind the item that lets me change my loadout and they can't get out. So I went and played Stardew Valley.

I'm going to give Satellite Reigns another shot but that wasn't a great first impression.

explosivo
May 23, 2004

Fueled by Satan

I think Temtem might be great? It might just be that it plays at a steady 144 fps but it feels super polished and they already have a good foundation of a game here for a Pokémon clone that can actually feel new and different.

Jamfrost
Jul 20, 2013

I'm too busy thinkin' about my baby. Oh I ain't got time for nothin' else.
Slime TrainerS
I have my eye on Temtem and Monster Crown to fill that Pokémon hole. Siralim 3 is doing an okay job so far.

Tiny Timbs
Sep 6, 2008

Satellite Reign really disappointed me. I hated spending ages trying to figure out a stealthy approach to a base only to have the AI magically adjust its patrols so they came right next to my guys. On a roof. Using a zip line.

Plus I’m pretty sure enemies could spot you using 3D lines of sight that you couldn’t identify with the overhead camera.

I really wanted to like the game but playing it was such a pain.

Tiny Timbs fucked around with this message at 06:27 on Jan 23, 2020

Shit Fuckasaurus
Oct 14, 2005

i think right angles might be an abomination against nature you guys
Lipstick Apathy

ponzicar posted:

I guess you've never seen those hardcore players with hundreds of hours played who get irrationally angry at a recent patch, nerf, update, or dlc package. Mainly an MMO thing, but they exist for most genres.

"Unbalanced poorly designed garbage!!1! -BonerGoku69 10,000 hours played

I'm this guy for Terraria. I have well over a thousand hours played but I think it's cripplingly addictive and people who don't know should stay away like it's the plague.

Awesome!
Oct 17, 2008

Ready for adventure!


thats funny, i keep meaning to try terraria after watching the agdq run

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KazigluBey
Oct 30, 2011

boner

ponzicar posted:

I guess you've never seen those hardcore players with hundreds of hours played who get irrationally angry at a recent patch, nerf, update, or dlc package.

Arguably that IS a useful bit of feedback: if a lot of long-term players flip, especially enough to affect the Recent Review category, it can indicate something worth looking into has gone down. I've seen it once or twice over sweeping monetization changes, or Early Access games that had been going well suddenly pumping the breaks before they're done.

If it's just one shitlord with 1K hours and an axe to grind over a patch nerfing his favorite thing, well, I think that's pretty parseable as such when compared to the majority of other reviews, which probably won't care.

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