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Sex Wizardry: Cuck Rising You all voted on Bertha the old lady sex wizard. The thread was unanimous.  Woman, of course.  I drop her agility as our mandatory Age Penalty because I think "oh, we won't be using guns, we don't need it." This will bite me in the rear end...very soon, actually!  The wonderful thing about the Depraved Occultist is that you can just google all the artifacts on the internet as you still get the bonuses/penalties without them being discovered, so it's actually not a meaningful drawback at all!  There was a lot of waffling in the thread about which philosophy to pick, I went with materialism as that is more babbling about cringey sex poo poo.  Anyway here's Bertha the Dan Brown sex occultist. This is one of those games where you can take a bunch of skills and you have to predict which skills the game wants for which encounter. Medicine and Science can be used for a fair bit, and also lets us craft crack pipes. Really. Occult is set to the max of 2 because we are a mage, and that's our casting skill. Melee is 2 because ammo is super rare in this game, and I forgot how the shield spell my gimmick build was supposed to work around works. Subterfuge lets us pick locks, but it runs off agility and thus...we can't actually use it. A+ game design.  The loading screen has this kind of neat comic book motif where the heroes are getting chased by the game's KKKultists. Enough of that, we have an intro.  Really! It really does this! It's voice acted too! They're trying to do a cool, spooky fade in and some jackass left the subtitles, in addition to the opening title scrawl. Don't worry, it gets worse! "But, TheGreatEvilKing, you handsome devil, how can it get worse?"  Ok, that's the first screen. Keep watching!  HOW DO YOU DO THIS????  They even spelled "loved" correctly in the captions! Why do these subtitles exist?  Now, welcome to the only part of the game that's actually effective.  It's the dismal man!  Alright, let's follow him.  We can't just walk outside, we need to go over and pick up the glowing lantern in the corner.  We go into the Old Eel House proper, and the Dismal Man leads the way. The game is silent aside from the clacking of feet and canes, and it actually works!  Follow the creepy man!  These ghosts show up and start approaching each other as the game plays a waltz.   The music starts wailing as the ghostly couples start murdering the poo poo out of each other, while the Dismal Man walks into the ruined Miskatonic University. This is the standard Lovecraft institute of higher learning that has your forbidden books of lore that our protagonists find to deal with whatever hellish abomination some idiot conjured up this week. More on Lovecraft and the game later.   Oh, it was only a dream. A dream that lost us 15 sanity. Of course this game has sanity mechanics, why wouldn't it? Sanity also doubles as our mana bar because the game wants to make spellcasting dangerous and scary. It is, for entirely the wrong reasons.  Anyway, here we go! We start with 200 Cigs, our secret society medallion, a doctor's bag for doing medicine stuff, a blank notebook, 3 cans of food, camping supplies, and some water. We are wearing the purple dress we got for being an occultist. We have a ceremonial knife and a laudanum shot, which is the equivalent of a health potion in other, better games.  Welcome to the old Eel House! The couples at the table don't want to talk to us. Let's talk to the bartender, shall we?   YUP! The first line of dialog said by the first NPC is "Good morning, cuck". Really! That's what cornuto means!  : Can you separate dream from reality anymore? : Oh I see, Cornuto is quite a philosopher...I find my own view simpler and more effective: Whether this is dream or reality or loving inferno, the question is, can you die?: If you can kick the bucket, which is definitely still the case my friend, I guess this is real enough. But if you want to give it a shot, I can spare you a pistol. : This trick is getting old, Marino. : I pay for your accommodations, however poor they may be.: Poor? I guess my rather poor services are still much better than being eaten by ghouls in a dark corner of a street, cornuto. They eat you alive, you know. : You are really a good example of how low a person can go.: Oh, please spare me your sharp wit. Later cornuto.Let's talk to Marino to see why we have earned the appellation "cornuto", shall we?  : Why do you call me cornuto, Marino? : But what is a cornuto? : This is getting boring. Oops.  Time to reload! We can't talk to Marino, which means we can't stay here and we can't buy his stuff.  : What does this have to do with me, Marino?: When I was the bartender of Isola, a small Italian bar in Chicago, a man used to come in there every evening. Every single day.: He didn't drink, he didn't seem to have any fun, he just kept looking at the patrons silently. Looking for someone.: Then, after almost a year, I learned his story. He was looking for the man who hosed his wife. He came to that bar every day, staring silently...You're like him. Interesting. He calls us "my friend" instead of cornuto. : Someone hosed us all. Don't you see?: Like I care. If we ask him for a drink, that opens the shop interface. If we try to rest in the attic he laughs at us because it's occupied. : What is the story of the Old Eel?: Do I seem like the loving chitty-chat kind of bartender, cornuto? They say an old drunk opened the place after a dream or something forty years ago. Satisfied? : Tell me about this Wax Face.: Not a smart question at all, cornuto. Just remember he is the king on this side of the Miskatonic. He is the boss of the Mob, the Unseen Imperatore. : What is the Mob doing in a remote New England town? : I'll keep my mouth shut. You can trust me.: I trust only the dead when it comes to these things. Forget it.We end the conversation. TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
 This guy in the corner is an insane darts playing man. We don't have the skills to beat him. If you have a high agility you can beat him, and then he throws a dart at you dealing health damage and runs off crying. This gets you an achievement and an encounter later where he tries to murder you with poison darts. Whatever.  Welp. Join us next time as we visit the wonderful world of Arkham! TheGreatEvilKing fucked around with this message at 07:00 on Jun 6, 2020 |
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Jun 4, 2020 01:38
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I tried the Stygian demo for like five minutes when it first came out, and thought the game seemed neat. I can't believe how wrong you've proven me already.
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Jun 4, 2020 02:01
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Mhm. If I remember my first (and quickly abandoned) run right, playing a marine with the "right" build can get your character in a very bad spot from the word go thanks to that initial sanity damage. I'll maintain I had fun, but it involved turning my back on the sanity mechanics as much as possible.
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Jun 4, 2020 02:37
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You can really tell how Edgy Hardcore And Adult Themed this game is by the fact they worked in "gently caress" like nine separate times into the first dozen text boxes.
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Jun 4, 2020 02:53
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Well, this is interesting. But my concern is the full-screen screenshots you are using are making the text boxes too small for me to properly read. I'm not sure how/if you should go about fixing it, but it is there.
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Jun 4, 2020 02:59
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I have a bit of the same problem where the writing is too narrow for the size of the screenshots. Flubs like that opening screen with the redundant (and wrong) subtitles makes me wonder if anyone ever actually playtested it. That just feels wrong from the word go, how do you miss something like that?
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Jun 4, 2020 04:48
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:and an encounter later where he tries to murder you with poison darts.
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Jun 4, 2020 05:42
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Hmm. I can try to transcribe more dialogue, I suppose? I'm still providing summaries so that you can skip all the mature and adult dialogue that was written by teenagers.
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Jun 4, 2020 05:53
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MagusofStars posted:You can really tell how Edgy Hardcore And Adult Themed this game is by the fact they worked in "gently caress" like nine separate times into the first dozen text boxes. That's just how some of us speak.
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Jun 5, 2020 09:12
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So as it turns out, this very game is on Humble Choice for this month, on the off chance you want to play along.
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Jun 5, 2020 18:54
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BisbyWorl posted:So as it turns out, this very game is on Humble Choice for this month, on the off chance you want to play along.
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Jun 5, 2020 19:05
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Excellent choice by the writers backing themselves into a corner immediately within the first two lines of dialogue. You see, cornuto only works as an insulting nickname to a man. Because toxic macho culture, Italians with the fiery Latin blood and so on, don't get me started. You would not hear it slung around like that, or it wouldn't be a regular nickname at the very least for a woman. You can call a woman cornuta, but you can't really make it as a regular thing because it's an insult steeped in gender roles, and you'd at most stick it on top of a bunch of others. But they just loved the idea of your Italian bartender calling you a cuckold, and they didn't really care to make it work to even account for gender differences that they themselves put into their game. Good start, will wait for more.
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Jun 5, 2020 20:17
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I doubt it would reach Pokemon Reborn levels of bad/hateful but I’m curious to see how unlikeable they’ll make every character.
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Jun 6, 2020 00:13
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can't wait for cucktender to be based on a real guy who likded saying cuck a lot
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Jun 6, 2020 00:21
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Call of Cuckthulhu for with strange aeons even cucks may gently caress
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Jun 6, 2020 00:25
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Reign of the Bad Coding So I am trying these guys as PNG instead of JPEG because things were a little blurry. Hope it improves! Today I demonstrate how to make Stygian unwinnable.  Welcome to Arkham! Get used to this map, as much of the game is spent running around the three Arkham screens until events fire to do things. If I haven't made it clear, this game is terrible.  The first thing you want to do is loot the trash. You might need those cigs! You will need those cigs!  Remember when I said Stygian was a land of Cthulhu and prostitutes? We just passed Cthulhu, so...  : Sure, I could use some relief. Prostitutes prefer lesbians, you heard it here first. : Understood. Let's go. I am really glad this game didn't give us a drawn sex scene or worse, one written in Lovecraftian prose.  That's a third of our lost sanity back! We also got 3 earlier from asking darts guy about a prize, because that is "materialistic" or something.  : How did you become a, uhm, you know... : A whore, you mean? Why the shyness now? We were moaning on a filthy street corner moments ago, darling. I know what you call me and I don't care.: You think I was someone else before the Black Day? Not at all. I just continued what I've been doing. Nothing changed in that regard, and I'd lived to see all those respectable ladies fall... : They will pay for their deeds one day, don't worry.: Will they? Good-bye, darling.TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
Ugh. This really just screams of the need to make this game "adult" like Marino calling you cornuto and whatnot. One of the notable things about Lovecraft's stories is that they're incredibly sexless. The narrators are usually all sheltered Lovecraft self-inserts and women appear rarely if at all. I would not harp on this so much if the game wasn't dedicated to clinging to the trappings of Lovecraft so hard leading to an awkward mishmash of all things Lovecraft. The game is set in Arkham near Miskatonic University in the 1920s. Lovecraft wrote about that era because that was the era in which he lived. His successors write about that era because they're unimaginative hacks. I know you all are curious about what powerful sex magic Bertha knows, so let's take a look, shall we?  See anything missing? Say, attack spells? That's right! Stygian starts you off with no attack spells whatsoever. You have the Evil Eye spell you will never use because it throws down a mediocre debuff, and Blood Circle, which is actually kind of hardcore but you need 8 AP to cast it. That is more AP then most characters get, which means that you will continue casting till your next turn rolls around. Any successful attack breaks the circle, which means that for Bertha this is completely loving useless unless our enemies are melee only or we dope her up with cocaine.  Honest Bill's pawnshop is our next destination, as I want to buy Bertha a crowbar.   : Who are you? : Cortellinis? : I see. : Is Charley the smiling blond fellow? : Another thing. : Get lost. You ain't no buyer, just a loving time waster.Well, gently caress you too. We have to talk to him again.  : I'd like to trade.: If you got the Cigs. And don't forget that the Mob pays good money for bullets.Whatever. I buy a crowbar. This guy is your main source of guns and ammo. There's a junk dealer who sells homemade pistols and poo poo. Hit this guy first. TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
Joe also sells this:  Moving on!  There's a short cutscene where the ground shakes and it makes these guys very sad.  To progress the plot we need to grab that key on the ground where the Dismal Man left.  Welcome to the real Stygian experience: aimlessly wandering around until something happens! Meet Eduardo.  : Are you following me? : No, no senora. But I cannot help to notice about you the scent of danger, of violencía...: You have that scent on you. I've seen you talk to people, asking questions. While others wait for Santa Muerte, you have a mísíon. I don't know what it is, but you know the time will come and blood be spilled, no? : Some of my enemies may not be human... : What do you want in return? Ah, yes, the lovely immature option. : I've seen how you stare at me. Does it have a price, too? : How much for bodyguard duty? : Deal. Follow me.: Bueno. Lead the way, senora. Eduardo Carnela, your angel protector is by your side.TheGreatEvilKing summarizes posted:
 Eduardo joined the party. You want Eduardo because he has a bitchin gun and free ammo. You might notice he doesn't take up one of our three party slots, he is a "henchmen" and thus doesn't count against our party limit. The regular party members do. We have two slots, there are three party members in the game.  Moving on to the next screen we get a cutscene where this mafia guy shoots the dude for looking at him and goes into the club-turned-"crime fortress". Whatever. We don't care about that. We have an antique shop to go to.  RIP Random Guy. You no longer have to be in Stygian. Would that we were so lucky.  Our destination is Schmidt's Antiques.   : That's a very nice collection of keys you have. : Why the interest in keys? : What changed after the Black Day? : I'll feel better knowing why you want them so badly. : Very well. After the Black Day, like many others, I lost all hope. With no reason to go on, I decided to end it... you know what I mean.: But what I desired most is forbidden to men. For days I fasted and prayed for Hashem's forgiveness, determined to end this misery of an existence...: I passed out from hunger and exhaustion, and then I dreamt of two keys. One was gold and burning, though it was only warm to the touch. : Go on.: They were the keys to the temple of Solomon! I felt the Light inside me. Oh. Hashem... He spoke to me. (The old man's eyes widen and lose focus, as if he were in a trance). : How can a bunch of keys help you escape? : If the pay is good we can share that dream. This is what the belief choices affect - if Bertha acts like a greedy, horny rear end in a top hat we get sanity points back. We want sanity points.  : What do you know about this key? : From a mysterious man, but I found it because of a dream. Long story. : It is not for sale. : Tell me about it first and I'll think about it.: Forgive me but I don't trust people easily. This particular habit also helped me tremendously in staying alive.Then we're taken back to the 500 Cigs screen. : I said no. : Don't waste your breath. I won't sell it. : Uh...a thousand for that? Alright, I guess.This is a Bad Idea, but I'm sure we don't need the key to progress and he'll tell us where to go, right?  Look, we got 10 sanity and a thousand Cigs. This rules! We leave the shop and...   Alright, that was funny, I'll load the autosave and -  : I want to buy the key back.You're loving making GBS threads me.  : What have you done with the key, it's not on you...[Subterfuge] Really. We are traumatized enough by not being able to complete the game we gain ANGST.  Really?  gently caress YOU, STYGIAN! TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
Next time: Terrible, terrible combat! TheGreatEvilKing fucked around with this message at 04:43 on Jun 7, 2020 |
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Jun 7, 2020 02:37
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: They hosed, something that never happens in my books.
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Holy poo poo, why did anyone think that was a good idea
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Jun 7, 2020 02:53
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Being able to sell the key is a fine enough way to mess with the players who aren't paying that much attention. But the autosave throwing off to after you sold it is hideously stupid.
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Jun 7, 2020 03:54
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Mh. Yeah. not even gonna try to defend that one. Could've had it turn off auto-save after getting in the failstate, or even have the failscreen pop up before it could autosave, but no. I suppose there are manual saves, but not gonna count those since: 1: it's still early enough a new player might not have manually saved yet, and 2: there weren't always manual saves. Fell in the trap back then? Too bad, start again. ...On a lighter note, got some decent use out of Evil eye for harder to hit enemies. Bullets weren't all that rare, but they are generally expensive enough you don't want to miss with the ones you have. Never really found a time where blood circle was helpful though. Between the high AP cost and not wanting to really stand in one place for too long, it's was a bit of a dud spell.
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Jun 7, 2020 04:06
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oh my god did the game actually autosave after you screwed up the critical path? this is truly inspired 
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Jun 7, 2020 04:06
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I was about to make a joke about Eduardo's phony-rear end ESL dialogue, but then I saw that autosave and had to laugh for a few minutes. This LP is going to be amazing.
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Jun 7, 2020 04:33
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God this sucks so bad. Have there actually been any good Lovecraft-based games? Dark Corners of the Earth nailed the mood but was too janky and badly made to actually enjoy, Call of Cthulhu was incredibly boring, what else was there? Eternal Darkness was Cthulhu with the serial numbers filed off and it owned, there was a turn-based WW1 shooter called something like The Blasted Land that only I seem to remember that was pretty good, what am I missing?
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Jun 7, 2020 05:52
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The original Alone in the Dark was excellent for its time. Don't try to play it now.
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Jun 7, 2020 05:56
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Me, reading the first half of the OP: "huh, this sounds potentially neat, I think that this game was one of the options for humble monthly maybe I should activate i-" Me, reading the rest of the thread: "Oh. Nevermind.
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Jun 7, 2020 06:12
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ultrafilter posted:The original Alone in the Dark was excellent for its time. Don't try to play it now. Play it? I did a blind LP of the whole series. It was terrible
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Jun 7, 2020 07:46
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Crane Fist posted:God this sucks so bad. Have there actually been any good Lovecraft-based games? Dark Corners of the Earth nailed the mood but was too janky and badly made to actually enjoy, Call of Cthulhu was incredibly boring, what else was there? Eternal Darkness was Cthulhu with the serial numbers filed off and it owned, there was a turn-based WW1 shooter called something like The Blasted Land that only I seem to remember that was pretty good, what am I missing? Darkest Dungeon nails that particular atmosphere of madness and despair, but it comes with a bunch of caveats
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Jun 7, 2020 09:11
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Crane Fist posted:Dark Corners of the Earth nailed the mood but was too janky and badly made to actually enjoy Oh so true. I hope someone remakes it someday, there were a lot of good ideas that were terribly implemented.
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Jun 7, 2020 09:12
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Yup, this is where I decided I am not interested in finishing the game. Godspeed.
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Jun 7, 2020 09:13
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mortons stork posted:Darkest Dungeon nails that particular atmosphere of madness and despair, but it comes with a bunch of caveats Darkest Dungeon is one of my favourite games ever but while it's got the lovecraftian horrors from beyond that drive you mad, instead of failing to comprehend the terrible thing from the stars and barely escaping with your life as a gibbering wreck, you smash it in the face with a mace and throw poison bombs at it, which is not the vibe of his work
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Jun 7, 2020 09:25
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Anchorhead is very good Lovecraftian horror, but it’s also a free text adventure. I don’t know anything decent with a higher budget except Eternal Darkness.
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Jun 7, 2020 10:39
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The Sinking City looked like a better Call of Cthulhu but without legal access to the name. Maybe that could float your boat CraneFist. It kinda dropped off my radar, so I don't know much about quality. Maybe some other goon played it?
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Jun 7, 2020 11:09
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Crane Fist posted:God this sucks so bad. Have there actually been any good Lovecraft-based games? Dark Corners of the Earth nailed the mood but was too janky and badly made to actually enjoy, Call of Cthulhu was incredibly boring, what else was there? Eternal Darkness was Cthulhu with the serial numbers filed off and it owned, there was a turn-based WW1 shooter called something like The Blasted Land that only I seem to remember that was pretty good, what am I missing? Dusk
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Jun 7, 2020 11:36
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Oh god this looks to be a glorious trainwreck of a game. I can't wait to see how else it's designed to intentionally screw you over.
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Jun 8, 2020 10:40
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I’m embarrassed to say I bought this game at launch, hungry for any kind of Call of Cthulhu rpg. I enjoyed it for a while. Even made good progress as a nebbish do gooder humanist PI who knew psychology right up until I tried to switch out my party members and they all apparently vanished in a puff of smoke leaving me high and dry. Haven’t touched it since.
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Jun 8, 2020 12:56
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Annndd deleted from my Steam wishlist, this looks real bad in an "It's entertaining to watch, but I don't wanna play it no more" fashion.
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Jun 8, 2020 21:17
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Ratoslov posted:I'm gonna dissent and say that Nihilistic seems like the no-fun-dialogue-options choice, so I suggest instead an esoteric elderly female depraved occultist named Bertha.
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Jun 9, 2020 05:06
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Random Men on Street Break Game By request, I'm putting the update on the test poster instead of directly in the thread. If people like it then I will move the previous updates to the test poster. Stalking! Kabbalah! Banks! Hotels! Prostitutes! Game-breaking bugs! Let me know if I should continue test posting or put the updates in the thread!
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Jun 14, 2020 22:54
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Yeah this is good. Man our mystic background is not doing us any favors huh
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Jun 15, 2020 03:13
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Seraphic Neoman posted:Yeah this is good. Man our mystic background is not doing us any favors huh It's worse than that. I did some playing around with the character generator. Remember how the Cursed Bloodline patrician got a +1 occult? Turns out that that isn't just a free skill point, it's a free skill point that breaks caps. The Outsider is a Cursed Bloodline Patrician, but if we had created a character who was a cursed bloodline patrician, we could have had the same 3 occult to start off with as well. So if you want to be a badboy spellcaster, don't play an occultist, play an aristocrat. Really.
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Jun 15, 2020 04:27
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This new format seems easier to read, so I vote to stick with it. I don't usually laugh out loud when I read LPs, but revealing that "Angst" is a stat/resource in this game was just too much. poo poo is priceless. I will say this much: at this point (that is, almost instantly) in the Tides of Numenara LP, I was already sick of the game's boring-rear end eternal blathering prose. This game has been much more entertaining so far. Don't know if it's been any more entertaining to actually play, and I gotta be honest, I don't really feel like finding out for myself. Thank you for your sacrifice, noble goon!
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Jun 15, 2020 06:41
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