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nessin
Feb 7, 2010

Bhodi posted:

Surprised there's nothing for Astroneer. I picked it up on the steam sale, I gather there was a big automation update?

I played for a few hours, my biggest problem so far is figuring out when hitting a tether Y junction which path leads back to civilization, how to carry all these materials with a 8 slot backpack, and how to make circular ramps leading down. Any tips?

I usually didn't find it hard to remember the way home but when it was confusing I'd just bite the bullet and plot down a second pole right next to the original to represent the way home. As already stated, don't try and make compact downward ramps, do long slopes. By the time you need to go so deep that a long straight-ish ramp is a problem (just out so sheer walking distance) you'll be using a vehicle with a drill attachment and the extra distance doesn't matter at that point. One way to get more carrying capacity is manually drag a module with slots down with you. It's a bit tedious but you can grab just about any storage module and either walk slowly or grab it and move it forward, drop it, then run past it, turn around, grab it again, and repeat. Then attach the containers to it and drag it back with you home. You'll also get a tractor later where you can attach platforms with storage or that you attach storage modules to and can drive a tractor where you need to go for extra storage.

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Der Kyhe
Jun 25, 2008

Ainsley McTree posted:

An easy way to do this, I've found, is to use nonlethal arrows for the final blow. They do a good chunk of damage so I find it a lot easier to finish the enemy off with a few of those than trying to find the right moment to switch to your fists (pitiful damage so the last sliver of health can take a surprising amount of time) or do a perfectly-timed spartan kick (if you gently caress it up and don't KO the enemy you have to wait for it to come off cooldown; plus it takes an ability slot which you may or may not want for something else).

The latter two options are perfectly valid mind you, I just found the bow easiest personally.

The combo attack while unarmed is also considered non-lethal and does relatively reasonable damage, and parry works also empty handed to recharge that with a quick counter set.

Lunchmeat Larry
Nov 3, 2012

I don't think I ever bothered with recruiting since the best recruits come from quests anyway

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.

Ainsley McTree posted:

An easy way to do this, I've found, is to use nonlethal arrows for the final blow.
I do the same thing. Beating the crap out of someone and then finishing them off with a blunt arrow to the head is easy and reliable and does not kill nearly as many people through severe cranial trauma and bleeding as it really should.

Catzilla
May 12, 2003

"Untie the queen"


Hardspace: Ship Breakers
Don't get stressed about the time limits. You can take as many shifts as you need to clear a work order and there is no penalty for stopping and moving on to a new ship. The only consideration is whether you will break even moneywise at the end of a shift. You need to clear about 500,000 per shift to cover costs.
The number of days that shows in the contracts screen is how long that listing is up for, not how long it is expecting you to compete the contract in.

SolidSnakesBandana
Jul 1, 2007

Infinite ammo
I think its pretty telling that everyone that plays the game says don't worry about the timer, and most of the criticism of the mechanic comes from people who haven't played the game yet

blackguy32
Oct 1, 2005

Say, do you know how to do the walk?
Question for Death Stranding. Is the anti BT pistol better than the hematic grenades?

Foul Fowl
Sep 12, 2008

"Roguelikes"*



*Latest Fad
One Step from Eden

The game is hard. Really hard. It's Mega Man Battle Network style combat taken to its most extreme, so sometimes the screen is just ludicrously flooded with attacks and all you can do is be cool and try to take as little damage as possible. Memorizing enemy patterns is the #1 way at getting better at the game, shortly followed by learning the metagame and what spells and relics synergize well. It takes a while to get good at it.

Learn to know what spells you have in the chamber from the icons on top of your character. Looking at the bottom of the screen will get you killed in the more difficult fights.

As always in these Slay the Spire style games, diluting your deck of spells for no reason is a bad idea. Skip the rewards if they're bad or don't synergize with your deck.

I would strongly recommend you don't look anything up about the metagame. Learning it is incredibly fun and when you put together an OP combo you feel like a genius. You can find some broken combos that will let you breeze through a normal run.

You can choose two spell categories to focus on in your deck menu. This will make spells drop more often from those schools. This is basically always worth doing.

You unlock new characters by beating them as bosses in the 4th area (3-0) and beyond. All the characters play very differently from each other. Give them all a try and focus on the one you enjoy playing the most. Some of the characters have abilities that drastically change the game which will make learning it harder - Saffron's alt loadout can slow time, meaning you can react to most attacks instead of learning their patterns. But this doesn't work for any other character.

After fighting a boss, you can either kill them for more XP and an artifact, or spare them for a big health refill. If you spare them, they will show up during your run to help you. Some don't do much, some are incredibly useful.

Sparing or killing bosses determines what you unlock at the end of a successful run, as well as the final boss of the run. Light mechanical spoilers: If you spare every boss, you will unlock the current character's alternative outfit. If you kill some and spare some you will unlock the character's alternative loadout. If you kill all of them you can loop your run and you will unlock the character's alternative loadout. You can also unlock the characters' outfits with various achievements.

Sometimes one of the paths is highlighted in red. This increases Luck on that path, meaning enemies and drops are both better. It also changes other mechanics: items in the shop will cost health. Watch out for the treasure chests.

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.

blackguy32 posted:

Question for Death Stranding. Is the anti BT pistol better than the hematic grenades?
Depends on what you mean by better. A single grenade is basically a one-hit kill against those floaty invisible guys. The handgun takes... 4 to 6 shots, I think? The upside is that it's a gun, so you can shoot farther and without worrying about arcing. Not sure what else to say about that.

blackguy32
Oct 1, 2005

Say, do you know how to do the walk?

Cardiovorax posted:

Depends on what you mean by better. A single grenade is basically a one-hit kill against those floaty invisible guys. The handgun takes... 4 to 6 shots, I think? The upside is that it's a gun, so you can shoot farther and without worrying about arcing. Not sure what else to say about that.

Grenades it is then. Thanks.

Brother Tadger
Feb 15, 2012

I'm accidentally a suicide bomber!

Cardiovorax posted:

Depends on what you mean by better. A single grenade is basically a one-hit kill against those floaty invisible guys. The handgun takes... 4 to 6 shots, I think? The upside is that it's a gun, so you can shoot farther and without worrying about arcing. Not sure what else to say about that.

Hold down the R2 trigger to increase the power of each shot. Lv2 and custom hematocrit grenades seem a little more powerful and are space-conscious w/ pouches

Zushio
May 8, 2008
Yeah, the regular blood grenades, and their upgrades, remain incredibly powerful the entire game.

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.

1redflag posted:

Hold down the R2 trigger to increase the power of each shot. Lv2 and custom hematocrit grenades seem a little more powerful and are space-conscious w/ pouches
This does cost you more blood, mind, so that increase in firepower does not come for free.

A Real Happy Camper
Dec 11, 2007

These children have taught me how to believe.
Eventually you can get grenade pouches that let you carry a stack of grenades more or less for free, so hematic grenades are always worth keeping on hand. They're also the easiest way to deal with a BT if you get caught.

Guns in general aren't great except for the non-lethal ones, imo. You can still use blood to make them effective against BTs, and the last thing you want to do is leave a bunch of corpses around.

The bola gun is super OP, though. Once you get an upgrade that helps you deal with BTs, you can trivialize any stealth section. A headshot is a guaranteed knockout, and anyone you hit with it can be kicked and knocked out easily.

My usual loadout was as many hematic grenades as I could carry, a bola gun and a non-lethal assault rifle if I had room.

A Real Happy Camper fucked around with this message at 12:15 on Jul 1, 2020

Lobok
Jul 13, 2006

Say Watt?

I'm no pro but yeah I was basically never without a bola gun and a pouch full of hematic grenades (the grenade pouch is great).

girl dick energy
Sep 30, 2009

You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?
My addiction to tower defense games strikes again.

Bloons Tower Defense 6
- Most resources gaining towers and upgrades recoup their costs after ~15-20 rounds. They’re mostly useful on higher difficulties, or if you plan to go into endless mode after you complete the main waves.
- Tower XP gain seems to be drastically reduced in endless/freeplay mode.
- Once you start getting them, your first three points of Monkey Knowledge should go into the right side of the Magic skill tree, to the node that passively increases premium currency gains.
- Experiment with other heroes and towers, you might find something you really like and never would’ve thought to use.
- Despite having a price tag, the game is paced like an F2P. Expect to be spending a long, long time pecking away at the metaprogression if you don’t want to shell out real cash for it.

tensai
May 8, 2007

Just trying to keep my boyfriend away from that redheaded harlot.
Anyone have something for Rebel Galaxy Outlaw? I just started it and seems like it could be really cool if I knew what the hell I was doing.

Hwurmp
May 20, 2005

tensai posted:

Anyone have something for Rebel Galaxy Outlaw? I just started it and seems like it could be really cool if I knew what the hell I was doing.

Hwurmp posted:

A combination of Photon Cannons and Auto-Cannons is the best possible balance of DPS and energy efficiency. Plus the ACs make a nice BOOM BOOM BOOM sound.
Gauss Guns can also be good--they have the best range and shot speed, making them very accurate against fighters. I always come back to Auto+Photons, though.

Try to focus on the Bountiful Vista quest line, which starts in the Eureka system. Building the station up will eventually unlock unique ships and missile weapons with extra capacity.

Omi no Kami
Feb 19, 2014


This might be too specific for BIP, but in Metro: Exodus how essential is exploration? I'm most of the way through Volga and I honestly wish I'd just sprinted for the NPC quests/main progression stuff instead of systematically looting the map.

haldolium
Oct 22, 2016



Omi no Kami posted:

This might be too specific for BIP, but in Metro: Exodus how essential is exploration? I'm most of the way through Volga and I honestly wish I'd just sprinted for the NPC quests/main progression stuff instead of systematically looting the map.

If you have enough resources and all the gun parts you want, then it's not essential. You may miss out on some cool locations and events but otherwise it's not needed. The maps will get more linear later on so you don't have to worry about it too much.

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.
"Essential" is a bit of a vague term. I'd call it pretty essential because exploring all those big-rear end levels which you are presented with is what the game is pretty much all about. Going through the game without doing that is missing half of what makes it fun and interesting. If you are feeling bored by that, though, then yeah, you really only need to do as much of it as you feel is necessary to keep up with the difficulty curve.

Omi no Kami
Feb 19, 2014


In a way I wish exploration was better incentivized because yeah, the game's frigging beautiful and I would love to have a really engaging excuse to clean it out, but since I'm fine on weapons and ammo it feels like every single question mark in Volga was an identical loop of punch bandit/ghoul, pick up 20-30 parts and chemicals, repeat. If I'm not missing out on really interesting environmental storytelling or critical progression (e.g. guns or attachments that make my life easier) it's easy to just explore until I get sick of it, but I was worried about screwing myself over if the difficulty curve assumed that I was going to be cleaning everything out.

ahobday
Apr 19, 2007

Omi no Kami posted:

In a way I wish exploration was better incentivized because yeah, the game's frigging beautiful and I would love to have a really engaging excuse to clean it out, but since I'm fine on weapons and ammo it feels like every single question mark in Volga was an identical loop of punch bandit/ghoul, pick up 20-30 parts and chemicals, repeat. If I'm not missing out on really interesting environmental storytelling or critical progression (e.g. guns or attachments that make my life easier) it's easy to just explore until I get sick of it, but I was worried about screwing myself over if the difficulty curve assumed that I was going to be cleaning everything out.

This is how I ended up feeling about Sleeping Dogs: I was happy to let the open world act as a very expensive back drop to what was a linear story and set of missions. It added flavour to the world, and interesting background events, but I didnt end up stopping to take part in much of it after some initial stuff.

My Lovely Horse
Aug 21, 2010

That is exactly how I'm treating Rockstar games these days.

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'm treating RDR2 the other way around: a big ol' world for loving around in at my leisure while ignoring the plot except in as far as it gates my access to certain types of items.

Lunchmeat Larry
Nov 3, 2012

ahobday posted:

This is how I ended up feeling about Sleeping Dogs: I was happy to let the open world act as a very expensive back drop to what was a linear story and set of missions. It added flavour to the world, and interesting background events, but I didnt end up stopping to take part in much of it after some initial stuff.
my memory of sleeping dogs, while a good game, is that the other... three islands? after the first one basically had no side content anyway and really were just backdrop. Wasn't a problem and probably would've treated them that way anyway, but definitely seemed like they ran out of money/time and decided (correctly) to focus on the main story

Der Kyhe
Jun 25, 2008

Cardiovorax posted:

I'm treating RDR2 the other way around: a big ol' world for loving around in at my leisure while ignoring the plot except in as far as it gates my access to certain types of items.

Its also annoying that in single player campaign there is no point at which the entire map is available and all collectibles are completable if you want to do it as Arthur while still inside the actual story.

EDIT: So my tip is to not overtly worry about getting collectibles done before you hit the end credits, because most of the collectibles have stuff in the Blackwater in South and its soft-locked until way way way into the overall story.

But do keep in mind that "Banking, the Old American Art " is a sort of point of no return, so take that mission only when you definitely want to advance the story because for the next several hours you will be railroaded into a side story after which some things are no longer available. Its the next mission after the one in which you assault a residence and which ends with a body being tossed from boat into the swamps.

Der Kyhe fucked around with this message at 15:12 on Jul 6, 2020

Omi no Kami
Feb 19, 2014


ahobday posted:

This is how I ended up feeling about Sleeping Dogs: I was happy to let the open world act as a very expensive back drop to what was a linear story and set of missions. It added flavour to the world, and interesting background events, but I didnt end up stopping to take part in much of it after some initial stuff.

What's interesting is that Alan Wake's devs were one of the rare teams who actually figured that out before it shipped. It was originally supposed to be an open world game with dynamic day/night cycles, but the devs realized that a) 90% of daytime was spent waiting for night, and b) nothing in the game actually leveraged the open world stuff. So they remixed it as a linear survival horror game at the last minute and basically just duct-taped all of the open world switches in the off position- if you boundary break or find a way to kill the scripting the whole town is usually explorable, and you can gently caress with the sun and stuff. It makes me feel bad for the devs who worked really, really hard to get all of that working, then realized it was a terrible idea.

El_Elegante
Jul 3, 2004

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
Biscuit Hider
We should be proud of them. Status quo bias and sunk cost fallacy are powerful things.

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 hate Alan Wake as a game, but I can respect that they were willing to look at what they made and acknowledge that it just didn't work as intended. I think it still doesn't, but as an open world game, it would've been worse.

Omi no Kami
Feb 19, 2014


It's a weird game for me- I should like it, weird survival horror stuff is totally up my alley, but it's always been one of those things where I respect it more than like it, because I was never able to get hype enough to push through the whole game.

Discendo Vox
Mar 21, 2013

We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.
The core loop is very limited and the written narrative gets exhausting fast

haldolium
Oct 22, 2016



Omi no Kami posted:

What's interesting is that Alan Wake's devs were one of the rare teams who actually figured that out before it shipped. It was originally supposed to be an open world game with dynamic day/night cycles, but the devs realized that a) 90% of daytime was spent waiting for night, and b) nothing in the game actually leveraged the open world stuff. So they remixed it as a linear survival horror game at the last minute and basically just duct-taped all of the open world switches in the off position- if you boundary break or find a way to kill the scripting the whole town is usually explorable, and you can gently caress with the sun and stuff. It makes me feel bad for the devs who worked really, really hard to get all of that working, then realized it was a terrible idea.

Alan Wake started not as a fleshed out game, but as a high level idea of a game world with very little thought into how the actual game should be. It's tech demo from 2005 was then both shown to publishers as a pitch as well as to the public, and the struggle of Remedy creating a Alan Wake was more complex then someone saying "whoops, OW suxx lets make it linear!" The fact that Microsoft got involved didn't help either.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoHkGDu0_Hw

Lake even says that in the end, AW benefited from having the world build instead of having been linear from the beginning.

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.
It does make it feel weirdly rich and fully-modelled for the kind of game Alan Wake is, which always struck me as a bit incongruous. The sheer expansiveness of the game world vis a vis the limited parts of it that you get to visit makes a lot more sense knowing that it was originally designed to be far more open than it is.

Whether that actually improved the game that it would've been otherwise, though? I would actually say it doesn't. The thing about linear games is that they get to be carefully curated experiences full of dramatic and good-looking setpieces. Alan Wake looks like an open-world game, in that large parts of it are actually incredibly repetitive and samey. A linear game would have had far more visual uniqueness to each area, because the same design team would've been able to spend the same amount of time and attention to detail on only a fraction as much game-world real estate.

It's the biggest weakness of open world games as a genre and Alan Wake is a great example of why only open world games can get away with being designed like that.

Omi no Kami
Feb 19, 2014


This is a weird connection to make, but this is reminding me of how Deadly Premonition was supposed to be a walking simulator, then someone (I believe the publisher?) expressed concern that it wouldn't sell in the west without combat, so they shoehorned in some repetitive, astonishingly bad combat sections that were directly responsible for me and a ton of other people bouncing off of a game that would've worked great with just the walking and talking.

Then again, I'm not sure if Alan Wake would've benefited from a similiar treatment- it was visually neat and the writers obviously had a ton of ideas, but one of the reasons I didn't get far was because from the very first chapter it seemed like they were going for either a JJ Abrams mystery box approach, or just throwing a ton of ideas at the screen without sorting them into a coherent story. This seems to be a recurring thing with Remedy- they always strike on really interesting worldbuilding or ideas that are fun enough to partially make up for severely flawed gameplay or botched execution.

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 think calling it an adventure game would be more fitting, because even without the combat, Deadly Premonition would have had far too much gameplay to fall into what is commonly called a walking sim. Pure adventure games have become very unpopular for some reason, so it's non uncommon to see developers tack some perfunctory combat onto a game that would have really worked fine without it.

pentyne
Nov 7, 2012

Omi no Kami posted:

This is a weird connection to make, but this is reminding me of how Deadly Premonition was supposed to be a walking simulator, then someone (I believe the publisher?) expressed concern that it wouldn't sell in the west without combat, so they shoehorned in some repetitive, astonishingly bad combat sections that were directly responsible for me and a ton of other people bouncing off of a game that would've worked great with just the walking and talking.

Then again, I'm not sure if Alan Wake would've benefited from a similiar treatment- it was visually neat and the writers obviously had a ton of ideas, but one of the reasons I didn't get far was because from the very first chapter it seemed like they were going for either a JJ Abrams mystery box approach, or just throwing a ton of ideas at the screen without sorting them into a coherent story. This seems to be a recurring thing with Remedy- they always strike on really interesting worldbuilding or ideas that are fun enough to partially make up for severely flawed gameplay or botched execution.

I played Alan Wake and Deadly Premonition and it is 100% that the combat in both games feels like a distraction from the main game of exploring the mystery of the town.

Alan Wake the combat is decent and easy to pick up and have fun with the light mechanics but gets repetitive very fast.

Deadly Premonition combat is loving trash and they knew it which is why you can so easily find infinite ammo versions of the weapons very early on.

John Murdoch
May 19, 2009

I can tune a fish.

Lunchmeat Larry posted:

my memory of sleeping dogs, while a good game, is that the other... three islands? after the first one basically had no side content anyway and really were just backdrop. Wasn't a problem and probably would've treated them that way anyway, but definitely seemed like they ran out of money/time and decided (correctly) to focus on the main story

Sleeping Dogs was borne from the canceled True Crime Hong Kong, so yeah, pretty much. This also shows in how the narrative starts to fracture a bit 3/4s through the game before getting back on track.

Though I will say that pretty much all GTA-style games suffer from the problem of the world itself being, at best, pretty but empty. Even one of the most well-regarded, Saints Row 2's Stilwater, is still mostly just filled with neat diversions and easter eggs rather than lots and lots of tangible stuff to do in any given location. And all of that only came about because they were able to flesh out the city after having already built out the core assets for 1.

Omi no Kami
Feb 19, 2014


I think Evil Within 2 is my favorite version of what Metro Exodus tried to do, where you have a quasi-open area you can explore to your hearts' content and several missions to do as you master that area, but the story is timed so around the time you've been everywhere and seen everything, the story moves the heck on and dumps you in a new open area.

Of course, that's also apparently really expensive and time-consuming to do well, so it usually results in stuff like EW2 where it opens with a huge, immaculately-designed area, segues into a few tighter and more restricted areas, then just kinda gives up and throws FF13 at you for the back half.

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Dr. Quarex
Apr 18, 2003

I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA
One advantage to Alan Wake being open-world might have been if you did not lose your entire inventory every time a stiff breeze blew past you or you decided to go anywhere or do anything

Also that "jogging through oatmeal" movement speed would have been even more astoundingly terrible in an open-world game, though maybe that was another thing they changed?

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