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Kanos posted:It's not bad, but it's also not great. It does a really good job of translating Gears style combat(oohrah big beef hulkmans chainsawing monsters) to a turn based strategy game, and it has some really cool mechanical ideas, but it falls down because it's a completely linear campaign with little variance or reason for replay, the generic troops are utterly replaceable/forgettable, and the loot system loving sucks rear end(literally loot crates with random items with % bonuses to random poo poo bolted to them). Thanks for the info, I probably won't get it rather than just reinstalling XCOM2. Probably the stuff I heard was intended like, "this is surprisingly decent given the genre change and origins" rather than just "this is great"
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Dec 24, 2020 08:24
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Ms Adequate posted:Thanks for the info, I probably won't get it rather than just reinstalling XCOM2. Probably the stuff I heard was intended like, "this is surprisingly decent given the genre change and origins" rather than just "this is great"
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Dec 24, 2020 08:42
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Gears is alright, the animations and solid mechanics are pretty meaty and translate the gears of war feel to the tactical game pretty well, but after half a dozen missions it definitely makes you feel that you could just be playing xcom2 instead.
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Dec 24, 2020 22:19
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it's a competently made game without the slightest hint of inspiration or creativity
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Dec 24, 2020 23:15
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A Christmas miracle: Omori is out
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Dec 25, 2020 15:40
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al-azad posted:A Christmas miracle: Omori is out I bought this blind. I'm 6 hours in. This is amazing. It feels like a Next-Gen Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass
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Dec 29, 2020 11:59
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Squashy posted:I bought this blind. I'm 6 hours in. This is amazing. It feels like a Next-Gen Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass Okay okay, I'll buy it.
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Dec 30, 2020 01:19
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Squashy posted:I bought this blind. I'm 6 hours in. This is amazing. It feels like a Next-Gen Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass Picking this up on the assumption you're referring to the overall atmosphere and tone and not the grindiness
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Dec 31, 2020 06:22
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garfield hentai posted:Picking this up on the assumption you're referring to the overall atmosphere and tone and not the grindiness Not grindy at all. The story is stellar and it's tremendously polished. Great pacing. A game worth playing blind because it's full of surprises. I love the sound design Squashy fucked around with this message at 11:01 on Dec 31, 2020 |
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Dec 31, 2020 10:58
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If you're looking for an XCOM-like, I can vouch for Phoenix Point: Year One edition being pretty good and fixing a lot of Phoenix Point's problems (including certain balance issues that could make your soldiers strong enough to wipe out the entire map on the first turn). It released early this month on Steam. It's not a perfect game but it does a lot well and is different enough from XCOM to warrant a full playthrough from me recently and then immediately launching into another one - and I generally don't finish games at all much less restart them, so there's something to it. The DLCs (included in Year One Edition) are fairly solid as well and add a lot of content Here's a pros/cons list completely independent of the original release and only considering the current state of the game: Pros:
Cons:
Anyway I've been having a good time with it for my last 35 hours of playtime and it's not constantly screaming at me to play XCOM 2 instead so 
deep dish peat moss fucked around with this message at 17:52 on Dec 31, 2020 |
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Dec 31, 2020 16:58
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How much of the campaign promises ended up in the final game? Eg all the stuff about how the enemies and bosses would mutate or there'd be some procedural generation involved with them
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Dec 31, 2020 19:14
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Does it do the character development aspect well? I love how invested you could get in WotC with the upgrades and synergies, or even vanilla - but the Chosen mechanic completely ruined the game for me 
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Dec 31, 2020 20:08
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Thirsty Dog posted:How much of the campaign promises ended up in the final game? Eg all the stuff about how the enemies and bosses would mutate or there'd be some procedural generation involved with them That's not there at all, which is the most disappointing part of the game IMO. In effect there are two "main" alien types - Tritons and Arthrons. Each one of those has maybe 15-20 variations, which are in effect mostly upgraded loadouts - generally stronger armor/shields/guns (of the same type), higher stats, and occasionally a different type of weapon, like higher tier Arthrons have grenade launchers pretty often, and slightly beefier/scarier models. The variations are time-gated and not at all reactionary to the methods you use to kill them - but the better you're doing, the earlier the higher level variants show up (similar to xcom's aliens sending in new alien types at certain thresholds). Some variants of Triton use guns, some are snipers, some are melee, some are stealth. Some variations of Arthron carry shields and use melee attacks, some use guns. There's virtually no difference in the variations other than how good they are/how much damage their gun does/etc. - Then you have Worms (3 variations, chaff popcorn enemies that are often spawned by certain other enemy types), Mindfraggers (just one variation, they're facehuggers from Alien). These don't change much but they're never the primary enemies in a map. Then there are Sirens and Chirons - these are like miniboss-level enemies, and toward the later game you will start having 1 or more show up in most alien missions. They have about 5 variants of Siren and 10ish of Chiron, but again they're mostly just statistical improvements over lower tier variations, or the same thing but using a different element. And finally there are Scyllas which are big boss enemies, there are... I think maybe 3-4 variants of them? But again, mostly the same with different amounts of stats. They show up in Citadel Attack missions and occasionally in other missions. The combat is fun enough that it didn't bother me as much as I thought it would, but it is getting a bit tiring on the second playthrough. Edit from the future, since I can grab screenshots now: The first 1-3 missions you do will be against worms and humans (there are lore reasons for this). After you do the worms mission you're introduced to the first 2 variants of Athrons:  The Athron Brute, who has a shield, spits poison, and will try to claw you with its pincer arm  And the Athron Shieldbearer, who has a shield, is heavier armored, moves slower, doesn't spit poison, and will try to claw you with its pincer arm. Every new variant of Athron for the rest of the game is one of those two archetypes with increasingly better shields/armor/guns (the Athron Brute line gets a machine gun arm soon enough) and occasionally new passive abilities, or a grenade launcher. There are some with a Claw + Gun but no shield as well deep dish peat moss fucked around with this message at 23:24 on Dec 31, 2020 |
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Dec 31, 2020 20:11
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perc2 posted:Does it do the character development aspect well? I love how invested you could get in WotC with the upgrades and synergies, or even vanilla - but the Chosen mechanic completely ruined the game for me Okay so this is a part of the game I really like! There are seven classes (3 base classes available at the start, 4 advanced classes that can be learned from NPC factions), and each class has six skills which can be learned at level 1-3 and 5-7 respectively. Every class has the same skill available at level 4, which is Multiclass - it lets you choose a second class for that soldier. Each character has character-specific SP which can be spent on learning skills OR on raising the three main attributes (Strength, Will, and Speed). These points are earned from leveling up as well as from every completed mission - so you're getting points to spend on customizing your characters even when they're not literally ranking up to the next level, as long as they're active in missions. Each mission also gives you a small amount of Phoenix SP which are the same thing but can be spent on any character. There's a lot of diversity and cool combos available by combining different classes and most combinations have at least some kind of synergy to them. Also none of the classes are railroaded into anything in particular - for example Berserker is the only class that naturally has melee weapon proficiency, but their skills all function regardless of weapon type used. You can absolutely make a Sniper/Priest into a melee character without crippling them (but don't, because melee weapons are bad. The best melee weapon is bashing someone with an autocannon) THEN each character has 2-3 random innate skills that can be learned - these are more generic like proficiency with certain weapon types, higher accuracy at the cost of lower damage, higher carry weight, etc. A lot of recruiting comes down to scouting for recruits with the right combos of innate skills. Then to go even further, each character has 3 armor slots (head, torso, and legs) - you can choose to forego use of up to 2 of these armor slots (per soldier) by either mutating a body part (tech learned from factions that requires capturing live aliens to convert into mutagen), or installing a cybernetic bodypart (tech learned from a DLC that requires large amounts of materials you need for everything else you do). There are 3 cybernetic parts available for each armor slot and they do things like adding a rocket jump ability, providing night vision and silencing weapons, not triggering overwatch fire, etc. Mutations I haven't messed with yet but I assume it's a similar setup of 3 variants for each armor slot. You can have a mutation and a cybernetic on the same soldier if you want. (There are also separate mutated heads available exclusively to the Priest class) And finally loadout-wise in addition to your carried equipment and your armor/cybernetics/mutations, each of the 3 armor slots has a "mod" slot that can be used if you're wearing regular armor or a cybernetic part, these can be freely added and removed at any time after you manufacture them but they add even more flavor variety like a helmet sensor that reveals nearby units, or a helmet mod that lets you devour Mist spawned by the enemy to restore Will Points (basically mana for using skills), or a torso mod to reduce explosion damage. I'm a sucker for (mechanical) character development and customization in tactical games and it's the thing that first hooked me on PP Edit: Some of my surviving soldiers in my first victory save included:  An Infiltrator/Technician with cyborg legs to avoid overwatch fire. Stealthed around the battlefield healing other soldiers, assembling spiderbots, and shooting with a poison crossbow  An Infiltrator/Heavy who used a jetpack on their big football player armor to get on rooftops then vanished and waited for the right time to pop an alien in the head with a big fuckoff crossbow  Multiple Heavy/Assaults with jetpacks and shotguns  A Heavy/Berzerker who cashed in on the Berzerker's AP-manipulating abilities to shoot 5 times per round with an acid cannon to melt Scyllas  A Priest/Infiltrator who used spiderbots to explore the map early on, then snuck around to panic and mind control high value targets  Some boring but effective stealth snipers with cyborg night vision/silencer heads  And a Sniper/Berserker who could kill anything in one turn by stacking a damage-taken-increasing debuff on it (Probably a bug that it's stackable, or will be nerfed in the next major patch I'm sure) then taking up to 3 Sniper shots. The only characters I ever made that didn't feel useful were ones focused entirely on shooting with pistols - pistols don't make a good primary weapon, but they're a fine sidearm for a character that doesn't focus on shooting, or a sniper/heavy who will have 1AP leftover after shooting with their primary gun. deep dish peat moss fucked around with this message at 00:23 on Jan 1, 2021 |
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Dec 31, 2020 20:23
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deep dish peat moss posted:Okay so this is a part of the game I really like! Immediately wishlisted, thankyou!
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Dec 31, 2020 20:36
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I haven’t played this, but a good friend of mine backed it at the start, and has played it through four times(!). He’s been pitching it to me as the best game ever made, so I appreciate your ‘cons’ section a lot, thanks!
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Dec 31, 2020 21:51
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how is the aiming each soldier's gun gimmick?
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Jan 1, 2021 01:44
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punishedkissinger posted:how is the aiming each soldier's gun gimmick? It's nothing groundbreaking but it does make combat feel more engaging and there are ways to use it to do things that wouldn't be possible in XCOM - like using an autocannon's 3 round burst to knock down a wall on the first shot and hit an enemy behind it with the other two, or disabling specific body parts where you as the player have some agency in whether the bodypart gets disabled or not. It prevents cases where a point blank shot doesn't hit the enemy. There are some times in XCOM where I just don't understand why a soldier doesn't have LOS of an enemy and being able to pop into first person to see exactly what a soldier's LOS is makes it a lot more sensible and intuitive
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Jan 1, 2021 15:34
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I've veen playing for a while and feel like I can handle combat but I don't know what to do or prioritise on the Geoscape all that well. I dunno if it's worth stealing aircraft and tech, or if raiding factions for each other is worth it.
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Jan 1, 2021 18:13
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Its older now but while xcom like games are being talked about Troubleshooter is amazing.
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Jan 1, 2021 18:21
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Dr Snofeld posted:I've veen playing for a while and feel like I can handle combat but I don't know what to do or prioritise on the Geoscape all that well. I dunno if it's worth stealing aircraft and tech, or if raiding factions for each other is worth it. The main goal of the game is to progress through the story missions/objectives in the top left, but on top of that: Stealing aircraft is 100% worth it and better than building them (Steal from Disciples for an 8-capacity but slow zeppelin, steal from Synedrion for a very fast aircraft but with 5 soldier slots - also keep in mind you can fly 2 of any aircraft to a mission site in order to use 8 soldiers) Raiding factions is also worth it and is a great source of resources. Click the Diplomacy screen and do some diplomacy missions for the factions - at 25% support (and completing the mission you get then) you can see all of that faction's havens, at 50% support they give you all of their research (instant + free), at 75% support you unlock their faction tech tree and can research anything they haven't completed yourself. You can keep all three happy while raiding them all occasionally, you just take a small-ish rep hit, so don't worry about it too much. Ultimately they all realize that it's an apocalyptic end-of-the-world scenario and you're going to do what you need to do, even if it means attacking/stealing from them. For the most part you play actively against the factions and reactively against the pandorans - you can go raid a faction at any time but pandorans need to reveal themselves to you first Always be doing something. Scanning sites (you only need 1 soldier in an aircraft to scan), story missions, raids, whatever. Get a second squad up and running as soon as you can handle the material costs (keep in mind Phoenix Project recruits come with no starting armor/weapons and they need to be manufactured) and start flying them around to missions and raids too. Mix up soldiers on missions as much as possible so they're all earning SP from partaking in missions. Activate a few other bases when you can handle the cost for radar coverage. Some useful faction techs (from either raiding or hitting 50% support): Disciples of Anu food production (only way in the game to generate a resource on your own, and you can trade the food for other resources) Synedrion mist repeller (this might only come from a quest when they support you? I'm not sure if you can steal it but you probably can) Advanced classes (each faction has one, Disciples have two) Synedrion vehicle (it's a hovertank that can do good damage, or heal and transport your units around the map) deep dish peat moss fucked around with this message at 18:32 on Jan 1, 2021 |
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Jan 1, 2021 18:29
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Snooze Cruise posted:Its older now but while xcom like games are being talked about Troubleshooter is amazing. Hardest of vouches for this one. Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children can best be described as 'what if the Trails series had a child with Yakuza and the kid decided to do things the XCOM way?'. I've never seen a game execute a 'hero-based squad tactics' setup so brilliantly. It really feels like a game from another age because it's clearly done by a very small team and yet so wildly ambitious, and GOOD at executing its ambitions, that it takes me back to the times when it felt like every new game was pushing boundaries in some way. The only knock is that it was originallly machine-translated from korean beefore the community helped make it sound more natural in english, and traces of that clunk are still there, especially at the start, but it truly is worth every penny. If anyone likes tactics games or games with a great story and an extremely likable cast of characters, you can't go wrong with this one.
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Jan 1, 2021 21:14
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Transient People posted:Hardest of vouches for this one. Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children can best be described as 'what if the Trails series had a child with Yakuza and the kid decided to do things the XCOM way?'. I've never seen a game execute a 'hero-based squad tactics' setup so brilliantly. It really feels like a game from another age because it's clearly done by a very small team and yet so wildly ambitious, and GOOD at executing its ambitions, that it takes me back to the times when it felt like every new game was pushing boundaries in some way. The only knock is that it was originallly machine-translated from korean beefore the community helped make it sound more natural in english, and traces of that clunk are still there, especially at the start, but it truly is worth every penny. If anyone likes tactics games or games with a great story and an extremely likable cast of characters, you can't go wrong with this one. Dissenting opinion: I love new XCOM, but bounced off of Troubleshooter after a few hours. It has most of the right ingredients, but I didn't think the final product came out all that great.
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Jan 2, 2021 19:08
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It might be the greatest video game ever made
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Jan 2, 2021 19:34
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Irene is an incredible character. "Villain." "I think they're a villain." "Sounds like something a villain would say." "DEFINITELY a villain!"
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Jan 3, 2021 02:26
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Ms Adequate posted:Irene is an incredible character. She owns so much.
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Jan 3, 2021 04:56
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al-azad posted:A Christmas miracle: Omori is out How would you describe the horror in this? Is it jump scare variety? Creepy? Left to imagination? Or is it more of a "horror theme but the game doesn't viscerally drag you through it"
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Jan 3, 2021 14:39
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Surreal psych horror. More unsettling and anxiety building.
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Jan 3, 2021 17:20
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5-Headed Snake God posted:Dissenting opinion: I love new XCOM, but bounced off of Troubleshooter after a few hours. It has most of the right ingredients, but I didn't think the final product came out all that great. The first few hours limit your options a lot so it doesn't surprise me. You only have two characters for a while and a bunch of generics you can't grow, and I think it's largely because the game understands deeply that it's extremely complex and is trying to not totally overwhelm the player. Once you get your third man though, the fourth quickly follows and suddenly the depths of its systems become explorable. It's fair to warn people about it. I do think it's a game that grows intensely with each hour you put into it, which is another point of similarity with trails. What starts fairly tamely and with a rough translation had me wishing I was playing a game that was twice as long by the end, which is not common praise for me.
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Jan 4, 2021 02:28
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ive heard it keeps throwing new systems at you like the whole game, which sounds kinda neat.
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Jan 4, 2021 03:17
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Yeah, you get some really major stuff like the ability to manufacture mechanical drones as late as like the final fifth of the game.
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Jan 4, 2021 03:20
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvKEKD3eo2Y I don't know if any of us are cool enough for Cruelty Squad
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Jan 4, 2021 17:25
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According to the steam reviews its actually a good game but the game trailer is giving off shooter manifesto vibes.
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Jan 4, 2021 20:47
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My concern is the selection of reviewers who chose to purchase the game might be pretty skewed? Makes it so hard to tell what’s up.
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Jan 5, 2021 06:33
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StrixNebulosa posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvKEKD3eo2Y This feels almost like a thecatamites game.
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Jan 5, 2021 07:04
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That Guy Bob posted:According to the steam reviews its actually a good game but the game trailer is giving off shooter manifesto vibes. drat, you'd think after the millions of people that were killed in the wake of Joker (2019) people would be more responsible.
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Jan 5, 2021 08:49
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Phasmophobia. Do...we already have a thread?
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Jan 5, 2021 21:43
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Potato Salad posted:Phasmophobia. Do...we already have a thread? which i wouldn't have found without today's fresh new hotness, the Great Games Index and New Thread Notification...Thread
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Jan 5, 2021 22:13
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Biomass https://store.steampowered.com/app/1138960/Biomass/ I just found this, and I'm really glad I did. It's got some definite rough edges and some annoying design decisions, but man the atmosphere is so, so good. If you love dark scifi, you need to check this game out. Like Axiom Verge, Biomega, Akira, Prey, and other trippy weird rear end scifi worlds. Gameplay wise it's tHe dArK SOuls of 2d metroidvania. Or something. The control is tight enough, but very fast and lethal, and with some very uneven difficulty. Exploration is only moderately interesting in terms of movement, though you do gain access to new tools that open up new routes as you play. Atmospherically though, drat this game nails it. Moody, brooding music, excellently done lowfi graphics with some really beautiful vistas, and storytelling delivered as much in the environments as the bits you piece together from dialogue with scarce talkative npcs. Structurally the game is unusual, you're only going to see part of the world and part of the story on your first playthrough, by design. If you want to see more, you need to play more, sort of like Nier: Automata. I can't recommend this to everyone because the rough edges are pretty rough, and the pacing isn't perfect, but if this specific subgenre is your jam, you'll probably love almost every minute of discovery in spite of the annoyances.
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Jan 6, 2021 20:08
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I really like metroidvanias in general, but I've been a bit disappointed by some of the releases we've been getting on PC recently, so I would appreciate it if you maybe go into a bit more detail about what the gameplay is like? Impressive vistas and good atmosphere are already a good start, but what does the game play like mechanically? Does it anything special or unique? Any particular gimmicks? Basically, I'd like to know what kind of cool things it allows you to do and how well it keeps up with giving you new abilities and mechanics to play with as you progress through the game. One thing I always find very disappointing in a game like that is when it frontloads all its mechanics and then basically turns into a jump'n'run game for the rest of its playtime.
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Jan 6, 2021 20:15
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