28.06.17

Okay, so I tried out Formula Fusion. It had recently launched and for some reason taken a large hit in ratings. Well, as retrospective inspection revealed, it was because the game was a laggy mess that couldn't run on any computer without at the very least hitching. My computer's pretty good, I dare say, and it froze like once a minute for 5 seconds on high settings, and had a split-second hitch every few seconds on the lowest settings. I'm not even really sure how the game itself was. Didn't look all too interesting, and the multiplayer is dead, but none of that matters because the lag renders it basically unplayable. Good riddance the review score is dropping.

Other than that, I took One Way Heroics for another playthrough. Failed about 10 times, but the 11th or so attempt went really well and I won. =) I don't really have much to say about the particular playthrough, and I don't really want to give lengthy opinions about games I've already played a bunch before, but One Way Heroics is an absolutely wonderful little game with more depth than you could ever imagine from looking at it or even playing it. It'll take a long time before you stop finding new things, and the sense of constant exploration and discovery is simply amazing. I should really get the expansion to it as well. Good thing the Steam Summer Sale is underway.

27.06.17

I was slightly occupied with other matters today, so no new games completed or started, but here's a new game that released on Steam a week ago.

Nex Machina is a 3D bullet hell game. It claims to focus on the action, so perhaps that's all there is to it. Looks pretty, ratings are okay, I guess it'll do.

Oh, also, PCGamer did an article on some hidden gems of the store, based on some mathematical formulas that basically searched for well-rated games with a low amount of ratings. I think a lot of the games included are pretty good, and there's a good chance you haven't heard of them. Which ones of course depends on the genres you're into. Here's the article with the top 100 listed at the bottom. And here is another list with a similar algorithm for a top 250.

26.06.17

It is done. I have played a 4X game from start to finish on "normal" settings. Not actually the first time, but it is a rather rare accomplishment, because when playing against AI there is a tipping point after which the outcome of the game is clear, yet half the game is still ahead of you. This issue plagues all large-scale TBS games, and Endless Space 2 is no exception. I'll be happy the day I find something that fixes this, but as long as I haven't I can't really hold it against any of these games either.

There are a lot of similarities between most TBS games, from the more known Civilization series to less known games whose names escape me for the time being. It's honestly difficult to describe one uniquely without going into all the tiny details. I guess the main difference of Endless Space 2 would be about the same as that of Endless Legend - the different factions / empires have a very different playstyle, even more so in Endless Space 2 than in Endless Legend. Another thing they have succeeded in yet again is making a very beautiful world. I find the aesthetics of the game pleasing, the soundtrack nice to listen to, and each of the factions has a solid backstory as well as a story that can be pursued in different directions through in-game quests. This really makes factions stand apart and give each a goal that is emphasized by their faction traits as well as lore, making playing different factions kind of like playing slightly different games.

Endless Legend was my favorite TBS game, and Endless Space is a fair competitor. I'll get to the reasons shortly, but first I can foresee a certain question. "Why would I play Endless Legend/Space 2 instead of [Your Favorite TBS Game Name Here]?" And really, I can't give you a reason. As I mentioned before, most TBS games are very similar to each other, with only the little details setting them apart, and it's usually a matter of preference. I happen to like the Endless TBS games the most due to the beautiful world, and a larger emphasis on the combat side of things. Why Endless Space 2 didn't feel as good to me as Endless Legend, was that I felt some of this focus had been taken off combat and put into diplomacy and system management. It reminded me a bit of Stellaris in the sense that you were partially subject to what your people wanted, and didn't have absolute control. This didn't sit with me quite as well, but it could totally appeal to someone else. Another thing were the odd connections between systems. There was pretty much no sense of a perimeter or which were your "outer" planets, and which were your "inner" ones - the enemy could just warp to any one of them, and you couldn't stop them, forcing you to defend literally everything, lest you wanted to suffer because of a stupid sneak attack.

So, yeah, I liked Endless Space 2, but the games take an eternity-and-a-half, and as usual, the AI doesn't pose a challenge past a certain point. It offers a lot of the same as Endless Legend, but is also very different. Perhaps some DLC will improve it in the future, as I heard a very recent patch already increased the intelligence of the AI.

25.06.17

It has been forever since I've lost a battle. My massive fleets are present in every single one of my systems, for I am constantly under siege from all sides and from all empires. There must be at least five battles happening at all times, yet despite all this, not only I have I not lost a single battle, I have not lost even a single ship. Most flee before I can engage them, others perish before so much as scratching my ships. I am by all means invincible. Sadly, time is not on my side, as there is one other empire who is working on a project to end this war once and for all. My conquests are slow, and I fear I may not be able to stop them in time. But suddenly, my scientists alert me of a new discovery. They tell me of a piece of Endless technology capable of shattering planets. Surely this would hasten my war efforts, for I have no need of the planets of my enemies, I simply need them not working for who they do now. I order as much of my empire to switch around to science production as possible, and get to work on researching this technology, as well as a ship large enough to fit this device. Further along the line, I set in motion a counter-project for ending this war. We are close to unlocking the secrets of the Endless, and with all of their knowledge combined, we can finish the war. As the planet destroyer's research draws to a close, I order one to go into production. A special fleet is prepared as an escort, and in due time, it is finished. I immediately receive a plea for a truce, but I reject it. I will settle for no less than total eradication. This universe shall be wiped clean of all lifeforms, just as this universe is eradicating ours. It is only fair that we take this one in exchange. The destroyer arrives at its first target. In a panic, they manage to muster a large enough fleet to destroy one of the ships protecting my destroyer. It's been a long time since that last happened. But their now shattered planet serves as a fair trade. I move on to the next one, slowly approaching their homeworlds.

So, yeah, the Endless Space 2 game is really starting to drag on as I have to fight a ton of battles each turn and carefully manage all my systems to make sure I don't slip anywhere. Unless someone manages to ninja a victory condition past me, I should be on my way to a Science Victory, but that'll still take around 50 turns - about 4 hours at the current pace. Honestly, I feel like as always, that the only true victory time should be complete elimination, but I didn't know if they'd managed some good victory conditions before I started. Apparently not, but I'm stuck with them for the current game. So if all goes well, I'll finish this run tomorrow.

24.06.17

A ton more Endless Space 2 today. I'm starting to really see my empire gain superiority over the others and feel like I don't have much of a chance to be overpowered anymore. I'm also starting to get a pretty good grasp on the game's mechanics. I think I can give my thoughts on it once the campaign is done. But that will still take a day or few, depending on how much I play it.

No Factorio today, I instead finished off the hopefully last lingering schoolwork assignment.

23.06.17

You know, both Endless Space 2 and Factorio are such time-consuming things, that I really don't have the time for anything else. I'm nowhere near "completing" the Factorio run, and Endless Space's campaign is probably less than halfway finished.

22.06.17

The next game of Endless Space 2 I started was with a race that will hopefully prove to be slightly easier. After all, I wasn't dead after 3 hours of playing, and I seem to be doing rather well, if I may say so myself. I picked The Riftborn, whose gimmick is apparently that they don't need food, new populations are constructed (as in, literally built like buildings), and they have time accelerators and decelerators, to boost or wither resource gathering rates, respectively. I haven't yet figured out how to use the decelerators on opposing star systems, but I really hope it's possible, as I see no reason why I would want to decrease my own resource generation. Also, it appears that for most races, you can have other races come to live on your planets as well. Well, as The Riftborn hate organic life, and the whole universe overall, then any foreign population is quickly drafted into the military and replaced with the superior Riftborn. It appears I'm naturally driven towards xenophobia in all space games that allow it.

Factorio is magically consuming the entire day, as usual. I'm playing in a three-person group, and we went for a world with increased Biter evolution, more expensive recipes and technology, as well as resource deposits that are further apart. The result was getting overrun by the end of the day, so I tuned down both the time-based evolution, as well as lowering the current evolution progress. If you don't know exactly that you're doing, don't do Death World.

Also, of final note is that the Steam Summer Sale began today.

21.06.17

So, I did start with Endless Space 2. Sadly OBS has something against it and crashes when I try to play it, so I can't stream my efforts. I managed about 3 hours of playtime before switching to Factorio for the rest of the day, but during those 3 hours I hadn't the slightest idea what I was doing. The game has an abundance of menus, submenus, stats, options... Sometimes it took 3 paragraphs explaining to me what something was and I still didn't understand it. However, I won't hold the complexity against this game just yet. If the systems really contribute toward a better game experience, then that is a good thing. Intuitively, they do so, but I honestly can't tell until I've played this more. Probably a lot more.

Also of note is that much like its predecessor, Endless Legend, each of the different playable races offers a really unique way of playing. Part of this difficulty might be that I started with the Vodyani, who apparently don't colonize planets in the usual manner, but instead live in giant spaceships and simply harvest the planets for resources. They also need a resource called Essence to make more of these vessels. Sadly, due to my relative inexperience, I was unable to secure enough Essense early on to expand my empire, and could later no longer muster the fleet required to defend my harvesters. As such, one of the more militarily inclined races destroyed me. (Note to self: Unanchor your Ark if you see a warfleet approaching, because for some odd reason you can't do it while under siege.)

20.06.17

Shit, I didn't complete or start a new game today.

But Brawlhalla's season was ending and I got enough ranked games done to get my season's rewards even though I might not even play it next season. And HotS had a new free week with one of the new heroes being free for the first time, so I simply had to try them out.

I did play a little of yesterday's last game though, and got Endless Space 2 all ready for the next time. Thing is, I might be occupied with Factorio tomorrow, and possibly most of some other days, as my friends finally have time to play it. But between and after that, I'll continue with my games list.

19.06.17

The first game I tried today was Next Jump: Shmup Tactics. It wasn't (and still isn't) terribly well known, but all the reviews were positive so I figured it might be good. I initially described it as a scrolling shooter, but that was incorrect. The background does indeed scroll, but each game board is stationary. Overall this game takes a lot of ideas from FTL. Namely the goal and travel methods are pretty much identical, the ship upgrades are very similar, and it has multiple ship types which can be unlocked in-game. But the gameplay is completely different.

And of course as is tradition here, I must reveal that the game was bad and proceed to list the reasons starting from the least significant ones. Combat lasts only three turns after which the battle is just abruptly cut short. You can extend this with specific combo attacks which shift from being unusable, to clearing the entire level in one turn, and back to being unusable as your ship gains upgrades, and then your enemies catch up. Also, once you run out of turns, you can just spam movement to get like one or even two more turns in before the game pulls you out of the combat screen, which is a huge bug.

Secondly, there is no indicator of what the enemies do. I've taken damage from one multiple times without even understanding in hindsight why that happened.

And thirdly and most importantly, this game is not grid-and-turn-based, only the movement is. Considering the previously listed very obvious and very huge bug, I'd chalk this up to just incompetent developers. While the game world is a 9x7 grid or something like that, bullets, pieces of scrap (currency), energy, and ship hitboxes are actual models in the game, not bound to the grid. So maybe you have a spinning piece of scrap? Wait until it spins closer to you to collect it. In a turn-based game this is unacceptable. Similarly it makes evading bullets, and collecting scrap and energy very unpredictable, as your ship's hitbox is not marked in-game, and you have to either learn where it is through trial and error and very carefully make sure that the hitboxes of your ship and other entities touch (or don't touch, in case of projectiles), or as a beginner, just hope that they do.

Furthermore this game is low on content and not well balanced, but those were the least of the issues.

I also started with Mages of Mystralia. I quite like the aesthetics of it and the music's pretty nice too, but the gameplay hasn't really been up to my standards. The spell crafting system is neat, but some of the modifications feel very specific and pointless or barely ever usable. The combat, the progression, the story, the puzzles - everything else feels kind of boring and just barely passable. It's not bad, which is why I played it for the 3 hours that I did. Heck, I'm not sure I can point out any concrete flaws in the game, but aside from the spell crafting, there is absolutely nothing noteworthy to be experienced here.
If you're looking for a good spell crafting game, even then (the original) Magicka has this beat. If you're looking for something else, you won't find it in this game.

18.06.17

I have begun.

I went ahead and tried two games today.

The first one was Owlboy. I initially described it as a "platformer-y adventure game" that looked nice, and I wasn't far off the mark. It really looks like a platformer, but since you're given the ability to fly with pretty much no restrictions, there's little point in even having the possibility to traverse terrain by running, jumping, and rolling, all of which you can do.

Is that a speck of irritation visible in my writing? Why, yes it is. I disliked this game, but the dumbed down movement wasn't my main issue. Neither was it that the other aspects of the game felt too simplified as well. Let me elaborate on that.

You had to carry your companion who couldn't fly, so you had to go to them, pick them up, then place them down when you needed to carry something else. In return, they'd act as your firearm, allowing you to shoot at things. Now, the problem with this was that that you could just toss them down a cliff or straight at the enemies - he was invincible. "But surely that's a bad idea, as you couldn't retrieve them from such a place." Ah, well, not really, as the game decided to give you a button to teleport your personal gun holder straight back to you, mid-flight too. And this just completely eliminates the need to even have a dangling person with no hitbox attached to you. Just give our owl character a gun and say he can't use it while he's carrying things. Much easier to make, play with, and much more logical. There were also useless obstacles and enemies that you just shot down in a split second since your gun had no perceivable fire rate limits. And with those things gone, there's not much content left in the game except for flying around.

And this finally leads me to my main issue. With 90% of the game being flying around the place, I'd expect that to be made at least half-decent. But I have no map, no indicator of where I'm supposed to go to, nor sometimes even a clue what the immediate thing is that the game wants me to do. It's pretty irritating when the game tells you to "go to the Lab", and you've never been there before. Heck, you've never even heard of it before. It could be anywhere on the map, but those four words are the only clue you have of what you're supposed to do. Out of the 90% of the game spent flying around, I dare say another similar percentage of it was aimless. You're hoping you're going in the right direction, or that maybe if you look through the area a third time, you finally find a clue that tells you what you're supposed to do. ...but hey, at least the game looks nice.

So in case it wasn't clear, I would not recommend this game. Don't even try it.

Now, something noticeably better was MidBoss. It was also of a completely different genre. It would be a pretty generic dungeon crawler were it not for the notable feature that allows you to possess the bodies of the foes you kill. Each of these characters could also be leveled up, unlocking more of their abilities, and then those abilities could be equipped on other characters you possessed, making for fancy hybrids. But sadly, that's where the gimmick ends. The equipment, items, stats, abilities and everything else really were terribly generic.

My first run almost got me through the entire game, and it was for the most part a grind. New enemies popped up frequently enough to keep it from getting boring, but I can't imagine going for a second run. So, yeah, I enjoyed it for the 4 hours it lasted, but there's not much replay value.

The various abilities gained from possessing monsters still faint in comparison to, say, the builds you can make in Dungeons of Dredmor. In fact, pretty much everything does. If you're looking for a dungeon crawler, go play that. If you've already played that a bunch, then I guess you can give MidBoss a try. It should be fun for the first playthrough, doubtful it will be for the second.

17.06.17

So I have just one final thing left to do before I can really start my summer break. It's been getting delayed due to reasons outside my control, and as such I haven't wanted to start going through the games yet. But I guess I shall, starting next week, as promised. Probably going to have a stream up as well, if I feel like it.

For now, here's two more games on top of the overflowing pile:

Hell Warders looks like a wave defense game, where you control the characters yourself. Something like Dungeon Defenders, I guess? Fancier graphics, but the gameplay remains to be seen.

Monolith is a shoot 'em up that seems to be played in very tiny maps. The reviews are quite positive, it looks nice, and claims to be a rogue-lite, whatever that means these days. The map size is scary small though.

10.06.17

I am very tired from my exams and other things.

I don't even have the willpower to write anything about these two games I found.

Tokyo 42 and Armed with Wings: Rearmed.

Just click the links if you're curious. The latter seems pretty cool.

Also I've been playing some Warframe. But I'll get to my backlog starting Monday after the next week.

03.06.17

I had time to play some stuff after all.

First up was Rain World. I'd had my eye on this for a while even before it launched. It looked fairly unique and I liked the setting. I wouldn't say the gameplay trailers were misleading or anything, but in retrospect, they clearly had people playing who already knew what they were doing. I did not. And sadly I couldn't keep my patience for long enough to start understanding the game enough. So, rushing ahead, I ultimately didn't like it and gave up after an hour or two of struggling. And oddly enough, it was all because of the difficulty. I'll try to break it down in some arbitrary order.

The first thing you'll notice is how the world looks. It's... gray. Every single non-living thing is mostly gray. And this is a problem because it makes it difficult to tell things apart. It doesn't help that there isn't any visual difference between the scenery and the interactables. Spear? Nope, just a pointy piece of scenery. Rocks? Lost somewhere in the grass, good luck finding them. Climbable pole? Nope, not this one. So there's a lot of trial and error involved, but I don't feel it contributes to the experience.

The second thing you'll notice is that your slugcat is quite unwieldy. With the animations being somewhat procedural you have a hard time understanding what your character is doing. Jumping is for the most part a tiny, rather useless, hop. (Although it can be used for some clumsy wall jumping and combined with some other mechanics to kind of approach the basic jump functionality you've come to expect from games, but it's far from consistent.) And I swear, the amount of times the adorable white blob refused to grab poles and instead fell all the way down, destroying my progress... The amount is troubling.

Then somewhere along the lines you'll realize that the timed shelter and food system is putting quite the pressure on your exploration. Fail to gather enough food - dead. Fail to find a new shelter? Better hope you have time to run the entire way back, or you're dead. It's essentially a checkpoint system, not much unlike Dark Souls. And you don't even lose any progress, because aside from exploring the map and managing to navigate it, there is no progress. I wouldn't complain about the infrequent appearance of these checkpoints, but I would complain about the fact that I am put on a time limit.

One part of the difficulty that I did like was the sense of discovery. The game tells you pretty much nothing about any of the systems, only the very basic movement. And if you always try to play it safe, it's possible you won't learn much. But it's moderately surprising how many elements of the world you can interact with and how those elements can interact with each other. There's always more tricks to be found to help you survive, and that's an acceptable substitute to character progression. The latter of which, as mentioned, doesn't exist here.

So, if you don't like the fact that you'd finish the game with the same character you started with, you probably also won't like that this game doesn't tell you anything about where you're supposed to go. It's generous enough to give you a map of explored locations, but navigating around the place is hell even without the constant threat of wildlife. So when you find out you also have no idea where you're going, and if the struggle up these pipes and ledges is difficult because it's the way forward, or because you're not supposed to get up there.

In conclusion, I didn't like it because I crumbled under the difficulty, but for some, this particular type of unfair struggle might be enjoyable. If you can embrace your role as the incapable slugcat you are and are dying to get to know all the secrets that sewer system has to offer... maybe you'll like it.

Not having any gaps between classes the next semester nor over the summer obviously, I won't really have an excuse to watch any anime. In any case, I currently finished Angel Beats. It was a rather badly put-together jumble of action, comedy, music, and tragedy. It was difficult to follow, felt somewhat rushed, and there were logical inconsistencies everywhere. But darn it, it made me sad multiple times and even cry at the end. I'm honestly confused since the characters and the entire story were too fake to be relatable, and yet they got me.
This is getting a little long, but it's apparently from the same company, Key, that is known for making sad visual novels. Planetarian being one I've played, but there's also Clannad, and other, slightly less popular ones. I guess they know their stuff. And for me, the animation and voice acting helps deliver the emotion better than static pictures and whatever voice I can come up with in my head from reading. Well played, Key. ;_;

And two more new games from this week. I swear I'll try all of them during summer. 1-2 per day. It's going to happen.
MidBoss (not to be confused with a different developer of the same name) is a rogue-like. Crawling randomly generated dungeons, as per seemingly usual, with the twist being that you can take control of the bodies of your enemies. Not too popular, and also tagged Casual, but it looks good enough to warrant a try.
Vanquish is probably some rather popular game that I don't have a clue about, because it was only ever available for consoles. Well, this is the port, and people seem to like it. You're in a... nice suit. And have a gun to shoot stuff. Which probably shoots back. Lots of shooting, lots of action. Looks cool, hopefully it's fun as well.