Some schoolwork, some HotS, some Factorio, but a lot of the time went on CodinGame. I'm currently hovering around the 70th place overall, which I'm quite satisfied with considering I have no specific movement code of any kind. Silver - Legend leagues will open up on Monday, so maybe I'll take another look at my code between my tests and Ludum Dare.
14.04.17
Oh look, more Duelyst look-alikes. Shardbound is a card game with a gameboard, and minions that can move around. The reviews aren't too good, but it seems the main complaint is about the lack of content as the game is very new. Well, it's free to play, so I'll just add it to my Library and get around to it at some point or another.
13.04.17
Well, I found out today that buying earbuds for 1.57€ is probably a bad idea overall and spent a lot of the day learning exactly why, and how I could choose better.
Oh, also, the next Codingame event is starting tomorrow. Meanwhile I'm just grasping for time, and it's mostly eluding me.
Oh, also, the next Codingame event is starting tomorrow. Meanwhile I'm just grasping for time, and it's mostly eluding me.
12.04.17
So much to do, so little time. I want to try some new games, but I have multiple big tests coming up early next week. Then there's Ludum Dare on the weekend after this one, and it'd be nice to get some Unity practice in before that. Also consistently being bombarded with homework. And then there's various other things I'd like to do, like Factorio modding, practicing my art skills... It's useful to have a little more on your plate than you have time to deal with, as it ensures you never run out of stuff to do, but I'm getting a little overwhelmed here.
11.04.17
Tuesday - Thursday are busy as usual, but uh... I managed to hit Diamond 3 in HotS. It's definitely starting to feel like my rank is a bit inflated, but I'd love to reach Master, even if I don't deserve it.
09.04.17
Yeah, I already mentioned I was busy today. No new releases on Steam on weekends either... Got my computer parts though. Now I just have to find a time to assemble them.
08.04.17
After the Empire looks like a 4X game with way more work done on the gameplay side than the user-friendliness side. Due to that, I can't really judge it by how it looks, but I've been pleasantly surprised by such things before, so I thought I'd give it a try at some point.
07.04.17
Okay, so I finished Hand of Fate's story mode today. Took me numerous tries and semi-frustrating losses, but I eventually got lucky, doubling my max health after reaching 200 of it, giving me a decent pool of it to work with when facing the final boss. But those are details. I'd rather talk about the game more generally.
I really quite like it. It's been a while since the last game I liked. Hand of Fate is a weird mix that, on paper, I didn't expect to work well. I'd say the core of the game is that of a roguelike's. You crawl dungeons in a turn-based manner, there's permadeath, hit points, food, various equipment, (mostly) randomly generated maps, etc...
But then there's also this card game, where the map and the enemies, and the loot, equipment, curses... All of the card types have their own deck. I would have really liked to see this side of the game be expanded on more. Currently there's a rather primitive deck assembler, but only for the map and equipment portions, not the other decks. Oh, and you can unlock new cards by defeating cards that you already have. This is the method of progression that exists between any two games, and I still haven't quite reached the end of it.
I think these two portions of the game work together really well, both in theory and practice. It creates something unique that I haven't quite seen in any other game, and what definitely helps it stand out is the attention to the style of it. All of the aesthetics fit well, and create a sense of immersion. Especially the dealer. I want to gush a bit about the dealer. They could have made the entire game without him and gameplay-wise, nothing would have changed. The dealer doesn't actually have a role in the game as such (aside from being the final boss), but without him, this game wouldn't be even close to as good as it is now. Not only does he have a nearly inexhaustible vault of flavor speech to add to pretty much every card and situation (which are often pretty witty, and oh I could listen to his voice all day long...), but it really makes you feel like you're just a player in the game. That you're not just playing by the rules because you want to enjoy a nice game, but because you have to. I don't know, it's hard to explain, but I'm sure you'd understand when you would actually start to play. The dealer is half the game without adding anything from a gameplay perspective, and it's among the most unexpected things I could've found in a non-story game. He's just that good.
Now, the parts I described are both turn-based, and mostly luck-based. (There's this nifty thing where the "chance" cards are shown to you, then shuffled just slow enough that you can try to track their movement and pick the one you wanted. Your eyes can't always keep up though. They could've just shuffled them fully randomly, but this is another one of those small aesthetic details that, together with others of its kind, help set the game apart from the crowd.) Some would argue that sometimes the luck can be too harsh, and you can lose the game without doing anything wrong at all. While I agree that yes, you can, I also think that it's in the spirit of the game, as the name says: "Hand of Fate".
But the other half of the game, that I don't have five paragraphs to write about, is the skill-based combat portion. Unlike regular roguelikes which tend to leave the combat also turn-and-die-roll-based, Hand of Fate decided to go with action combat. People are saying it's a clone of some Arkham game? I haven't played that, but it reminded me of dumbed-down Shadow of Mordor combat. I can't really say the combat felt bad. It definitely wasn't as good as the other half of the game, but that's not my concern with it. Rather, it felt too different and not much in the spirit of the rest of the game. I can't help but wonder if it would have been better with the combat being in the style of the rest of the game - turn-and-luck-based? Perhaps even a card game against the enemies. I think that would have been fitting. Alas, I guess I'll never know. So yeah, if anything at all, my gripe about the game would be the combat half of it.
But in conclusion, it's a great game that really kept me hooked for the first several hours, and stayed interesting throughout the entire story mode. The attention to detail is amazing and there's plenty of content and depth to it to not get boring for quite a while. It's not like any other game out there that I'd know of, so if you're looking for something original, but also of good quality, I'd definitely recommend trying this.
PS. I'm currently 3 hours into my first endless mode game. It progressively gets harder as the levels go on, and you can't make your own deck. Instead all the available cards are in the deck, and they can repeat throughout the game. Unlike the well-balanced story mode, endless seems a little too easy. I'm currently stuffed with equipment (rings stack basically forever, or at least as much as there are different kinds of them), loaded with gold, maxed on hit points, pretty much maxed on gear, also have a bunch of blessings... The game just throws increasing quantities of enemies at me with increasing quantities of hp and damage, while I've kind of stopped scaling. Sure, they'll eventually overwhelm me with sheer numbers, but even now it's crossed the line into tedium as I spend far too long fighting.
Apparently Hand of Fate 2 is in development, and not too far off from release anymore. They've kept the sweet dealer, and I hear the combat's gotten better. Am definitely looking forward to it.
06.04.17
Oh sweet weekend, finally. Although I still do have some things to take care of, and I'm busy celebrating my birthday over Saturday and Sunday, so it won't be the most productive weekend games-wise. Oh how I wish for more hours in a day.
05.04.17
How do you know if a game's good, or just looks good? Hell if I know, but the latter's definitely more prominent. In all honesty, if you just stick to games with reviews in the triple digits and ratings above 90%, you'll probably get to try all the really good games out there. But I'm not like that, so here's three games from last week.
Apparently there's this popular thing on consoles called Smash. Rivals of Aether is apparently kind of like that Smash, except it's available for PCs. I wanted to mention it, because I think it's a good game, but I wouldn't really recommend playing it simple because there's a better alternative. These games rely heavily on the size of the playerbase for PvP matchmaking, and Brawlhalla has a playerbase that's 10-20 times as large. Honestly, neither game is better than the other, although they do have their differences, but I'd recommend Brawlhalla, because Rivals of Aether is relatively dead.
Apparently there's this popular thing on consoles called Smash. Rivals of Aether is apparently kind of like that Smash, except it's available for PCs. I wanted to mention it, because I think it's a good game, but I wouldn't really recommend playing it simple because there's a better alternative. These games rely heavily on the size of the playerbase for PvP matchmaking, and Brawlhalla has a playerbase that's 10-20 times as large. Honestly, neither game is better than the other, although they do have their differences, but I'd recommend Brawlhalla, because Rivals of Aether is relatively dead.
Then some lesser known games that look good, but that I'm less sure about.
HackyZack seems to be a skill-requiring action puzzle platformer. Now, puzzle platformers aren't really my thing, but it's been a while since I've played one, and this one has an interesting twist where you have to juggle a ball while doing wall-jumps and the like. It's probably as difficult as it sounds.
And Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King appears to be some RPG-ish adventure game. Looks fairly simplistic, but the pixel art's nice, and perhaps there's a little bit of good gameplay in there.
04.04.17
I've been waiting for Rain World for quite a long while now. It's an action-adventure platformer where the starring slugcat looks simply adorable, and the environments look well done as well. From the reviews though, I can gather it had a rough launch. Gameplay issues perhaps? Well, regardless, I'm not about to not play it after waiting for so long, so expect it. Eventually.
03.04.17
All work and no play makes me slightly stressed. Sure, some of it is work I don't have to do, but it's also timed, so I can't really do it later.
Sorry I don't have any content right now. I estimate to get around to beating Hand of Fate around Friday. That is all.
02.04.17
I spent a good amount of yesterday on /place. It's quite the thing, and I'm surprised it's so organized. They're pretty much out of space now though, so I hope it shuts down soon before people lose interest and the quality drops. Wasn't there that much today, just checked in every now and then.
Instead I tried my hand at Hand of Fate. No luck. The last level is really quite difficult, but there is slow progress.
Also got a few hours of Divinity done. At this pace it'll take a while, but if we get a few sprints in, it could be done in a couple weekends.
01.04.17
Oh hey, April fools. I'm not a big fan though, so all will continue as usual.
Sometimes I question what I'm really searching for in all these games I play. Sometimes I enter a game with pretty much the full knowledge that I won't really enjoy it, but for some reason I still feel compelled to finish it. I really love multiplayer games and MMOs, and I'd love to spend more time in Planetside, HotS, maybe even start with EVE, Albion Online's been on my mind, Crowfall's coming, I've actually also wanted to go back to Mabinogi, then there's the Factorio modding scene I haven't properly explored, and although it doesn't fit the multiplayer description, gosh, it's been years since I last played Dwarf Fortress.
But I know I have around the magnitude of a hundred games waiting for me to play them, and as I go through a hundred, a hundred more appear, so I don't really ever get around to properly playing the games I really like. I don't know. I guess I don't want to miss out, so I'm not. But at what cost?
Right, but with that out of the way, here's another game onto the pile: Battle Brothers. I'm not entirely sure what it's about, but I see a hex-grid, turn-based strategy, army management, and they're telling me it's inspired by Mount&Blade. It's also quite popular, it seems, so, uh, yeah...
31.03.17
Let's start the day off with a new find. Monster Slayers is a deckbuilding RPG rouge-like, by its own description, and aren't I already playing one of these right now? Well, it's well received and the art style made me recognize it as one of Nerdook's games. I used to love his work back when I was playing flash games on Kongregate. It stands out less now that it's compared to actual paid games, but it's definitely worth trying.
I forgot about the last "hidden" level in Hand of Fate, so I didn't quite finish it today. But soon. Soon...
I also got over a rather difficult level in Shenzhen, after not playing that out of frustration for a while. My solution was still terribly inefficient and produced the greatest circuit spaghetti imaginable, but it works.
 |
| (Click to enlarge) |
I forgot about the last "hidden" level in Hand of Fate, so I didn't quite finish it today. But soon. Soon...
I also got over a rather difficult level in Shenzhen, after not playing that out of frustration for a while. My solution was still terribly inefficient and produced the greatest circuit spaghetti imaginable, but it works.
30.03.17
Busy, busy, busy. I actually got a couple more hours of Hand of Fate done, and am nearing the end of the campaign. I'll definitely have my thoughts by the end of it.
29.03.17
Only about an hour of Planetside 2 today. I still like that game.
But there's also a Humble Bundle that might be worth buying if you have friends to play with. There's Eon Altar at the 1$ level, which is an RPG played with an Android app as a controller. Also Helldivers at the 10$ level, which looks like the spiritual successor to Magicka (rather than Magicka 2, which didn't do so well), except with guns.
Sadly you only get the first episode of Eon Altar, and only one of the ~ten DLCs for Helldivers. Far from the full experience, which is why I won't be buying it. But there's also some other games in there, which I dare say are decent, but not as good as the listed ones.
28.03.17
I blame my lack of time on the fact that it's the middle of the semester. It's not always like this every week, I swear. nervous smile
In all honesty, Tuesday-Wednesday are busier days than the rest. I don't have much time for games on them.
27.03.17
Spent most of my free time today picking out parts for my new PC. I just wanted a CPU upgrade, because my shitty 3rd gen i3 was not at all handling a bunch of games on the settings I wanted, but new CPU → different socket → new motherboard → new RAM... So I ended up getting a i5-7600K and 16GB of DDR4 RAM. Should complement the GTX 960 nicely.
26.03.17
More Hand of Fate, more Factorio, also a fair bit of time spent on studies. Nothing of note.
25.03.17
Oh, hey, NieR:Automata released a week ago. I was waiting for that. I heard it has some slight performance problems as is common with console-first games, but nothing too serious. I never played it, but I liked the look of the original NieR, so I'll surely play this one. Eventually.
Right, but, staying on track with actually trying out games:
Butcher is a platformer + shooter that advertises itself as being very difficult. I would definitely say it is difficult, but I don't at all like some of the aspects that contribute to that difficulty. What mainly irks me is how pixelated the games is, and how everything is pretty much the same color. While it's true that this is the "feel" the game is going for, and "that's just part of the style", it could have been executed better.
It is incredibly difficult to keep track of where the enemies as well as all the objects on the screen are, and whether they're scenery or important. It feels frustrating instead of genuinely difficult if more than half the times you get hit are because you couldn't see the enemy. Also pretty bad if a button I have to press gets buried under a mountain of corpses, and I spend 3 minutes looking for it while the entire level only took me 2 minutes otherwise.
I can't even get to analyzing the gameplay because the visuals are really that terrible as to render the game mostly unplayable. For a game that does these kinds of visuals right, I suggest taking a look at Devil Daggers.
I also spent a couple of hours with Hand of Fate, and I am really enjoying it thus far. The atmosphere, the visuals, the animations, how many lines the dealer has... It's all darn wonderful. This game seems to have both loads of content and depth, but I'll get a more detailed understanding of that as I play more.
Finally, not a new game, but I tried my first game of "FactorioMMO" yesterday night/today. Essentially, it's just regular Factorio, but with about 30-60 players on at all times. It feels completely different than playing alone or with a small group, because with tens of people, you can't really keep track of where everything is, so each player kind of has to have their own little area of expertise and just hope that everyone else is doing their job. It doesn't run as smoothly as a well-constructed singleplayer factory, but I'm honestly amazed at the speed of progress and how relatively organized everything is. If it weren't for the inevitable FPS death and the potential lethality of griefers, I would really love to see how one of these would pan out over a longer course of time. There's moderate potential for some sort of economy to form.
Right, but, staying on track with actually trying out games:
Butcher is a platformer + shooter that advertises itself as being very difficult. I would definitely say it is difficult, but I don't at all like some of the aspects that contribute to that difficulty. What mainly irks me is how pixelated the games is, and how everything is pretty much the same color. While it's true that this is the "feel" the game is going for, and "that's just part of the style", it could have been executed better.
It is incredibly difficult to keep track of where the enemies as well as all the objects on the screen are, and whether they're scenery or important. It feels frustrating instead of genuinely difficult if more than half the times you get hit are because you couldn't see the enemy. Also pretty bad if a button I have to press gets buried under a mountain of corpses, and I spend 3 minutes looking for it while the entire level only took me 2 minutes otherwise.
I can't even get to analyzing the gameplay because the visuals are really that terrible as to render the game mostly unplayable. For a game that does these kinds of visuals right, I suggest taking a look at Devil Daggers.
I also spent a couple of hours with Hand of Fate, and I am really enjoying it thus far. The atmosphere, the visuals, the animations, how many lines the dealer has... It's all darn wonderful. This game seems to have both loads of content and depth, but I'll get a more detailed understanding of that as I play more.
Finally, not a new game, but I tried my first game of "FactorioMMO" yesterday night/today. Essentially, it's just regular Factorio, but with about 30-60 players on at all times. It feels completely different than playing alone or with a small group, because with tens of people, you can't really keep track of where everything is, so each player kind of has to have their own little area of expertise and just hope that everyone else is doing their job. It doesn't run as smoothly as a well-constructed singleplayer factory, but I'm honestly amazed at the speed of progress and how relatively organized everything is. If it weren't for the inevitable FPS death and the potential lethality of griefers, I would really love to see how one of these would pan out over a longer course of time. There's moderate potential for some sort of economy to form.
24.03.17
Something a little less popular today: Snowflake's Chance. It's a supposedly difficult platformer with a slightly creepy atmosphere. You have 99 lives to climb out of a pit you fell into, mostly running and hiding from your enemies instead of fighting them because you're just a scared little bunny.
As for games I tried today:
Yomawari: Night Alone is an isometric horror-y adventure game. I'd say the best part about it are the visuals - I quite like how cute the sprites are, looks a bit like Don't Starve. Now, the horror part isn't nearly as well executed. With how adorable stuff looks, it doesn't really give a frightening atmosphere, and while I was spooked a few times, those were simply poorly executed jump scares. Rather hard to not jump at a sudden sound and a picture popping up at you.
The game does a poor job at explaining what exactly I'm supposed to do or how I'm supposed to avoid the enemies in the narrow streets I'm traversing. The isometric view combined with tall trees and buildings often obscures my view, and the enemies are invisible unless directly looked at to boot. Overall, not a very pleasant playing experience.
Oh, also, it doesn't really explain the controls, it crashed on me after playing for a semi-short while, and I couldn't really find a way to recover my save data. So, with how the game had been, I just quit it there instead of starting over.
As suspected, Night in the Woods isn't really my cup of tea. The story didn't seem to start to get any interesting and I didn't really relate to it either. Possibly a conscious decision on the art style, but it did a very poor job with expressing the (rather important) details. I couldn't understand anyone's gender, mood, expression, anything... And the characters only had about one sprite. If that was facing sideways, it looked terrible in any situation when they shouldn't have been facing sideways. There wasn't really any gameplay to speak of, just walking from place to place, so nothing to commend there either. (And gosh, those rhythm game sequences are long and not even good.)
Overall, the only thing I saw going for it was the humorous mono- and dialogue. Got a chuckle and a few grins out of me, but not enough to keep me playing. I don't know, clearly a fair amount of people like it, but personally I don't even know who the target audience would be, so I can't at all recommend it.
As for games I tried today:
Yomawari: Night Alone is an isometric horror-y adventure game. I'd say the best part about it are the visuals - I quite like how cute the sprites are, looks a bit like Don't Starve. Now, the horror part isn't nearly as well executed. With how adorable stuff looks, it doesn't really give a frightening atmosphere, and while I was spooked a few times, those were simply poorly executed jump scares. Rather hard to not jump at a sudden sound and a picture popping up at you.
The game does a poor job at explaining what exactly I'm supposed to do or how I'm supposed to avoid the enemies in the narrow streets I'm traversing. The isometric view combined with tall trees and buildings often obscures my view, and the enemies are invisible unless directly looked at to boot. Overall, not a very pleasant playing experience.
Oh, also, it doesn't really explain the controls, it crashed on me after playing for a semi-short while, and I couldn't really find a way to recover my save data. So, with how the game had been, I just quit it there instead of starting over.
As suspected, Night in the Woods isn't really my cup of tea. The story didn't seem to start to get any interesting and I didn't really relate to it either. Possibly a conscious decision on the art style, but it did a very poor job with expressing the (rather important) details. I couldn't understand anyone's gender, mood, expression, anything... And the characters only had about one sprite. If that was facing sideways, it looked terrible in any situation when they shouldn't have been facing sideways. There wasn't really any gameplay to speak of, just walking from place to place, so nothing to commend there either. (And gosh, those rhythm game sequences are long and not even good.)
Overall, the only thing I saw going for it was the humorous mono- and dialogue. Got a chuckle and a few grins out of me, but not enough to keep me playing. I don't know, clearly a fair amount of people like it, but personally I don't even know who the target audience would be, so I can't at all recommend it.
23.03.17
Now, I don't really like card games. Something like Hearthstone didn't sit with me at all. Duelyst was a little bit better with the game board and moving units it brought to the table, but ultimately still not to my liking. Now, I don't really have much hope for it, but I figured I would give Faeria a try. It adds to just having a gameboard with the ability to actually build it as the game progresses. Sadly, that was about the only innovative thing I saw on it, and it wasn't that much of a game-changer. Not really in the mood to explore yet another card game deeper, as it doesn't seem to be special enough - might as well go back to Duelyst.
22.03.17
I haven't actually played it yet, but there's this apparently MMO shooter thing by the name of Foxhole. It's not out yet, but there's a pre-alpha available for install further down on its Steam page. It reminds me a bit of Running with Rifles, which was pretty good, funny, although mostly dead in terms of the playerbase.
21.03.17
Maybe if I cut down on some of those PvP games, I'd have an adequate amount of time. In any case, tomorrow's a long day, but at least I have the 3 day weekends to look forward to now.
And I just counted - I have 95 games left to play, not counting Visual Novels and VR games. (Which I don't have a headset for.) So I'm not sure how I counted 111 games some while back. Maybe I included the half-finished ones in my Library? Point is, that's less than 100, and that already looks like a manageable number. One day... One day I'll try them all.
20.03.17
I should kind of just admit that I don't really have time for stuff on the weekdays. I want to have something to write every day, but it's quite difficult.
19.03.17
As promised, starting a new game today. Night of Azure is that game, and it's got rather sad reviews on Steam already and a couple hours of playing mostly confirms what the reviews say.
For starters, the game doesn't even scale to 1080p, forcing me to play in either windowed mode or have stretched out pixels. Secondly, while I can play with a keyboard, nothing explains the controls to me, nor allows for rebinding them. The original keyboard controls are listed in some text file that comes with the installation, but they're pretty terrible. I'd need three hands, as I can't use the mouse for looking around.
There's a clear deficit of polygons, as is common for console games, the animations are noticeably robotic, and as far as I've gotten, the story is bad.
As for the game itself... It's pretty much a cycle between cutscenes and levels, with a break for equipping new stuff every now and then. Except the levels are boring, easy, and you just mash the attack key while awkwardly trying to handle movement and the camera, which are on opposite sides of the keyboard. (And the attack key is in the middle.) There's a lack in the variety of your equipment, and it practically changes nothing except for a small boost to your stats.
So, uh, yeah... Game's shit. Again.
Speaking of Action Anime RPGs, I wonder how Dragon Nest is doing. I never really liked it, judging it as an MMO, but as a singleplayer ARPG, it might even be pretty good. I might take a look at some point.
For starters, the game doesn't even scale to 1080p, forcing me to play in either windowed mode or have stretched out pixels. Secondly, while I can play with a keyboard, nothing explains the controls to me, nor allows for rebinding them. The original keyboard controls are listed in some text file that comes with the installation, but they're pretty terrible. I'd need three hands, as I can't use the mouse for looking around.
There's a clear deficit of polygons, as is common for console games, the animations are noticeably robotic, and as far as I've gotten, the story is bad.
As for the game itself... It's pretty much a cycle between cutscenes and levels, with a break for equipping new stuff every now and then. Except the levels are boring, easy, and you just mash the attack key while awkwardly trying to handle movement and the camera, which are on opposite sides of the keyboard. (And the attack key is in the middle.) There's a lack in the variety of your equipment, and it practically changes nothing except for a small boost to your stats.
So, uh, yeah... Game's shit. Again.
Speaking of Action Anime RPGs, I wonder how Dragon Nest is doing. I never really liked it, judging it as an MMO, but as a singleplayer ARPG, it might even be pretty good. I might take a look at some point.
18.03.17
Oh crap, I've been lagging behind on posts by a day, but I'll start a new game tomorrow, I swear.
17.03.17
Turns out that with the slight change in the Steam reviews system, they also changed it to not show the score of any game with less than 10 reviews. It sort of makes sense because you can't really accurately decide from such a low amount of reviews, but they do help, especially the negative ones. Games with a low amount of reviews tend to have more positive ones, so each negative one speaks a lot about the game. That and the change also broke my script which I used to look through those games. Actually took me three days to notice that it hadn't given me any games to manually look through. Well, fixed now though.
And among those three days worth of games I found Streets of Rogue. It's apparently some sort of Early Access multiplayer roguelike with a ton of mechanics, but not (yet?) terribly much content. But it looks kind of interesting. Reminds me a bit of Monaco.
16.03.17
Well, I finished my HotS placements, placing in the same spot I was last season. At least the progress isn't backwards.
I also managed to relocate all my classes from Friday, so I have a three-day weekend now, which is nice. I've still a bit much on my plate right now, but I hope to get a few games over with on the weekend.
15.03.17
I found Atelier Firis: The Alchemist and-the-name-is-way-too-long... Didn't I just see another game by the same name (that spans like two whole lines) like a week back? Anyways, hey, it's another JRPG, and I've grown wary of those. Couldn't tell from the images, the video, nor the user reviews that it's severely lacking in certain aspects, and maybe it actually isn't, but I have my doubts at this point. Still, worth a try, right?
12.03.17
Started the day off with a few more hours of Tyranny. By my estimates, I'm maybe 20% through the game now, so I have a decent enough idea of it. And from what I hear, the ending is rushed/incomplete anyways.
I can't accurately compare it to Pillars of Eternity, since it's been a few months since I played the latter. It obviously shares all of the major mechanics and is all around very similar, but as far as gameplay and ease-of-use (UI, menu layouts, understanding what I'm supposed to do, etc.) go, I'd say there have been slight improvements.
Other than that, my opinions are the same as last time in that it's not inherently bad, but instead just not my style.
-Expects me to roleplay to some degree, to at least interact with the story, but I prefer to pick the most efficient route.
-It's darn hard to determine the most efficient route and that would turn the rate of progress into an unbearably slow slog.
-So I either dislike it because I am being suboptimal or I dislike it because it takes too long to do every little thing.
And adding to that, I don't really care much for the story, nor do I consider the combat to be fun or interesting.
Quick to be added, quick to be removed. As far as games go, The Mooseman was terrible. You just walk right and try to solve shitty puzzles. And it throws some myths and real-life lore at you real often. If I wanted to read this lore, I'd go do so somewhere outside a game. Although, this barely qualifies as a game.
Way of the Red was that one game I added to my list because I hadn't been adding enough games. That was back when I didn't have automation assisting me in filtering out the garbage from the Store. It actually turned out to be surprisingly good. Not quite worth recommending, but good nonetheless.
Way of the Red is a simple action platformer. Not sure if one could really classify it as a Metroidvania, but it's near there at least. Now, I don't particularly have anything bad to say about the game, but the majority of the components weren't good either. My biggest issue was with how wall-grabbing required you to press jump after you had made contact with a wall. If you were holding it down any sooner, it failed. But other than that, basic movement was actually above average, as it was really responsive and quick. I never felt frustration from the controls, only from my own incompetence (at times).
But the problem was that the game was only a few short hours long and lacked features. There wasn't any real quality in the art, story, or gameplay. It was all just barely sufficient to not be bad in any way, but I could never point to this game for doing something particularly well.
So, hey, if you're starved on Metroidvanias or the like, you can try this, it probably won't be a dislikeable few hours, but don't expect anything memorable either.
Quick to be added, quick to be removed. As far as games go, The Mooseman was terrible. You just walk right and try to solve shitty puzzles. And it throws some myths and real-life lore at you real often. If I wanted to read this lore, I'd go do so somewhere outside a game. Although, this barely qualifies as a game.
Way of the Red was that one game I added to my list because I hadn't been adding enough games. That was back when I didn't have automation assisting me in filtering out the garbage from the Store. It actually turned out to be surprisingly good. Not quite worth recommending, but good nonetheless.
Way of the Red is a simple action platformer. Not sure if one could really classify it as a Metroidvania, but it's near there at least. Now, I don't particularly have anything bad to say about the game, but the majority of the components weren't good either. My biggest issue was with how wall-grabbing required you to press jump after you had made contact with a wall. If you were holding it down any sooner, it failed. But other than that, basic movement was actually above average, as it was really responsive and quick. I never felt frustration from the controls, only from my own incompetence (at times).
But the problem was that the game was only a few short hours long and lacked features. There wasn't any real quality in the art, story, or gameplay. It was all just barely sufficient to not be bad in any way, but I could never point to this game for doing something particularly well.
So, hey, if you're starved on Metroidvanias or the like, you can try this, it probably won't be a dislikeable few hours, but don't expect anything memorable either.
11.03.17
But I actually completed everything I had to do for next week, so I got the weekend free. Therefore, games.
So I played about 4 more hours of God Eater 2: Rage Burst, and I'm stopping here. My opinions from the first time still stand, and I won't much repeat them. I'm losing more and more hope in JRPGs, perhaps I'll one day actually be biased against them.
Right, but why am I stopping? Well, let's start with the less bad case - the story. It feeds you some bits of story here and there through cutscenes and optional dialogue. Most of the time, neither is particularly interesting, and at worst, they're cringeworthy. There's hints to an interesting overarching storyline, but ugh, the majority of it is garbage.
I would complain that forcing the not-so-good story down my throat at regular intervals is a bad thing, but sadly, compared to actually playing the game, I was looking forward to the occasional cutscene. The combat is really repetitive, enemies are either too easy or can soak up too much damage, and the hitboxes of their attacks are weird, meaning you basically just run up to them and hit them until they die, running to a safe distance if they start charging an attack you feel you don't want to risk tanking. No flashy dodging nor awesome combos, just hit, hit, and hit some more.
And the complicated equipment system? Shallow, sadly. I'd say at least 75% of it doesn't see any use. Now, which 75% might depend on who's playing, but for any single individual, the vast majority of the stuff you see is irrelevant.
All the environments are heavily re-used, tiny, but you still need to run tons to actually get from one fight to another. And the minimum downtime between two actual missions is huge, because you need to wait for like 40 seconds after each victory, then it lists you all the stuff you earned one-by-one, loading screens, head back to the mission terminal, back to the gate, more loading screens... Laughably little fighting.
Honestly, the first impression it gives is pretty good, but that quickly wears off and then it's just layers upon layers of bad. Each worse than the last and the next.
So instead I gave Tyranny a go. Looks extremely similar to Obsidian's last game - Pillars of Eternity, which I didn't end up liking. I'm about 3 hours in right now, and I'm slightly less bored, but by no means enthralled by it. The reason for the former might just be the ever-different circumstances and levels of boredom in my life, or maybe Tyranny does something slightly better than it's predecessor. Some optimistic estimate sets the playthrough time at 12 hours, but I highly doubt that's the case with my pace.
So instead I gave Tyranny a go. Looks extremely similar to Obsidian's last game - Pillars of Eternity, which I didn't end up liking. I'm about 3 hours in right now, and I'm slightly less bored, but by no means enthralled by it. The reason for the former might just be the ever-different circumstances and levels of boredom in my life, or maybe Tyranny does something slightly better than it's predecessor. Some optimistic estimate sets the playthrough time at 12 hours, but I highly doubt that's the case with my pace.
08.03.17
This is all the news you'll be getting for today, but two new games:
Desync is an FPS, where you... shoot enemies. Well, clearly I have my doubts about the depth of this game and how long it can be entertaining, but it looks colorful and action-y enough.
And the other is For The King. It's a turn-based RPG, and it seems everything is on a hex grid, from the battles to the world map. I really like how the game looks, but I hear it has some serious problems with the balancing of some mechanics. In any case, it's in Early Access, so at least for me, it has time to fix those issues.
06.03.17
The more I think about it, adding possibly shitty games to my list isn't all that bad. If they're good, I lose nothing. If they're bad, I run them through another 2-minute check before playing anyways, so I get to second-guess any past decisions, should I feel the need. And even if I do try them, the bad ones don't last too long. I guess the quality of my choices has kept up with my expectations, else I'd be more picky with the games I choose.
That said, Weapon Shop Fantasy is listed as a casual game, and does look like something that might make for a mobile game. On the other hand, most mobile games are completely trashed by Steam users, so I'm hoping this isn't as bad. Not much need for descriptions what the game is about - the name pretty much says it all.
05.03.17
At least I finally got like 2 hours of "proper" free time just as the weekend was ending. I'll surely be showered with new problems the next week, but for now, I have time.
So I started with God Eater 2: Rage Burst. It's a little more anime-ish than I thought and it totally shows it's a console port. The graphics don't look all that old nor bad, but there's a distinct lack of polygons, and the control scheme isn't the best, but I don't have any major problems with it right now, and it's probably better than that of the average port.
The game seems incredibly complicated on the combat portion, to the point I don't really have a clue what I'm doing yet. I just hope it has the depth to match instead of eventually boiling down to a few strategies that work best, and then a ton of useless fluff. Sadly that does seem to often be the case with RPGs coming from the East. Same issue with poorly adjusted difficulty. I haven't really made it past the tutorial-y portions yet so I don't really know about either, but I hope those things won't be issues.
The game looks really cool in my opinion, and the weapon are about the most oversized I've seen. It lists my 2 meter sword as a knife. So if the combat ends up being more fun than tedious, I feel like I got another long game on my hands. For better or worse.
04.03.17
Okay, no, there's no way there's so many "passable" games being released as of late. I must just be getting more lenient with picking them.
But even now I'm feeling a sense of "Maybe it would have been fun." on some games I left out. Like a Guns of Icarus with actual ships at sea, or some physics-based ragdoll climber, or a side-view PvP shooter.
Okay, so, people probably heard about 911 Operator. It's kind of a management game where you send different emergency vehicles to places that need help, or something. Seems there are some other events that you might have to respond to as well. Eh, will see.
Then there's Hollow Knight - another metroidvania. I like how it looks. As for the gameplay side, seems pretty standard, but well polished? Again, will see once I hopefully ever get around to it.
And oh, hey, more knights. Hyper Knights seems like a much shorter game about using various combinations to execute attacks on little tiny knights or having your own army of little tiny knights fight the other ones. Seems fun for a short while, which seems to be kind of a trend with well received games these days.
Actually, about that last part. I did just realize that there are comparatively few (good) full-length or well-replayable games coming out. It's definitely harder to have a game be engaging for a longer period of time, but if I can't even pull double digits out of a game, I can't honestly recommend it as good. It's a semi-sad state of affairs where we're drifting towards this "lots of cheap games that will keep you entertained for a short while" mentality. I mean, if they continue being fun, then these short experiments, I dare say, are fine. But I'm afraid we might be leaning towards the mobile market where people might not want to pay large amounts of money for games, or expect to get a new game every couple of days. Here's me giving my vote to quality over quantity, always.
And, finally, I'd mention that that Codingame thing I was linked to was pretty fun. Got out of wood tier and into bronze at least. I have some more ideas for improvements, but considering it ends in a day and I still have other things to do, I'll leave it as it is. They supposedly have more competitions happening, so perhaps I can try again at some other time.
And, finally, I'd mention that that Codingame thing I was linked to was pretty fun. Got out of wood tier and into bronze at least. I have some more ideas for improvements, but considering it ends in a day and I still have other things to do, I'll leave it as it is. They supposedly have more competitions happening, so perhaps I can try again at some other time.
03.03.17
Work, work, work. The end is in sight though, so I have hope for getting some stuff done this weekend. Not much hope for reaching my goal though.
02.03.17
I'm really going to struggle reaching that goal I set for myself by the end of this weekend since I'm adding all these new games.
Right, so, Northgard released (into Early Access), which has been sitting in my wishlist for a fair while. I can't even remember why I originally added it, but it seems the reception so far is very good, unlike most Early Access games. The game looks quite pretty in both art and design too. It's an RTS, probably more like Age of Empires than Starcraft though. I do have a general distaste for RTS games, but that's mostly only if there's any form of multiplayer involved. Current complaints seem to be a lack of difficulty and meaningful content, but perhaps that'll get better over time.
Then there's Unexplored, which seems to be another randomly generated rogue-like. But apparently this one's actually decent, or something? I skipped over this when I first saw it, but it actually released now, and people seem to praise it for the good dungeon generation algorithm as well as the plethora of content.
And lastly, Open Sorcery, which seems to be shortest and simplest of the bunch. At first glance I thought it might be another coding game of sorts, but looking closer I guess it's just a text-based adventure. But it's also supposedly real short, so nothing lost either way.
Still, I need to really step up my pace and work through a large bunch of games this weekend if I want to stay on track. It doesn't help that I'm still busy and have a bunch of stuff I need to take care of if I want to enjoy a weekend free of responsibilities. A friend also recently pointed me to this, and a time-limited contest taking place there. Not that I'd want to seriously compete, but it seems like a fun thing to try. But that does add another thing that I need to do in the near future, and my imaginary schedule is overflowing already. I do hope to one day surmount my giant list of games, but I can't help but think if that's a false hope, and I'll instead be locked in an eternal struggle against them.
01.03.17
There's a terrible lack of time right now. Which is great because everything I'm doing feels really important, but obviously bad because I still don't have enough time to do everything.
A rather large group of potentially good new games in the Store today.
First up, Pixel Privateers. This is from the same group who made Pixel Piracy, I think, and plays somewhat similarly too. It looks like there's tons of new content and mechanics, and a multiplayer mode. The original Pixel Piracy was a flop in terms of execution, but it had decent ideas. Considering the reviews for this are relatively good, I have hopes it'll be enjoyable unlike its predecessor.
Next, Berserk and the Band of the Hawk. Ugh, I partially think the good reviews come from people liking the source material, not the game itself. I speculate I won't actually like it, but with how popular it is, I can't just not try it.
And finally, Night in the Woods. Some cartoon-y adventure game about... I don't know what. Again, looks like a game for a different target audience than me, but I have to try it. It's kind of the reason I play all these games even though I don't like >90% of them. They're often enough not a waste of time, and if I'm ever pleasantly surprised, it's worth all the times I haven't been.
I also finished watching Attack on Titan. Can't say it was the best I've seen, but it was still pretty darn great and the quality was consistent throughout.
28.02.17
Today I spent a tad more time than I care to admit on Dominus. It's a... slow-time strategy game, if you'll excuse my terminology, and it's actually quite fun.
It's a medieval-themed game where you mainly just build armies and send them to battle with other armies and take the castles of other players. If you take their castle, they become your vassal. Vassals stack like a tree, and any vassals under a player transfer with them. You can also rebel against your lords and make them your vassals if you win. So, eventually, everyone will be in a single vassal-lord tree, and then it becomes a game of who can stay at the root node of that tree (the lord of all) for two days. If you manage that, you win the game.
There's more depth to it than that, but it's still quite slow-paced, so by no means will you always have something to do. I wonder how much dedication it actually requires, as well as how bad things will get once you haven't tended to your lands over the night. I don't really have hope I'll play it for a longer while due to having to routinely attend to it, but it sure is fun for now. Stock market jokes are quite something right now.
27.02.17
Nothing much to report today.
But any day with nothing to report makes me reflect on why that was, and where I went wrong that that day was so uninteresting. So there's room for improvement.
26.02.17
I tried out Heavy Metal Machines with my friends today, and as a team of 3, we had a 90% win rate, with most games going 3-0 in our favor. Well, aside from it being too easy, it was a rather fun experience. The game didn't seem to have a lot of depth to it, so I would've probably gotten bored regardless of the high win rate, but dodging enemies, ramming opponents, trying to shoot them down or knock them into lava while trying to keep fire off your carry and them at full health... It's fun, really.
Basically you first rush to get the bomb from the middle, then try to carry it down the windy track to your opponent's finish line, or kill their carry and grab the bomb to push it backwards on your track. It's like a constant tug-of-war. There's a few different cars with the main types being healer, damage dealer, and bomb carry.
The entire game has a population of about 50-200 players, depending on the time of day, and connection issues are actually rather commonplace, even if it's not the players' fault, so you'll be dealing with at least one AFK in most games. So, due to the low depth, low player count, and high amount of connection problems, I don't think I'll be returning to it. But I did have fun.
25.02.17
The Mooseman looks like a fairly short adventure game that's perhaps again a bit more focused on how it looks and feels, rather than how it plays. But as usual, it seems worth trying, as there's not much time to be lost in any case.
Now, I also suddenly got access to the pre-alpha testing of Crowfall. It's apparently been two years since I backed this project on Kickstarter. It's also the first and so far only project I've backed so early. That is partially due to me having faith in them accomplishing what they said they would, and partially because I've been starved for a proper Sandbox MMO for far too long.
I wasn't actually expecting to get in yet, as the game is a long ways from being finished. A lot of the systems still need work and there's plenty of band-aids in place to even have this playable. I tried it for a few hours, and there's not much to really do yet. Couple that with the fact that mostly everything is going to change before launch and that there will be resets, and I'm not really inclined to spend all that much time in it beyond learning what can be done at present.
Currently there's combat and crafting. The former needs work from a client-server interaction standpoint at the very least, and the latter is just a game of crafting potions, which are a quick fix that give massive boosts to everything so we wouldn't be stuck in the low-level stuff. Much to test, not much to play.
24.02.17
Well, two games down, after a long period of relative inactivity.
I finally gave Shadow Tactics a try, and it went about as well as I predicted. It definitely looks like a good game, but the combination of genres simply doesn't appeal to me, so I gave up fairly quickly as it wasn't enjoyable. I guess my understanding of it all is a bit limited given my short playtime, but...
The stealth portion looks fairly standard and solidly executed. Lots of cover, cones of sight, noise circles, stealth kills, hiding the bodies, creating distractions, traps, etc... Getting seen is not instantly the end of everything, but it is a difficult situation to come out of, and by no means can you just switch to rushing the enemy.
And for the RTS side, well... It's just real-time at all times and features multiple characters whom you can control at once. And this is actually the bigger part of what I don't like. The game often requires or at least benefits from being able to simultaneously control two or more characters, but I don't feel like the strategic/tactical side mixes well with having to rapidly queue actions, which can fail if you're not fast enough or make a mistake due to rushing. The characters feel great if you can actually give any one of them your full attention, but since you often can't, they don't. It's not satisfying to see a mistimed action, and then scrambling to get your characters out, but instead someone sheepishly stands there or has been left in crouch mode and is slowly sneaking away while being shot at.
But I suppose that's more my general issue with RTS games. The stealth portion is decent, and I can't particularly say that the RTS side is poorly executed. So if you like both genres, you might enjoy it. I just don't think they mix well like this.
Another game I tried today was Valley. I apparently got about halfway through the thing, as it's only a few hours long, but as far as I heard, the last half is just more of the same. As you can guess, since I stopped halfway, I didn't like the game.
As I started, it appeared to be another one of those all graphics, no gameplay exploration games. The controls also felt a bit heavy or sluggish, and remained so throughout the game. I honestly had some hope as I was running at high speeds through the first map in the newly acquired suit, making long leaps, but that was about the highlight of the game for me, and it wasn't anything particularly good, just... passable. The rest was just "go there, do that, meet some invisible walls and how-am-I-supposed-to-get-over-this terrain along the way".
The life giving and taking mechanic of your suit is a pointless addition to the game, which only serves as an alternative to flipping switches, restricting mobility, penalizing deaths, and other game mechanics that they wanted to limit. There's more than enough energy everywhere and shooting stuff to revitalize it was just a chore. Not that the so-called exploration was any better.
So, yeah, that hope I got dwindled away real quick and it really was another one of those all graphics, no gameplay exploration games. The graphics are good though, I got to give them that, if only perhaps a little too shiny and blinding.
Another game I tried today was Valley. I apparently got about halfway through the thing, as it's only a few hours long, but as far as I heard, the last half is just more of the same. As you can guess, since I stopped halfway, I didn't like the game.
As I started, it appeared to be another one of those all graphics, no gameplay exploration games. The controls also felt a bit heavy or sluggish, and remained so throughout the game. I honestly had some hope as I was running at high speeds through the first map in the newly acquired suit, making long leaps, but that was about the highlight of the game for me, and it wasn't anything particularly good, just... passable. The rest was just "go there, do that, meet some invisible walls and how-am-I-supposed-to-get-over-this terrain along the way".
The life giving and taking mechanic of your suit is a pointless addition to the game, which only serves as an alternative to flipping switches, restricting mobility, penalizing deaths, and other game mechanics that they wanted to limit. There's more than enough energy everywhere and shooting stuff to revitalize it was just a chore. Not that the so-called exploration was any better.
So, yeah, that hope I got dwindled away real quick and it really was another one of those all graphics, no gameplay exploration games. The graphics are good though, I got to give them that, if only perhaps a little too shiny and blinding.
23.02.17
Found a little game by the name of Soul Searching. It probably has more depth in meaning than gameplay, as the latter doesn't look particularly good, yet it's noticeably well received so far. Onto the list it goes, for whenever I get around to it.
22.02.17
Oh hey, Fairy Fencer F: Advent Dark Force released on Steam. It's kind of from the Neptunia series, just skinned differently and has a more serious tune to it, which is all good in my eyes. I played through the original one and kind of liked it despite how glaringly bad the actual gameplay was, which I think I briefly mentioned when writing about Tales of Zestiria. So, Advent Dark Force is apparently just like the regular Fairy Fencer F, except with little improvements all across the board. New difficulty levels supposedly make the game not laughably easy, but don't turn the combat any less uninteresting. So I'd suggest this over the original if you want to play it and haven't yet, but I won't be going through it again.
21.02.17
Day 2 of not making progress toward my set goal.
I must be really bad at this. I was actually a bit busy with stuff that needed doing instead of wasting my time today though. Soon. Soon...
19.02.17
The day goes fast when spent on Factorio with friends.
I actually also played some Burnout Paradise. Not because it was on my list or anything, no. I've already played it a fair bit a few years back, but decided to spend a couple more hours on it for some odd reason. It has that good moment-to-moment action, but not much in terms of enjoyment after being done with it for the day. And I already have plenty of other games for the former.
I still have 111 games on my backlog as of right now. I want to get it down to <100 by two weeks' time. I need some arbitrary goals to motivate me, at the very least.
18.02.17
It's finally done. I wasn't sure this day would come. I finally finished that VN. And this is precisely the reason I'm reluctant to read them. They take an eternity to complete. I'll stick by my decision of not describing them for long, but it suits this one especially well. Any actual details would spoil it.
The House in Fata Morgana was a darn delightful read, and is now one of my favorites. It's highly different from all other VNs I know, not being anime-themed, among other things. It's a series of intricately woven tragedies, but that's as much as I'm allowed to say. Oh, also, the music is really good and a very important part in the overall feeling of the story.
Hey, perhaps I can finally play some other games now. Wouldn't that be a joy?
17.02.17
And hey, here's some rogue-like action game that I probably won't like, since I keep adding such mediocre stuff to my list as of late. Brut@l would be that game.
But hey, if the games really are bad, it won't take all too long to realize that when trying them. On a good day, I can go through 4-6 bad games. In contrast, my average over the last month must be more like 0.04 games/day. I'll try to fix that, I swear.
16.02.17
Okay, so, I'm both clearly biased towards anime, as well as selecting games below my average quality threshold at the moment. That said, the two following games still don't look all that bad.
Atelier Sophie and Nights of Azure are both seemingly similar JRPGs, although the former is noticeably more popular and better rated. I can't really see anything special about either at first glance, but I might enjoy them.
15.02.17
Wednesdays are days of lectures, classes, and art. So in terms of the writings here, nothing ever happens on a Wednesday.
14.02.17
I tend to forget what I do once a few days have passed. And with some days being consistently more busy, it's no wonder I don't have time on those days.
I think I mostly only got a little bit of Factorio done. I'm playing a scenario where each player is on some different part of the map and on a different faction so they don't share technologies nor do they see each other. With the resources not being terribly abundant and aliens being everywhere, this should hopefully eventually create some scenarios for trading, which would be fun.
13.02.17
Not much done today, but I do wish to draw your attention to this: https://www.humblebundle.com/freedom. It's a little odd for a Humble Bundle, being 30$ minimum, but the value on the entire pack is really darn good. Sadly(?) I already have most of the games I'd want from that bundle, but I think it has a lot of good games. It also has some books, which I know nothing about.
Here's some of the ones I've liked: The Stanley Parable, Mini Metro, Invisible Inc., 2064: Read Only Memories, Super Meat Boy, The Witness, Nuclear Throne, VVVVVV, World of Goo, Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP.
12.02.17
Truth be told, I haven't been checking Steam's store for the past 9 days. But I took the couple of hours needed to finish the entire automatic checking thing, so that scenario shouldn't happen again. But couple that with not having much variety in the games I've been playing for, gosh, perhaps a month now, and you get the same effect as going to a store on an empty stomach. So I ended up picking 6 games from the store that I'll try.
Starting off with Warcube. It's apparently some super early version, but the graphics and gameplay look simply lovely. Hard to say if it's going to play good, but it certainly looks good both in motion and while still.
Next up, Linelight. I don't normally try these minimalistic puzzle games (also because there's oddly many of them) that Steam's userbase has branded as casual, but this one looks a bit more polished and I've heard about it from other places too.
Now, one simply because it's free, Heavy Metal Machines. Some odd 4v4 combat racing game, but I don't think I'll stick with it for longer than perhaps a couple of hours.
This one I haven't the slightest how to pronounce, but... Rosenkreuzstilette. It, uh, reminds me of Megaman, as much as I've played the latter. Judging from the graphics, I would guess it's >10 years old, but nope, completely fresh.
And continuing in the same vein, because I do like these kinds of games a tad more than most, Alwa's Awakening. I suspect this, as well as the previous one, aren't all too long. At least I hope they aren't. They don't look like they could sustain over a dozen hours of play, and even half of that length would seem to be too much.
And finally a choice-based story-focused game. A House of Many Doors looks like a type of game I haven't played in a while. Not that I'd have a particular liking for choice-based games, but I don't think it's a bad genre either. Mainly hoping to remind myself how those kinds of games play.
11.02.17
Like, really too much HotS, what am I even doing with my free time, I have things that need do be done. I've been hanging in Diamond 4 for a while now, as opposed to going between 5 and 4, so it's some improvement, I suppose.
I also played something by the name of Ultimate Chicken Horse at a... uh... place. It's a fun party game, sure, but not really my style, and I wouldn't play it if I got to pick the game, so I don't really have much I'd want to say about it.
10.02.17
More HotS. I also almost finished Fata Morgana, for real this time. I'll write a few lines about it when I do. Mostly just too much HotS though.
09.02.17
How the days fly. I suppose it's a welcome change, but I do slightly miss the free time.
I tried the For Honor beta, and honestly the server issues with the entire thing were just abhorrent. It appears to have plenty of depth, but I couldn't really get a good feel of the combat due to the combination of it being on the complicated side as well as not having the willpower to trudge through the constant disconnects and long load and matchmaking times.
Might see how it does at launch, but I'm still more waiting for Absolver, since Blade Symphony doesn't appear to be livening up ever again.
08.02.17
I have nothing on-topic to share, so here's something that's not. I took a digital painting course. And it makes me feel like I'm complete shit. If that ever happens to you with anything you do, remember that someone, somewhere, is worse. Doesn't excuse you from being a complete shit though. ;_;
07.02.17
I'll just mention that the For Honor Open Beta will be beginning on the 9th, so I'll definitely play a lot of that over the weekend. It's a good chance to try the game for a few days without having to buy it. Personally, I think it looks pretty good, reminding me of Blade Symphony quite a lot. (I really liked Blade Symphony, but there's nobody there anymore.) It's of course a lot less fancy, but hopefully the balance is decent, and it most definitely has plenty of players for now. I can only hope it stays that way.
06.02.17
And then a new semester, the first week of which is always a little hectic. I actually took a (small) class relating to game development. It's about program design patterns, but especially from a game developer's stand point. So, uh, slowly working in various ways towards becoming a game developer some day. Now if only I spent some of my free time on that instead of playing games, I might get there faster.
05.02.17
But on others, I was playing Factorio with my friends again. Shocking they've time for games so often in the past ~month. Have I mentioned how much I like Factorio? With just a tiny bit of hyperbole, it's the best thing ever. Seriously.
04.02.17
I honestly forget what kept me so occupied some of these days.
(But here, have a few paragraphs I wrote, but never published. They relate to the post two days ago, but were written a good 1-2 weeks before that.)
I've
already slightly ranted about this, and it might just be my current
state of feeling tired, but there are way too many games being released
on Steam.
Looking
up some of the statistics, apparently over a third of all the games
currently on Steam were added there this year. And the percentage of
rubbish continues to increase. Day after day, the vast majority of games
I sift through have, by my estimates, been made in under 100 hours
solo, or under 200 combined hours as a group. In other words, probably
not more than a week or two's worth of work. It's sickening, and there
is literally even a company that brags about how they release a game
every single day.
Shifting
through ~200 games every week only to find 2 at best... it's
demoralizing. I just don't feel like it's a good use of my time to
thoroughly consider each of these games, so I already preemptively judge
them based on the amount of reviews, the positivity of them, as well as
what the game looks like in the first few seconds.
03.02.17
The Steam store feels like it hasn't felt for perhaps about even a year now. It's a lot more pleasant to look through games if they actually seem interesting, although I'm as picky as ever. Perhaps that has to do with my slow progress of clearing my backlog as of late. In any case...
I wasn't expecting to like it, but it was free, and I felt like trying it. Guild Quest, that is. Well, it's an idle game, not even a clicker, and it's not a good idle game either. So, I didn't like it, but 30 minutes isn't much lost.
Then there's Tales of Berseria, which seems to be one of the more popular releases as of late. Seems the release went rather well, and people are saying that the bad combat and equipment system from Tales of Zestiria have been "fixed". With how long and grindy these are (or seem to be, I haven't really played all that much to accurately know), I don't think I'd have the patience to finish both at this point. So I'm ditching Zestiria, and will at some point play this instead. If it turns out to be much to my liking, I might go back to play the previous one too.
And finally, Avorion, which I don't really know much about. It seems to be some kind of Space Sandbox, but I can't quite grasp the main "point" of it from just briefly looking at it. Regardless, it seems plenty popular and liked, so I guess I'll try it.
02.02.17
If this continues, I might just switch to a lower-frequency update schedule. Maybe thrice a week or something like that. Although there's no guarantee that I wouldn't miss those updates then as well. I hope this is just a phase of relative inactivity.
I actually spent the majority of today working on that program that would browse Steam's new releases for me. I'm not particularly experienced with making stuff that communicates with other stuff, so it took rather long. Not to mention I had to figure out how to automatically bypass age and mature content restrictions, as well as deal with a bunch of exception cases. In the end, I got it working (for the time being at least), and all that's left is to automatically mark certain games as "Not Interested".
It's not too aggressive with the filtering, only weeding out about 60% of the games. I manually looked over the batch of ~200 games it decided were not worthy of my attention, and not a single one of those was something I, myself, would have considered either, so I think it's doing a good job. And the rest that it did choose for me to look over were of much better quality. Having not gone over the new releases for about a week now, I should have some new games listed in the next post.
It also does some very minor logging on the amount of games released as well as the average score my program gives to the games on that day. It's more for the sake of fun than anything else though.
31.01.17
If I tackle multiple games at once that I don't really wish to play for extended periods of time, things start dragging on. Like how I'm still both playing Shenzhen and reading a lengthy VN, and most of my day goes on something other than those two regardless. Problem is that if I take another game to play beside those, it's increasingly more likely one of them will slip out of my schedule entirely.
So those situations take weeks during which I'm not getting much done in terms of new games. Luckily a friend finally had time to come over so we could play some local co-op games, two of which I'll tell you about.
Starting off with N++. I'm slightly conflicted about it. On one hand, I can't say I didn't have fun, but on the other, I don't particularly like platformers. Perhaps N++ is all that more commendable then, for making me have fun on a genre I don't particularly enjoy. Although I don't at all wish to go back to completed levels to get a better score or any such stuff, which it seems this game is quite much about.
N++ is very similar to Super Meat Boy in a lot of ways which include, but are not limited to, difficulty, speed, enjoyability, and silliness. While I don't really want to go back to it after about 6 hours, I would still say it's a very well made game, and would highly recommend it to anyone who does, unlike me, like action platformers.
The other one was Tales of Zestiria. Now this one I'm a lot less sure about. The most painful thing I had to find out was that this isn't really worth the co-op label. 11 hours in, and an agonizingly large portion of that is a complete singleplayer experience. I feel sorry for anyone who got 4 people together to play it, hearing it supports that many players, only to have 3 of them quit one by one because the game keeps lowering the amount of characters you can play. It's also terribly inconsistent in how many people can play at the same time. You start off with two, then get a third, then either of them is missing most of the time, then you gain the ability to merge two of them into one which means the other player has to constantly play the third, now uselessly weak, character, and in the case they go missing, it turns into a singleplayer game again. And then you get a fourth and fifth character in your party, but you must apparently have 2 "human" party members for two actual people to play at the same time. I mean I half understand a character leaving the party for story reasons, but ffs if I have 4 characters in my party, why won't you let two people play at once and rather leave some characters sitting idle?
Too lengthy of a rant, but that really did irk me. And while I'm on the negatives side, the battle camera is downright broken in how nearly unusable it is, often leaving my character not within its boundaries or close enough to an edge that I can't see what I'm fighting. Also it sometimes zooms in so that the entire camera view is is obscured by a single monster.
Now, what weren't completely terrible were the battle and equipment mechanics. There's a lot of depth and complexity to them, to the point where it's downright difficult to comprehend even after it's been explained to you by a tutorial. The problem is that it doesn't really warrant such complexity. Basically, a lot of the things you can do, you don't really want to. It doesn't help that there's like 20 different attacks, and that you chain them into combos and to elaborate mid-combo switches and effect stacking or whatever. Reason being that there's still only just a few that you'd actually use, and then you just stick to spamming those until the rare case something better comes along. Oddly enough, basically the same applies to equipment.
I guess that's been my overall experience with the gameplay side of all JRPGs so far, and it's really leaving a negative impression on me. That said, comparing it to games in the Neptunia series, I feel it's better in pretty much all the aspects, from difficulty scaling and combat to story and visuals.
I'm not entirely sure if I'm going to finish it, or perhaps instead try the very fresh Tales of Berseria instead. Why I'd bother at all in spite of the honestly not-very-enjoyable gameplay is because it feels kind of relaxing. The story is fun to follow, and beating up lots of enemies is kind of cathartic. I don't even care that the story is neither thought-provoking nor deep, and that the combat isn't challenging nor elaborate. These are not serious games, and I'm not taking them as such.
30.01.17
I spent most of today working on something to help me with the ever-increasingly time consuming task of looking through all of Steam's new releases. I'm already not handling the influx of utter shit (I'm sorry, but the quality really has nosedived.) that is being released on Steam, so I'm going to spend a little less time looking at those that are in all likelihood not worth anything, so I could spend a little more time looking over those that have at least a tiny bit of hope.
I'm not 100% sure I'll finish this as I've run into some problems, but I think they're surmountable.
29.01.17
Had a relatively rare opportunity to continue the game of Divinity I've been playing over nearly half a year now. 62 hours in apparently, and I'm surprised I haven't gotten bored in the slightest. Highlight of the session for me must've been when I finally got my Master level spells and unleashed my first Meteor Shower. The explosions and fiery death were quite something. òᴗó
28.01.17
I'm starting to think I'm playing a MOBA slightly too much again. I was afraid it would happen, which is one of the reasons why I didn't want to pick one back up.
There's this constant struggle between instant satisfaction and long-term satisfaction. Generally the things that are the most fun at a given moment don't offer much over a longer period of time, while things that may be tedious or boring have much more satisfying effects further down. As examples:
- MOBAs have moment-to-moment action where every move could be decisive, which constantly keeps things exciting and on-edge. However once a match is over, you start from scratch. Worse still, looking back at that time spent, it's not very unique, which makes it less memorable. So if you spend an entire weekend playing, the weekend will feel wasted on Monday because you lack distinct memories which are needed to create the feeling that the events happened over a lengthy period of time.
- Then there's games you can complete from start to finish, which may not be as exciting when playing them, but they often leave you with a story or some new experiences or ideas. This of course very much varies depending on which genre or specific game you're playing, but they generally create a larger feeling of accomplishment once you're through. And looking back at them, maybe you'll feel like you've learned something along the way.
- And as far as games go, I guess the other end of the spectrum would be games like EVE. It's actually a semi-solid argument to ask why people are spending their time in a game such as that rather than doing some or any kind of work in real life, but over the course of days, weeks, or even months, the stories and tales that come together are really something different. Looking back at them, it's not just some experience or idea you've gained, it's often a story worth sharing. But comparing the moment-to-moment gameplay? It's completely dull and uninteresting.
- And stepping outside of playing games, I'd say the worst of all is learning. It's tedious, frustrating when you just can't seem to grasp something, and you're not producing anything in the process of learning. No matter how much you learn, you never have anything to show that actually represents how much you've gained. Only when you exert extra effort to further use that gained knowledge to create something can you really see the fruits of your labor. But that is definitely a great feeling. Because I'm sure you've looked at a drawing and thought "I wish I could draw that well." And the same goes for everything, from art to technology. Who wouldn't want to know how to make things, or understand precisely how they work? But the road to each of these is a struggle.
27.01.17
A few more Shenzhen puzzles complete, some more HotS, got the neverending siege bug again on Endless Legend so I quit that playthrough, and some of Steam's features appear to be down, like the search/browse function, so I can't check for games today...
Overall nothing particularly noteworthy.
Overall nothing particularly noteworthy.
26.01.17
Can't believe I spent the entire day on Endless Legend. Same settings as last time, but it's going much better. One of my cities got the oddest bug where it remained under siege even after the opponent was gone. So I had to suffer a setback in productivity while I withdrew my armies and let the AI capture it, so I could get it back, and have it free from the siege. I'm actually trapped on an island for the time being, as I have not researched any naval units, and the enemy is in full control of the sea. While I'd love to get some, all the new researches are so much more profitable, I can't possibly give them up. This ties back to my opinion that there should be more required technologies before each next era.
25.01.17
I'd question if a post a day is too frequent, but then I remind myself Twitter is a thing. I'm probably fine.
In other news, I'm upset at HotS for refusing to reconnect me after losing my internet for literally 10 seconds, then also giving me the leaver penalty, not allowing me to play Draft Mode until I properly complete a few games.
So instead I tried a 1v1 Endless Legend game on the hardest difficulty. Apparently trying to explode your economy is only a viable strategy if you realize when the opponent is going to attack. I was caught off guard, and by the time I managed to get my defenses up, only my capital was left. The loss was inevitable, but I had fun repelling siege after siege with just one hero, a few militia, and a couple of infantry. Must've taken down about 40 units before they finally attacked me with a Guardian who just one-shot my units. I'm so not used to these DLC.
24.01.17
Oh shit. Forgetting to post anything for two days is a clear indication this is falling behind in my subconscious priority list.
Or that I don't really have much to write about.
23.01.17
More of the same as yesterday. I feel like I want to do something new, but I also don't wish to forsake the things I have yet to complete at this point.
22.01.17
No new games to speak of, but I did complete another level of Shenzhen, finish my placement matches in HotS (Diamond 3, yay?), finish, but not complete, another game of Endless Legend, and then another chapter of The House in Fata Morgana. (The latter nearly completely bores me, but then the ending of each chapter turns pretty great. Arguably worth it...)
21.01.17
Endless Legend and all its DLC are on probably the biggest sale they've been. I speculate the cause is that Endless Space 2 is coming along nicely, and they've finally finished adding stuff to Endless Legend. In any case, I think it's a wonderful game, and I used this opportunity to play it in multiplayer with all the possibly-wonderful DLCs.
The one thing I feel definitely got worse with DLCs though is the research "tree". The amount of technologies you have to research for each next level is too low in comparison to how many technologies there actually are so it creates moderately painful situations where you have to choose which technologies you're going to leave behind. Bumping it up to 10 or 12 might make for a more enjoyable experience. But hey, it actually has workshop support so if I'm feeling particularly productive, I can do that.
20.01.17
Okay, potentially getting back on track now, starting out with this:
Pit People. It's a strategy RPG by the people who made Castle Crashers and BattleBlock Theater, and looks to be very much in the same vein of silliness. So far it's been very positively received, so I'm going to try it out (at some point). In truth, however, I'm afraid that while entertaining and... different?, it won't be that good gameplay-wise, as I've thought the case to be with their other games.
Pit People. It's a strategy RPG by the people who made Castle Crashers and BattleBlock Theater, and looks to be very much in the same vein of silliness. So far it's been very positively received, so I'm going to try it out (at some point). In truth, however, I'm afraid that while entertaining and... different?, it won't be that good gameplay-wise, as I've thought the case to be with their other games.
17.01.17
Exam (luckily the last in a while) on Friday, which is rather demoralizing, and on which I blame the fact that I didn't really do anything today. Two more days of this, then I'll get back to doing stuff, swear.
I should probably think of filler content for these occasions, but I haven't any ideas.
I should probably think of filler content for these occasions, but I haven't any ideas.
15.01.17
Another rather rare occasion of getting a few of my friends to both have free time at the same time, and to play a game together. So more Factorio it was.
We finished with launching a rocket, which was actually the first time I've not gotten bored of the game before reaching that point and starting over.
But really, it's a questionable decision to even add a "The end" screen or some final goal to sandbox games. It's been long since I forsook Minecraft, but I remember my disbelief when they added a victory condition to the game.
I guess it's more acceptable for a game that started out with one, as opposed to one that was doing fine without it, since "that's not what the game is about". On one hand it adds a goal to strive for - many people find a lack of reason to play a game if they have no concrete goal to reach, since they're not good at or not used to making their on goals. On the other, it gives all that much more reason to stop playing a game once you do accomplish that goal, while if you're already used to setting your own goals, you could always go further.
14.01.17
I took advantage of HotS' free Hero weekend for a bunch of hours today, encompassing half of my activities today.
The other half was spent on The House in Fata Morgana, which is a rather dark and non-standard VN.
And well, that's about it.
The other half was spent on The House in Fata Morgana, which is a rather dark and non-standard VN.
And well, that's about it.
13.01.17
So I played some various games with my friend, among them also Art of War: Red Tides. It's a lane pusher in a rather literal sense. It consists of only one lane and a bunch of units running down that lane to fight against the opponent who's doing the same, but instead of controlling the units, you're the one who spawns them.
And from that description, I can already get to the flaws I saw in it:
Since 90% of the "work" is done by the AI, it is unacceptable that this AI is, in fact, pretty bad at controlling your units.
It doesn't appeal to a lot of people because you really essentially don't do anything. Picking the spawns takes seconds, and while you could spend the rest of the time thinking about good counter strategies, it doesn't really feel too exciting. But maybe I'm wrong and you do just like to watch the units battle each other.
I can not confirm this, but I hear the balance isn't all too great, where some strategies aren't always counterable, depending on the army build-up you selected when the game begun. Also that some units are nigh useless, and some units are almost universally a good pick.
But the positive sides, as far as I can see, are that the game's not dead, it's not pay-to-win (although it does take some grinding to unlock new unit types), and it looks pretty okay, since you'll be doing a lot of idle watching.
I didn't personally enjoy it, mainly due to the fact that I prefer to be constantly doing things, but for the nonexistent price of free, it might be worth checking out if its description even slightly interested you.
11.01.17
Ugh, exams, sanity, not forgetting to update this...
I'll just mention that you'd probably want to check out this Humble Bundle. EBF4 and Pony Island for "pay what you want". Deadbolt (which in my opinion wasn't as good as the others I've named here, but still decent) for "over the average", and VA-11 Hall-A and N++ for 10$ or more. (Neither of which I've played yet, but they seem like something I'd quite enjoy.)
I have not played nor am I planning to play Shantae nor Day of the Tentacle, but considering all of these games, as the bundle's name states, are Overwhelmingly Positively rated on Steam, I'd say they're all both very popular and almost unanimously liked by everyone who did try them.
There's also more games to be added to the "over the average" tier in less than a week now, so there's more value to be had.
10.01.17
Finished that river thing in KSP, went for a trip around the world, ran out of fuel halfway across the ocean, couldn't even land in the water properly because I had broken two tail fins on a landing earlier. Everyone died horribly. 'bout what I expected.
Also a couple of hours of Planetside and HotS, but I do at least one of those on most days, so it's not worth mentioning. I'd like to roll a new game, but I can't in good conscience do that with an exam in 3 days.
Also a couple of hours of Planetside and HotS, but I do at least one of those on most days, so it's not worth mentioning. I'd like to roll a new game, but I can't in good conscience do that with an exam in 3 days.
09.01.17
 |
| (Click to enlarge) |
08.01.17
A game a day seems like a steady pace. At least when said game isn't too long or I'm going to quit halfway.
So today's game was Concrete Jungle. I played it for a good few hours, and had fun while I did, but the fun doesn't last very long. It's a puzzle game skinned as a city builder, where you place tiles that give bonuses (or penalties) to adjacent tiles, and then some tiles to collect those points. Meet a score goal for each row, sprinkle some slight special mechanics here and there, add deck building and card unlocks as a progression system, and that's basically the game. It sounds simple, it is rather simple, and therefore doesn't entertain for all too long before the "new" stuff is just a repetition of the old stuff.
So I'd say it's fun for a few hours. Definitely not a repetition of ideas I've already seen in a lot of games, and while they don't make for a great new game, I'd give it some points for the relative originality.
07.01.17
Tried Dungeon Souls, which seems to be a rather average action-roguelike. It could have been interesting for longer than an hour or so, but there have been a lot of games from that genre over the last years, so one would really have to bring something new or extremely well-made to the table to keep my attention anymore.
So while I can't say anything particularly bad about this game, there's probably a better alternative for anyone out there.
06.01.17
Hey there, I'm back! Back to one post a day that is. I have exams precisely a week and two from now on, but other than that, I have all the free time in the world for a month, so hopefully I can get a bunch of games done with.
Today's attempt went on Ara Fell, which, as far as I saw from my nearly 2 hour attempt, is quite a standard RPGMaker game. Not actually made in that though, but they all look the same.
I'm honestly not sure why this was slightly more popular than most others of its kind, because it played very similarly. Lots of dialogue, slow pace, shallow combat, and a story that wasn't bad, but not particularly gripping in any way either.
So unless you really like playing these simple kinds of RPGs, it's not worth trying.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)