So it's been another long while since I've last picked up a new game. The next four days are mostly filled with Ludum Dare, then it's the busy part of the schoolweek again, and only about an entire week from now will I properly have time again. I've acquired Trillion though, and it'll be the next game I play. Didn't have high hopes for it before, don't have them now either, but it doesn't look bad so I have to at least try.
19.04.17
I've never played console games, and as such I don't know of any games on them. But apparently Bayonetta was something rather popular and people are excited for it coming to PC. I haven't heard of many port issues, the game looks fun (although a bit over-the-top), I see no reason why not to give it a try. It looks a little old... Although it's from 2009, so I guess it's just the design? shrug
18.04.17
It's been over a week again with no new games, so after some consideration I deemed The Signal From Tölva worth trying. At first glance it bears a lot of similarities to other open world FPS games I've played some time ago. It remains to be seen if that is true, but if it is then I'm afraid it won't fare too well in my eyes, because it seems precisely the quality and quantity of the content is the weakest point. I wouldn't recommend a game that's mechanically similar to another, but not executed as well, even if the original game was good. But that's far too many assumptions for now.
17.04.17
generic filler text
School's keeping me busy, and will probably continue to do so until LD takes over on the weekend. Could be worse. Time consuming things could be happening simultaneously instead of consecutively.
16.04.17
This is scary actually. 24 hours is a really long time if you start to think about it. And every know and then you just lose one such period of time. What was I doing on Sunday again? For the most part, no clue.
15.04.17
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...
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