Videogames: The Sequeling

[Fez]

I picked up the Mass Effect Legendary Edition a few weeks and been playing it on the side; I'm about midway through ME2 now. My opinion from a few months ago remains unchanged:

ME1 has great world-building, a single fantastic scene that still gives me chills, and a few other good scenes. It also has surprisingly good voice acting for the time. But the game itself is and was always kinda shallow, and in fact, there was even less conversation with characters than I remember. Time has also not been kind to the combat. Even with the improvements in this edition, it remains a slog to get through

So I was a bit nervous starting ME2 that it wouldn't be as good as I remember, or wouldn't hold up. And I'm glad to say I was wrong there; it remains one of the greatest games of all time. My only complaint is that doing the Firewalker DLC seems to have messed up the pacing a bit, since each tiny  mission counted as a "mission" for the purposes of triggering main story beats and loyalty mission prompts. So I'm at the point where the Illusive Man wants me to get the Reaper IFF, everyone has a loyalty mission request at once (and therefore won't talk to me in the meantime), and I still haven't even recruited Tali or Samara. I just hope I didn't lose out on any ship-based dialog by triggering the loyalty missions too quickly (since I wasn't going around talking to people in between Firewalker missions).

[Stannis Eats No Peaches]

I loved Hollow Knight! It’s Dark Souls in 2D with platforming, while being more accessible.

[RumHam]

4 hours ago, Fez said:

I picked up the Mass Effect Legendary Edition a few weeks and been playing it on the side; I'm about midway through ME2 now. My opinion from a few months ago remains unchanged:

ME1 has great world-building, a single fantastic scene that still gives me chills, and a few other good scenes. It also has surprisingly good voice acting for the time. But the game itself is and was always kinda shallow, and in fact, there was even less conversation with characters than I remember. Time has also not been kind to the combat. Even with the improvements in this edition, it remains a slog to get through

So I was a bit nervous starting ME2 that it wouldn't be as good as I remember, or wouldn't hold up. And I'm glad to say I was wrong there; it remains one of the greatest games of all time. My only complaint is that doing the Firewalker DLC seems to have messed up the pacing a bit, since each tiny  mission counted as a "mission" for the purposes of triggering main story beats and loyalty mission prompts. So I'm at the point where the Illusive Man wants me to get the Reaper IFF, everyone has a loyalty mission request at once (and therefore won't talk to me in the meantime), and I still haven't even recruited Tali or Samara. I just hope I didn't lose out on any ship-based dialog by triggering the loyalty missions too quickly (since I wasn't going around talking to people in between Firewalker missions).

This makes me want to finish trudging through the first one for the first time. The combat was just so boring and basic. and if RPG combat isn't difficult then there's no reason to care about upgrading your weapons and whatnot. 

I also picked up BioShock trilogy while it was on sale for the switch so I may try that first. That's another one I missed out from that Era because my 360 had the red ring of death. 

But first Legend of Mana comes out tomorrow! I hope it's as weird and great as I remember. Could never get it to work right in emulation so it's been years. 

[Corvinus85]

Well I must suck at action RPG combat, because I didn't find the combat in ME1 easy. Though most of the difficulty came from finding the UI not so intuitive, and just from the graphics providing a challenge in actually seeing where the enemies were. In my first playthrough, I died loads of times on Eden Prime.

The greatest annoyance for me with ME1 has always been the overbearing tediousness of handling your gear and items.

[Week]

Been enjoying the start of Hollow Knight - it's been the perfect difficulty of challenging but not impossible (Hornet took maybe ... 5 legit attempts? Additional faceplants not counted).

Now with DASH ... Shit just got real down here. Love it.

[Werthead]

Wildermyth launched today and is getting rave reviews. It had a lot of praise through Early Access and the final release version seems to have delivered on the promise. The big selling point is the semi-procedurally-generated storytelling system, ensuring a different story and different character dynamics through every gameplay session. The idea was to generate BioWare-when-they-were-good levels of character interplays but through random iterations of design. Impressively, it seems to have delivered.

I'm going to give it a whirl, see how it goes.

[Fez]

41 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Wildermyth launched today and is getting rave reviews. It had a lot of praise through Early Access and the final release version seems to have delivered on the promise. The big selling point is the semi-procedurally-generated storytelling system, ensuring a different story and different character dynamics through every gameplay session. The idea was to generate BioWare-when-they-were-good levels of character interplays but through random iterations of design. Impressively, it seems to have delivered.

I'm going to give it a whirl, see how it goes.

I've been playing a bit of Wildermyth throughout early access. It's a very interesting experiment, and some of the writing is really quite moving. However, I think it does miss the mark a bit too much. Too many of the story beats, which on their own are quite cool, feel "stateless"; as in, it was essentially randomly decided which character is slotting into which role. There are a handful of adjectives to define each character, and those do play a role in how their dialog sounds; but it doesn't quite feel like there's enough through line between stories for them to develop defined personalities.

Combat itself is simple, but I like the magic system quite a lot. The other gameplay systems are all basically just there, they fill their role but are nothing to write home about.

[RumHam]

https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/p/sonic-mania

Sonic Mania is free on Epic's store for it's 30th anniversary. Really great throwback to the original games. Seriously if you have any love for the original sonic you should give this a try. 

[Fez]

I feel like I've said it every steam sale for a while now, but I am really not impressed by the summer sale this year. I've got 15 games on my wishlist right now, only 6 of them have any sale at all. And 5 of them are only 20% off, the 6th is 33% off. I miss the days when it felt like damn near everything was 60-75% or even more. Now far fewer are at those levels

I'll never forget my first steam sale, either in 2014 or 2015 when I was first getting into PC gaming after being a console player the previous generation, and I picked up Gone Home for 90% off. Feels like you never see those kinds of deals anymore. I actually just checked and Gone Home is 60% off this time around.

First world problems and all that. But its still an annoyance. One of the bigger games I wanted to get was the SMT 3 remaster, but it's actually not on sale at all; and I'm simply not paying $50 for a port of a PS2 game.

[Werthead]

I completed my first Wildermyth campaign and it was very good. XCOM-ish combat, and the way the story moulds itself around characters and plot points to come up with something organic and original but cohesive each time is quite impressive. You can kind of see the limitations of that (non-sequitur moments, not helped by a fairly obtuse sense of humour in the first place) but it works very well. I'll certainly press on with the second campaign.

[Luzifer's right hand]

13 hours ago, Fez said:

I feel like I've said it every steam sale for a while now, but I am really not impressed by the summer sale this year. I've got 15 games on my wishlist right now, only 6 of them have any sale at all. And 5 of them are only 20% off, the 6th is 33% off. I miss the days when it felt like damn near everything was 60-75% or even more. Now far fewer are at those levels

I'll never forget my first steam sale, either in 2014 or 2015 when I was first getting into PC gaming after being a console player the previous generation, and I picked up Gone Home for 90% off. Feels like you never see those kinds of deals anymore. I actually just checked and Gone Home is 60% off this time around.

First world problems and all that. But its still an annoyance. One of the bigger games I wanted to get was the SMT 3 remaster, but it's actually not on sale at all; and I'm simply not paying $50 for a port of a PS2 game.

I usually pick up older games I want to replay. This time I picked up the Max Payne games. I pirated them back in the day... 

[Fez]

4 hours ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

I usually pick up older games I want to replay. This time I picked up the Max Payne games. I pirated them back in the day... 

My "problem" is that at this point I've bought pretty much all the older games I want to replay. And there's been enough of those that I never even installed once after buying it that I don't do it anymore for the few left unless I know I want to play it right now.

I did end up buying The Room 4 at 33% off. I've found those games really relaxing and I love the tiny hints of atmosphere and story.

[Toth]

Oh my god, I'm so confused. I actually bought something at the Steam sale: Umineko: Golden Fantasia, which I had long on the screen and now is 50% off.

I... I am so ludicrously bad at fighting games that I don't even know how to look up the controls. The entire menu is geared towards controllers, so it calls the buttons A, B, C even when the buttons attached to them are Z, X, C. And then I get doubly confused by how a switch to the Meta-world is supposed to trigger when pushing all three, but when I do, nothing happens. Instead the Meta-world gets toggled when I push H, which isn't even remotely explained in any of the menues. And then I can't figure out how to trigger my Meta-Finisher because it depicts an analogue stick and arrows that apparently describe its movement, but make no sense whatsoever on a keyboard.

Also I don't know how to block, which is obviously really, really bad. That's not a button that is explained anywhere. I already tried out all of them and I'm just stumped. I want to have fun with the game, but damn, it being so nonsensically dumb to control drains all my motivation.

[Ghostlydragon]

On 6/23/2021 at 6:46 PM, Stannis Eats No Peaches said:

I loved Hollow Knight! It’s Dark Souls in 2D with platforming, while being more accessible.

I'm on this right now. The puzzles aren't as unforgiving as Guacamellee 2 but thr bosses sure are. Sometimes I wish they would die sooner. I'm on the road to the final boss so thought I better get all my upgrades first.

[Ghostlydragon]

22 hours ago, RumHam said:

https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/p/sonic-mania

Sonic Mania is free on Epic's store for it's 30th anniversary. Really great throwback to the original games. Seriously if you have any love for the original sonic you should give this a try. 

Agreed. It's the true Sonic 4. That pair of episodic games from ten years ago were not.

[Werthead]

All three Shadowrun Returns games are free for the weekend on GoG.

[IlyaP]

On 6/23/2021 at 11:35 PM, Fez said:

ME1 has great world-building, a single fantastic scene that still gives me chills, and a few other good scenes.

It's the scene with Vigil, isn't it? 

Because if you had to ask me what the best scene in the game is - it's that amazing, beautifully scored, edited, and structured scene. 

[IlyaP]

Between GoG and Steam, the summer sales have been amazing. I've already dropped over $100 on Gujian 3, Greedfall, Terra Alia, Papers Please, Shadows: Awakening, Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms, Hellbound, Rebel Galaxy, Metro Exodus, Hellbound, Prey, and a few others. My poor, sad wallet.

 

[Werthead]

STEAM SALE 2021:

"Look, Mass Effect: Legendary Edition is on sale."

"Oh that sounds goo..."

"Yes, it's now only £45."

"Ah, this is some new definition of the word 'sale' that I was previously unaware of?"

[Corvinus85]

Speaking of sales, I picked up The Outer Worlds. I've never played the Fallout games, so I can only say it feels like Skyrim in space with added dark humor. Even the music makes me think of the TES games, I had to check who the composer was, to see if it was Jeremy Soule. I like it so far.