T w e n t y S i d e d
This week I’ve finally picked up Crypt of the NecroDancer.
I’m not a very big fan of rhythm games but I do enjoy a good Roguelike. I’ve only gotten to zone 3 and I can’t play too much at a time or my hand will cramp. I’m also kind of tempted to get the Hatsune Miku DLC but I should probably play a bit more before doing that.
I also started playing Alice: Madness Returns. I don’t know why I didn’t play it before, I’ve been aware of the game for a while and I’m quite fond of the Alice in Wonderland aesthetic, also the horror mixed in is really cool. Rhe game did need a few text file changes to get a frame rate above 30 but after that I’ve had no problems. Also the physics of Alice’s hair are quite impressive for 2011.
Anyway, what are you guys up to?
Joker's Last Laugh
Did you anticipate the big plot twist of Batman: Arkham City? Here's all the ways the game hid that secret from you while also rubbing your nose in it.
id Software Coding Style
When the source code for Doom 3 was released, we got a look at some of the style conventions used by the developers. Here I analyze this style and explain what it all means.
Shamus Plays WOW
Ever wondered what's in all those quest boxes you've never bothered to read? Get ready: They're more insane than you might expect.
The Disappointment Engine
No Man's Sky is a game seemingly engineered to create a cycle of anticipation and disappointment.
Mass Effect Retrospective
A novel-sized analysis of the Mass Effect series that explains where it all went wrong. Spoiler: It was long before the ending.
I’ve had little time for gaming this week, but the time I have had has gone into Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. I’ll be back to ToCS and FL sooner or later, but isometric CRPGs were my first love so when I am pressed for time it’s the last to go.
So in recent weeks I’ve played being on vacation so no games outside of some mobile stuff (which was also somewhat limited due to a flaky internet connection). Following that I’ve played a bit of being sick and not playing much. And after that I finally got around to:
Fallout:London. Despite having around 25 hours in my playthrough I am not very far into the main storyline because I got distracted exploring random places so I don’t have much t otell about the storyline yet. On the technical side for a mod this is a massive and impressive amount of work and relatively stable after taking some extra steps, I had a couple crashes but Creation Engine is not the most reliable thing at the best of times so I’m willing to overlook that.
Gameplaywise I’m still somewhat in the honeymoon period: exploring the world, seeing the sights and levelling up feels fresh and enjoyable unless you are completely repulsed by FO4 gameplay (in which case you probably shouldn’t be playing the mod in the first place). The map does feel more constrained and occasionally somewhat claustrophobic but that is to be expected seeing how the entirety of the game is happening in a city with few large open spaces (and what spaces there are are scaled down like everything else).
As a bit of an aside I will add that getting the mod to run on the Steam copy of the game is an exciting adventure in ignoring everything you know about cybersecurity. GOG is distributing FO:London as a standalone download which, at least in theory as I haven’t tried, neatly applies to their version of the game as it hasn’t received the “next gen” update. If, however, you want to run it on the Steam copy of the game you have to go through a “downgrading” process, which can be done manually with some hassle or with a provided automatic downgrader. Antiviral programs tend not to enjoy the taste of the downgrader so ignore them if possible or best disable them. You may also have to disable your firewall. Oh, and give it your Steam credentials, that is after you disable Steamguard (the two factor authentication)…
Once again it has been a while since my last check-in.
I played the War Within Pre-Patch event. It is cute. The idea that you are fighting against “bad” memories of all the quests and bosses who tormented you in the past. It fits with the expansion and the 20th anniversary coming up. It is very much appreciated. Also thank the Naaru that the manner the event behaves and rewards currency has been changed.
I played Gordian Rooms 2. For what it is it is way to open worldy. Some items are stupidly hidden and it has many technical issues. It has less an escape room vibe like the first one and more a myst vibe. But the crashes and the screen tearing/smearing is not great. The developer says it is related to my graphics card as it does not meet specifications (which it does) or does not support DX12(which it does). It does not matter as I am finished with the game. On the other hand I would like to return to check if their recommendations could fix the issues just to be thorough.
Then there is Orgynizer. One of those match items with rooms games given the hints provided. It is cute. It is quirky. It has a stream friendly mode. Quite the inclusive and fun package. There are a few typos.
Played Chillquarium and Capybara Spa. Both of them being Idle games on the two opposite side of idle gameyness. Chillquarium: Start for 10 minuten and wait a day. It is basically buying and selling fishes. Yes, one could feed them to grow them quicker but that is too annoying. :)
Capybara Spa has way more input from the player. You can not just let it ídle and do its thing. Some things can be automated a bit but there is still a lot to do. It si cute and the animals are fun. If someone needs a mindless fun game with cute animals, here is one.
Then there was Duck Detective. Really cute short “detective” game. Has some Noir vibes. It also spoofs some Whodunnit tropes. It was really nice for what it was. Would recommend.
next up eas Piczle Cross Adventure, a retro styled Picross RPG with way too many side stuff going on and a leveling systemö. Yes the levels do not mean anything. It looks really nice but the excuse for the puzzles is quite flimsy. More on the side of Pictopix than on the Murder by Numbers (think Picross meets Ace Attorney)
Finished up Grim Fandango Remastered. It is a great remaster. It sounds good, has the charme of the original but with smoother graphics. But is still plagued by the issues present in the games from yesteryear. Also there is an achievemtn for playing it with tank controls, which are way better with KB than with gamepad. Puzzles are still as obtuse as ever and sometimes timing based. Felt like the original.
Cosmo’s Quickstop is basically Overcooked but on a gas station in third person. Plays well. The KB controls are wonky and weird. Has some interesting mechanics. It is fun if you want to play it with someone else. Sadly only Remote Play Together or Couch Co-Op, which means if both players have the game only the host gets the achievements which is not great.
Lastly I finished Turnip Boy robs a bank, a roguelite twin stick shooter. It was fun and interesting. But not much else to say about it. It is quirky and funny and plays well. It is quite easy. So there is that. I enjoyed it..
At a total just shy of 40 hours I have, as the game itself said, completed the main story content of Hades. There is, as I suspected, a post-game goal, and a bunch of [redacted] I haven’t unlocked, but I doubt I’m going to play that much more. I don’t really like the difficulty increases of the pact stuff, which is the remaining spice to add aside from just grinding. Probably in some number of years I’ll be itching for some competent action rogulike and pick it back up for a while, if I don’t just go on to the sequel.
Been eyeing Pathfinder: Kingmaker myself, got it installed but have diverted off to reading up on various Pathfinder classes. Someone at work was saying they’ve got most of a group together (which is now immediately back on hold because fml) and while my stance is that Pathfinder is nice for Pathfinder people (of which I am not one, instead with my own 300 page document for 3.x), if someone else wanted to run the game I figured there are some Pathfinder classes I wouldn’t consider for 3.x which I wouldn’t mind trying out. Pretty sure Kingmaker is only going to have so many and mostly basic classes (I went and reread Sorcerer bloodlines and, just, ugh), but there’s other cool stuff, right?
Strap in for a rant.
Enter research of the Pathfinder Summoner. Which I’ve generally heard as being broken due to the customization of the Eidolon- something I would not allow in my own game, but if everything’s got the PF power glut because it’s a PF game, why not get on board right? Except. . . this thing sucks. There are simultaneously many evolution options, and yet too little to actually do standard things, the writing of their entries betraying fundamental failure to grasp mechanical equivalencies or lack thereof as well as basic anatomy. Their own examples show that trying to imitate an even remotely interesting standard monster requires essentially a full 20th level summoner. The obvious char-op thing to do is buy nothing but size, limbs/heads, the biggest natural weapons you can put on there, ability scores, etc, to make the best possible bruiser, which is presumably where the bustedness comes in. But your options outside of that, again, just suck. Why is the breath weapon not only the maximum cost of 4 points, but also only 1/day? Where are the damage auras and wacky stuff like Engulf or swarm attacks? I’m pretty sure the Astral Construct menus are more flexible than this. Summon Monster itself has more flair and flexibility than this. Hell, even the “archetype” which specifically lets you have three different forms of your Eidolon still forces you to pre-pick which one you’ll have available that day, some chaotic protean that is, ha. The most exciting option you can do on these things are actually the feats, which are also the thing you’re not allowed to change with the Transmogrify “oops I messed up” spell.
The Unchained version I’m told is more balanced, and yup, it clearly is, by simple dint of effectively forcing you to take a bunch of defenses. A good move, I have a similar point about Fighters (the Fighter problem is only having feats, the solution is more feats- but with a different list so people have to take non-aggro options), but there’s nothing else. A few of the subtypes might have one interesting ability at some level. The evolution list is the same. The spell list, which specifically said it was different, at a side-by side comparison seems to be exactly the same but without the splat spells added to the original list. There’s the Spiritualist from their Occult book with “psychic” magic (more ugh), which has standardized the attacks and actually has the brains to realize you can just say “everything has these two attacks with this damage, but it can look different if you want.” . . except they removed the evolutions entirely and there’s no Summon Monster feature. And the spell list seems to be mostly the same but with a few more squicky attack spells and ghost stuff.
This is the kindof failure of a class I would usually be inspired to fix with some simple rewrites. Except it’s so blech I don’t even care. I’ve already figured out how to design summoning spells worthy of the name Eidolon, I could just write those and be done, or make a PrC or base class that specializes in them if I really want.
On the other hand, there’s a 3rd party PF book/class for the Monster Trainer, which is exactly what you think it is, a Pokemon Trainer. Except it’s kindof a goddamn work of art, deftly weaving through the mechanical balance obstacles so well I would actually consider the core mechanics for a 3.x game. Your monster shows up with your hit points, and when it returns or gets killed you drop to its hit points: no monster is too fragile or tougher than you, nor is it an expendable shield, and getting hit by AoE spells basically gives you the worst of either save but doesn’t actually double the damage. Your monster takes no actions without you spending your own actions, so you’re only one character even if you’re in two places. The monster’s special abilities are all unusable for several levels, before being linked to a limited daily use pool (with further restrictions on level for things that are spells), so there is no infinite ability abuse and even if the DM accidentally gives you a monster with an ability that is OP now, eventually you’ll level up and that old ability won’t be huge anymore (or the DM can just nerf the monster, because it’s a monster under their purview, not a class feature they have to “take away”). Instead the class focuses on a sorc-equivalent progression of spells, with your spell list determined by your active monster: you “lose” the natural potentially broken abilities of a monster, but replace it with level appropriate spells. There’s no forced “6 pokemon because that’s how pokemon works,” there’s no “oh you have multiple monsters so you have to have some sort of gang-up option because it doesn’t make sense otherwise.” It’s just brilliantly and simply contained and balanced. There are still typos, unclear language, and some poor editing even in the “anniversary” edition, but they’re not difficult things to make rulings on. The only thing it doesn’t have is a way to customize your monsters’ “moves,” but even then it is again wildly simple to let the player do a limited amount of template or other customization of their monsters within normal limits, as the base mechanics are so solid.
So that’s what I’ve been “gaming” the last couple days: evaluating the much ballyhoo’d PF Summoner and finding it oh so wanting, and rediscovering how well designed the Monster Trainer class was.
Good news! Pathfinder second edition has much better balance across the board. If you want to play tabletop pathfinder I encourage you to look at 2nd edition.
PF1E is still burdened by concepts like the Full Attack and other 3.X design problems (you may not consider them problems, but personally I hated how static fights became in 3.X and PF1E with the AOO and Full Attack mechanics), in addition to design problems all of its own, but I think it’s a reasonable alternative. If you think only basic options are available for Kingmaker, I encourage you to boot the game up to character creation and click around a bit, so that you get an idea of where to point your Pathfinder research. Unfortunately, a remake of Kingmaker and WOTR with PF2E rules is at least 3 years out, probably longer.
Wrath of the Righteous adds a whole different progression system in on top of the class-level system, I am looking forward to some hours down the line in WOTR where I will be able to make AOOs by provoking them from enemies.
You’re preaching to the diametrically opposed faith- I don’t want to play Pathfinder. I want to play 3.x, which I have been sanding the edges off for years (but as I said, I might be willing to play PF for the simple fact of not having to DM myself).
And you’ve triggered a second rant: The full attack vs move and single attack is quite possibly the *most* fundamental choice which separates DnD as a tactical war game from Final Fantasy’s JRPG video game adaptation, and thus possibly the most perfect example of people missing the point. Char-op’s obsession with “pounce” on everything and 5e just making everything into move+full+spring attack at all times, are the problems, not the original full attack system. Failing to use the system is not a problem of the system. Unless it was something horridly obfuscated, but this is not, I grasped it literally the first time I read it as a child.
IIRC, PF2 is on board with some sort of 3 action system which basically boils down to everyone moves and makes multiple attacks. If there’s no basic tradeoff between choosing to charge first with a lesser attack in or wait for the enemy to move first and react with a greater counter on your terrain, it’s missing the point. It’s an absolute standard question in both fiction and real life, but people just want to go first and w+m1. I don’t even care if that *is* usually the best option thanks to fantasy stuff, the system has to allow the possibility that it is not, for it to even be a choice, and indeed for that fantasy stuff to matter. So based on that one thing alone (I don’t recall being interested in any other changes I read back in the day), I would emphatically not want to play PF2.
If you don’t want your fights to be static, well they shouldn’t be all that static. Many 3.x monsters have full attacks that are supposed to be overwhelming even for the meatshield (because they’re supposed to need a party), which the meatshield (and party) can reduce by keeping on the move: now instead of 3, 4, 5, 6, etc attacks you only eat two (one standard, and yes one AoO), while your casters soften them up. I literally went through a bunch of monsters from 1st-5th evaluating the usefulness of in-combat cures, which failed to keep up if the melee character was being a bonehead, but suddenly worked just fine with a comprehension of the basic tactical mechanics. But then char-op shows up again and hey these overpowered by definition characters built to “solo” things can’t handle the idea of not full attacking for their maximum theoretical damage, also whining about AC and healing being useless after refusing to use a shield while putting themselves in position to receive maximum damage at all times, and in particular salty that going first does not let them deal maximum one-round kill damage by default. See also refusing to move at all because of AoOs, when your melee should *prefer* taking a single AoO to negate a full attack- because they know the AoO will hit their no-defense melee character. Pathfinder fails to fix any of the basic problems with all-aggro damage builds- it might have some defensive classes, but shields still suck, medium armor still sucks, tons of “combat” classes are given light armor and no shields (and I’ll bet there is no decrease in overall monster attack bonus), 2-handed is still the most powerful (without jumping through some serious hoops at least), etc, etc.
Granted, your table may have been perfectly reasonable most of the time, and sure with enough defenses you can have the opposite of the high level rocket tag problem with a high level slow grind problem (also the game lacking in serious high level testing and development). But I find most of the problems with 3.x come down to excessive char-op, caring only about numbers, disregarding most other basic mechanics (and fighting tons of classed NPCs, essentially PvP, instead of the actual monsters). Complaints about standing full attack immediately show the disregard for those basic mechanics. Easy moving full attacks alone is enough to disqualify any large homebrew poject from being taken whole, and an excellent sign to be wary of everything they’re presenting, in my experience.
We’ll have to agree to disagree. Full attacks being “all or nothing” was always a problem to me, and it remains so now. I much prefer PF2E’s 3-action system.
My group has been playing pathfinder 2 and it’s been overall a pretty miserable experience. Yes, it’s more balanced, because they removed most of the ability to make relevant choices. Spells tend to suck (the incapacitate tag means “don’t take this”). Class feats frequently have no effect on the game at all, especially caster class feats. Items are bland. Because level adds to every single number, anything with a fixed DC becomes worthless within like 2 levels of getting it. Pretty much every bonus in the game is capped at 2, which includes being invisible and attacking someone who doesn’t know you’re there.
And unfortunately, the crit system, which seems really cool, is a big cause why they constrained everything so badly. Turns out it basically turns +2 to hit into +4 to hit, effectively, but it doesn’t feel like that from a player perspective. Like, most D&D games are set up so that martial classes first attack is probably going to be a hit, because missing every attack on your turn feels bad, but in PF2 your first attack is going to be a coin flip and your odds go down from there, because if you have a 90% chance to hit then you also have a 40% chance to crit and they can’t have that (except for enemies, they can have that).
Skill feats are generally completely pointless, with the notable exception of Medicine, which is awesome.
I have started up Baldur’s Gate 3 again after a while. I moved around a bit at started scratching at the surface of the beginning of Act 3, and then I decided it’s just too hot to concentrate on it. I feel the hype coming back up, and the want to finish it, but it might need a little more cooling off on the outsides.
I also dipped into IXION, which is scifi city builder in SPACE, and ran pretty soon into the resource-and-people-juggling that has put me off of Frostpunk when I tried. I am not yet willing to give up on it, also because so far things seem to work, somewhat, but I can see it getting WAY WAY more stressful down the line.
Also booted up again was Mechwarrior, and there I seem to be running into the same problem I have with W40kCG:DH, namely that I do not play it consistent enough to not lose my grip between sessions.
Generally I feel like I am spending not enough time gaming, but there’s just so much other things going on on which I am also not spending enough time. Maybe I should just sleep less.
I played Ixion for a while and enjoyed it. Then I switched to other things for a bit, and unfortunately I a) don’t want to restart Ixion from scratch and b) suspect that jumping into it after having lost the context would be kind of a nightmare. It’s a shame.
I finished Hardspace: Shipbreaker. The plot on that game definitely looked at subtlety and said “nah, I’ll pass”.
One funny thing is that if you just look at the company deal as it is at the start and ignore the bullshit they pull over the course of the game (which yes, is written into the contract you sign at the start, and I do love burying foreshadowing in an EULA), it’s actually really generous. Like, they start by putting you in what seems to be a monstrous amount of debt, but you can clear that debt in 120 days or less once you get going. They charge you for all sorts of random crap, like the air you breathe, but the amount they charge is tiny compared to the amount they give you for parts. Plus you have a 15 minute workday (ok, gameplay abstraction clearly) and immortality (note: consult a philosopher on whether Spares are actually immortality – you won’t get an answer, but do it anyway).
What I’m saying is that a game aiming to deliver a massive anvil about corporate greed and exploitation managed to be less evil than the real world. Songs like Sixteen Tons cover important details, like your debt outpacing your earnings. Or companies paying in company scrip, and not real dollars at all. Heck, in a debt to earnings comparison Lynx Salvage beats out student loans for a lot of fields.
Anyway, you can mostly ignore all the story stuff if you don’t care. I wish some of the dialogue was skippable because regardless of writing quality your dialogue should always be skippable. I kind of wish there were some kind of replayable version of the final mission, because it’s an interesting twist on your normal goals – funnily enough I think if you were doing it perfectly it would look a lot like doing a mission normally, just with reversed destinations. Blowing shit up is cathartic but actually not the fastest way to fail.
I think a fair amount of the ‘decent’ evil corporate overlord part is also gameplay balance reasons, as if it was impossible to ‘win’ a lot of players wouldn’t play the game.
Earlier on during Early Access the rates were rather less favourable. I had a lot of shifts where I lost ground on the debt, so they clearly rebalanced.
There are a few contract clauses that make no gameplay difference but would be horrific in ‘real life’ – eg Lynx
can make additional copies of you at will. They literally own your soul.I totally agree that the dialogue should be skippable. In some ways it was a better game before they added a story, but I can totally see that they felt they needed one to appeal to a wider audience.
That’s a fair point, it’s difficult to balance “you should feel bad in universe” with “you should feel great out of universe”. Presumably similar reasons why all of the bad things that happen are entirely story based and don’t actually affect the gameplay at all (and indeed some of the bad things storywise are new gameplay features or the demo charges or whatever).
“Heck, in a debt to earnings comparison Lynx Salvage beats out student loans for a lot of fields.”
That doesn’t make them Not Evil…
I’ve been playing Dungeons of Hinterberg. I’m finding the story and setting quite interesting: a remote mountain town suddenly developed magic, monsters and dungeons, and promptly made it into a tourist trap where people pay to go dungeon delving. You play a dissatisfied young lawyer who comes to town for excitement and to escape the grind. I’m still quite early on, but there are hints at things starting to fall apart and people not happy with turning literal magic and wonder into a tourism thing. The framing neatly sidesteps the meta weirdness in some RPGs of having a series of dungeons of increasing difficulty, with puzzles that would stretch belief of an actual mineshaft being laid out that way. This is explicitly managed to have beginner dungeons for people to wet their toes in, leading up to more dangerous threats.
The gameplay is pretty varied. The game is split into different parts in each day. In the morning you chat with fellow adventurers, in the afternoon you choose an area to explore where you can find dungeons, hunt for treasure or find a place to relax, and in the evening you get to go shopping and choose who to spend time with.
Each area has different magic available. The first time you go somewhere, your first objective is to find the skill shrine where you will gain two spells that can only be used in that area: a close up and a ranged option. They have different effects out of combat too, and are used in the puzzle solving in the area’s overland and dungeons.
There are 4 stats which are affected by what you choose to do: reknown, amusement, familiarity and relaxation. Doing dungeons as fast as possible will increase your reknown, but if you choose to spend the afternoon resting at a beauty spot you’ll instead increase your relaxation. Familiarity comes from spending time with the different people in town, and amusement will go up if you spend the evening in the fun night life areas rather than talking to one person at a cafe.
There’s also relationship management. The game tracks how much time you spend with various people, and as you get to know them better you unlock perks like being able to upgrade equipment or gain health or magic faster.
I’m enjoying it so far, looking forward to seeing how the story develops and what else there is to unlock
Had something else to do and I just have Corellia left so I didn’t play The Old Republic, but I did get in a run of Mass Effect 2, doing some mining on the Omega planets and then going to the Citadel for the first time. Despite comments that I’d be short of Element Zero, right now I’m really short on Platinum, since I invested in the Med Bay upgrades to remove the scars (since my character would DEFINITELY do that). I also found that the conversation with Anderson and the quest with Quarian and the money chit were the closest I’ve come so far to feeling like I did in some of the conversations in “Mass Effect”. Still, I’m not thrilled with ME2 and have really come to feel like I like Dragon Age a lot better, maybe even being willing to take on Inquisition again over playing this series.
Work has been killing me the last couple of weeks, so I’ve been way too tired to play anything but a few casual rounds of Bloons TD 6 on mobile here and there.
Except that a few days ago SteamWorld Heist II was released, and I had to make myself some time for it. I’m a big fan of the SteamWorld franchise, and the original Heist is my favorite of the bunch. I’ve played it a dozen times since I got it and I’ve bought it for every platform I own where it’s available. I was very excited for the sequel. I’m only about 4 hours in, but I’m loving it so far. It’s at least as good as the original, and better in many aspects. I can tell already it’s gonna be a classic for me.
Now if work can get off my back for a few days it’ll be nice.
Been getting into the newly-released Creatures of Ava recently. I’ve been in love with monster collection games (from the “fantasy biologist” standpoint) since I discovered Gen 1 Pokémon at the age of 9, but the older I get the harder it becomes to ignore some of the unfortunate implications that tend to be papered over. Creatures of Ava is something of a reverse-monster collector; you play as Vic, one of two humans sent to rescue creatures (including the indigenous sapient inhabitants, the Naam) from the planet Ava before something known as The Withering completely kills all life on the planet. Creatures infected by The Withering become hostile and aggressive, but in the first few minutes you find an ancient artifact that lets you cure it. Saving creatures is a bit like playing TF2 Medic while your heal targets try to kill you, until you cure them and they calm down. Non-infected-but-still hostile creatures can be rendered friendly by playing their unique tune on a flute – this is a fun little interaction, as you start to come to know creatures by their individual songs, which you play out with your mouse in a little radial menu. Once you’ve pacified creatures, you can teleport them off-planet to a “BioArk” in orbit to save them. I like that the game points out that you’re “just one human with a magic wand” – you might be able to save some creatures locally, but realistically you can’t scale up to clear The Withering entirely by yourself, making it explicit that being a world-saving hero isn’t a possibility.
This still has some some unfortunate implications of outside “experts” swooping in to save the locals with or without their consent (most of the Naam seem – to human eyes strangely – unperturbed by The Withering and uninterested in “being saved” by being removed from their planet), but the game seems prepared to deal with them based on the trailers. I’m still probably less than half-way so I don’t know how things shake out yet, though.
Silent Hill Ascension has ruined The Withering as a term. I’m now expecting Creatures of Ava to contain an orgy and multiple casual revelations that this local creature is yet another serial killer.
Well, it’s an in-game secret how the Naam (a single-sex species) reproduce, as they’re reticent to talk about it with humans, getting embarrassed or changing the subj…oh dear.
The local creatures are definitely all serial killers, though.
I finally got around to playing Untitled Goose Game. I thought it was great, but felt bad for my victims…
It’s so mean! :D
I’ve not been on the site for some time so only just saw you’d been playing Alice: Madness Returns on the more recent weekly post! I really enjoyed that game, the aesthetic is great, like disappearing into a burst of butterflies when you dodge. When I saw the cover of the game with what looked like Alice holding a kitchen knife, I just had to get it. Would be nice to get a remaster with high resolution textures. The first cutscene caught me off guard with how gory it was! The story is fascinating, and in fact is possibly
the darkest story I’ve played in a video game…, just you wait. Hysteria mode is so cool. I must have taken 100 screenshots of the game, minimum.And if you turn the difficulty up to Nightmare level, it is a seriously palm-sweaty experience. The normal enemies could kill me in 2-3 hits.
And yes!! The hair physics were very impressive, the standout thing for me. I’d jump about just to watch her hair flowing. Made me wonder what all the nVidia HairWorks fuss was about. Just wait until you reach a certain level, and they become even more so :)
Such a shame that we didn’t ever get a third game :/ it was in-progress or awaiting being in progress for so long. I still need to play the first game actually.