This week, I’ve just been playing Infinity Nikki.
I think it’s the perfect game. It has everything—fishing, bug catching, combat, animal grooming, bike riding, and photography. Okay, maybe not everything, but there’s definitely a lot to do. In this game, almost everyone’s problems can be solved with fashion. Someone’s sad? Just be pretty at them. Someone’s getting bullied? Scare them away with superior style. The world’s ending? Be fancy.
And lastly. The game is just really pretty

What’s Everyone else doing this week?
The Disappointment Engine

No Man's Sky is a game seemingly engineered to create a cycle of anticipation and disappointment.
Spoiler Warning

A video Let's Play series I collaborated on from 2009 to 2017.
Programming Language for Games

Game developer Jon Blow is making a programming language just for games. Why is he doing this, and what will it mean for game development?
What is Vulkan?

What is this Vulkan stuff? A graphics engine? A game engine? A new flavor of breakfast cereal? And how is it supposed to make PC games better?
Control

A wild game filled with wild ideas that features fun puzzles and mind-blowing environments. It has a great atmosphere, and one REALLY annoying flaw with its gameplay.
Good old Terraria, with the Calamity mod. It’s been a while, but it’s hard to beat the classics!
I was quite sick this week, and spent three days playing “stay in bed and try to breathe”. (I won.)
Brotato? I think there was Brotato. Nothing new.
Slay the Spire got some plays again. I have a ton of hours into that game and never did bother to learn what the good builds are. The Defect is still not at Ascension 20.
Final Fantasy 1. I’d forgotten how percent-chance-to-hit that game is; I tried to skip some weapon upgrades and found myself missing two attacks out of three. Also forgot they named the Queen Queen Jane. It’s fitting; my team is dying in battle, and it’s certainly repetitive.
Did I play Soul Nomad? I don’t remember. It might be the most plot-heavy Nippon Ichi game, and like, there’s so much plot that plot characters don’t even get screentime. There’s a scene that introduces two court wizards, one Good, one Evil; the Good one dies immediately, and the Evil one never shows up. Plotlines are just falling off the sides, they’re cramming so much in.
Started second attempt at finishing Legacy of the Void, but the jrpg-ish approach of “emotions first and only” storytelling and gimmicky missions makes it boring and unsatisfying.
Which raises interesting questions when it’s compared to the very simplified, yet well-working storytelling of the first Starcraft.
Hah. the phrase ‘jrpg-ish approach of “emotions first and only” storytelling’ made me laugh. Perfect.
Reminds me why I just can’t *remember* the story of almost every JRPG I’ve played. Engaging in the moment, but looking back there’s almost no coherence to the memories I have and I couldn’t tell you what it was about.
Oh yeah, that guy ws evil, kept monologuing about…sin or something. His plan was to, erm, end the world because of…sin. And then he turned into a Kaiju because, er, it was time for a Boss fight?
Oooh, wait until you get into the lategame, narratively it’s… not great.
I played Marvel Rivals all weekend. Got a few characters learned and into a decent groove on “quick match,” which is to say “casual.” Eventually decided to try competitive, ’cause sure competent foes but also competent teammates and the feeling that you weren’t just fighting the dregs. Bonus points for having someone immediately cussing me out for not noticing the enemy had portaled to the point behind us- after not bothering to say anything themselves, while I’m playing a character that sets up minefields.
Did a round trying to tank, got rolled. Went, okay, guess I need to fall back to healing, got rolled again. Said fuck it if they won’t kill things I will, switched to Iron Man, rolled through like 3 games in a row and only barely lost the next. Then started running into the counter, which is mostly “enemies with ranged attacks looking up” (Iron Man is made of glass in this game, and says it himself), but particularly annoying people just surviving on 1hp over and over and over. The only fix to getting hard countered is to play something else, but Iron Man seemed to be the only reason I was winning.
Thus, decided to go learn some more characters, which was even more annoying: Scarlet Witch, who seems to be a pretty strong counter to Iron Man (she has a quasi-lock-on attack and deletes him in seconds, and enemy Iron Mans was a major part of getting grounded), was indeed even easier to play. . . and could barely kill anything. I’m keeping the damage on constantly, and there are characters that can just self heal as fast as she damages. The game says her attack is “percentage based,” and sometimes it seems to kill tanks quickly, but I’m pretty damn sure it does *not* kill them in the same amount of time as squishies, which is what “percentage based” should mean. She’s basically a pyro from before the pyro buff, sweeping in with a max range limited spike of damage, but head-on any healing or tank abilities seem to shut her down.
So I tried Cloak and Dagger, a “tactician” (read: healer) who switches between healing movset with long-range seeking attacks (which Scarlet lacks) and attacking moveset with what seems to basically be the same as Scarlet Witch’s attack. And continue to get rolled, for a while, until things turn around and it feels like the last four or however many matches of getting annihilated really was just terrible teammates, ’cause then I start winning again. Cloak and Dagger is *a lot*, because you never get to rest: you have to be healing, and then attacking, and healing, and attacking, but you don’t have a very good escape move so you have to retreat extra fast, and you still can’t actually DPS hardly anything. It’s like riding a knife edge, so appropriate name I guess. Also her ult sucks and her voice lines are annoying, so that’s not great.
Hey, I’m also playing Marvel Rivals! I made it to Gold last season, but this season the climb’s been a little bit slower. I’ve also been doing more Quick Play because I want to learn some different characters. Last season, I had enormous success playing Groot, Dr Strange, Cloak & Dagger, and even a little Scarlet Witch. This season I’m mainly focused on Strange, Magneto, and Cloak.
Regarding Scarlet Witch, her main source of damage is actually her Right Click. It’s relatively easy to hit, because it’s basically a rocket with quite a good bit of AoE. Once I started hitting my right clicks more consistently, I got way better at her.
As for Cloak & Dagger, her ultimate is actually one of the best support ultimates in the game. This is why she gets picked even in high-ranked games, and on more than one occasion I’ve managed to win my team a team fight just by using it. Sometimes it’s good to use it around the point (be that the Capture Point or the Cart) just to serve as area denial, because both the damage and healing on that thing are INSANE. Or, you can charge into the enemy team and wreak absolute havoc!
I’m also having a lot of fun playing Loki. His clones are basically turrets, and his attacks are AoE, so you can just aim at your melee tank’s feet and heal him while dealing damage to his target. His Shift ability basically makes you and your teammates invulnerable, but you need to be tactical with it due to its cooldown. Invisible Woman is another character I’ve had a lot of fun with. Psylocke, too (especially with that one skin :D). Oh, and Iron Man. Oh, and Squirrel Girl! And Peni! And Venom! And……
What can I say? It’s a really good game :D If you like it, I definitely recommend watching a guide or two for the heroes you’re interested in. It was a real game-changer for me! it turned me from being frustrated at the bad tutorials the game gives you to being positively hooked!
Maybe it’s a general skill difference then, ’cause I’ve dropped C+D’s ult into massed of foes on multiple occasions and I don’t think I’ve gotten a single KO with it at all. As for Scarlet, I had also noticed the orb damage is pretty high, but I am far too used to using missiles as suppressive fire to treat them as precious no-miss damage- I get along with Iron Man because he’s basically a TF2 Soldier except with more shots and flying instead of needing to learn wacky rocket jumping (so both my problems solved) at the cost of hp.
If you’ve got any advice for Strange that isn’t “just aim better” and not taking him on teams that he doesn’t work with I’d take it though: Strange is the character I kinda wanted to play most. I am asshole wizard (see also flying around shooting fireballs). Strange’s shield only works with ranged teams that will actually stick with him, his own attack is limited in range and accuracy, slow and slower to reload, etc (I was hitting more on the steam deck at like 20fps than I am on the new comp at 60, like being half blind let me lead the shots better). I did pick up from an enemy that melee is useful for avoiding reload problems and I’ve figured out the ult is not in fact a sphere but more of a point blank cone. But down here at the bottom he’s too team dependent to use most of the time, and if I go to competitive I’m not dealing enough damage myself even if the team is using my shield.
With Strange, you should mainly use your body for tanking damage. Pop your shield only when:
1. You’re moving from cover to cover.
2. You hear your teammates getting shot
3. Your health is low (around 200-300 or so). Once you (hopefully) get healed back to full, take the shield down.
Why should you do this? Because your teammates can heal your health, but not your shield. The only time your shield regenerates is when you’re not using it. If it breaks, it’s got a really long cooldown.
Once you feel you’re losing the fight, pop your Shift (his flight) and fly away. Shift is also a great way to deal with melee heroes – just fly above them and shoot them to kingdom come!
Another way to deal with melee is to just save your shots for close range (which you should be doing regardless, actually). Strange hits like a truck, and even with my poor aim (around 40% accurracy is my usual average), I still manage to get quite a lot of kills.
Your E ability (the AoE) is also really strong, provided you give it enough time to charge – I pop it at 80, minimum, and always try to get it to 100. The only cases when I pop it sooner is to try and secure a kill on someone super low. And even then, I’m often kicking myself for not having charged it longer.
Also, don’t be afraid to use your portal just to get back in the fight. Yes, you can use it to TP your team behind enemy lines, and do all sorts of other cheeky stuff, but that requires a lot of coordination.
The most skillful thing I’ve ever done with it is pop the portal in the middle of the enemy team and use my ultimate (if you want to try that, you need to pop the ulti as you’re going through the portal – not before that!). But for the most part, I just use it to get to my team, seeing as Strange has quite the low movement speed.
And speaking of his ultimate, his is really powerful. In case you didn’t know, the green soul that flies out of your enemies is actually a separate hitbox! So, if you pop your E near an enemy, they take double damage – once for the hero, and once for their soul. Ideally, you should have your E charged up before you ulti. You can actually get 2-3 normal attacks before having to pop your E, so feel free to pop the ult at 60-70 charge if you see people clumped up. I’m in Gold now, and as long as I have at least half my health, it’s hard for people to focus me down. Just be careful of Peni, who can interrupt your ultimate with her right click (the stun web). Once it’s off, your damage focus should be:
1. Healers
2. DPS
3. Tanks
Like most ultimates (even stuff like Cloak and Dagger’s), it’s best to use it when your team is there. I see people popping it when their team is 3v6, or even 2v6, and then they wonder why it didn’t do anything. At worst, I use it when we’re 2 men down, and I KNOW I can get a healer with my ultimate, and at least two other people.
Other than that, make sure you’re not getting focused by their entire team. Always make use of cover, and keep track of your healers – do they have an angle on you, are they getting dived… This is actually my biggest issue playing tank – I’m so focused on the fight that I often push in too deep, and I wonder why I’m suddenly surrounded by 5 people :D Even if my healers do have an angle on me, no one can heal that much burst damage.
Other than that, always keep people in the best range for your character. In terms of effective range the tanks go:
1. Peni – long range
2. Groot – long mid-range
3. Magneto – mid-range
4. Strange – close mid-range (a bit farther than melee)
5. All the melee tanks
6. Venom – in the middle of the enemy team
Oh, and an extra tip for Cloak: you should actually spend most of your time as Dagger. Only pop Cloak when you want to use his E (the wave), or when you want to escape. His damage ability is mostly situational.
Well I thank you for the advice, but yeah that’s mostly stuff I already do/know. Hadn’t known that you could double-hit people under Strange’s ult, saving the burst for that is a good idea. Or that there’s a full-on cooldown when the shield breaks, also good to know. But my accuracy is usually like 20% (though it might be higher if I did less supressive fire at corners where I’m expecting foes,). And yes, I spend most of C+D as D, heals come first. I’m considering trying Magneto, looked like his basic attack might be homing? It’s hilarious taking down/chasing off Spider Mans and Iron Mans with Dagger.
My big issue on tank is all the “tank” characters (and “dps” characters that are basically tanks) who just jump/swing/etc into your backline and then refuse to die. Venom in particular (also his attack hits like nearly all the way to the skybox wtf), but also your Wolverines, Black Panther, Iron Fist, etc. I think they were less of an issue when I was playing Strange on casual (’cause they’re not very good), but on competitive the dps just has to scatter and then the frontline folds.
Venom is very survivable, but his attacks do relatively little damage. Once his blue health is depleted (he gets it from his E – it gives him HP based on how much health he’s missng), he doesn’t really do much. If you all focus on him, he’ll die fairly quickly. As for Wolverine – he’s pretty much a tank buster, seeing as his damage is based on max health. My best advice is to keep your Shift ready and avoid him as best you can. He actually has a bit of trouble bringing down squishy characters.
As for the more jumpy melee characters, I find it more useful to shoot at my healer, rather than try and track that enemy. If they’re following my healer, I’m more than likely to land my shot. But I’m not gonna lie, if a Spider-Man is any good, I focus on hitting him with my AoE – my aim isn’t that good, even at close range :(
As for Magneto, his attacks aren’t homing, but his Left Click does have AoE, so you can just aim at people’s feet. His F (the bubble shield) also makes him immune to Jeff’s ultimate, so that’s fun :D The pattern with him is: Right Click, then F to shield yourself and recharge your Right Click, and Shift Shield when you’re moving to cover or retreating. All the while peppering them with Left Click. If the other tank is more forward than you, or your healeris getting dived, you can bubble shield them with your E. His ulti is really useful – just make sure to charge it (it gets charge based on how much enemies are shooting around you. There’s an easy-to-miss white counter under the ball that goes to 100).
One thing people forget with his ulti is that not only does it the enemies’ absorb bullets, it also absorbs the healing bullets their strategists are using! Just be careful when you ulti vs a Punisher ult – that bar fills really bloody fast!
Oh, also I love it when Hela ulties, and I use Strange’s flight and shield to cockblock her! It’s glorious!
In general, 90% of my losses are due to my team staggering. Usually, 2 people die during the first fight. By the tme those 2 make it back, the other 4 are also dead. Now those 2 people are dead again, and thr rest of the team is fighting 4v6. Then those r people die… I can’t tell you the number of games I’ve won because:
1. I’ve told people to go in together
2. I’ve waited for my team – and especially my healers – to come to me after respawning. Usually, that’s enough to hold the fort long enough for my DPS to arrive
I know it’s common sense, but even in Diamond games I’ve watched there are people who don’t do this. Even if you see your healer fighting 1v6, it’s bettee to just leave them. They shouldn’t be taking that fight, and you making it 2v6 instead of 1 6 isn’t going to help them.
Update: focused running Strange all night (on casual) waiting for those full perfect moment madness blasts, results much better and even snagged an MVP. The game does a great disservice making it sound like you have to be careful when it actually drains so fast it’s hard to fill and you have a large window before you start taking damage and it is in fact your main method of securing kills in the chaos. I’ve also been trying to get people to stop staggering, but as one would expect for pub randos results are mixed.
Oddly enough, now that you’ve mentioned it, I’m seeing tons of enemies using Cloak’s ult to pry us off the point (and now I can warn the team what it actually does).
Awesome!!!
Lowkey, I think this kind of thing is also a big reason why people stagger so much. As you may have noticed, the announcer lady is constantly giving you updates on the enemies’ progress (she’s very subtle, I know :D).
“They’re halfway there! STOP THEM!”
“Only 60 seconds left!!!”
She always sounds so urgent that you obviously need to get there as quickly as possible, rest of the team be damned!
But if you think about it, it’s rarely that urgent. The moment one of your teammates is near the cart or on the point, the enemy’s countdown stops. And the maps are actually surprisingly small, so it won’t take you that long to get there. In the grand scheme of things, 10 seconds of waiting for your team isn’t wasting you that much time.
You should only ever rush ahead if there’s 30 seconds left, the enemy team is close to winning, and none of you are touching the point.
But the announcer doesn’t have that level of nuance. I feel like she’s mainly there to add to the chaotic vibe of the whole thing, and as far as I can tell, it fits with the character. Same with Dr Strange – it makes total sense why he’s uncomfortable with that level of chaos building up in him – wouldn’t you be :D
It’s just really tough to communicate that to your team, especially given that a lot of this stuff acts on a subconscious level. I guess the best way to do it would be to use voice comms – if people can hear how calm you are, they’re much more willing to listen.
And although I don’t use voice comms, what has helped me the a lot when peope don’t want to stick together is to end with something like “we can win this”, or “they’re not that good – we just need to stick together”. I’m always surprised how effective that is! Once I even managed to stop teammates flaming each other by focusing their energy on how we’re better than the other team and we just need to stick together :D
It’s even worse actually: the payload maps are specifically designed with those giant doors and tiny chokepoints which give *the attackers* a defensive killbox position. There is a specific moment where you have to realize there’s no chance of holding that door and pull back to meet the rest of the team at the next point where the map actually gives *you* the defensive position. And if you don’t, the cart moves so fast and the walkbacks are so long (I disagree that the maps are small) that even a single one means they’ve cleared half or more of the distance and quite possibly made it to the next point where *they* have the killbox advantage again. It’s clearly intentionally designed and does make for an interesting interconnected series of battlegrounds, but it’s massively at odds with the announcer spam and the idea of being on defense itself. Like, how many times have I gotten lost trying to exit *my own base*. That’s not how defense is supposed to work.
Indeed, on a KOTH fight last night I made the specific point of calmly saying “remain calm” when the enemy capped it 1% before we won. Because falling apart trying to stop them there just means they also get to 99%, instead of the whole team showing up to contest at like 20. I personally also like to warn when going into the second bit of a KOTH set that after the first round, the enemy will have learned their lesson so don’t get sloppy.
I’ve been playing Ender Magnolia, which is a sequel to Ender Lilies. It’s been a while since I played Ender Lilies so I don’t remember much about it, but I think the story was pretty incomprehensible (because metroidvaniasouls does that). This time around I’m not having that problem, there are homunculi who sometimes go nuts and try to kill everyone and your character (and others with similar abilities) can sanify them and then summon them later. Like in the first game, you’re playing a little girl who can summon creatures with giant swords or guns or whatever, which is mechanically pretty much the same as using the weapons yourself but hey, it’s an interesting aesthetic. You have 4 buttons to map summons to and there’s a few different types – basic melee, basic ranged, powerful abilities with cooldowns, and summons who attack without your input at all.
I’m generally enjoying the game so far. It is fairly linear – sometimes it offers you a choice of two zones to do, but then you have to finish both before you can really progress. Getting a new metroidvania movement option can open up paths to loot in previous zones or open up the next mandatory progress area, but you’re not really making choices about the path you take through the game.
A feature that I really like is that for each area of the game, it marks when you’ve found everything there (items, exits, secret rooms, whatever). Also, the map clearly marks some of the progression obstacles you can encounter, which is good since the player map marking is pretty meh – you can put down markers, but you can’t differentiate them in any useful way.
There was an area that annoyed me, the Crimson Forest, because it had a single bench (read: where you respawn when you die and can fast travel to) for most of the zone, and it felt like it was meant to be a central hub that you opened up shortcuts to… except all the shortcuts you opened were one way, and that one way was the wrong way. It was also a teleport maze, so I found myself consistently taking the long winding path around the whole thing to eventually get to somewhere I hadn’t previously been. On the bright side, they just released a patch that claims it helped with this, though too late for me to benefit.
There’s also a boss I straight up had to leave alone for a bit and come back to after doing the other available area, because it summoned a healing minion. And that healing minion healed for quite a bit, and killing it was not very useful because they’d summon another one right away. The upside of the game not being completely linear is I did have the option of going elsewhere and gaining some power.
Ey, that’s out now? Ender Lilies was one of those games I held onto for a while ’cause I really wanted to enjoy it, then because of whatever reasons got to the end and never finished. So now I don’t want to replay the whole thing, but I also don’t want to dive straight back into the final zone having forgot most of the story (though it’s all there in the journaly bits to reread I guess) and the last zone being damage over time at all times. Their map system is the best though, zero-spoiler knowledge that there is in fact something you missed/that you did in fact full-clear is correct.
I got in a planet of The Old Republic, continuing with my Smuggler. I tend to take the crew skills now to have something for the crew to do, and pick something for me to do in the environment. This time I picked bioanalysis, because my character would like going around and picking up flowers, even the ones named some kind of nerve blocking poison or something like that. But then when assigning missions for the other two, I clicked on bioanalysis and noticed that it had missions, too. I hadn’t realized that the gathering skills had missions. So I assigned the Wookiee to do it, because that’s what my character would do. Now I’m wondering if the other gathering ones like slicing have it, too.
I think I’m going to put a pause on The Age of Decadence until March. I have a change in schedule coming up that will run a couple of weeks so there’s really no point in trying to build a routine now, and so it will be better after that. This is pretty similar to what I did with Pool of Radiance last year, although I ended up just bailing on the Gold Box games last year. I don’t think that will happen here, as The Age of Decadence is only one game and not a series, and isn’t a long game. If I abandon it, it will be for the same reason I abandoned Disco Elysium, which is that I hated the world and main character and found the personality mechanism underwhelming (when it was the aspect I was most interested in).
I haven’t played in years, but I am almost positive that I remember sending my dudes on slicing missions.
That sounds promising, because for the longest time I was always taking a couple of the ones that I KNEW did missions — Diplomacy, Investigation, Treasure Hunting — and then lately took one gathering one where there are, at least now, things in the world to click on. This would open things up a bit for my characters.
Personally, I think Age of Decadence is amazing, but it may not be for everybody. Very different from Disco Elysium though P.
I had a brief session with it earlier in the year. I’m interested in the idea that you can — and need to — play as your class would and am going Loremaster with an INTENSELY combat-averse character. So far, I kinda like the skill checks that you can get into as part of that, but was a bit annoyed with a very early quest that my character identified that the item being sold was not particularly impressive but since he failed the next check ended up having to pay full price if he wanted it, and there was no opportunity to try the check again. If too many things act that way, it might get annoying.
I have finished the utterly predictable, fully unnecessary main story of ButtCreed: Origins and will not enter the DLCs.
I also finally managed to play a bit of BG3 again, and went to the circus.
Finally I played the demos for the Golden Idol-Games and I might find some appeal in deduction games after all.
The Golden Idol games are great. If you like them there’s also “Duck Detective: The Secret Salami”, which uses very similar deduction mechanics, though its storytelling is done in a more humorous way.
I’ve started playing Lonely Mountain: Snow Riders.
I think I like it even better than the first one.
It’s difficult yet very peaceful, perfect for a small gaming session before going to sleep after a work day.
Got my hands on a mini PC as replacement for my old laptop (it wasn’t broken, it was just an utter piece of trash from the start) so basically I’ve been trying to see what games it can run. It’s not going to replace my PC anytime soon, even with its outdated graphic card, but I’m actually impressed at the number of games it actually runs. Certainly more than my laptop. It can run stuff like Wolfenstein: The New Order and Metal Gear Solid V (obviously not at highest settings, but still) and I’m told even The Witcher III runs well in it. So I’ve spent the whole week just going from game to game, not really staying with any of them for more than a while, with one exception.
I thought this would be the perfect occasion to finally try Disco Elysium and man, this sure is a strange game. I am unsure what to think about it in the few hours I have with it. There’s been, in that time, an insane amount of dialogue and actions to sift through, yet the story hasn’t really advanced or even moved on from the same location in all that time. If this was, say, a Lucasarts game, I feel we would be done with this starting area in 5 minutes. Again, this approach isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I’ll have to keep playing through to see if this excess of side information is a good or bad thing.
I’m also unsure what to think of yet of the story mechanic of having the protagonist start the game with amnesia after being black-out drunk as an excuse to slowly feed the player information about him. On its own is perfectly fine, I just don’t think it gels well with the gameplay mechanic that allows you to set your character’s personality traits. I simply don’t think all kinds of personalities would ever end up in such a state. I suppose I’ll have to wait and see if the story finds a way to properly justify it later.
I agree with you about Disco Elysium. I was unpleasantly surprised that the protagonist had so much of a defined personality and, even worse, one that I didn’t like. That’s what got me to bail on it.
Picked up Tunic and Hollow Knight a while back, since they were on offer.
Turn out I’ve got a pretty standard opinion on soulslike games: good game, be a lot more fun if it were easier, thank you those people who made mods that made it possible for me to reach the ending without quitting in disgust, etc etc.
But it’s is the storytelling. I’ve never seen the story of a soulslike that I’d call ‘bad’, but I do find them irritating. It’s all so vague and obtuse, expecting you to infer meaning from details buried in the background or secret areas that you’ll likely miss because the game’s difficulty has distracted you. I know that a good storytelling principle is ‘show, don’t tell’, but this much effort to understand what’s going on and why you’re doing what you’re doing seems…well, very fitting for a soulslike, but still irritating.
I know that the rule is ‘show, don’t tell’ – but I’ll settle for being told something over shown it, if ‘shown’ means trying to piece together something from deliberately incomplete information. Come on, this plot really isn’t that good, game. Just tell me already.
Especially since even after following the steps to acheive a specific ending my main response is usually ‘Is that it?’.
Really reminds me of old point-and-click puzzle games, where you eventually give up trying stuff that make sense and just try anything, because you’re not solving a puzzle; you’re just trying to guess what the devs want you to do.
I beat Tunic, got both endings, and had questions about the story. So I went online and, well…so did everyone else, apparently. Theories about lovecraftian monsters (not mentioned in the game at all), time travel (hinted at), predestination (mentioned, but deliberatly hidden), NPCs finding out how to mine data (just, wat) and so forth. All to make sense of what’s depicted in the game.
Sure , it could be that the story’s super deep and I just don’t get it becaues I’m a scrub. But it could also be that this story’s more like ‘mood music’ than a coherent narrative…
I suspect that on many occasions the answer is less incomplete information and more 404: answer not found. The ruined world where you’re piecing together some idea of what happened by digging through trash can work on vibes alone, but does not necessarily mean they had a full picture for you to find in the first place. Like, Elden Ring goes on touting however much George R.R. Martin writing it got, and I expect it does have answers to most of its questions, and DS2 is broad enough it’s not *supposed* to have direct answers (the world is collapsing in on itself so nothing makes sense but there are a bunch of dregs from the Fall of Man laying around), but DS3? I seriously doubt DS3 has actual answers for what’s going on with the wings and the flesh-angels and whatnot. The answer to most things in DS3 is “because Bloodborne.”
It sounds like explanation for Tunic is “because videogames.” They made a game, but it’s got enough soulslike vibes that people excpect it to have the same underlying Truth that they expect other soulslikes to have, and it never did. Because they made a cute game that was also a bit difficult and did a meta thing where the instruction manual is actually in the game (that’s the extent of my knowledge, haven’t played it myself).
It’s not so much that I need to know the background story – you can tell how a kingdom fell in braod strokes, that’s fine. But Hollow Knight’s good ending has your character finding a macguffin in a hidden area, taking that macguffin to a place and changing it – then, because you now have this new item, it changes what you can do to the final boss.
Now I, as the player, was simply doing what you do in a game – following hints, going to new areas that have opened up, and once there my character would just do…stuff, with no input from me beyond pressing ‘interact’ when prompted. An NPC who was previously a recurring boss fight, who also refused to speak clearly despite knowing the entire story, turned up and helps to [spoilers], and then you get a second stage fight, and then you win and…
Welp, okay. I guess that’s it. Would have been nice to understand or have some real input into what my character did that and why, but sure. If you like.
It’s not as bad as other games I’ve played – Sekiro’s good endings were like a bad game of Simon Says with their arbirtary requirements – and it does make sense, but maybe if they’d foreshadowed that thing it might have had more impact.
I totally understand what you mean in principle. A lot of games try to emulate elements of Dark Souls aesthetics, storytelling or gameplay. I watched a friend play some kind of fantasy action game recently and upon death it had a very soulsy “gong” and the fade to black with a “you died” message… except it was “mission failed” which I found really jarring in the context of the aesthetics.
Having said that it’s going to be a case of varying mileage because to me Hollow Knight struck a very nice balance between things it kept obscure and things it revealed. In fact the way to the item you’ve got as well as the scenes that immediately followed should have delivered some big reveals putting a bunch of things in context. Having said that I will admit that after beating the game I went on a big wiki binge and there is a bunch of stuff that I have no idea how people figured out (I suspect word of dev).
My first run of Hollow Knight I completely failed to find the down area, because there’s no signposting or hints whatsoever as far as I know. My second game I accidentally found it and oh hey *that*’s what I was missing and why other things were so hard. And I was definitely vibing with the story that I’d managed to dig up. . . but couldn’t quite piece it together, still had to look up one of the things needed to do to change the ending, and then never actually finished it. So I don’t actually know what happens, or have the will to play through the whole game yet again (and I’d rather not just watch a video ’cause I’d like to put together my own answer first). Also it didn’t help that they went and added the DLC, which is kindof endgame but also not, which seems to be connected to the lore but it’s not clear how but presumably would be after you finish the super challenge mode DLC fights and nope.
Yeah, Tunic I feel hits a weird point on the the souls-like spectrum. I like souls games and still found it’s combat pretty frustrating, as it occasionally had the difficulty of a souls game, but not the polish to make it satisfying – the controls didn’t feel tight enough and enemies didn’t telegraph their movements enough – there was one boss I just ended up cheesing in a very unsatisfying way, and I ended up thinking of the combat as more of a puzzle for how to ‘break’ it than really a standard ‘combat’ game.
Other than that, really enjoyed the game – lot of clever “that was always allowed” moments and clever puzzles.
I do think there’s a lot of games that just hint at plot stuff and don’t really have an answer, but I would actually guess that Tunic isn’t one of them given how much does seem to be hidden in that game. I finished the game months ago but I haven’t looked up spoilers about some of the secrets because I’m still tempted to go back and take another crack at them, which is something I rarely do. In particular, I’m tempted to take another crack at
figuring out the written language.(e.g. for comparison, I finished Animal Well and had like no interest in that games secrets – one of it’s ‘secret’ puzzles I got stuck on, thinking it was a normal puzzle, ended up looking up the answer and found the answer utterly dumb, so I decided not to continue that game)
Satisfactory – Finished. Project Assembly is done.
Monster Hunter World Finished. At least the end credits rolled and The Witcher bonus quest is done.
SubverseAlmost finished. Just the End mission (or a lot of grinding for 100% … let me think. … Nope)
No Mans Sky Playing in Coop is weird. Some resources are chaired (Flowers, chests, bones, …) some are player independent (Exosuit upgrade modules, buried tech, …) Story progression and tech trees are individual per player but building stuff is coop. Weather on planets is different for each player. While my buddy has a huge storm hiding inside, I’m outside scanning and harvesting without a care in the world.
I’ve found No Man’s Sky co-op very unsatisfying when we tried it with a buddy. It’s obvious the actual multiplayer was tacked on and there are (or were at the time) these almost constant arbitrary idiosyncracies where the game will do stuff like count an objective for one of us while the other one had to duplicate the requirement.
Having said that I might take it for a spin again now that the second update to world generation is out… I’m just torn between not wanting to trudge through some of the quests again but also wanting to experience a fresh start for the new content.
Been playing Stalker 2 on Xbox series X. Has massive latency problems. Seriously, you need a lot of patience to accomplish very basic tasks in this game. Also, the games level design is set up so you often need to take very roundabout paths to reach locations. What’s more, the RNG for many artifacts is infuriating and the games economy is broken. Why pay someone less than the price of repair and ammo for mercenary work? Even more problematic, stealth mechanics feel badly designed. No telling when someone can see you crouchwalking from 100 meters away with your flashlight off through tall grass and trees. Aside from all that, it is a decent single player survival. That shouldn’t be this rare.