T w e n t y S i d e d
This week I played a little bit of Lethal Company. I went into the game with little knowledge about anything. It reminds me a lot of SCP – Containment Breach such as trying to survive many monsters all with their own ways to survive them -but with scavenging scrap trying to meet quota on top of that-. The gameplay loop simple but is elevated by being multiplayer. I think the game is quite good and I’m excited play more and die in new and interesting ways.
What are you guys playing?
Top 64 Videogames
Lists of 'best games ever' are dumb and annoying. But like a self-loathing hipster I made one anyway.
Do It Again, Stupid
One of the highest-rated games of all time has some of the least interesting gameplay.
The Gameplay is the Story
Some advice to game developers on how to stop ruining good stories with bad cutscenes.
Civilization VI
I'm a very casual fan of the series, but I gave Civilization VI a look to see what was up with this nuclear war simulator.
The Opportunity Crunch
No, brutal, soul-sucking, marriage-destroying crunch mode in game development isn't a privilege or an opportunity. It's idiocy.
Still Rogue Trader. I’ve been using the in-game bug reporting tool a lot and I hope it’s helpful. Still, even in the state it’s in the game is entertaining (though from what I’ve heard the late game is pretty badly broken). Feels like in addition to the bugs it could use some polish, there are some wild imbalances in character power, the economy is pretty goofy, and a lot of the gun types seem meh.
From your description Lethal Company sounds like Deep Rock Galactic, from the screenshots google shows not so much. Weird.
Yesterday a friend and I finished chapter 1 of Raft Mechanic with the promise of “Chapter 2 coming soon” [Insert resignation laughter here]. That sounds like Scrap Mechanic in itself, where the game is in Early Access for at least 8 years now and the promise of chapter 2 was made 2 years ago (last Devlog: March 2023). At least with Dr. Pixel Plays I know he doesn’t work on Raft Mechanic anymore instead developing Scrap Factory.
In solo I’m playing Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core Reunion. Not much to say about it, I haven’t said last week. Analog I’m playing a bit of Jaipur and some more Heat: Pedal to the Metal.
RE Lethal Company and Deep Rock Galactic: bearing in mind I have mostly second hand experience of both games from watching other people stream them they have a similar central loop but somewhat differ in character. Judging from the outside while both games are meant to elicit those moments of chaos where people panic and recover or fail LC is janky in that “loljank” way where it fully intends to give you gotcha deaths (especially before you learn how some of the enemies work), somewhat wonky physics, mechanically unreliable gear and mechanics that other players can trigger that are immediately lethal to their comrades. I’d say the SCP comparison is very apt both as a pro and a con.
I was told that Lethal Company is like Pikmin but you are the Pikmin.
I managed to finish off Dragon Age Inquisition. It took me about 88 hours total for this run, but I left some areas and quests unfinished because there was no explicit marker and I couldn’t be bothered to do more exploring. Ultimately, I think the open world clashes with the story and character parts, which are really good. While I think the clash with the main villain isn’t as personal as it needs to be — he’s more an enemy of DA2 DLC Hawke than the Herald — how it ties things back to the previous works is really good if you’ve played them, and how things change based on your decisions works. I enjoyed it more at the end, I think, than I did the rest of the game or the first time I played it, but I still don’t have any great desire to play it again.
Because I needed to finish that off, I didn’t get to play The Old Republic again this week. I might get a session in this upcoming week, but that’s weather dependent (based on the current forecast, I might have to shovel snow in that timeslot).
I DID manage to create characters in Pool of Radiance, since the Gold Box games are my new long-term gaming project. I’ll see if I can manage to get through them or if I get lost or can’t win a battle and have to bail on it.
Urghh, the “main villain” of DAI is such a letdown. Here we have this character (I’ll respect your choice of not naming them) who should be absolutely central to both lore and one of the thematic axes* of the setting but goes all “hurr-durr, I evil! I have mcguffin! my abilities are red!”, then they relegate any sort of actual setting development to a DLC which has no resolution and is effectively little more than a teaser for the next game. Which is guaranteed to take years to come out (so far 10 and counting), could be completely unrelated storywise either as a plan or because someone else took creative and/or writing control and instead wants to make it a story about Carta rather than that whole worldshattering thing, or could be saddled with a stupid battle royale or whatever the next big thing was afterwards mechanics that have nothing to appeal to the core audience of the series AND come years after the trend has died down anyway… Can you tell I’m somewhat tired of AAA?
*Today I Learned this is the proper plural of axis!
Well, I have to admit that one of the main reasons I didn’t name the villain was because I wasn’t sure I remembered how to spell the name [grin].
Yeah, that we didn’t get a follow-up to the game yet is disappointing, although I did like the at least official, non-DLC console ending that was, well, just a teaser for later things (Flemeth and the Dread Wolf), which is what makes me disappointed that we didn’t get a follow-up game sooner (even if that story was continued in DLC, which I didn’t play). Especially since I do think that this series managed to avoid the issues that the Mass Effect Trilogy had. No matter what you think of the story and any of the games, they hold together better.
And I kinda have to agree about AAA. I can’t think of a AAA game out that I actually want to play (maybe the Persona 5 one, if that counts). Part of that might be me being a bit more on the outside of that scene now than before, but even with some of my sources still intact I’m really interested in older games and some indies perhaps than that scene. Oddly enough, part of that would be that there aren’t enough games in the franchises I like to get me interested in the scene again.
To say that part of the story is “continued in DLC” is a stretch. Tresspasser has some nice character moments for companions and in many ways works as an epilogue for them but in terms of main narrative progression it’s pretty much the Witch Hunt again, which is why I find it so annoying.
Finally got a winning run on Streets of Rogue, which I apparently didn’t do the first time. Missed opportunity at the end; the frame story is about taking down the Mayor, and the last mission is specifically to take the Mayor’s hat, and I was convinced that if I killed the Mayor then some other resident would grab his hat and I’d end up having to take down five or six “Mayors” in succession. But no, seems like the hat just sits there on the ground and nobody else wants it.
Broke down and installed the free-but-online-only Super Auto Pets, which is as fun as it looks and more fun than it sounds. You buy up to five animals which each have a unique ability, then try to buff them and synergize to defeat someone else’s team of five. Standard mode is the Arena, try to win ten times before losing five. But they know Round 1 is a complete crapshoot so if you lose round 1 or 2 you get an extra life. Lots of meta builds, lots of fun. (Got a really nice broken combo on one of my first runs; a 1/1 Scorpion with Deathtouch, plus a tier-2 Armadillo(?) that gives 16 health to everyone, plus a Tiger that males the armadillo trigger again for 8. So the 1/1 becomes a 1/25, and the enemy team’s health doesn’t matter because my guy’s got Deathtouch.) But, I think two days of it has sufficiently scratched the itch.
Made one run of Noita, which went much smoother than I remember that game going, don’t know what’s up with that.
Chess is going badly, I’m now routinely losing to people 500 points below me. I think that one’s going on the shelf for a bit.
Almost done with Greedfall. It’s an interesting conundrum from a critical perspective: I want games like Greedfall to be a success because the choice-heavy party RPG is a genre I love and I don’t want it to be the exclusive domain of Bioware, Obsidian and Larian. The fact that a pretty small developer took a swing at it and produced something that feels this Bioware-y is amazing. With that said, it’s just very uneven as a whole. The combat is decent, quest structure is pretty good, and I like the art (especially the really stylish armor sets). But damn, I literally had to walk my phone into the other room so I would stop pulling it out to check Twitter during the slow-paced, predictable dialogue. I like talky games, I shouldn’t be falling asleep during the talky bits! No enemy variety, recycled environments, and bad clipping/map boundaries are things I would expect and forgive from a smaller studio. But man, I just want some dialogue that’s good and I haven’t found it in 20 hours.
Very uneven as a whole is the definition of the studio that made Greedfall (Spiders) but on the plus side it means they have these moments of surprising brilliance.
As I feared, not much time to play this week either. The good thing about Super Mario Bros. Wonder is that it can be picked up just for a few minutes at any time and you won’t be confused or anything, so I’m taking my time with it, coming to it when I have a little time to kill between tasks.
Meanwhile, when I actually have some free time I’m playing NIER: Automata. I’ve been putting this game off for years for whatever reason, so I’m glad I’m finally giving it its due. I’m having a lot of fun with it, though it does have that thing where if you die you need to go pick up your body to recover your stuff and if you die before doing it all that stuff is gone. So of course I die literally seconds before reaching my body, and it has happened to me multiple times.
I can’t get mad at the game for that, though, it’s my own damn fault for not doing a beeline straight to the body and getting distracted in pointless battles that chip away at my health.
I also started an indie horror game called Wendigo. Not much to say about it because I’ve only played a few mintues, but I do like its atmosphere.
Finally got around to starting Baldur’s Gate 3 and it’s consuming my life. Running a human sorcerer with Astarion, Shadowheart and Gale as my core party
I started Starfield about two weeks ago and I can see it taking me a long time to get bored with it. Still only in the mid-teens of levels and not too far along the main quest.
I am playing a lot of puzzle games right now. Mostly Logic Town. It is cute and a nice idea but way to repetitive. The same kind of puzzle for around 60 levels is a lot.
Also tried a few other games. Harmony’s Odyssey is nice. Not the most complex and varied game. Has its flaws. The explanations on how the levels work are weak. It is unplayable with KBM. And the last world has a horrid difficulty spike. The developers promised to fix it in the summer of 2022.
Other than that I am looking for another project game. Have not found anything yet that entices me. Want something interesting in the 20-40 hour range.
You’ve already played Baba Is You?
Yeah already tried it. Got to world 3 or so. Definitely not fitting for my after work brain. But I did enjoy it for what it is and what it wants to be.
I want to play Cobalt Core , it looks like an interesting spin on Slay the Spire and other deck building games.