T w e n t y S i d e d
I haven’t done much this week. I’ve been too busy to play much Terraria, so instead I’m playing Deep Rock Galactic. Not much going on there, just playing solo and collecting stuff from this current season.
What’s everyone else doing this week?
Silver Sable Sucks
This version of Silver Sable is poorly designed, horribly written, and placed in the game for all the wrong reasons.
Bad and Wrong Music Lessons
A music lesson for people who know nothing about music, from someone who barely knows anything about music.
Quakecon Keynote 2013 Annotated
An interesting but technically dense talk about gaming technology. I translate it for the non-coders.
Charging More for a Worse Product
No, game prices don't "need" to go up. That's not how supply and demand works. Instead, the publishers need to be smarter about where they spend their money.
Could Have Been Great
Here are four games that could have been much better with just a little more work.
Demonschool is finished, and I have complex feelings on it. There are a lot of games out there that appeal to my interests, but this is the first game I’ve played that felt like something I might have made. The absurd plot that feels like it’s being made up as we go. The continuous twisting of basic jokes. (“Throw a coin in the fountain?” “Throw a rock in the fountain?” “Throw some bread in the fountain?” “Drink the fountain water?”) The movie reviews. The obsession with snakes. The overfast ramping up of stakes, then the story being stuck with too-high stakes too early and nowhere to go but further up. The charmingly lame minigames.*
The combat is easy, but the greatest foe you face is the movement mechanics. The way it works is, you have eight action points per round, and every time a character moves it costs one more than the last time they moved. So what it means is, every turn you can either move all four characters once, and two characters twice, or, you can move one character three times, two characters once, and the last one not at all. The goal is to kill a certain number of enemies, and also cross the battlefield to the other side. The longest non-boss battle expects to last five turns; they’re all very short. But. But.
The movement in battle is frustrating. You can move three spaces in any of the main eight directions. That’s three spaces; not “up to three”, exactly three. Unless you hit an obstacle, you can’t stop early. The game gives you a free sidestep of one square, that you can use to align yourself better; but it’s only free if there’s nothing to target on that side. If there’s something to target, you’ll automatically target it with a cost action, instead of taking your free action. (This makes the “push your friends” ability flat terrible; you’ll be unable to sidestep anymore because allies are close by.) The sidestep is also strictly a *side* step; you can’t move up or down the column without using a full action. And a full action requires you to move three paces, so if you want to move one row down, tough tit.
With regards to the actual fighting, your resistances are enormous; most enemies only hit for one, so if you resist their element, your character will be invincible. A lot of fights only have enemies with the same element, and you can check it before deployment, so you can just stack the party with, say, Resists Spirit, and the enemies literally can’t hurt you anymore. Then it’s just a race against the turn limit; but it’s not a hard limit, it’s just a ranking thing. You can take more turns if you want. Shamus would say it’s like the Arkham games; it’s really easy to win, but much harder to win perfectly.
Bosses are big setpieces, but mostly work the same way; they’ve got a big attack, they’ll scatter three components across the battlefield, and upon hitting the three components the boss will take damage. They’re not really challenging, but are very showy. It fits the mechanics pretty well. And they get big artsy camera swoops over these PS1/SNES graphics. Neat.
I think I called the story noise at one point, but it is better than that; it ramps up way too fast way too early
(the whole island has lost their memory by, like, the second boss. Of twelve.), but continues to take itself the same level of serious throughout. It’s not like Knuckle Sandwich or something truly lolrandom. But I did really like the ending,which was just “here’s nine endings, pick one blindly.”Of all the ways the game could end, that’s probably the best; it’s got the same level of charming disrespect as the minigames that brought us here.….I don’t think I’m ever going to replay this one. That’s part of the problem with feeling like something I would write; my stories are mostly throwaways. They’re fun to write, not to read. The whole experience of Demonschool is more interesting than fun. Most games I play these days, when I reach the end, lead to me starting a new run immediately, until all the desire to play has fully burned off. This one… it’s kind of been gone for a while. Which is too bad, I really want to like it, and want other people to like it. The World Needs More ME.
* (there’s like a dozen minigames, they all last a couple of seconds, and they’re all just, so very mediocre. There’s rock-paper-scissors, but the opponents never vary their throw; if they throw rock the first time, they’ll throw rock every time. The weight-lifting minigame is literally just choosing between two text boxes; “pick up the weights”, and “put them back down”. No rhythm to maintain, no stamina bar, just pick the box. And if you pick the wrong one a character tells you “no, you’ve got to pick the other one,” and you pick again. It’s like the game is saying, “you want minigames, here’s your minigame, now shut up.”)
Triangle Strategy continues. Two endings in now; there’s two more runs to see every battle. I’ve just looked up the True Route, and am hopefully following it, because I kind of just want to finish the thing off, and see if the Golden Route is worth seeing. This third playthrough features routes I’ve already seen, and thus heavy dialogue skipping; turns out the game goes quite fast when you ignore the story and sidequest battles.
Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass got an update, that added a Hard Mode. So far it’s more like a Cheeky Mode, nerfing the most obvious strategies. (I’m not sure if this is inspired by Look Outside’s Cursed Mode, which did the same kind of thing last year. But I like JatPM more anyway, it doesn’t have Survival elements for Hard Mode to ramp up.) You know how Skitterbones can be insta-killed by stealing their bones? No you don’t, because now they only take half damage. You know how you can fight Big Enormous alone outside of the group battle, so he isn’t there to buff everyone? Well now if you do that he uses the bear’s Rampage attack every turn for more than your max health. (I don’t know if that fight’s even winnable anymore.) You remember the Tea Mouse? Well I didn’t, but sure will now that they’ve got a Physical Counterattack you have to maneuver around. So, so far it’s been a good excuse to replay the game.
I’ve seen you talk about this game before. Steam says it’s about exploring an 8-year-old kid’s dreams.
Would you recommend it to someone who despises turn-based combat, but is super interested in good narrative and Lovecraftian horrors? Or is the “pulsating mass” just a metaphor for child cancer, in which case I’m definitely out?
No, it’s a metaphor, which gets too heavy-handed in the endgame, I would have greatly preferred they left it vague. I like it because it’s a mashup of Earthbound and Final Fantasy 5, with body horror dungeons thrown in. So, the turn-based combat part.
I found it through thevoiceofdog’s playthrough, and Tietuesday also saw it there, so if you don’t like turn-based combat I’d recommend those instead.
…I might be underselling the narrative. The Mass is pretty clearly some kind of waking-world cancer by the end, but the game is all in the dream world, and in the dream world it remains a conscious thing that specifically hates Jimmy, and keeps coming after him in progressively stronger forms that can each be physically defeated with the aid of friends and family. So it’s an adventure of Jimmy hanging out with the dreams of his mom, dad, brother and uncle, and fighting progressively meaner versions of the Mass, looking for a way to kill it forever.
Also fighting various childhood fears, like cramped spaces and math. (I don’t know why I find the Lumpagon so disturbing, but I think that bothered me more than anything else.)
Easter didn’t give me have time to play video games. But board and card games, we played a lot. In Bomb Busters the family and I reached the second boss stage of mission 30 and passed it third try. Stressful. And I introduced a new player to the game with missions 1, 2, 8 and 19.
Then we played ito, a party games of sorting hidden numbers according to liking things to different topics on a 1 to 100 scale. Guess which number Toxic Waste gets as a pizza topping, compared to cheese or salami?
I also played Tag Team and Everdell Pearlbrook with a friend. Everdell is such a good game, but the necessary table space is off the rails.
In Jedi Survivor I spent some more futile time against the
double rancors, before giving up for now and going to faceDaganand good grief did I find his attacks untelegraphed, so no parrying there really unless by luck. But managed to succeed, so now to see what parts of the game remain that I haven’t managed to spoil for myself mildly or otherwise. Also 2-3 more races in Gravel, the odd and oddly soulless racing game that really does its best to be entertaining and not-soulless, that I got for £1 on the PS Store.I’ve been playing through Jedi Survivor, but I’m a shameless casual and play on story mode because it’s the exploration and collecting and stuff that I find really fun. The platforming challenges are the most frustrating bit!
There are a few enemies that have some untelegraphed attacks it seems, even some that go into unblockable ones in a split second. They’re annoying even though I’m no danger of dying.
Glad I’m not the only one who thinks that! Some enemies seem to have the prerogative to suddenly chain into a red attack if they fancy. Are you enjoying it? Unlike Fallen Order this time you get a load of minigames! I’ve been constantly surprised by the breadth of the game this time, an improvement in every way for me. Pylone’s Saloon is a real surprise, I enjoyed just listening to the music there. Funnily enough I’ve done the opposite of you, sort of. I played Fallen Order on Jedi Master, and that was a struggle, and I barely engaged with the parry mechanic. This time I decided I’d make it more fun by playing on Jedi Knight. But after a while I noticed that I wasn’t really enjoying the combat because I was never at risk of dying, so I turned it up to Jedi Grandmaster :D Which is good for the areas, but not good for the more exotic challenge enemies. Hell the chickens can one-shot me with their unblockable attack!
I am enjoying it! I think I’m about 90% or more through it now, but naturally I won’t be in a position to play it for the next 10 days… There are some enemies that are a challenge even on story mode. Not in danger of killing me, but a right pain to put down. And when you get multiple of them at once, and they all use super quick red attacks… The one that really annoys me are the rockets that you can’t force-push, unlike other rockets that get fired at you.
Interesting. I actually prefer Fallen Order. It somehow managed to do more, using less. The story was more focused, it didn’t have the dumb twist Survivor has near the end, and you got to visit more different locations. It was kind or disappointing that most of your time is spent on that one planet (Bogano, I think?). It feels like most of the places you visit are some sort of desert.
Still, I’m glad you guys are enjoying it.
Played a bit more of Suikoden III. I’ve gotten through the three chapters for each protagonist and the two chapters for Thomas, and so now all I need to do is go to Chapter 4 with the character that will be the protagonist for the rest of the game. You can indeed pick any of them and it will work, and each of them will pick up a True Rune out of it, but the general consensus is that Hugo is the best choice, skills notwithstanding, because he will take up the True Rune from the Flame Champion, who was a Grasslander like himself, Chris will then end up with the True Water Rune that her father carried, and Geddoe will get to keep the True Lightning Rune that he had the entire time. Narratively, it makes more sense that way, but you can indeed do whatever you want and it will work.
In Geddoe’s final chapter you get access to a True Rune for the first time in this game, his True Lightning Rune once he reveals his entire backstory. Runes are what are used for magic and most useable skills, and True Runes are the most powerful of the lot. So it was cool being able to use what was with a normal Lightning rune your level 4 skills as a level 1 skill and getting 9 of them, which made battles a lot easier in a rather tough section because you could just use Geddoe’s True Lightning spells and kill most of the party off. I don’t use Fire spells that much though — and the main character’s True Rune is a True Fire Rune — because the attacks damage everyone in a set area, and with the game having actual movement if you have any melee characters you’ll likely damage your own characters as well, which is a bit pointless. That’s why I made Joker — the one character who starts with a Fire Rune — more of a melee character this time around, although I maxed out his Fire Magic anyway, just in case.
I also played a bit of Knights of the Old Republic. I created a character with minimal Strength and high Dexterity, figuring that I could get Weapon Finesse at one point (in looking at some things I came across that somewhere) but that wasn’t there, only Weapon Focuses. But I made her more of a ranged character anyway, and I’ll see how it works. So far it hasn’t been an issue — she barely gets hit by anything — but that was only the Endar Spire which is presumably a bit easier, but I should be able to mitigate it by using the other characters as primarily melee for a while, and my preferred way to take out Malak was generally to turn on Energy Absorption and drop Thermal Detonators on him, so hopefully it will work out. And yes, there’s a reason I’m replaying this game that is related to the blog.
It really is on my list to go back to KotOR now that I have played D&D for the last 5 years, and actually understand those sort of mechanics a bit more!
I got a bit nervous about it — because lightsabers are melee weapons and are the main weapon for most of the game — and looked it up, and while the Weapon Finesse abilities are only added in Sith Lords, lightsabers supposedly always use the higher of your Strength or Dexterity, which makes this move a good one, as I can focus on ranged for Taris and then use lightsabers afterwards utilizing my higher Dexterity.
After several rounds of staring at my backlog, I settled on Going Under for my next game. I’ve been making decent progress, although the achievements list tells me I’m still in the early game. Going Under is, in very simple terms, a cross between the Dilbert comic and Hades — a sendup of workplace doofiness (in this case centered on startup culture) combined with procedurally-generated hack-and-slash action. Like Hades, it’s got a good mix of little bite-sized systems to use and projects to pursue that keep the dopamine dripping without falling prey to flat Number Go Up syndrome, and I’m pleased to say that there’s a decent amount of room for player skill acquisition and that making progress is feeling pretty rewarding.
On the downside, the motion is just uncomfortably floppy, almost along the lines of something like Gang Beasts or Human Fall Flat. I don’t really like it, especially when compared to Hades’ tight controls. I’m also not super into the humor — you can tell that it’s a relatively shallow source of ideas from the way conversational options in the hub drop off quickly, to the point where most of what people has to say is essentially just quest assignment and quest fulfillment stuff.
Ultimately, it’s a decent enough Hades-alike that I’m having fun so far and am happy to continue, but it’s no Hades. I guess that goes for most games, though, eh?
I’ve mostly been playing (the digital version of) Ark Nova recently, obsessively trying to beat the advanced challenge modes. I’ve managed to beat a few recently, which just makes me hungry for more. The way the game works, as soon as someone gets 100 or more points it triggers a final round where everyone else gets a single turn to do something, after which the points are tallied. So the optimal play is get your points up to 99 before dropping some massive point bomb and trying to get a high enough score that you maintain your lead when the end-of-game points are tallied up (typically in the range of ~3-15 or so). For one of the challenges this week I somehow ended up with a final score of 138, which I didn’t even know it was possible to get (I think the highest I’ve managed before was something like 123). So that felt pretty good, and I’m chasing the high on the other challenge modes.
…well, apparently Graveyard Keeper is free on Steam until April 13th. It’s a game I never finished but is definitely worth it at that price.