A bit shallow, sometimes too jokey. There doesn’t really feel like there’s enough game here. I’m perturbed that it feels like I’m most of the way through the game in only 3 hours, when Uplink had satisfying RPG numbers-go-up mechanics to mitigate the hacking mechanics being fairly straightforward to master (and even then, the joy of Uplink was performing an outrageous hack that rendered all the mechanics irrelevant thereafter, like robbing all the money from a bank, allowing oneself to instantly buy all the best computer parts and programs with no risk of retaliation)
Instead, hacknet makes up for it by slightly more ‘realistic’ theming. One types commands into a terminal for instance. It still feels like movie hacking but with just a bit more groundedness. I don’t really consider this a positive, as the instantly dated cyberpunk genre over-the-top feeling of Uplink was certainly a positive, whereas Hacknet feels staid and uneventful.
The most exciting moment in the game, when your computer is traced and you have about one minute to hack into your isp server to disguise your IP was completely undermined for me because the isp server was completely bugged and didn’t do what it was supposed to. I could not reset my ip, and got a ‘game over’. However, when I loaded my game again, I was at the same point in time, but with no active trace harrying me.
Still, I played for 3 hours and to the game’s credit, that’s because fakey-hacking games are inevitably appealing to me. I enjoy the virtual voyeurism of reading fake people’s emails.
I liked this video about Sunless Sea re: why the slog enhances the game.
I found the game too overwhelming to play however, and have just never gotten back to it. This feeling of an old PC game showering you with strange unknown stats you need to keep an eye on.
I didn’t feel that way at all playing the free weekend. I just felt like I was collecting and trading story tokens (which is objectively what I was doing)
Granted, I would like to see someone besides myself talk about games like CK2 and KoDP in the way that Quinns in that video talked about Sunless Sea (as they’re much more appropriate examples for the idea that ‘bad mechanics’ are actually ultimately beneficial to the experience’)
Really, none of the feelings of unease or terror at the sea were felt by me during the free weekend, which is partly why I didn’t end up buying the game (I will just wait for it to be on sale for an even lower price before I consider it). The game didn’t leave me feeling much investment in anything. Because of the roguelike mechanics, I ultimately felt no identification with my character because they were underdeveloped and way too blank for me to get attached to. Similar to why I never bothered to play Fallen London very much: too much downtime and the stories are so non-specific that they feel very retrograde: stories without characters.
Sunless Sea felt like an extremely dry sketch of a Choose Your Own Adventure story with a really boring videogame attached. If neither part of an awkward split game is compelling, and they don’t gel well either, I can’t see it as anything but a complete failure.
Yeah, I thought sunless sea was pretty poor on execution, but I can see plenty of reasons to like it, and the British games intelligentsia sure got fired up
Playing Assassin’s Creed Rogue and really enjoying it. It’s basically a direct sequel to Black Flag, both narratively and in terms of gameplay. My complaint with the otherwise excellent Black Flag was that all the Caribbean locations all kind of looked the same. That’s been addressed in this one. Now instead of one big same-y area to sail around and explore you have two still-huge but more distinct areas: the Arctic iceberg-infested North Atlantic and the lush Hudson River Valley. Both areas have lots of settlements and caves to check out and animals to hunt for crafting and if you want a more traditional AssCreed flavor you can go to New York, or Manhattan more specifically, and dink around there.
It’s pre-Great Fire Manhattan too so it has a bit of a Gangs of New York vibe (I would play the hell out of a Gangs of New York game). Blasting iceberges with my cannons to get loot crates is more satisfying than it has any right to be.
i finally got around to playing Undertale and i actually really like it!
The Earthbound comparisons are unavoidable but what this reminds me more than anything is Frog Fractions, in terms of how the battles can unfold. i thought i was mostly just going to try to get through this game from the (really charming and cute) monster dialogues, but the Bullet Hell segments actually add some skill and challenge.
i feel like it earns all the accolades it’s been given.
Playing Way Of The Samurai 4, got the normal Prajna ending, it’s pretty cartoony this entry, the bad guy looks like a bad guy from Star Wars, the sex mini game and the characters are more cheesy than normal.
I think I like 2 better becuse of the neutrality of the lack of a big antagonist and kind of prefered the style system for the first 2 entry, changing depending in sword instead of equiping it, but that’s a personal preference.
now I’m going to try to help everyone a little without messing with another group, but I think fucked up in the begining and aparently working with the magistry to stop opium smuggling wasn’t a good deed for the foreigners.
I’m playing Dark Souls for the first time in like… a year? I was going to do my standard halberd-wielding pyromancer but ended up getting a black knight halberd drop really early on and the game turned into running around in my underwear wrecking everything in three hits or less. It’s maybe the easiest playthrough i’ve ever done.
Also got cheat engine working for it, because i’ve run so many characters that i feel i’ve earned the right to just give myself the shit i want for themed playthroughs and get down to business already. Plus it means i am able to use the dragon torso stone for the first time ever! Dragonfriend for life~
I have been recently playing thru Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future (Dreamcast, 2000). It’s one of the most frustrating and finicky games I’ve ever played and simultaneously one of the most compelling.
I kinda feel like this one has been somehow unjustly forgotten.
I like how all of the characters speak in deliberate and considered quasi-poetics. It must have felt really heavy-handed and obtuse at the time, but it helps push the serenity and patience this game requires of its players well.
I’m definitely going to write more about this game, if for no reason other than the dashing-out-of-the-water-into-the-air mechanics are endlessly fun and remain unequaled in the decade and a half since the game’s release.
There’s no point at which the game steals control from you and forces you to do missions, is there? I think the changes Peace Walker made to accommodate mobile gaming were a huge positive on the series.
If you could have stoppes in the middle of MGS4’s torturously long cutscenes to go airlift goats the game would have been so much better
I have done 17 story missions and am thoroughly burnt out on MGS5. I know there’s something like 50 to finish?
I think part of the problem is that every mission is essentially the same, thus the fun of the game relies on you wanting to change up your strategies, buddies and loadouts.
The game eventually just becomes absolutely miserable just the worst. I never even saw the hanging gardens. Im really bad about playing games long after I stop enjoying them but there was a line in the sand with ecco where I absolutely could not take any more of it. To play more would hurt me.
I think there is definitely interesting stuff ib it but any wow the graphics had is long gone so you are stuck really trying to enjoy it.
