I tried that Infini game last night and played through the first two levels. (It was too late at night for me to have enough patience to get through the third.) It’s an odd game for sure, and I always like to see odd games.
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In armo(u)red core V, you can either do the ten story missions OR these side missions of which IGN’s guide said there were 40 of.
I just beat mission 40.
Thats how I found out there’s actually 83.
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I downloaded the demo of Infini on switch a few months ago but it felt too much like a 2009 indie game to me mechanically so I bounced off. Should I stick with it more? Seems to be a game focused around one game mechanic (ala 2009 indie games) and one that doesn’t interest me much
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Been playing a little of the network test for Dark and Darker, a game heavily influenced by escape from tarkov but with a dungeon crawler coat of paint over the mechanics and aesthetics. Or so Im told as Ive never played tarkov myself but from what I can gather the core mechanics are largely the same.
Basically youre dropped into a randomly generated dungeon with 15 other players and a battle royal death circle starts closing in on the map, the dungeon is filled with loot and enemies but after a certain amount of time portals will appear that let you escape after camping them a short time. When you escape from the dungeon you keep everything you found, with loot mostly consisting of equipable weapons and armor or trinkets that can be sold between games. Its a simple loop but its made compelling by the ridiculous hostility of the dungeon, where even a single shambling skeleton can take you down in two swipes while you wail on it repeatedly to no avail.
I also love how janky the combat is, with proper physical comedy like spike traps hidden in the dark and enemies dropping down on your head after opening a chest causing the first person camera to immediately crumple and ragdoll.
The pvp elements are really interesting here, Im sure other games have it too but since its my first time playing something in this format, Ive been having a great time trying to communicate and cooperate with other players. Usually by switching off my weapon and squating repeatedly to show that Im not hostile, which has lead to some strong runs as well as some very funny backstabbings. It is just objectively funny to literally get stabbed in the back by a cloaked dude you just met 5 minutes ago, while opening a chest, especially with the goofy fast knifing sfx playing repeatedly.
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this was my experience too but i have sub-zero patience for puzzle games (especially this kind of puzzle game) so i’m curious what people who actually spent some time w this think.
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Somebody described this as “King’s Field, only it’s a BR” which is an absolutely hilarious idea for a game.
I think folks on Bachelor’s server have been playing it? One of the neu-SB Discord servers anyway.
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Thats not far off, at least in terms of the combat. It’s definitely laughing at the player in the same ways which is whats important
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there’s apparently also red portals that take you to even worse places than the sewer you start in. reading the subreddit for this is a treat if you like vague tales of centaurs murdering scores of tonsured lads in the “hallway of death”
the wizard spell that makes you leave fried chicken afterimages seems powerful
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so hmmm i dont actually hate twin snakes i know i have a lot of disgust in my heart for swagless faildev projects like sotc ps4 or demons souls ps5 but yknow part of my objection there has a lot to do with the og games not being in print or playable on currently manufactuted consoles… you could play mgs1 and they kept it in print all thru the ps3 gen. obvs the aesthetic is nowhere near as strong the new music is mid as hell… adding tranq darts and first person aiming basically breaks the game cause the mgs1 level design doesnt accomodate it all or like you can take down ocelot in 3 shots just by standing there and aiming in first person. but the ryuhei kitamura cutscenes have a lot of swag totally enjoyable mocap showcase i like to think of it as a complimentary work (and one which has obviously done nothing to supplant the original game in anyones head)… and yknow it was actually developed with a lot of involvment from kcej! not like these new remakes where the actual original developers had no input in things. it’s not as good as the original but it’s kind of a fun little footnote
anyways there is a lot of similarity between mgs and the design of old re games and demons / dark souls in that its like… very enjoyable and kind of the point to really learn how its laid out and where items are and plan out a route thru the base very intentionally
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We plod on through the fans and rare metals of the PS5 towards Demon’s Souls Remastered’s end
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Of all the levels that are most in need of changing things up it’s probably this big Dragon guy. The fight is just a stealth run to two checkpoints and then a final kinda sorta trap where the downed dragon can kill you by accidentally breathing on you if you’re not careful.
This fight feels like the most compromised by the original’s reined in scope and the remake shows this even more. It’s weird to have such a well-rendered level and model for about 10 minutes of relatively uninteresting challenge and if there was ever a point in the game to take some creative licence it’s probably here – especially since the Dragon God was always a weird sort of mascot for the game. It’s not bad since the strength a lot of Souls games forgot along the way is that every boss is intensely different and therefore diverse as a roster. Dragon God works as long as its set aside everything else. Taken alone it’s not super strong but I’d still appreciate the devs trying to really ‘remix’ one of these levels. They do change some minor things for no reason so why not take a big swing? Probably best they didn’t really.
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Unlike 3-1’s blueprints, 3-2 is more of a winding marble run. Up and down towers with a chaotic sequence of enemy spawns and ambushes as the level progresses.
It’s excellent as a level:
A. because it’s always keeping the player moving up, down, in, out, and all around
B. it’s a practice run for Maneater with all the pitfalls and big beefy beasts ready to encircle and smother you
Maneater still one of the hardest fights. The lunge attack, their frequent flight and two maneaters plays havoc with the camera if you’re locked on, and the camera is often jerking upwards or sideways while you’re trying to dodge on a narrow bridge. Feels deliberate in the original design. A late-game dare to step away from the comfort of lock-on.
Here’s the ‘best’ adaptation of Demon’s Souls’ OST from the remake. Comparatively reined back enough that you can still make out the melody and circling menace implied in the original. Still too much choir for Demon’s Souls. When an orchestra swells what is the opposite of that? Just make the orchestra do that, please I beg you.
Like Leechmonger and many other fights, the character of the fight is made memorable by the unusual arena shape you have to work with. A long walkway with no safety rails, a ramp stairway in the middle up to a wider circular arena with a big torch in the centre. Compliments the fight well, hell, it is the fight, but the remake makes the sky a little too readable compared to the original. The game is generally brighter on default settings and it probably stems from the desire to show off the pretty pixels, something every Demon’s Souls player cared urgently about. Anyway, it makes tracking the Maneaters much easier.
Special shout-out to the old kouraykubo maps, they are excellent and filled with that good FAQ energy: [3-2]Fool's Idol Archstone
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The game’s greatest gimmick. I haven’t been playing online so haven’t really experienced this ‘properly’. Boss is coming so late in the playthrough that I steamrolled it. Old Monk is great conceptually but the actual fight and level I don’t have much to say about this time. The Old Monk’s wrinkles really pop thanks to the power of the PS5. Demon down.
Only 1-4 remains…
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Without having played much of ps5 Demon’s I think one of the most painful losses is the constant pulsing heartbeat ambience in 3-2. That place was one of the darkest, atmospheric parts of Latria if not the whole game, not surprising that sums up their approach to this project
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in games i played today, my path of exile saboteur (tree here, strictly 4 the freaks) is into the endgame and feeling really strong despite me having waaaay less HP than i’m usually comfortable running at this phase of the game (3.5k – i usually like to be around 5k+) but thanks to the playstyle i’m not getting clapped out of maps that often. turns out you don’t get hit much when you’re freezing everything around you and can stack up 15 traps for the boss to charge right into
POE avoids the “run the same few bosses over and over” endgame of a lot of games in this genre through its Atlas system that leverages the game’s RNG-based item rolling system to drop each endgame level as a map item that can be upgraded in rarity, power, and complexity (i.e. monsters have more abilities or the area is populated with environmental hazards.) each of these upgrades also increases the likelihood of you getting good drops, forming a loop of gambling the item modification currency you’ve been collecting over the game to build bigger and sillier challenges that you hope your character can overcome for bigger rewards.
this all builds to (eventually) fighting a series of eldritch deities who like to make speeches and do bullet hell but in the meantime i’m still levelling up and getting loot to get ready for all that mess. on top of the gigantic character passive skill tree i linked previously, the Atlas has it’s own, modifying the type of stuff you encounter, how difficult it is, and what it can drop. it’s a neat way to customize a big sprawling ancient forevergame to your liking as you can effectively turn off stuff you don’t like and boost the hell out of the stuff you do. hate tower defense minigames but love heisting? spec for it.
(a link to my tree, for the real sickos)
you start at the bottom center and work your way up, with the nodes in the top third largely related to the three aforementioned eldritch bosses you can sorta make out in the background art. mine’s very thin so far, mostly just working my way up the middle to get more map drops and expedite filling the tree out. in this league i think i’m going to specialize in the Bestiary mechanic which adds strong miniboss monsters to your maps since my build is better at killing bosses than clearing masses of monsters, Heists since they reward indirect combat and fast + evasive builds, and Rituals, a mechanic where you fight a ton of monsters in a small arena full of shifting hazards because i can easily crowd control most monsters with freezes. i might spec out of this one later if the crowds get too hairy, we’ll see how it goes
““gear progression”” in POE is full of RPG treadmill stuff (i.e. just put time in and eventually something will drop) but unlike all of its contemporaries it encourages relatively unrestricted player to player item trading, another callback to diablo 2. this sounds a lot like the diablo 3 item house nightmare, but POE differs by lacking a generic “gold” currency that can be indefinitely accumulated from monsters, eventually deflating into worthlessness. instead, monsters drop a multitude of orbs that when destroyed let players reroll items in different ways. this is all random as hell which has the effect of players destroying a lot more orbs than they farm, keeping a relatively functional economy going for a few months until the next league comes around and everything resets.
even though i’m a socialist i can find engaging in markets entertaining when its in a game, and figuring out ways to scrap a character together from nothing thru esoteric game knowledge and good old fashioned haggling with funny money really scratches an itch for me? here’s an unsolicited picture of My Orbs because this has been a lot of text.
the short version of that is if you drop shit you don’t need you can flip it for stuff you do. this is incredibly valuable in a game based around random drops and build-enabling items! i was lucky to drop an exalted orb, an item used as a “finishing touch” to big endgame crafting projects, something i’m not doing anytime soon. i tossed it in my trade tab & set an ask (15 chaos orbs, yes, i love sounding like a sonic npc while bartering with a stranger named [PISS] THICC_JUGG_VD[1]) got my orbs (here’s some 3d printed exalted and chaos orbs, in case you thought items named these things weren’t weird amalgamations of Heads)
then i nabbed a Heatshiver, a very ugly hat that makes anything frozen by my traps take the same amount of damage as fire damage while they’re stuck there all mad about it. most monsters don’t survive long enough for this to matter but will be a big help in boss fights, as my main defense in those is to end them as quickly as possible. i also nabbed some new boots giving me cold-related offense + defense and a bunch of critical chance which helps on offense but critical cold hits guarantee that a monster will be frozen, key to my defense. all the rest of my gear is Off The Ground and unoptimized but that’s next on the todo list~
oh right, almost forgot to leave off with more wisdom from global chat, this time trying to root out a rat among them
1. there is a class named Juggernaut and a skill named Volatile Dead. yes people talk about VD builds all the time and ask for help on reddit because “my VD isn’t proliferating far and ruining my clear, help???” and no one talks about the clap. i don’t get it but maybe i am just old enough and from a poor enough school district to have seen very Antiquated Tapes during health class and the Kids don’t know this acronym?
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I got doom eternal for like $5 and boy am I glad I didn’t pay more than that for it. it’s like aggressively mid compared to doom 2016 which itself I felt was mildly overhyped.
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I accidentally deleted several saves because I didn’t back them up before reinstalling Retroarch 
.
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HOTTTT
Uh, also the link to your Atlas tree doesn’t work.
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i fucked up the markdown, should work now!
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I am through the first four areas of Infini and it is very much in that “we have a central mechanic that we add a different twist to in each subsequent area” school of design mechanically. I don’t know how far the demo goes as the first area isn’t really doing much with said mechanic, if it goes through the first two and it doesn’t do anything for you I don’t think more of it will change your mind.
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hell yeah i been waiting for this post for a while, good post
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yeah it made me want to play path of exile a little bit (which to be clear i have not been waiting for)
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Here’s my Dark & Darker experience:
I chose the Cleric. The Cleric looks very intense, and has a mace. I have a soft spot for maces in video games. I do not know why. They’re usually not very fun to use. I think this is just me trying to be different.
There’s probably some meme format that would express how I felt after seeing how the cleric really looked, how he’s not some bad-ass mace-wielding zealot but some bare foot Friar Tuck motherfucker, but I don’t do memes, I don’t know what they are, I just know this really upset me, especially when I got into my first dungeon and saw this
So this game is better than Half-Life 2, cuz you can see feet, but maybe worse, cuz you can see feet.
Dark & Darker is some King’s Field-esque battle royale shit. If you’re reading this thread you know that already. Despite me repeatedly asking WHO WANTS TO PLAY THE FREE NISE KINGS FIELD BATTLE ROYALE no one took me up on the offer so that just confirmed my suspicion that everyone on here is just like me (pretending to like King’s Field way more than I actually do). My solo adventures all ended in immediate death so I started inviting strangers, which was difficult for me. I have anxieties, I have difficulties engaging with people, the thought of sending an invite to a close friend makes me feel kinda ill, nevermind someone I don’t know. But I got the fuck over it, largely cuz nearly every single character name in the user list was fuckin’ sexual as all hell.
Not featured: the 3000 names I saw with words like “cum,” “milkers,” or “sex.” Almost all of them turned me down.
I know you might find that hard to believe, but it’s true, I give off weird vibes, people will often back off cuz they’re afraid they can’t handle this Rodeo Burger, but thankfully eventually I got a party together.
Anyway I died like 2 minutes into our adventure cuz I couldn’t figure out how to cast spells and I was bad at hitting skeletons with my mace. All the skeletons in the game are very meaty, they make squishy sounds when they get hit, and bleed a bunch, it’s an interesting choice. Also all the spiders I saw were also mummies, which I didn’t notice at first cuz it turns out the world of Dark & Darker is really really dark most of the time. sandian cleared the dungeon though, she got out with a bunch of loot but that didn’t do jack shit for me. I think I got a tiny bit of experience but I was still fucking barefoot and largely useless.
Wait actually maybe zaq0ranger is the one who survived the dungeon run and not sandian, I get confused pretty easily nowadays, good on whoever won a game though. My attempt at “respeccing” as a “warrior who fights in only a bra” didn’t work out, I also died really quickly, I’m not very good at this game, I did write lots of words blaming my poor performance on my bra though. Forgot to take screenshots but it was pretty funny I think, so funny that I decided to go to bed, to go out on top, I’m a winner at Dark & Darker even though I my KDA is 0. I probably made at least one stranger chuckle! Everybody loves a clown! Why not!! Fuck it!!
Everybody loves a clown!!
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