I prefer cuba’s method of treating quick saves like checkpoints between major firefights over savescumming inbetween every bullet fired. Even though the latter is possible it feels more like avoiding learning how to play a game
Then again I have over 30 years of experience playing old and unfair pc games so I could just be used to their spiky difficulty and the only way I can feel anything any more is redoing the same ambush dozens of times until I get it right
I played some of Creature Kitchen today. You have to learn to cook, figure out who to cook for, and then find out what to cook for each creature you encounter. I like it so far.
It’s a little like Carimara in that it takes place in and around a single house where you uncover small mysteries.
Edit: I finished the game. It’s very good.
the quirk that makes everything reset around you when you quick load in stalker is fantastic. it is the perfect cost of being able to save whenever you want. you have to be strategic about where you do it or everyone will immediately sense you nearby and fuck you up. it also means different shit happens every time you have to reload
I love that 20 years later I can still put in a full shift in at the mount & blade factory slaughtering hundreds of shirtless guys as part of a plan to spend another twenty to forty hours slaughtering less naked guys but this time as a well paid mercenary
I miss the freelancer mod for warband where you could be one of the troops in an NPC lord’s army and work your way up the ranks though
thing is, i have habits from even older pc games (doom/quake) that make this look like an unsatisfying compromise
so even if i accept this is the only way to play max payne for me, im also not happy about it being the case
the games adaptive difficulty is broken so bad that what youre doing is what everyone had to do to play the game for ages. by the halfway point of the game shotguns would just one hit you. the difficulty never goes down when you die too much because you have to wait for max’s entire death animation to play out cuz the system is primitive. it is considered one of the hardest pc games of the time! its really not something to fret over
it is not “power cycling too hard”; it can happen on any shutdown event. in the fc/nes design, the 6502 would act erratically during power down which was capable of writing garbage to addresses where save data was stored. holding reset prevents the CPU from doing this
edit: i should note this is not even remotely the only way an NES cartridge can corrupt your save data, but the above is the reason why those “hold reset” warnings are there
I really need to actually go back to playing Spider-Mans, but all I’ve felt like doing lately is Terraria. I’ve been building towns for my NPCs and I don’t usually try to decorate in Terraria, but I’m experimenting with it for this
i didn’t like the menace demo and it’s ouut in early access now so i figured i would try it again, and no somehow the battle brothers developers have not gotten any better at UI so expect to misclick all the time and accidentally waste moves because rotate facing and deploy are on the same key. because when you’re playing a turn based strategy game you want to feel a lack of precision in the controls. previously said this game is pure try hard milslop and i stand by that statement, it’s just as cringe as ever
anyway i figured out why this genre is shit now, namely that you can never tell what anything is anymore
1999
2003
2026
yeah it’s ok i don’t need any more tactics games I’ll just play ja2 forever because I can tell what’s happening at all times and I like that privilege.
Romeo Is A Dead Man sure is a Seven out of Ten video game.
2XKO is kinda fun to play (that is, pressing buttons) but is an inscrutable thing. It’s been in development for like a decade and launches with a pretty small roster and the devs have immediately had a huge layoff which is great for your live service fighting game.
It looks and plays very slick. Almost feels a little too sanitary like everything has been wiped and sanded down. However, console version has pretty bad screen tearing and no real graphics options.
The button layout and lack of motion inputs doesn’t bother me and this feels like the vs. fighter I’ve had the most success grappling with. That said, I haven’t won any matches and I haven’t felt super compelled to play beyond a sort of ‘research play’.
Did the math in the store and skins are insanely expensive when compared to fighting games generally but I guess this game is free? You’d quickly reach a proper purchase price in one season pass and skin and it’s all just cosmetic lobby avatar stuff or skins or interface stuff. There’s nothing I want behind the free colours I’d have to grind.
I don’t really know any Riot characters beyond a cursory watch of Arcane S1. Going with Braum and Caitlyn as I tend to like playing extremes and Braum is v simple and Caitlyn is v complex combo routing and trappy and can aim her gun. Idk, it feels hard to get excited about it even prior to layoffs. I think just the Riot sheen brings with it connotations of a company that has a po-facedly hyped approach to esports whilst also resenting the fact that it doesn’t make them enough money.
I’m buying it the moment I get home. I actually completely forgot it was out today. I’ve also only seen the very first trailer
Said that before seeing it’s literally at 71 on metacritic
I’ve never concerned myself with scores. I like a lot of games that no one else likes
two stages in so does suda
I usually don’t post until I have a bunch of games to yammer on about, but I just started a new Skyrim game for the first time in over a decade so that will be taking up a lot of my time DON’T WORRY I didn’t give microsoft any money
SHORT VERSION: A very mediocre 90s FPS that apparently has a bit of a cult following, but I wont be joining that cult. Though it has environment and enemy variety, lots of little gimmicks throughout the game, and a charming grimy aesthetic, the levels are all too flat and the combat very shallow. I hope this opinion wont cause a rift between me and fans of the game!
LONG VERSION:
Apparently this started as a project by some Ukrainian students, so I don’t want to be too harsh… so I’ll start with all the things I liked/found interesting!
For one, it goes through different time periods/locations complete with their own textures and enemies (though there is some overlap, especially at the end). There is a near-future military base, a medieval town and castle, an Egyptian pyramid, and alien worlds.
A lot of levels also have unique gimmicks that only appear once in the game, which is neat. So for example, the pyramid is full of one time booby traps (there is also a bit of puzzle solving in how to avoid these traps and such throughout the game). These gimmicks appear less as the game goes on, though.
There are some fun enemy designs too, such as the goblin jester as seen on the box. Speaking of enemies, another big thing is dismemberment! So you can shoot the arm off an enemy, leaving them without a weapon… so they’ll start kicking you instead, like the black knight from Holy Grail. Another enemy attacks by screaming at you, so you want to shoot its head off ASAP. Some weapons are better at dismembering than others, and some enemies DON’T dismember, and unfortunately we see much more of them as the game goes on.
There are a number of bosses, but all of them are more of a puzzle than an actual fight, which I thought was neat even if they were pretty janky to actually solve.
I also love the game’s aesthetic… well, there are lots of different aesthetics, but I love all the lo-fi, crunchy textures and low poly enemies, with lots of industrial and gothic textures. Just a cool 90s FPS vibe… and obviously inspired by Quake (as is the soundtrack, which is mostly dark ambient).
Oh, there are also some in-game cutscenes with VERY impressive forehead animation! The story itself involves time hopping aliens or something, it doesn’t really matter despite them throwing these cutscenes in there (which are just cameras pointed at NPCs talking).
Levels are also very abstract, despite the attempts to make convincing locales… there are some areas that look like actual places, but for the most part it’s just abstract battlegrounds… this could be either a good or bad thing depending on how you look at it. It DID add a surreal flair to some of the levels.
Now for everything I didn’t like!
First of all, though the environments and enemies are all polygonal, this is an extremely flat game with almost no verticality. I’m actually pretty sure the engine is straight-up incapable of floors above floors.
This leads to most levels just being a series of tight corridors and boxy rooms. The texture, enemy, and gimmick variety DO help the levels feel different, and they definitely don’t feel identical in regard to layout… but this is sub-Doom design in pretty much every aspect. In fact, it’s closer to Wolfenstein 3D.
Levels are generally all switch and key hunts, too. Sometimes there is some flavour text to add context to the switch hitting, but it’s still just switch hitting… though again, the gimmicks do help make things a bit more interesting (though again again, fewer appear later in the game). Oh, there is also a map which is very useful.
Combat is also not very good… enemies tend to attack the second they see you, giving you little time to seek cover, and then actual combat is just poking in and out behind a corner as you shoot the enemies. The weapons, though mostly fun, also feel very unbalanced.
I mentioned the bosses feeling janky… well most of the game feels janky, especially anything that involves jumping, and a lot of the puzzle solving stuff… but I still enjoyed those elements.
The version I played included three extra levels, with some kind of Nordic village/fort and a very underwhelming finale in a space castle.
BUT YEAH, I can see why this has a cult following as it has some neat ideas and charm! Even if it runs out of ideas towards the end. I wouldn’t call it a good game, though… but I enjoyed it enough to play it all the way through, so that has to count for something!
Playing Quake on my steam deck. Scourge of Armagon is fun as is the transition from the sci fi enemies to the demon enemies as you get through the first act.
I don’t think I ever got to the point where the Rites felt as intuitive to me as even the worst weapon loadout from Hades, but I do remember finding that my frustrations with the system started to diminish once I spent more time with the more mobile characters that they introduce. By the end, I really enjoyed using any of the characters with the upgrades I’d given them. I even fooled around with the online PvP a bit after I was finished with the story, but the story is such a rewarding part of the Pyre package that I resolved to put the game down until I could revisit it when my memories had faded.
Also I think Pyre has my favorite soundtrack of all Supergiant games by a significant margin—Darren Korb’s work in Hades is pretty amazing, but the structural and diegetic integration of the music in Pyre is the high watermark, as far as I’m concerned. I’ve listened to some of these tracks as recently as last week.
Mewgenics — I like the amount of expressiveness here better than most of these lately. So far though I would put it at like a B+/A-, like, not amazing, but I think a lot of people are big fans of the Binding of Isaac guy?
also the lack of keyboard control or the ability to rotate the camera is kinda brutal
