Video Games: The General Discussion & Community Thread Number Two

[Dark Cloud]

Playing Zubmariner, gotta say it ain't bad. Hope Vaporum is as good as the reviews I've seen say it is.

[Dark Cloud]

Playing Zubmariner, gotta say it ain't bad. Hope Vaporum is as good as the reviews I've seen say it is.

@Dark Cloud

So, now that I've been playing Zubmariner for a bit I'll say I really enjoy the mix of minimalistic gameplay and a robust selection of narrative choices. I just lead a rebellion against guinea pig people with a bunch of steampunk rats, it's fucking wild yo.

[Dark Cloud]

Today I will purchase Vaporum, it's very hardcore from the gameplay I've seen. With live action grid based combat, and it's an rpg. No turn based combat, which sounds pretty god damn frantic and it is. (on sale eshop for like 7 or 8 dollars + tax)

[Shu]

Anxiously counting these last days until June 23’rd.

[Dark Cloud]

Anxiously counting these last days until June 23’rd.

@Shu

Is tyat when the space skyrim is released?

[Dark Cloud]

It sounds like a probability from what I hear that Switch might also get Dragon's Dogma 2, it has a supported engine. In other news I bought the first DD as it was on sale for 12$ CAN and I'm going to try to actually explore as much of it's content as I never actually did the Bitterblack Isle DLC just the main and post game. But I actually missed out on a lot as I rushed to the final-final ending.

Here's to a new era of Arisen friends! ^_^

[BangoSkank]

Dark Souls is a great game. Still my favorite in the series. Maybe even more than Elden Ring. It's so goddam good, but it takes awhile to get in to. The whole "You Died" thing and learning from how you died is a very different vibe than I was used to.

I legit bought it. Died like 10 times. Put it away for a year. But then when I tried it again I tried something a little different and it just started clicking.

If you're looking for a cRPG then yeah DoS:2 has great writing. Baldur's Gate 3 is in Early Access but it has the same basic design (beyond specifically D&D aspects) and the same great writing.

Disco Elysium is supposed to have incredible writing too. I've never tried it but I've considered buying it like 3 times now. Just waiting on a discount.

[Xar]

Disco Elysium is amazing. I honestly feel like I could play through it 3-4 times and have each play through feel completely different from the last. The replayability is insane. I wish I was paying attention when they sold the cool jacket online, woulda grabbed one.

Been trying out Furi. It’s been a challenging type of fun, been a fan so far. However, I feel like sometimes I’m just playing a walking simulator… I heard before some patch it didn’t even have an auto walk.

[Dark Cloud]

In commemoration of my history of muscular Pawns, I have made Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. He looks pretty accurate too xD. Time to spend 40+ hours playing on Normal difficulty then Hard for my NG+ run through and be an evil bastard! Wooo cheers to 10 years of Dragon's Dogma baybee

Pawn ID: 85B3 - AE68 - B472

[SleepingSilence]

Undertale can be a little bit pretentious at times. I know. Hot takes. But it's ultimately very "cute" and charming. (As someone who finished a true pacifist run, and will not do a genocide run, because I'd feel too bad.)

There's a bunch of games that I put on hold, because I felt like it was taking too long to get to "the fun". (Or the controls were just garbage/clunky at best.) But I reinstalled Hades. Since I never got around to finishing it. Can't imagine why, for how much universal praise that it received...

Hades Rant

Is it wrong to want to play a game to, ya know, have fun/actually win? Because I'm pretty open to challenges in games. (Much as I suck at the vast majority of 'em.) But, I feel like "losing" in games should be, because you as a player, can get better at them.

So when I die in Dark Souls or whatever else. Its because of my lack of knowledge or some fucked up hitboxes. But in Slay The Spire, it's various flavors of 'why and how you're going to lose'. Same feeling with Hades. It's never, "Oh, I was fairly bested and I'll get them next time!". It's "Yep. I lost because of this bullshit. And I learned absolutely nothing."

You don't get better at Hades. You die to make the game easier/get better RNG drops. (Until you've played enough to become one of those "Yeah, it gets better after forty hours" people. I'm kidding. Kind of.) I mean, I understand that the game is content-rich. And it's just engaging enough to play. But honestly, I get to moments like Eurydice. And I do genuinely enjoy those moments. The parts where I don't do the endless repeating combat arenas/play the game. But all the nice music, voice acting, dog petting and set dressing aside. The actual gameplay feels like a chore to me.

And my own personal pet peeve, is when I look up information about the game and find absolutely nothing useful/honest in the responses. I.E. When someone asks "What do you think is the best weapon is? Or, "What are some of your best and favorite builds?" Or, "Help, I'm stuck on this?" and I see hundreds of "Every. Single. Thing. Is. Perfectly Balanced. There is no bad. Only good. There is no explanation to help you."

It only annoys me to no end. Because its bullsh*t, and I don't think "spoiling" little things about a game, do anything but improve the person's chances of enjoying the rest of it.

Example: Don't tell me that Deepnest is any less terrifying in Hollow Knight, because new players look up "Holy shit. I fell into the darkness and I have no skills. Save me!" and can easily find directions on where to go.

All games have answers, exploits, and min-max ways to play them. So you don't have to pretend that they don't.

(After writing this, I've realized that I already grieved about this game a year prior. But it has not improved with time and hindsight.)

---

Today I will purchase Vaporum, it's very hardcore from the gameplay I've seen.

@Dark Cloud

How is the game treating you? (If you've played it.)

And, because you asked earlier, Underhero (thus far) has been quite an enjoyable experience. The humor and subversive elements in the writing are on point.

[Dark Cloud]

@SleepingSilence It's treating me well, worth the price I got it at 60% off. Very edge of your seat, white knuckle but fun. On a side not sOmEbOdY should use my Pawn.

[Fabricant451]

You don't get better at Hades. You die to make the game easier/get better RNG drops. (Until you've played enough to become one of those "Yeah, it gets better after forty hours" people. I'm kidding. Kind of.)

@SleepingSilence

This seems blatantly hyperbolic considering the game can be beaten on a fresh run with zero boons and the game is designed around the fact that unless you're literally dying at room one that every run will help you unlock something to get the thing in your favor. I absolutely got better once I found my weapon preferences and kept losing to Meg and bosses until I figured out their patterns and my dash frames. Hades and a Souls game have more in common than not except there's not the random factor in a Souls game but both games revolve around getting into a rhythm and memorizing optimal paths.

[SleepingSilence]

@Fabricant451
It was labeled a rant.

I likely expressed my issues with this game better a year prior. Especially when I played and compared it to the new Dead Cells' gameplay loop.

Honestly, I've never felt like any death in Hades was something I did wrong and could've easily avoided.

So without any consistent ability to heal in the beginning. (Something that I just don't like.) The environmental damage, spam mobs, or smaller enemies that charge you from off camera, tend to steal your HP, lil by lil. (Unless you're doing particularly well. And then this game will throw some extra hard/damage sponge mini-bosses at you.)

Plus, due to no fault of its own, my Switch controller must really not like this game. Because it stick drifts and fucks up at critical moments, more than any other game I've ever played. So a single moment where my stick drifts off into the lava on level two, even after all the enemies are dead, and oops half your health is gone. Thus, it feels like positioning somewhere (where AI pathfinding fails it) and camping, is almost always the most effective method to dispose of the mobs.

And that "never should've happened" moment tends to end every single one of my runs. Like my first time losing to Meg, was because of her 'surround you with four death circles'. Where one dodge often failed to keep me from taking damage. Opposed to my very next time, where you can upgrade for a double dash. And I never lost to her, ever again.

Or the second boss (who I beat on my first try). Seemed very hard to "figure out a pattern for", when all I saw was spam seeking missiles, random environmental hazards, and several far ranged attacks coming from off-screen in varied directions.

So I dunno. Each boss feels like "you haven't gotten enough upgrades" road blocks. That all boil down to "kill them before they kill you." (And I know how that sounds.) But it feels like your meant to be strong/lucky enough to tank all their off screen spam attacks, until you have more health and luck than they do. Then you can succeed and pray you run into enough health upgrades/rooms before your next paddling.

And maybe if the story or characters were strong enough to grip me, then I'd learn to love bashing my head against the wall. (Git gud. So to speak.) But it takes far too long to go anywhere, even if it does.

Though I know I'm in the minority with this game. (I know it was at least once your GOTY.) But no, "the gameplay loop feels like a chore to me" is the most accurate way to sum up my feelings toward this game. I can understand feeling engaged and addicted, like a MMORPG or mobile idle game. Where you will ever-so-slowly progress to certain victory. But if I do happen to ever beat Hades. I'll likely call it quits there and never touch it again... Everyone's a critic.

(I guess I technically did that with Pyre too. Despite having a much better time with that/enjoying its story & characters far more. Plus, I usually play to completion once and then never again.) But it feels like the end game of Hades *is* the real game. Especially since you have to beat/repeat all the content ten times over, to see the 'true ending'.)

And how can you not become repetitive, when you're forced to go through a game that many times? *Shrugs*

And maybe if there more of the weapons and etc, unlocked from the very start. I'd agree that it gives you more than enough variety to get anyone through the game. But that's my two cents again. (Frankly I feel that way about other games I enjoy playing more. Like Risk Of Rain 2, would be infinity better with more characters unlocked from the start. But no, the worst or least interesting weapon or character is always what roguelikes start you off with...)

Sorry, this post is long as fuck.

[Carlyle]

people are abusing absol's recent buffs in unite so much right now i actually get tired of playing it sometimes

one ult/unite from absol basically oneshots dreadnaw and does a hefty chunk of damage to zapdos so securing objectives (provided the unite doesn't murder you anyway) is a pain in the ass or essentially impossible in games where people are playing absol

[Dark Cloud]

@Kuro Tis why I quit. Then proceeded to try Fall Guys and went 'nope' because it looks awful on Switch and the frame rate from users from Switch to PC looks rough af.

[Carlyle]

@Kuro Tis why I quit. Then proceeded to try Fall Guys and went 'nope' because it looks awful on Switch and the frame rate from users from Switch to PC looks rough af.

@Dark Cloud

Fall Guys was fun for the first few weeks but by then the novelty wore off. It definitely didn't have the lasting popularity that something like Among Us had/has.

[Dark Cloud]

@Kuro Well, in Among Us you don't necessarily pay for all the cosmetics but in Fall Guys it's your wallet or look like a pleb.

[Dark Cloud]

On another topic, I will be trying out Salt & Sanctuary as the whole 600+ equipment had my attention the moment I read the summary and if I have the funds Death's Gambit: Afterlife. A lot of fantastic games are on sale on the Switch eshop. Dark Souls is 50% off, Dragon's Dogma as well and the one I'm eyeing atm is definitely Empire of Sin and Trails of Cold Steel III.

Hope my wallet doesn't bust from the amount of triple A titles on sale atm, but oddly Square still won't put Triangle Strategy on sale but both Octopath Traveler & Bravely Default II (an absolutely amazing game btw) on sale. *shrug* and yes I will finally fork over 16$ for Hollow Knight, to please my friends who 'bug' me about it xD

[BangoSkank]

I got stuck in Elden Ring at the Ornstein/Smaugh type boss encounter.

Just nope. Don't have the patience to get through that grinder again.

Currently playing Sniper Elite 5.

It's always funny cavitating Nazi heads into canoes, but I think Sniper Elite 4 was a better polished product.

[SleepingSilence]

>Steam Summer Sales be like

OH MY GOD, MY ENTIRE STEAM WISHLIST IS ON SALE! *mouth gargling/foaming sounds*

Just when I finished a decent chunk of my backlog. I got me a few more games to play. Maybe more, depending on how broke I'd like to become.

Death's Gambit: Afterlife.

Yes I will finally fork over 16$ for Hollow Knight, to please my friends who 'bug' me about it. xD

@Dark Cloud

Let me know how that plays, if you do.

And it's been $15 since release. GEDDIT! (ya know if ya want.) It's fun. :P