[Dr Lancer-X]

Undertale. Since the hype has worn off, I figured it would be a good idea to finally check it out.

holy shit this thing feels like xx̊y.

[Dark-Star]

Dr Lancer-X, on 08 January 2017 - 12:12 AM, said:

Undertale. Since the hype has worn off, I figured it would be a good idea to finally check it out.

holy shit this thing feels like xx̊y.

Wow, talk about a crazy coincidence. In the last 36 hours I went from having zero knowledge of Undertale to a rabid fan. There are a few spots (namely on the battle screen) where the graphics are so crude they reach Atari 2600 levels. But sometimes less is actually more as proved the concept behind the game which is something I've wanted to see for almost a decade: actions have permanent consequences and you don't get an easy-undo if you screw something up through carelessness or callousness. And its clearly hit a nerve with the huge fan community it's spawned.

I was nearly bit by complacency on my first playthough despite determining to be a moral player from the start like I always do. When I couldn't talk my way out of combat with Toriel I assumed that the game would automatically stop me from stabbing my own self-proclaimed adoptive mother to death with a toy knife. It didn't. I stopped at about 2 hits away from killing her before I discovered the peaceful way out.

There are few games that can reach through your monitor and punch you right in the feelings, much less change the way you think about things. This is definitely one of them.

[djtiesto]

Went to MAGfest (Music and Games Festival) in DC this past weekend and played a whole bunch, some of them on some beautiful PVMs with RGB display:

-Ladder (addicting ascii graphics Donkey Kong-esque game for the obscure Kaypro computer from the early 80's)
-Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Grafitti
-Blue's Journey
-some Space Harrier ripoff for the Famicom starring a schoolgirl where you fight giant kangaroos, that's much better than the Master System Space Harrier
-Blazing Star
-Battle Garegga
-ESP Ra.De. (the game that got me into CAVE back in the day)
-RayXanber for the SuperGrafx
-Dracula X: Rondo of Blood
-Music Gun Gun 2
-Jubeat
-Medieval Madness (pinball)
-AC/DC (pinball)
-Mike Tyson's Punch Out with a controller the size of a coffee table

And played a buncha DQ7 3DS on the way down.

This post has been edited by djtiesto: 11 January 2017 - 01:30 AM

[Dr Lancer-X]

djtiesto, on 11 January 2017 - 11:30 AM, said:

-ESP Ra.De. (the game that got me into CAVE back in the day)

I played this a lot because I had a bunch of games running in MAME. Esp ra de was the only one without a long unskippable notice screen and I basically started playing it each time. Raging Decide is still one of my favourite shmup boss themes. (although it doesn't sound that great by itself - you really need the game sounds in the foreground)

[Dr Lancer-X]

Alright, I think I've played enough of Undertale. I'm having a really bad time against one particular boss, but otherwise I think I've seen 99% of the game. I'm not sure I have the motor reflexes / DETERMINATION for this sort of thing nowadays. Back when I played Touhous and Hitogata Happas, maaaaybe. While it is just the same sequences of moves looped, and I could see myself learning them with sufficient time, the margin for error is really low.

Currently playing FFL2. Good game. I don't like it as much as I liked FFL, but good game. Certainly way better than Romancing SaGa.

[KKairos]

FFL = Final Fantasy Legend?

[Dr Lancer-X]

KKairos, on 12 January 2017 - 06:12 PM, said:

FFL = Final Fantasy Legend?

Yes

[Wervyn]

Dr Lancer-X, on 12 January 2017 - 03:49 AM, said:

I'm having a really bad time against one particular boss

Well it's not like you weren't warned... Though I do find it totally fascinating that the game can make you want so much to play through such an obviously troll fight, which is completely unfair but totally beatable with enough DETERMINATION, just so you can get the BAD ending.

Oh yeah I'm still here. What have I been playing recently, I picked up a ton of new stuff over the recent Steam sale that I'll probably never touch but I've hit some of them. Let's see...

• Dishonored 2 - So I recently got myself a new gaming machine. Most of this was because I was really due for one, my previous computer served me really well for 8 years but it's been time to move on for awhile. But having a computer that could play THIS, particularly after hearing so many reports of performance issues, was a major factor.
  
  The good news is it works great and looks beautiful! The bad news is...actually there is no bad news, it's a fantastic game, I've put like 40 hours into it already just on my first playthrough, and still need to finish that. If Thief or the first Dishonored were your thing, and you have a machine that can play it, this is absolutely worth your time.
  
  
• Firewatch - I actually stayed away from this one for awhile because my first impression of it was "oh that's another one of those shitty survival horror shovelwares where you wander around in the forest with an axe." I eventually realized this was not the case and that it was getting some amount of critical acclaim, so the sale seemed like a good time to check it out.
  
  I'd say it's definitely worth a look, especially on a good sale. I didn't think it was a transformative experience or anything but it is very pretty, the conversation mechanic at the center of the game is pretty clever, and I thought the story was enjoyable.
  
  
• Obduction - If you liked Myst, this is a lot like Myst, which is only to be expected given who made it. It's neat to be able to have that original experience again, of getting dropped into an alien situation without context, having to piece together what happened to all the people who were clearly till-recently there, and make judgements about what to do about it all. And without the baggage of a previous backstory, looming more and more as Myst became a series affair. The puzzles get a bit video-gamey at times, when you question why you're going through all the trouble to get around an obstacle or door when a normal person would just swim across a stream or climb over a wall. But you knew what this was when you started playing it. It's a good game, and definitely a return to form.
  
  
• Event[0] - An accident in deep space on a mission to explore Europa requires you to solve puzzles to piece together what happened, while dealing with a potentially murderous AI. Event[0] is more of an experience than a fun game, really, the central mechanic has you typing in requests and conversations to a chatbot and there's basically no other way to interact with anything. But it's a neat concept, and has a fun retro-future pastiche going on. I like that the obvious shortcomings of the NLP are easy to forgive because you're SUPPOSED to be dealing with a primative, broken, and often uncooperative AI; random changes in subject seem like evasiveness rather than program limitations.
  
  
• The Turing Test - An accident in deep space on a mission to explore Europa requires you to solve puzzles to piece together what happened, while dealing with a potentially murderous AI. Um. It's actually a very different sort of game though, better described as a poor man's Portal or Talos Principle. I bring it up mostly because of the weird synchronicity, how do two completely unrelated indie games with such similar setups get released within a month of each other? Like Armageddon and Deep Impact...
  
  Anyway, some of the puzzles are pretty clever, and the game is trying to be philosophically provocative even if it ends up being almost entirely sophistry. The story and premise really strain credulity though, and fell apart to me after even cursory consideration. What's presented as an ethical and moral quandary ends up feeling just amusingly simplistic. Honestly the more I think about the topic I could write paragraphs about what's wrong with this game, so I'll just move on.
  
  
• Owlboy - Really enjoyble high quality pixel "platformer", in quotes because you're an Owlboy and you can generally just fly everywhere. It's a bit on the short and easy side, and it feels like they could have done more with the story than they did, but it's still good stuff, and has a fantastic, fully-orchestrated soundtrack. I'd still recommend waiting for a sale though, it's a little expensive at full price for the amount of play you're going to get out of it.

There's probably some other stuff too but that's a long enough list for now. Like I still play a LOT of CrossCode, but I'll plug that again when it gets closer to full release later this year.

ETA: Wow, I really never post here anymore. I was looking back over to check and realized I never gave a shout out to The Witness, so that's another of those things you should really play if you have any interest in puzzle/exploration games. It's another Myst-like released at the beginning of 2016, but more as homage and on the contrast side of "compare and contrast". It's also a game that's really intended as a personal journey/experience thing and trying to explain it in depth can really ruin that. So instead I'll just say that the game is NOT about:

• Experiencing a story or unraveling a mystery. There IS a story/mystery of sorts but it's not really the point and discovering it is kind of incidental. It explains to a limited degree why you're experiencing what you are, but really just reinforces that the experience IS the point.
  
• Solving a bunch of line puzzles ad nauseum. Drawing a line is a mechanism of interaction, not the action itself. There's also a lot going on in the game that isn't immediately obvious.
  
• Getting to the end of something. The puzzles in the game are not an obstacle barring you from some ultimate payoff, they are themselves the payoff. Trying to BEAT the game will probably leave you disappointed. Instead try to understand each piece of the game in turn.

"I'M SMILING AND I HATE IT!"

This post has been edited by Wervyn: 12 January 2017 - 06:52 PM
Reason for edit: The Witness

[Exophase]

KKairos, on 07 January 2017 - 05:56 PM, said:

Salt and Sanctuary - closest thing you'll truly see to Dark Souls in 2D, with a simplified covenant system and some nods to Bloodborne as well. I lost all my "salt" once to a trap I never saw coming, and the game was well-designed and the moment humorous enough that I wasn't even mad. Okay, maybe a little mad, but more impressed.

I personally wasn't very impressed with the cheap deaths but I got over it. Never did manage to make it through NG+ though.

I'm half tempted to just go back and play a normal playthrough at some point. Mainly because I was so in the dark about some of the mechanics. I had no idea that the bonus you got from one-handing swords (which I needed to do for speed anyway) brought the strength soft-cap down. The cap that the game never really explained anyway. So I was very over-specced in strength and under-specced in willpower, which guides seemed to say I shouldn't really care about. I respecced heavily at the end and went from being able to chain three attacks to something like six. Made a huge difference with the end boss, especially using that ring that unbalanced him.

Also played through the entire game without realizing that one of those items spell using classes got at campfires restored focus. By the time I realized I wasn't using that class anyway.

Biggest thing keeping me from wanting to do that is the game's utter lack of soundtrack. Uggh "ambiance"

[KKairos]

Haha, I guess that's my thing is, I didn't think of them as cheap. Maybe there's some coming later that'll change my mind.

Just finished HD Spelunky. While I have some reservations about the new aesthetic, it's basically the same game mechanically and the design of the designer for levels seems more or less as fair as last time. It's a solid 4/5 game still. (I think the only difference I saw was that spiked shoes don't let you jump on man-eating plants anymore, but maybe I'm crazy and that was never a thing.) I will add though, that I'm unsure why all the music sounds either like demo-scene music used in MZX games. It's like Derek Yu sat down with his soundtrack composer(s) and was like "OK, so play a bunch of Day of Zeux games. You hear that sound? That's what I want."

[CJA]

Well, I'm thinking that Yu basically wanted a retro sound without a particular direction, so whoever composed music for Spelunky decided to take an old Yamaha synthesizer, some Komplete synths like Massive/Battery, and a bunch of SNES soundfonts and go wild.

Also, just finished? Ugh, I've been playing Xbox 360 Spelunky for years without beating it.

[KKairos]

I'm on Steam but with the XB360 controller. I actually beat it twice today, partly by chance. Both of my wins so far have been without aggroing any shopkeepers. Also, in both I had the Jetpack which makes the final boss way easier. Also, save damsels (at least this helps somewhat), but also don't get hit. And also get bombs. Bombs can help ease the final boss by

Spoiler

getting him into the lava beneath the arena much sooner

. Also it doesn't hurt to be on a streak of having played for about 15 hours over 2 weeks.

[GetDizzy]

Watch_Dogs 2 is good? I'll have to give it a try then, I really didn't like the first one that much .

I've been playing Forza 6, a little Fire Emblem Fates, and Diablo 3.

[Terryn]

Finished Salt and Sanctuary. I got stuck for a bit because I wrote off a critical area as completed for a while when it wasn't (it pretty much only had a second boss left for me to do, pfft) but I enjoyed it. I played pauper with two-handing polearms, light armor, clerical skills.

I felt like I pretty much deserved most of the deaths I got. The only deaths I considered cheap were those freaking spindlebeasts. Yeah, not fond of one-hit kills (at the point I got to them, I could survive them if I completely lacked any wounding and had full health but that's it). Thankfully you can reliably roll past and hit them, at least with polearms, but reaching them to figure that out takes a bit of time at best. However, my least favorite bit was the Tree of Man, who wasn't really cheap but instead tedious as hell.

[KKairos]

So I'm still pretty early on in the game. Terryn, Exo, have you found shielding to be really worth the effort, controls-wise or otherwise?

[Terryn]

I found rolling a far better damage mitigation option most of the time. With some enemies, it's vastly preferable to parry and punish, though.

Spoiler

(One later enemy has a great surprise when parried. I died and then laughed.)

Only time I found pure shielding really necessary was... Tree of Man. Mind, I two-handed pretty much the whole game. Sounds like Exo used actual shields though.

[Exophase]

Terryn, on 21 January 2017 - 12:06 AM, said:

Sounds like Exo used actual shields though.

No, I didn't use shields past the start of the game. I misspoke earlier, I meant to say that I two-handed my sword, hence why I got the STR bonus.

I rarely blocked with my sword either. I relied heavily on rolls. I think you've really got to pick one or the other and focus on it, you can't really be good with both.

[djtiesto]

Patalano came over last night and we played Puyo Puyo Tetris, Esper Dream 2, Project Diva Future Tone, and Wild Guns Reloaded. Just found out there's an Esper Dream 2 translation patch so I might play through it soon on an emu (I own the Famicom cart, Dan got me that for Christmas this year).

[T-Bone]

Been playing GTA 5 single player. I must say this game is a lot better than I thought it was going to be. Much more story driven than its advertisements really let on.

[djtiesto]

Started Esper Dream 2 and Lagrange Point. Lagrange has a bit less storyline development and a slightly smaller scope than I originally expected but is still worth playing for the A E S T H E T I C S and the amazing soundtrack.

[djtiesto]

Esper Dream 2 reminds me of the original version of Kikan a bit... because you will be walking around the map, and then get into an encounter (denoted by little footprints walking through the area), then you are taken to a large square arena where you battle the opponents out in an overhead action RPG style. Really cool game. You join with an NPC who is an anthropomorphic screw named "Screwy", lol.

[Baby Bonnie Hood]

X-Play once called Freelancer "Diablo in space" if only for the ability to instantly repair hull and recharge shields by using nanobots and batteries like potions. But I've been playing a game that's a real and actual "Diablo in space" because along with basically potions for shields, hull, and energy, this game also has loot drops, items with varying stats and effects and rarities, monsters in the form of living ships, quests that have you delivering stuff and killing things, stats that influence various drop bonuses and damage type resistances, procedurally generated sectors, being able to play as multiple ships and have a shared stash they can all access... it's literally Diablo if everyone was a spaceship.

It's not a complete copy though, it does have a few unique features of its own. Like various alien races that you can trade and ally with, and fight against too. They also interact with each other (and yes, they can be eliminated whether by you, them, or monsters), and some quests have you helping them out by hindering their enemies. Being an endless game, you don't stay in one sector forever; eventually you'll either win or lose the sector via military, diplomatic, or economic means, and once that's done and you've done everything you can in that sector, you can proceed to the next procedurally generated one and do it all over again there. So it's very replayable, like Diablo.

If you like Diablo and Diablo-likes, you might like this game. It's called Drox Operative.

The same company behind this game also has another Diablo-like, exact same game engine and everything, but with zombies. It's literally Diablo if the Walking Dead happened to it. I prefer space over zombies, though.

[Dr Lancer-X]

Persona 4 Golden.

If anyone can recommend anything else that's worth playing on the Vita I'd appreciate it. The library looks a little thin, but there's also many titles I've never heard of.

[djtiesto]

Lancer, you play the Danganronpa series?

There's that, Gravity Rush, Wipeout 2048, Lumines: Electronic Symphony, Tales of Hearts R, and a shit-ton of :uguu games - Criminal Girls, Senran Kagura, Valkyrie Drive Bikkhuni (Weaponized Lesbians Powered By Orgasms is the subtitle)

[Dr Lancer-X]

Quote

Lancer, you play the Danganronpa series?

I've played one of them but I sure wouldn't mind playing more.

Thanks, I'll keep those titles in mind.

[djtiesto]

I beat Lagrange Point, Exile: Wicked Phenomenon and The Last Guardian.

Lagrange Point - SICK music, really steep encounter rate, nice enemy design.

Exile - Not nearly as good as the prequel. I like how the translation tries to slightly rename the narcotics you use for healing (cananabis [sic] is a healing item, as well as coca, and peyote!). But the areas are short and the screen only scrolls when you're 90% to one side, which makes for a ton of cheap hits. I patched the game back to its original difficulty level since WD borked the balance really bad in the US version.

Last Guardian - has quite a few brilliant moments, beautiful graphics and cinemas, but it became a struggle to play - you're fighting the controls, it feels so random to get the beast to do what you want him to do (yes, I know that's the point), ehh I liked Ueda's oher 2 games better.

Also started Gravity Rush 2, which I'm not feeling as much as the first. The world is much larger, and there are more side missions, but the side missions feel like more of a chore and take forever. Plus there's some not-fun stuff like stealth in there.

[AeonPhoenix]

Every day, I sit down and try to finally play Dragon Age: Inquisition, like I've been meaning to for two years. Every day, I fail.

[djtiesto]

Zeruda of course

[Goshi]

Tales of Berseria. Combat feels like a watered down version of Tales of Graces f, but I really like the cast so far. Never got around to playing Tales of Zistiria, so a lot of the references are lost to me.

[djtiesto]

Nier Automata, the GOTY. Holy shit is this fantastic...