What are you playing at the moment? - November 2017

[Shadoko]

I’ve been playing a bit of Strike Suite Zero on my new laptop.
It’s ok.
It has great and not-so-great elements.
First off it’s not a great port. It good but it’s not great. It works and for once mouse+keyboard controls are very efficient, I never felt like I would have been better with a controller. Now, it doesn’t run great : some scenes and effects bring my GTX1050 to its knees where they logically shouldn’t, but whatever.
The story seems pretty anecdotal so far, though I really like the way the mission always put you under pressure without having timers or escort missions - the bane of action games. All the rest is pretty straightforward. So you have the anti-shield gun, the anti-armor gun, homing missiles, rockets, swarm missiles, everything is familiar so far.
The music is excellent, of course it’s Paul Ruskay. But seriously, it’s the kind of music that belongs to a better game, IMO, even if SSZ is far from being bad.

May I say that the design of the Strike Suit is horrendous ? I’m not a fan of mechas to begin with and it’s simply ugly. I preferred the average space fighter you start with. The main problem I have with the Strike Suit is that it doesn’t feel powerful enough. I mean, the very idea of transforming into a humanoid robot in the middle of a space fight is ridiculous to begin with, but I never felt like it was even a legit power-up. I’m just standing in the middle of a fight firing marginally more effective pew-pew at the enemy. It feels extremely meh, and it’s certainly much less exhilarating than finishing off a cruiser with a volley of rockets fired at full speed. I genuinely think that the game would be better without the Strike Suit stuff.

So yes. It’s fun. It’s not great, but it’s a solid 7/10 arcade space shooter. I can’t say I’m not having fun with it.

[Baines]

A Robot Named Fight is Super Metroid with the serial numbers filed off, repainted, and turned into a Roguelite. It isn’t Metroid-inspired, it flat out copies Super Metroid’s mechanics and design ideas, changed just enough graphically to not pull a C&D from Nintendo.

The Roguelite elements primarily are permadeath, randomized room layouts, and randomized item placements. The game apparently has a relatively large pool of “upgrades” to draw from to use as keys for its various “gates”. (For example, there are gates that are blocked by vines. Your run might have you finding a flamethrower sub-weapon, or you might instead encounter an upgrade that turns your regular shot into a flame shot.)

During play, you can collect scrap from enemies. You can find allies where you can spend that scrap for some benefit, such as acquiring completed maps of an area or building an assisting drone that will accompany you. These do not carry over between runs.

While it apes Super Metroid relentlessly, it doesn’t quite have the same magic. You will recognize repeated room layouts quickly, and the map will be a bit of a rambling affair. Boss designs aren’t exactly inspired. The biggest issue, which isn’t a game play matter, is simply the artwork. Super Metroid was a colorful game. A Robot Named Fight is a brown game. It has color, I just remember “brown” and “dull enemy design” though. The enemies appear to be globs of meat/flesh. (I admit that I skipped the story intro, so I don’t know what it presents them as.) They lack both the color and the character of Super Metroid’s bestiary (while hitting the bases of "that’s ARNF’s version of a Skree, that’s a Zoomer, that’s a Chozo, …)

Still, if you really like Super Metroid, it may be worth checking out A Robot Named Fight.

[alms]

Thanks(? :D) to @trjp, I’ve been playing a little Idle Champions of Forgotten Realms.

The main innovation, compared to other, similar, games I’ve played before, is the introduction of party composition and formation.

DPS can be greatly enhanced by arranging your “Champions” in order to maximize their synergistic buffs. While in theory this could be an interesting addition, in practice the UI is less than stellar and I find it easier to just fiddle around until I get a bigger number, giving it pretty much up on understanding the why stuff works a certain way.

In that department, it’s also somewhat disappointing seeing an IP like D&D treated this way, both in the way that it further fuels all kind of D&D prejudices about what the game is and isn’t, and for the level of the art and the general realization, especially having ind mind certain gorgeous illustrations from the printed manuals.

Other than that, I’ve been playing “try games and get’em off your wishlist”. The last victim was Creeper World 3. By all means, I should like this game, but it looks ugly as sin and it starts off not terribly enticing, so I guess, even though the fans insist (and rightfully, is my understanding) on its uniqueness, I’d enjoy playing more Infested Planet instead.

[LexW]

Thanks(? :D) to @trjp, I’ve been playing a little Idle Champions of Forgotten Realms.

The main innovation, compared to other, similar, games I’ve played before, is the introduction of party composition and formation.

DPS can be greatly enhanced by arranging your “Champions” in order to maximize their synergistic buffs. While in theory this could be an interesting addition, in practice the UI is less than stellar and I find it easier to just fiddle around until I get a bigger number, giving it pretty much up on understanding the why stuff works a certain way.

Yeah, I saw one of my friends had 30 hours on this, so I thought I’d give it a go.

It was fun for about an hour, before I realized how formulaic the whole deal was. I played with it in the background for another couple of hours to see if there was anything else interesting to be found, but yeah, no, apparently not.

[Gus_Smedstad]

In the same “games I’m no longer playing” vein, I’ve decided to set Crashlands aside after 17 hours. I’m bored. While the enemies have definitely changed, in that they have different attack patterns and aren’t just earlier enemies with more HP, I’ve had enough of the combat at this point, and the crafting cycle is very repetitive.

[Sp4rkR4t]

Just played my first game of Total War: Arena as it’s having open beta week, and if you play in the open beta week you get to stay in the closed beta when it continues.

It’s basically World of Tanks but everyone forgot to bring tanks, or guns. You have a commander, the commander controls up to three groups of units and you take them into battle and knock the living snot out of the enemy. It seems pretty fun.

[ToomuchFluffy]

Other than that, I’ve been playing “try games and get’em off your wishlist”. The last victim was Creeper World 3. By all means, I should like this game, but it looks ugly as sin and it starts off not terribly enticing, so I guess, even though the fans insist (and rightfully, is my understanding) on its uniqueness, I’d enjoy playing more Infested Planet instead.

True, it really is quite ugly, but for some reason it didn’t bother me in this case. The comparison that imposed itself on me was to Perimeter and even though I did enjoy CW3, Perimeter had a great soundtrack, interesting story and a frequently unusual selection of units and mechanics. Resource-management was far less forgiving, which could be frustrating but in Creeper World I barely ever got into any trouble and thus interesting situations.

Also, though I had intended to focus on Risen 2 for now, I have tried a bit of the RTS Maelstrom and have played some Skirmishes. It’s by KD Vision, the russian company which followed KD-Lab which made Perimeter. Alec Meer wrote a review on it over on eurogamer and I mostly concur with his points (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/maelstrom-review). I haven’t played much of the campaign, but what I’ve seen hasn’t encouraged me to continue with it, nor to bother with the “Remnants”-faction. This kind of human/survivors/normal tech-faction might not be the most inspired idea, but I’m sure that the execution could have been better. The way it’s implemented, the faction simply has no style, aside from using mostly very pedestrian technologies and ideas. So, I have ended up mostly playing the “Ascension” (mega-corporation, high tech) so far. Their tech is based on transformation-technology and whereas the Remnants have to get separate buildings for collecting solar energy and to extend unit supply, all of this is integrated in the few buildings one will get as the Ascension. It’s simplified, but can be a bit confusing since it allows for a good amount of flexibility. Some more points of note below:

• Ice Hammer-infantry can freeze water so that troops can walk on it. Doesn’t seem to be of much practical use since it melts again soon, but it’s still nice that it is there.

• The environments are destructible to a good degree. I recently had a battle, in which I ended up coming from the eastern side of the map, crossing a shallow bit of water. After a battle that developed at that location and my Phantom Enforcers (big tanks with a very destructive shot) hitting the area with a number of shells, the area had effectively been remolded and now consisted of a number of craters half filled with water.

• The “Hai Genti”-Alien-faction slowly covering the map in water is also a nice feature. It can make it difficult to actually maneuver around the map, though I’m not completely sure about all the rules yet. Stil, it’s just odd when I suddenly notice how a ditch reaching up to my doorstep is slowly filling with water, till my Manipulators (collect resources) eventually had to stop what they were doing since the water had gotten too deep for them.

• It’s not of any importance for the gameplay, but zooming goes down under the water and up above the clouds.

• I haven’t played with the Hai Genti much, but their base-building is also quite interesting. The mutagen pump which collects water and spreads it across the map, the building which goes on top of survivor bunkers and collects the second resource (Hai Genti only use two instead of three) and produces biothralls, which can upgrade eggs (of different sizes, spawn units) and do some other things. And the main building, which simply gets upgraded to unlock more tech. Also pretty simple, except that everything gets covered in water which heals the ground units.

[Imaginary_Llamas]

I was playing through the first Splinter Cell until either a Windows or graphics driver update broke the fix I was using for the shadows. So instead I’m mainly playing Tropico 4 - it’s a lot of fun, although it feels like there are some mechanics I haven’t appreciated yet. I evidently suck at trying to maintain a reasonable number of high-school educated citizens on my islands for example. Despite having well-staffed high schools and the literacy edict active I am rarely able to fully staff factories and police stations.

As an aside I’ve also been playing local multiplayer Action Henk. Good game, even if some of the physics that makes advanced moves work is quite strange…

[Baines]

Red Obsidian Remnant is keeping my attention, despite its sometimes confusing translation. The combo system is slightly more involved than I originally gave it credit for, particularly once you get weapons with various effects, and you also factor in what weapon you want to land a killing blow with (as some weapons have effects that only trigger on death).

The game remains difficult as well. I can clear Normal without real difficulty, but have yet to clear Hard. Beating Hard will unlock Nightmare. Beating Nightmare both unlocks Limit (which sounds to either be a time limit run or some special challenges) and allows the unlocking of Devil’s Gift (you get extra starting equipment, but enemies get buffed).

Going back to my back log, I was somewhat unimpressed by the beginning of Of Orcs and Men. I’d heard positive things about it, but the combat system is so very disappointing. While the bulk of the game is a regular action game, the combat itself is instead more like a turn-based RPG. Honestly, many turn-based RPGs have combat that looks more action-y than this game. Here, your character just mindlessly stands in the midst of enemies (as you have no positioning control), repeating a basic attack until you manually go in and queue new actions. In a further weird choice, the game greatly slows time but doesn’t actually stop it when you go to queue actions. It doesn’t really make sense. If the game was trying to appeal to an action crowd, then it wouldn’t have implemented such a wannabe turn-based system. But if the game was trying to appeal to a more strategic or worse reflexes crowd, then it should have stopped time entirely for action queuing. The mix the game uses just doesn’t seem like it would appeal to anyone.

[Det.Bullock]

Descent 2 via DXX-rebirth
My initial intentions were only to configure the sourceport (basically set up the HOTAS and the resolution to fullHD with 4x multisampling) to play it later but I ended up getting to the second world.
I liked the possibility to use the extra cannon energy to recharge shields just in case you wound up with enemies only dropping cannon energy and not shields, it has still to be above 100 to do so but I wish I had the possibility in some of the levels of the first game.
The thief bot is a nightmare but a rather adrenalinic one, chasing it for the whole level basically forces you to ignore everything else and just look for that tiny window that allows you to place a few hits on the goddamn bastard.

[L_No]

I bought Steep in the Steam sale, and am enjoying it very much. One can tire quickly from the obligatory Ubisoft icon clearing, but the snowboarding and skiing is so good. The game scratches the same itch for me as the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater games - messing around and trying tricks in large open levels. The mountains feel appropriately huge, and snow in a game has never looked better. It can be truly breathtaking.

[Tikey]

Getting closer to the end of Deus Shock (aka Prey).
I’ve been completely absorbed by it. Clearly I’m a sucker for immersive sims.

[Sarfrin]

I downloaded the itch.io client after remembering I owned Panoramical, which is a fun musical playground, then realised I hadn’t played all the way through Kitty Horrorshow’s Anatomy. As mentioned in several RPS posts, it makes an awful out of creepiness out of a very limited design space. An experience worth having.

[LTK]

Enter the Gungeon is really starting to grind. Grind to a halt, I might say. Bosses continue to drop one or two unlock tokens and new items have steadily increased from costing 3-6 tokens to costing 9-14, making it take longer and longer to unlock a single item. It doesn’t help that the game strongly favours variety at the expense of balance, meaning that in any given run you’ll probably use weapons you’ve never used before but if the dice don’t roll right and you get an underpowered weapon (or worse, no weapon) to use on the first boss, that’s going to doom your entire run. There are so many weapons that completely blow everything else out of the water (Love Shotgun, Hexagun, Witch Pistol, and Vertebrae, to name a few) that there is no reason to use anything else once you’ve got one. There are just as many that simply suck (almost every charge-up weapon). It becomes frustrating having to rely on RNG to have a chance at a decent amount of progress at all.

[EPICTHEFAIL]

Motivated by nostalgia and a yearning for decent co-op (i.e. not Warframe) I’ve reinstalled Left 4 Dead 2, which I hadn’t played in a good 3-4 years. After re-learning the various campaigns (somewhat embarrassingly, I got lost in the first level of Dark Carnival), I am pleased to say it’s still as good a time as it’s always been. The game is great at enforcing proper teamwork through the way zombies behave, the shooting is still fun enough, and the atmosphere is great, even in the more light-hearted and goofy sequel campaigns, though I prefer the originals frankly. And I am amazed by how popular it still is, 7 years after it launched. The player counts are high enough that I had no problem filling out teams even on unpopular campaigns like Blood Harvest.

The only real issue I’ve had has been the awful hit registration. Source has never been known for good hit detection, it has to be said, and I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve failed to cr0wn a Witch because half of my shotgun pellets vanished into hyperspace (and I’ve got hundreds of hours in the game, it’s not like I lack experience). And that’s not even getting into missed headshots, shots passing straight through zombies and melee weapons simply gliding over zombies without hitting.

[MantisTobogganM.D.4]

I’m thinking of grabbing dying light. I loved dead island, so I should love dying light right? I may only have 1 friend to play co op with though. Any yays or nays? I elected to post this here instead of the talk down thread because I’m not necessarily looking to be talked out of buying it, so much as confirmation that if I liked dead island I’ll probably like it, and that one co op partner is enough for the game to be enjoyable.

[Det.Bullock]

Descent 2 via DXX-rebirth
I got to the 10th level, it’s getting much more intense than Descent but less frustrating at the same time.
Apart from the thief bot and the energy thief bot until now the most bullshit enemies of the first game or similar equivalents are nowhere to be found, and even the forementioned aren’t that bad compared to the vulcan wielding bots and the seeker missiles bots of the first game.
I find myself saving more often now (mostly after I kill the thief bot) but it’s still a rather more polished experience comapred to the first game.
One thing I noticed though is that if you find a secret level (which are more some sort of very large secret areas, they qualify as levels only because you reach them through a teleport portal, after you beat them you return to the normal level you entered from) and you have hostages even if you do not die they don’t count as rescued once you return to the normal level and beat it which is a bit disappointing.

[Tikey]

I finished Deus Shock. I was getting annoyed by the moralizing of the decisions (a trend in recent immersive sims) but I guess that the ending actually justifies it. So everything is good.

[vinraith]

I thought Dying Light was fantastic, and an enormous improvement on the (already enjoyable) Dead Island games. I wasn’t even aware it supported more than two player co-op - I played through the whole thing with a friend and had a blast. In truth, the only parts I didn’t care for were the forced solo tutorial, and the forced solo finale. Both are brief, though, especially in comparison to the enormous game in between.

[MantisTobogganM.D.4]

Forced solo finale? Wtf, weird. Sounds right up my alley besides that though.