They’re all different games, to the point I would say the do not scratch exactly the same itch. Invisible, Inc. is very much a roguelike, whereas Door Kickers has both strong flavors of RPG and Hotline Miami. I can’t really speak about Frozen Synapse, as that wasn’t …my bowl.
Another game that comes to mind is Cargo Commander. While that one plays in real time, as it employs an action platformer loop, it does share a few traits: ship-boarding, procedural generation, and the side view, off the top of my mind.
It is.
You’re right, the levels feel same-y despite being different from one another, that’s hardly an uncommon problem with procedural generation.
Also, when evaluating larger moves, I noticed I spend more time looking at the minimap rather than the screen, because the view cannot be zoomed out, and the minimap is more readable, and it dawned on me that the world design, and color palette, seem just too homogeneous and unexciting.
Also, I picked up a new tactic, which, weirdly, works when it would seem it shouldn’t rightly do so: when opening doors, or dealing with spawner doors, I’ll just keep my distance, even backing up to increase it, and let the enemies walk up to me; the robots with guns have terrible aiming, so they will take stupid shots or just miss with amazing regularity …BUT, your robots, even if equipped with short-range guns, can still wreak havoc, as long as they’re using weapons with limited dispersion.
Seabrass is especially deadly from across the screen, and lining up the shot is easy enough, after having made sure to pick a path that’s relatively open: he is way stronger than Piper, who is held back by the low damage dealt by scoped weapons.
On that token, I’m finding kind of annoying that headshots do not always register as critical shots. If you’re asking me to take the time to aim, then you should reward me with a sure critical, is my belief? if you take away the critical from me because of RNG, that just feels …cheap.
Are you sure you’ve played the same games as me? The world in D3, up to where I played (only the demo), is a grim and depressing grind, would you have some undeads sprinkled on top your undead-stuffed undead buns?
T2 is richer and overall more enjoyable. It may as well be the game opens up later, but I did try an experiment of going back to the first Torchlight after playing the D3 demo, and it was far more fun than the same-y same stuff that the demo forced me through, right from the get go.
PS: Torchlight has music by Matt Uelmen who was the original Diablo guy.