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I’ve been playing a lot of Halo 4 with friends lately this week. We’re working on Spartan Ops since it’s the last legendary achievement i have to do
Eriksholm
It is a very beautiful isometric stealth game with a good story. I am playing the demo and I am already hooked to it. The demo is surprisingly long and enough to decide whether you are interested or not in this game.
I’m about to start EX mode in Void Stranger. The method to unlock it and the tail puzzle are the only two solutions I’ve just looked up for this game because holy shit do I not have the time for that lol.
Good game, with the exception of those two puzzles specifically
Killing Floor (2009)
Proof that you don’t need good graphics for a good game. It’s gameplay still holds up after all this time and I’ve been diggin its wave based combat again lately.
Hollow Knight in preparation for Silksong
High On Life
10/10 story-driven FPS game from the creators of Rick and Morty. Not excessively complicated or difficult. Your house is teleported to another planet. You have defend yourself with guns that are also talking aliens (gatlians). Not graphically intensive either so would be good for mobile gaming.
I enjoyed this. A shooter with a different feel and a vibrant palette, and genuinely funny in parts.
I also got banned from the Xbox subreddit a couple of years ago because of this game. Apparently a photo of the in-game sounding rods was inappropriate. Mate, it’s literally an unedited screenshot from an Xbox game.
I’m playing split-screen Halo MCC with my brother. I’ve only got a 27" monitor to play on, so cutting the screen in half makes it very small and really brings back some of the nostalgia of playing the game back on the original xbox with a tiny little box tv lol.
With a mixture of the AlphaRing mod and an edit to the settings.json file for EasyAntiCheat, I’m still able to get achievements despite using a mod which is nice. We’re currently playing through Halo 2 on Legendary, which is less nice. Sniper Jackals are the bane of our existence.
While I’m not a furry, Steam has some interesting titles on offer from Anthrocon, even if you just find animals to be a unique aesthetic choice for characters. I’m an Ace Attorney fan, so I got the demo for “Dragon Detective” which just released yesterday.
In other gaming news, the demo for Trails in the Sky’s remake is out. In typical JRPG fashion, reports say the demo covers about 6 hours of content.
Where are ya seeing these anthro sales? I can’t seem to locate them :c
Sword of the Sea!
Unfortunately I haven’t been able to play much because there’s a spot in what I would call chapter 2 where the game kept crashing and dying. I tried so many things to make it work and nothing came of it.
Finally , last ditch effort, went through the process of upgrading from Mint 21.2 to Mint 22. And now it seems to be working! Yahoo!
Buuuut now I’m going somewhere this weekend and I won’t be able to play, lol. C’est la vie
Same here, but the performances are abysmal on the Deck (15-20 fps on low), and crashes on every map changes. I’m gonna wait next week to see if it goes better with the first few fixes, and then I’ll chose if I refund it or not.
Final Fantasy: strangers of paradise
It has a co-op mode (up to 3 players), which is a huge plus for me.
Whats great:
- variety of weapons and combat styles
- aesthetics
- Variety of enemies
- co-op mode
Whats decent:
- combat
- character customizations
- level design
Whats meh:
- exploration and rewards
Whats not good
- story. Wasn’t really interesting and some parts I didn’t understand.
Overall I really enjoyed it, because not many coop games I can play with loved ones.
Shadow Tower Abyss (PS2 - FromSoftware 2003)
EDIT: Forgot to say, this game never released in English but there is a fan translation patch available that should be easy enough to find if you’re interested.
There’s a growing trend in indie games for the King’s Field-likes; Lunacid, Dread Delusion, etc. I’m a huge fan and if anyone has any other good ones to recommend, please let me know! EDIT: Just found Caput Mortem which looks like it might fit the bill near enough and also features music by Ockeroid of Crow Country notably …
But for this I thought I’d return to the roots. I’ve picked at King’s Field I (JP) and II a bit before and while I enjoy them, they’re overall still very clunky and I usually get distracted. I wasn’t sure how long I’d stick with Shadow Tower Abyss, but I feel like this one I may very well see through, I’m enjoying it quite a bit so far. That’s not to say it’s not still a clunky slog, and it’s certainly not for everyone, but there is real charm there.
(Scoring system: 1-5 being bad, OK, good, great, excellent with decimals being vibe based to push it closer to one rather than the other. For example 3.2 is meant to indicate a bit better than just good, but still not great. 3.8 might indicate close to great, but missing a few aspects that prevent it)
Sound: 3.2/5, Good. Like a lot of FromSoft games, there’s not really much music aside from the occasional musical sting which provides effective ambience. The sound design is minimal as well, but there are some very good moments of creepy thrumming, droning, and distant screeching that make it an intense environment to inhabit.
Graphics: 3.5/5, Good. What’s on display is generally competent and atmospheric, each new area has its own theme which is interesting to explore, but still, I feel like they could’ve done a lot more with the PS2 graphics. It’s certainly an improvement over King’s Field '94, but exactly how much is debatable …
The monster design is pretty good, everything has this kind of alien/abyssal feel to it. The overall theming is on point. Areas of the game have simple descriptions (i.e. Blue Light Area) that give the impression the player character is a foreign explorer rather than anyone with innate knowledge of this weird world. It’s a small aspect of world-building I appreciate.
Gameplay: 3.8/5, Good. Overall control still feels dated, but much less clunky than previous entries. The player moves at a brisk enough pace, but still slowly enough that you soak in the environment and progress feels meaningful. Being an older game you can’t really rebind the controls, but there are a variety of schemes including Type 4 which allow for the expected, modern dual analog stick looking/movement.
Combat can still be a little boxy and clunky but each weapon offers a left and right slash as well as an overhead bashing and frontal thrusting attack. Each weapon also has related stats for these types of attacks and enemies will have weaknesses or possible points of dismemberment making them vulnerable to particular attacks. Unlike some of the earlier King’s Field games, connecting attacks always feels good and has satisfying feedback.
The stats system is definitely very obtuse, even if you are familiar with From’s games and I recommend consulting a guide quickly before your first time playing. Again, as is very typical in From’s fashion, there isn’t an abundance of items but what exists is very deliberate. Money consists of these single large coins which you usually only find 1 or occasionally 2 at a time. Most things will only cost a handful of coins with healing potions being 2, boxes of ammo (for your gun!) being 1(?), and weapons and armor ranging anywhere from ~4-15. You’ll also find a plethora of items scattered throughout the game so there’s no shortage.
There is a unique balancing though as in order to heal yourself from the rare healing stations you have to sacrifice items for their value, although I’m early enough in the game that a basic Hat still seems to fully heal me from low health. In order to repair durability on your items from the rare purple repairing stations, you must sacrifice health with items like magic rings requiring sometimes more health than you currently have! This creates a tense and balanced management situation that feels like you might possibly softlock yourself by eating through too many resources, but so far hasn’t proved an issue for me. As a personal aside, I’m a big fan of playing games as they were designed so I’m doing my best to only save at the rare save points and not save state my way through the game, although this is of course up to your own tastes and discretion.
But is there a poison area with forced damage, I hear you ask? Yes, you fool, YES! Why would you even doubt it? Don’t let this discourage you though as understanding the stats system and equipping proper armor allows you to minimize the damage per poison tick such that it creates urgency as a pressure point more than a pain point. Definitely sacrificed a few lives just scouting the area out, though. Game Over means reload a save.
Summary/TL;DR Shadow Tower Abyss is a very competent dungeon crawler with a unique theme and atmosphere that’s worth exploring if you’d like to see historic FromSoft (it’s 20+ years old, as an ancient gamer I can use “historic” if I want). Miyazaki gets a lot of credit for modern From games and while a lot of that is certainly due, it’s fascinating to see how many of these deliberate design concepts have always been in their DNA.
As an aside, one day I’m going to write an entire essay on what makes a Soulslike a Soulsike. I missed the boat on the original hype and only got into them during COVID lockdown in 2020. I didn’t think I’d be a fan of the grueling, “git gud” experience but I’ve come to realize that’s not what makes those games interesting. It’s one concept and some people may find it unsatisfyingly vague, but it’s not the bonfires, or the losing souls on death, or the dodge rolling. It’s the stone-cold deliberateness. A lot of the difficulty from these games arises out of that deliberateness; what items you choose to equip and how you observe and approach unique situations. The games aren’t good because they’re hard, the specific design elements that make them hard are also the things that make them good.
Abiotic Factor
I discovered Inscryption this week. It’s a story driven, deck builder, escape room game.
Without spoiling anything for anyone…how uh…how far are you?
I would say I finished the main game and have done a part of the post game.
If that makes sense :)
I think you’ve seen that there’s more than meets the eye, at the very least, so we can leave it at that. A friend of mine was quite sure he had almost finished it before when he was nowhere close, lol.
Still working my way through this one. It’s aight. Not as good as the first one; better mechanics and QoL, but lacks the amazing writing and soul of the first one. Still very enjoyable when doing main quests though and excited to finish.
But… from what I’ve seen on Twitch I, next I really want to play Abiotic Factor. Described as Half Life 1 meets Minecraft, with apparently amazing progression. Can’t wait.
lacks the amazing writing and soul of the first one
Really? The first one seemed content to just let you do mundane tasks as part of your quests, but I’ve found that this second one makes sure that there’s always something interesting along the way.
I‘m gonna continue Salt & Sanctuary this weekend, which is basically 2D Dark Souls, like, heavily inspired by Dark Souls.
Other than that, I‘ve picked Outpath back up which is Minecraft graphics combined with Forager gameplay, I suppose? It‘s hard for me to describe.
Maybe I‘ll start Peak with my gf if she wants to. She‘s kinda scared cause she read it‘s hard, I have no clue, I‘m going in blind lol
