Subnautica reminds me of an outer limits episode....
"Captain, from what you describe, that creature is not trying to eat you, it's trying to eat the raft, you need to jump out and swim."
Everyone in the room and the astronaut: WTF?!
Wasn't that the one where the guy goes through a wormhole or something and gets trapped on an alien planet, and he's going to have to survive on his own because it'll be thirty years until Earth can send him another care package?
Temporary wormhole, never knew about it. Improvised care package sent and no ship able to survive journey.
Subnautica reminds me of an outer limits episode....
"Captain, from what you describe, that creature is not trying to eat you, it's trying to eat the raft, you need to jump out and swim."
Everyone in the room and the astronaut: WTF?!
Wasn't that the one where the guy goes through a wormhole or something and gets trapped on an alien planet, and he's going to have to survive on his own because it'll be thirty years until Earth can send him another care package?
Temporary wormhole, never knew about it. Improvised care package sent and no ship able to survive journey.
Episode on YouTube, worlds apart
That's the one! That was a good episode.
I have a bunch of leftover Steam sale cards:
Choices Matter x2
Mom's Spaghetti x2
Labor of Love x2
The world is Grim Enough x2
Defies Description x4
Haunts my Dreams x4
Soul of Vitruvious
Whoa Dude 2.0
I finished VA-1 Hall-A last night, and man it was great. It's pretty refreshing playing a bunch of games all in a row that all have fantastic writing (Hellblade, Her Story, Valhalla, and even Demons Souls). It makes me really question why AAA games are such shit when these tiny teams make it look so easy.
Valhalla is a bartending themed visual novel set in a cyberpunk dystopia. Emphasis on the visual novel part. The bartending is a minigame that is tightly integrated with the novel segments, but the 'game' is primarily reading. The story is 'kinetic', in that it does not have branching paths. The player does not have control of the dialogue. The story can be influenced by how drunk you get your patrons, and how well you choose drinks to serve them, but the influence seems fairly minor. You also earn commission and tips on the drinks you serve, and making enough money to buy the things the main character yearns for and paying your bills each week is important (and also has an effect on which endings you are eligible for).
The main draw is most definitely the story. The 'main' story is the story of the city itself, however that story is told through the individual plot arcs of the patrons that you serve. The majority of the plot threads are tied up by the end of the game, and the individual character arcs are ended nicely in their own endings (assuming you qualify for them; they are obtained by serving the involved patrons well during that character's key scenes). One of the main drivers of the city 'superplot' is the city mayor, known as QUINCY, who is an analogue for the real world venezuelan president. Many of Glitch City's political dellimas are carbon copies of problems in Venezuela (such as a worthless exchange-rate-controlled local currency). One thing I found interesting is how many of QUINCY's negative aspects are also parallel in Trump (such as corporate driven antienvironmentalism, racism, anti net neutrality, and PR manipulation through both news media misdirection and internet forum trolling).
The game was longer than I expected (13 hours for my playthrough), and even though I beat it in two sittings, I was never bored. I highly highly recommend this game to anyone who likes VNs of any type.
+14
Dr. ChaosPost nuclear nuisanceRegistered Userregular
Subnautica reminds me of an outer limits episode....
"Captain, from what you describe, that creature is not trying to eat you, it's trying to eat the raft, you need to jump out and swim."
Everyone in the room and the astronaut: WTF?!
Wasn't that the one where the guy goes through a wormhole or something and gets trapped on an alien planet, and he's going to have to survive on his own because it'll be thirty years until Earth can send him another care package?
This reminded me of this roleplayed LP of Subnautica:
I bought this one in 2016 being both a fan of Obsidian's work (though recognizing their many flaws) and having been a regular watcher of South Park in high school and college. I started it up shortly after midnight when the backlog challenge kicked off to give me something more relaxed as a way of cooling down after Dark Souls 3 sessions.
It was fun but parts of it did wear out their welcome. The first thing I was struck by was how well the game nailed the show's art style. From a technical standpoint, that's not the most difficult task but from an art and animation direction standpoint it was rather impressive. This was especially true for the bits that mirrored times the show itself switched from its usual art style into other styles of animation.
Wandering around town rummaging through people's drawers for vendor trash with humorous descriptions and callbacks to the show was one of the highlights. Combat and questing were also enjoyable with the former playing a lot like early Paper Mario games which really suits things perfectly. Some of the button and stick prompts to make your turn based attacks effective got a bit annoying at times (e.g., Stan and Butters have very similar stick motions but different buttons and were easily confused) but working out a strategy that meshed with your character's build against varied opponents was fun.
The puzzle solving to get around during major quests was serviceable but nothing stellar. It's mostly your usual use x ability to do y thing. In many cases you could optionally use abilities outside of combat to eliminate an enemy before battle started which was neat. But the controls to do so often left something to be desired. You do a lot of switching between powers after a while which breaks up the flow of things. And some of the button and stick inputs needed for your fart powers were especially annoying and unclear at first.
Which brings us to the writing. South Park is known for often vile and offensive humor, viewing no one and no subject as being off limits to humor, and often having commentary on some issue affecting society. This game embodies plenty of the first two but is not one of the ones where the writers are providing their opinions on something. This is mostly just an excuse to collect South Park references and kill a lot of zombie Nazis. That's not to say it doesn't say some things. For example, the ridiculous and petty nature of cliques comes up a lot in the game through the idiotic behavior of many characters in ways that often did make me laugh. But there's no central idea or message here.
A lot of the humor comes from references to South Park episodes. Thankfully much of it doesn't require an encyclopedic knowledge of the series. It's been about a decade since I regularly followed the show and I still recognized a lot of the callbacks. The rest of the humor comes from some commentary about media and video games (e.g. a government agent decrying how Nazi zombies are so overdone at the start of a Nazi zombie outbreak) and gross absurdity. It's definitely not for everyone as most episodes of the show never got this awful. One ranged weapon you can find is a used tampon to throw and at one point in the game you fight zombified and Nazified fetuses. If you thought the episode that introduced Mr. Slave was too much, this probably isn't the best game for you.
Overall, it's a shortish (for an RPG) and fun experience for fans of South Park and RPGs. That said, other games have done the humorous RPG thing now. West of Loathing immediately comes to mind as something I'd recommend over Stick of Truth to someone looking for a funny RPG (and anyone that enjoyed Stick should really check out WoL).
This feels like a 7/10: Enjoyable while playing but you're not going to really remember the gameplay a lot after.
I've finished 140, or at least I've finished all I'm gonna.
The game is a pretty good platformer with a very neat aesthetic.
Your basic geometric shape protagonist collects little power circles, and these each transform the world to add more platforming obstacles that move to the background techno track, which is itself transformed on each power-up.
There are four levels (although there were originally three so the end-of-game splash screen is now at the wrong spot), and at the end of each there's a boss fight to shake things up.
It's a pretty nice little game.
The platforming mechanics could be tightened up somewhat, specifically rubbing against the static hazards causes you to die, rather than if you collide with them.
This forces you to 'air-gap' hazards, and is sort of a pain.
But all in all, I enjoyed it, until I went to the level select and found the other four 'levels' over the other side of the screen.
These being mirrored versions of the previous levels which require no deaths.
As the bosses are at the end of these levels, and I had the most problem there, I don't see running the gauntlet to be much of a draw and noped back out of the game.
It also rubs a bit the wrong way, as the actual game is far too short, and now there's the other four impossible levels staring at me.
Oh well.
Neat short platformer, don't push yourself to no-death the levels, and quit at 50% completion IMO.
Conan Exiles has come a looooong way since last time I played it. It's starting to feel like a real game. Apparently it now has an actual release date, too: May 8. Early access buyers will get extra love (like free armor), and the price goes up on release, too, so if you're interested in it you'll want to nab it before then.
@Steel Angel I felt similarly about SoT, but I had stepped away from the show right around the whole Saddam Hussein - Satan thing (2002?). Even then, I got most of the references and there were some legit laugh-out-loud moments for me.
I agree with the crudeness, but I tend to take it in stride with the nature of the show.
I found I was mostly ignoring the fart-based powers for combat, instead focusing on the, uh, Power Point....powers. I ended up focusing on Cartman as a sidekick for the second half of the game but Butters and Stan had their moments. I did not gravitate toward the buff partners (like Jimmy, or kinda like Kenny) or a healer (like Kyle)
My biggest criticism about combat was that defense abilities had a very small window to hit your button, and enemy telegraphs weren't very straightforward. Part of me understands why it's this way because otherwise you remove the danger element in combat, that you'll lose the fight.
Overall it was a good time for me. It reminds me that I should put more time into Undertale in the future and take a second look at WoL.
I just beat my third game: Resident Evil: Revelations
Damn, this game is great. It is by no means perfect, but it is exactly what I want out of a Resident Evil game. Gameplay wise, it fits smack dab in between RE4 and the PS1 RE games, with gunplay nearly identical to RE4 (with a less emphasis on melee combat) but with level design straight out of the PS1 titles. The majority of the game takes place on the cruise ship Queen Zenobia, which has an inspired layout. The layout feels a bit metroidvania-y (you collect RE's signature keys, which in addition to unlocking doors you need to progress through for story reasons also usually unlock previously-inaccessible doors from earlier levels.) The layout is a bit dark souls-y too, with progress regularly opening up shortcuts back to older parts of the ship. There are events going on outside the ship, and usually once a chapter there's a segment where you control someone other than Jill. The non-Jill segments do a nice job of breaking up the ship segments, which keeps the ship from feeling stale or tedious.
The story is pretty standard bad-but-good Resident Evil supervillain bioterrorist plot garbage. Enough of a story to give me a reason to plunder a cruise ship full of animated mouldering biomass, but nothing to write home about. I actually have no idea where in the RE timeline the game takes place. You primarily play as Jill and it seems to be before the events of 5, but I could be wrong (actually, I feel like maybe the very final scene might be a lead-up to the RE5 trailer cutscene, but it's been so long since I've seen it that I'm not sure). The game sets itself up for a sequel, which exists as Revelations 2, but I do not own that game, and looking at it in the steam store it seems to be a ridiculous mess of dlc episodes, so chances of me picking it up are fairly slim.
+6
Idx86Long days and pleasant nights.Registered Userregular
Alien: Isolation is so awesome, and I will be sad when it's done. There are very few games where I feel that way when I'm heading toward the end. For example, Fallout 3 I am ready to be done with it but it just. keeps. going. and. going.
2008, 2012, 2014 D&D "Rare With No Sauce" League Fantasy Football Champion!
Revelations 2 isnt really dlc, the entire game is episodic. So its episodes 1-4, each one involving two different groups going through the same area at different times. The extra RAID stuff is just multiplayer stuff, costumes, unlocks, extra space. If you pick up episodes 1-4 its the base game.
Revelations 2 is actually my favorite of the resident evil series I think, it has such good shooting and still retains the feels of confusing areas. I thoroughly enjoyed the shit out of it, barely able to wait for the next episode to come out. If you liked REvelations 1, I STRONGLY suggest REvelations 2. It has much better shooting, and much better multiplayer imo. Its still not online story coop, but the raid system is super fun and engaging, reminding me a lot of Mercenaries from earlier series.
Pick up the intro episode, see if you like it, if you do you can't go wrong buying the rest of the episodes. The Extra RAID stuff and costumes is very much not needed.
CorriganX on Steam and just about everywhere else.
Revelations 2 isnt really dlc, the entire game is episodic. So its episodes 1-4, each one involving two different groups going through the same area at different times. The extra RAID stuff is just multiplayer stuff, costumes, unlocks, extra space. If you pick up episodes 1-4 its the base game.
Revelations 2 is actually my favorite of the resident evil series I think, it has such good shooting and still retains the feels of confusing areas. I thoroughly enjoyed the shit out of it, barely able to wait for the next episode to come out. If you liked REvelations 1, I STRONGLY suggest REvelations 2. It has much better shooting, and much better multiplayer imo. Its still not online story coop, but the raid system is super fun and engaging, reminding me a lot of Mercenaries from earlier series.
Pick up the intro episode, see if you like it, if you do you can't go wrong buying the rest of the episodes. The Extra RAID stuff and costumes is very much not needed.
If I buy the first episode, will I still be able to buy the 'collector's edition' pack or whatever it is? The episodes are all ~6 a pop, and there's enough of them that the whole thing looks to be about 40-50 USD, whereas it's half that if I get the collector's pack. I might wait and see if the whole thing goes on sale.
So yesterday I was trying to play and beat The Last Tinker: City of Colors for the backlog challenge since I watched @Berylline play it. Unfortunately for me it must have screwed up my equilibrium since it was the first game I have ever played where I felt nauseous and had a headache. I really feel bad since I liked watching it being played. So unfortunately it is now shelved and I have to find another game to play.
Rogue Legacy has one of the most addictive gameplay loops I've ever experienced.
We need more games like that badly.
I needed to jump in on this, because I REALLY liked Rogue Legacy and it was one of the few things I got out of deep diving into the Steam world that I finished(I had to leave because my backlog is so effed and almost all my time is in WoW so its staying that way for awhile)
I think the thing that made it work so well is the short play sessions and that they make almost every single one feel rewarding. I mean, even if you don't get any gold, the fact you choose a new character might be enough to feel like you got something out of dying. So you always think you can fit in another session. The other game that tried to do that was Enter the Gungeon. Only problem is, it had very little if any continuity to gain from each playthrough because it went for a more pure roguelike experience. But because it wanted short sessions, it had to make them super difficult to do it. Because i mean, if you want a short session then if you don't have something to keep the player going, the game is just short. I like how Rogue Legacy did it though because no matter how hard it is, you make the player feel like they can do it eventually by working toward those improvements. It just nailed something special. It had its warts in some spotty room design and sometimes unfair challenges. The game that nailed the room and tight gameplay design was Flinthook. If Rogue Legacy had that quality of design in its rooms and tight gameplay, it would have been gaming perfection.
I need to try Dead Cells too but clearly it can wait because I wouldn't be playing it much right now even if I got it. It likely is a good thing it isn't exactly the same as Rogue Legacy though, because something different is always a good thing.
0
SteevLWhat can I do for you?Registered Userregular
Dead Cells main similarity to Rogue Legacy is that between levels, you pump one of the game's currencies (the "cells") into permanent upgrades or unlocking weapons that can appear in future runs.
It differs in that you don't really play as a different character each run; same guy, same stats. It also has a strict level-based structure. Once you clear the first level, you can't go back to it on that run, unlike Rogue Legacy. On the other hand, there is some variety to the levels, and there are alternate levels as well. Instead of going to the Promenade of the Damned as the second stage, I can choose to go to the Toxic Sewers. And every level has its own unique type of layout.
I still haven't beaten the game once. I've met and defeated two different bosses, and I've made it to what I believe is one of the game's final levels, but I've died every time.
Looks like I'm spending my birthday in virtual reality.
Thanks to the prize I won from @Heatwave I decided to get Arizona Sunshine while it was on some degree of a discount (also because you can co-op it and Aumni's on deck for that)
And while I was practising dicking around with shooting zombies, this happened:
Thank you SO much, @HyphyKezzy ! Incredible degrees of class, right there.
Chief downside was that it was crashy as hell. I don't think I played an hour long session without getting an error when saving "There was a problem saving your session" and then back to desktop. So I replayed a lot of battles and dungeon rooms.
Pretty much everything else was fantastic, though. I loved the art style, and it was fantastically executed throughout the game - overmap, battles, inventory, town screens, cutscenes, etc. Crazy good looking game. Combat was super satisfying. Level progression was great. Loot and gear crafting was engaging. Really it hit all the RPG gameplay dopamine switches.
The story was fine, and maybe more relevant for fans of the comic? Dunno. I came for the monster killing, looting and gearing up.
I loved my 63 hour playrthrough. I think you could do it in much, much less. I took the time to chase down ingredients for all the epic weapons, did all the dungeons on legendary, chased down battle blimps until I found the bandit king, etc. I also spent an embarrasing amount of time fishing looking for that last goddamned fish to fill my Fishiary. But at some point I realized I was a crazy person and just went and finished the game. Curse you Mobius Fish!!
Alien: Isolation is so awesome, and I will be sad when it's done. There are very few games where I feel that way when I'm heading toward the end. For example, Fallout 3 I am ready to be done with it but it just. keeps. going. and. going.
Okay, but check back with us after another 12 hours when you've actually reached the end and let us know if you still feel that way.
Zavianuniversal peace sounds better than forever warRegistered Userregular
Just wanted to add, Revelations 2 is one of my top coop games of all time, no exaggeration. The team play mechanics of the two characters is just so much fun to me where one character is focusing on action and combat with the other as a crucial support. You don't get games with that kind of symbiotic coop often. There's also a light RPG progression system that encourages replay at higher difficulty levels.
Also, I Moira
0
PiptheFairFrequently not in boats.Registered Userregular
Just wanted to add, Revelations 2 is one of my top coop games of all time, no exaggeration. The team play mechanics of the two characters is just so much fun to me where one character is focusing on action and combat with the other as a crucial support. You don't get games with that kind of symbiotic coop often. There's also a light RPG progression system that encourages replay at higher difficulty levels.
OK, so Arizona Sunshine is pretty much what I expected of it. There are points along each level where your character will crack wise to himself; I guess if you like Nathan Drake you'll enjoy it, I could take or leave it but it fills out the quiet moments, and muttering to himself about what he needs to do next is better than objective markers or text that kill your immersion.
Shooting is on par with Hotdogs, Horseshoes and Hand Grenades, but little bit less realistic in that all you need to do to reload is tap the thumb pad to eject the empty mag, then bring your gun close to your chest where your ammo pouch is to reload. Can still get pretty hectic when a horde is bearing down on you and you lose count of how many rounds are left in your gun. There's holsters you can use to swap out other weapons and you can dual-wield, which I thoroughly enjoyed with a pair of revolvers.
What surprised me about the game is that it's co-opable! I thoroughly enjoyed a short session with Aumni. The most memorable part being where we entered an old mine shaft and I had the only flashlight while he was stuck with a glow stick. That was a pretty interesting horde attack with no other light sources available. No friendly fire moments... yet. Got real close a couple of times when we turned around and were surprised by each other but stopped just short of squeezing the trigger.
"Steel Angel" I felt similarly about SoT, but I had stepped away from the show right around the whole Saddam Hussein - Satan thing (2002?). Even then, I got most of the references and there were some legit laugh-out-loud moments for me.
I agree with the crudeness, but I tend to take it in stride with the nature of the show.
I found I was mostly ignoring the fart-based powers for combat, instead focusing on the, uh, Power Point....powers. I ended up focusing on Cartman as a sidekick for the second half of the game but Butters and Stan had their moments. I did not gravitate toward the buff partners (like Jimmy, or kinda like Kenny) or a healer (like Kyle)
My biggest criticism about combat was that defense abilities had a very small window to hit your button, and enemy telegraphs weren't very straightforward. Part of me understands why it's this way because otherwise you remove the danger element in combat, that you'll lose the fight.
Overall it was a good time for me. It reminds me that I should put more time into Undertale in the future and take a second look at WoL.
The problem with the fart based powers in combat for me was that you have to use an item to have enough mana to use them and it was generally better to use a speed potion as your first item to take an enemy out of the fight quickly instead.
The button prompts have some weird timing going on. You have a fairly generous window of opportunity to press the button after seeing the on screen displays but unlike in many other games trying to time your button presses to sync up with the displays didn't seem to work so well.
I have to agree on all your SoT points, also suddenly if you were only focused on physical attacks (which I did) the difficulty of combat suddenly spikes where you're only doing 1-2 points of damage and have to go back and re-learn it all to get things like bleed, gross out, etc to stack and deal heavy damage.
The zombie Nazis felt a bit lazy too. Like I get it, lots of video games have zombie Nazis, but just doing the thing you're parodying feels less parody and more just lazy.
I really do not understand the love for Rogue Legacy.
I found the death-gating of the levels to be the most obnoxious thing.
I don't want to have to die so that I have the capability to progress, and I don't want to only play like ten levels each life because those are the only rooms on the edge of the cake-walk and brick wall regions.
And most of all, I want to know if I suck or if the game really expects me to take down this enemy with a pea-shooter. But I can't tell that when there's a skill tree waiting to be increased if I don't succeed.
I have to agree on all your SoT points, also suddenly if you were only focused on physical attacks (which I did) the difficulty of combat suddenly spikes where you're only doing 1-2 points of damage and have to go back and re-learn it all to get things like bleed, gross out, etc to stack and deal heavy damage.
The zombie Nazis felt a bit lazy too. Like I get it, lots of video games have zombie Nazis, but just doing the thing you're parodying feels less parody and more just lazy.
The first time I dealt with an enemy that I had to stack DoTs on to deal with took a few tries. It was also at a point where I didn't have a ton of options in that regard but I got a lot of use out of weapon mods that added those effects.
I did actually enjoy how the zombie Nazi thing was done. It helps that it's been a long time since I've played a game involving either which helps things but the fact that it wasn't the usual case of Nazis raising zombies but zombies that also are Nazis and start spouting off random recordings from Hitler's speeches complete with distortion even if they're things like cows or rats made it stand out from the usual approach. It's not masterfully done parody or anything, but still a way to make the trope different.
I really do not understand the love for Rogue Legacy.
I found the death-gating of the levels to be the most obnoxious thing.
I don't want to have to die so that I have the capability to progress, and I don't want to only play like ten levels each life because those are the only rooms on the edge of the cake-walk and brick wall regions. And most of all, I want to know if I suck or if the game really expects me to take down this enemy with a pea-shooter. But I can't tell that when there's a skill tree waiting to be increased if I don't succeed.
I found it to be the most unsatisfying game.
The answer is both.
Rogue Legacy's level system acts as a dynamic difficulty setting. Players have gone through the entire game at low levels or without leveling if they are familiar enough with enemy patterns. Some players take more naturally to things like bullet hell games and platforming. But for the rest of us, the leveling system is there. It makes it so that it's virtually assured everyone can get numbers big enough to progress through the game if they can't do it purely on action gaming.
If you just don't like the platforming and combat period, that's another matter (and there are some classes I just flat out don't like using) but the RPG side is there to bolster people having trouble with the action side (I don't want to think about my final level even with some min-maxing of the castle upgrades) so that sucking at the game is fine and something the game accommodates.
I have to agree on all your SoT points, also suddenly if you were only focused on physical attacks (which I did) the difficulty of combat suddenly spikes where you're only doing 1-2 points of damage and have to go back and re-learn it all to get things like bleed, gross out, etc to stack and deal heavy damage.
The zombie Nazis felt a bit lazy too. Like I get it, lots of video games have zombie Nazis, but just doing the thing you're parodying feels less parody and more just lazy.
The first time I dealt with an enemy that I had to stack DoTs on to deal with took a few tries. It was also at a point where I didn't have a ton of options in that regard but I got a lot of use out of weapon mods that added those effects.
I did actually enjoy how the zombie Nazi thing was done. It helps that it's been a long time since I've played a game involving either which helps things but the fact that it wasn't the usual case of Nazis raising zombies but zombies that also are Nazis and start spouting off random recordings from Hitler's speeches complete with distortion even if they're things like cows or rats made it stand out from the usual approach. It's not masterfully done parody or anything, but still a way to make the trope different.
I did like the distorted random hitler recordings on the rats, cows, cats etc. I'll admit that cracked me up.
I really do not understand the love for Rogue Legacy.
I found the death-gating of the levels to be the most obnoxious thing.
I don't want to have to die so that I have the capability to progress, and I don't want to only play like ten levels each life because those are the only rooms on the edge of the cake-walk and brick wall regions. And most of all, I want to know if I suck or if the game really expects me to take down this enemy with a pea-shooter. But I can't tell that when there's a skill tree waiting to be increased if I don't succeed.
I found it to be the most unsatisfying game.
The answer is both.
Rogue Legacy's level system acts as a dynamic difficulty setting. Players have gone through the entire game at low levels or without leveling if they are familiar enough with enemy patterns. Some players take more naturally to things like bullet hell games and platforming. But for the rest of us, the leveling system is there. It makes it so that it's virtually assured everyone can get numbers big enough to progress through the game if they can't do it purely on action gaming.
If you just don't like the platforming and combat period, that's another matter (and there are some classes I just flat out don't like using) but the RPG side is there to bolster people having trouble with the action side (I don't want to think about my final level even with some min-maxing of the castle upgrades) so that sucking at the game is fine and something the game accommodates.
Yeah, nah.
Did a quick search of no-upgrade runs and Aleksander looks impossible without using the RPG mechanics.
So for any realistic playthrough, you've got to use the skill tree.
And if you have to use the skill tree, then you have no gauge of how not-crap-or-otherwise you are.
And so the game has no functional challenge, and is therefore so much grey unjoyous grindy cruft.
That is, a well-implemented dynamic difficulty setting would have some sort of feedback as to what the current difficulty setting actually is.
So I object to calling the death-gating a dynamic difficulty setting.
If I could somehow remove the skill tree from the game, flatten the HP and damage values throughout, and put in a class select I guess, I would have done it and had a much better time.
The coins wouldn't have done anything anymore, and that would have been perfectly fine too.
Finished Alan Wake and Alan Wake's American Nightmare. Both are very good games that hold up, but American Nightmare while shorter just plays better and is more fun-sized.
Both did a lot of interesting things, but I feel like Alan Wake's combat in particular overstays it's welcome by the end of the game. The story throughout both is great, though I feel like the ending of the original game is a bit abrupt. The suspense builds and builds and then it's sudden curtains. American Nightmare helps to fill in some of what I feel like is a gap in the storytelling though. Lots of interesting characters and situations. Particular highlight for me was the interstitial music at the end of each chapter. The first game got me with a blatant jump scare and I don't like that game ;_;
Recommended if you've never gotten around to playing them!
I really do not understand the love for Rogue Legacy.
I found the death-gating of the levels to be the most obnoxious thing.
I don't want to have to die so that I have the capability to progress, and I don't want to only play like ten levels each life because those are the only rooms on the edge of the cake-walk and brick wall regions. And most of all, I want to know if I suck or if the game really expects me to take down this enemy with a pea-shooter. But I can't tell that when there's a skill tree waiting to be increased if I don't succeed.
I found it to be the most unsatisfying game.
The answer is both.
Rogue Legacy's level system acts as a dynamic difficulty setting. Players have gone through the entire game at low levels or without leveling if they are familiar enough with enemy patterns. Some players take more naturally to things like bullet hell games and platforming. But for the rest of us, the leveling system is there. It makes it so that it's virtually assured everyone can get numbers big enough to progress through the game if they can't do it purely on action gaming.
If you just don't like the platforming and combat period, that's another matter (and there are some classes I just flat out don't like using) but the RPG side is there to bolster people having trouble with the action side (I don't want to think about my final level even with some min-maxing of the castle upgrades) so that sucking at the game is fine and something the game accommodates.
Yeah, nah.
Did a quick search of no-upgrade runs and Aleksander looks impossible without using the RPG mechanics.
So for any realistic playthrough, you've got to use the skill tree.
And if you have to use the skill tree, then you have no gauge of how not-crap-or-otherwise you are.
And so the game has no functional challenge, and is therefore so much grey unjoyous grindy cruft.
That is, a well-implemented dynamic difficulty setting would have some sort of feedback as to what the current difficulty setting actually is.
So I object to calling the death-gating a dynamic difficulty setting.
If I could somehow remove the skill tree from the game, flatten the HP and damage values throughout, and put in a class select I guess, I would have done it and had a much better time.
The coins wouldn't have done anything anymore, and that would have been perfectly fine too.
You're probably looking for a very different game then.
A lot of players like Rogue Legacy specifically because of the skill trees and RPG elements because they don't enjoy high difficulty platformers normally. The game is more of a way to get RPG fans, especially Rogue-like fans, into a tough platformer than it is a way to make platformer fans enjoy roguelikes. If Spelunky is the middle ground between tough platformers and Roguelikes, Rogue Legacy is in the middle befween Spelunky and traditional rogue-likes.
As for dynamic difficulty settings providing clear feedback, that's also not going to be a universal opinion. Dark Souls would a prime example where people complete areas and runs at vastly varying levels based on how many times they died and had to rekill things or engaged in co-op play but you never get clear feedback what the designers thought your stats would be at a given point.
Resident Evil 4 is another prime example where players were generally unaware there was dynamic difficulty in place years after release because it was done so seamlessly. The game adjusted ammo drops, health drops, enemy aggressiveness, and other aspects based on how a player was doing without clearly telling them about it. There it was made so that struggling players could still progress but players doing well would still have to worry about ammo usage and caution around enemies. It may not have been as much of a horror game as previous RE games, but it wanted to make sure players at least couldn't get too cocky during runs and people love RE4. No matter their skill level, people will talk about things like how creepy regnerators were or how to conserve ammo by roundhousing and suplexing not-zombies because the dynamic difficulty made all those things a universal concern and a shared experience without telling them they were getting some slightly different experiences.
I really do not understand the love for Rogue Legacy.
I found the death-gating of the levels to be the most obnoxious thing.
I don't want to have to die so that I have the capability to progress, and I don't want to only play like ten levels each life because those are the only rooms on the edge of the cake-walk and brick wall regions. And most of all, I want to know if I suck or if the game really expects me to take down this enemy with a pea-shooter. But I can't tell that when there's a skill tree waiting to be increased if I don't succeed.
I found it to be the most unsatisfying game.
The answer is both.
Rogue Legacy's level system acts as a dynamic difficulty setting. Players have gone through the entire game at low levels or without leveling if they are familiar enough with enemy patterns. Some players take more naturally to things like bullet hell games and platforming. But for the rest of us, the leveling system is there. It makes it so that it's virtually assured everyone can get numbers big enough to progress through the game if they can't do it purely on action gaming.
If you just don't like the platforming and combat period, that's another matter (and there are some classes I just flat out don't like using) but the RPG side is there to bolster people having trouble with the action side (I don't want to think about my final level even with some min-maxing of the castle upgrades) so that sucking at the game is fine and something the game accommodates.
Yeah, nah.
Did a quick search of no-upgrade runs and Aleksander looks impossible without using the RPG mechanics.
So for any realistic playthrough, you've got to use the skill tree.
And if you have to use the skill tree, then you have no gauge of how not-crap-or-otherwise you are.
And so the game has no functional challenge, and is therefore so much grey unjoyous grindy cruft.
That is, a well-implemented dynamic difficulty setting would have some sort of feedback as to what the current difficulty setting actually is.
So I object to calling the death-gating a dynamic difficulty setting.
If I could somehow remove the skill tree from the game, flatten the HP and damage values throughout, and put in a class select I guess, I would have done it and had a much better time.
The coins wouldn't have done anything anymore, and that would have been perfectly fine too.
You're probably looking for a very different game then.
A lot of players like Rogue Legacy specifically because of the skill trees and RPG elements because they don't enjoy high difficulty platformers normally. The game is more of a way to get RPG fans, especially Rogue-like fans, into a tough platformer than it is a way to make platformer fans enjoy roguelikes. If Spelunky is the middle ground between tough platformers and Roguelikes, Rogue Legacy is in the middle befween Spelunky and traditional rogue-likes.
As for dynamic difficulty settings providing clear feedback, that's also not going to be a universal opinion. Dark Souls would a prime example where people complete areas and runs at vastly varying levels based on how many times they died and had to rekill things or engaged in co-op play but you never get clear feedback what the designers thought your stats would be at a given point.
Resident Evil 4 is another prime example where players were generally unaware there was dynamic difficulty in place years after release because it was done so seamlessly. The game adjusted ammo drops, health drops, enemy aggressiveness, and other aspects based on how a player was doing without clearly telling them about it. There it was made so that struggling players could still progress but players doing well would still have to worry about ammo usage and caution around enemies. It may not have been as much of a horror game as previous RE games, but it wanted to make sure players at least couldn't get too cocky during runs and people love RE4. No matter their skill level, people will talk about things like how creepy regnerators were or how to conserve ammo by roundhousing and suplexing not-zombies because the dynamic difficulty made all those things a universal concern and a shared experience without telling them they were getting some slightly different experiences.
Yeah I have to agree with the looking for a different game completely thing. It sounds like you just didn't like that type of game and needing to rewrite the entire formula to work for you kind of proves that. It is dynamic difficulty, it just might not have dynamically worked for you. The game HAS been completed in one sitting, but it wasn't a super popular game to challenge mode even though it was made well for it. A lot of the better runs are done as speed runs, and the fastest way to do it involves a single optimal death I believe. But that is just the nature of the best way and honestly, that still is the game accomplishing it's goal. Just because it might need one death to succeed, doesn't mean the whole system fails. In fact, I think you forget that even if its SUPER nice about it, Rogue Legacy is a rogue like and one of the main traits of those is you are supposed to die. A lot. It isn't written in stone, but it is an expected design choice.
Now I still stand that the one big flaw in the game is it ends up with a lot of unfair deaths due to some control issues and honestly somewhat cheap room designs. That is what I would consider a major gripe. But again, being a Rogue Like the deaths are really supposed to be expected even if it does so unfairly at times.
I get that failure being a part of a game isn't for everyone. But It is for some people, and there are very few games that make expected failure more bearable than Rogue Legacy.
I feel nearly obligated to grab Fallout New Vegas Deluxe/Complete/Adjective for 9 bucks even though I have no idea when I'd play it. Especially when a fair number of people consider it better than both FO3 and FO4.
+5
KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
I find I can't hit anything long range in Rogue Legacy, and that the jumping/platforming isn't really as good as I'd like it to be. Then again, I've considered multiple times after progressing for 8 hours and beating only one boss, that my overall dislike of difficult games and rogue-like death mechanics is overshadowing my enjoyment of RPG progression.
I've considered retiring it almost every time I play it.
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See, I would say Rogue Legacy is a misnomer, and is actually the antithesis of a Roguelike.
In a Roguelike you learn to progress, and sometimes that kills you.
In Rogue Legacy, you die to progress, and sometimes you might learn something. But more likely you'll just reattempt the boss with more damage/HP.
Also, a Roguelike should have little performative skill required to allow that knowledge to be in the forefront.
Rogue Legacy is a platformer, and so does not do that.
Expected death is fine.
Required death is not.
I really did not like Rogue Legacy, and the whole repeated necessary death loop killed an otherwise decent platformer for me there.
Finished Alan Wake and Alan Wake's American Nightmare. Both are very good games that hold up, but American Nightmare while shorter just plays better and is more fun-sized.
Both did a lot of interesting things, but I feel like Alan Wake's combat in particular overstays it's welcome by the end of the game. The story throughout both is great, though I feel like the ending of the original game is a bit abrupt. The suspense builds and builds and then it's sudden curtains. American Nightmare helps to fill in some of what I feel like is a gap in the storytelling though. Lots of interesting characters and situations. Particular highlight for me was the interstitial music at the end of each chapter. The first game got me with a blatant jump scare and I don't like that game ;_;
Recommended if you've never gotten around to playing them!
Did you play the 'special' episodes in Alan Wake before moving on to Nightmare?
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Temporary wormhole, never knew about it. Improvised care package sent and no ship able to survive journey.
Episode on YouTube, worlds apart
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
That's the one! That was a good episode.
I have a bunch of leftover Steam sale cards:
Choices Matter x2
Mom's Spaghetti x2
Labor of Love x2
The world is Grim Enough x2
Defies Description x4
Haunts my Dreams x4
Soul of Vitruvious
Whoa Dude 2.0
if anyone needs some to make their badge.
Valhalla is a bartending themed visual novel set in a cyberpunk dystopia. Emphasis on the visual novel part. The bartending is a minigame that is tightly integrated with the novel segments, but the 'game' is primarily reading. The story is 'kinetic', in that it does not have branching paths. The player does not have control of the dialogue. The story can be influenced by how drunk you get your patrons, and how well you choose drinks to serve them, but the influence seems fairly minor. You also earn commission and tips on the drinks you serve, and making enough money to buy the things the main character yearns for and paying your bills each week is important (and also has an effect on which endings you are eligible for).
The main draw is most definitely the story. The 'main' story is the story of the city itself, however that story is told through the individual plot arcs of the patrons that you serve. The majority of the plot threads are tied up by the end of the game, and the individual character arcs are ended nicely in their own endings (assuming you qualify for them; they are obtained by serving the involved patrons well during that character's key scenes). One of the main drivers of the city 'superplot' is the city mayor, known as QUINCY, who is an analogue for the real world venezuelan president. Many of Glitch City's political dellimas are carbon copies of problems in Venezuela (such as a worthless exchange-rate-controlled local currency). One thing I found interesting is how many of QUINCY's negative aspects are also parallel in Trump (such as corporate driven antienvironmentalism, racism, anti net neutrality, and PR manipulation through both news media misdirection and internet forum trolling).
The game was longer than I expected (13 hours for my playthrough), and even though I beat it in two sittings, I was never bored. I highly highly recommend this game to anyone who likes VNs of any type.
Its pretty great.
I bought this one in 2016 being both a fan of Obsidian's work (though recognizing their many flaws) and having been a regular watcher of South Park in high school and college. I started it up shortly after midnight when the backlog challenge kicked off to give me something more relaxed as a way of cooling down after Dark Souls 3 sessions.
It was fun but parts of it did wear out their welcome. The first thing I was struck by was how well the game nailed the show's art style. From a technical standpoint, that's not the most difficult task but from an art and animation direction standpoint it was rather impressive. This was especially true for the bits that mirrored times the show itself switched from its usual art style into other styles of animation.
Wandering around town rummaging through people's drawers for vendor trash with humorous descriptions and callbacks to the show was one of the highlights. Combat and questing were also enjoyable with the former playing a lot like early Paper Mario games which really suits things perfectly. Some of the button and stick prompts to make your turn based attacks effective got a bit annoying at times (e.g., Stan and Butters have very similar stick motions but different buttons and were easily confused) but working out a strategy that meshed with your character's build against varied opponents was fun.
The puzzle solving to get around during major quests was serviceable but nothing stellar. It's mostly your usual use x ability to do y thing. In many cases you could optionally use abilities outside of combat to eliminate an enemy before battle started which was neat. But the controls to do so often left something to be desired. You do a lot of switching between powers after a while which breaks up the flow of things. And some of the button and stick inputs needed for your fart powers were especially annoying and unclear at first.
Which brings us to the writing. South Park is known for often vile and offensive humor, viewing no one and no subject as being off limits to humor, and often having commentary on some issue affecting society. This game embodies plenty of the first two but is not one of the ones where the writers are providing their opinions on something. This is mostly just an excuse to collect South Park references and kill a lot of zombie Nazis. That's not to say it doesn't say some things. For example, the ridiculous and petty nature of cliques comes up a lot in the game through the idiotic behavior of many characters in ways that often did make me laugh. But there's no central idea or message here.
A lot of the humor comes from references to South Park episodes. Thankfully much of it doesn't require an encyclopedic knowledge of the series. It's been about a decade since I regularly followed the show and I still recognized a lot of the callbacks. The rest of the humor comes from some commentary about media and video games (e.g. a government agent decrying how Nazi zombies are so overdone at the start of a Nazi zombie outbreak) and gross absurdity. It's definitely not for everyone as most episodes of the show never got this awful. One ranged weapon you can find is a used tampon to throw and at one point in the game you fight zombified and Nazified fetuses. If you thought the episode that introduced Mr. Slave was too much, this probably isn't the best game for you.
Overall, it's a shortish (for an RPG) and fun experience for fans of South Park and RPGs. That said, other games have done the humorous RPG thing now. West of Loathing immediately comes to mind as something I'd recommend over Stick of Truth to someone looking for a funny RPG (and anyone that enjoyed Stick should really check out WoL).
This feels like a 7/10: Enjoyable while playing but you're not going to really remember the gameplay a lot after.
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How many missions do I have left in that arc and is there anything beyond beating the last boss?
Arc 2 boss was also damn fun.
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
The game is a pretty good platformer with a very neat aesthetic.
Your basic geometric shape protagonist collects little power circles, and these each transform the world to add more platforming obstacles that move to the background techno track, which is itself transformed on each power-up.
There are four levels (although there were originally three so the end-of-game splash screen is now at the wrong spot), and at the end of each there's a boss fight to shake things up.
It's a pretty nice little game.
The platforming mechanics could be tightened up somewhat, specifically rubbing against the static hazards causes you to die, rather than if you collide with them.
This forces you to 'air-gap' hazards, and is sort of a pain.
But all in all, I enjoyed it, until I went to the level select and found the other four 'levels' over the other side of the screen.
These being mirrored versions of the previous levels which require no deaths.
As the bosses are at the end of these levels, and I had the most problem there, I don't see running the gauntlet to be much of a draw and noped back out of the game.
It also rubs a bit the wrong way, as the actual game is far too short, and now there's the other four impossible levels staring at me.
Oh well.
Neat short platformer, don't push yourself to no-death the levels, and quit at 50% completion IMO.
I agree with the crudeness, but I tend to take it in stride with the nature of the show.
I found I was mostly ignoring the fart-based powers for combat, instead focusing on the, uh, Power Point....powers. I ended up focusing on Cartman as a sidekick for the second half of the game but Butters and Stan had their moments. I did not gravitate toward the buff partners (like Jimmy, or kinda like Kenny) or a healer (like Kyle)
My biggest criticism about combat was that defense abilities had a very small window to hit your button, and enemy telegraphs weren't very straightforward. Part of me understands why it's this way because otherwise you remove the danger element in combat, that you'll lose the fight.
Overall it was a good time for me. It reminds me that I should put more time into Undertale in the future and take a second look at WoL.
Damn, this game is great. It is by no means perfect, but it is exactly what I want out of a Resident Evil game. Gameplay wise, it fits smack dab in between RE4 and the PS1 RE games, with gunplay nearly identical to RE4 (with a less emphasis on melee combat) but with level design straight out of the PS1 titles. The majority of the game takes place on the cruise ship Queen Zenobia, which has an inspired layout. The layout feels a bit metroidvania-y (you collect RE's signature keys, which in addition to unlocking doors you need to progress through for story reasons also usually unlock previously-inaccessible doors from earlier levels.) The layout is a bit dark souls-y too, with progress regularly opening up shortcuts back to older parts of the ship. There are events going on outside the ship, and usually once a chapter there's a segment where you control someone other than Jill. The non-Jill segments do a nice job of breaking up the ship segments, which keeps the ship from feeling stale or tedious.
The story is pretty standard bad-but-good Resident Evil supervillain bioterrorist plot garbage. Enough of a story to give me a reason to plunder a cruise ship full of animated mouldering biomass, but nothing to write home about. I actually have no idea where in the RE timeline the game takes place. You primarily play as Jill and it seems to be before the events of 5, but I could be wrong (actually, I feel like maybe the very final scene might be a lead-up to the RE5 trailer cutscene, but it's been so long since I've seen it that I'm not sure). The game sets itself up for a sequel, which exists as Revelations 2, but I do not own that game, and looking at it in the steam store it seems to be a ridiculous mess of dlc episodes, so chances of me picking it up are fairly slim.
2008, 2012, 2014 D&D "Rare With No Sauce" League Fantasy Football Champion!
Revelations 2 is actually my favorite of the resident evil series I think, it has such good shooting and still retains the feels of confusing areas. I thoroughly enjoyed the shit out of it, barely able to wait for the next episode to come out. If you liked REvelations 1, I STRONGLY suggest REvelations 2. It has much better shooting, and much better multiplayer imo. Its still not online story coop, but the raid system is super fun and engaging, reminding me a lot of Mercenaries from earlier series.
Pick up the intro episode, see if you like it, if you do you can't go wrong buying the rest of the episodes. The Extra RAID stuff and costumes is very much not needed.
CorriganX on Steam and just about everywhere else.
If I buy the first episode, will I still be able to buy the 'collector's edition' pack or whatever it is? The episodes are all ~6 a pop, and there's enough of them that the whole thing looks to be about 40-50 USD, whereas it's half that if I get the collector's pack. I might wait and see if the whole thing goes on sale.
Steam: betsuni7
I needed to jump in on this, because I REALLY liked Rogue Legacy and it was one of the few things I got out of deep diving into the Steam world that I finished(I had to leave because my backlog is so effed and almost all my time is in WoW so its staying that way for awhile)
I think the thing that made it work so well is the short play sessions and that they make almost every single one feel rewarding. I mean, even if you don't get any gold, the fact you choose a new character might be enough to feel like you got something out of dying. So you always think you can fit in another session. The other game that tried to do that was Enter the Gungeon. Only problem is, it had very little if any continuity to gain from each playthrough because it went for a more pure roguelike experience. But because it wanted short sessions, it had to make them super difficult to do it. Because i mean, if you want a short session then if you don't have something to keep the player going, the game is just short. I like how Rogue Legacy did it though because no matter how hard it is, you make the player feel like they can do it eventually by working toward those improvements. It just nailed something special. It had its warts in some spotty room design and sometimes unfair challenges. The game that nailed the room and tight gameplay design was Flinthook. If Rogue Legacy had that quality of design in its rooms and tight gameplay, it would have been gaming perfection.
I need to try Dead Cells too but clearly it can wait because I wouldn't be playing it much right now even if I got it. It likely is a good thing it isn't exactly the same as Rogue Legacy though, because something different is always a good thing.
It differs in that you don't really play as a different character each run; same guy, same stats. It also has a strict level-based structure. Once you clear the first level, you can't go back to it on that run, unlike Rogue Legacy. On the other hand, there is some variety to the levels, and there are alternate levels as well. Instead of going to the Promenade of the Damned as the second stage, I can choose to go to the Toxic Sewers. And every level has its own unique type of layout.
I still haven't beaten the game once. I've met and defeated two different bosses, and I've made it to what I believe is one of the game's final levels, but I've died every time.
Thanks to the prize I won from @Heatwave I decided to get Arizona Sunshine while it was on some degree of a discount (also because you can co-op it and Aumni's on deck for that)
And while I was practising dicking around with shooting zombies, this happened:
Thank you SO much, @HyphyKezzy ! Incredible degrees of class, right there.
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Chief downside was that it was crashy as hell. I don't think I played an hour long session without getting an error when saving "There was a problem saving your session" and then back to desktop. So I replayed a lot of battles and dungeon rooms.
Pretty much everything else was fantastic, though. I loved the art style, and it was fantastically executed throughout the game - overmap, battles, inventory, town screens, cutscenes, etc. Crazy good looking game. Combat was super satisfying. Level progression was great. Loot and gear crafting was engaging. Really it hit all the RPG gameplay dopamine switches.
The story was fine, and maybe more relevant for fans of the comic? Dunno. I came for the monster killing, looting and gearing up.
I loved my 63 hour playrthrough. I think you could do it in much, much less. I took the time to chase down ingredients for all the epic weapons, did all the dungeons on legendary, chased down battle blimps until I found the bandit king, etc. I also spent an embarrasing amount of time fishing looking for that last goddamned fish to fill my Fishiary. But at some point I realized I was a crazy person and just went and finished the game. Curse you Mobius Fish!!
I highly, highly recommend it.
On to the Backlog Battle!
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
Okay, but check back with us after another 12 hours when you've actually reached the end and let us know if you still feel that way.
Gamertag: PrimusD | Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Also, I
barry finally becomes a not-shit dad
Shooting is on par with Hotdogs, Horseshoes and Hand Grenades, but little bit less realistic in that all you need to do to reload is tap the thumb pad to eject the empty mag, then bring your gun close to your chest where your ammo pouch is to reload. Can still get pretty hectic when a horde is bearing down on you and you lose count of how many rounds are left in your gun. There's holsters you can use to swap out other weapons and you can dual-wield, which I thoroughly enjoyed with a pair of revolvers.
What surprised me about the game is that it's co-opable! I thoroughly enjoyed a short session with Aumni. The most memorable part being where we entered an old mine shaft and I had the only flashlight while he was stuck with a glow stick. That was a pretty interesting horde attack with no other light sources available. No friendly fire moments... yet. Got real close a couple of times when we turned around and were surprised by each other but stopped just short of squeezing the trigger.
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The problem with the fart based powers in combat for me was that you have to use an item to have enough mana to use them and it was generally better to use a speed potion as your first item to take an enemy out of the fight quickly instead.
The button prompts have some weird timing going on. You have a fairly generous window of opportunity to press the button after seeing the on screen displays but unlike in many other games trying to time your button presses to sync up with the displays didn't seem to work so well.
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The zombie Nazis felt a bit lazy too. Like I get it, lots of video games have zombie Nazis, but just doing the thing you're parodying feels less parody and more just lazy.
I found the death-gating of the levels to be the most obnoxious thing.
I don't want to have to die so that I have the capability to progress, and I don't want to only play like ten levels each life because those are the only rooms on the edge of the cake-walk and brick wall regions.
And most of all, I want to know if I suck or if the game really expects me to take down this enemy with a pea-shooter. But I can't tell that when there's a skill tree waiting to be increased if I don't succeed.
I found it to be the most unsatisfying game.
The first time I dealt with an enemy that I had to stack DoTs on to deal with took a few tries. It was also at a point where I didn't have a ton of options in that regard but I got a lot of use out of weapon mods that added those effects.
I did actually enjoy how the zombie Nazi thing was done. It helps that it's been a long time since I've played a game involving either which helps things but the fact that it wasn't the usual case of Nazis raising zombies but zombies that also are Nazis and start spouting off random recordings from Hitler's speeches complete with distortion even if they're things like cows or rats made it stand out from the usual approach. It's not masterfully done parody or anything, but still a way to make the trope different.
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http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
The answer is both.
Rogue Legacy's level system acts as a dynamic difficulty setting. Players have gone through the entire game at low levels or without leveling if they are familiar enough with enemy patterns. Some players take more naturally to things like bullet hell games and platforming. But for the rest of us, the leveling system is there. It makes it so that it's virtually assured everyone can get numbers big enough to progress through the game if they can't do it purely on action gaming.
If you just don't like the platforming and combat period, that's another matter (and there are some classes I just flat out don't like using) but the RPG side is there to bolster people having trouble with the action side (I don't want to think about my final level even with some min-maxing of the castle upgrades) so that sucking at the game is fine and something the game accommodates.
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I did like the distorted random hitler recordings on the rats, cows, cats etc. I'll admit that cracked me up.
Yeah, nah.
Did a quick search of no-upgrade runs and Aleksander looks impossible without using the RPG mechanics.
So for any realistic playthrough, you've got to use the skill tree.
And if you have to use the skill tree, then you have no gauge of how not-crap-or-otherwise you are.
And so the game has no functional challenge, and is therefore so much grey unjoyous grindy cruft.
That is, a well-implemented dynamic difficulty setting would have some sort of feedback as to what the current difficulty setting actually is.
So I object to calling the death-gating a dynamic difficulty setting.
If I could somehow remove the skill tree from the game, flatten the HP and damage values throughout, and put in a class select I guess, I would have done it and had a much better time.
The coins wouldn't have done anything anymore, and that would have been perfectly fine too.
Both did a lot of interesting things, but I feel like Alan Wake's combat in particular overstays it's welcome by the end of the game. The story throughout both is great, though I feel like the ending of the original game is a bit abrupt. The suspense builds and builds and then it's sudden curtains. American Nightmare helps to fill in some of what I feel like is a gap in the storytelling though. Lots of interesting characters and situations. Particular highlight for me was the interstitial music at the end of each chapter. The first game got me with a blatant jump scare and I don't like that game ;_;
Recommended if you've never gotten around to playing them!
You're probably looking for a very different game then.
A lot of players like Rogue Legacy specifically because of the skill trees and RPG elements because they don't enjoy high difficulty platformers normally. The game is more of a way to get RPG fans, especially Rogue-like fans, into a tough platformer than it is a way to make platformer fans enjoy roguelikes. If Spelunky is the middle ground between tough platformers and Roguelikes, Rogue Legacy is in the middle befween Spelunky and traditional rogue-likes.
As for dynamic difficulty settings providing clear feedback, that's also not going to be a universal opinion. Dark Souls would a prime example where people complete areas and runs at vastly varying levels based on how many times they died and had to rekill things or engaged in co-op play but you never get clear feedback what the designers thought your stats would be at a given point.
Resident Evil 4 is another prime example where players were generally unaware there was dynamic difficulty in place years after release because it was done so seamlessly. The game adjusted ammo drops, health drops, enemy aggressiveness, and other aspects based on how a player was doing without clearly telling them about it. There it was made so that struggling players could still progress but players doing well would still have to worry about ammo usage and caution around enemies. It may not have been as much of a horror game as previous RE games, but it wanted to make sure players at least couldn't get too cocky during runs and people love RE4. No matter their skill level, people will talk about things like how creepy regnerators were or how to conserve ammo by roundhousing and suplexing not-zombies because the dynamic difficulty made all those things a universal concern and a shared experience without telling them they were getting some slightly different experiences.
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Now:
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Steam ID: Good Life
Yeah I have to agree with the looking for a different game completely thing. It sounds like you just didn't like that type of game and needing to rewrite the entire formula to work for you kind of proves that. It is dynamic difficulty, it just might not have dynamically worked for you. The game HAS been completed in one sitting, but it wasn't a super popular game to challenge mode even though it was made well for it. A lot of the better runs are done as speed runs, and the fastest way to do it involves a single optimal death I believe. But that is just the nature of the best way and honestly, that still is the game accomplishing it's goal. Just because it might need one death to succeed, doesn't mean the whole system fails. In fact, I think you forget that even if its SUPER nice about it, Rogue Legacy is a rogue like and one of the main traits of those is you are supposed to die. A lot. It isn't written in stone, but it is an expected design choice.
Now I still stand that the one big flaw in the game is it ends up with a lot of unfair deaths due to some control issues and honestly somewhat cheap room designs. That is what I would consider a major gripe. But again, being a Rogue Like the deaths are really supposed to be expected even if it does so unfairly at times.
I get that failure being a part of a game isn't for everyone. But It is for some people, and there are very few games that make expected failure more bearable than Rogue Legacy.
I've considered retiring it almost every time I play it.
In a Roguelike you learn to progress, and sometimes that kills you.
In Rogue Legacy, you die to progress, and sometimes you might learn something. But more likely you'll just reattempt the boss with more damage/HP.
Also, a Roguelike should have little performative skill required to allow that knowledge to be in the forefront.
Rogue Legacy is a platformer, and so does not do that.
Expected death is fine.
Required death is not.
I really did not like Rogue Legacy, and the whole repeated necessary death loop killed an otherwise decent platformer for me there.
Did you play the 'special' episodes in Alan Wake before moving on to Nightmare?
EVERYBODY WANTS TO SIT IN THE BIG CHAIR, MEG!