I am thoroughly enjoying Hand of Fate. It pushes so many of my buttons. I recognize that the game is considerably flawed in certain aspects, but holy shit, just, wow. The aesthetics of the card game, the deckbuilding, the RPG elements, those are all great. But then the combat is the Batman dance-fight system?!? (albeit an admittedly poor-man's version of it)
I am thoroughly enjoying Hand of Fate. It pushes so many of my buttons. I recognize that the game is considerably flawed in certain aspects, but holy shit, just, wow. The aesthetics of the card game, the deckbuilding, the RPG elements, those are all great. But then the combat is the Batman dance-fight system?!? (albeit an admittedly poor-man's version of it)
And Hand of Fate 2 ended up better in almost every way, so you have that to look forward to.
I am thoroughly enjoying Hand of Fate. It pushes so many of my buttons. I recognize that the game is considerably flawed in certain aspects, but holy shit, just, wow. The aesthetics of the card game, the deckbuilding, the RPG elements, those are all great. But then the combat is the Batman dance-fight system?!? (albeit an admittedly poor-man's version of it)
And Hand of Fate 2 ended up better in almost every way, so you have that to look forward to.
I am thoroughly enjoying Hand of Fate. It pushes so many of my buttons. I recognize that the game is considerably flawed in certain aspects, but holy shit, just, wow. The aesthetics of the card game, the deckbuilding, the RPG elements, those are all great. But then the combat is the Batman dance-fight system?!? (albeit an admittedly poor-man's version of it)
And Hand of Fate 2 ended up better in almost every way, so you have that to look forward to.
There's a....sequel....?!?
Wishlisted. Holy fuck.
*huff puff* I came as soon as I heard Hand of Fate.
Pulling up an old mini review for 2.
The bad:
-combat can still be a bit wonky and isn't quite as smooth as comparable Assassin's Creed or Batman Arkham games. However, I think in part this is due to Hand of Fate not needing you to be totally action oriented all the time (the hit counter is slow to reset except when you get hit) so it encourages more defensive play, except in timed battles. Still there are times where an attack hits when it might shouldn't have or a bugged situation, or iframes on the weapon skill not working as intended.
The mixed:
-the character creation isn't that in depth, but let's you make a male or female protagonist that you can change any time during the course of the campaign by returning to the campfire. Not a huge thing, but compared to the first game that locked you into a male protagonist with one look it is a step up.
The good:
-Do you like board games? Do you like varying degrees of random chance in your board games? Well HoF 2 has 4 games of chance up from the originals 1. You still have the card shuffle, but now also the card wheel, dice, and pendulum. You'll still cry bullshit at times, but all games can be mastered in some way (watching the cards in the shuffle, calculating where the wheel will land, pendulum is almost all skill). If not, then stack blessings and equipment to tip luck in your favor.
-The Setting: Taking place in a carriage as you travel towards the capital, the Dealer will play out various challenges for you to face. Perhaps you are hunting down relics in the wilderness or helping innocents out of a town riddle by plague. Each challenge adds its own cards to the deck of cards used to construct the adventure giving it a roguelike appearance though you know thereabouts exactly what can happen, but not necessarily in the right order. Completing a challenge adds more cards, which if they have tokens may unlock additional ones letting you explore mini-stories or your various companions' stories while performing a challenge.
-The Dealer: once again the Dealer from the first game plays central stage as he speaks of your journey, the stakes and the challenges you face. He'll be a font of wisdom, a sharp wit to mock your misfortune, or congratulate your successes. He is your constant companion, and while there is always some amount of animosity between you two, he does want you to succeed.
-Length: There are 22 challenges and their length and I'm about 2/3rds through at 14 hours played, so depending on completion rate it will probably be a 17-20 hour game for the challenges. Course some challenges have optional objectives to gain their gold level completion leading to retries though often you need cards from the silver challenge completion to help achieve the gold. I was never locked into a single challenge however so if I found one challenge too difficult I could come back to it later. Also it let's you save and quit out of a challenge at any point so you don't have to finish it in one sitting.
That's what I can think off the top of my head. Try it out, though I'd say if like Bastion/Transistor the narrator/Dealer doesn't suit you then you may not enjoy it nearly as much.
Trailer says PS4, but apparently it's for PC as well, like the original was. It was an adaptation of a Belgian comic book, rendered as a highly stylised cell-shaded FPS, and this was back in 2003 when cell-shading was much less ubiquitous than it is now. It also had David Duchovny sleep-walking through his performance as the central character, balanced out by Adam freaking West as an army general. Another thing it had was a frustratingly unsatisfying cliff-hanger ending, which I don't expect to get much better here.
Oh wow, I played it only a few months ago, I guess I should have waited. The game is clunky here and there but it's fun, it has everything you'd want in fps spy game.
I played XIII back in college. Fantastic game! Although I feel like it teed itself up for a sequel that never came, which was a bummer.
I played it on the OXbox. I remember not being totally enamored. It's been a while, but from what I recall:
- It starts off with inventive, narrative-driven gameplay, but by halfway through the game, it's a slog of getting from point A to B and gamely murdering dozens and dozens of goons on the way. Kind of like Outlaws and Mafia in this regard.
- After murdering many, many goons, the final fight is a boss with a giant bullet-spongey health bar. I hate that.
- You know who the traitor is 2 seconds after talking to him, but it's not revealed until the very end of the game. I think it was that cliffhanger mentioned above. My brother and I were referring to him as "traitor" through the whole game, and I thought for sure it was going to be one of those games where the main character has figured out what's up, but nope.
Every time I play a Borderlands game I can't help but think how much better it would have been with normal 3d shading.
I don't think a graphical overhaul would have made the game better or worse from a gameplay standpoint. At the time, FPS games were all going for the gritty, overly-realistic look (CoD, BF) or super-shiny futuristic look (Halo). Borderlands actually popped hard with the cel shaded look. Probably one of the bigger reason it sold as well as it did....well, that and LOOT!
But at the end of the day, graphics are almost always a personal choice. But from what I've inferred from this conversation is that you need a lot more cel shaded games in your library.
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Of course everything is subjective and if you don't like the look you don't like the look. But they did try a somewhat traditional shading and coloring and it looked drab and dull and kinda boring. I think it was the correct decision to try and make their own style instead.
the change to cell shading literally saved the game during development and also made it stand out in the crowded market.
Wishing them to have kept the old style is a very rare objectively wrong aesthetic opinion.
Trailer says PS4, but apparently it's for PC as well, like the original was. It was an adaptation of a Belgian comic book, rendered as a highly stylised cell-shaded FPS, and this was back in 2003 when cell-shading was much less ubiquitous than it is now. It also had David Duchovny sleep-walking through his performance as the central character, balanced out by Adam freaking West as an army general. Another thing it had was a frustratingly unsatisfying cliff-hanger ending, which I don't expect to get much better here.
Oh wow, I played it only a few months ago, I guess I should have waited. The game is clunky here and there but it's fun, it has everything you'd want in fps spy game.
I played XIII back in college. Fantastic game! Although I feel like it teed itself up for a sequel that never came, which was a bummer.
I played it on the OXbox. I remember not being totally enamored. It's been a while, but from what I recall:
- It starts off with inventive, narrative-driven gameplay, but by halfway through the game, it's a slog of getting from point A to B and gamely murdering dozens and dozens of goons on the way. Kind of like Outlaws and Mafia in this regard.
- After murdering many, many goons, the final fight is a boss with a giant bullet-spongey health bar. I hate that.
- You know who the traitor is 2 seconds after talking to him, but it's not revealed until the very end of the game. I think it was that cliffhanger mentioned above. My brother and I were referring to him as "traitor" through the whole game, and I thought for sure it was going to be one of those games where the main character has figured out what's up, but nope.
XIII suffered from a bit of rushed development plus am IP that wasn't widely known in the US.
I'm pretty sure Borderlands actually isn't cel shaded.
cB557 on
+3
FiggyFighter of the night manChampion of the sunRegistered Userregular
edited April 2019
Whether or not you're a fan of cell shading, it was the right move for them to launch the franchise just weeks ahead of Modern Warfare 2.
Remember that most gamers (and moreso people who buy for gamers) aren't this forum. And the aesthetic of the game against MW2 would have been pretty underwhelming. A unique first visual impression would have made more consumers pay more attention, where they'd then learn about all of the differentiating factors of Borderlands vs typical shooters.
But if you just look at the box and it looks like every other shooter on the shelf, who knows?
Remember the hype build after they switched gears and released this cover on PC Gamer?
I'm pretty sure Borderlands actually isn't cel shaded.
It's technically not, although they do use the z-pass filter to make the thick outlines. They just hand drew all the textures in a western comic book style.
Of course everything is subjective and if you don't like the look you don't like the look. But they did try a somewhat traditional shading and coloring and it looked drab and dull and kinda boring. I think it was the correct decision to try and make their own style instead.
There was also that animated short film that basically looked like Borderlands from a couple years before Borderlands came out...
the change to cell shading literally saved the game during development and also made it stand out in the crowded market.
Wishing them to have kept the old style is a very rare objectively wrong aesthetic opinion.
I'm pretty sure Borderlands actually isn't cel shaded.
It's technically not, although they do use the z-pass filter to make the thick outlines. They just hand drew all the textures in a western comic book style.
It's mostly the thick outlines I hate, I guess, when I think about it. The coloring/shading doesn't really bother me.
Of course everything is subjective and if you don't like the look you don't like the look. But they did try a somewhat traditional shading and coloring and it looked drab and dull and kinda boring. I think it was the correct decision to try and make their own style instead.
There was also that animated short film that basically looked like Borderlands from a couple years before Borderlands came out...
And before that, Scanner Darkly. I'm sure there are others, too.
But in terms of video game style, Borderlands was the first to take the field.
So, I was looking at the request list today, and Moxiboxxi requested a bunch more things. However, I just realized this user signed up on April 13th and has has had exactly ZERO posts. So, before I shut them down I wanted to find out if this was someone's friend or something? I'm totally fine giving away a bunch of stuff if they've got a connection to PA and just never actively participated but if they are some rando who joined for free stuff I'm gonna have to stop the flow. Thanks!
Interesting. I'm always curious when we see indications of the extent to which this thread is watched by non-participants. And are they 'legit' lurkers who just read the thread and haven't joined or spoken up, or are they folks out on the Internet harvesting keys and games?
Like all the [code ][ /code] codes that get taken with no acknowledgement. Where do those go? For a while it seemed to be driven by folks encountering our group-only giveaways on Steamgifts. The volume of those is way, way down, though. So I don't think that's a big driver these days.
Quick update. I spoke to @Moxiboxxi briefly and confirmed he was just a long-time lurker who got excited by the game list. Hopefully since he's registered, now, he'll become a responsible member of our little part of the internet.
the change to cell shading literally saved the game during development and also made it stand out in the crowded market.
Wishing them to have kept the old style is a very rare objectively wrong aesthetic opinion.
I'm pretty sure Borderlands actually isn't cel shaded.
It's technically not, although they do use the z-pass filter to make the thick outlines. They just hand drew all the textures in a western comic book style.
It's mostly the thick outlines I hate, I guess, when I think about it. The coloring/shading doesn't really bother me.
I'm pretty sure there's a way to disable the outlines...I don't remember how, though.
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Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
And Hand of Fate 2 ended up better in almost every way, so you have that to look forward to.
There, I said it.
There's a....sequel....?!?
Wishlisted. Holy fuck.
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Agreed, however, Cel Shading is ok if done correctly
Can't find that post to save my life, what was that game?
*huff puff* I came as soon as I heard Hand of Fate.
Pulling up an old mini review for 2.
-combat can still be a bit wonky and isn't quite as smooth as comparable Assassin's Creed or Batman Arkham games. However, I think in part this is due to Hand of Fate not needing you to be totally action oriented all the time (the hit counter is slow to reset except when you get hit) so it encourages more defensive play, except in timed battles. Still there are times where an attack hits when it might shouldn't have or a bugged situation, or iframes on the weapon skill not working as intended.
The mixed:
-the character creation isn't that in depth, but let's you make a male or female protagonist that you can change any time during the course of the campaign by returning to the campfire. Not a huge thing, but compared to the first game that locked you into a male protagonist with one look it is a step up.
The good:
-Do you like board games? Do you like varying degrees of random chance in your board games? Well HoF 2 has 4 games of chance up from the originals 1. You still have the card shuffle, but now also the card wheel, dice, and pendulum. You'll still cry bullshit at times, but all games can be mastered in some way (watching the cards in the shuffle, calculating where the wheel will land, pendulum is almost all skill). If not, then stack blessings and equipment to tip luck in your favor.
-The Setting: Taking place in a carriage as you travel towards the capital, the Dealer will play out various challenges for you to face. Perhaps you are hunting down relics in the wilderness or helping innocents out of a town riddle by plague. Each challenge adds its own cards to the deck of cards used to construct the adventure giving it a roguelike appearance though you know thereabouts exactly what can happen, but not necessarily in the right order. Completing a challenge adds more cards, which if they have tokens may unlock additional ones letting you explore mini-stories or your various companions' stories while performing a challenge.
-The Dealer: once again the Dealer from the first game plays central stage as he speaks of your journey, the stakes and the challenges you face. He'll be a font of wisdom, a sharp wit to mock your misfortune, or congratulate your successes. He is your constant companion, and while there is always some amount of animosity between you two, he does want you to succeed.
-Length: There are 22 challenges and their length and I'm about 2/3rds through at 14 hours played, so depending on completion rate it will probably be a 17-20 hour game for the challenges. Course some challenges have optional objectives to gain their gold level completion leading to retries though often you need cards from the silver challenge completion to help achieve the gold. I was never locked into a single challenge however so if I found one challenge too difficult I could come back to it later. Also it let's you save and quit out of a challenge at any point so you don't have to finish it in one sitting.
That's what I can think off the top of my head. Try it out, though I'd say if like Bastion/Transistor the narrator/Dealer doesn't suit you then you may not enjoy it nearly as much.
Even if you don't like fighting games as a genre you can't tell me that doesn't look good.
Also almost all of the DBZ fighting games have cel shading and they'd be stupid to not have it.
Here's a few examples of how amazing cel shading can look when done right:
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I played it on the OXbox. I remember not being totally enamored. It's been a while, but from what I recall:
- It starts off with inventive, narrative-driven gameplay, but by halfway through the game, it's a slog of getting from point A to B and gamely murdering dozens and dozens of goons on the way. Kind of like Outlaws and Mafia in this regard.
- You know who the traitor is 2 seconds after talking to him, but it's not revealed until the very end of the game. I think it was that cliffhanger mentioned above. My brother and I were referring to him as "traitor" through the whole game, and I thought for sure it was going to be one of those games where the main character has figured out what's up, but nope.
Dawn of Man?
Conan Unconquered?
Not really the Warcraft 3 art style though.
No, neither of those, sorry.
I don't think a graphical overhaul would have made the game better or worse from a gameplay standpoint. At the time, FPS games were all going for the gritty, overly-realistic look (CoD, BF) or super-shiny futuristic look (Halo). Borderlands actually popped hard with the cel shaded look. Probably one of the bigger reason it sold as well as it did....well, that and LOOT!
But at the end of the day, graphics are almost always a personal choice. But from what I've inferred from this conversation is that you need a lot more cel shaded games in your library.
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https://youtu.be/ztAd70Ol91U
........I should play more FTL.
There are good reasons they dropped the more realistic style even after considerable work had been done on it.
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Wishing them to have kept the old style is a very rare objectively wrong aesthetic opinion.
XIII suffered from a bit of rushed development plus am IP that wasn't widely known in the US.
It was Warparty!
Remember that most gamers (and moreso people who buy for gamers) aren't this forum. And the aesthetic of the game against MW2 would have been pretty underwhelming. A unique first visual impression would have made more consumers pay more attention, where they'd then learn about all of the differentiating factors of Borderlands vs typical shooters.
But if you just look at the box and it looks like every other shooter on the shelf, who knows?
Remember the hype build after they switched gears and released this cover on PC Gamer?
It's technically not, although they do use the z-pass filter to make the thick outlines. They just hand drew all the textures in a western comic book style.
There was also that animated short film that basically looked like Borderlands from a couple years before Borderlands came out...
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
That's adorable. :razz:
It's mostly the thick outlines I hate, I guess, when I think about it. The coloring/shading doesn't really bother me.
And before that, Scanner Darkly. I'm sure there are others, too.
But in terms of video game style, Borderlands was the first to take the field.
Quick update. I spoke to @Moxiboxxi briefly and confirmed he was just a long-time lurker who got excited by the game list. Hopefully since he's registered, now, he'll become a responsible member of our little part of the internet.
For your own Steam Signature visit https://alabasterslim.com/steam-signatures/
Guild Wars 2: Kendrik.5984
I'm pretty sure there's a way to disable the outlines...I don't remember how, though.
For your own Steam Signature visit https://alabasterslim.com/steam-signatures/
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https://borderlands.fandom.com/wiki/Borderlands_PC_Tweaks
The default location of WillowEngine.ini is Documents\My Games\Borderlands\WillowGame\Config\
Outlines on:
Outlines off:
Still, not sure if it still works in the new Enhanced edition.
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