I'm really digging Nine Sols, however I will say that I am getting tired of games taking Dark Souls elements and maybe not quite understanding how and why they work (also, not all design decisions in Dark Souls are good and need to be aped).
Specifically, Nine Sols has a soul pile mechanic- thankfully this only applies to currency, not experience, however the game is pretty stingy with the amount of currency enemies drop (in the first few hours it's like 5-10 per enemy), but literally everything that's not a skill tree upgrade requires it to unlock and starts off at 800 and only gets higher.
So you can be exploring for 20 minutes, scrape up enough to buy one thing, then whoops you dropped into a location you can't return from and died to a big enemy. Now you've respawned 3 areas away, half an hour of currency is stuck in an area you have no map for, and you're pretty likely to die and lose that pile just trying to get back to it.
The currency upgrades also require special items you find in the environment, so the economy largely feels tacked on just to give you something to sweat about- this isn't Dark Souls, where repeatedly going through an area nets you enough currency to, once you get through to the next bonfire, actually get a meaningful bump in your strength, making return trips easier. Here it feels more like a gateway to using the items you fought hard for, encouraging you to just farm near a "bonfire" until you can afford to use that health upgrade.
The game also made me appreciate how Dark Souls item drops and chests work- they always give you a physical item, even if it's a soul item, that you do not lose upon death. Because you know what sucks, Nine Sols? It sucks that I can open a big chest, which drops a bunch of money, and then some fucker wombo-combos me to death and I lose all that money when I fail to get back to my soul pile. That chest is now gone. It feels really bad.
it is a pretty strange cinematic to use as a first impressions piece for a competitive game
like the first two minutes are largely dialogue about a sci-fi heist, and honestly a narrative-heavy game about being space thieves could be interesting
Invisible Inc. wasn't a bad PvPvE competitive heist game, really. A little niche, sure.
I've been slowly plinking away at The Book of Hungry Names, like a chapter a night or so, and I really like it.
I love the chucklefucks of a pack you build. Especially that none of them feel one note, even if they seem like that at first. For example, the muscle you can get for the pack is not dumb muscle. He's a scavenger who also is the tech head of the group, able to craft and code and do all sorts of shit instead of just being a himbo.
+3
Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
edited June 1
Cyberpunk is kind of overhelming me at the moment. I feel like I'm far enough in that I should know what I'm doing better than I do. I keep getting absolutely smashed in combat and I don't know if that's because I need better gear or perks or if I just need to come back to those things later. Should I be doing all the gigs and side jobs? I've tried 3 of the cyberpsychos, 1 I was able to do by sneaking up and doing a takedown, but the other 2 both stand watching the entrance to their area and spot me immediately, and my attacks basically do nothing and they kill me in like 10 seconds.
I also haven't done any crafting or got any cyberware because I dunno what I should be focusing on. In fact I have no idea how crafting works, it's never given me any prompts to do it and the menu makes no sense to me.
I love all the dialogue and character stuff, the dynamic between V and Johnny is great. Just traveling around the city is fun too as it's so interesting to look at the sights. But I'm about 15 hours in now and I don't really feel like I know how to play the game yet.
Brovid Hasselsmof on
0
MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
edited June 1
Cyberware is absolutely, 100% necessary
It is where all of your armor comes from, for example
So without cyberware you are basically going into combat naked
EDIT: I'll also say, as you progress through the game if you pick up and sell guns regularly, you will be pretty flush with cash and cyberware can be swapped out if you want to change it up, so the only thing it ends up costing is money
Cyberware is only restricted by your current max equippable value and how much money you have to burn, there's no reason not to just go to the nearest ripperdoc and have them go to town. There aren't any lore drawbacks to kitting out as much as possible like the TTRPG has.
Ideally you want to kit for however you're investing your attributes/skills at least, like John Punchmans will want the beefcake stuff, etc.
0
Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
Do all the different ripperdocs sell different things?
So far the only thing I've spent money on is a Samurai t-shirt. Very important priority.
Do all the different ripperdocs sell different things?
So far the only thing I've spent money on is a Samurai t-shirt. Very important priority.
Used to be, but as of recent patches they all have the same inventory, but the higher quality availability is tied to your character level.
+1
Librarian's ghostLibrarian, Ghostbuster, and TimSporkRegistered Userregular
Elden Ring: So I head into Castle Morne and talk to Edgar. Get the claymore and switch Sacred Blade over to it as it is just a solid upgrade from my other greatsword. Decide to head straight to the boss, Leonine Misbegotten. Get down there quickly as I avoid most enemies. Summon Edgar. Enter the boss door. Summon my wolves. Hit Leonine with Sacred Blade as he runs at me which slows him. At which point he is fucking piled on by Edgar and three wolves as I hit him with the holy claymore from behind and finish him with a critical. Dude didn't even hit any of us. Felt real good.
Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
Oh one more question for now - I have felt no inclination to do the NCPD jobs because why would V work for the cops. Are they worth doing? The impression I got is they're just one-and-done loot drop type events and don't have much meat on them.
0
minor incidentexpert in a dying fieldnjRegistered Userregular
It is where all of your armor comes from, for example
So without cyberware you are basically going into combat naked
EDIT: I'll also say, as you progress through the game if you pick up and sell guns regularly, you will be pretty flush with cash and cyberware can be swapped out if you want to change it up, so the only thing it ends up costing is money
Also, money eventually becomes, effectively, infinite as you progress. Like, there’s definitely some economic tightness early on, but near the end of the game I literally had more money than I could spend in two lifetimes. So don’t hesitate to try out cyberware, and switch things up whenever you feel like. There are a handful of pretty agreed on “endgame” builds you can settle on late in the game, but the game really is flexible enough to let you approach it however, as long as you’re equipping *something*.
On my current playthrough, I never once touched any hacking stuff and went almost purely melee, and just gradually picked out cyberware around that and it worked out fine.
Ah, it stinks, it sucks, it's anthropologically unjust
Think I'm done with Hollow knight. 45 hours, 94% complete, got the first ending but I didn't think I can will myself to grind out another 1000 essence or deal with the Traitor King corpse run. Real fun and real glad I picked it up off game pass
Use the dream nail teleport thingy.
The what now?
Thanks, this reminded me that I needed to go hit the seer for that upgrade. Ended up nuking traitor king in like 3 attempts once I didn't have to deal with all the damn spikes. Still probably going to call it done because I don't feel like messing with any of the dream bosses but feels good getting TK down.
Oh one more question for now - I have felt no inclination to do the NCPD jobs because why would V work for the cops. Are they worth doing? The impression I got is they're just one-and-done loot drop type events and don't have much meat on them.
They are just more money + more gameplay. If you want to roleplay never doing them, that's extremely doable, but I would recommend the Cyberpsycho jobs, since they're all unique and at least kind of interesting.
Spent the afternoon going through Mullet Mad Jack. Very much what it says on the tin but pretty fun, my favorite part was definitely the main characters' quips
Duke Nukem ripoff voice going "Love your own company!" "Eat more potatoes!" "Free games cost you more in the long run!" got me every time
Nine Sols just ain't feeling very fun to play. Enemies are attacking much faster now and when there's multiple you can get hit from behind really easily because you're focusing on some speedy dudes in front. Also some enemies explode. And some enemies explode into more exploding enemies, enough to murder you dead in a chain reaction in fact because unlike most games you don't get any iframes for being hit, meaning you can and will get juggled to death sometimes and there's not a damn thing you can do about it short of playing perfectly. Sometimes the game will also just spawn enemies behind you during a fight in certain parts to try and get a cheap shot ambush in.
Currency is also a real pain to get and whereas in Souls games when you lose a bunch of souls you wince but press on because you'll get more just by going through areas again? Not the case in Nine Sols. Currency is precious and when you lose over 1,000 all at once that's not going to be easy to get back. And things in shops or other buyables are often 1,000+ so that's a double whammy since you can't buy upgrades if you keep dying.
I just finished a boss that was basically Ornstein and Smough, except the real boss is untargetable until you kill one of the two. Then the boss comes down and starts ringing a bell, allowing you to hit them for a few seconds before the other enemy is revived to full health. And all that time the second of the duo is being a pain in the ass preventing you from doing so. And to make things even "better" the boss heals while it's untargetable, meaning you have to keep killing one of these two to get her to come down for hitting and also to prevent her from healing up too much. Several times, immediately as the fight began, I got juggled to death because both enemies attacked as soon as I had movement and I got bounced between them. It doesn't feel great.
I just finished Titanfall 2 after grabbing it on sale for $5 and that remains a real gem. Playing it on PC is a lot easier in some ways although the controls for sliding and the various Titan abilities are a little less than ideal in the standard setup I think.
But yeah what a nice game, just a very cool short and sweet FPS with a neat multiplayer mode that should have been a gigantic hit.
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i have a couple of complaints about nine sols' combat and probably the biggest one is making the recovery from a knocked state ability something you have to unlock. it's not 'mandatory' but oh my god it is so frustrating how many fights there are where getting hit once can result in an unavoidable sequence that one shots you when you don't have it
(the other main one is that the talisman move feels pretty bad baseline until you get a ton of skill points and also specific jades, which makes me wish there were more options to spend qi because you build qi so fast)
also w.r.t currency
prices are high because the shops you get access to early on are the shops for the rest of the game. as you get later in the game you get more jin faster so i think the prices are high to start to account for that? also most of the stuff you can buy with currency doesn't matter, imo? pretty much the only way you can convert jin into power directly is buying the max hp increasing stuff (and the more effective heal, i guess, but there was never a point in the game where i felt like i needed more healing than i had) and you can't even do that at the beginning
I'm really digging Nine Sols, however I will say that I am getting tired of games taking Dark Souls elements and maybe not quite understanding how and why they work (also, not all design decisions in Dark Souls are good and need to be aped).
Specifically, Nine Sols has a soul pile mechanic- thankfully this only applies to currency, not experience, however the game is pretty stingy with the amount of currency enemies drop (in the first few hours it's like 5-10 per enemy), but literally everything that's not a skill tree upgrade requires it to unlock and starts off at 800 and only gets higher.
So you can be exploring for 20 minutes, scrape up enough to buy one thing, then whoops you dropped into a location you can't return from and died to a big enemy. Now you've respawned 3 areas away, half an hour of currency is stuck in an area you have no map for, and you're pretty likely to die and lose that pile just trying to get back to it.
The currency upgrades also require special items you find in the environment, so the economy largely feels tacked on just to give you something to sweat about- this isn't Dark Souls, where repeatedly going through an area nets you enough currency to, once you get through to the next bonfire, actually get a meaningful bump in your strength, making return trips easier. Here it feels more like a gateway to using the items you fought hard for, encouraging you to just farm near a "bonfire" until you can afford to use that health upgrade.
The game also made me appreciate how Dark Souls item drops and chests work- they always give you a physical item, even if it's a soul item, that you do not lose upon death. Because you know what sucks, Nine Sols? It sucks that I can open a big chest, which drops a bunch of money, and then some fucker wombo-combos me to death and I lose all that money when I fail to get back to my soul pile. That chest is now gone. It feels really bad.
Ugh, yeah that's such an easy design fix. Even like, just re-spawning money chests so you can try again would fix the issue.
That game is super tempting me though... Vaguely furry 2D darksouls seems laser targeted at me.
But my current gaming behavior is to buy things and then play Guilty Gear for another million hours instead- and also Hades just sort of came out... and I need to play FF7 remake before the sequel gets out on PC. Can we just stop making video games for a little bit?
0
Johnny ChopsockyScootaloo! We have to cook!Grillin' HaysenburgersRegistered Userregular
Finally giving the God of War Ragnarok Valhalla DLC some time now that I'm between huge games, and damn for a "We have Hades at home" this is pretty gourmet.
Some people would rather endlessly fight for eternity than go to therapy. But what if the therapy got brought to them between endless fights?
Elden Ring: So I head into Castle Morne and talk to Edgar. Get the claymore and switch Sacred Blade over to it as it is just a solid upgrade from my other greatsword. Decide to head straight to the boss, Leonine Misbegotten. Get down there quickly as I avoid most enemies. Summon Edgar. Enter the boss door. Summon my wolves. Hit Leonine with Sacred Blade as he runs at me which slows him. At which point he is fucking piled on by Edgar and three wolves as I hit him with the holy claymore from behind and finish him with a critical. Dude didn't even hit any of us. Felt real good.
Leonine is one of the early bosses that just gets absolutely bodied by the wolf swarm. Stagger for days.
My buddy and I who had previously played on PS5, both picked up Elden Ring on steam and are running the seamless co-op mod and it is glorious. It's everything I wanted from elden ring and none of the absolute shit fromsoft multiplayer garbage.
It did have a neat bug last night where he was in a dungeon in caelid while I was in one in limgrave. His character, on my screen, would show up in my area doing whatever he was doing on his area. So I'd randomly see his legs hanging out of a ceiling wandering around. Or he'd emerge from a wall and cross a room in front of me, fully engaged in combat with an enemy that I couldn't see.
The plus side was the ai could see him too. So he kept aggroing gremlins who couldn't actually harm him, and I'd just saunter up and backstab them.
Been playing this happy to have a second afro-something game to play this year.
But the frequency of double jumps + air dashes in just the leadup to the first real boss tells me the devs said, "We know and you know how to play these games. So lets roll with the platforming."
Only platforming bullshit is in the challenge areas, which are challenge areas for a reason.
Dead father story analogue is played rightfully touching.
Elden Ring: So I head into Castle Morne and talk to Edgar. Get the claymore and switch Sacred Blade over to it as it is just a solid upgrade from my other greatsword. Decide to head straight to the boss, Leonine Misbegotten. Get down there quickly as I avoid most enemies. Summon Edgar. Enter the boss door. Summon my wolves. Hit Leonine with Sacred Blade as he runs at me which slows him. At which point he is fucking piled on by Edgar and three wolves as I hit him with the holy claymore from behind and finish him with a critical. Dude didn't even hit any of us. Felt real good.
Leonine is one of the early bosses that just gets absolutely bodied by the wolf swarm. Stagger for days.
My buddy and I who had previously played on PS5, both picked up Elden Ring on steam and are running the seamless co-op mod and it is glorious. It's everything I wanted from elden ring and none of the absolute shit fromsoft multiplayer garbage.
It did have a neat bug last night where he was in a dungeon in caelid while I was in one in limgrave. His character, on my screen, would show up in my area doing whatever he was doing on his area. So I'd randomly see his legs hanging out of a ceiling wandering around. Or he'd emerge from a wall and cross a room in front of me, fully engaged in combat with an enemy that I couldn't see.
The plus side was the ai could see him too. So he kept aggroing gremlins who couldn't actually harm him, and I'd just saunter up and backstab them.
Started up Elden Ring again since it's been a year or two and I want to ready for the DLC on a new character. Picked Wretch, got wrecked by the abomination, and currently now rolling around Limgrave on the hunt for loot having just taken down the Tree Sentinel. I've forgotten where everything is and that's just what I wanted. I am using a map thing though to mark where I've been and ensure I loot everything important.
There was a free demo so I put a little under a hour and a half into this.
-I was joking when I said it's satisfactory but candy land but, uh, this is totally Satisfactory but Candy Land. It's first person, resource nodes are infinite and you shove belts directly into machines instead of using loaders (which I feel like every other factory game does.). I'm probably going to pick it up just for that.
-The Candy gimmick feels... Like it has potential but this feels like a fun reskin of Satisfactory in some ways. I'm still early in, but they just changed iron and copper to chocolate and sugar crystals, you still smelt them into chocolate bars and raw sugar, which you then turn into chocolate plates and sugar wires. It's cute, and honestly even though it's the same shit, it's nice to not see yet another one of these with iron and copper.
-It's functional but unpolished. I didn't encounter any bugs or crashes. But it's not even an early access game yet and it shows, it lacks a lot of flare. Like, there's gingerbread men that wander into your factory and they'll attack you if you get close and you can kill them... but it feels less baked (pardon the pun) than even the rudimentary animal stuff in Satisfactory.
-UI needs the most work, as it can be cumbersome and hard to figure out at first, and definitely lacks a lot of the quality of life polish that will hopefully come from it's early access development.
-There is ZERO "gather foliage to handfeed to generators" phase in this game. As soon as you get automation, you can automate power.
-The belts in this game are a little weird, compounded by the fact that every machine has inputs/outputs at different heights. I feel like they're doing it for whimsy reasons, but I figure the hardcore megafactory crowd is going to hate it.
-There's no hub, and I haven't seen any story yet.
I quit playing when I unlocked foundations and walls, since it meant I needed to do a base teardown, but if you want something that scratches that Satisfactory itch and you're willing to put up with very basic presentation, I'd say check it out. Definitely gonna be one I keep an eye on.
Playing a bit mroe and the game is starting to deviate from Satisfactory a bit more. (Jelly jump pads are everywhere, even before you can build your own, and the hangglider ability is ridiculous when used in conjuction with that. It allows you to glide ridiculously far. There's also an exploit where when you deploy the hang glider at the apex of your jump, you'll glide for like a second, but it's way faster than your walk speed.
The demo ended not long after I quit, I basically had just gotten to the end of the tech tree and didn't realized it.
Looking into the company making the game and it seems like they may not be the best; they had a survival crafting game they made in 2023 but they're already working on a sequel due out this year. Someone mentioned that game used unreal store assets, so I checked and it looks like at least the Gingerbread man is from the unreal asset store, so this has the hallmarks of an asset flip studio. Would definitely explain the weird biker-dude hands of the player and the oddly scifi weaponry in the trailer.
...but, like, the core of the game as solid, it just needs to be built out.
Still gonna keep an eye on this one, but I'm going to temper my expectations.
I got back into Wildermyth after the Omenroad update and the notice that the studio's now going to just like stop working because they're done with the project and not sure they feel like starting a new game which seems healthy.
Anyway I'm surprised at how well this new roguelike-ish mode works! I still haven't tried to story-mode version of it, but the just-combat stuff works really well! I forgot how good the tactics layer of this game is, even when it's just 50 fights in a row. I judge all tactics things against Into The Breach, and I think this doesn't quite reach that level of perfect but it has a lot more fun customization and working with the random stuff that gets thrown your way.
Anyway everyone who doesn't have Wildermyth should grab the game and DLC immediately because it's truly one of the greats.
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As much as i think Into the Breach is a very, very good game, it always to me suffered a bit from the absoloutely perfect play issue. Tryign to think how to express this...
Basically there's so little randomness, and so much perfect information that there's very little wiggle room. The randomness of draws in something like Slay the Spire, or Wildermyth's various things makes for a much more engaing experience for me, simply because it takes the edge off.
Course it's possible to go too far in the other direction *stares hauntedly in X-Com*.
Which reminds we, aint heard shit from Firaxis for a while, have we? *checks wikipedia* Oh. Take-two laid off 30 employes back in may 2023. Fuckers.
Still - 8 years since XCOM 2, 7 since war of the chosen, 4 since Chimera Squad (Which i should really check out). Even been a while since Midnight Suns, really. And 8 years since Civ 6 (though that had such a lovely long tail of DLC it's less aww).
As much as i think Into the Breach is a very, very good game, it always to me suffered a bit from the absoloutely perfect play issue. Tryign to think how to express this...
Basically there's so little randomness, and so much perfect information that there's very little wiggle room. The randomness of draws in something like Slay the Spire, or Wildermyth's various things makes for a much more engaing experience for me, simply because it takes the edge off.
Course it's possible to go too far in the other direction *stares hauntedly in X-Com*.
Which reminds we, aint heard shit from Firaxis for a while, have we? *checks wikipedia* Oh. Take-two laid off 30 employes back in may 2023. Fuckers.
Still - 8 years since XCOM 2, 7 since war of the chosen, 4 since Chimera Squad (Which i should really check out). Even been a while since Midnight Suns, really. And 8 years since Civ 6 (though that had such a lovely long tail of DLC it's less aww).
Not sure where XCOM is at with Jake Solomon gone:
XCOM designer Jake Solomon is done with turn-based strategy and is now making a life sim inspired by small town dramas like Gilmore Girls
Features
Midsummer Studios CEO Jake Solomon lays out plans for a Sims-style life sim that pats you on the back for engineering drama.
Yeah I feel like we're basically done with XCOM. I bet there's a second reboot at some point, but it feels like Midnight Suns wasn't enough of a hit.
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Yeah I feel like we're basically done with XCOM. I bet there's a second reboot at some point, but it feels like Midnight Suns wasn't enough of a hit.
As I keep working through Midnight Suns you can see the executive / revenue generating currencies that were half done then abandoned. There are seven different resources, half of which are so throttled it forces you to grind a bunch of meaningless missions if you want to improve a hero.
I suspect that's where you were supposed to spend additional money to unlock stuff faster.
Of course, playing with mods effectively removes all that gatekeeping and gets you to the point of just enjoying the game and unlocking things naturally.
It's all a tragedy because the actual gameplay is sublime.
I am in the business of saving lives.
+1
PaperLuigi44My amazement is at maximum capacity.Registered Userregular
I don't think adding more randomness and less perfect information to Into the Breach would make it better. Playing it again recently I've revaluated that it isn't as perfect as I originally thought, but there's very little I would actually change.
Posts
Specifically, Nine Sols has a soul pile mechanic- thankfully this only applies to currency, not experience, however the game is pretty stingy with the amount of currency enemies drop (in the first few hours it's like 5-10 per enemy), but literally everything that's not a skill tree upgrade requires it to unlock and starts off at 800 and only gets higher.
So you can be exploring for 20 minutes, scrape up enough to buy one thing, then whoops you dropped into a location you can't return from and died to a big enemy. Now you've respawned 3 areas away, half an hour of currency is stuck in an area you have no map for, and you're pretty likely to die and lose that pile just trying to get back to it.
The currency upgrades also require special items you find in the environment, so the economy largely feels tacked on just to give you something to sweat about- this isn't Dark Souls, where repeatedly going through an area nets you enough currency to, once you get through to the next bonfire, actually get a meaningful bump in your strength, making return trips easier. Here it feels more like a gateway to using the items you fought hard for, encouraging you to just farm near a "bonfire" until you can afford to use that health upgrade.
The game also made me appreciate how Dark Souls item drops and chests work- they always give you a physical item, even if it's a soul item, that you do not lose upon death. Because you know what sucks, Nine Sols? It sucks that I can open a big chest, which drops a bunch of money, and then some fucker wombo-combos me to death and I lose all that money when I fail to get back to my soul pile. That chest is now gone. It feels really bad.
Real mad.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
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Invisible Inc. wasn't a bad PvPvE competitive heist game, really. A little niche, sure.
I love the chucklefucks of a pack you build. Especially that none of them feel one note, even if they seem like that at first. For example, the muscle you can get for the pack is not dumb muscle. He's a scavenger who also is the tech head of the group, able to craft and code and do all sorts of shit instead of just being a himbo.
I also haven't done any crafting or got any cyberware because I dunno what I should be focusing on. In fact I have no idea how crafting works, it's never given me any prompts to do it and the menu makes no sense to me.
I love all the dialogue and character stuff, the dynamic between V and Johnny is great. Just traveling around the city is fun too as it's so interesting to look at the sights. But I'm about 15 hours in now and I don't really feel like I know how to play the game yet.
It is where all of your armor comes from, for example
So without cyberware you are basically going into combat naked
EDIT: I'll also say, as you progress through the game if you pick up and sell guns regularly, you will be pretty flush with cash and cyberware can be swapped out if you want to change it up, so the only thing it ends up costing is money
Steam: MightyPotatoKing
Ideally you want to kit for however you're investing your attributes/skills at least, like John Punchmans will want the beefcake stuff, etc.
So far the only thing I've spent money on is a Samurai t-shirt. Very important priority.
Used to be, but as of recent patches they all have the same inventory, but the higher quality availability is tied to your character level.
Also, money eventually becomes, effectively, infinite as you progress. Like, there’s definitely some economic tightness early on, but near the end of the game I literally had more money than I could spend in two lifetimes. So don’t hesitate to try out cyberware, and switch things up whenever you feel like. There are a handful of pretty agreed on “endgame” builds you can settle on late in the game, but the game really is flexible enough to let you approach it however, as long as you’re equipping *something*.
On my current playthrough, I never once touched any hacking stuff and went almost purely melee, and just gradually picked out cyberware around that and it worked out fine.
The what now?
Thanks, this reminded me that I needed to go hit the seer for that upgrade. Ended up nuking traitor king in like 3 attempts once I didn't have to deal with all the damn spikes. Still probably going to call it done because I don't feel like messing with any of the dream bosses but feels good getting TK down.
They are just more money + more gameplay. If you want to roleplay never doing them, that's extremely doable, but I would recommend the Cyberpsycho jobs, since they're all unique and at least kind of interesting.
Currency is also a real pain to get and whereas in Souls games when you lose a bunch of souls you wince but press on because you'll get more just by going through areas again? Not the case in Nine Sols. Currency is precious and when you lose over 1,000 all at once that's not going to be easy to get back. And things in shops or other buyables are often 1,000+ so that's a double whammy since you can't buy upgrades if you keep dying.
I just finished a boss that was basically Ornstein and Smough, except the real boss is untargetable until you kill one of the two. Then the boss comes down and starts ringing a bell, allowing you to hit them for a few seconds before the other enemy is revived to full health. And all that time the second of the duo is being a pain in the ass preventing you from doing so. And to make things even "better" the boss heals while it's untargetable, meaning you have to keep killing one of these two to get her to come down for hitting and also to prevent her from healing up too much. Several times, immediately as the fight began, I got juggled to death because both enemies attacked as soon as I had movement and I got bounced between them. It doesn't feel great.
But yeah what a nice game, just a very cool short and sweet FPS with a neat multiplayer mode that should have been a gigantic hit.
(the other main one is that the talisman move feels pretty bad baseline until you get a ton of skill points and also specific jades, which makes me wish there were more options to spend qi because you build qi so fast)
also w.r.t currency
Ugh, yeah that's such an easy design fix. Even like, just re-spawning money chests so you can try again would fix the issue.
That game is super tempting me though... Vaguely furry 2D darksouls seems laser targeted at me.
But my current gaming behavior is to buy things and then play Guilty Gear for another million hours instead- and also Hades just sort of came out... and I need to play FF7 remake before the sequel gets out on PC. Can we just stop making video games for a little bit?
Some people would rather endlessly fight for eternity than go to therapy. But what if the therapy got brought to them between endless fights?
Steam ID XBL: JohnnyChopsocky PSN:Stud_Beefpile WiiU:JohnnyChopsocky
Leonine is one of the early bosses that just gets absolutely bodied by the wolf swarm. Stagger for days.
My buddy and I who had previously played on PS5, both picked up Elden Ring on steam and are running the seamless co-op mod and it is glorious. It's everything I wanted from elden ring and none of the absolute shit fromsoft multiplayer garbage.
It did have a neat bug last night where he was in a dungeon in caelid while I was in one in limgrave. His character, on my screen, would show up in my area doing whatever he was doing on his area. So I'd randomly see his legs hanging out of a ceiling wandering around. Or he'd emerge from a wall and cross a room in front of me, fully engaged in combat with an enemy that I couldn't see.
The plus side was the ai could see him too. So he kept aggroing gremlins who couldn't actually harm him, and I'd just saunter up and backstab them.
Steam - Talon Valdez :Blizz - Talonious#1860 : Xbox Live & LoL - Talonious Monk @TaloniousMonk Hail Satan
Been playing this happy to have a second afro-something game to play this year.
But the frequency of double jumps + air dashes in just the leadup to the first real boss tells me the devs said, "We know and you know how to play these games. So lets roll with the platforming."
Only platforming bullshit is in the challenge areas, which are challenge areas for a reason.
Dead father story analogue is played rightfully touching.
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
What a wild glitch.
There was a free demo so I put a little under a hour and a half into this.
-I was joking when I said it's satisfactory but candy land but, uh, this is totally Satisfactory but Candy Land. It's first person, resource nodes are infinite and you shove belts directly into machines instead of using loaders (which I feel like every other factory game does.). I'm probably going to pick it up just for that.
-The Candy gimmick feels... Like it has potential but this feels like a fun reskin of Satisfactory in some ways. I'm still early in, but they just changed iron and copper to chocolate and sugar crystals, you still smelt them into chocolate bars and raw sugar, which you then turn into chocolate plates and sugar wires. It's cute, and honestly even though it's the same shit, it's nice to not see yet another one of these with iron and copper.
-It's functional but unpolished. I didn't encounter any bugs or crashes. But it's not even an early access game yet and it shows, it lacks a lot of flare. Like, there's gingerbread men that wander into your factory and they'll attack you if you get close and you can kill them... but it feels less baked (pardon the pun) than even the rudimentary animal stuff in Satisfactory.
-UI needs the most work, as it can be cumbersome and hard to figure out at first, and definitely lacks a lot of the quality of life polish that will hopefully come from it's early access development.
-There is ZERO "gather foliage to handfeed to generators" phase in this game. As soon as you get automation, you can automate power.
-The belts in this game are a little weird, compounded by the fact that every machine has inputs/outputs at different heights. I feel like they're doing it for whimsy reasons, but I figure the hardcore megafactory crowd is going to hate it.
-There's no hub, and I haven't seen any story yet.
I quit playing when I unlocked foundations and walls, since it meant I needed to do a base teardown, but if you want something that scratches that Satisfactory itch and you're willing to put up with very basic presentation, I'd say check it out. Definitely gonna be one I keep an eye on.
The demo ended not long after I quit, I basically had just gotten to the end of the tech tree and didn't realized it.
Looking into the company making the game and it seems like they may not be the best; they had a survival crafting game they made in 2023 but they're already working on a sequel due out this year. Someone mentioned that game used unreal store assets, so I checked and it looks like at least the Gingerbread man is from the unreal asset store, so this has the hallmarks of an asset flip studio. Would definitely explain the weird biker-dude hands of the player and the oddly scifi weaponry in the trailer.
...but, like, the core of the game as solid, it just needs to be built out.
Still gonna keep an eye on this one, but I'm going to temper my expectations.
I appreciate Reus 2's sense of humor.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/thezombiepenguin/
Switch: 0293 6817 9891
Anyway I'm surprised at how well this new roguelike-ish mode works! I still haven't tried to story-mode version of it, but the just-combat stuff works really well! I forgot how good the tactics layer of this game is, even when it's just 50 fights in a row. I judge all tactics things against Into The Breach, and I think this doesn't quite reach that level of perfect but it has a lot more fun customization and working with the random stuff that gets thrown your way.
Anyway everyone who doesn't have Wildermyth should grab the game and DLC immediately because it's truly one of the greats.
Basically there's so little randomness, and so much perfect information that there's very little wiggle room. The randomness of draws in something like Slay the Spire, or Wildermyth's various things makes for a much more engaing experience for me, simply because it takes the edge off.
Course it's possible to go too far in the other direction *stares hauntedly in X-Com*.
Which reminds we, aint heard shit from Firaxis for a while, have we? *checks wikipedia* Oh. Take-two laid off 30 employes back in may 2023. Fuckers.
Still - 8 years since XCOM 2, 7 since war of the chosen, 4 since Chimera Squad (Which i should really check out). Even been a while since Midnight Suns, really. And 8 years since Civ 6 (though that had such a lovely long tail of DLC it's less aww).
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/thezombiepenguin/
Switch: 0293 6817 9891
Not sure where XCOM is at with Jake Solomon gone:
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/life-sim/xcom-designer-jake-solomon-is-done-with-turn-based-strategy-and-is-now-making-a-life-sim-inspired-by-the-small-town-drama-of-gilmore-girls/
Jake Solomon obviously wasn't the only person working on XCOM, but he was the studio head that 2K credits the project to
This is probably fine.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/thezombiepenguin/
Switch: 0293 6817 9891
As I keep working through Midnight Suns you can see the executive / revenue generating currencies that were half done then abandoned. There are seven different resources, half of which are so throttled it forces you to grind a bunch of meaningless missions if you want to improve a hero.
I suspect that's where you were supposed to spend additional money to unlock stuff faster.
Of course, playing with mods effectively removes all that gatekeeping and gets you to the point of just enjoying the game and unlocking things naturally.
It's all a tragedy because the actual gameplay is sublime.
Absolutely.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/thezombiepenguin/
Switch: 0293 6817 9891