I am admittedly currently tilted and salty, however the kids like to call these days. But I'm taking Tooth and Tail off of my backlog early, which is something I've only done to three or four games in my entire life by now. Here's why (mild plot spoilers)
I'm in a mid-to-late-game in which you are assigned to break up a happy little truce being formed by three of the game's four factions. This is, plot-wise, certainly meant to be a grueling uphill battle. Here's a few of the special conditions you're up against:
- You start with only campfires, not farms. The relevant difference is that farms you can build out to provide eight times the resources per second, whereas campfires are heavily limited. These campfires will eventually give out, leaving you with no resources (meaning you lose).
- The enemy, by contrast, starts with several fully-upgraded farms and multiple campfires. And theirs, unlike yours, don't deplete with usage.
- In Tooth and Tail, you order your units around with a special "commander" unit. This lets you see where the AI is planning to attack. In this mission, there is no enemy commander-- all of their individual units can move autonomously, so no matter where you try to move, take over enemy production facilities, or attack, there will be enemy units waiting, in force, because they have unlimited resources.
- You can take over the enemy's farms and campfires if you destroy them. But good luck doing so without losing half your troops, because the enemy is everywhere you don't have turrets.
- There is a special day/night cycle in place. During the night, enemies will spawn at the edge of the fog of war and attack your buildings. These are free units for the enemies and the practical upshot is that you have to either heavily restrict your movements or invest deeply in some static defenses.
- There are prison complexes that you can attack to gain powerful units. Unfortunately, they're also manned by siege weaponry that, due to the dense layout of the map, is likely to have free shots at most of your units before they get within firing range. And they're going to have to wade through all those infinitely-generated enemy units anyway.
- Oh, by the way, the map goal is a total rout. To win, you have to destroy every single enemy on the map.
But that's just how they designed the map to be horrible. Here's two failings I've run into that weren't planned:
- Tooth and Tail randomly generates its maps. I've had multiple attempts where my base spawned in firing range of one of the prisons with a siege cannon and had parts of my base blown up before I could get anyone there to respond.
- This is what finally broke me: after getting 15 minutes into one attempt (and most of them that got anywhere were 15 minutes, I realized that one of the prisons had been generated in an unreachable position. I triple-checked the map, right-hand ruled the perimeter, checked the mini-map for clues as to what the game thought was a walkable tile-- and anything the minimap said was walkable ground was actually blocked by some incidental prop rocks. So the one actually good chance I had of clearing the map was stymied by a map design that could have been found with a basic maze verifier. (Oh... and the only flying units you get for this mission are the medics. So I couldn't try to fly some airborne guys over either.)
I'll admit that 98% of my frustration with this mission was my own bad strategies and poor RTS play. But when the remaining 2% is "the game might actually just be literally impossible to win", then I'm out. It's a waste of time.
To follow up on this:
Because I am bullheaded to a fault, I decided to go back several hours after declaring I'd have nothing more to do with the game and attempted the mission again, this time with a revised battle plan.
Tooth and Tail has what it calls "Heroic Objectives", which are meaningless bonus requirements you can try to fulfill as you go after the main objective. In the mission I described above, the Heroic objective is "don't build any barracks", meaning your army is capped at the initial troop allotments you receive-- new units will be built to replace the ones that get destroyed, but only up to a specific (low) cap. It's possible, through guerilla tactics and relying heavily on static defenses (which are except from the "no barracks" rule), to manage with that particular troop size. However, you can easily wipe out by being over-aggressive for just a few seconds, resulting in a time-and-money costly session of replacing your dead units.
The psychological trap I fell into with this Heroic Objective was the fact that it persists indefinitely, as long as you are willing to not use a specific button. Other Heroic Objectives, like winning in a certain amount of time or defending specific allied structures, can be involuntarily failed, and if that happened I was perfectly happy to proceed to the regular objective. With this mission, though, building more barracks felt like an admission of failure. It was only once I said "would I rather keep the Heroic Objective, or actually win the fucking map" that things proceeded at a normal pace. It is not fair of me to take my frustrated pride out on the game or its developer's reputation.
The two "last straw" criticisms from above stand as stated: you will have to restart the mission several times to get a favorable randomly-generated map in order to start, and the specter of an unwinnable map still looms over the whole affair. However, if you actually build yourself a larger army and ignore the "But you aren't winning hard enough!" flag, the map I'm talking about becomes manageable. So Tooth and Tail is a lot better than my initial post makes it seem.
My favorite musical instrument is the air-raid siren.
Mx. QuillI now prefer "Myr. Quill", actually...{They/Them}Registered Userregular
Oh cool, Pyre got a new True Nightwings mode that rebalances aspects of the game, opens up the entire shop inventory from the beginning, and doesn't let you restart rites/reload checkpoints.
They also added the acoustic songs and the eight variations of Never To Return to the soundtrack, as a free download if you already own it.
I hope someone swoops in and saves The Good Life/White Owls Studio, because YEESH
I mean, clearly public interest isn't there
Who would invest in something that hasn't even made 20% of its funding goal
Someone that believes in the creator and thinks they can get more interest stirred up with marketing dollars
It happens fairly regularly and leads to successful projects
yeah i'd buy the game the second it cam out but i refuse to back video games anymore. i've done maybe 12 since KS launched and 2 have finished.
The only PC game that I've backed on KS that hasn't completed appears to still be in progress. It's years behind already though, and most of the others I backed finished 1 or more years late as well. Even though the games I've backed pretty much all turned out to be good games, they end up taking so long that I'm just not interested in backing any others at this point.
Just the entire way things are being run, with SWERY asking Twitter about stretch goals and whatnot, just makes me think it could be way better if he had a social media/marketing person for this thing.
Yeah, all the videos I've seen of Cuphead do not make it seem that hard. I assumed it was just because it was the beginning levels I was seeing but maybe not?
But if I can do no death runs of Castlevania and Ghosts and Goblins, I can probably handle this.
Yeah, all the videos I've seen of Cuphead do not make it seem that hard. I assumed it was just because it was the beginning levels I was seeing but maybe not?
But if I can do no death runs of Castlevania and Ghosts and Goblins, I can probably handle this.
What I've heard is that even when it's very challenging it's fair. Moves are telegraphed and there's always ways to deal with things. It may require a lot of time to learn patterns and really good reflexes, but it's possible to not just succeed but feel like you're succeeding (in contrast to a lot of what I like to call "bullshit platformers" that are so obstinately difficult that making progress isn't even satisfying because you feel like it was just random luck).
+1
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BroloBroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered Userregular
Occasionally there are games where I think 60 fps is a mistake
Cuphead is one such game
To see that 1930's cartoon style moving so fluidly kills the entire purpose behind it, as far as I'm concerned
It still looks great in stills but I think it looks kinda bad in motion
no. not at all.
it looks great. it moves exactly like those cartoons did. the movie shorts from the 1930's WERE that fluid
the gameplay is incredibly fun but they really need an immediate "quit to desktop" option in the menu, not quit, wait for a loading screen, get another splash screen, wait for a loading screen go to another menu and exit game.
it can get frustrating sometimes and I just want out.
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Hob is out tomorrow
To follow up on this:
Tooth and Tail has what it calls "Heroic Objectives", which are meaningless bonus requirements you can try to fulfill as you go after the main objective. In the mission I described above, the Heroic objective is "don't build any barracks", meaning your army is capped at the initial troop allotments you receive-- new units will be built to replace the ones that get destroyed, but only up to a specific (low) cap. It's possible, through guerilla tactics and relying heavily on static defenses (which are except from the "no barracks" rule), to manage with that particular troop size. However, you can easily wipe out by being over-aggressive for just a few seconds, resulting in a time-and-money costly session of replacing your dead units.
The psychological trap I fell into with this Heroic Objective was the fact that it persists indefinitely, as long as you are willing to not use a specific button. Other Heroic Objectives, like winning in a certain amount of time or defending specific allied structures, can be involuntarily failed, and if that happened I was perfectly happy to proceed to the regular objective. With this mission, though, building more barracks felt like an admission of failure. It was only once I said "would I rather keep the Heroic Objective, or actually win the fucking map" that things proceeded at a normal pace. It is not fair of me to take my frustrated pride out on the game or its developer's reputation.
The two "last straw" criticisms from above stand as stated: you will have to restart the mission several times to get a favorable randomly-generated map in order to start, and the specter of an unwinnable map still looms over the whole affair. However, if you actually build yourself a larger army and ignore the "But you aren't winning hard enough!" flag, the map I'm talking about becomes manageable. So Tooth and Tail is a lot better than my initial post makes it seem.
It looks dope
Ruiner is also out today
I need this thread to be closed so I can make a new one primarily about Cuphead being out this week
fuck
I really want to play Ruiner but fuck, no time at all for this
Vinny doesn't seem to realize that you can push enemies over railings to kill them.
18%
The Good Life, the game that is not coming out, would have had dogs too
They also added the acoustic songs and the eight variations of Never To Return to the soundtrack, as a free download if you already own it.
3DS Friend Code: 2165-6448-8348 www.Twitch.TV/cooljammer00
Battle.Net: JohnDarc#1203 Origin/UPlay: CoolJammer00
I mean, clearly public interest isn't there
Who would invest in something that hasn't even made 20% of its funding goal
Someone that believes in the creator and thinks they can get more interest stirred up with marketing dollars
It happens fairly regularly and leads to successful projects
yeah i'd buy the game the second it cam out but i refuse to back video games anymore. i've done maybe 12 since KS launched and 2 have finished.
The only PC game that I've backed on KS that hasn't completed appears to still be in progress. It's years behind already though, and most of the others I backed finished 1 or more years late as well. Even though the games I've backed pretty much all turned out to be good games, they end up taking so long that I'm just not interested in backing any others at this point.
3DS Friend Code: 2165-6448-8348 www.Twitch.TV/cooljammer00
Battle.Net: JohnDarc#1203 Origin/UPlay: CoolJammer00
Cuphead is out
It all comes down to this
sorry we had to change how time works
because of daylight savings?
anyway cuphead fall 2325 switch launch date TBA
that is some impressive denial
i'm gonna buy it and suck at it and then watch someone beat it in 10 minutes at AGDQ
it's gonna be great
But the multiplayer will let you visit other player's towns as your chosen animal regardless of what animal they play as.
Which then leads me to go "wait, you have multiplayer planned for this?!?!"
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
But if I can do no death runs of Castlevania and Ghosts and Goblins, I can probably handle this.
What I've heard is that even when it's very challenging it's fair. Moves are telegraphed and there's always ways to deal with things. It may require a lot of time to learn patterns and really good reflexes, but it's possible to not just succeed but feel like you're succeeding (in contrast to a lot of what I like to call "bullshit platformers" that are so obstinately difficult that making progress isn't even satisfying because you feel like it was just random luck).
So a few of my friends bought this game on PC and have been really enjoying it
So now I await the PS4 version
It looks like Road Rash except you can straight up murder fools, and from their description that's exactly what it is and is fun as hell
Cuphead is one such game
To see that 1930's cartoon style moving so fluidly kills the entire purpose behind it, as far as I'm concerned
It still looks great in stills but I think it looks kinda bad in motion
and it looks visually amazing and also like I would probably have gotten real frustrated and given up about 5 minutes in
edit I think the way your progress on any attempt is almost completely opaque is what would drive me up the wall the most
It shows you a progress meter when you die, including spots where the boss switches patterns!
Oh that is good to know! I wonder how I never noticed that in the other videos I've seen
no. not at all.
it looks great. it moves exactly like those cartoons did. the movie shorts from the 1930's WERE that fluid
the gameplay is incredibly fun but they really need an immediate "quit to desktop" option in the menu, not quit, wait for a loading screen, get another splash screen, wait for a loading screen go to another menu and exit game.
it can get frustrating sometimes and I just want out.