Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
Staaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrsssss
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
I wonder if they'll ever go back and do a remake of RE1 in the style of the RE2/RE3 remakes
Like, I can understand why they didn't start there, as that game has already been remastered and partially remade multiple times, but those aren't really on the scale of what they did with RE2, as I understand it
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
I wonder if they'll ever go back and do a remake of RE1 in the style of the RE2/RE3 remakes
Like, I can understand why they didn't start there, as that game has already been remastered and partially remade multiple times, but those aren't really on the scale of what they did with RE2, as I understand it
I mean, at the time it was a similar scale and scope to what the RE2 REmake is now.
Except RE4 hadn't come out yet.
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
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MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
With the Newgame+ Feature completed we’re now focusing our work on the Post Game DLC that will add a little Epilogue to the current end of CrossCode. Among other things it will feature things like an extended Rhombus Square, more Quests, and a proper Final Dungeon. And also a few answers to some of the questions you might still have at the end of CrossCode’s story.
We don’t have a release date for the Post Game DLC yet, as it will still take some time to develop. We’re currently targeting Q2, 2020.
As we’re currently focused on the DLC, we unfortunately don’t have a lot of content ready for regular game update. However, you can expect an upcoming technical update in the next 1-2 weeks, as we plan to update NW.js, the software/engine we use to run CrossCode. We hope that this will fix some of the Crash issues people experience on Linux as well as Memory Leaks on Windows. There will also be a little feature added to that, but more on that later!
Also working on console versions, with the Xbox version being focused on first.
Only thing I wanna know about CrossCode is when the fuck's it coming to Switch godammit
Not right now, I don't think so. Maybe in like, ten years? I don't think there's any need to remake 4 right now, really. Game design has changed a lot since RE2 and 3. It has changed since 4, but not nearly as drastically.
KR0 has more finished game available to play, it doesn't keep nickel-and-diming you with transactions both micro-and-macro.
It's also absolutely an example I would cite not just for games being art but games as literature
And yet it still isn’t done, which is the point of the joke.
Episodes 1-4 are done. None of Star Citizen is out of Early Access. I don't think any of it is even technically beta? Maybe it left alpha recently.
It's on v3.7.2.
...which is still considered "alpha." So more like 0.3.7.2 but whatever.
It's supposed to go into beta sometime next year? But if you accept the delineation of alpha and beta as something that feature complete and consider all the batshit things Roberts wants to put in this thing, then ahahahahahaha
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Remaking 4 now would be more like remaking 1 when 1 was remade (which they did do, so who knows).
Like, Resident Evil 1 through 0 are all based around fixed camera angles as an important part of how you explore the game. They're deeply disorienting and add a bunch to the horror, especially in early games that weren't exactly able to wield realism as an element there.
The switch to the over the shoulder third person with 4 is a massive change for the games, and the locations in Resident Evil 4+ feel very different than the locations in the earlier games because of it. The RE2Make is, in addition to everything else, a remake based around switching the game to these controls. Plus improved graphics, improved enemy AI, that sort of thing.
So a remake of RE4 at this point would probably just be better graphics and better enemy AI? Which I mean, RE4 is a very popular game, I'm sure that would do fairly well. But it wouldn't be the level of gamechanger that remaking 2 or 3 is.
That list of game reccomendations is rather nice.
You're making me feel like I should give Phantom Doctrine a try. I kind of wrote it off, but I've played the rest of those and enjoyed them.
I did play some Black Closet but never finished a full run. It's an interesting one.
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ApogeeLancks In Every Game EverRegistered Userregular
I’ve been mostly playing console games for the past ~six years, but should be finishing a pc build tomorrow. I’ve grabbed Total War: Warhammer 2 and Battletech off the steam sale, what other recent-ish titles should I be looking at?
I’m open to anything except horror, sims, and the more intensive 4x/strategy games (I’m on the fence with Stellaris, it looks neat but I also thought that about Crusader Kings 2 before dropping it after a couple hours).
On my buy-in-the-near-future list I’ve got Control, Disco Elysium, Plague Tale, a multiplayer shooter (either Rainbow Six or Overwatch, both of which I’ve played on console), possibly Monster Hunter when the expansion drops. I might add some bigger multiplatform titles, but particularly I’m interested in more modestly budgeted / indie releases that I might be overlooking.
On the budget/indie side, I'd go with my usual recommendation of Bastion and Transistor as the best-of-the-best.
Bastion is a top-down arcade-y brawl-y sorta adventure with a subtle backstory and the best narrator voice this side of Darkest Dungeon. It's cheap, grab it and enjoy it and be sure to beat the bonus levels that show up late in the game for some additional sweet, sweet backstory.
Transistor is the follow up to Bastion that is a totally new story and setting, but similar interface with the addition of optional turn-based mechanics (which sounds weird, but it works). It has a more more personal story and is absolutely beautiful to play. It's my go-to example of 'games as art that are still games'.
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
That list of game reccomendations is rather nice.
You're making me feel like I should give Phantom Doctrine a try. I kind of wrote it off, but I've played the rest of those and enjoyed them.
I did play some Black Closet but never finished a full run. It's an interesting one.
I felt like having it be about a generic terrorist organisation kind of squandered the cold war setting a bit, for one.
I think it was a tough balance to strike, and they definitely faltered in some places.
I like the idea that all of these historical events are actually even more wrapped up in government conspiracy than they already were. I think it provides both a point of connection, to keep it from feeling totally disconnected from its setting, and also gives the opportunity for divergence, such that the player can't know exactly what is going to happen next just by having a Wikipedia page about 1983 world events pulled up on their phone.
But it did also feel very generic at times, especially with the large amount of repetition in the non-story missions.
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pyromaniac221this just might bean interestin YTRegistered Userregular
I’ve been mostly playing console games for the past ~six years, but should be finishing a pc build tomorrow. I’ve grabbed Total War: Warhammer 2 and Battletech off the steam sale, what other recent-ish titles should I be looking at?
I’m open to anything except horror, sims, and the more intensive 4x/strategy games (I’m on the fence with Stellaris, it looks neat but I also thought that about Crusader Kings 2 before dropping it after a couple hours).
On my buy-in-the-near-future list I’ve got Control, Disco Elysium, Plague Tale, a multiplayer shooter (either Rainbow Six or Overwatch, both of which I’ve played on console), possibly Monster Hunter when the expansion drops. I might add some bigger multiplatform titles, but particularly I’m interested in more modestly budgeted / indie releases that I might be overlooking.
Ok! Here's a quick list based on all of that, with notes in the spoilers:
GAMES WITH TACTICAL COMBAT
- XCOM and XCOM 2
(maybe you already played these on console, but if not, they're definitely worth it here!)
- the Shadowrun Returns RPGs (Shadowrun Returns, Dragonfall, Shadowrun Hong Kong)
These are by the studio that developed Battletech (and which is run by the guy who invented both tabletop franchises). They're story-heavy cyberpunk-fantasy RPGs with grid-based tactical combat, a la XCOM; you control a party of people specializing in various guns, melee weapons, and magic styles. Outside of combat, the stories are well-written with memorable characters and some difficult choices. Each game clocks in at 10-15 hours and I think they're excellent examples of how to do a good game on a small budget.
- Into the Breach
Giant kaiju monsters have invaded the world and only you, controlling a squad of mechs, can save it. You do this by battling the monsters on a grid, trying to defeat them all before they do critical damage to buildings and the people within. There's no random element, and the creatures move in predictable ways (and the game tells you what they're going to do with their turn) so you can pull off cool tricks: is a monster shooting at a building? Try knocking him into a different row so his shot hits his buddy instead. Playing optimally means you can defeat every monster and save every human with no losses. Of course, that's way easier said than done.
It's very Pacific Rim, with an interesting and welcome emphasis on saving lives, and you can get different mechs with different powers and equipment that can be upgraded, resulting in very different play experiences. The whole thing has a very tight, elegant feel, and the lo-fi pixel art presentation is charming.
- The Banner Saga 1, 2, and 3
Tactical RPGs where you control a dwindling caravan of warriors, refugees, and survivors fleeing the end of the world in a Norse-themed setting. The tactical combat has a very chess-like stark simplicity, where characters move and act in strictly-prescribed ways without an element of randomness. Which can be a bummer as you can't rely on a lucky headshot or whatever to save the day, but is very satisfying when your perfect tactics utterly destroy the enemy.
The campaign layer above the tactical layer is a mixed bag. The story is well-written and compelling and the presentation is lush, with characters and environments rendered in a very quasi-Disney, vibrant, colorful way, but the story presents a lot of choices where the stakes are obscure and the consequences don't become apparent until much later. Do you pick an apple from this tree? You did? Oh, you stupid fucking fool, now your best guy is dead. I kind of hated that part of the game - but it's a testament to how much I enjoyed thecore gameplay, and how fascinated I was with the story being told, that I plowed through anyway.
- Phantom Doctrine
A rough-around-the-edges, not entirely successful but smart and interesting and innovative XCOM-a-like set during the Cold War. You run a spy agency and are pitted against a global conspiracy; you recruit agents, build a global spy network (not too fiddly, though, this is much more XCOM than Crusader Kings), and send them on tactical missions where they can use stealth and gadgetry or go in guns blazing. Agents can develop personality quirks as you play and some might turn mole for the enemy - but you can also brainwash captured enemy agents to your own side.
The combat does an interesting thing where instead of relying on a percentage chance to hit (an infamous source of frustration in XCOM when your guys blow 99% headshots) every shot is assumed to hit instead, but targets have an Awareness score that is drained (very quickly) by being shot at and only regenerates in cover. So the onus is not on you to get lucky and roll the dice well, but to mitigate damage and incoming fire by doing everything you can to keep from being shot at in the first place. Which feels really appropriate for a spy game, to me.
ADVENTURE + PUZZLEY GAMES
- Unavowed
A 90s style pixel art adventure game combined with a Bioware RPG. You play an ordinary person in modern-day NYC (choosing their gender and a profession of either bartender, cop, or actor) who was possessed by a demon and forced to commit horrible crimes. Now you awake a year later, freed from the possession by the Unavowed, a secret society of monster hunters. You join them to help set right the demon's crimes and track it down. It's a classic puzzle adventure game, but each member of the Unavowed has a different skillset (one person is super-strong, another sees and communicates with ghosts, etc) and who you choose to accompany you on each mission changes how the game plays out. It's well-written and a ton of fun.
It's also a sequel to...
- The Blackwell series (The Blackwell Legacy, Blackwell Unbound, The Blackwell Convergence, The Blackwell Deception, The Blackwell Epiphany)
A series of indie adventure games by the creator of Unavowed made between 2008 and 2015. You play Rosa Blackwell, a reporter in NYC who discovers she's inherited the family curse: Joey, the ghost of a deceased wiseguy from the 20s who's been sent to Earth to help Rosa's family put lost souls to rest, often by solving the circumstances of their deaths. It's like the Sixth Sense, except Haley Joel Osment is an adult woman with social anxiety and Bruce Willis is a pinstriped joker who calls people "toots."
The games are well-written and the fantasy elements are very low-key; mostly you explore real-life New York environments and get involved in very slice-of-life (if sometimes tragic) stories of forlorn lovers, college kids who took a wrong turn, etc. The puzzles are mostly fair, to the point of being on the easy side. The games are short and sweet, each one clocking in at only a few hours long; playing them in a row feels like binging episodes of a TV show, and they build an over-narrative that comes to a satisfying conclusion. They're also only like a couple bucks apiece. I strongly recommend them if you like point-and-clicks.
- Heaven's Vault
A science-fiction archaeology game that puts you in the role of a woman trying to track down a missing scientist across a series of alien worlds, and challenges you to decipher the inscriptions left behind by a long-lost civilization to advance the story. That...might not sound like fun, but in truth, I was hooked. The alien language has some cool subtle shades of meaning that actually change your perception of the plot as you move through the game. The actual presentation is really lovely, with beautiful environments.
- Baba Is You
A puzzle game with charmingly minimalist graphics where the rules of the puzzle are physical objects within the puzzle, and manipulating those objects can change the rules. So if Baba (a cute little sheep thing) is You, you control the sheep on the screen. But if you push the word "baba" away from the phrase "baba is you" and replace it with the word "rock", suddenly you control every rock on the screen. Or maybe you want to get past some lava, so you say LAVA is DIRT. Those are just examples. Idk, it's a hard game to explain but it's incredibly intuitive and elegant in practice.
- Black Closet
A very weird and cool indie narrative puzzle game/visual novel...thing. I never see anyone talking about this, I think largely because its anime-y style gives people the wrong impression about it, but I strongly recommend it.
You play a young woman, a senior at an exclusive private boarding school for ladies, who is elected senior class president. It turns out that being head of the Student Council means being responsible for policing your fellow students to avoid scandal and keep the school's name out of the papers.
What this means in gameplay terms is that there are procedurally generated mysteries to solve. This blew my mind, because I didn't think procedural mystery generation was even possible, but here this indie anime game goes and does it? Anyway, what happens is that students come to you wtih a problem: Jenna is being kept awake at night by spooky noises, Raven has been depressed and has run away, Valerie and Ilana got into a brawl in the cafeteria over a boy.
You command the girls of the Student Council, each of whom have different specialties: one is towering and intimidating, one is scientifically gifted, one is such a wallflower that she can get anywhere without being seen. You assign them various tasks - talk to the witnesses, investigate the scene, break into someone's dorm. They succeed or fail based on their stats, and come back to you with information: the runaway girl had letters from a boy in her drawer, the strange noises are being made by the girl's roommate who wants her to fail calculus, the two angry girls tell you to fuck off. You decide what kind of action to take, whether to recommend anyone for suspension or expulsion, and are graded on your results. Meanwhile, time is passing and you have your own exams to study for.
And along with all this, there's an overarching story involving a mystery at the school, and a dating-sim element where you can hang out with the various girls of the Student Council, each of whom has their own story, and try to get to know them better. Which is good, because one of them is a traitor who's trying to undermine your efforts on behalf of a rival school. All these different subsystems and the actual overarching narrative feed together and synergize with each other in a way I don't often see in games and really dig.
GAMES WHERE THE POINT IS THE WRITING
- Firewatch
You play a troubled man named Henry in 1989, who takes a summer job as a fire lookout at the Shoshone National Forest in Wyoming. You're hundreds of miles from any kind of civilization and your only human contact is Delilah, your supervisor in the next tower over, whom you can speak to by walkie-talkie. The game takes place in a few square miles of beautiful forest wilderness around Henry's tower, which you can explore (mostly) at will, and it's all rendered in a beautiful, vivid style influenced by 1930s WPA poster art.
A mystery begins to unfold involving disappearing campers and someone stalking Henry and Delilah, and the mystery begins unraveling the baggage that drove both these characters to flee the world and get a job in one of the most remote places in the country, but the meat of the story happens in your radio calls with Delilah; you can choose your responses, and that gradually shapes how these characters' relationship evolves.
The game doesn't have much gameplay beyond just walking and talking (although unlike other "walking simulators," you do get to make some interesting choices through the dialogue system) but even with just those things it's an absolutely memorable experience.
- Gone Home
Another "walking simulator," this one casts you in the role of a young woman who's returned to her family home after a year abroad only to find the old place empty on a rainy night. You begin exploring to try to figure out what happened, moving through people's rooms, rooting through their stuff, reading old diaries and receipts to reconstruct the story of your family. Again, there's no real gameplay beyond just, like, opening doors and going through closets and drawers, but the presentation is lovely (the graphics are realistic-ish but not stultifyingly so, and there's good music and voiceover work) and the writing is often poignant.
Since you don't like horror, I will go ahead and spoil a minor thing by revealing that no, there are no serial killers or ghosts. The game tries to be coy about this at first, and has the lights flicker (it's an old house in a thunderstorm) but what's going on is more personal and more mundane.
- Sunless Sea and its sequel Sunless Skies
Narrative-driven RPG/uh...vehicle games?...where you're the captain of a ship (a steamship in Sunless Sea, a space train in Skies) voyaging through an atmospheric world of dark Victorian/Edwardian gothic mystery/comedy/horror.
The quick version is that it's the late 1800s, and London has been magically transported to a vast cavern the size of a continent underneath Europe, called the Neath. Hidden from God's sight, physical laws work differently in the Neath; death is a temporary inconvenience, devils are real and walk around in top hats, and magic and other alien forces are at work. Most of the Neath is dominated by a huge underground ocean, the Unterzee, which is dotted with islands on which various strange and alien civilizations reside, and its waters conceal huge monsters and other horrors.
You play a captain trying to make a fortune on the Unterzee, beginning with a rusted junky steamship and hopefully advancing to bigger and better things. You steam between ports, carrying cargo and undertaking missions (transporting people, hunting monters, looking for resources etc), all while trying to earn enough money to keep your crew fed and your ship stocked with fuel. When you arrive in port, you navigate the story through a series of choose-your-own-adventure text boxes and skill checks (different captains can specialize in different things, and you can earn XP and improve your skills). Each island has its own mysteries to unravel, and it's all told in writing that is wonderfully evocative, alternately touching and poignant, hilarious, exhilarating, or terrifying.
The actual sailing of the ship is functional rather than super great and exciting, and the game has a steep learning curve, especially early on. There's a roguelike element where death is frequent and freqently unfair, but a captain can pass on some of their possessions and stats to a successor (and it's also possible to beat the game in one of many ways, which also confers additional bonuses to future captains). The problem is that climbing back up to the top can be time-consuming, so I personally play with permadeath disabled and saving/loading enabled. The star of the story isn't the gameplay, anyway, but the writing. There's also some genuinely wonderful music.
Sunless Skies is the same deal and a direct sequel to Seas, except it takes place a decade later, in the early 1900s, and London has escaped the Neath and created an empire in space (albeit space as imagined by 19th-century writers, where "aetheric wind" blows between stars, and solar systems are encased in great glass spheres). The gameplay is much improved and the controls are better, as are the visuals. It's a straight improvement in most respects but it's still worth playing Seas first.
Tales from the Borderlands
I guess technically you could call this an adventure, but the gameplay elements are incredibly minimal. Instead, it's more like an interactive movie where you make dialogue and story choices. It just happens to be a very good interactive movie, with terrific dialogue, and is easily my favorite Telltale game. I hugely recommend it even if you don't think much of Borderlands otherwise.
This rules, thanks for going to the effort. I’ve played a few of the adventure games on this list, but will definitely be getting many of the others.
psn tooaware, friend code SW-4760-0062-3248 it me
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Der Waffle MousBlame this on the misfortune of your birth.New Yark, New Yark.Registered Userregular
Halo Reach is on gamepass, huh. Guess I'll play a Halo game for the first time ever!
(as soon as I'm done with Wolfenstein, that is)
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Librarian's ghostLibrarian, Ghostbuster, and TimSporkRegistered Userregular
I brought my fancy keyboard to work today to try to figure out what is broken. I cleaned it pretty well and not it seems like it isn't having the issues I was having yesterday? I don't know why it freaked out. I'm going to leave it plugged in for a while and see what is up.
I felt like having it be about a generic terrorist organisation kind of squandered the cold war setting a bit, for one.
There's an interesting element to this, and honestly maybe hiding this was not the ideal call, especially in a game that keeps the bad guys at quite an arms' length for the bulk of its running time, but after completing the game the first time you unlock the option to begin a new campaign as an agent of the Mossad with some different twists and turns than the base game gets, and you apparently learn a lot more about Beholder, including that
they're the Nazis.
which fills in a lot of the motivation gap for me, though I would get still finding it kind of generic
But it did also feel very generic at times, especially with the large amount of repetition in the non-story missions.
The game 100% needed more mission types. I'd especially have welcomed mission modes that didn't put implicit pressure on me to carefully mouse around looking for glowing documents, which was by far the most tedious and my least favorite thing in the game. More openly hostile missions would be great - assaults, defenses, chase sequences, timed bomb defusal, etc etc.
I liked the game a lot in part because it dealt with subject matter I love and never get to see in video games, but as a game it was kind of a proof of concept of the core systems (the non-random combat, stealth, intelligence minigame etc) and I feel bad that there will probably never be a sequel that iterates on those and improves the narrative and overall experience.
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AtomicTofuShe's a straight-up supervillain, yoRegistered Userregular
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Okay I still haven't done the last mission in Phantom Doctrine because I decided to do a couple more base assaults last night instead, but I'm going to write up my full thoughts anyways because we're sort of actively talking about it right now.
First let me reiterate that I liked the game a lot and I am going to be picking a bunch of nits here. I highly recommend it if you enjoy XCOM or Invisible Inc or both.
That said, it was definitely bridging a gap between two landmasses with those. Its tactical combat was never going to be as good as XCOM's and its stealth play was never going to be as good as Invisible Inc's. Part of that is fine - it's a game designed around a mix of both of those elements - but for me at least it made the game feel a bit empty. Specifically, I played it as a stealth game. My agents specialized in disguise, everyone had at least one silenced weapon equipped and some folks (snipers typically) had two. Most missions I could clear without raising an alarm, and if I did raise an alarm, it was generally because of a dumb mistake, not any competence on the part of the enemy.
Part of this is that the enemy never gets better at dealing with stealth. Enemy agents are never disguised, and while enemy units get to a higher level with all sorts of neat abilities and what have you, all of those abilities are combat based - there's nobody with an increased sight cone, nobody who notices when windows are broken or doors left open, nobody who opens up cabinets that I have stuffed full of corpses (I would also have liked the body disposal to be a more Hitman style thing, rather than magically disappearing corpses by spending a fire point). All the armor and acid grenades in the world aren't going to save you from a silenced revolver at point blank range.
Ideally all of that could also be done adaptively, where the game looks at the fact that you're approaching 9/10 missions stealthily and starts making levels staffed with more lookout style guards and better security nets. Or vice versa, you go in guns blazing too often and even your basic guards have full body armor to contend with.
Another part is, as mentioned, the mission structure. There absolutely needed to be more mission types - personally what I would have liked is a number of missions based around the enemy fighting me the way I was fighting them. Let me set up my agents to execute one of their informers, and get interrupted by a squad of dudes creeping through the bushes. Let me run more active surveillance on locations as an attempt to find enemy bases, rather than waiting for the right secret document to reveal it. Maybe no missions where I try to blow up civilian infrastructure while the enemy tries to disarm my bombs, but I don't know, maybe? We're spies after all, we're supposed to be morally dubious.
I also felt that the game, while it tacitly encouraged playing it as a stealth game (partially by making stealth easier), the story missions frequently forced you into playing it the other way. It's not a big problem, but getting a force majeure alarm on nearly every story mission, having the interconnected power (hack all devices when you hack a single device) not work on story missions, limited support and disguise abilities on story missions, all of that makes me reluctant to actually play those missions when they come up, because I know they're going to fuck up my team worse than anything else will.
After all that it's mostly small stuff for me.
More maps would have been good, of course, I repeated maps a lot. Presumably some of this would come with more mission types.
I really liked the intelligence minigame but I wish it were harder? Like maybe you can highlight the wrong thing or something, follow false leads further. I've been playing Heaven's Vault as well, the sort of way that you define words there where you get certain one way or the other after a certain point, that would be good. Also I would have just liked a summary sort of thing after I completed a corkboard, because I had almost always forgotten what the original document was about at that point so it was fairly disconnected from the actual narrative.
Obviously I want more character customization options. What was there was very good, but there could always be more and this game is essentially my version of playing with dolls. And maybe replace the passport pictures with just a screenshot of the character's current face? They often felt weirdly at odds, but there weren't enough passport photos to actually be changing those all the time.
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
I agree wtih all of that. Also, stuff like tailing a moving target could be really good as a mission type - stealth, but with the added pressure of it being timed and you don't get to control every variable of your approach. That would also massively add to the utility of support spotters ("careful, when he turns that corner there's a guard patrol right there").
I loved the intelligence minigame as a minigame but yeah, it could absolutely have been harder. Also, it was fairly transparently a skin over a reward - you do a puzzle, you get a contact who will sell you body armor, or a new agent to hire, or whatever. Names turned up again and again ("Lighthouse," etc) but clearly didn't refer to the same people/places/things from one minigame to the next. I'd have really loved if that weren't the case: like if the game, when you started a campaign, actually generated every possible contact and informant and assigned them locations and code names, and those were persistent throughout your campaign, so when you finally figure out that Simple Simon is a gunrunner in Algiers it's a big deal that adds additional context to every puzzle you solve going forward.
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https://www.paypal.me/hobnailtaylor
Why so soon?
"Come out"
KR0 has more finished game available to play, it doesn't keep nickel-and-diming you with transactions both micro-and-macro.
It's also absolutely an example I would cite not just for games being art but games as literature
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
And yet it still isn’t done, which is the point of the joke.
Steam: MightyPotatoKing
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
https://www.paypal.me/hobnailtaylor
Like, I can understand why they didn't start there, as that game has already been remastered and partially remade multiple times, but those aren't really on the scale of what they did with RE2, as I understand it
I mean, at the time it was a similar scale and scope to what the RE2 REmake is now.
Except RE4 hadn't come out yet.
Stop ignoring my calls!
Only thing I wanna know about CrossCode is when the fuck's it coming to Switch godammit
You promised this year! You promised!!!
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
Don't sweat it, it's a pavlovian response
Not right now, I don't think so. Maybe in like, ten years? I don't think there's any need to remake 4 right now, really. Game design has changed a lot since RE2 and 3. It has changed since 4, but not nearly as drastically.
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
It could really benefit from some better antialiasing
Episodes 1-4 are done. None of Star Citizen is out of Early Access. I don't think any of it is even technically beta? Maybe it left alpha recently.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
It's on v3.7.2.
...which is still considered "alpha." So more like 0.3.7.2 but whatever.
It's supposed to go into beta sometime next year? But if you accept the delineation of alpha and beta as something that feature complete and consider all the batshit things Roberts wants to put in this thing, then ahahahahahaha
Remaking 4 now would be more like remaking 1 when 1 was remade (which they did do, so who knows).
Like, Resident Evil 1 through 0 are all based around fixed camera angles as an important part of how you explore the game. They're deeply disorienting and add a bunch to the horror, especially in early games that weren't exactly able to wield realism as an element there.
The switch to the over the shoulder third person with 4 is a massive change for the games, and the locations in Resident Evil 4+ feel very different than the locations in the earlier games because of it. The RE2Make is, in addition to everything else, a remake based around switching the game to these controls. Plus improved graphics, improved enemy AI, that sort of thing.
So a remake of RE4 at this point would probably just be better graphics and better enemy AI? Which I mean, RE4 is a very popular game, I'm sure that would do fairly well. But it wouldn't be the level of gamechanger that remaking 2 or 3 is.
You're making me feel like I should give Phantom Doctrine a try. I kind of wrote it off, but I've played the rest of those and enjoyed them.
I did play some Black Closet but never finished a full run. It's an interesting one.
On the budget/indie side, I'd go with my usual recommendation of Bastion and Transistor as the best-of-the-best.
Bastion is a top-down arcade-y brawl-y sorta adventure with a subtle backstory and the best narrator voice this side of Darkest Dungeon. It's cheap, grab it and enjoy it and be sure to beat the bonus levels that show up late in the game for some additional sweet, sweet backstory.
Transistor is the follow up to Bastion that is a totally new story and setting, but similar interface with the addition of optional turn-based mechanics (which sounds weird, but it works). It has a more more personal story and is absolutely beautiful to play. It's my go-to example of 'games as art that are still games'.
Phantom Doctrine is good.
It ain't perfect, but it is quite good.
Insufficient Phantoms and/or Doctrines?
I think it was a tough balance to strike, and they definitely faltered in some places.
I like the idea that all of these historical events are actually even more wrapped up in government conspiracy than they already were. I think it provides both a point of connection, to keep it from feeling totally disconnected from its setting, and also gives the opportunity for divergence, such that the player can't know exactly what is going to happen next just by having a Wikipedia page about 1983 world events pulled up on their phone.
But it did also feel very generic at times, especially with the large amount of repetition in the non-story missions.
This rules, thanks for going to the effort. I’ve played a few of the adventure games on this list, but will definitely be getting many of the others.
(as soon as I'm done with Wolfenstein, that is)
There's an interesting element to this, and honestly maybe hiding this was not the ideal call, especially in a game that keeps the bad guys at quite an arms' length for the bulk of its running time, but after completing the game the first time you unlock the option to begin a new campaign as an agent of the Mossad with some different twists and turns than the base game gets, and you apparently learn a lot more about Beholder, including that
which fills in a lot of the motivation gap for me, though I would get still finding it kind of generic
The game 100% needed more mission types. I'd especially have welcomed mission modes that didn't put implicit pressure on me to carefully mouse around looking for glowing documents, which was by far the most tedious and my least favorite thing in the game. More openly hostile missions would be great - assaults, defenses, chase sequences, timed bomb defusal, etc etc.
I liked the game a lot in part because it dealt with subject matter I love and never get to see in video games, but as a game it was kind of a proof of concept of the core systems (the non-random combat, stealth, intelligence minigame etc) and I feel bad that there will probably never be a sequel that iterates on those and improves the narrative and overall experience.
Steam
First let me reiterate that I liked the game a lot and I am going to be picking a bunch of nits here. I highly recommend it if you enjoy XCOM or Invisible Inc or both.
That said, it was definitely bridging a gap between two landmasses with those. Its tactical combat was never going to be as good as XCOM's and its stealth play was never going to be as good as Invisible Inc's. Part of that is fine - it's a game designed around a mix of both of those elements - but for me at least it made the game feel a bit empty. Specifically, I played it as a stealth game. My agents specialized in disguise, everyone had at least one silenced weapon equipped and some folks (snipers typically) had two. Most missions I could clear without raising an alarm, and if I did raise an alarm, it was generally because of a dumb mistake, not any competence on the part of the enemy.
Part of this is that the enemy never gets better at dealing with stealth. Enemy agents are never disguised, and while enemy units get to a higher level with all sorts of neat abilities and what have you, all of those abilities are combat based - there's nobody with an increased sight cone, nobody who notices when windows are broken or doors left open, nobody who opens up cabinets that I have stuffed full of corpses (I would also have liked the body disposal to be a more Hitman style thing, rather than magically disappearing corpses by spending a fire point). All the armor and acid grenades in the world aren't going to save you from a silenced revolver at point blank range.
Ideally all of that could also be done adaptively, where the game looks at the fact that you're approaching 9/10 missions stealthily and starts making levels staffed with more lookout style guards and better security nets. Or vice versa, you go in guns blazing too often and even your basic guards have full body armor to contend with.
Another part is, as mentioned, the mission structure. There absolutely needed to be more mission types - personally what I would have liked is a number of missions based around the enemy fighting me the way I was fighting them. Let me set up my agents to execute one of their informers, and get interrupted by a squad of dudes creeping through the bushes. Let me run more active surveillance on locations as an attempt to find enemy bases, rather than waiting for the right secret document to reveal it. Maybe no missions where I try to blow up civilian infrastructure while the enemy tries to disarm my bombs, but I don't know, maybe? We're spies after all, we're supposed to be morally dubious.
I also felt that the game, while it tacitly encouraged playing it as a stealth game (partially by making stealth easier), the story missions frequently forced you into playing it the other way. It's not a big problem, but getting a force majeure alarm on nearly every story mission, having the interconnected power (hack all devices when you hack a single device) not work on story missions, limited support and disguise abilities on story missions, all of that makes me reluctant to actually play those missions when they come up, because I know they're going to fuck up my team worse than anything else will.
After all that it's mostly small stuff for me.
More maps would have been good, of course, I repeated maps a lot. Presumably some of this would come with more mission types.
I really liked the intelligence minigame but I wish it were harder? Like maybe you can highlight the wrong thing or something, follow false leads further. I've been playing Heaven's Vault as well, the sort of way that you define words there where you get certain one way or the other after a certain point, that would be good. Also I would have just liked a summary sort of thing after I completed a corkboard, because I had almost always forgotten what the original document was about at that point so it was fairly disconnected from the actual narrative.
Obviously I want more character customization options. What was there was very good, but there could always be more and this game is essentially my version of playing with dolls. And maybe replace the passport pictures with just a screenshot of the character's current face? They often felt weirdly at odds, but there weren't enough passport photos to actually be changing those all the time.
I loved the intelligence minigame as a minigame but yeah, it could absolutely have been harder. Also, it was fairly transparently a skin over a reward - you do a puzzle, you get a contact who will sell you body armor, or a new agent to hire, or whatever. Names turned up again and again ("Lighthouse," etc) but clearly didn't refer to the same people/places/things from one minigame to the next. I'd have really loved if that weren't the case: like if the game, when you started a campaign, actually generated every possible contact and informant and assigned them locations and code names, and those were persistent throughout your campaign, so when you finally figure out that Simple Simon is a gunrunner in Algiers it's a big deal that adds additional context to every puzzle you solve going forward.