I’ve been interested in Soulslike games and got Code Vein on sale recently. I think I’m about halfway through and it’s pretty good. Playing at the 2nd hardest difficulty, dying here and there but also one or two shotting most bosses, which suggests it’s found a good sweet spot for difficulty where it’s not overly punishing but also not trivial, though I kinda wish I had started it on the hardest difficulty. I’m not sure how popular the game was but I suggest it.
The ultimate anime waifu creator. I’d also recommend giving it a try for any souls fans out there. Also don’t be ashamed if you look up a guide on the cathedral.
Haha walking into the cathedral was a cool gaming moment. I get there and am looking around, wondering who could have even built this, and then Louis asks “How is this even possible?”
They did a pretty good job with the follower conversations. Yeah, the random ones can get repetitive, but it added a bit more depth when Louis voiced what I was thinking. In another (annoying) area, as you get to the end, he says he hopes we’re done here soon.
I like the part about how it reminds me of Minecraft, but in space and with tools/weapons that never break and the ability to add more inventory slots. (There are less material options for building player housing though, but at least this limitation has led to some very creative community bases.) That, and I always find it rewarding to discover as many of a planet’s plant and animal species as possible to earn those chip things you can learn crafting recipes with, and many of the planets’ terrain looks pretty awesome since while it is all procedural copypasta, there are countless possible combinations of available ores, rock models/colors/usefulness, terrain color, animal appearances/traits, plant products, hazards, etc. You can use all of this to determine which planets near your spawnpoint are useful and which ones are useless, out of millions of possible planets. I also like how after coming back to that game after more than a year, I found that unearthing the buried tech things gives you 4 of that data thing you need to complete all the tech-trees in the early game instead of just 1. And unlike many games, they update all platforms at the same time, which is great since I find the console controls on the Switch edition easier to remember than the PC controls.
But I do wish the planets had more than just one climate and biome so they’d be more realistic and those 2 undiscovered rare polar animals keeping you from earning lots of nanites would be less painful to track down. My current home planet is a swamp world that has Florida-like temperatures even at the poles and on mountains.
If you want a true “Minecraft in space” experience, I recommend Space Engineers. Not as broad as NMS, but much deeper (especially with mods like WeaponCore, MES, and Aerodynamics).
Uplink - A hacking sim game that’s actually quite addictive in a playthrough. Will make you feel like you’re in the movie Hackers.
Spycraft: The Great Game - An adventure game that had as consultants CIA director William Colby and KGB Major-General Oleg Kalugin.
I don’t know a lot of people that have played these, but they definitely rank up there for me as some of the more interesting and unique games I’ve played over the decades.
Played Uplink as a kid, later learned about fragmentation for computer memory. Was cool to find out the inventory system wasn’t just a cool game mechanic but was based off how actual memory works.
They were supposed to have a whole series IIRC, but the contract got cancelled because the initial offering didn’t sell very well. It didn’t help that the marketing didn’t really know how they wanted to talk about the game.
Nice, that’s one I have in my library not yet installed. Bought it when there was a cheap bundle with others by that company, but was mainly looking at The Place which kinda turned me off of those style games. I’ll have to be sure to give it a shot now.
Epic’s game store is trash, and they fuck cleanly off with trying to fragment the PC gaming market. If they want to compete with Steam, build a better product.
You don’t have to use the platform. Competition is good, and steam taking 30% is massive. I’m a huge fan of steam but the fears of what happens post-gabe should have us all wanting other companies to put pressure on them. Hopefully it’ll drive them to promise continued pro-consumer practices such as proton (let’s gloss over DRM)
I agree competition is good, artificial segmentation is removing choice which is anti-consumer. Steam takes 30% but provides many services and features that Epic doesn’t, which is how Epic doesn’t need to charge as much, so many other services they just lack. I think more providers of options are good, as long as they’re not paying devs to lock games into their ecosystem. Valve had the option to lock down their VR headset to only work with Steam games, but didn’t, because they generally make some pretty good decisions in favor of their customers.
I agree though about what happens to steam when the current decision makers step down, it could get really gross really quick.
Hardspace Shipbreaker. You’re a wage slave (literally) in a space dock, taking apart ships and throwing the bits into the right bins. Doesn’t sound super fun, but it is. 1) You’re chopping up ships but you get to use LASERS!!! and the energy grappling hook. So satisfying. 2) The physics is 90% spot on. You’re in 3d, but it’s not purely inertial. There’s a dampening field that slows things down, so it doesn’t get too outta hand. There are a couple of other quirks, but they’re not hugely impacting. 3) The soundtrack is perfect. It’s a very bluesy, banjo style for a very bluecollar type job. 4) The voice acting is amazing. Every line from Weaver is just perfect. You hate Hal with a passion (you’re supposed to). The writing is a little hammy, but they have to rush it bc it’s really a minor bit of the game. (Spoiler, it’s very pro-labor and anti-capitalist, so if that triggers you, don’t play it.)
I’ve played it thru twice. The first time as-is, but the 2nd time I shut off the “15 minute shifts” option. I think that breaks things up too much. I think open-shift is better. I bought the vinyl soundtrack. I’m not a huge fan of vinyl, but this is the right style of music that would benefit from it.
I remeber playing Jedi fallen order and seeing ships being broken down like that during the opening mission. I thought that I would rather be doing that and then hardspace showed up on steam a few days later. It’s been on my wish list for way too long, definitely going to pick it up for my next game
I’ve just recently said that on Lemmy - I said to a friend I wanted a game where you broke down and scrapped star wars ships, and they pointed me towards this game. It was recently on sale so I picked it up. It’s been an absolute blast and exactly what I was looking for (though I still wish I could do it with SW ships). I also agree about the shift timer, so thankfully there’s an option for that.
The writing is a little hammy, but they have to rush it bc it’s really a minor bit of the game. (Spoiler, it’s very pro-labor and anti-capitalist, so if that triggers you, don’t play it.)
Which annoyingly, is the reason I bounced off the game. Breaking down ships is fun. That’s literally the whole reason I want to play the game. The story wants me to hate playing the game and won’t let me play until I listen to the entirety of why capitalism is bad.
I listen to the entirety of why capitalism is bad.
Capitalism is pretty bad, so it didn’t bother me. It was refreshing to hear it in a narrative. Game devs don’t usually get to say stuff like that, so it was nice.
Yeah, but you don’t need to tell me that in an unskippable cutscene (the fact that it’s unskippable is the part I have an issue with) and ironically, the gameplay is so compelling that I absolutely do not mind just wasting my life away toiling under these ridiculous work conditions.
Edit: Let’s be real here, the game didn’t need a story. Just set me up with a ridiculous amount of debt and let me just break down ship after ship. They could have just added more ships and systems than make a story that people actively would work against.
Major studios pander to current sentiment but don’t seek to resolve the issues. For example the cyberpunk genre is an indictment of many things including the reckless pursuit of technology and corporate super powers. Yet Cyberpunk 2077 with partner with Amazon Prime gaming and let the man leading Neurolink voice a character in their game.
That’s not to disparage 2077 just an acknowledgement of the reality of triple A game development. They’re making products most of the time rather than art. Their worms can still be enjoyable but rarely get to make scathing statements.
Major studios pander to current sentiment but don’t seek to resolve the issues.
Lol, seek to resolve issues? They’re not the government. They’re art. Art critiques things and suggests people to change things. It came write laws.
Yet Cyberpunk 2077 with partner with Amazon Prime gaming and let the man leading Neurolink voice a character in their game.
The devs and writers don’t make the business decisions. Wish they did, they’d have a better product, imo. The marketing is done by someone else who the devs, usually, have no control over.
From my perspective producing art can be pivotal in impacting change, good or bad by swaying public sentiment. I’m not claiming that they can pull out the old quill and ink and pen up some statues, but that voicing distaste is the first step in enacting change.
Voicing thought alone doesn’t impact change, but neither does enacting laws, you also require enforcement. But laws enforced without public support don’t last forever.
On the last paragraph I think we had a disconnect, I had assumed you said devs in reference to an entire studio. But it seems you were strictly speaking about the individual of that occupation in a larger studio.
It still is a little lib-ish. The game goes to great lengths at showing Silverhand (and anyone blaming capitalism) as being a bit too harsh or off their rocker, with V explicitly mocking his leftist opinions in dialogue many times (replaying the game, once during an elevator ride, another after dealing with the chapel in pacifica). The game is very on the nose about blaming corporations but spares the rod when talking about the system.
Underappreciated for sure, but to be fair, it’s super repetitive. If they’d added a secondary component or loop where you could black market trade or participate in the economy of the game some how to drown out the monotony of breaking the same ships over and over, I’d have played it more.
For me right now, Shadows of Doubt. It is an early access game and it’s got a fair bit of jank, but it’s crazy how unique it is. It had a week or so of popularity and then it fell off. The devs just released an update for it too!
If you like the immersive sim genre, might I also recommend Cruelty Squad and Gloomwood. Those two have very unique aesthetics and really cool mechanics.
Max Payne 3. After running consistent crashes on chapter 6 (I think?) I decided to play it on PC using a completed save file I found online. I was a bit annoyed with how Rockstar stores their save files but I eventually figured it out. Turns out I was literally a minute away from completing the chapter.
I managed to finish it and I’ve moved on to Cyberpunk.
I’ve also been playing The Sims 3. I want to try to create a world free of lots and any kinds of spawn points and place a family and see how things go when you essentially break the game and need to buy fridges for apples to plant, travel through time to get seeds, or flirt with the mailman to expand your family tree.
I'm not sure how successful it was, but there's a fun horror (mostly) walking sim called Apsulov: End of Gods. It's based on Norse mythology and has a refreshing take on Loki, especially if you're tired of everything Marvel has put out. The visuals are great too.
There's another one called Close to the Sun that's essentially, "what would happen if Nikola Tesla built a giant fucking cruise ship for the world's smartest minds at the time and then everything goes wrong?". The story is really interesting, and I've been hoping for a sequel.
I don't think Murdered: Soul Suspect did very well from what I remember when it came out, but I had a ton of fun playing that game. They could have done way more as far as mechanics go, and some aspects are pretty cheesy, but I'm a sucker for detective games and trying to piece together information.
Speaking of which, The Painscreek Killings is so good. You play as a reporter who's tasked with invesigating a cold case in a tiny abandoned town. I really liked this one because there is absolutely no hand holding when it comes to playing detective. You absolutely have to figure everything out yourself. Back when I used to stream, I had a regular viewer tell me it was their favorite game that I played, because listening to me trying to figure out the story and my next step was like listening to one of those old crime radio shows. It's one of the few games I wish I could play again for the first time, since I know the outcome now and how everything fits together. The developer is supposed to be making another similar game, so I'm eager to see how that goes.
The year this was being shown at E3, I got my best friend in as my ‘photographer’ for the show under a press pass, and set up a bunch of private gameplay demos of games (by this point nothing interesting was shown on the show floor anymore).
When we went to our appointment at the Square Enix booth, they immediately ushered us into a room with nothing but two Japanese guys, and were like “ok, go ahead and ask your questions.”
Apparently they thought we’d sat through an earlier gameplay demo which they never set up, and we were suddenly sitting with the game director and their translator for a half hour interview about a title I hadn’t even seen or knew anything about - and an interview conducted through a translator on top of that (and I’d intentionally been trying to avoid ending up in interviews in the first place).
It was one of the more surreal experiences I’ve had in life, and very much reminded me of the times I’d be in a book discussion in high school for a reading assignment I hadn’t done, frantically grabbing on to any thread that seemed legit and running with it.
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