I have been playing a load of Abiotic Factor, It sits on the sweet spot between story and fun for me, Constant new mechanics, always the feeling that I am sneaking in a better way to do the thing. Game kinda Feels like Valheim got cuddley with HalfLife.
I’ve played that before, but have they removed/made players able to reduce frequency of appearance or outright stop the annoying moaning monster from the lab zone yet? I’m a solo player and it was a creepy encounter the first 5 times and then just an annoying interruption, and it was so constant and inescapable that it made me stop playing.
I personally am the over prepared type but that’s why I get mods that extend the end game and put me through my own optimization and automation personal hell that causes everyone around me to question why I’ve never seen a therapist for my clearly neurodivergent behavior.
This alone is one thing that makes Grounded stand out so much. Why do they make me suffer? Shuffling my equipment in and out of chests is not fun. I want to organize it, and then fill it up.
I assure you fellow survival fan, you not being able to carry materials through portals will absolutely improve the game and not just pad it out significantly!
And on top of that, not make sailing a skill, the map reveal range hilariously short even in wide open oceans, not having much to do other than sometimes stopping to fish or collect chitin, and really only one threat in the ocean for 95% of the game who stops being a real threat once you’re beyond wood/flint arrows (the actual threat being your fellow players shooting the boat’s wonky collision)
I fully expect them to go back and rework sailing but right now its not a great time.
I agree, but I’m also torn there. The first boat trip back with a full cargo of previous new resources definitely felt more awesome than just stepping through a portal. By the fifth time the novelty has worn off though and I would like to teleport it please. Maybe something like the first 50 ingots need to be produced at the home base for your character to get “magically attuned” to the metal ?
They introduce a tier 2 portal in the Ashlands that let’s you teleport metal.
IMO, a little too late (in terms of the game’s biome progression), but still useful because sailing to and from the Ashlands in a bloated barge is a real bad time.
I worded that poorly, I meant too late in progression of the game’s biomes*.
By the time you’re in the Ashlands, you’ve likely moved hundreds or thousands of tin/copper/iron/silver/black metal. It feels like tier 2 portals should have been unlocked around the time you get an artisan table since the game makes you double back for more iron to make the padded set and then once again for mistland weapons - Which just feels tedious since roaming the swamps with plains tier gear makes the enemies laughable.
(I know you can mine the ancient giants armor for scrap iron too but I seem to get like 95% copper 5% iron scrap.)
There are a few different mods that allow you to gate material teleporting in various ways. Closest to what you’re suggesting would probably be AdvancedPortals which adds tiered portals created with higher-tier materials. I just use TeleportEverything because I don’t think the restriction is fun or presents an interesting challenge.
No, hear me out. Start by hitting this rock 50 times. Before you know it you’ll be moving on up in the world, now you can hit this other rock 50 times!
All of them? There’s several that I can name off the top of my head that are just fun to play: Valheim, the forest, subnautica, ark: se. You can even include some that aren’t completely the norm, like terraria, satisfactory, or avorion. Hell, several of those even have really neat stories as part of the gameplay, like subnautica and the forest (and maybe valheim if you like the sort of narrative that’s crafted).
I’ve been getting back into Palworld these last couple days. I love the game, the pals have such personalities and there are so many and I actually want to collect them all.
However some of the world settings don’t really seem to be working right for me, so that’s kind of annoying.
ARK (and Palworld, which directly copies most of its mechanics) was actually the first game that came to mind when reading the OP. Higher rarity blueprints require hundreds of times the resources as their base counterparts just to increase the amount of busywork you need to do in late-game. Why does a shotgun that does 50% more damage require enough metal to build multiple skyscrapers? Or in Palworld, that plus the drops from a dozen boss battles to make one item?
If you didn’t experience a magical feeling the first time you saw some of the stuff you see in Minecraft, I dunno what to say. Maybe you’re young and that level of 3D procedural generation has always been there, but once upon a time it was unusual. We called it “multiplayer lego” except you can fight zombies.
Semi-joking there; dysmantle is a breath of fresh air imo. It’s not as survival-focused as some games; you don’t have to eat, for example, and the crafting that you do is… actually worth it, and usually dead simple to unlock because if you’ve been progressively destroying literally everything like the game wants you to do, you have plenty of stuff shortly after unlocking the thing. And yes I do have a save file in which I am attempting to clear every breakable item in the game, which is almost everything. Because why not.
The game is mostly just explore, break shit, kill zombies, build a base if you want (there are some quests but you can destroy everything after if you don’t want it. It serves no real purpose beyond a creativity outlet), and eventually escape the island. After you learn all the story through finding random scraps of information because that’s right, all people except you are zombies! You don’t talk to anyone! And that really enhances the game imo.
That one has a magic I’ve been looking to get again with another game but no, it’s too unique! The horrors! The studio is working on another game called dysplaced which is going to be drum roll an open world survival crafter!! I’m actually excited to try it because of dysmantle, though! :)
I generally like the sandboxy gameplay and exploration, but what I dislike is that nearly all of them have some BS design flaw that the devs double down on, and a lot of them tend to rely on padded grind as ‘progression’ which often just feels awful.
You have to shield yourself from those red shells. When youre in a good position, you get the banana peels more often, if you press and hold the button that throws the item, you keep the peel behind you and can use it as a shield against shells.
I get asked this question a fair bit! Each time ive shared a review recently I added a banana pic. I tend to get asked what my review of said banana is.
But I have an autoimmune disease where potassium is terrible for me! So…I never know how good these bananas are :(
Thanks for sharing this review, it’s great to see your reviews and interviews here.
I’ve seen a similar recent DS-emulation system review and they were playing Rhythm Heaven, and what really looked like it would bother me is the emulation input latency (it appeared roughly 10-20ms). Have you played Rhythm Heaven or other latency-sensitive games and do you notice any input delay?
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