There is a demo out on Steam, if anyone wants to try it.
Edit: So, I played the demo. Takes about 30 minutes. The game has a lot of charm, but that much was clear from the trailer. The gameplay is… basic. There is a map on which missions pop up. You choose the hero to send there, based on their skills. You get some hacking minigames and every now and then you can choose what your character says or does in a cutscene.
If I had to critique something else besides the basic gameplay, it’s the lack of feedback after a mission. You get a voice line and a little graph that shows how well your chosen hero’s skills matched the requirements of the mission. Also some missions were clearly meant to be done by one specific hero, but if they are on cooldown or already busy elsewhere you have to send someone else. Made me feel like I did something wrong. I think the game will be its strongest after you have already played it once. Knowing who to send where and being aware of character specific missions. But at the same time, a lot of the charm of the game will be gone by the second time you play it, since you already saw most of the very well done cutscenes.
Exactly my experience. I tried 3 runs, bat was on cooldown for “his” mission on the first one, he was in the wrong form in the second one, and I failed the rng on the third one, like, I just wanted to see the good outcome from that mission (:
It does have some replayability on the map section by just sending different people to different jobs to see different unique dialogs (eg: sending someone good at dealing with fires to the “shit’s on fire yo” mission, or sending the Pyro that caused it), but I’m not sure it’ll entice a second run if the game is mostly a linear story.
The dispatch loop is extremely similar to a game called This is the Police. Any good management game like this will have situations where there is no correct decision, and the fun of it is having to make those tough calls. I’m curious to see if the core loop holds up over the full runtime, because it ran a little thin in This is the Police. The story bits between that harken back to Telltale are some much appreciated new special sauce on the formula in This is the Police, but that alone won’t keep the core loop fresh. Still, I’m looking forward to this.
Very good video that lines up with a lot of my own thoughts (yay).
That said? I think I fundamentally disagree with the idea that everyone should be able to beat every game for narrative reasons. My preference is for something similar to what Nine Sols did (AMAZING boss fights. Dogshit metroidvania and traversal), but I don’t fundamentally believe that everyone needs to be able to experience every game. Like, you can make an “easy mode” for DCS but… the point of that game is the fidelity and turning all of that off just feels “wrong”? At the end of the day, it is up to the devs and what they want people to consider “accomplishment” to be.
And we live in the internet age. I remember beating Arkham Knight, having fun, and then deciding there was zero chance I would ever want to get all the riddler keys or fight deathstroke a dozen times and just went to youtube.
But I 100% agree with the back half of the video. The game is very much designed to just take a break and wander off when you get frustrated. Which is where I DO wish there were more QOL features to make it clear what areas might still have a mask (preferably one you can reach) rather than needing to find a guide or try to guess. Especially when you don’t even get map markers for a decent chunk early on.
I cannot wait for this game. It doesn't seem to have a lot of hype but it's a return to form for the OG TellTale devs. The demo's writing was sharp and fun. I hope it does well because there has been a drought of interactive story games since they went out of business.
I agree with a lot in this video, but disagree on one key point. You can go explore somewhere else and get upgrades and stuff.
I really liked this aspect in Elden Ring, where the bosses could get pretty hard, but you could always just go explore. Explore the lands, level up, find cool weapons and upgrades to get really OP. Then return to the boss and kick their ass. Once you’ve put 500 hours into it, you do challenge runs like SL1. But if you only want to put in 100 hours, you can easily beat it, no matter your skill level. The exploration feels great, the world is interesting and there is a lot to find. As compared to the previous Souls games where the game would just put a big roadblock boss in your path and good luck getting past it. Or a game like Nioh that gives you a tutorial boss, with which one struggles a bit but then beats pretty fast, only to almost right away throw in the next boss which is so hard about 70% of people quit on him (according to stats I’ve seen).
However, I feel like this doesn’t apply to Silksong at all. You can go explore and get a whole lot of stuff, but a lot of it seems totally useless? You can get one damage upgrade, which does fuck all (haven’t looked it up, but feels like 15% maybe?). The different crests are really cool, but won’t help you beat bosses. There is maybe 1 full mask or 2? But as everything does 2 damage, that’s only 1 extra hit. The secondary weapons are mostly useless and as the video said, you need to farm resources to be able to use them.
I consider myself pretty good at these kinds of games. Not great, but pretty good. I’ve played the fuck out of DS1, DS3 and Elden Ring. I’ve beaten Nioh 1. I’ve done SL1 runs and all sorts of challenges in DS1, DS3 and Elden Ring, I’ve done randomisers etc. I’ve beaten Hollow Knight 3 times, the third time I did 112%.
For Silk Song I’m about 20 hours in, I’ve beaten Act 1 and did pretty much everything I could find (not spoiling myself on anything). I’m part of the way into Act 2 and I don’t know if I want to play anymore. Every enemy is a bullet sponge, requiring a lot of hits to get out of the way. Everything does so much damage. Simply exploring and finding shit feels like a slog. I’ve had many completely unfair deaths where I got booped by an enemy only to fall into a pit of spikes and die. You go from full health to death very fast. And the bosses just keep on getting more difficult. It feels like a grind instead of fun.
On the other hand, I love the way the game looks, I love the boss music (not as much a fan of the level music, too much atmospheric, too little actual music), I love how smooth it feels to play. And I love the world and want to explore it all. That’s where I disagree with the video, I’m not in the rage quit phase, I’m in the this isn’t fun to play phase.
Maybe I’ll continue, I know I have the skills to beat the game. But if I’m not having fun, what’s even the point of playing anymore?
Holy crap this is amazing based on the demo. Agree the gameplay is a bit basic but I don’t really care with this style and interesting characters and their dialogue.
youtube.com
Najstarsze