Coelacanth

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

Very short and sweet article. If anyone wants to read more there is a longer elaboration by the same author here: “I Told Him I Loved Him, Because I Do”. Worth a read.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

I haven’t watched it myself yet but I’ve heard a lot of good things about Mapocolops playthrough of it and I’ve watched plenty enough of his other Let’s Plays to vouch for him in general.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

Great review, as always I love your content! You mentioned a higher price point but I don’t think you mentioned the actual price anywhere in the review. Or did I miss it? I guess it’s just a quick search away.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

I’m glad it’s good. Probably going to try to hold off until a sale because I’ve got my backlog full already but man, I’m tempted. Reviews sound great and a part of me wants to honour Itagaki by immediately getting in over my head in NG4 on Master Ninja.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

I think I might have relapsed. Send help. Everything was going so well, I was playing through the Final Draft of Alan Wake 2 and having the time of my life, and then I clicked on a video YouTube recommended in my feed that looked interesting and the familiar old craving kicked in. Suddenly a week had passed by and I was deep in the rabbit hole again.

So this week I’ve mostly been modding STALKER: Anomaly. There’s been so many new mods and modpacks and even engine optimization released since I played it last and I’m having a blast getting reacquainted, this time basing my modlist on the H.A.C.R. pack which seems to be a flexible and solid base. I’ve already added about 30 mods to it.

I also have to give special mention to the mod and video that kicked it all off - TALKER. It transcribes your voice talking into the mic, and uses AI to give responses from characters in game and it’s actually just so much fun to use, especially for someone like me who loves the role-play and emergent narratives and storytelling of Anomaly. Right now I haven’t even started a full playthrough yet as I’m still tweaking parameters for the AI to fine tune the prompts given to each faction as well as adding to the list of unique personalities.

If you’re an Anomaly player, I definitely recommend checking out TALKER, even though setting it up is a little annoying.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

The upshot is that since nobody knows whether they own it or not there is nobody bothering to actively enforce copyright, so you can just download the games for free if you want on NOLFrevival.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

Both NOLF 1&2 and Contract JACK are available on the website above, patched and fixed to work on modern machines.

YMMV but when I tried NOLF 1 for the first time earlier this year I sadly found the gameplay so poorly aged I wasn’t having enough fun to make myself finish it - despite the setting, theme and writing being quite fun.

I might give it another shot at some point though, it was a critic’s darling back in the day and I’d like to be able to say I have played it.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

Damn I didn’t see this coming, hit unexpectedly hard. I just played through all the Ninja Gaiden games just recently as well as his Samurai Jack game and was so pumped for both his next project as well as NG4. He was a legendary character and whatever you think of him he was a colourful figure on the scene and will be missed for that if nothing else.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

I believe the final frontier for Linux gaming - apart from some niche cases - is multiplayer games with kernel-level anticheat. They are literally impossible to play on Linux, so if you’re into one of those then don’t bother.

The other edge case is modding. A lot of mods work just fine on Linux, but some just don’t and some - like those relying on Mod Managers and the like - might require more fiddling and specific tinkering. If you do a lot of modding it’s probably easier to stick to Windows as you know everything just works.

Otherwise you should be good to try.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

I agree. That scene on the island with Celes hit me like a ton of bricks the first time.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

Great pick, she’s up there for me too. I also only played the first one but thought it was an amazing experience.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

I love Control, I think the gameplay and level design is amazing, the world building is phenomenal and some of the side characters are great. Jesse herself wasn’t really that memorable to me though. I get that she’s supposed to act like a foil for all the craziness that’s happening, but as a result she ended up feeling kind of bland and forgettable. I always thought this was intentional, as the main focus of the game was the world building and lore and the Oldest House. Having a protagonist with a super strong colorful personality would be too much and just end up distracting from that.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

The games are available for free on NOLF revival if you want to play. Nobody knows who owns the IP so there is nobody enforcing the copyright.

The setting, theme and writing is really fun but the gameplay really hasn’t aged well.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

I love the concept. Not my genre and not my favourite art style, but the idea is really fun.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

Viva New Vegas should be a stable base to work from in terms of mods, as already mentioned. Vanilla New Vegas is almost unplayable but with the latest slew of community patches and engine fixes and even engine rewrites plus 4GB patch and all that it should be quite stable.

I recommend trying again, I had a playthrough just two years ago I think with pretty much no stability issues. And New Vegas is an amazing game.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

I’m still hoping for a “Definitive Edition” type update eventually. There are some parts that could definitely do with a retouching or restructure, the final act in particular.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

Do it like Remedy does for Alan Wake: Pattinson acts and reads out the lines in (presumably butchered) French, but then have a separate native French actor do the voice and dub over him.

Best of both worlds?

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

I’m far from a parry god myself, so I simply built around it. Stacked HP and Defense on Maelle along with the First Strike Pictos and started every fight with her using Egide, which let her absorb damage for the team. Ran Lune with constant healing through Tsunami. Reasonable investment in HP and Defense on all my characters. The only times I ran into an issue of getting one-shot through the main game was when I deliberately went into a higher level zone - and at that point I felt like I had it coming. The optional superboss is a different story of course, but that’s a whole different issue and also kind of par for the course.

Also this was on Normal mode and not Expert so YMMV.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

I did a ton of side content (basically all of it) so I probably was overpowered then in terms of levels/weapons/Pictos for the main story?

The balance of the game is all over the place, that much I agree on. Especially the final act, which is a mess quite frankly. If you do any side content at all the final boss is a complete joke you probably kill in one shot and miss a bunch of cool attacks and mid-fight cinematics.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

That clip of Jim Cummings talking to a fan and telling them “please remind Larian that I exist” still breaks my heart. I guess Matt Mercer is a cheap PR move or something to boost sales but I wish Jim got to come back to do Minsc.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

Also who replaces ::: spoiler spoiler Viconia. Though the whole character assassination of Sarevok and Viconia in itself is a travesty. :::

Studios like Remedy and Sandfall have shown you can have mocap done by an actor other than the voice actor and still end up with a great product. Stuff like this is just one of the many little things that make me feel like Larian had very little regard for the original games, and only used the IP for brand recognition and marketing. Which makes me sad.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

I never really got the feeling of reverence for the originals personally, down to the references made feeling like lip service created by someone browsing a wiki who has never played them in the first place.

Choosing to set the game a 100 years later (so that they wouldn’t have to incorporate much of the original cast or story) but still shoehorning in two fan favourite characters never sat right with me either.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

Slogging through Cronos: The New Dawn, probably around the 60% mark now, maybe a bit more? I’m at the Hospital area, which I think is the final main area out of three. I have a lot of things to say about this game, and not too many of them are positive sadly. I’m really on the verge of dropping it and have actually taken a break from it today playing other games.

And it’s a shame because Cronos does have its qualities. It’s beautiful to look at, both visually stunning and with environments displaying immaculate art direction. The atmosphere is on point, and both the alternate-reality Poland with its brutalist nightmare architecture and the sci-fi future tech is fantastically realized - with the caveat that the “Travellers” the protagonist belongs to might be a tad derivative of Bioshock Big Daddies.

Where the game falls flat, sadly is the gameplay. First of all it’s a survival horror with a heavy emphasis on survival and a very weak “horror”. The game is not really particularly scary, even accounting for the occasional cheap jump scare. Instead it’s an absolutely gruelling action slog where the real horror is inventory management and ammunition scarcity. And this would have been fine if the action gameplay was good, but it’s just… boring, stale and uninspired.

The enemies are just the blandest garden variety zombies you can imagine, the touted “merge” mechanic feels cosmetic at best and doesn’t factor in as much as you’d think and without a dodge button a lot of the fights are just running around kiting and waiting for a chance to charge up a shot and repeat. Most enemies are slow enough that it doesn’t even feel particularly thrilling, you’re not really in danger and are just waiting for them to go into an animation you can punish.

On top of that the ammo scarcity is so ridiculous that I often feel compelled to reload my last save if I miss more than two shots in a fight as I don’t want to risk getting soft locked. I know I’m not a god gamer and my aim isn’t the best, but it feels too harsh. And yes, I’m charging every shot to conserve ammo already.

On top of that the body-burning mechanic combined with the restrictions on flamethrower fuel dispensers leads to repeated situations of running back-and-forth between bodies and a dispenser for like 10 minutes straight, which feels like an enormously unfun waste of time and just adds to the endless tedium and frustration the game delivers constantly.

And it’s a shame because the story is actually kinda intriguing. It’s what’s kept me going this far. I do like the world building, the mysterious “Collective” you belong to has me interested still and when the story delves into some more philosophical musings occasionally I am enjoying myself. It could still all fall flat though, as this is a time travel story and those often devolve into timey-wimey messes full of plot holes that fall apart under close inspection. But so far I’m still wanting to see how it ends.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

Ooh I remember hearing about that game last year. I was intrigued by the appeal of the premise of like, playing a bit part character in the universe so to speak. The idea of the “real conflict” happening between massively powerful factions and creatures in the background while you scuttle in their shadow felt very interesting.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

Yeah I remember that. Definitely will keep tracking this game, sounds cool!

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

At this point I trust Fitgirl repacks more than some official publishers.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu (edited 2 miesiące temu)

Argo Tuulik along with Martin Luiga were players in Robert Kurvitz’s Elysium TTRPG sessions, perhaps less important than Robert in the creative process and world building but still definitely participating enough to be considered co-creators of the setting. Torson and Mcclane were characters created and played by Argo and Martin during the tabletop sessions, for example.

Argo Tuulik was also a writer for Disco Elysium who was hugely important to the game, and wrote several iconic parts of it like the Hardie Boys. His involvement in trusting the people who betrayed Robert is something he personally regrets, and has talked about in his extensive interviews with the 41st Precinct YouTube channel.

EDIT: Argo Tuulik’s interview series below. Be warned it’s like 20 hours of content. Interview part 1Interview part 2Interview part 3

ZA/UM - The Inside Story Part 1ZA/UM - The Inside Story Part 2

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

Yeah I agree. I never used Gamepass as I am not the target audience, but the value proposition made sense to me and I understood why some people paid for it.

This new pricing makes no sense at all, wouldn’t you rather just buy the games you want at that point? $360 a year gets you a lot of games, even accounting for a couple of AAA day one purchases every year.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

I’m not sure I understand the camera mechanic but it looks cool! Mannequins moving when you’re not looking reminds me of the weeping angels from Doctor Who.

Coelacanth, 3 miesiące temu

Spoiler tags aren’t working for me either, I don’t think they’re correct for Lemmy markdown. It should look like this:

::: spoiler Spoiler Title

Spoiler text body goes here

:::

And hopefully work like:

Spoiler TitleSpoiler text body goes here

---

Anyway for Cyberpunk endings I agree, and happy endings don’t really go with the setting. Personally the one I felt best about was doing the “Don’t Fear The Reaper” secret ending path into the Temperance ending, for me that was an awesome and fitting resolution. But I had grown quite close with Johnny over my playthrough. Caveat that I haven’t finished the DLC yet and I know it adds endings, so maybe I’ll like one of those better.

Coelacanth, 3 miesiące temu

Nothing has ever hit me harder than Disco Elysium, and I don’t think anything else ever will. Everything from its themes of failure and depression and addiction and clinging to the past to its surprising message of hope in the face of unrelenting nihilism resonated with me on a molecular level. And the Final Dream is just the single most impactful, emotional and heart-rending moment I’ve had in any game ever. The culmination of the entire game distilled into one scene, and even the whole pathos of that one scene concentrated into three closing words:

spoiler“See you tomorrow”

Coelacanth, 3 miesiące temu

Reaching Room 46 the first time is the first of like three or four natural jumping-off points, I’d say. You can totally stop playing there if you’re satisfied, but if you want to keep digging you can go so much deeper.

Coelacanth, 3 miesiące temu

For me that was the first ending I got, Rogue’s path followed by the Sun. I felt like absolute shit afterwards personally. I took Johnny’s offer because I was appealed by the idea of redemption, but instead he dragged Rogue down with him one last time. And then in Path Of Glory V had learned nothing, discarded all the character growth and ignored every lesson to instead let Night City consume her like it does everyone else that fails to realize it’s a festering swamp you must leave behind at all costs. That’s why the two endings that have a positive undertone - The Star and Temperance - involve the main character leaving Night City behind.

Coelacanth, 3 miesiące temu

That formatting is what Reddit uses and Sync still has the code to process it.

Coelacanth, 3 miesiące temu

Finished Enotria: The Last Song and even did a quick NG+ run to get the secret ending and its achievement. Not going to bother with 100%-ing it, however. I really enjoyed my time with it overall. For a somewhat janky AA Soulslike it’s got a lot of charm and the Commedia Dell’Arte framing is great. Beautiful environments and some well designed levels, enough fun to be had with the skill tree, loadout switching, active abilities and elemental/status system. Not too hard (which is fine by me at this stage of my life) and short enough to not overstay its welcome. If you’re a Soulslike fan and can stomach AA games it’ll do the job if you’re done with the usual suspects. I still wouldn’t pay full price for it, but as part of the current €17 Humble Bundle it feels like good value and if you’re not interested in the other games in there then keep it in mind for a future deep sale.

Next I’m not sure. I started playing GRIME that I’ve had my eye on for a while and snagged recently when it was on an all-time low sale, but even though I can tell it’s really good it’s not grabbed me yet. Spooktober made me pirate Cronos: The New Dawn to try it and see if I like it, otherwise I have an impending Alan Wake 2 revisit planned. I still haven’t played the DLCs but I want to replay the Final Draft again first in preparation.

Coelacanth, 3 miesiące temu (edited 3 miesiące temu)

Did the customary scroll through my 50-game wishlist for irresistible 80-90% discounts and basically came up empty. Most of the deep sales are games that will surely be on another deep sale before I finish my upcoming few planned games to play, nevermind my whole backlog. Normally I end up adding something to the pile out of the old “well this is too good to pass up” but for once my wallet might be safe.

Maybe I give in to temptation and pickup one of Virgo Versus The Zodiac(-70%), The Banner Saga(-80%) or Salt and Sanctuary(-75%).

Coelacanth, 3 miesiące temu

If it would have had Swedish voice acting I would have bought it.

Coelacanth, 3 miesiące temu

I think he’s talking about the second one, which I’ve heard mixed things about. I thought the first one was an excellent - albeit short - experience that knows what it tries to do and doesn’t do anything else.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

I’d probably have snapped it up already if I didn’t recently buy GRIME on an all-time low deep sale and it sort of fulfills the same niche.

I had no idea about co-op actually but I don’t have anyone to play with so it probably won’t move the needle for me.

I will get to it eventually though, it looks great.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

Isthereanydeal.com is such a good resource for knowing if a deal is actually a rare opportunity or it’s a game that comes up for deep sale constantly.

Coelacanth, 3 miesiące temu

Yeah I’m feeling a little out of the loop here. I know of The Crew only because of it being the flashpoint starting Stop Killing Games. Is it supposed to be a timeless classic I’m missing out on?

Coelacanth, 3 miesiące temu

I feel like I’m the only one unexcited by this. It looks good and reviews well but 50ish hours of Ghost of Tsushima was more than enough for me. I don’t really have appetite for another helping of “more of the same”.

Coelacanth, 3 miesiące temu

A remaster like this is pointless in the first place, it’s not meaningfully doing anything to make people play it who wouldn’t otherwise. A proper Nightdive-style remake is what the game deserves.

Coelacanth, 3 miesiące temu

I guess that’s probably fair. I never had huge issues with them but it’s been a hot minute since I last played through.

Coelacanth, 3 miesiące temu

I’m playing two games at once this week, firstly I’m playing bits and pieces of Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword on my 3DS. It’s a really great game so far, super fun and surprisingly good at translating the mainline NG gameplay onto a handheld and using stylus input for controls. Might well end up one of my favourite DS/3DS games when I’m done with it. I’m about halfway through so far I think.

I’m also playing through Enotria: The Last Song on PC for the first time. So far I’m having a blast with it, after some initial information overload I’m finally starting to engage with the systems and am starting to really enjoy using the stances and elemental rock-paper-scissors. From what I’ve seen so far it does not really deserve its mixed steam reviews - yes, there is some jank and it’s plainly AA but there is a lot of good to make up for it. The world design is gorgeous, the level design is great with lots of verticality and the setting is so lovely and unique. I have heard it’s fairly short, and I do maybe concur that it might not merit a full price purchase, but I do think it’s worth wishlisting for a deep sale if you like the genre. I’m having a lot of fun with it so far.

Coelacanth, 3 miesiące temu

I couldn’t beat it “fairly” either, but approaching it as a puzzle fight where you’re trying to figure out how to deal with its bullshit is also kind of fun. I ended up stunlocking it, which in itself you can do in several different ways. The game has a lot of fun things you can do with builds.

Or just Stendhal.

Coelacanth, 3 miesiące temu

Lune was by far my favourite to use mechanically, the stains system just made for such fun planning of rotations. There is a lot of fun with various weapon combos too, like the Potierim support build that applies Greater Slow. I personally used her as AP and buff battery with Typhoon giving everyone max AP and refreshing greater versions of all buffs every turn. And then I used Braselim with Storm Caller and Lightning Dance to farm a tier 3 Gradient every turn.

The Genesis build is AP efficient but once you have 9 every turn it gets outdamaged by Lightning Dance (single target) and Hell (AoE). Though you wouldn’t guess so going by the astronomically poor and unclear skill descriptions.

I didn’t get Medalum either but honestly you don’t need it. The one shot builds only need it pre Cheater to start in Virtuoso, after that you can just Last Chance anyway.