Coelacanth

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

“Hasn’t improved” is a very polite way of putting it, but wouldn’t “gone to shit” be more accurate?

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

I’m glad you are enjoying it, but I wonder: how much of the enjoyment is inherent to the game and how much is just having a good time with your mates (and would be equally fun in any other co-op game)?

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

Really? I’ve only played Kingmaker but while uneven I thought they had some good ones. I really liked both Jubilost and Nok-Nok, I thought Harrim was a pretty interesting character and Jae’thal was enjoyable too.

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

Our first data point is Monitors Unboxed. They found the Switch 2 returned an average pixel response time of 33 ms at 60 Hz.

Jesus Christ Nintendo. That’s absolutely horrendous. But on the plus side I’m glad the screen undervolting let you improve the battery life to an impressive *checks notes* two hours!?

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

Signed it ages ago when it first came about, and it’s really sad to see it still hasn’t gotten enough signatures.

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu (edited 4 miesiące temu)

Only just started Pentiment. And by that I mean I got through the background selection, and I’m now trying to decide if I’m happy with my choices or want to go with something else. The game looks really good so far, I’ve heard good things and I’m excited to see how it plays out.

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

So it’s this versus Expedition 33 for GOTY then? I feel for Sandfall, that’s some unfortunate timing if they end up upstaged by Kojima.

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

I have a very hard time seeing any of those competing with either Clair Obscur or Death Stranding 2, apart from maybe Silksong (if it actually ever does come out). But even then I’m not sold.

Mina the Hollower will probably duke it out with Blue Prince for the indie game of the year.

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

FromSoft reported sales of Elden Ring increased by over 200% following its GOTY win, if I remember right. It definitely has an impact. I can’t imagine it’s irrelevant in terms of attracting or keeping talent either, and it probably would help maintaining creative integrity and sticking to your vision in talks with investors.

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

You tried, Remedy. Now can we please get back to you guys making the type of games we actually want you to make again?

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

They are indeed. Very curious how they’ll end up solving the Max Payne remake with James McCaffrey passing.

Though the game I really long for is Alan Wake 3, but I’ll probably have to wait 5-7 years for that if not more.

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

!gameart

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu (edited 4 miesiące temu)

There are probably better owners than Pearl Abyss, so in a sense that could be a reason for hope. Though I don’t know how much of a hand they have had with all the crap CCP have failed with over the years. Peak EVE was so amazing, but I honestly have no real idea how or if it’s possible to get back to that.

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

Yeah it’s convenient to blame Pearl Abyss for everything wrong with EVE, but truthfully CCP were making moves of dubious quality way before they got bought up by them.

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

There’s definitely weird people making games on itch and sometimes in the depths of Steam.

Oh yes. Ever heard of Beautycopter?

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

It’s not quite as weird, but Alan Wake 2 as well qualifies I think.

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

Sam Lake is still out there fighting the good fight. Kojima too - whether you think he’s a genius or think he produces incomprehensible nonsense you can’t deny he is at least flying the flag for the weird.

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

I tried using Heroic to install Alan Wake 2, but it didn’t recognise me owning the DLCs. Only worked through the actual Epic Launcher. YMMV

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

Pretty much every single game has a massive drop off in concurrent players after the initial spike. That’s just how humans work, not everyone who tries something will like it.

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

PC Gamer has given it 60/100 (which some take to mean a terrible, terrible, scathing review but to me, idk, 60/100 seems like a fun time?)

This has been a thing for ages, and I suspect it’s got some psychological explanation in how our brains are wired. But 5/10 is not an “average game”, it’s a quite bad one. In fact, anything below 5 is usually literally unplayable, despite 4/10 really being just below average. 7/10 is typically the score for “a fun time if it aligns with your interests, but by no means a great game”. Everything below 7 tends to be actively bad.

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

Review Aggregator:

OpenCritic - 35 average - 0% recommended - 18 reviews

Dear lord you don’t see that often. I mean, it’s no surprise and it’s definitely deserved as the game is a hot pile of garbage but even then. They didn’t buy off a single reviewer?

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

Aren’t Hasbro the villain moreso than WotC?

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

I’m back on my first playthrough of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided after a two-month break for Blue Prince, Clair Obscur and F.E.A.R… It’s a great game, but I think I did it a disservice by taking the long break, I can feel I’m so much less invested now than I was when I began playing it.

It’s very unfortunate that the series ended on a cliffhanger, what they have here is really good and in many ways an upgrade on Human Revolution. A third game from the studio would have been a true masterpiece, I think.

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

God damnit we just can’t have nice things.

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

He does deserve that, but I wish the single biggest modding hub on the internet and a load bearing pillar of an entire gaming culture wasn’t sold off to an unnamed party with no transparency and only vague reassurances that “nothing will change”.

What with the late stage capitalist society we’re living in, I’ve been conditioned to think that good things being sold off rarely amounts to good things.

Let’s hope this is one of the few exceptions.

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

Yeah that’s about what I expected. Fucking hell.

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

I said any Call of Duty from the past decade as answer to the original comment, and I still think that is a solid candidate. However, another game I played recently that qualifies I think is Sleeping Dogs. Perfectly cromulent 7/10 GTA clone but ultimately not pulling up any trees.

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

Even though Greedfall is hardly a great game I think it has too much charm to really fit here. I found it too memorable to really be a “mediocre slop” contender.

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

Bruh, FFTA is a great game and I will hear no slander of it.

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

I’ve probably talked more about XV than any other supposedly bad game, so maybe I’ve developed some sort of Stockholm Syndrome. But for an objectively pretty bad game I enjoyed parts of it and it did elicit emotions out of me at times.

The game has many problems, but maybe the biggest is the huge overambitious “multi-media experience” they attempted. The game itself suffers because its content is spread so thin as it’s stretched out over a movie and a comic and the DLCs and I don’t remember what else. An anime? Even the Royal Edition still suffers for not integrating the DLCs, and it’s kind of awkward to have to stop playing at the appropriate times to go so the DLCs for the maximum impact. And even then the planned Lunafreya DLC would have added so much to the story, but they never got around to that as the game flopped (in large parts because crucial story elements were scheduled for fucking DLCs instead of included in the game!)

I do agree that the combat is fun, and they did have a really good vibe going with the bros and the road trip. There are some really nice heartfelt moments where the game shines. And the fishing minigame is absolute top drawer, one of the best in gaming. But ultimately I look at it as a huge pile of wasted potential.

Absolutely gorgeous music though, some really powerful leitmotif work like Sunset Waltz/Valse di Fantastica and Ardyns themes.

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

These posts are some of the best content on Lemmy and bring me back to the early 00s days of reading the physical PC Gamer magazines in all their glory.

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

Great article. The entangling web of endless progression systems is one piece, but one thing they failed to mention is time gating and daily quests. It’s very important for these games to force you to play a little bit every day, instead of in large chunks all at once. This helps move the game subconsciously in your brain from “a game” to “a habit/a hobby”, and that makes your purchasing decisions very different.

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

I knew what that video was before even clicking the link. Great insight into the horrible people ruining the games industry.

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

This will probably make me finally get around to playing it. I had a lot of fun with NWN back in the day, but that was more the multiplayer custom servers. The single player campaign was pretty mediocre.

I never actually played the sequel, but I remember hearing very good things about the Mask of the Betrayer expansion to NWN2. Hope it lives up to the reputation.

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

That’s good to know. Are the expansions independent or do you have to get through the base game first? Would you recommend just doing Mask of the Betrayer and calling it a day there?

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

Thank you! I guess the question is, is sitting through 100 hours of mediocre main campaign worth it to get to Mask? My guess is probably yes, but that knowledge will likely end up de-prioritizing the game on my backlog.

Thanks a lot for the rundown! Are the other two expansions any good?

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

Good to know again, thank you! I played through Kingmaker last winter and your description is pretty spot on. There were parts of it that were great, parts of which that were not, and parts of it that were downright awful. And particularly the latter parts really soured me on it, and made me super reluctant to play Wrath of the Righteous. If that is Owlcat’s idea of high level play I don’t really want an epic adventure from them.

I’ve played Divinity 1&2 and BG3, but I’m less high on Larian than everyone else these days. They’re fine games and fun to play but Larian’s style of writing isn’t my jam and I also think BG3 has a lot of problems that get kind of glossed over.

I missed Pillars 1, so I guess that is on some sort of to-do list. I played about half of Pillars 2 but got bored and never picked it back up.

PSA: If you play ANY of the Pathfinder CRPGs? Get blind fight ASAP. And make sure every arcane caster has a few charges of Glitterdust at any moment.

I had Blind Fight on every single party member and that final bit of the game was still a hellish slog that made actively detest Owlcat.

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

Hearing the bit about rights hell and patches makes me feel a lot better. House at the End of Time followed by that final broken capital area was just some of the least fun gameplay I’ve experienced in a CRPG. And I was there back in the day getting one-shot by Gibberlings in BG1! I’m not as big a fan of the epicly mythic type of narratives and settings as I am of more grounded stories, but if it makes the combat more fun and better balanced I might stomach it.

And if the game is genuinely that amazing I might bump it a bit on my priority list. I already bought it on sale last year, but the Kingmaker slog (what is it, 200 hours or so?) kind of wore me out on western CRPGs for a bit.

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

I guess it’s like Rust but in space? Survival MMO set in the EVE universe? Not really what I’m looking for but it could work I suppose.

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

What’s it like these days? I sometimes miss the heyday of like 2011-2014 EVE, but I stopped keeping track of what was going on some time after quitting. I also kind of lost faith in the direction it was going and what CCP was doing.

As someone who’s been around the block, is it in a good state now?

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

To be honest, I was flying with a specific group of people and when the main FC/corp leader quit I sort of just quit too. So I’m not sure I’d come back regardless, unless he miraculously comes back. But it’s been like 8 years now. Also, EVE consumes your whole life and it’s kind of nice to have time to play other games.

I was doing primarily small gang warfare, as well as some Blops dropping. And bombing runs whenever the opportunity presented itself. For income I was stocking the market of our home station, which I really enjoyed doing.

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

I played it obsessively for a solid month or so following its release. One of the best puzzle games ever and still a GOTY contender for me.

I know some people didn’t like the RNG, but for me it never became a real big problem. You get some control over the randomness eventually, and I also just found the drafting part of the game enjoyable in itself.

Piecing together the story and the world building bit by bit and uncovering the mystery was also super enjoyable. It’s one of the most rewarding games ever for note-takers. So much so that keeping physical notes in a journal was like half my enjoyment.

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

There were a couple of moments for me that made me go “wait, how fucking big is this game actually?”, but otherwise yeah it’s more of a game where you gradually scratch at the surface and peel at the corners and bit by bit it keeps opening up and opening up and opening up beneath you.

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

There are several more. Some examples (light spoilers):

spoilerPick any room upgrades that give you extra dice. There are also two items that let you reroll, though they aren’t the easiest to acquire (but can be Coat Checked!). I also recommend looking into the Sheet Music puzzle.

There are some other ways to reroll or affect RNG, but I don’t know how to hint at them without spoiling too much.

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

It’s not a perfect game as I’m sure you’ve gleaned from this thread. It varies from individual to individual how much the RNG affects your enjoyment but I can understand some people’s frustrations.

That being said: it’s not a full price game, it’s an incredibly interesting and unique concept and it’s put together with an incredible amount of detail and care. It’s also made by a small indie studio, and I love supporting those. If the puzzle you helped solve seemed interesting and you like puzzles and escape rooms and piecing things together then you should absolutely buy it, in my opinion.

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

I meant it’s a $30 indie game as opposed to a full price $60 game, so even if you don’t end up liking it it’s not as big of a loss.

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

Mapocolops played through Dark Forces II recently and it was incredible watching those FMVs again that blew my mind as a child. I will always love Kyle Katarn.

However… the level design is absolutely wild! I have no idea how I got through that game as an 8-year-old!

Coelacanth, 4 miesiące temu

Finished playing F.E.A.R. for the first time and am now about halfway through the first expansion Extraction Point. Man, it really holds up incredibly for a 20-year-old game.

The particle effects look fantastic for their age, the lightly destructible environments add a beautiful layer of carnage and the gunplay is surprisingly great for such an old game. Every single gun feels satisfying to use (bar the bizarrely awful assault rifle), with the highlight of course being nailing people to the wall with the famous 10mm HV Penetrator.

The AI is also just as good as people say and it continues to surprise me with shockingly good dynamic behaviour for again a game of this age. Especially the way they interact with the environment in unscripted ways impress me: closing doors behind them as they retreat to wait in ambush or smashing windows and vaulting over to charge you for example.

The horror and story is actually the weak point, at least of the main game. It’s all pretty predictable, the horror is fairly mediocre and not even the jump scares really land. I will say it has been better in the expansion so far, though, even if it’s still only sort of okay.

But that doesn’t really matter. The atmosphere does enough to sell its pseudo horror identity, but the fantastic gunplay across these well designed claustrophobic levels is worth experiencing. It’s a classic for a reason and I completely get why. And with it frequently being for sale for like a dollar on GOG it’s a must play, I think.

Just make sure to install the EchoPatch!