Malix

Malix, 9 days ago

Chants of Sennaar

samesies. Finished it yesterday, absolute banger of a game. The different word order/sentence structures between the languages did my head in a bit, and the last few glyphs I had somehow entirely missed on earlier areas, and when I did finally find them - the backtracking to solve the remaining translations was a bit of back and forth. But man, what a vibe that game was.

Malix, 12 days ago (edited 12 days ago)

point & click adventure games? Some older ones can be aquired for cheap, or even free as some of them have been released as freeware.

some suggestions in no particular order, some are older (like, DOS old, but still good today, imo), some are 2010’s or so:

• TellTale Sam & Max -episodic games (3d, cartoony, comedy)
• Monkey Island -series, parts 1-3. (2d, cartoony, comedy, pirates, yarharhar) (Later games in the series are pretty finicky to get running/stay running.)
• Sam & Max: Hit the road (2d, cartoony, comedy)
• The Dig (2d, scifi)
• Full Throttle (has a modernized remaster) (2d, “scifi”, biker-theme)
• Flight of the Amazon Queen (freeware) (2d, ~40’s vibe, “retro-scifi”)
• Beneath a steel sky (freeware) (2d, scifi, comedy, some gore)

Ones that have some keyboard usage, but are mainly mouse driven (or can be mouse driven)

• Grim Fandango (modernised remaster, original doesn’t do mouse) (3d, latin-american land of the dead, comedy)
• Indiana Jones & The Fate of Atlantis (some occasional fights where keyboard would be preferred, most of these can be circumvented though) (2d, some comedy, ww2, I mean, it’s indiana jones)

The older ones can be played via Scummvm (scummvm.org) - it’s basically a simplified launcher/runner just for adventure games.

Malix, 12 days ago

I only longingly looked at the screenshots of Sam&Max in some gaming magazine at the time, managed to get the game waaayyy later. But man was it worth the wait :)

You’re welcome! Also, there are still some more-or-less indie devs who keep the point&click adventures alive, afaik most, if not all from Wadjet Eye’s catalog are great, eg: The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow, Strangeland, Primordia… worth checking out!

Malix, 13 days ago

Our group got Lethal Company - and promptly refunded, none of us really felt it. Later “Content Warning” was given free, which we got and still occasionally play, it’s okay - if a bit jank. We’ve been discussing about this one, but it just screams streamer/youtuber-bait to me, and while it is exceptionally fun to watch good streamers having a banter and laughs. I dunno if it holds as well for us, it kinda feels like we’d play it once or twice and then drop it entirely.

Visually the game is on point, though. The southpark-esque “canadian” way the robot-characters talk is hilarious, and the slight eye movements really sell it.

Malix, 13 days ago (edited 13 days ago)

I’m a bit two minds about Content Warning - on one hand, it’s simple to pick up and it’s definitely goofy and, fun? But lack of meaningful permanent progress kinda brings it down for me.

Essentially, you can do “fine” with the basic gear (camera, flashlights), but you get more views (ie. money) with better gear - assuming you actually can capture some footage the game-logic deems worthy. Lost items can occasionally be found in the spoopy-place later on, but not guaranteed. Also replacing/buying new gear is kinda expensive, and dead teammates cost money to bring back (but you can’t go to debt because of it, iirc, so that’s nice).

The runs, at least for us, are usually VERY short, like few minutes in and out. Your runs are limited by oxygen, health and amount of footage you can record - which is 30s. so make it count. So basically how the runs go:

1. find the first monster
2. goof with it and try not to die
3. okay steve died while goofing with the monster, but I got it on film!
4. RUN AWAAAY with camera set in selfie-mode and try not to die

Usually monsters can be found very quickly, sometimes it takes a while. But usually run is over in few minutes, the prepwork before taking a dive tends to take longer :D

AFAIK There are some “hidden puzzles”, like combine some bones or whatever to summon a spoopy secret monster or such, but I haven’t seen them myself, just seen some mentions about them occasionally.

Also, It has mod support too. We tried a few:

• longer/infinite film - initially we thought this would be great, but that just defeated the whole point, recorded footage started to drag on and on and on… Short film forces you to really asses the situation and only record peak footage, instead of meandering nonsense.
• More/infinite money - While it was dope to finally test the equipment we were usually too stupid drunk bad to be able to afford them, the items range from useless single use toy to needlessly expensive for what they are.
• More days - same, kinda defeats the point.
• free hospital bills - a good one, imo. The game is punishing enough as is.

Maybe a bit more durable dudes or longer/infinite oxygen tanks would do, dunno.

Doesn’t sound like a glowing recommendation, but in general I’ve never had bad time in the game. The runs are just over bit too quickly, but then again starting a new doesn’t take long either. It’s decent at minimum.

Malix, 14 days ago

Arkham City is great! Plays well, sounds dope, looks still pretty darn good. The artstyle is still a nice balance between realistic and stylistic, which doesn’t age as hard as realistic, imo.

Got to ask, FSR really needed? Shouldn’t this run at 4k even at fairly modest/toaster-ish pc now? Or does FSR provide better antialiasing results than whatever the game does without it?

Once upon a time I did 100%'d Arkham Asylum, but bailed out of that plan on Arkham City - the amount of collectibles, challenges and secrets was just too much. (And then Arkham Knight came along and turned it way past 11, didn’t bother to finish the game because screw those Joker races.)

Malix, 13 days ago

oh I wasn’t going to go on a rampage about fake pixels or anything, honest question about performance. Kinda wild it tanks that hard beyond 1440p. There’s few games where I run DLSS even if performance-wise it isn’t neede - just because it does better job with antialiasing than whatever TXAA/TAA/FXAA/whatever postprocess AA there usually is. A lot less crawling pixel edges in fine details etc.

Also, just heads up if you ever intend to go for Arkham Knight - IIRC the good ending requires finishing all joker stuff (incl. the collectible trophies). I got no time for that nonsense so just watched the ending on youtube after getting bad ending. :D

Malix, 13 days ago

are you using some app to use fsr in older games, or is that just baked into the amd drivers/software now?

Malix, 27 days ago (edited 27 days ago)

and the hand kinda is reminiscent of the sausagedog from it too, different devs though.

edit: aww poo. there apparently was a demo but it doesn’t seem to exist anymore. :/

Malix, 27 days ago

oh DERP, how did I even forget that one.

Malix, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

same deal, favorites change according to mood, but there are overall few mainstays:

Indiana Jones & The Fate of Atlantis.

It’s a childhood favorite I return to every now and then. It’s a point&click adventure, and to me it’s essentially the 4th (and last) Indiana Jones movie. :D

Apart from one or two bad bits the game pulls, it’s otherwise pretty logical from start to finish. 3 different paths from mid to late game, and mostly good voice acting (for the time). I know the game by heart at this point, but still it feels fun to play, every time. Nostalgia-goggles probably play a big part.

:::spoiler kinda spoilery descriptions of said bad bits

• there’s a “puzzle” where you need to go back and forth trading items between 2 characters, until eventually some hint from the recipient drops. Not hard, just… tedious.
• the hot air balloon controls are bad. Not impossible to use, but just imprecise for no real gameplay reason.
• if you didn’t LOOK at one specific Atlantean cupboard’s door, you have no clue how to solve a later puzzle. Though, you can return to the cupboard, but nothing hints there being instructions for the later puzzle on it. :::

Cyberpunk 2077

I know it’s a divisive game, don’t care, works for me. The bleak vibes of the game just speak to me. Have played it through several times since launch, occasionally still find new things here and there. Not the deepest rpg around, but a good action-rpg with neonlights.

Unnamed Space Idle

I’ve been on this idle/timewaster for way over a year, slow progress raising the numbers all the time. Sure it’s a bit low on gameplay, but absolutely neat little game to occasionally click few times when watching some longform content or so.

Malix, 1 month ago

oh man, The Longest Journey has been on my todo list for eternities. Ages ago I was being a pixel-peeping-perfectionist and I hated the aliasing on the character models - but now that ScummVM does the game perfectly I really have no reason to wait… but… here we are.

Since the game is dear to you, how about some motivational sales pitch for it? Why should I drop everything else and go play the game right now? :D

Malix, 1 month ago

the character models were as weird looking as you’d expect from the era

Oh sure! Love the lowpoly/pre-rendered backgrounds aesthetic. The aliasing thing I mentioned earlier is just a “petpeeve” of mine, I can’t stand the jagged edges / lack of antialiasing. The rough pixel edges of the modes look so out of place when the pre-rendered backgrounds are so smoothly antialiased.

Though, there’s an argument to be made that when playing in modern high resolution, the character models are a lot sharper than the upscaled/blurry backgrounds :D

Some of the puzzles are obtuse to the extreme, and silly. There’s one that’s almost legendarily bad, so it has that bit of history if you’re interested lol.

I guess same goes for pretty much every point&click adventure game, sometimes you just need to be in the same “headspace” as the puzzle designer to get it, otherwise you just don’t.

But, sure I’m down for some history of a bad puzzle! I love obscure tidbits of old games.

Malix, 1 month ago

fextralife

Sometimes it feels like fextralife is filled only with stub articles.

me: “Hmm, I wonder about [a thing] in [a game]”

fextralife’s entire article: “[A thing] is a thing in [a game]”

brilliant, thank you.

Malix, 1 month ago

I JUST started replaying Styx -games, can’t wait for this one!

Malix, 1 month ago

if you enjoy stealth games, sure!

The main idea is that Styx is smaller than humans, so direct combat is never an option. Stealth takedowns, traps and such are the tools here. The enemies are delightfully stupid: sure, once you’ve been spotted they give you a chase and smack you about, but they also go back to their patrols if you manage to escape and hide for a bit. The usual “huh, must have been the wind” thing.

Gameplay can be a bit quicksave/quickload if that’s how you want to play it. Levels are generally huge, but end up somewhat being obstacle courses with few routes which zigzag around the direct path through them.

The games are a bit “eurojank”, sure, but imo, very enjoyable. But I am the kind of gamer who takes hours per level just so they can knock out EVERYBODY in the level, without raising alarms, just because that’s fun to me, so I might be a bit biased. :P

All in all, since you already got them, give them a whirl? The first levels tell you pretty fast if you like the gameplay or not.

Malix, 1 month ago

high-fps abuse looks GREAT! I honestly thought the SDL sourceport (?) that’s existed for years already had that, but apparently not.

Might have to revisit the game at some point

Malix, 1 month ago

kinda sounds like The Outer Worlds, in a way. Which is kinda the feel I got from some youtube videos I watched about the game. Got to wonder how on earth the current 70€ pricetag is in any way justified.

Oh well, wishlistforgotten, maybe some sale notification at some point comes a long

Malix, 1 month ago

I thought it was okay, though not without it’s issues. The itemization (everything being “standard -> better -> betterer -> best”) and the size of the playable areas were kinda weak.

IIRC Finished the main game twice, couldn’t be arsed with the dlc though.

Malix, 1 month ago

Well, it’s a gametype/genre I tend to enjoy greatly - so I can probably overlook quite a bit of jank/issues/whatevs and still get some enjoyment out of it. First round was the “blind go”, second round I wanted to see what can be done differently and what kinds of different outcomes there are. IIRC not much changes when doing stuff differently. Admittedly the second round around was bit of a slog - I think I played it through, but not 100% of it.

To me the “okay” means more of a “more fun than not”. The game isn’t great by any means, but it’s not also off-putting to play, but I don’t feel like I need to re-install the game ever again. Also, the game isn’t terribly long either.

But, opinions, everybody has them. :)

Malix, 1 month ago

So many “drinking-games”: Obenseuer, Finnish Cottage simulator, My Summer Car, Finnish Cabin Mayhem/Mökkimähinä… probably forgetting a few… and now Drunkard Simulator and Last Drop?

Self-deprecating humor and all that, but… this starts to feel a bit weird :|

Malix, 1 month ago

well, ofc I can only speak on my own point of view, as a finn, the fairly prominent “lol drunk” -memery in games feels a bit weird. If that was what you were asking.

Malix, 1 month ago

Just because “when finland -> lol alcoholism”, I get that it’s a self-deprecating joke and all that, but… we could have other jokes too, maybe? :P

I don’t mind the games, let peeps have their fun.

edit: what I called “weird”, is probably better put as “…this thing, again”. I guess.

Malix, 1 month ago

I’m not trying to bust your chops or anything.

didn’t take it as such, no worries. We cool? :)

And I bet the whole “'murica” stuff is quiiite a bit more prevalent.

Aaaaanyhoo, feels like these kinda drunklol games are pretty much just youtuber/streamer-bait for cheap giggles - and I do watch quite a bit of gaming content so these things are kinda inescapable. Oh well. Old man yells at cloud. :P

Malix, 2 months ago

Aliens: Colonial Marines

IMO, the game is better than it’s reputation - at least in it’s current state. After the .ini tweak to fix the alien ai-typo makes it a bit better - afaik, I can’t remember if my group played it with the fix or not, we’ve played the campaign at least 3 times now.

The game’s not a masterpiece by any means, though. It is pretty enjoyable action game in COOP and fairly high difficulty. Sure, arguments could be made that any game is, but game still more fun than not. Now, would I play the game on my own, as single player? Eeeeeeeh, dunno… But if my gaming group asks to play some ACM, I’m down.

Some random points about the game summarized:

• Pulserifle goes BRRT, alien goes splat.
• Could do with less of the human/android enemies though, or at least the parts with androids felt like they dragged on for considerable time.
• Quite a bit of collectible guns, they’re mostly sidegrades but they are different enough, imo.
• runs on a toaster
• goes for pennies on Steam sales, so gaming group funny hours per unit of currency -ratio is pretty good, imo.

Malix, 2 months ago

I did state that I can’t remember - entirely possible we did, but it has been quite a while since we played it.

Malix, 2 months ago

Elex

I truly need to give this game another go, can’t really say why I stopped playing it. But it is EuroJank all the way.

Funny tho, I noticed most of the character animations I saw in Elex are straight up the exact same they were in Gothic 3, possibly from even earlier games’ of theirs. Nothing wrong with reusing assets, but damn they’ve gotten some mileage out of them :D

Malix, 2 months ago

np, it happens. :)

Malix, 2 months ago

most people and/or critics hate witcher 3? o_O

Malix, 3 months ago

Oh, but you might finally play some of those untouched games in your library, so there’s that.

(X) to doubt.

Malix, 3 months ago

As cool as this is, to me this just screams security issues. If scripting in PDF can run doom, it can be (and is) used for nefarious purposes. Wasn’t eg. LTT’s channel compromized because of a PDF with some nasty stuff in it?

Malix, 3 months ago

same, same. Had some cheap laughs with it around the time of release - got horribly drunk, peed out of the van’s window - at obscene speeds on dirt road, died several times… good times.

But actually building the car? Yea nah, that’s some arcane arts to me, don’t know much about cars beyond the surface level.

Malix, 5 months ago

the discord for the mod is really helpful, and has a pretty smart bot to decipher crashlogs. Definitely solved some issues I had. Recommended, unless discord is a nono, which is fair.

I do some “community service” over there and help out others where I can. And seems like most crashes are either some lingering mods from old-fallout4 install, creation club mods (any cc*.* files in fallout/data -dir, or old config files in mydocs/mygames/fallout4) or “bug fix mods” intended for 1.00/1.01 folon versions, and lastly: weapon debris -option enabled - that causes crashes outright with nvidia cards.

edit: also “long loading times fix” -mod is a total nono, there’s better and less files corrupting options out there (highfpsphysics)

Malix, 5 months ago

out of curiosity, weapon debris -option enabled if you check the base game’s launcher -> options? that causes mad crashes on nvidia cards.

Malix, 5 months ago

not 100% sure if the weapon debris is nvidia only issue, but I’ve only seen the crashlog sniffing bot mentioning it when people have had nvidia cards.

Malix, 5 months ago

Awesome! If it helped, great!

Malix, 5 months ago

oh cool, bought the game aaaages ago, seems it has received a lot of content. Probably need to check back into it :o

Malix, 6 months ago

Part of me wants to experience the shitshow first hand, seems like an absolute riot. Realistically tho, never happening, I’ll probably look up some gameplay video at some point.

Malix, 7 months ago

Both seem reasonable. The banning is (AFAIK) mostly to prevent cheaters from making made-up familymember steam -accounts, and cheating in games as them. Once one made-up family member is banned, make another.

Malix, 7 months ago

Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles … but with the caveats that a) it’s only PARTLY like stardew/portia/harvestmoon and b) For the life of me I can’t remember if the game had money or not.

The game is partly farm-life-sim, but the other part is “zelda-like” adventuring and getting rid of “dark smoke thing” that does bad things to the world.

Malix, 7 months ago

Okay, sure, when given the fps camera, closest things to the camera are getting noticed. Duh?

But all things considered, who cares about a single goblin toe? Im much more scarred about the thongs happening in nearby shed. Bleach please.

But at that scale there’s always gonna be compromises. Duh. Does somebody actually expect full fidelity between 3rd person and closeups all the time? Might be showing my age but I sure don’t. What kind of madnes is that?

Games don’t need the show everything, leave a bit to imagination. Sure visuals ate cool, but don’t let that be all there is to it.

Malix, 11 months ago

while all of those qualities are great, they alone don’t make game great.

Malix, 11 months ago

I haven’t played many SNES games, but the ones I have have been pretty good. Fairly sure there’s quite a bit of stinkers in there too.

Malix, 11 months ago

Dunno if it is good or bad, but Warframe has this loading screen where you see players’ ships and you can steer them a bit. No real point to it, but at least it’s something to do when waiting for someone to load in.

Malix, 1 year ago

Got to play it with someone for a bit, they seemed to know where all the neat things were (iirc, the murals, scarf lengthening thingies, etc). But due to the inability to communicate more than just “dings” I couldn’t convey that I needed a quick toilet break. They were gone after I came back, which was a bit sad but I probably wouldn’t have stayed waiting either, tbh.

It was quite okay, I recall playing it through twice, but the second round didn’t really offer much in terms of “value” over the first. Cool visuals and concept, though.

Other somewhat similar vibing games which I somewhat relate to Journey:

• Sable - Somewhat similar character designs, quite a bit more scifi and some dialogue. Pretty cool 3d platformer puzzle.
• Proteus - walking-sim, graphics are those “if atari 2600 could do 3d”. Kinda cool experience, but also kinda one-and-done.

Malix, 1 year ago

Last Epoch

playing offline because that’s where all my stuff is as last I checked the online was a disaster. Other than that, it’s pretty cool ARPG. Though I have some thoughts about some “gearcheck” -type bosses. After ~180h (since beta) or whatever, I’m still thinking it’s a solid 7/10. Fairly enjoyable, but not greatest of all time by any stretch.

Content Warning

It’s completely stupid and I love it. Essentially wannabe-“spööktubers” take a camera and few flashlights into dark, abandoned industrial complex to film something spooky, just to gain views on “Spööktube”. Views gain you money, money buys you gear.

The dives to the industrial complex are very short too, as you can only film so much (90s max, it seems), and the monsters are hella deadly. Either the camera gets filled or everyone is dead in minutes.

The footage can be saved as .webm -videos to desktop, which is GREAT

Malix, 1 year ago

good to hear. But, either way all my current stuff is on offline and none of my friends have the game, so moot point.

Malix, 1 year ago

Under a steel sky

Is there a third game in the series I’m not aware of or did you mean Beneath a steel sky?