[slab_happy]

Maybe I'll have to fire up Kaycee's mod tonight. You are tempting me back into it.

I can report that because a lot of the escape room stuff's been removed and you're already familiar with the mechanics, runs can be fast. You're dead or victorious (but most likely dead, at least in my case) very quickly.

So I can see myself interspersing Kaycee's runs combined with something more narrative-heavy or exploratory. Just a little crunchy palate-cleanser.

[slab_happy]

Update: killing the moon has not yet stopped being satisfying.

[JamieG]

Update: killing the moon has not yet stopped being satisfying.

Unfortunately first time I faced it I had an insta kill card. I presume that’s harder to achieve in the mod. Also unfortunately I’m still waiting to get my controllers back from Nintendo. So still no Zelda or kaycee’s mod or anything. I’m having to watch telly and read stuff like a muppet. 😅

[slab_happy]

Update: killing the moon has not yet stopped being satisfying.

Unfortunately first time I faced it I had an insta kill card. I presume that’s harder to achieve in the mod. Also unfortunately I’m still waiting to get my controllers back from Nintendo. So still no Zelda or kaycee’s mod or anything. I’m having to watch telly and read stuff like a muppet. 😅

Yeah, in the mod the moon can no longer be affected by Touch Of Death or Stinky (which was what got me through first time in the base game).

I'm really enjoying it; it feels like when I originally played the game, I floundered my way through and eventually only escaped Act I courtesy of dumb luck and a LOT of death cards. And it still felt like a struggle and was immensely satisfying.

And now I understand how to play the game a lot better, and the mod is making me having to struggle and work for everything again, at escalating levels.

(Plus  you can unlock new starter decks! Weird new cards! Horrible new challenge levels!)

I hope your controllers are returned to you soon, and that you've got good telly and books in the meantime!

[Dingdong]

Surprised to not see it on here but has anyone picked up the new Diablo? Just started it this evening and it’s been good fun, takes me back to booting up the second one and LANing with mates

[yetix]

Looking forward to getting it once I'm done with doom eternal (late to the part I know!)

[crzylgs]

I am 100% on the Diablo IV HYPE train... Only reason I didn't allow myself to be ripped off and pay £20 to play it 4 days early is because I knew I was working all weekend. However, from tomorrow I'll be sinking a fair few hours into it to catch up with my mates who paid for the early start 

[slab_happy]

It's not available for Mac so I can't play it (and also it sounds like it requires reflexes and timing and other things I lack), but I've heard raves about:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/989790/The_Vale_Shadow_of_the_Crown/

And it's a fascinating concept -- a graphics-less game with a blind protagonist, which apparently manages to make combat work in an audio-only system.

[Fiend]

Started on A Plague Tale 2, as before it looks great and the atmosphere is good. The gameplay is boiled bollox and more frustrating than the previous one, so far the stealth sections have been counterintuitive RNG-based death traps that mostly warrant rebinding a button to "Restart Checkpoint".

[warmonke]

Has anyone been playing Dave the Diver? Seen a lot of hype around it and looks like it could be fun

[JamieG]

Dave the Diver does look good, but I haven't played it yet. My controllers came back fixed and I am currently on a massive Zelda deep dive. Excellent as expected. Basically more breath of the wild with a new set of skills and even more to explore. At times overwhelming, but just a fantastic experience overall. The building mechanic in particular is funny. Nothing like spending ten minutes building some ridiculous rocket powered hover board to get across to another sky island for it all to go hilariously wrong and blast you off into the opposite direction! The story is typically naff but I don't really pay it any attention, since moment to moment gameplay is where the magic lies.

[slab_happy]

Just had an excellent time with my first run through Transistor (an earlier work from Supergiant, the lot who made Hades), and will be diving back in on the New Game Plus mode a.s.a.p., as I think I've only scratched the surface of the combat system.

It's real-time mixed with a "turn" mode you can go into to plan and queue up actions (followed by trying frantically not to die during the "turn" mode's cooldown period), which means that despite my lack of reflexes it's possible for me to just be very bad at it, rather than physically unable to play it.

And I'm in love with the functions system, where any function you acquire can be plugged into your loadout as an active function, OR used to upgrade and alter the effects of another active function, OR plugged into a "passive" slot to get an ongoing buff/defense of some kind, with the result that you have an absurd number of potential combos, and the chance to rebuild your loadout completely every time you hit a save point.

This review describes it as "Transistor's wonderful laboratory of violence": https://www.eurogamer.net/transistor-review

Also, enjoying the Art Noveau/cyberpunk visuals.

The game's pretty short (apparently 6-10 hours for most people, nearly 12 for me -- like I said, very bad at it).

But the New Game Plus mode and a bunch of optional limiters (make things harder for yourself in return for bonus XP) and different challenges means there's way more scope to explore. It feels like I've just got started.

I especially like the Backdoor space full of literal sandpits to test and experiment with options.

[Will Hunt]

Hades

The premise is simple and sounds repetitive and boring. Choose one of 6 weapons and fight your way out of the Greek underworld through a semi-random series of rooms. After clearing a room you will be offered a choice of paths to take, each with a different reward which will help you progress. The underworld is split into 4 biomes, with exit from each guarded by a boss. When you inevitably die (because There Is No Escape) it's back to the House of Hades to speak to the residents of the House, progress the story, and then try again.

However, there is a stupid amount of content and variation built in that makes this game compelling and addictive. Each of the 6 weapons has 4 aspects which significantly change its use. During an escape you can be offered up to two Daedelus Hammers which will significantly change (for the better but in different ways) how the weapon operates. Olympic Gods will show up at regular intervals to offer assistance in the form of upgrades (Boons) which will apply during that attempt. So you might go into a run with a rough plan of how to play, but you will need to adapt to what hammers and Gods are offered to you. Excellent optional difficulty scaling is on offer, meaning that although it's got similar scope to Hollow Knight for gittin' guud, it's never going to make you beat your head against the wall to progress the story and enjoy the game.

Learning what boons combine well and how to stack the bonuses to result in game-breaking levels of damage output is incredibly satisfying. The art is great, the music is great, the voice acting is very well done, the Greek mythology theme is cool, there's plenty of humour.

So, like Hollow Knight, it's another 10/10 game. Though for comparison, after 70 hours I'd taken HK as far as I was prepared to, having completed just about all of the main content apart from Path of Pain and Pantheons. I'm up to 75 hours on Hades and I've still got plenty of story stuff to do, stuff to unlock, harder difficulties to try, and I'm still really really enjoying it (I bought Inscryption and Pikmin but have no desire to play them yet). It is phenomenal value.

[Dingdong]

Hades

The premise is simple and sounds repetitive and boring. Choose one of 6 weapons and fight your way out of the Greek underworld through a semi-random series of rooms. After clearing a room you will be offered a choice of paths to take, each with a different reward which will help you progress. The underworld is split into 4 biomes, with exit from each guarded by a boss. When you inevitably die (because There Is No Escape) it's back to the House of Hades to speak to the residents of the House, progress the story, and then try again.

However, there is a stupid amount of content and variation built in that makes this game compelling and addictive. Each of the 6 weapons has 4 aspects which significantly change its use. During an escape you can be offered up to two Daedelus Hammers which will significantly change (for the better but in different ways) how the weapon operates. Olympic Gods will show up at regular intervals to offer assistance in the form of upgrades (Boons) which will apply during that attempt. So you might go into a run with a rough plan of how to play, but you will need to adapt to what hammers and Gods are offered to you. Excellent optional difficulty scaling is on offer, meaning that although it's got similar scope to Hollow Knight for gittin' guud, it's never going to make you beat your head against the wall to progress the story and enjoy the game.

Learning what boons combine well and how to stack the bonuses to result in game-breaking levels of damage output is incredibly satisfying. The art is great, the music is great, the voice acting is very well done, the Greek mythology theme is cool, there's plenty of humour.

So, like Hollow Knight, it's another 10/10 game. Though for comparison, after 70 hours I'd taken HK as far as I was prepared to, having completed just about all of the main content apart from Path of Pain and Pantheons. I'm up to 75 hours on Hades and I've still got plenty of story stuff to do, stuff to unlock, harder difficulties to try, and I'm still really really enjoying it (I bought Inscryption and Pikmin but have no desire to play them yet). It is phenomenal value.

Hades is real good fun. I’m always a sucker for repetitive dungeon crawlers like that and binding of isaac etc

[Jono.r23]

Hey folks. If you’re Sheffield based & into games i’m looking for participants for a study into player experience for my MSc final project  . It involves playing a short 3D ‘open-world’ game & completing a questionnaire. This would likely take about 10 minutes of your time!

If that sounds like fun and you could spare the time i’d love to hear from you! Dm me or email: jonathanrichards79 (at) gmail.com

Many thanks 

[Fiend]

In keeping with the changing season and the recent weather, I've been skipping merrily through this soothing little jaunt:



For some reason I skipped this originally, but played 2 and 3, enjoying the iconic style and atmosphere despite the gamefeel being as smooth and direct as trying to drive a car, blindfold, in reverse, using a buttplug connected to the steering wheel via therabands. I had the urge to try the remake and as promised it delivers on all fronts including aforementioned slick, crisp godawful clunkfest of the controls. So yes it does exactly what it says on the tin, it looks great even at low-medium settings, the quality of life improvements and tweaks all seem good (from a review that highlighted the changes), the gameplay seems reasonably balanced, and the savepoint system is quite generous (I remember it being gruelling in 2 for some reason, although maybe that reason was I hadn't been anally toughened by Soulslikes' punishment yet). Anyway highly recommended at 10 hours in.

[slab_happy]

Also, if you like story games and the walking simulator style, I think you would really like Gone Home too. (this is also based on other comments you have made in other threads on here . . . . ) :-) Again the less you know going in, the better.

I was a bit spoiled going in but still enjoyed it, thank you! Though there were aspects that frustrated me, like the door you can unlock without a key but only from the other side -- the mechanisms to force you to uncover the story in a particular sequence were a bit too visible at times. Now I'm having thinky thoughts about linear storytelling and how space gets used in games like this.

this is also based on other comments you have made in other threads on here . . . . .

Okay, now I'm curious about whether what you inferred from my comments was "LGBTQ-friendly" or "was young in the '90s", or both! 

(Both would be accurate, obviously.)

[JamieG]

Good stuff slab_happy. Glad you enjoyed it. It is a touch ‘gamey’ at certain points but I think overall it worked well.

I thought you’d maybe enjoy it because of its sensitive (at least I thought so) exploration of LGBTQ themes and challenges. But as a fellow child of the nineties I can see why that appealed too.

 

Unfortunately my gaming is currently at 0%. Work, kids, occasional climbing are consuming all my time.

[slab_happy]

Carmen Maria Machado's essay on her history as a gamer:

https://www.theguardian.com/games/2023/nov/19/carmen-maria-machado-critical-hits-writer-gaming-alternate-worlds-in-the-dream-house

For anyone who doesn't know her work: Her Body and Other Parties is a very strong short story collection (leaning towards horror), and In The Dream House is an extraordinary, experimental memoir about an abusive relationship.

So the anthology she co-edited (Critical Hits: Writers on Gaming and the Alternate Worlds We Inhabit) sounds very promising.

[Banana finger]

For all the 'Souls' fans out there, I've just started the new "Lords of the Fallen". Its great.
All the reviewers cry about it ripping off Darksouls...But i see no issue with this 
Basically pretend its Darksouls 4 and you're away. Its got all the mystery, beauty and grind you'd expect.
Fair enough, slightly easier, but you can't just blindly smash through it....If Magic wood did darksouls...

[Fiend]

For all the 'Souls' fans out there, who want something gentler and cuter (one for Will then??) than Lords Of The Fallen (I played the possibly unrelated original), I've been enjoying Asterigos. It's mostly great.
Many reviewers cry about the lack of map, limited fast travel, and endless superfluous lore. I definitely agree with these issues, but they don't detract too much from a neat cartoony style, decent theme, smooth controls and fun pacey combat with various style options and skill controls (useful because the bosses are IMBA AF as usual) 

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1731070/Asterigos_Curse_of_the_Stars/

[Will Hunt]

Documentary by Valve on the making of the original Half Life. Interesting to see how the process that's so chaotic and decentralised comes together to make such a polished and coherent thing.

https://youtu.be/TbZ3HzvFEto?si=V6Cnt3jkr2Tc1_Lf

[slab_happy]

"Slay The Princess" is a very good, weird, darkly funny time. Think absurdist horror metaphysical visual novel.  I rec being as unspoiled as possible going in:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1989270/Slay_the_Princess/

Definitely has some Stanley Parable vibes, for anyone who's played that, and made me grin throughout in the same way.

[slab_happy]

Also Disco Elysium is 75% off on Steam and everyone should play it:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/632470/Disco_Elysium__The_Final_Cut/

[JamieG]

Santa brought me the new Mario game! I feel like I’m 7 again!