Laco

There's no form of multiplayer at all, sadly. But don't let that stop you from playing it!

I'm halfway through world 3 and just started testing a Luigi and Rabbid Mario combo. I think I'll switch back to Rabbid Peach though purely because she's so consistently funny and well animated. No part of the previous sentence is something I ever expected to say. Also picked up SteamWorld Dig 2 on Switch and spent all morning playing it. It's so great! I haven't replayed the original since the 2013 3DS release, but this feels very true to my memories while looking a lot better and being more polished generally. Image & Form keep going from strength to strength. (Maybe I should dig up an old SteamWorld thread, but I don't have much to say yet except "it's lovely"). I'm so happy with my Switch. At home I don't spend as much time with it as my PC, but just knowing it's there ready to throw in my bag for a long train journey or travel to PAX next month... ahh. But the rest of the time it's still a proper modern console! I wonder if my brain will ever learn to accept this.

I only just now realised that the Section 8 campaign I played and remembered enjoying was actually Prejudice, the expandalone/sequel released two years later. Whoops!

XCOM is a classic example, where it's usually called snowballing. I suppose that's based more on luck than the skill-level problem you're talking about here. Tom Francis has some excellent suggestions for fixing it: http://www.pentadact.com/2016-02-25-solving-xcoms-snowball-problem/

Holy moly, that's a huge price drop. In local currency with delivery the Rift is now significantly less than half the cost of the Vive, $590 vs $1400 AUD. I haven't jumped on it yet, mostly because around the time they launched I heard what seemed like unanimous reports that the Vive was just better. Touch seems to have evened things out a bit, but it's still a lot of cash. That said I'm now actually tempted for the first time ever.

I managed to see quite a few of the runs during the event. I'll throw a couple of particularly entertaining ones onto the playlist. Seeing the setup for FFVII was absolutely fascinating. I didn't stick around for the whole 8 hours (!), but it's interesting to compare the expected standards on different games. As a general rule older, less rng-heavy, and especially shorter games have been more precisely routed; skips of 20 frames might be relevant in a 30 minute run, but nobody has time to care about a couple of seconds in a multi-hour game. FFVII seems like an exception: the community has mapped out the exact position and step count required on every screen, including when to walk vs run, in order to precisely manipulate encounters. Banjo-Kazooie 100% was very impressive. It's quite a long run with a lot of extremely difficult tricks, and the runner pulled it off near-flawlessly: he came within two minutes of his own world record. It helped that the commentators were so knowledgeable and explained everything well. (Just... here especially, don't read the comments). I also have to recommend the Jedi Outcast run for the sheer enthusiasm of the runner, CovertMuffin. In such a fast-paced game full of tricky jumps I'd expect a separate commentator so he could focus, but instead he spent the whole hour explaining the tricks as he pulled them off, even taking the time to thank and greet every donor that was announced.

I love reading this thread and selfishly want to extend it for as long as possible, so I checked my list of spare keys for FPS games that fit in chronologically. I don't have E.Y.E., but I do have a bunch from 2007-2010: TimeShift, Call of Juarez, Legendary, Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, Section 8, Sniper: Ghost Warrior. Check your DMs!

I beat The Room and The Room Two, Steam versions. I remember getting halfway through the second on iPad a few years back, but for whatever reason enjoyed the PC remakes a lot more. They're not quite engaging enough alone, but I put on a podcast and spent a few satisfying hours poking and prodding my way through each. The physicality is great, and I only got stuck enough to use a hint once. I hope they remake the third game too. The last mention I can find is an RPS interview from a year ago, where the director said "it depends how The Room Two is received". Well, it's rated Overwhelmingly Positive, but looks like it only sold about half what The Room did.

The full-price games are hard to justify, I agree. What's most annoying is that digital prices are kept high (here Bomberman digital went up by $25 just after release) to appease retailers, but they start discounting almost immediately whereas the eshop essentially never does. Apparently I paid $115 for that 200GB card. Not cheap, but full-price games here are generally $80-90.

Same here. I haven't bought a new physical game in at least 5 years despite the generally higher cost of digital games on consoles, especially Nintendo. I definitely understand people's desire to avoid having their game collection tied to an ephemeral service, but for me convenience wins. That 200GB card only set me back a little more than a full-price Switch game. It certainly adds up, but it should last at least a few years.

I finally picked this up after watching a dozen hours of Polygon's excellent Awful Squad streams, https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaDrN74SfdT5xZKh7TsCL4ydk7TOduLeu. I've only played a few hours so far but the streams have given me a headstart on understanding the game. I made #3 in a match earlier today! This game is amazing. The thing it most reminds me of is the original Ghost Recon, in that you're tiny and the world is huge and full of concealed enemies that can kill you very quickly, but you have complete freedom of approach. It's one of the only multiplayer games I've played where sniping actually works, because 95% of the time you're not engaging enemies so it's always a surprise. In most action games the scale is so tiny you can see the "sniper" at the end of the next corridor, and anyway the only thing anyone is thinking or doing is "fire gun at enemy". In this you're looting buildings, planning next moves, healing, hiding, or just waiting, all downtime that makes being stealthy and picking your shots actually worthwhile. In one memorable match I was crawling through a cornfield when a jeep raced past within metres. It skidded to a stop about 50m away and the driver jumped out to grab an airdrop, only for another player to materialise out of the cornfield and kill them. I got a few rounds into the second player but didn't get the kill, and we had a tense standoff (lay-off?) at the edge of the cornfield for about 2 minutes. Eventually the electric wall of death was approaching and the next circle was far enough away that it was clear the still-empty jeep was the only hope of survival. I crawled towards it, jumped in and drove like crazy. I still have no idea what happened to the other player. My raving has convinced a few friends to buy it, so I'm looking forward to squad mode. Solo is fun but very tense, and dying instantly is less dramatic than getting downed to be heroically revived by a squadmate.

Heck yes! This is the best news I've heard recently. This Hitman was one of my favourite games ever, and I'm delighted we'll now definitely get a second season.

The name change is a shame. Adjective-adjective is much less memorable, somehow, than adjective-noun. The logo weirdly reminded me of Project Cars, and looking it up they are very similar. I assume bluetooth means other wireless controllers will be supported eventually. That controller design looks mostly okay, apart from the bizarre decision to cheapen it by including turbo/clear buttons (and making them more prominent than start/select)! But yes, I can count on one hand the number of decent controllers designed by companies other than major console brands, so expectations are low.

This is way outside my area of expertise (I don't believe I've ever actually Managed a Lord personally), but Awesomenauts shares some vague similarities with the genre and is on PS4. I remember having fun when I played it a few years back.

Yesterday 8bitdo released a firmware update making all of their controllers Switch compatible. As the first third-party controllers of any kind for Switch, this is pretty big news! I've used but never owned an 8bitdo controller, so after yesterday's announcement I ordered an SFC30 and it arrived this morning. It's really lovely! Unlike most third-party retro controllers (including their own NES / FC30 / Pro), the SNES / SFC30 look and feel almost indistinguishable from the originals. I just tried it out on my Switch, and it synced and worked seamlessly. I'm looking forward to playing through Shovel Knight, Wonder Boy, and whatever comes out on VC.

Reading this the other day mildly frustrated me, which seems to put me in the same boat as most here. As Twig said it's not actually wrong, just disingenuous and over the top. While Steam is in a position of dominance now, that wasn't always the case. In my opinion it did great things for PC gaming, especially for the first decade of its existence, to the extent that the market wouldn't really exist today without it. Valve worked very hard and solved some difficult problems so completely that no competitor on any platform has come close. Despite a few iffy practices Steam is way more consumer-friendly than almost any other store I can think of, GOG and itch.io being wonderful exceptions. I found this line particularly amusing: Uh, no. The sale is the marketing. That's what sales are for. They're not a new concept. People make memes and talk excitedly because they're consistently such good sales, though personally I don't know anyone who's especially cared for at least a few years. There are definitely problems with Valve, like any big company. Communication could be a lot better, they should pay marketplace creators more, and some real competition to motivate them to invest in improving the platform would be great. Let's talk about those, but this "wake up, sheeple!" angle is just tiresome.

This thread is the best. Having never played an Armored Core game I don't have anything to contribute, but I love reading your detailed thoughts on each game. Thanks, Lork!

I picked up Chime Sharp too, thanks for the tip. I remembered the original as a relaxing zone-out sort of game, something like Lumines, but wow is this new version tough. I'm struggling to make it to 75% coverage before time runs out on even the easiest levels.

The mismatch between the two screens makes it look like a smartphone docked into a bluetooth controller. The effect is odd, but perhaps the larger screen is a tradeoff for the loss of 3D and front-facing camera.

I keep track of my collection and completion status on a dedicated site (backloggery.com/lachlancooper). This naturally includes iOS/Android, though the huge abundance of F2P can make it hard to draw a line around what's actually part of my collection. I guess I generally leave out free stuff unless I've spent money or a decent amount of time on it. It might be going slightly over the top, but I also maintain a spreadsheet tracking the price, date, and store for every purchase. Mostly this is to satisfy idle curiosity, so I can tell at a glance how many games I bought and how much I spent each year.

I've been playing on Switch too, and I love it. Platformers(?) have become more complex over the decades, but this is both incredibly simple and extremely nuanced, the kind of organic system that was impossible to simulate in early games so the whole industry has basically ignored forever. I like how all the collectibles aside from the three you need to finish each level are totally meaningless. Why blue spheres and golden coins? Why not! Also that the game tracks your progress within each level so you can go back later and collect only what you missed the first time. Re: Switch specifically, I picked up Snake Pass on release day and the HD rumble was totally over the top. The motor noise made it unplayable in a quiet room. But they released an update that fixed it just a couple of days later! That's so unlike my experience of any Nintendo or other console, I hope this says good things about the ease of the update process.

Wow, I didn't even consider that this might be possible! I added P.T. to my account around the time it disappeared, only a week before buying my PS4, so I never got to play it. Gonna give this a try.

This brought to mind Grow Home / Grow Up. If you haven't already played either, I'd recommend them. They share some similarities with BoTW, like hand-crafted worlds full of cute touches and a focus on collection, though the Grow games are much smaller scale and have no combat.

Oh my god, I would play the shit out of Dark Souls on Switch.

The finger-snap that the system plays in software is terrible for this because it fires separately from and masks the physical click that tells you when a joycon is actually properly attached. I was playing in handheld mode on my couch yesterday when the left joycon started slipping off, because five minutes earlier I'd reattached it but only heard the software sound. I don't think it's that big a deal, but I'm going to be sure to jam them on very firmly from now on. (So many things these days get this basic bit of interface design wrong. Don't give me feedback about my input if you haven't really registered it! Elevators and swipe card systems are the worst.)