Henke

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Everything posted by Henke

  1. Kickstarters

    Probably Swery's D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die, which is a pretty weird and obscure thing to be riffing on. :/
  2. Kickstarters

    You folks back any Kickstarter projects? How have they worked out? I was playing the Early Access version of one of my latest backed projects, Consortium: The Tower, this weekend and figured it was time I took stock of my investments and see how this whole thing has turned out. Giana Sisters Backed: 2012 | Status: Fully released | Contentment level: Released very quickly, perhaps even on schedule, which is unusual for KS projects. It was a robust platformer, but kinda soulless and I couldn't be bothered playing very far. Distance Backed: 2012 | Status: Fully released | Contentment level: Backed this arcade racer purely because of how much enjoyment I'd gotten out of it's free prequel Nitronic Rush, and Distance certainly lived up. Finally came out of EA this September. LA Game Space Bundle Backed: 2012 | Status: Partially released | Contentment level: We got a pile of half-finished experiments out of this, but there were a few gems in there. It's a shame VideoheroeS never turned into a full-fledged release, it had real potential. Sui Generis Backed: 2012 | Status: Early Access | Contentment level: This morphed into a spin-off-prequel called Exanima, which is still in Early Access. I've had a lot of fun with it though and I love seeing how it develops. Spintires Backed: 2013 | Status: Fully released | Contentment level: This is my favourite KS project. Yes, the development has been bumpy, with frequent clashes between the developer and the publisher, but those things are in the past. This is head and shoulders above any other offroading game out there, and with the game's latest incarnation Spintires:Mudrunner at new home Focus Interactive, there's nothing but blue skies and muddy dirtroads ahead! KÔNA Backed: 2014 | Status: Fully released | Contentment level: An interesting first person mystery that came to an abrupt halt when the development time and budget ran out. They call it a "full release" but, eh. Convoy Backed: 2014 | Status: Fully released | Contentment level: A Mad Max-style FTL-alike. It was alright. STRAFE Backed: 2015 | Status: Fully released | Contentment level: Roguelite FPS that was a lot of fun. Wildfire Backed: 2015 | Status: In Development | Contentment level: This 2D stealth platformer seems like it gets more and more ambitious with each new backer email. I guess I'll wait and see. Consortium: The Tower Backed: 2016 | Status: Early Access | Contentment level: I backed this super-ambitious Immersive Sim on Fig after the KS failed. I just played the Early Access version and it swings wildly between very impressive and polished to dull and half-baked. I don't know where this is gonna go, but I'm glued to my seat watching the development. The Good Life Backed: 2018 | Status: In Development | Contentment level: I enjoyed the demo of Swery's new game and I look forward to seeing how it turns out. OVERALL VERDICT: Interesting mediocrities with a few bright spots! Tell me of your backed projects! Have you gotten your money's worth?
  3. Kickstarters

    Good write-ups, syntheticgerbil! I played the Larry games up until 7(that's the one on a boat, right?) but I get the impression they've dropped in quality since. Not much desire to revisit the series as it'd probably just remind me of my awkward teenage self. Did Project Fedora eventually turn into "Tesla Effect"? That's the only Tex Murphy game I've ever played. I liked it! And yeah Shovel Knight was great, but the Plague Knight DLC was too difficult for me to bother with.
  4. Recently completed video games

    Recently completed games round-up! Fade To Black This lesser-known sequel to Flashback came out in 1995, I played it back then but could never make it past the first level. After Flashback showed up on GOG the other week I felt the strange urge to go back to this thing and see if my aged gamer skillz might let me progress further this time, ended up playing through the whole thing over a few days. The graphics actually look kinda cool in a retro way, but the controls have not aged as well(for instance, the jump key is J and it's unrebindable), I also had to play the entire thing on keyboard because while it does support mouse-input, the control layout pretty much means you'd need 3 hands to comfortably play it with M+KB. Although it looks like an action game, the cumbersome movement and rough difficulty makes it feel more like a survival horror game. It's pretty wonky, but interesting enough that I couldn't stop playing. Steel Rats Sidescrolling motorbike action that kinda feels like a mix between Trials and Sonic. Length and pacing felt appropriate. Game was pretty easy, aside from 2-3 difficulty spikes. End bossfight was quite tepid, story bleh. The gameplay's fun though! Kathy Rain Just finished this! I liked the characters and story, and it had some pretty good puzzling.
  5. The audio is definitely better! I've never played this game (or any Zeldas before BOTW) so I have no idea what's been randomized or modded here. Except I'm like 99% sure that's not Link's original outfit. ¬_¬
  6. Kickstarters

    Damn osmosisch, that's a lot of games! I've played several of those. Actually had a lot of fun with Satellite Reign and Hyper Light Drifter as well.
  7. Kickstarters

    I played a bit of Broken Age when it was in PS+, but it didn't do much for me. :| In general I get the sense that backing projects by legendary devs usually turn out to be a disappointment. See: Star Citizen, Godus, Mighty No. 9, Underworld Ascendant, everything by Double Fine. Shenmue 3 is probably headed that way too. My personal rules for what to back: -There has to be a playable demo or at least convincing in-game footage. Flowery descriptions and concept art ain't gonna cut it. -Only back projects which might have a hard time meeting the target. No point backing these super-popular projects that fly past their target in a few days. It's safer to just wait for release and reviews on those. -I only back at the basic "digital download" level, because I'm not just backing so the dev can "follow their dreams", I expect to actually see a return for my investment in the form of a finished game.
  8. Kickstarters

    RE: Giana Sisters. It's just one of those games (like Uncharted 4 or Horizon Zero Dawn) where I really can't fault the game on any level, it just left me cold and disinterested.
  9. Netflix Originals

    THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS, GAW DAMN! It's a series of short stories. It starts off good, and then you think "ok, they start off with the good stuff, right?" NOPE, coz then it gets BETTER. The Tom Waits and Zoe Kazan segments were my favourite. Also I, uh... may have developed a bit of mancrush on Bill Heck. :|
  10. It picks up where The Defenders ended, but aside from that it's very self-contained. The other Defenders are barely even mentioned. It also feels much more like a sequel to Daredevil S1 than S2.
  11. Netflix Originals

    I'd blissfully forgotten about Mute, only made it about a half hour into it before I turned it off. I liked The Get Down's first season, but couldn't be bothered with the second after a couple episodes. Ok I gotta add this to my list. The rom-com setup isn't enticing me, but I've heard enough hype that it warrants a look. The Outlaw King came out on Friday. It's about the Scottish war for independence and the story picks up where Braveheart ended. Starts off strong with a one-take opening scene that really immerses you in the setting, but after that it tapers off a bit. Feels realistically un-glamourous for the most part. There's some decent war scenes and one super-gory part. It's ok. Also watched the first half hour of Orson Welles' The Other Side Of The Wind. It's, uh, kinda all over the place and not really doing anything for me. :|
  12. Y'all watch Daredevil S3? I watched it over the last week. Had some great character moments, some great twists and it wasn't afraid to go super-bleak. The ending tho? Eh. I think my issue with the final episode is Anyway, overall I really liked it tho. In fact it might be my favourite season of the series.
  13. Another Red Redemption, Dead

    Whenever a new R* game comes out I tend to loose myself in it for a good long while, so I actually took this past week off from work so I could really immerse myself in this. It's, uh, pretty fucking great. I'd been staying away from previews because I knew I'd be playing it regardless and I've been impressed by how much deeper they've made all the systems. From GTA 4 to 5 I felt like they made a lot of stuff more arcadey and less simulation-y(mainly driving), but I'm glad to see they've gone the opposite route here. I'm currently at 31% Total Completion and 21% Story completion. Mostly I'm having too much fun with the open world to bother with the story missions. If there's one part of the game I'm not crazy about it's actually the story missions. I'm kinda split on them. Early on in the game when I noticed how deep a lot of the systems were and how viable it was to play in first person I started thinking "oh my god is this a proper COWBOY IMM SIM now?", but that illusion vanishes when you start a story mission. If it were an immersive sim I feel like the game would just give you an objective and then leave it up to you to use the systems of the game to complete it any way you wish, but nope, rather missions play out in a rigidly scripted fashion. It's all "go here, do this thing. go to this second place, do another thing. go to a third place, do a third thing. ok, mission done." But on the other hand, these set-piece heavy affairs aren't bad. In fact they're varied and often very entertaining, but I still kinda mourn for the cowboy imm sim this could've been. Even worse the game often strips out systems during story missions. I've found myself unable to whistle for my horse, lead my horse, or even holster my gun at certain points because that's not what the game wanted me to do at that specific moment.
  14. Recently completed video games

    5000TH REPLY IN EPIC THREAD We sure played some games, didn't we? To clear my gaming-plate for RDR2 coming out tomorrow, I powered through Sniper Elite 4's final mission tonight. Following in the steps of it's predecessor, the levels are open and huge, usually take 2-3 hours to play through each one. The stealth is solid but perhaps unremarkable. The sniping is delicious. The writing is terrible. Overall a very enjoyable stealth-action game. The past month I also played through Dishonored 2: Death of the Outsider, which was great. And a couple VR games: Moss, which had an adorable protagonist and a few cool moments, but for the most part it's just a bog-standard action-adventure that's also a very short. And Creed: Rise to Glory, which had a few clever gameplay ideas, but the core gameplay of flailing your arms at dudes is pretty lacklustre.
  15. Cyberpunk 2077

    In case anyone else is as confused as I was about what these last few posts are about, here: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/10/24/gog-makes-another-offensive-tweet-offers-non-apology/ Yeah this sucks. The original Cyberpunk tweet I could chalk up as just a thoughtless joke, but two of these from the same wider organization is a worrying trend. Despite being quite big, CD Project Red and GOG nevertheless had this image of scrappy good-guy underdog to bigger western developers and Steam, but this is really tarnishing that image. :|
  16. The threat of Big Dog

    Behold our future. Our sexy, sexy future.
  17. Episode 449: Frozen Synapse 2

    Good ep, liked hearing the Thumb's takes on the single player campaign. It sure is a lot more opaque and complex than the first game's campaign(and for that reason I'd recommend new players start with the first game). This game really needs a wiki, because I've been having A LOT of questions, thankfully the Steam forums have been a big help. I'm ~28h into the campaign and I'm not sure when this thing is gonna end. IIRC something was mentioned about needing to collect 10 Relics near the start of the game, but I have 11 of them by now and this thing is still going! I haven't had any issues with the story not aligning to my choices, but I think that's mostly because I've been playing super-diplomatically, never fighting any other factions unless it's part of a story mission or if they attack me. The only contracts I've taken on has been attacking Raiders and delivering parcels. Since the campaign is so opaque and info about the game is still scarce online, how about we POOL OUR RESOURCES and share some HOT GAMER TIPS. Here's a few things I've picked up so far: The default HQ is on the edge of the map and thus very far from most things you might like to do. Get an office in a more central location as soon as possible. Size doesn't seem to matter, so get a cheap one. Don't feel like you have to do every incursion, you can skip a lot of them and still be ahead of the other factions. One thing that really sucks is having to give up on a contract (and thus losing money) because something urgent (like a nearby incursion) popped up while you were on your way to the job. So before accepting a contract, send your squad to the street just outside the mission-location, then accept. Also if you're making your way back to base with a Relic and a buncha loot, don't just send them straight back to base if there's a bunch of checkpoints in the way, take the long way around instead. If some of your units need to heal, create a separate "healing squad" for them so they can stay behind and get better even if you have to send their regular squad out. To use rockets and grenades you need to purchase a heavy weapons license, check under the Services tab. It's also worth upgrading the travel-license so you can move faster around the map.
  18. Idle Thumbs Hiatus

    Yeah I was surprised by how much the forum-activity dried up when the pods stopped coming. I figured forumites would hang around this place regardless, but I guess it is in large part the episodes that keeps people coming back here. I still usually swing by at least once per day on my daily stroll through the internet. Of course, I'm relatively new here so I couldn't really say what's normal for this place. Elders, have there been droughts like this before?
  19. Idle Thumbs Hiatus

    They've really been putting the "Idle" in Idle Thumbs recently!
  20. Recently completed video games

    Here's something that should be right up most Idle Thumbers' alleys. Florence, the latest game from the folks behind Monument Valley. It's short but sweet. Well worth picking up for anyone who has an iOS/Android device, 4 bucks, and a heart. Uhhh what else have I played recently lets see Dishonored 2 - GOOD! Budget Cuts - flawed but occasionally great. Distance - very cool!
  21. Modest Tech: The NX Generation (Nintendo Switch)

    New Super Mario Brothers U! Yeah, I wanna play that.
  22. The Big VR Thread

    Played through Budget Cuts over the last couple days. Budget Cuts Review Well, this is kind of a mess. But at least it's an interesting mess. First off, the stealth gameplay is pretty crap. Early on the game arms you with knives and encourages you to throw them at baddies. If you've ever throw anything in VR you'll know it's difficult to do so with any kind of precision. Worse still, if you somehow do manage to hit an alerted robot before they blast a hole in your skull, you're likely to find that they don't go down unless you get a freakin' headshot. In other words it's next to impossible to kill enemies by throwing stuff at them. This, combined with the rough checkpointing which means you might have to replay a hefty chunk of the level when you inevitably fail means you'll likely give up on throwing things in a hurry. The other option for taking down enemies is getting close enough to simply stab them in the head with a knife, but unfortunately a quirk of the game's teleportation system means that often any knives you have drawn when teleporting will go involutarily flying out of your hands when you teleport. So to pull off a sucessfull stab you'll have to teleport next to an enemy, open you inventory, equip a knife, and then stab him in the head before he puts a hole in YOUR head. It's wonky and unreliable. A much more viable tactic is to simply pop your head around the corner, let a robot spot you, duck back, then wait till they come running around the corner so you can put a knife in their head. Yeah, it's cheesing, but the prospect of having reload the game yet againmeant I often resorted to it. There's also a lot of hunkering down to squeeze into vents, which gets old (and hard on your knees) fast. So, besides the terrible steath, how's the game? Pretty good! It's very charming, the robots are very funny, and the narrative kept me hooked. There's also some nice puzzles sprinkled throughout, and they fit naturally into the leveldesign. The game's strongest part is probably the final level, which is terrifyingand great. I'm a huge coward when it comes to horror in VR. To it's credit, this level doesn't resort to any jumpscares, it's entirely systems-driven. Despite that I wussed out TWICE before I finally worked up the nerves to go back and finish it on my third attempt, tho I did have to pause and look up a walkthrough to figure out how to beat that part. After that, the game ends very abruptly on a "To be continued...". The end credits are awesome tho. Total playtime: just under 5 hours. So, yeah, kind of a mess. Not recommending it at full price, but maybe when it's half-off. -------------------- Besides that, my VR gaming of late has been a bunch more Beat Saber and, oh yes, American Truck Simulator! A friend got me the New Mexico DLC for my b-day so it was time to get back on the road. Cheesy country music is requirement for quality truckin'!
  23. Sure have! It was good, but I didn't get into it as much as FTL. Pretty much just finished it on Normal and never came back to it. Also recently bought Flotilla 2, but due to a bug where it's only playable with the left Touch-controller on Oculus Rift I've been unable to enjoy it. Chung tried to fix it, but to no avail. :| However I am HYPED for Frozen Synapse 2 and Valkyria Chronicles 4 coming out over the next couple weeks!
  24. [Dev Log] Grease Monkeys

    Looks good!
  25. The Dancing Thumb (aka: music recommendations)

    Haven't seen the film yet but I do love the album of the same name. The album from a few years ago, that is, not the new soundtrack album. I mean I don't DON'T love the soundtrack album, I just haven't listened to it yet! Jeez, why'd he have to re-use the same title? Now for something completely different. I've been listening a lot to the Cocaine & Rhinestones podcast lately, and through it I discovered Tom T Hall. I love country music. I love this sad and sincere and slightly cheesy stuff. <3