Ben X

Oh yeah, it's 75% off at the mo. In case you missed my edit, I'm having a bit of a blast through HL2 first. I probably won't go through any vehicle sections, though, so shouldn't be long before I get into SWRC.

I got to a bit where you have to take down two fighter planes with a shitty gun and you die 19 times out of 20 no matter how good you are. I fluked past it once only to get to a turret section where I only had 7 health left. My paramedic doesn't want to help me because he's in a raft. Fuuuuck this, uninstalled. Star Wars: Republic Commando next! (I don't have any Half-Life 2 + episodes posts to paste here, but they're brilliant, obviously EDIT: in fact, fuck it, I'm going to play a bit of HL2 just to remind myself how amazing it was in 2004)

So far, MOH:PA is like a very clumsy Far Cry. After a long sequence of levels which were nicely presented but where I didn't have to do much (boot camp and Pearl Harbor mainly), I'm now in the jungle. It's very difficult to figure out where I'm supposed to go or where the enemy are. I keep on coming up against leaf-painted walls and having to sit back and watch my squad until I can tell what the hell's going on. The shooting's not very satisfying so far either - crappy WWII weapons plus enemies that don't always react to getting shot. The atmosphere is as you'd expect - a mix of gung-ho and glumness, with an R Lee Ermey clone chucked in for good measure.

Ehhh fuck it, I can't be bothered to muck about with mods (especially as I have to work out how to avoid shitty fan textures) just to play this game for ten more minutes before remembering that it's just not my sort of thing. Also, that lock-picking mini-game. I'll paste here what I posted on the Size Forums when I played DooM3 over a couple of months a few years ago: And now I'm moving onto Medal Of Honor: Pacific Assault. I'll have a bit of a play, and if anyone wants to try co-op, let me know!

Once you've watched it, check out our (languishing) Pixar re-watch thread!

I'm not a huge fan of the first Matrix either, and I think the reason is that there's no real story to go with the high-concept setting. It's just "Is Neo the one? Yes." I also find the 'real world' sections to feel a lot more fake than the matrix sections, which is really the wrong way round.

Good call - what a dreary, bloated, franchise-builder of a film. And they've announced they're now making FOUR more! There were two good moments in the whole film: where Newt Scamander takes the muggle into his suitcase which contains a huge animal sanctuary with loads of different climates and weird creatures interacting with each other. (I sat there thinking "this would be an amazing VR experience", which I guess is the new version of watching an action sequence and thinking "this would be an amazing video game level") when the muggle who has seen all this amazing stuff and been a good ally is told at the end of the film he has to be obliviated because rules. It's a clever rearrangement of a standard Potter trope that garners a lot of pathos.

Phew! 1828 is duty bound by forum honour to stay at number one.

Have we all been knocked off the high score table yet?

I asked this on Slack. I was told that if you extract the first zip folder it will automatically do the second one at the same time. Worked for me!

Well, hopefully you've fixed it so I won't need fullscreen!

Another free FPS! I just got Killing Floor for free from Humble Bundle, but when I registered it I was given two free passes to the full game as well, so I'm not sure what I've actually got in my library... So if I've got a playable version of the game, and if someone wants to play co-op with me, I'll give it a go once I hit that point of my playthrough!

I'm already getting bad deja vu to the first Thief game! It's fun sneaking around putting out candles and what have you, but I just get frustrated by not knowing what the consequences of any of my actions are going to be. I'll definitely need to look into a fan mod I read about that links all the levels together and eliminates the DXIW- scale loading times before I go any further with this, I think.

I got past that boss and luckily glitched my way through another one that would probably have led me to give up on the game, as it has some stupidly harsh and unavoidable fall damage. I actually got right up to the end of game boss, but I couldn't figure out the trick, so I watched a video of it instead (you have to shoot the meteors into Lucifer). The final level setting was really cool - lots of different battles from different eras frozen in time. It's a shame the rest of the game wasn't so inventive. It had its moments, like the Ghost Rider guys who grab nearby enemies and use them as shields, but the essentially real-world locations and general grimdark feel mean this game isn't as memorable as Serious Sam. Oh, and the inter-level cut-scenes are as dreadful as people were saying! Pointless, interminable, and ugly, with so many misread lines, plus they feature Eve (yes, that one) looking like a default Unity naked female model but with a hair bra (which, bizarrely, you can see right through anyway). I think another reason this felt like a bit of a slog was that the weapons, as per usual with these games that have a big wacky selection, weren't very satisfying or well-balanced on the whole. If they'd reduced the stake-gun reload time and given it the secondary freeze mode, they could have got rid of every other weapon except the chain-gun (with its rocket launcher secondary mode). Here's a much more favourable retrospective from The Will Porter: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/painkiller-retrospective And now I'm onto Thi3f!

Holy cow @One8Two8, pleeeease stream this game or at least record some high-scoring play!

Painkiller is feeling like a bit of a chore, to be honest. I don't think I'm so much into the bullet hell FPSes like this and Serious Sam. I'll keep going in them until I hit an annoying bit and then give up. I think I've actually hit that already with the swamp monster boss. The bosses are annoying bullet-sponges in general, but this one requires you to shoot temporary bubbles when they appear near the boss and I've only managed to get it to happen twice ever. I checked a walkthrough and there doesn't seem to be anything I'm missing. So I maaaay give up on this game already. I'll see how I feel when I come back to it. The cheesy atmosphere/enemy design is cool and shooting enemies with the ice-gun is always fun, but it's not enough to rescue this from being a slog.

Got past it and finished, and really enjoyed the game! The ending was very funny! I'm guessing that a puzzle which is alluded to but not included was cut for time? A hint for people stuck in the same place I was, as atte confirmed on Slack it is not glitchy:

I'll echo 1828 re. session high-score, but this is a fab game. Graphics are very evocative, mechanics are great and it's really addictive. It's so enjoyable to get a good chain going. The only thing that pissed me off was the difficulty in jumping then immediately striking, which lead to a lot of situations that were impossible to get out of. It may have been better if it auto-struck on jumping (but with no delay on a second strike). Perhaps the power-side is meant to alleviate this? It might be better to change that move to 'pressing attack when sliding puts you into a dive' - I needed to do this a lot so a single button-press would be really handy. Oh, also maybe some audio feedback on the umbrella peeps might clarify their rules/time limit? Personal High Score: 2650

Yeah, but I'd like to disable the right trigger...

The hand-drawn style is lovely, the music's really nice and the dialogue's cute! I'm stuck at the moment, but the puzzle I solved was very cool:

Well, you probably know what my reaction is going to be: stunning presentation, great player feedback, clever mechanics, and too damn hard for me! I'm not a twin-sticks guy, so I could never really master the movement, but I did manage to get over 3000 which I was very pleased with! The only thing I'd ask for is the option to change the shockwave button - I'm constantly on the triggers for shrinkage so I tend to accidentally use shockwave rather than tactically hold onto it. I'd much prefer right shoulder. I'm also looking forward to seeing some of the world leaders play this thing!

EDIT: it's an itchio! https://timegentleman.itch.io/the-robots-lips With only a few days left of the jam, some people from the Team Seeking/Recruiting threads have gathered together to make a small game. "The Robot's Lips" will be (subject to any further design changes!) a single-screen platformer where you play as a robot convincing wary humans to love you, with the power of kisses. Possible robophobe cameos include the Idle Thumbs and Will Smith from I, Robot. The team: Atlantic (music) Driadon (coding) DyslexiaKills (coding) ValorianEndymion (art) Vehementa (art) We're all pitching in on design.

Thanks!

After googling Osu, I worked out what to do, but it's too hard for me, I'm afraid! Nice writing from what I heard, though!

I'll pop this here as it took me a while to find! https://sunless.itch.io/super-pools-n-ghosts-hamburger-mode-edition Wow, the art design and production values on this are fantastic, and the mix of dark humour and elegiac tone works so well. Gorgeous.