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Talos is fantastic. The DLC, Road to Gehenna, is up to the same high standard and well worth playing. I'll quote what I said about it in this very thread:

 

On 14/08/2016 at 1:56 PM, Beasteh said:

The Talos Principle: Road to Gehenna 

 

Story keeps the sombre-but-hopeful tone of the original, while poking fun at internet forum culture. The terminals make a return, but instead of philosophical discussions (it's light on the philosophy this time), there's forum posts, text adventures and even Jeff Goldblum fan-fiction (have Croteam been listening to Idle Thumbs?).

 

As an expansion pack (sure, it says "DLC" but the game's plenty long enough to merit the description), it goes beyond the difficulty level of the base game, which was often too easy. You'll be using new techniques, pushing the core toolset to new heights - this time it's really a challenge. The final optional puzzles were a cycle of frustration and elation, punctauted with long periods of headscratching. When that "aha" moment comes, it's all worth it. Gehenna delivers such moments in spades.

 

Talos was already one of my favourite games from recent years, Road to Gehenna makes it one of my favourites of all time.

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I picked up the Mankind Divided season pass as it finally went on sale on PSN. I enjoyed the three DLCs, the first two were pretty short though. But just getting some more Deus Ex stuff to play for a few hours made it worth it.

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Snake Pass! It's a N64-era-style puzzle platformer, where you play as a snake, that moves like a snake. You can't jump. You can slither, but you have to slither properly or else you lose momentum. You have to keep a careful eye on how much contact you have against things because otherwise you can't really move properly. And so on. It's 'physics-driven' in a way that's unique, especially in that you're fully in control of a creature that has weight and needs contact and grip to move properly, so it feels much more satisfying than almost anything else described as 'physics-driven'

 

Platformers live or die on how fun it is to move around. Their core mechanic is traversing, and Snake Pass knows that trying to be a snake is actually pretty interesting! It's a challenge, though, and the game is a little over-confident in how much it expects players to have internalised how to move like a snake. It took me a while to pick up on it, and it felt like the game was being a little ambitious; I know the average player gets into a real scrape in the second world, where the game starts assuming you basically get it.

 

It doesn't help that the checkpointing and camera was carried over from the late 90s. The checkpoints are relatively sparsely placed, and reset all progress, including collectibles - a solution like Rayman Origins' would have been better, where it counts as collected forever so long as you leave the area without getting killed. The camera is just Bad, particularly on moving obstacles.

 

Still, the level design is really good, and the game knows it's about 'trying to do something that seems straightforward with a character who moves in an alien way' so the levels are readable and complex without being unclear or unfair. They feel big and distinct, too, despite being various flavours of floating ruins, mostly because the levels can be fairly small and contained while still providing a lot of gameplay, thanks to the way the main character moves.

 

Anyway I liked it a lot, I think whether you'd like it depends on 1) how you feel about platformers and 2) how you feel about having to master a sensible but unintuitive control scheme. I like those things.

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I played a tonne of it yesterday as part of a lazy Sunday. It's pretty great, but damn, level 7 had me ready to throw my Switch. I really wouldn't mind the difficulty at all, except that the checkpoints are SO BAD. Still, I'm gonna go back to it and keep going. What would you say was the point that you hit where it gelled for you?

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It was when I realised that Noodle's body and tail had weight and could drag Noodle off things. Before, I just kept falling off things because I'd try sticking my head where it needed to go, and I'd start sliding off. Once I realised that moving my head around and slithering forward was shifting my weight, and that job 1 was making sure that Noodle's weight was evenly distributed, it became a lot more manageable. Moving platforms are still a pain but then that's what gripping is for, and there's only a handful of moving platforms in the game you can't cheese.

 

It's either that or realising that you can zip up ladders by spiralling up one side of them. The movement mechanics are built around contact and support, and spiralling around a pole with regular horizontal rungs provides almost as much of both as a horizontal surface.

 

It's interesting, people say they don't like tutorials telling you what to do, but Snake Pass demonstrates that learning through doing is not necessarily the superior choice. I understand why they made the checkpoints so far apart, because you're supposed to get to the point where you don't find that kind of climbing risky (and later in the game, where it's all inherently risky, there's a checkpoint every two or three obstacles) and you can cheese it with luck enough that you don't have to learn. Maybe the sequel needs a couple of minigames where you have to climb a ladder in 5 seconds or something like that, to help people from basic movement to full mastery.

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Really glad to hear about the checkpoint every two or three obstacles later, because I did levels 8 and 9 tonight and, while I'm definitely getting a lot more comfortable with the controls (SHIT THIS FEELS GOOD TO PLAY), there were a few moments in level 8 in particular during spinning platform gauntlets where I died on my fourth or fifth try and shouted at my Switch "A CHECKPOINT HALFWAY THROUGH THIS SET OF THINGS WOULD BE REAL FUCKING NICE!"

 

Then my girlfriend got mad because I was playing handheld mode in bed and she was trying to sleep. I should not play Snake Pass after bedtime.

 

Still, I think I had my own epiphany moment this time. I need to feather the ZR button and not just always be moving forward. I actually scaled a completely vertical pole doing that right before I stopped playing, which made me realize that some coins I skipped in earlier levels are actually kind of easy to get now that I know how. As I understand it, beating the game gives you collectible radar for level replays on anything you missed, so I may actually try to 100% this one. It really does feel amazing when you hit the zone.

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I just beat "Max, An Autistic Journey" and... I'm conflicted?

 

It's fine that the kid uses his imagination to cope with his problems, but the battles are drawn out and tedious, but I guess I find the autism... problematic?

 

Isn't it very wrong to insinuate that simple meditation and exercise can help you with autism and anxiety? If you fail a breathing minigame, you fight an anxiety boss and that's it?

 

And I'm pretty sure adding jump scares isn't a good idea if loud sounds mess you up? I know the game is based on the author's kid and Max loves FNAF, but still, don't?

 

So... the game is about the artists autistic son, which is nice, but I really don't think it's healthy HOW the author talks about it.

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...

Did I offend anybody with this topic?

 

If not.... I just beat Mimana Iyar Chronicle, a game that tries to rip off the "Tales of" series and suffers from not copying enough?

 

The combat is pretty bad, but it's very much inspired by the Tales series in the sense you can control one character in battle and move it around a filed while the others are AI controlled and the special move commands is JUST LIKE TALES, but since it didn't copy all of it, it suffers... a lot, you can only control the main character and you can really do much except mash the X button since you don't get barely any special moves, mostly recovery spells, which aren't that good since you're the only one who seems to attack enemies, you don't really get anything but support characters till near the end.

 

But the characters and the story are fun? The main character is pretty much an awful person at the start of the game, but changes a lot through the game and I'm frankly surprised how badly received this game was...

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Who here can claim to finish as many games as Tanukitsune, the Backlog Battler? Not me, not with my attention span and Netflix subscription.

 

BUT I did finish Castle Crashers! Okay, I already finished it about 5 times many years ago, but it's good! I mean, it's okay, the cracks are definitely starting to show. There are too many bosses who become invulnerable or duck out of combat, especially when they're down to their last few hit points (I'm looking at you, Ice king!)...and that's on top of having HUGE HP pools to start with. Ugh.

 

 

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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.

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I finished Sniper Elite 4 and all of its DLC missions. Sniping has long been my favorite part of FPS games so I'm not sure why I held out so long in getting into these games, but they are perfect for me. Spending the time to consider positioning, escape routes, wind direction etc is really fun. I also appreciated how long the missions were. When sniping in a game like Far Cry, Stalker or Fallout usually you have cleared an area pretty quickly. Most of the missions in SE4 take at least an hour if not longer depending on the difficulty you play on and how cautious you are. Next up is the 2nd and 3rd games in the series.

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I finished Wolfenstein: The New Order last night. It was good. I thought it was funny that the last level's hallways full of soldiers were harder to get past than the various giant robots you fight as the story comes to the end. The end of the story itself doesn't scream "I smell sequel!" but I'm sure I'll enjoy The New Colossus when it comes out.

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19 hours ago, Cordeos said:

I finished Sniper Elite 4 and all of its DLC missions. Sniping has long been my favorite part of FPS games so I'm not sure why I held out so long in getting into these games, but they are perfect for me. Spending the time to consider positioning, escape routes, wind direction etc is really fun. I also appreciated how long the missions were. When sniping in a game like Far Cry, Stalker or Fallout usually you have cleared an area pretty quickly. Most of the missions in SE4 take at least an hour if not longer depending on the difficulty you play on and how cautious you are. Next up is the 2nd and 3rd games in the series.

 

Careful, Sniper Elite v2 will not go well after your expectations have been set so high by SE4. Each game has been a an escalation in quality, Sniper Elite III probably still holds up but the open ended levels are bottle necked at certain points to allow for the weaker 360 to handle the wide-open spaces. v2 is extremely linear with very little open-ended gameplay.

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I finished Prey (2017) a little while ago. Amazing game. GOTY 2017 for sure, basically. Everything I could've hoped for from a System Shock 3. That this game hasn't set the world on fire twice over is a tragedy for all gamedom.

 

I started and finished The Beginner's Guide a few days ago. Also an amazing game. I think it's one of the most intricate, thematically rich games I've ever played. It almost feels like it's impossible to say anything of substance about it because there is just so much to grapple with that it's impossible to know where to start or to mention one thing without mentioning everything, and you can't mention everything.

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Hey I played through The Beginner's Guide last week as well. Tho I'd spoiled it for myself by watching an Errant Signal video, I still liked it a lot. Actually liked it better than the Stanley Parable.

 

Just finished Lone Echo. A VR game where you play an android aboard the Kronos II spacestation. Your captain is Olivia Rhodes, and in the days leading up to her reassignment to another station, a catastrophic spaceevent happens, she goes missing, and you set out to find her.

 

This might just be my favourite game of the year so far. Partly because the story is gripping, well-paced, and the characters are great. Partly because of the gameplay and locomotion-systems. I love spacegames where you're more of a bluecollar space-worker than a commando, and this is exactly that. The tasks you perform are quite menial, but the zero-G movement system makes them a ton of fun.

 

 

 

By mapping movement to your hands, which are motion-tracked, instead of more abstract movement-by-thumbstick, the developers have managed to produce a locomotion system that both feels incredibly natural and is completely nausea-free.

 

In my playthrough I did encounter a bug or two, and one point where the game kept crashing until I cranked graphics down to low. So, while I'll absolutely recommend this to anyone with a VR headset, perhaps wait a week or two for the first patches to iron things out.

 

I see a lot of reports of the game's length being 4 hours, but mine ended at just under 6 hours, and I know I missed a lot of optional content near the start.

 

Anyway, wonderful game. :tup:

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Finally checked off Beyond Good and Evil. Is there some story behind the ending of that game? The total lack of denouement beyond the post-credits stinger feels really weird.

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For a long time no one really discussed this ending in depth. It's also tricky in that almost no text or dialogue in this game explains it, leaving it up to nearly pure visuals. I will just tell you my thoughts of what I noticed and suspect after playing a few times. It's funny because back in 2004 here on Idlethumbs some people told me I was reading too much into my explanation. But still seriously I don't think so! Here goes:

 

Pey'j's hand that turns into green Giger Domz stuff at the end is the same hand that Jade held when he was presumed dead after being captured. In that scene there is a close up of them holding hands and Pey'j just comes back alive magically. I think on first glance it's just the movie fake out but I'm pretty sure they are conveying Jade healed him either through infecting him or turning him into a Domz.


And the reasoning for that is Jade may either be a Domz or has some kind of Domz blood. Mom or dad was a Domz? Grown in a lab? The green lipstick doesn't seem so important but it seems to have a reflection of this reasoning. If you notice in the intro when Jade goes underground on the first Domz encounter she is caught and not killed but spoken in tongues to by the creature. This part is also subtitled and the alien language is repeated a few times later in the game. Who knows what it says though but it would seem they convey she is special.

Whatever was happening here was supposed to be explored in the originally planned trilogy. Probably never again. Ancel doesn't seem tight lipped about the end because no one ever really asked or discussed this stuff much until the game gathered more popularity through word of mouth. So perhaps if someone just interviewed Ancel about that cliffhanger he would answer.

 Try googling "Jade" and "Domz" or "Shauni" and you'll get more speculation probably more clear than my memory.

 

Also I'm going to guess that none of these questions will be answered in the second one or prequel or whatever.

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I beat MeiQ: Labyrinth of Death and it's OK, but it has a weird story behind it.

It's a dungeon crawling game were maiden control "guardians" a.k.a. mechs to fight to restore the world. It's not very complex, you can upgrade and give new parts to your guardians, you learn a few support spells, but that's about it?

 

Well, except while looking up guides I found out it was banned in Australia and I'm super confused, while the game has girls in skimpy clothes that don't make sense, that's it and yet... it was banned? To make things weirder I found out later that this game has a special edition with a mouse pad with boobs... What? 

 

The only logical conclusion I can think of was them trying to pander to pervs with no perverted content and Australia saw the "boob pad" and assumed the worst? 

 

Oh, also, check out how crazy the maps get in this game:

 

DemonLordsPalace1F.jpg

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Night in the Woods - PC - 8 Hours

 

I really wanted to get this game when it first game out, but I had plenty of other stuff to play, and because of the setting it looked like a great game to play in Autumn so I was going to wait however it was my birthday a few weeks ago and my Girlfriend gifted it to me on Steam! 

 

I just got done playing it and I really enjoyed it. Nice simple graphics, great soundtrack (which I will be buying from Bandcamp) and just a very pleasant game to play. There wasn't much in terms of gameplay, it was mostly walking, talking and a few moments of interaction like band practice but this didn't bother me. 

 

I really enjoyed the characters and totally bought into them and their relationships. The game does a fantastic job with this aspect. It nailed the setting and I could totally imagine these characters living in a town like this, and their daily lives. 

 

The game got surprisingly deep at times which I was not expecting, and I liked it alot. It felt real and added alot to the game. I felt like I empathised with the characters which made the whole experience better.

 

The story, while I enjoyed does end pretty abruptly in my opinion. I thought to myself okay I can feel the game winding down now I must have maybe 1 - 1.5 hours left.. nope it straight up ends which is a little disappointing. 

 

Looking at some of the achievements I missed it seems the game has two endings so I will probably give it a replay in the Autumn.

 

I recommend this game!

 

Eojal.gif

 

Also pretty sure I saw our very own Jake Rodkin listed in the credits!

 

 

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Finished Syndicate the boring fps reimagining version from Starbreeze and EA. Had this on my list for ages, but finally played it through. Short game and quite boring as I had feared. I love the original Bullfrog game so Syndicate in my mind has a high bar to reach to be good.

 

The story was your typical scifi fps story and the ending was a let down for me. Also I'm not a fan of the musics at all. The dubstep of the original theme annoys me so much.

 

It was a relatively short game, just 6-8 hours long, I think.

 

The game itself was surprisingly easy and had no tough challenge in the small boss fights, but the final boss fight was crazy. The difficulty raised to insane in that final fight.

 

I also didn't really like that it had those later COD style moments where you are not in control and the game just forces you to press a certain button for a long time for something to happen. The health in the game is also modern boring fps style in that you have regen health.

 

The Max Payne style slow motion was fun, it's always fun and I never get tired of it. It was also well implemented in Syndicate. There were this very lightly built rpg elements where you learn new skills through upgrades, but those didn't really have much change in the actual gameplay. Just your health is bigger or weapons reload slightly faster or slomo time is longer etc.

 

Graphically the game looks really like a Blade Runner or Deus Ex. There is a feel of dystopia in many scenes and the game looks really nice when you get to see sometimes more than just regular corridors or air ducts. 

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I beat Kathy Rain, a AGS adventure game heavily influenced by Wadjet Eye Games, I think they even hired the same artist?

 

It's a story that takes place in the 90's where your grandpa has just died and you want to solve the mystery of an accident he had years ago to give grandma some closure.

 

Being a plot driven game I can't really say much without spoiling the story, but I really loved it and it gave me the heebie jeebies, so I'll mention the gameplay.

Like I said it's Wadget Eye inspired and uses their hint system and since it takes place in the 90's you have to do things the old way, which means phone books instead of iPhones. You even need to do some 90's hacking using a boot disk to get some special software to help you in your investigation... even though you do things you shouldn't be able to like using a scanner to read and record on a tape... :blink:

 

I highly recommend this game if you like adventure games! :tup:

 

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1 hour ago, Kolzig said:

Finished Syndicate the boring fps reimagining version from Starbreeze and EA. Had this on my list for ages, but finally played it through. Short game and quite boring as I had feared. I love the original Bullfrog game so Syndicate in my mind has a high bar to reach to be good.

 

The story was your typical scifi fps story and the ending was a let down for me. Also I'm not a fan of the musics at all. The dubstep of the original theme annoys me so much.

 

I'm probably in the minority but I greatly enjoyed the Syndicate FPS, enough so that I even played through it twice. It's my 3rd favourite Starbreeze game, after Riddick and Brothers. That's right, it was BETTER THAN THE DARKNESS. There, I said it.  And the dubstep version of the theme is... bad ass. B)

 

Agreed on the story though, it's a buncha nonsense.

 

Have you played Satellite Reign, Kolzig? I played through most of it in singleplayer, and am currently co-opping through it with some friends. Strongly Syndicate-influenced in it's look, tho it plays more like Commandos, which I'm perfectly fine with.

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Unfortunately I haven't yet. I do have it in my Steam library, but it just hasn't been on the top of my backlog. I do remember the Kickstarter of it and I got such a strong good Syndicate feeling of it. That's why I ended up also buying it.

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Samorost 3 - 5 hours

 

I do enjoy these Amanita Design games. They always have gorgeous art, music, cool puzzles and level design. I did have to use a guide for a few bits however (because I suck). I wonder what their next game will be.

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Just finished POLLEN (~4 hours long). Playable in VR or regular monitor-o-vision. It's a sci-fi adventure where you're a technician sent to a remote spacebase but when you get there all kindsa weird shit has happened and you have to figure out what. There's audiologs, puzzles, mystery, all the usual stuff. One thing this game does very well, is object interaction, and setting up logical systems for how it's world works. Sometimes these objects and systems are used for puzzles, but very often they're simply there to make the world feel more real. In the below video I discover that a panel in the control room actually controls the locks on every door in the base. Game progress does not rely on using this panel to open any of the doors, but it was still fun to see that this system existed within the gameworld. Later on, down in the cargo bay there's plenty of tools you can pick up and use. Totally not necessary in any way, but the fact that when you hit the use button while holding a flashlight it actually flicks on and off is a small thrill. Being able to pick up and interact with non-essential objects is of course something that's been around for a long time, but this stuff feels especially nice in VR.

 

 

So how's the game beyond just tinkering with random objects? It's ok! The touch-control implementation is a bit janky, but useable. Storywise, it gets off to kind of a hectic and messy start where it's difficult to take it all in, but once it slows down and starts letting you uncover the mystery at your own pace it's good. The ending was pretty great too.

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