Ben X

"The Swindle" from Size Five Games for PC and consoles

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Not seeing anything on Steam about guaranteed 60fps, so I guess I'll wait until it's 75% off or just pirate it.

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Yeah, I need Totalbiscuit to weigh in on this before I buy.

 

 

Just kidding.

 

I will ask, as I asked in the Rezzed thread, are there customisable buttons? That melee button really doesn't work well assigned to RB on the Xbox One controller. Not a deal breaker, but an annoyance I had while playing it during the show.

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I'm going to wait for the metacritic score to be at least above 85 before I even look at this game. 

 

I kid, I'm totally getting this when I get home :)

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I wasn't aware that this came out today!

Does anybody have this on PS Vita? If so, how is it? I'm pondering whether to get it for Vita or stick to the PC version.

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Yeah, it is supposed to be out on Xbox One but I can't see it on the store.

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As far as I'm aware, the buttons are customisable. They are on PC with an XBox controller, anyway. Also, it's not out on XBox until the 31st, then WiiU shortly after.

 

Zerofiftyone, don't know if this makes any difference to your decision but it's cross-buy on Playstation across Vita, PS4 and PS3.

 

Launch trailer:

 

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I am so very bad at this game. I've scraped my way to area 2 with only Hack and double jump, and now I feel hopelessly outclassed and I'm down to 78 days :(

I almost feel like I need to go back to area 1 for a few days in order to have some $$$ runs again.

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I just bought this game a couple of days ago and it's awesome!

There's a shade of what it's like to rob the black market in Spelunky but greatly expanded upon with new mechanics.

 

I hope Chris streams this game at some point, I did enjoy his Spelunky streams greatly!

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Still not on the xbox store - were there problems with cert or something?

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It started off really well, loads of good feedback. But then he got a couple of poor (and imo wrongheaded) reviews that knocked the Metacritic score pretty heavily (which unfortunately is a big deal and taken at face value by a lot of the industry/customer base despite being utterly flawed), so he's a little less optimistic right now. I'm hoping MC will add some more positive scores in soon (and maybe interpret some non-scored reviews like the Eurogamer one into a percentage - do they do that?) and the XBox launch will give it another boost. Also, of course, all the upcoming Idle Thumbs mentions and streams will help!

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Yes, the emotional spikes of releasing a game certainly are tough.

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Metacritic do bodge scores sometimes but they leave Eurogamer well alone now. Going off the Xbox One page it is interesting to see very few games getting over the 85% hump. I think that might be to do with the dearth in reviews for the platform because a low scoring review never used to have that kind of impact on the x360, but one person gives a game a 40 or 50 and a game will plummet into low 70s or high 60s.

 

Good to know it is still coming out - bummed I didn't get to play it this weekend.

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I'm loving this so far, and according to Steam I've already played 18 hours O_O.

 

I played this all day yesterday until my reflexes and judgment turned to utter crap and I had to take a break. From what I've seen the bad reviews are just people who had hoped to beat the game in their first go and think it's bad that you have to start over. The only Steam reviews that are negative seem to be from people who think it doesn't control well which I think is unfair because it just controls differently than other platformers. By the time you have more mobility upgrades it feels great like you're a master thief.

 

I've already gone through 200 days but I'm still having fun getting better each time and getting more upgrades in less time. It's fun to optimize the upgrade path and balance saving for upgrades or saving to unlock new areas which yield more money but are tougher to get through. I hope more people get the game because it's lots of fun! 

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From what I've seen the bad reviews are just people who had hoped to beat the game in their first go and think it's bad that you have to start over. The only Steam reviews that are negative seem to be from people who think it doesn't control well which I think is unfair because it just controls differently than other platformers. By the time you have more mobility upgrades it feels great like you're a master thief.

 

Yeah, this is totally it. I was also taken aback by the amount of people who demand to be able to 100% everything ever, even when the game is explicitly designed not to let you do that.

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Just bought this, and wow is the level generation awful. Low points include: 

  • A 24£ heist on day 4 which would have required triple jump to advance any further (3-high window to jump past, or a chimney 3 off the ground to jump into)
  • An area that was so filled with badguys there was no way to advance into it (not an inch of ground not under constant surveillance)
  • A 32£ heist where most of the cash and all the computers were in sealed, inaccessible rooms

The impossible levels would be tolerable if you weren't working with a limited number of heists, then it would just be sigh-inducing rather than feeling like the game dancing around going "Haha, fuck you!"

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The inaccessible rooms are bad indeed. I've seen single cell rooms with no possible way in. But not being able to 100% a level because you are not fully geared is ok with me.

I've encountered parts in levels where I could not return. It thought me no look before I drop.

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The inaccessible rooms are bad indeed. I've seen single cell rooms with no possible way in. But not being able to 100% a level because you are not fully geared is ok with me.

 

I have a strong philosophical objection to the level requiring upgrades that you couldn't have afforded yet (even if you'd played all levels perfectly and put all money earned towards the upgrade), which is part of my problem. My bigger objection though is that there's a huge difference between "Not being able to 100%" and "Only being able to 4%." I quit after getting several consecutive 4%ers because the game was just willfully wasting my time while doing its "fuck you" dance, decrementing the "days remaining" counter.

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Hooray, this is featured in this week's Thumbscast!

 

Meanwhile, Dan has given in to what is probably a vocal minority and released an update that makes inaccessible computers less likely and the basic upgrades cheaper. Personally, I'm worried that he's giving in to exactly the kind of hand-holding that gamers are used to and which The Swindle wasn't to have any truck with. However, it is kind of hard for me to tell as I've been beta testing it through so much balancing and I'm halfway through a playthrough at the moment.

 

I have a strong philosophical objection to the level requiring upgrades that you couldn't have afforded yet (even if you'd played all levels perfectly and put all money earned towards the upgrade), which is part of my problem. My bigger objection though is that there's a huge difference between "Not being able to 100%" and "Only being able to 4%." I quit after getting several consecutive 4%ers because the game was just willfully wasting my time while doing its "fuck you" dance, decrementing the "days remaining" counter.

 

Either you must have been insanely unlucky to get several 4%s in a row, or you're just not practised enough at the game yet. In my latest playthrough I got to New Belgravia (ie the second district upgrade) in 12 heists - the game is not ungenerous. I assume your "strong philosophical objection" is regarding game design philosophy? I don't see an issue with a game showing you stuff you're not able to get yet, as a hint as to which upgrades you might want to aim towards.

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Either you must have been insanely unlucky to get several 4%s in a row, or you're just not practised enough at the game yet. In my latest playthrough I got to New Belgravia (ie the second district upgrade) in 12 heists - the game is not ungenerous.

 

I'm certain it wasn't an issue of practice, I explored all the levels from left to right, top to bottom, and I'd either explore every square without finding much (presumably the good stuff locked in sealed rooms, occasionally sealed rooms were visible), or I'd run into a series of things that required many jump upgrades to progress further in the level.

 

 

I assume your "strong philosophical objection" is regarding game design philosophy? I don't see an issue with a game showing you stuff you're not able to get yet, as a hint as to which upgrades you might want to aim towards.

 

It's a game design philosophy thing, yes. It bothers the hell out of me when Binding of Isaac spawns a locked door and there are no keys anywhere in that or any of the preceding levels, and this bothers me for exactly the same reason. If it was consistent (the first district always has exactly one computer that needs triple jump to reach it) it would probably bother me less, but it's infuriating that the game gives you a limited number of heists, and then sometimes a heist will be worthless because the game spawned a bunch of stuff you can't get. It also pushes the player into this horrible reset-focused playstyle "Well I didn't get enough cash for hacking on Day 1, then on Day 3 when I had hacking it didn't give me any computers. That's two days wasted, better reset."

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