Ben X

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

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It's also features on this week's Daft Souls! :D

 

Oh, sweet, I misread your Whatsapp message, I thought you were telling me the Thumbs were discussing Swindle and Dark Souls! 

 

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.

 

Well, I was thinking more that maybe you hadn't got your upgrades up to scratch in time. I dunno, it's just weird that you would have the hacking ability and then go through several (which I take to mean six or seven) heists in a row where you can't hack a single computer.

 

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."

 

OR does it teach them that sometimes a heist will be wasted - you can't get access to much loot, you get killed - but that's part of the game and you'll be able to more than recoup your losses with a couple of good heists? I mean, if I reset every time I wasted two days in a row due to my own stupid errors,.I'd never get past Day 20!

 

Like I said earlier, "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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Well, I was thinking more that maybe you hadn't got your upgrades up to scratch in time. I dunno, it's just weird that you would have the hacking ability and then go through several (which I take to mean six or seven) heists in a row where you can't hack a single computer.

 

Oh no, I was getting sealed rooms on day 2 (maybe day 1?), mandatory triple jumps on day 3 or 4. And I was using several to mean three, which is three more consecutive waste-of-time heists than I wanted or imagined in the game.

 

 

OR does it teach them that sometimes a heist will be wasted - you can't get access to much loot, you get killed - but that's part of the game and you'll be able to more than recoup your losses with a couple of good heists?

 

What it teaches me is that sometimes I will randomly lose a bunch of heists to factors outside of my control, and that if I'm not far in, I can reset to play through the early few days and get those heists back.

 

 

Like I said earlier, "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."

 

The fact that it's intentional doesn't make it good. Imagine an RPG where in the starting zone you will randomly encounter an ice elemental, and if you haven't bought the fire sword yet, you can't kill it. And it's so early in the game you can't afford the fire sword. And you only get a limited number of random encounters to earn XP before the final boss. And you have to spend minutes fighting the elemental that ultimately won't give you any XP.

 

That shouldn't happen. It feels bad, it costs the player time and in-game resources, and the only thing it accomplishes is to teach the player that ice elementals exist, which can be done in easier ways. At the very least, the game should hold off on spawning ice elementals until it is humanly possible to have bought the fire sword.

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Ah well, we'll just have to agree to disagree; I find it works fine in the context of this particular game.

 

 

In other news, this is now out on Xbox One!

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Yup, downloaded it.

 

Dan from Giant Bomb has said some positive things about it on the Bombcast.

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I picked this up last night, it seems right up my street, it's like a great mix of Spelunky and Rogue Legacy. However, playing on Vita, it controls like utter shit. I've landed in spike pits more times than I can remember. 

 

Also when you play perfectly, pull everything off right, then realise the randomly generated level has left you stranded...man that's an awful feeling. It wouldn't be so bad if the upgrades weren't so expensive. I have hacking...and that's it.

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Did my first run to Day 0 and failed, obviously.

 

Congratulations on the artist for designing a main character that my partner finds as compelling as the enemies. The number of times she has sat watching me play something and been commenting on how awesome all the enemies I have to destroy look, this is the first time she has been positive about the hero(es).

 

Loved my first run - I get other people's complaints about inaccessible rooms and computers but the arc of getting the good gear to get through it makes those early frustrations feel awesome. The controls have been suitably tweaked and now feel intutitive and comfortable and the later levels have that perfect player story of 'what the fuck is this thing and how the hell am I supposed to beat it? Oh, ah, now I see'

 

Also, remote detonate is the best

 

My minor complaints:

 

- The bug is overpowered as all shit - it is fairly easy to drum up money with them that feels cheap as I don't have a risk/reward element to it (I can still hack a computer that has been bugged so I can still get a successful heist AND make all the bug money)

- I am still not enjoying the purge which just feels really underpowered to the point where I never use it due to having it on the item wheel (instead of its own dedicated button) and it taking forever to recharge (even with the boost)

- Hacking drones next to doors causes doors to open, this happens all the time and is the worst as I have been caught out by it, not sure what I would recommend on that but it does feel particular annoying as most of the time you are relying on the drone to clear the room that you don't want to go into just yet

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Yup, downloaded it.

 

Dan from Giant Bomb has said some positive things about it on the Bombcast.

I saw on his twitter that he's given up on the final mission because even if you ghost the whole way to the Basilisk, all the alarms sound when you take it I guess? I don't know, my only experience with this game was the Unprofessional Friday show.

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Re. the final level, I haven't completed it yet, but there's a way to make sure the alarms don't go off which is consistent with the rest of the game - just getting to the Basilisk would be far too easy!

 

Re the BUGs - they are pretty high-powered but I'm very glad about that as it gives you more chance of having a few goes at the final level.

 

Re. the purge - I find at 6 seconds it's really useful. Remember you can turn it off again so you don't have to charge all the way back up!

 

Re. Vita - yeah, sounds like it had some tech problems. Hopefully a patch will be out soon.

 

And yeah, you have to be pretty careful before diving into a room until you get double-jump - lots of cautious sliding down walls then jumping back up!

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I should play it on PS4 since it's cross buy, maybe that'd be better. I just picked it up for vita since I wanted something long and repetitive to play while I'm on holiday. 

 

I picked up the tactic of sliding down walls to scout out place fast. I'd really appreciate a Spelunky style look down/up which moves the scree just to peek at what's there before springing up/down walls in a pretty uncontrollable way.

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You can buy that upgrade (and I think Dan tweaked the price down in a recent patch, though I'm not sure when that will make it to PS), or the stick-to-walls upgrade which does the job too.

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Yeah I didn't really get far into upgrades because I died so much  :getmecoat

 

One thing I do love about the game is that 100 hiests seems like a lot. I'm doing awful, but I have like 60 left, and no urge to reset. I feel like resetting is a great way to feel frustrated, because 4-5 good runs in a row and you'll be rolling in dough. 

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They updated the game with a couple small patches recently and I can't tell whether or not I've gotten better at it or if the patches made major changes. I restarted my file and was just freaking killing it. Lots of successful heists, which means (as long as you don't die) getting the XP bonus. Which builds into something substantial. I was getting 2.6x the money from heists before I finally messed up.

 

It seems like they cut down on the amount of in-escapable situations you can wind up in, as well as how frequently underground/unconnected rooms show up. I'm finally seeing some of the more fun upgrades, my favorite being the scrapyard upgrade. Direct money deposit (which means it's there despite failure) for destroying robots on the map. It adds up.

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I've gotten to the point where the vita version is unplayable. The frame rate is so slow at the higher levels that you can't do a thing.

On the bright side, bugs are amazing. They completely negate the stress of failure and allow access to all the upgrades.

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How is it on PS4? (Hopefully a big patch for both will come out soon, taking it to v1.5.)

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A lot of the patches have been making strides to make the game easier in the latter portions. I have no idea if I owe my success to that or just my natural learning curve. (That's not me saying I'm hot shit btw). Problems I've had in the past when it came to the game's natural design was shit like early levels generating cliffs I can't climb without 100k cost upgrades or whatever. They seem to have fixed their level generator.

 

I have about 62 days left or so, in my playthrough. Just unlocked the casino area which leaves I think two more stages. The casino has some really intimidating things that I have NO idea how they work as far as detecting you or outright killing you. Which is tense and exciting as hell. So far I have no ranged weapon and I'm kinda glad for that. I don't think the game has any range weapons anyway.

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Does the difficulty increase with each day or failure? I'm having the worst luck on the Vita version. The worst one was when I saw three pits in a row with bots on each AND A MINE! Now I'm finding it impossible since they added cameras to the mix... You know the funny thing? I'm still in the slums!  :tup:  :eyebrow:

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No it doesn't, you've just had a run of bad luck! No need to worry about a few days lost, though. I'm surprised you got cameras in the slums, though. Did you go up a zone then come back down?

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Yeah, I went to next zone and couldn't do anything, so I went back and tried to get money for a new upgrade.

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Yeah, that's a bad move because they install cameras in the slums if you go back and the rooms are too small for it to be feasible. Go back up a zone and stick at it. Be careful and don't take risks - you don't need to try to clear every level until you've got enough kit!

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I'll have to restart, I really can make any progress with the cameras around, my garrote doesn't seem to do any damage to them, I supposed I'll need the bomb? I'm sure they'll give the game a bit Spellunky vibe. I could swear I saw inaccessible areas.

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Yeah, you can't whack the cameras with your stick. I'd recommend going back up and eking out what money you can until you can afford some upgrades over starting over - you'd have to spend a long long time in the slums to get kitted up enough to be master of the next zone on arrival, and you'll probably improve faster by struggling on Warehouse than by coasting on Slum. Don't expect to beat the game on your first playthrough, and don't worry about wasting days - it's possible to beat the game in 15 days or so (although my shortest is about 60!) and you can eventually buy more days, so even if you have a run of 10 days or so where you earn zero pounds, it's not a disaster.

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Yeah, once you can hack computers to just generate money for you, a lot of these problems go away.

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Also, I need to set up some kind of reminder to play this game on Christmas eve - got to get that Achievement!

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Please remind me too!

 

The hackbugs are a way off for Tanu, but just getting your hands on a few Warehouse computers and cash bundles makes a big difference, as there's a big step up in pay-out from the slums.

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Definitely will be getting The Swindle at some point, still not sure will it be PC or Wii U as my choice of platform. Just so much stuff in life on going right now that I haven't had the chance yet.

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