Coelacanth

@Coelacanth@feddit.nu

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Day 283 of posting a Daily Screenshot from the games l've been playing⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Story wise though, i’m a bit mixed on. I’m really liking the story, just not as a Max Payne story. The Brazil setting isn’t really doing it for me and it feels a bit more GTA Coded than Noir, at least until i detach it from the first two games.

  This is pretty much the general consensus of the game overall I think. Good game, just not a good Max Payne game.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 hits 500k sales in one day⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Look Ubisoft: this is what your devs could be making if you’d let them make what they want to be making. Instead of churning out another cookie cutter “Ubisoft game”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Day 281 of posting a Daily Screenshot from the games l've been playing⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah GoT quickly turned from a fun game I enjoyed to a game I almost loathed and resented as I had to force myself to finish it.

  It really doesn’t have enough variety to support being that long, in my opinion. The mission design is way too bland and samey and the tone of the writing just starts wearing you down. Literally everything is the same serious tone delivered in a dour monotone. A handful of moments with Kenji is not enough to break the tedium. It would be fine if the game was 20 hours long, not 60.

  I still think it’s a fine sort of 7.5-8/10 at the end of the day but I consider it one of the most overrated games of all time. It’s just a polished Ubisoft collect-a-thon open world with solid combat at the end of the day. It’s not game of the decade or whatever.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  This is certainly a game that is best played blind. Peeling back the mysteries is so rewarding and there is a lot more under the surface than you think at first.

  I don’t think there are many puzzles relying on foreknowledge. Most of the puzzles also have clues to be found later, sometimes clues leading to other clues, so if you can’t find a solution to something right away I recommend just moving on for the moment and coming back later, doing other puzzles and investigations in the meantime. Exploring and figuring things out, both in terms of puzzles but also narrative is the whole game so just take it slow. You’re not meant to solve everything in one run, but gradually learning and making progress over time. Contrary to what the intro video suggests there is no time limit, so there is no rush.

  Also: take notes. I have filled out like 30 pages of notes at this point. This is a very satisfying game to take notes of, making connections and spotting details.

  This is one of those rare Obra Dinn/Outer Wilds type games that only pops up once every couple of years. If you’re into that sort of thing you should absolutely jump on it right away, it’s spectacular.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 | Launch Trailer⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I suppose I will use the same “supporting indie devs is a good deed” justification as when I purchased Blue Prince on launch day for this game.

  La Belle Epoque inspired game that is reviewing at 92/100 on OpenCritic with several mentions of it being a GOTY contender? And the themes are about wrestling with hope and optimism in the face of nihilism and hopelessness? (Disco Elysium my beloved)

  I never stood a chance.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Day 281 of posting a Daily Screenshot from the games l've been playing⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Ubisoft made a fun game, but it’s way to big for it’s own good.

  Well, everyone expected this game to copy Ghost of Tsushima, so maybe it’s not surprising that it ends up copying its biggest flaw as well.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Still wrestling with Blue Prince and still as enthralled with it as I was last week. It’s such a clever, beautiful, unique and interesting game.

  I’m finally starting to glimpse the finish line at the horizon now after having been in the endgame for about a week. Still a couple of puzzles left to solve, still a couple of unanswered questions left to investigate but I can feel how close I am now.

  God damn it am I going to miss this game once it’s over. Experiences like this don’t come around often. If you like puzzles and mysteries and escape rooms be impatient for once and play this game. It’s extraordinary.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 | Review Thread (92/100 OpenCritic)⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m a slut for La Belle Epoque so even though I’m not necessarily in the market for a JRPG at the moment I might just cave anyway with scores like this.

  I’m almost done with Blue Prince too, so it’s fortuitous timing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The window for a convincing UFO video has closed⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s my favourite take on a first contact story. I think you’d appreciate it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The window for a convincing UFO video has closed⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Ever read Roadside Picnic?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Lemmy specific Apps and Libraries⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Used to use Sync and I still prefer it in a lot of ways, but I can see the writing on the wall what with ljdawson not having reared his head for well over a year. That app will stop working when Lemmy 1.0 rolls out.

  Switched over to Summit and I’m slowly getting used to it. Still missing some features and options and having some bugs, but overall it’s good and I think it will grow into being the best app for me in the future.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨And then I'll sell my AI, so everyone can make drawings - EVERYONE can be an artist! And when everyone's an artist... no one will be⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  One of my favourite small indie bands trained and used AI to make music videos for their most recent album. They were very upfront about it basically saying it was the only way they could have made the type of video they wanted as they simply wouldn’t have had the resources to do it another way.

  I still don’t like AI art and I don’t feel great about it but this is the closest to a legitimate application of AI art I’ve come across.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Doom (2016) now DRM free on GOG⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  God damn it my backlog is already long enough why’d they have to go ahead and do this.

  Sigh

  Now where’s my credit card?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Useless rant about Witcher 3 romance⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I think this criticism is fair to be honest and is one of the things that’s sort of swept under the rug a bit in discourse about Witcher 3. I definitely think the pacing is off just as you mentioned. I’ve heard other people regret their choice of Triss because they had basically locked in her romance already by the time you start doing stuff in Skellige with Yen and start seeing what she’s like.

  Personally I think the Yen/Geralt dynamic is a lot better than with Triss, although it’s got its own troubles (nobody is perfect). I like the banter between them and they feel more like a proper couple.

  The game as a whole also flows better with Yen as your romance choice in my opinion and to me it feels more like the Triss romance is an afterthought yes. A bone thrown at those who desperately can’t stand Yen.

  Geralt (in the books) is deeply in love with Yen and is also bound to her by literal Djinn magic, so it makes sense that he’s always hot for her in the game and I think the attention paid to the Yen side of things is a desire by CDPR to anchor their game in the preexisting lore.

  If you’re not dead set on Triss or wildly opposed to Yen I’d say go with it and do the Yen romance. It’s very suitable for a first time playthrough imo.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  The hidden depths and secrets are just completely insane. I’m loving piecing together the narrative, but every time I think I have seen (though not completed!) all the puzzles a new hidden layer opens up with new objectives and challenges.

  Amazing game!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Decentralization Scoring System⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Same here. Do you think this data is from Email Apps/Clients rather than the addresses? iPhones are extremely popular and so I can imagine loads of people open their mail on their phones. But I have a hard time seeing more users being on Apple mail adresses compared to the huge widespread gmail.com users.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Skyblivion fan project lead reacts to Oblivion remake news with "all love and no hate"⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m sure the remake will release with the same level of QA and polish that the original Oblivion shipped with. That renowned Bethesda standard of quality.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m still neck-deep in solving the mysteries of Blue Prince. Hopefully it’s permissible to talk about here as it’s hardly the most patient of gaming I’ve done (I bought it on release day). It did have a release week 10% sale though so technically I didn’t pay full price?

  The game is absolutely great and it’s extremely hard to talk about without spoilers, which would ruin your experience. It’s a half-roguelite/half-puzzle game and it’s so well made and so intricate. It will take you a little while to start peeling back the layers, but once you start getting into it you realise just how much depth there is under the surface.

  If you have any interest in puzzles you should play this game. Like right now. It’s cheap too, not even €30 full price. It’ll probably be a GOTY candidate and it’s definitely the best new game I’ve played in quite a while. Absolutely beautiful distinctive art style too, which meshes perfectly with the themes of the game.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's a cancelled game you really miss?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  The whole aimed shots thing makes combat magnitudes more fun in the classic Fallouts. Maybe this is telling of when I first played the games (hint: I was a teen), but there is something about taking cheap shots at people’s groin that doesn’t get old. Becoming a Prizefighter by exclusively and indiscriminately punching your opposition in the dick is always going to be funny.

  The critical hits and misses are also very entertaining, though definitely add to the notorious RNG. The animations and effects, like disintegrations and splatter, also make combat a lot more satisfying.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's a cancelled game you really miss?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  To be fair to Arcanum in terms of companions Baldur’s Gate 2 was really the watershed moment in terms of how companions were treated in RPGs. Arcanum released less than a year after it and so while development timelines were shorter back then I doubt they had much time to adjust and get influenced by BG2. Fallout 1&2 doesn’t have it much better in terms of fleshed out companions.

  (Fallout 1/2 combat had many issues by modern standards, but it was definitely much more refined than in Arcanum).

  I would definitely recommend FO 1&2 easier than Arcanum and with fewer caveats. Maybe that’s just because I think they are fundamentally better and more important games than Arcanum though and so they are more worth suffering through some jank for. They still have a fiendishly retro interface that is quite clunky and the combat is not great, especially without mods. There is some really questionable encounter design in there and they both suffer from tremendous RNG heavy potential misery and loads and loads of reloads. Not least with random encounters.

  Also the first few hours of Fallout 2 are absolutely miserable. It’s still one of my favourite games of all time though.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's a cancelled game you really miss?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  That would have been quite something. I’ve seen P.T. being played and that was fucking scary.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's a cancelled game you really miss?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I played the Multiverse Edition which had a bunch of patches and fixes integrated. Including HD I believe.

  I think the world building is pretty good, at least parts of it. There is some disappointingly boilerplate Tolkienesque fantasy in there, but the conflict between magic and technology is well realised and interesting and feels grounded in the world. The steampunk aesthetic is cool and I like the Victorian racism angle they’re doing with half orcs and ogres. I liked the newspapers and there are some interesting quests, like the half ogre conspiracy. I thought the peace negotiation was going to end up being absolutely amazing but in the end it is just an anticlimactic stat check.

  The combat is absolutely atrocious in every possible way, from balance to animations and whether you play turn based or real time doesn’t really matter, both are horrible. It’s quite possibly the worst AI I’ve ever seen and every fight is just every creature mashing into eachother until one dies. I don’t think anyone or anything has special abilities or different AI behaviour. You can’t use Mage followers because they don’t use their magic, opting instead to charge into melee with their fists or staves.

  The tech skills are the most interesting and unique aspect of the game, but involves a horrendous amount of parts collecting, crafting, inventory management and over-encumberance for very little rewards.

  The companions feel extremely bare bones by modern standards and it’s extremely disappointing that none of them even get ending slides. I liked Virgil but not even he got any sort of closure at the end.

  The main story was okay, it had some twists and funny moments like with Nasrudin. The whole “life was a mistake” angle by the BBEG felt a little tired to me, but maybe if playing Arcanum was the first time I came across that concept it would have blown me away.

  The actual writing itself is not bad in terms of the prose and dialogue etc and the game has some funny moments.

  The vast freedom you get with character building is probably the best part. I like how varied you can make your characters, although I don’t know that all builds are viable. Props for following the example of Fallout 1 and 2 and including specific “dumb dialogue”, even though I didn’t go for that personally. Having to balance tech and magic with your character build is a fun concept.

  Overall I understand why it has its cult following and I’m glad to have played it, but it’s hard to recommend it to people unless they have an extremely high retro game/clunk tolerance.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's a cancelled game you really miss?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Thanks to the design documents being leaked back in 2007 (I think) and the original designers being open to contact from some dedicated people, there are actually a couple of fan made attempts at creating what would have been Van Buren. I know of both Project Van Buren and Fallout: Yesterday.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's a cancelled game you really miss?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I played Arcanum for the first time this year. There are a lot of cool things in it, but it really doesn’t hold up all that well.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨HELP! Im looking for a game like CIV 6 where the point is to go to war⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I will throw in another vouch for this series. It is exactly what you’re looking for. I haven’t played any of the more recent entries but I’ve heard they’ve been received very well. Total War: Rome 2 is a classic, but for something more modern I’ve heard only good things about Three Kingdoms, though I haven’t played that one personally.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Determining the reason no one replied to your Lemmy post.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  My meagre contributions pale in comparison to your efforts, but I do what I can.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nintendo ‘warned to expect 145% tariff on Nintendo Switch 2’⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  And there are those who have it even harder than YOU. Everyone’s station in life is different. They are allowed to experience that.

  I’ve never understand the logic of the people who espouse that line of thinking. Is only the one single person alive who has it the literal worst out of all the billions of living human beings allowed to feel bad, and everyone else is obliged to look at them and say “well it could technically be worse so I guess I’m not allowed to feel bad”?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Eternal Darkness' infamous sanity system patent has expired - so can anyone now copy it?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Wholly agreed. In general the concept that “you can’t patent an idea” or “you can’t patent a general concept” is supposed to be at the heart of patent law. I think some of these game mechanics parents, like this and the Nemesis System, go against that too much.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Metro 2033 Redux is free to claim on GOG for the next two days⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Spongy isn’t related to hitboxes, just means taking many bullets to kill. I think there are only two in 2033

  spoilers

  Demons and Librarians

  and they are meant to be avoided anyway I think.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Metro 2033 Redux is free to claim on GOG for the next two days⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I played 2033 and Last Light on Ranger Hardcore and didn’t really feel the bullet sponge issue, at least in 2033 (haven’t played Exodus yet). There are some tanky enemies but I think they’re mostly meant to be avoided rather than fought.

  Also I’m pretty sure on higher difficulties both you and the enemies deal more damage so while you die easier there are also fewer bullet sponges. If anything I think the bullet sponge phenomenon occurs on Easy, bizarrely enough. Someone correct me if I’m wrong.