Been playing a bit of Tomb Raider Anniversary. I remember the camera being less horribly janky, but it's still a lot of fun. I really want something similar to scratch that lonely exploration/puzzle itch. Any suggestions?
Can't think of anything with that specific vibe apart from CD's own Legacy of Kain games and, of course, Ico - which is not a lonely game per se, but I think its ability to channel separation anxiety is a perfect complement to its stark environments - and while it's not really the same thing, Sable is really nice and chill when it comes to exploration, which is ironic because it's set in a desert, but hey.
Yeah, Sable! Or for a few other indie alternatives: Tchia, Rime
Or when you're ready to get SERIOUS: Human Fall Flat
Last edited by henke; 24th May 2023 at 14:38. Reason: Got serious
Also, the other games that along with Anniversary make the first Cystal Dynamics TR trilogy are pretty good too, Legend and Underworld (although I seem to remember preferring Legend to Underworld).
The big tombs in the second Crystal Dynamics TR trilogy can be good lonely puzzle experiences, but I don't think the rest of those games really capture the TR feel, thanks to trying to be open world games in the UbiSoft mould at the same time.
And when you're ready to get seriously serious, HFF's user-created levels.Originally Posted by henke
Yeah, Sable! Or for a few other indie alternatives: Tchia, Rime
Or when you're ready to SERIOUS: Human Fall Flat
Oh yeah, there's also Tasomachi, and while I haven't played the full game, I played its charming if bare demo, and it's got the loneliness and chill puzzle exploration bit down. The controls are floaty, though, and it's more of a puzzle platformer than something where you're peeling back multi-stage puzzles or carving your way through environments, but it's worth a look if nothing else.
Edit: how do you feel about a perspective shift - as in, isometric entries like Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light/Temple of Osiris? GoL was really great back in the day, and I have fond memories of co-op'ing it with henke, and I'm sure it'd play nicely solo; but yeah, they aren't lonely again per se.
Last edited by Sulphur; 24th May 2023 at 11:48.
Or perhaps play some of TR's numerous fan missions?
I was kind of bored with Tears of the Kingdom, so I went back and am doing a NG+ run on Elden Ring. It's pretty funny in the early to mid areas, you end up just wiping the floor with everyone. I took out Magrit, Godrick, Radahn, 2 Tree Sentinels, Godfrey and Morgott on my first try (plus a few others). You wouldn't think that would be fun, but strangely enough it was. It's kind of like Luke coming back to face Vader after getting his ass whooped at Cloud City, payback time. Anyway, it's great just going anywhere and doing whatever you want to do, my main goal has been just getting every area of the game open and accessible as quickly as possible.
The difficulty has definitely picked up in the endgame areas though (everything northeast of the Capital), so that's where the challenge will lie. Even at level 185, I'm still getting my ass kicked in certain areas of the Haligtree. For the moment I'm just looking to do a bunch of quests that I never got around to the first time, and maybe try some new weapons out. It's been a year since my last playthrough, but it's easy to slip back into it and it's still a great time.
Just thought of this, but I sort of wonder how DLC will be handled (once it comes out) if you're currently playing NG+. I'd be best to go back and play it on my original run of the game, but I'm guessing that's not possible anymore.
Some great suggestions, thanks folks. I've played some of them like Rime and Sable, but got some more to add to the list.
Was not aware there were fan levels for tomb raider!
I recently bought my first ever gaming console... XBox Series X! Apparently I got the last XBox in my hometown and now it's out of stock again, which made me feel a bit smug about it.
My main excuse for this unexpected turn of events was that my wife wanted to play Hogwarts Legacy (she has never shown much interest in any kind of games before), but it's a fun little toy to play with. It's sort of interesting to see how awkward the main user interface is though, and how unbelievably bad some of the Finnish system translations are - you wouldn't believe that this is the flagship product of a mega-corporation. After my first steps into the console world I'm getting used to the awkwardness though, so it's alright. It's great to play games on the big tv screen, and most (not all) of the games run and load super quickly too.
I subscribed to the Ultimate Game Pass (or whatever it's called) for 2+ years as I discovered some loophole that you could use to get it for really cheap. It involved buying some XBox Live Gold gift cards on bargain and then converting them to Ultimate. I think it works for new Ultimate users only.
So far I've been playing Weird West, Unravel, the new Lego Star Wars game, Bugsnax, Super Lucky's Tale, Lonely Mountains: Downhill, Forza Horizon 5, Fifa 22, and Redfall. Nothing particularly great, but they're all at least somewhat decent. Maybe I'll post about them some time later.
I grabbed the Luck of the Draw Humble bundle earlier this week.
Started out with Luck be a Landlord, which consumed 5 or so hours immediately after installing. It's fun enough and does have quite a bit of depth when you start examining it, but I had my fill after around 10 hours total. The basic premise is that you're a tenant in an appartment complex and the only way you have to pay your ever increasing rent is to play a slot machine which you constantly modify.
Then I got hooked on Tainted Grail: Conquest. The story is that reality and time completely broke apart due to some sort of corruption called the wyrdness, so people die and come back over and over while trying to keep their minds in one piece and not succumb to the corruption. A strange goat-like creature tasks you with setting things right and purifying the source of corruption. It's clear to see the devs put in a lot of effort in making the game look and play well for a deckbuilding roguelite. I highly recommend it if you like Slay the Spire or other combat centric deckbuilders and want something more with a good amount of story.
Little Nightmares 2 is a beautifully crafted game. The artistry on display alone makes it worth playing this one - which is good, because as a game I find it frequently frustrating. Often it's clear what the game expects you to do, but to actually do so is fiddly, not least because of the perspectives and camera angles that add to the game's aesthetics. All too often, I ended up replaying a sequence several times because I'd misjudged the distance or got snagged on a little thing in the background.
I also think that both Little Nightmares games suffer from having lots of ideas but little idea of how everything hangs together. The game uses Holocaust imagery, seemingly because it's effective imagery but not because they actually have something to say about the Holocaust. There's a weird time loop that makes little sense, but it's there because... time loops are cool? And while the first game felt more coherent (albeit in a nightmarish fairy-tale way) in how it juxtaposed the child protagonist(s) and the world of the adults, here the various ideas don't much fit into a larger whole.
And yet... The artistry that's in the visuals and the sound is fantastic, and for these I am glad I played the game - but I'm equally glad that I'm done with it now.
I've now started playing Hob, an appealing Zelda-like from 5-6 years ago. It's not quite designed as well as the Zelda games, and so far I'd definitely say it lacks the magic of something like Tunic or even the beauty of Death's Door, but it's enjoyable in a "6 to 7 out of 10" way.
Description: There are wooden door and table with a jar of water on it in front of you.
Input: USE wooden door
D: The door is closed.
I: USE QUANTUM GRAPNEL ON A AND JAR
I: TELEPORT AJAR TO DOOR
I: USE DOOR AJAR
D: There is enough room to crawl through.
Briefly about Counterfeit Monkey.
Almost done with Hob. If you're into this kind of game, it's definitely very nicely made: the world is a gigantic machine whose parts move and change shape and reconfigure themselves, which makes for some great visual moments. At the same time, the various regions all look pretty similar - sure, you've got a wooded region, an arid region, an area that's more watery, but the visual style could have done with more variation (or the game could've been shorter).
What's more of a problem, though, is that the game determines the perspective at which you see any given area, and while that works well enough most of the time there are sections of the map where you feel like you might be missing something and perhaps you just haven't stood in quite the right spot for the camera to pan to the side or tilt upwards - and sometimes that's true, but sometimes you're simply in the wrong place. There have been a handful of moments when I consulted a walkthrough just to find out where the game wants me to go next, after I'd searched an area half a dozen times, and sometimes it's that I didn't notice that an area had changed and I could now traverse it, and sometimes it was that the ladder or set of steps I was supposed to take was simply not particularly visible. The game's better at presenting its world for the wow factor than it is at giving subtle clues as to where you could go next.
Still, if you like Zelda-likes, you don't mind games that are wilfully obscure at times, and you dig the visual style of the game, it's definitely an enjoyable ten hours or so. Personally, I'd say I enjoyed Tunic a lot more and Death's Door somewhat more, but I could imagine Hob appealing more to people who find the former two games too cutesy.
I bought Boltgun, which is pretty enjoyable, but suffers from poor damage feedback, repetitive map design and no map screen.
Guns are really nice, and there's a good feeling of weight to everything. The titular bolter and its heavy variant in particular are really nice to use.
But it couldn't hold my attention, so I put that down in order to crack on with System Shock.
Having never played the original, I'm really enjoying it, although I can't say I've really come across anything particulary "Immersive Sim" about it yet. But then, I've only just got to the reactor. But again, it couldn't hold my attention...
So I picked up Hogwarts Legacy, which, despite not really having any exposure to Harry Potter other than in passing, I'm really enjoying.
It's a beautiful open world game with fantastic graphics and great performance (outside of the invisible mazes, which tank performance whenever you're in the area with them).
The combat has depth and is rewarding, and quest and world design is constantly inventive and surprising.
Yes, it has the standard Riddler style quests that so many open world games have, and is probably larger and longer than it needs to be. But it keeps pulling me forward.
It's definitely an Avalanche game, but feels a lot more accomplished than the Just Cause games. There's a better, more consistent narrative thread running through the whole thing.
However, unfortunately, there is no way whatsoever to interact with ambient NPCs, and they don't react in any way to things you do around them, which has a large detrimental effect on immersiveness.
I also get heavy Fable vibes from the game, thanks to the 19th Century rural British (technically Scottish) setting. Some of the humour can feel forced (such as Peeves the Poltergeist), but a surprising amount lands.
I am aware of the controversy surrounding JK Rowling and the world she has created. But that doesn't stop this being a fantastic game.
It's also the closest (outside of the aforementioned Fable) that we're likely to get to an open world Pratchett game any time soon.
As an aside, I do think there needs to be a shift in the way developers approach open world game "RPG" systems. At the moment, the trend is to give players enough experience and/or skill points so that they can unlock absolutely every ability in these games. I understand the approach, but feel that it completely nullifies player choice and expression, thereby also reducing replayability.
From what little I've played I can't tell whether the remake has introduced more immersive sim elements, but the original is a stepping stone, a precursor to the genre at most. It's really closer to something like Ultima Underworld than it is to System Shock 2 and the later games in the genre. There simply isn't enough of a focus on systems that can be used in various ways and that can interact with each other. I suspect that everyone's playthrough of System Shock will be much more similar than people's playthroughs of System Shock 2, and definitely than the player expression you get with Deus Ex.
I've also finished Hob, and I found the ending (at least the one I got) pretty underwhelming. I'm largely fine with the elliptic, implicit world building and storytelling approach they've chosen, but they're not good enough at it to make me all that emotionally involved. The final decision is pretty opaque to begin with - what's happening, what are my options, how do I go about doing one thing or another? - so I felt zero agency in what I made happen, and I didn't particularly *care* about the world. I found it reasonably *interesting*, but that kind of choice barely works if you're not invested in it, and I definitely wasn't. I'd still recommend the game for all the reasons mentioned above, and with the caveats I've mentioned, but it's not a game that will leave much of a trace in a couple of weeks.
Finished System Shock. Go down to the forum if you wanna know what I thought of it.
Wanna play Amnesia: The Bunker but I know I'm gonna be too busy to play much Thursday to Sunday, so waiting with starting it till after that.
Booted up Bus Simulator 21 on PS5 instead. It has a story mode! The story is that you are a wonderful bus driver. I drove a couple missions and then management called me in the middle of a route and wanted me to Open Map and Plot New Route. I told em I'm trying to figure out what change to give back on this Senior Ticket and I don't need this shit right now I QUIT!
Might just play some solitaire and listen to a relaxing podcast instead.
Just imagine if management had called you because they wanted to go bowling or watch a strip show...
On a very different note: I kinda want to try getting into Prey: Mooncrash again. I like the idea and I love the base game, but I've bounced off of Mooncrash twice - probably because I play it too much like the base game. I suspect that I should just stick with it for an hour or two; I have that sometimes that I don't click with games I end up enjoying a lot at first (Thief being one of those games, as well as Stalker). Wish me luck.
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