Yeah, Pentiment is one I want to play very soon, probably after finishing Shadow of the Tomb Raider.
Talking of which: whatever the game does wrong, it has some wondrously beautiful environments, especially the more puzzly bits. There's a pretty good Tomb Raider hiding in this one, but it is well hidden by the dreary writing and performances (I don't mind them trying to address some of the iffyness of the Lara Croft premise, but they do so in such dull ways) and all the concessions to modern gaming, even though they add little to nothing to the game and often make it more grating.
I need to get around to finishing Pentiment, but I dropped due to all the back-tracking I was doing because I was afraid to miss out on some vital clue.
It also feels very much like the conversation tree from an Obsidian game that has had the rest of the game stripped out. That's not necessarily a bad thing!
But the backtracking adds a lot of travel time between the good bits.
I've been playing Pentiment for Aerothorn's Game Club, since that's the game for this month. I have opinions, but I've been posting them there. (I think anyone here'd be welcome to join the discussion if they wanted to, though I should probably ask them. It's all on a discord channel.)
Generally, the tone of it is anachronistic, which is so far the main thing limiting me getting too into it (considering it's main hook is being in that world). It's not that it's anachronistic per se; Kingdom Come was also anachronistic, but I still felt it was trying to be in that world in heart.
This game is set right in the heart of the Protestant Reformation on the eve of that revolution (and the peasant's revolution). It's still a pre-enlightening society; you'd never just blurt out what you're actually thinking, and even when you want to, you bury it under a mountain of plausibly deniable suggestion. Nominalism itself, the idea that it's even possible belief and the real world might not perfectly overlap, hadn't fully crystallized as socially acceptable, like we think of totalitarian societies today. People pin you by what you say, and if it doesn't accord with accepted truths, you're a lunatic or a real danger that can't be tolerated; most things happening were whisper campaigns where you're looking over your shoulder to see who might overhear; and the printing press was a pretty radical innovation, where people were radicalized by the slightest innuendo. Whereas the tone of this is very confessional like our culture and I don't get that sense of real risk in the air about what I say to whom, or it's gamified.
Maybe I'm being too strict about it and I'll ease up as I get into it, but that's been one of my early reactions.
I think that's a pretty smart choice. It's one thing to want a simulation of that time, it's another thing to actually play something that alien if you're a member of the unwary gamer demographic. There's probably an entirely different sort of game to be had if it were that accurate to the prevailing societal mores of the time, a sort of atomised social stealth thing with unforgiving turns of the screw, but '16th century Protestant Reformation Pathologic' is an extremely hard sell, let alone Pentiment's more mainstream concessions towards being a mediaeval walk and talk game. The dichotomy between the time period and the treatment's better resolved if you see it as a story from the lens of today, with Andreas Maler being a stand-in for modern attitudes - at least, this is the implied context I get, as the game doesn't even give you options to be a stealth rebel, so its priorities must have lain elsewhere.
I am currently playing Cultist Simulator. Or at least I was playing it for a while. Cultist Simulator is this card-based roguelike game that focuses on storytelling. I sort of really like what it's trying to be and I love the 1920's and Lovecraft vibes. The presentation is a bit bland; the cards aren't exactly beautiful to look at but I guess that they're at least somewhat practical. However, the game really fails at showing the player how to actually play it. I know that people often complain about too much handholding in modern gaming, but Cultist Simulator is like the complete opposite. The start of the game is fairly simple; there are a couple of cards on the table and you think you've got some vague idea of what to do with them. Fifteen minutes later the table is full of all sorts of cards and scary countdown timers, and you no longer know what any of them really do. Another fifteen minutes later you suddenly die because you've acquired too many Despair tokens or something. I couldn't figure out why that even happened.
Yeah, I'd probably learn to play the game if I spent a bit more time on it, and I'm fairly sure that there's an interesting game buried in there somewhere... But, since the theme and all the mystery were the only things in Cultist Simulator that really caught my attention within the first hour or so, I think I'll just move onto something else.
The first thing to get about Cultist Simulator is that even understanding the game is basically the game.
In the big scheme of things, though, a full game can take over 10 hours. So I don't think it could have been designed much differently to have that kind of breadth than having you work it out as you go. I mean it's central to the character of the game. It's understandable why one wouldn't like it, but I think it's fair to say it should be true to what it wants to be, take it or leave it.
Yeah, I suppose you're right. I think it's the somewhat bland visual style and the awkward UI that puts me off the most. That, and the game really does throw you in the deep end right away. Perhaps I'll give it another chance. Perhaps not. C'est la vie.
I really need to get back to Cultist Simulator at some point, but every time I think about it, I'm immediately put off when I remember that the game's card management is minimal, and that it actively breaks any other management system you try to impose on it.
That, and even when I think I'm doing well, my whole run can be brought down by something that just feels random and unfair.
But contrary to Tomi, I actually really like the lo-fi cards and the air of mysticism they bring to the game. It allows the imagination to fill in the gaps.
It just falls a little to far to the "Unfair" side of the difficulty scale, and despite putting plenty of hours into it, I've never had a "successful" run.
A lot of the gameplay is about learning how to play it and exploring the different interactions between cards. Use pause liberally (in part to read the various cards) and experiment with what happens when you stick a random card into a random slot. There are various ways to either erase the negative cards or turn them into something positive.Originally Posted by Tomi
Cracking the code to avoid Despair and Hunger opens up the first stage of the game, learning how to grow your cult, which opens up the game even further. It really is a very complex game that doesn't do much to help you on your way, but to me that is part of the charm. It's also very thematic that you'd have to stumble your way to power drawn from eldritch entities with little to no direction.
I've only beaten it once and that was after several close attempts.
I've been playing Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and have seen some criticism of it here recently. I have to say though, it's been several years since I played the first two games in this recent trilogy, but this one seems the most like old school Tomb Raider. I feel like overall I've been doing a whole lot more exploring/climbing/puzzle solving than killing mercenaries with a machine gun. Between the main game challenge tombs (9) and the 7 more included via DLC, plus the 10 crypts to explore, I've been enjoying the game quite a bit.
Don't get me wrong though, some of the same criticisms from the first two games still applies. Constantly taking control away from the player. Really awful scripted sequences that are essentially de facto quick time events. Boring paint by numbers story, and overly long conversations and dialogue. But if you can get by that... The settings and environments are amazing and gorgeous, and there's a whole lot to do (some interesting, some not, but a lot of it being completely optional), so I feel like I can take the bad with the good and still have a great time playing Lara again.
I would definitely agree that I found the tomb raiding bits best in Shadow of.... It's the stuff that they come packaged in that I could've largely done without. All of these games have taken bad lessons from Metroidvania games: it's simply not very interesting to have busywork gated off and having to return just to pick up an artefact here and a document there. To me, this feels so much more hollow than the actual Metroidvania thing, where you get the Thingamy Beam, which finally lets you open the Thingamy Door, which takes you to a whole new, distinct, interesting area where the plot continues and new gameplay elements are introduced. If you want me to backtrack, game, give me interesting, worthwhile things to find, not just three additional lore dump paragraphs.
Finally got around to finishing Cyberpunk 2077 and it was a mixed bag, but overall worth playing. The pros: the excellent writing, characters and setting. Any time you're in a main story mission, it's an engaging, exciting sci-fi story, and the depth of history and world-building is strongly immersive. The cons: it's still buggy, even now, and there's a general lack of polish to a lot of it. Usually it's nothing game-breaking, it just suffers a death by a thousand cuts with hundreds of little problems with animation, audio and physics. There's a lot of filler content. Outside the main missions, there's an awful lot of "Get a text message, go to the generic marker, incapacitate the six guys, find the explanatory chat log, receive thank you text message and cash reward". There's a huge overreliance on UI elements to plaster over noisy, unclear environment design.
Now that I've finished it, I can't help thinking that this is yet another game that gains nothing by having an open world. If the environments had been structured more like Deus Ex, with closed, discrete levels, there would have been a lot less pointless busywork, and probably a lot more room to polish within scope and budget...
Yeah, it seems like half the time open worlds are a detriment to the game. In particular they seem contrary to having a detailed story. (Backstory is fine.)
I am all sorts of obsessed with Rain World. I beat it after days of effort, then immediately restarted on the easy difficulty, which has a slightly different story. After I beat that, I downloaded the "DLC" Downpour, which is a misnomer since it more than doubles the scope of the game. Halfway through its first story, I also started a game on the original's hard difficulty, and I'm glad I did, since even its first story beat reshaped my perspective of the original campaign. I see there's a thread for the game, I'm going to go gush over there.
GOG had a sale on Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition, so I grabbed it in order to not be reliant on the Steam version and started playing the game again (for the 4th or 5th time).
It is still one of the best crime based open world games ever.
I really need to replay that again. Or play the DE for the first time, actually, as I've only played the original+DLC. I really don't care for the GTA-style open world games much, but I thought it pulled it off as well as GTA3 or Saints Row 3 did. It had character and did its own thing in a lot of ways, whereas I usually just feel like I'm playing a crappier version of GTA3/SR3.
The first major difference I stumbled across was that you don't have the various DLC outfits unlocked automatically in DE, but have to buy them at a new store in the Night Market. They cost varying amounts of money, with some being cheap enough to get early on (opening a briefcase or two will give you enough) and others being more expensive than many of the cars you can buy.
I never finished it but really enjoyed it. It was just such a nice atmosphere, driving through the town in the rain.
Right before the pandemic I was visiting Korea and then everything shut down. Sleeping Dogs was kind nice to scratch that foreign travel itch...
(and yes I know it's HK not Korea but the architecture and vibe is a lot closer and more nostalgic than, say, GTA set in the US)
Yeah, all the cosmetic DLC stuff (clothes, cars, etc) were apparently integrated into the world in the DE.
It's stuff like this that makes me like definition editions and remasters. EvaUnit02: it's not greedy, it's a flat claim that the game was valued correctly the first time, that it is as worth as much now as it was then.
Been playing a lil video game called Thief 2 (HEARD OF IT?) and also The Dark Mod. Caught up on some quality FMs.
T2:
The Violent End of Duncan Malveine - This one's by nicked and it's a fricking huge murder mystery in a mansion, featuring some scripting I didn't even know was possible in Thief 2. I correctly identified the killer (which is randomized each playthrough), but didn't get all the optional extras, so for me the mission was over after a mere 4.5h. Highly recommended to anyone looking to get back to T2!
Affairs of Wizards - A really cool mission by Nameless Voice where you're hopping through portals into various locations to steal magic keys from magic dudes.
Compulsory Egress - Big city mission with some nice, spooky bits and a nice mystery at its core.
In TDM I played "Sneak & Destroy" and "Full Moon Fever". The first one is quite small but the second is a big ~2h mansion mission. It's been a while since I played TDM but each time I pick it up I'm impressed by how robust it is. New features like the lock picking and dynamic lighting and ragdolls add a lot. I'm the kinda taffer who wants to make sure the people I knock out are lying in a comfortable position before I move on, so being able to move individual limbs means I spend a silly amount of time making sure they're comfy.
Ha! I do the same! I like to think if I leave them in a more comfortable position, they will be less likely to wake up before I've completed my work. I also just feel guilty if I leave them all splayed out awkward -- especially if their role in the mission was no more than doing some basic job.
Thought I'd make a Steam Next Fest thread, but it's too late because this thing ends tomorrow. Cross-posting my thoughts from another forum:
Oblivion Override: a very on the nose Dead Cells imitator, with the mediaeval fantasy swapped out for sci-fi where you are, of course, a robot. The artifice works to explain why you keep coming back after you 'die' and respawn at the base. They seem to have removed the procedural rooms aspect from it, which means it's only a half rogue-like. A half-like? Nah. Anyway, I usually appreciate handcrafted levels, but these are all as anonymous as your usual procedural generator would spit out, so I don't see the point. Gameplay saw weird stuttery issues for me, but the combat is all right. It is, however, unabashed in its aping of Dead Cells right down to the random weapons and upgrade structure, and so does nothing to differentiate itself. Dead Cells is just better to play overall, so they need to think about whatever game they make next a little harder.
Planet of Lana: very short demo, great first impression. Lush jungle areas and a nameless protagonist with a very adorable cat blob companion. You and the cat creature need to rely on each other to progress the various environmental obstacles, and it makes sense mostly. It's quite tranquil until some Planet Alpha style invading robot forces turn up, and then the puzzles ramp up the tension. Overall not bad, but it's nothing particularly new. Your catty companion is lovely though, it has some autonomy in pathfinding its way back to you if you leave it behind, and it does that adorable butt wiggle cats do before they leap onto a ledge.
I have quibbles with the level art being repetitive and kinda not approaching Ori levels (which is very unfair, I know) but there's a sort of bitmapped sprite-y translate/transform thing used to achieve the background animation of tree branches moving, which feels less nice than it should. Super nitpicky, and doesn't make a difference to 99% of anyone who'd play it, but I thought I'd note it.
Nocturnal: Great art, premise that's hard to follow because you're dropped into it in medias res, so-so gameplay. You're some order of the phoenix/flame guy who has to find his sister and defeat some forces of darkness and/or other soldiers? Anyway, the core conceit is you set your sword on fire by whacking a flame, and light torches to make mechanisms work. No, it doesn't make sense. You also fight enemies, with some mandating your sword to be on fire, which would have been fine if setting it alight didn't start a countdown to it being extinguished. I see where the devs are going with creating that element of tension, but I dislike having to constantly manage a resource and top it up every four-five seconds, it just feels quite unfun and not particularly right as a mechanic. It's sort of clever, but juggling enemies and lighting your sword is more irritating than fun, and then it gives you timed platform puzzles that require you to keep your sword aflame and quickly leap onto wooden platforms before they retract, which is even worse. And then it takes it a notch further with a forced-follow mechanic where there's a lantern on a rail and you have to be right alongside it while jumping onto platforms, else you start over again... nah. Stopped there.
Gripper: a sort of on-rails bike tunnel runner with floaty controls, irritating obstacles to dodge, and random button triggers for certain obstacles (only RT or LT, and no consistency for why it's either whenever it happens). Skip.
Shadows of Doubt: so. much. potential. Look, this thing procedurally generates a city, its interiors, NPCs, and their connections and relationships at the start. Then it tasks you with investigating a murder, where you have to pick through those elements, and the simulation is ridiculous. Almost everything is interact-able and inspect-able, everyone can be spoken to, and everyone has an address and a schedule and connections with other people. Your first crime scene involves breaking into an apartment, investigating the body, looking for evidence: this includes tracing the last phone call made from their phone, finding things in their trash, and get this, sweeping the area for fingerprints with a scanner. None of this is done in the traditional game sense with guardrails that ensure you're confined to an event scene until you hit every clue the story wants you to find; you do all of this yourself, and you're free to try and figure stuff out with whatever clues you can find. There's a case board that helps you place and identify connections, and you have to do things like identify names, addresses, whereabouts during the murder, and all of that.
Whew. That's a lot. So, what does this mean?
The Good: the simulation is, as mentioned, ridiculous. You can go anywhere you want if you have the tools, and don't trip security or alert people. The breadth of shit you can do to investigate a murder is fantastic. And it's all completely free-form!
The Bad: every single good point is a double-edged sword. The simulation is so heavy that it eats your CPU for breakfast if you pan the camera to any point that sweeps across the city. You can go anywhere, but that means you will encounter jank and unforeseen issues like security systems tripping on NPCs for random reasons. The procedural nature of the game means that just about every NPC is just a bunch of lines of text with no personality beyond agreeable to your requests/could you kindly fuck off, and there's no actual narrative to the experience that I can discern beyond you're a detective solving crimes. Things could get repetitive in the full game, but we can't know yet since the demo literally clocks you out at 90 minutes.
And yes, it does look like shit. But damn it, if they could weld some more compelling fiction into it, this could be beyond incredible.
And lastly, Repeat: you run around while holding some girl's disembodied head in an industrial area with scaffolding. That's it. Fucking weird, massively unintuitive. Skip.
(Okay, more detail: the level's full of bouncy tarp, steam pipes that fling you into hard to reach places [you're on a sort of floaty balloon disc, for some reason?] and fans that play music when you knock them over that the head sings to. It takes a bunch of minutes to understand that patting the girl's head manipulates the level in places, and before that point all you know is that she makes dumb warbling noises when you do it.)
Yeah I played Planet of Lana and Shadows of Doubt demos too and pretty much agree with your takes. Lana was nothing too original, but polished and fun. SoD is a very impressive technical achievement but I'll reserve judgement about whether it's a good game or not.
Welp, I couldn't help myself. I bought Sports Story. And yeah it's just as buggy as Aja and PigLick have been saying. Weird things! Like when you jump into the water there's this water splash animation that plays, but sometimes when you're just walking along the edge of the water the same splash animation keeps playing under your feet. Sometimes pieces of UI gets stuck on the screen when it shouldn't be there. The game is very finicky in how close you need to be to other characters in order to talk to them, mostly you basically have to have your face pressed right up against theirs in order to talk to them. This is a fascinating mess. The visuals and music are good. The writing and characters aren't grabbing me like Golf Story did, but it has its moments. But it's like the devs just lost all their programmers since the last game? I just got to a new fishing village area where it always rains. And the rain effect looks really nice and atmospheric, but it's causing a constant slowdown and lag spikes which impact EVERYTHING gameplay related and honstly it's just too much. Think I might throw in the towel. I hope there's a PC port of this at some point, that'd at least brute force fix the performance issues (which a 2D game like this really shouldn't have).
I'd love to get a behind the scenes look at the development of this at some point because I am dying to know what happened here.
I've been playing Pentiment; I'm currently about an hour into the third act. I'm enjoying it a lot, and the story's drawn me in more than most game stories in recent years, especially in the tense second act. I have an inkling that the player choices may not change all that much about the overall plot, but that's not something that bothers me, as I find the smaller changes (which are still quite momentous on the character level) highly engaging.
One thing I'm very curious to find out: whether there is indeed a solution to the game's central mystery, and whether you definitely find it out. I'm not sure Pentiment will present me with a neat resolution, and I'm not sure this would even be necessary, but I don't want to end the game thinking that there is no 'what really happened' there at all. My impression is that Pentiment is more about what do you do with conflicting stories and incomplete information and the responsibility you take on by deciding that this or that is the truth in the face of not knowing for certain, but that's still different from a story where key aspects are not just unknown to you but altogether undetermined. It's a difficult balance to get right, and the game's got it right so far, but the conclusion will be key to how I'll remember Pentiment.
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