Gaming thoughts, bite-size chewables - new orange flavor!

[GMBigKev]

I bought Nova Drift the other day.

To summarize, "What if Asteroids and 20 Minutes Until Dawn had a baby?"

It's a flashy, space-based shoot-em-up game where you level up from killing enemies and objects (sometimes even asteroids!) and each level you get to pick between several options of how to improve your ship. You always start with your weapon, shield, and hull - but then each level after those improves your stats or gives you different options - go with the spread shot to get ridiculous numbers of bullets flying across the screen, build a ship that focuses on crafting little dudes to help you kill things, get a mother-hecking energy lance and just ram into your enemies instead.

It's pretty fun and pretty tough. A few of the weapon options seem not as interesting as others and are harder to use (I hate the grenade) but it's a very well-balanced take on that rogue-lite 'pick 1' style game. And who doesn't love Asteroids?

 

[GMBigKev]

I mean, we're not talking about Beat Hazard by any means. Nova Drift has never been so busy I lost my ship.

Like any of these games, there's always someone telling you that the thing you hate is their favorite, which is usually a sign of good balance and variety. One Grenade run I had was certainly in my top 5. There is a ton to unlock and things to try, especially with the Wild Metamorphosis Mods and special combo mods.

That being said, my top 2 scores far and away were both Spectre Body (cloaks when not shooting or moving) the homing swarm missiles that reload over time, and Calibrate (damage increases when you're not firing), with of course all the usual basic upgrades. Not only does the synergy max your damage output, but you just get shot at a whole lot less.

However, my friend who has ~100+ hours in Nova Drift has soured on the game balance, saying that unfortunately "non-firing" builds dominate in the long run, which disappoints him, since he likes the pew-pew. I haven't had the same experience, but his scores make it clear he's the expert here.

I just can't figure out grenades. I love missiles, they're so fun.

I can see the constructs possibly overwhelming over time. My best run so far had been a missile + constructs run, but my second best was a lance run where I basically became a Beyblade.

ETA: Since it's still Early Access that kind of balance issue could be addressed.

 

[GMBigKev]

The Messenger has done to me that no game has done in forever.

My hand hurts from playing it for like... four hours....

 

[GMBigKev]

Finished the Messenger - hated the DLC. Then I cut my finger on a knife so I can't play a twitchy, high dexterity game.

I found the game Pan'orama. It just got released last week and it's very enjoyable and cozy. If you've played Dorfromantik it's a very similar game - you get tiles you have to place down to try to make combinations of tiles and build up a cozy looking town. If you haven't played Dorfromantik then I'll give you a little mini-review of that game too because it's necessary to understand the differences.

In Dorfromantik you are given a series of hexagonal tiles with each tile having some combination of plains, village, fields, forests, either a lake/shore tile or a river, or a railroad going to each edge of the tile. There's also stations which operate as a river/railroad. Placing matching edges gives you more points and you're given quests throughout to either make a region of exactly or greater than X of a certain number of objects on a tile or specific tile types (e.g., 45+ houses, 6 river tiles.) Some of these also require you to "close off" the area by surrounding the region with different tile types. Doing this gives you more tiles to work with until you run out of quests and tiles. It's cozy and gentle.

Pan'orama is similar except focus is on the tile rather than the edge of the tile. Connecting tiles to other tiles gets you more points. Some tiles have multiple tile types (like a forest and field) and there are also flower tiles that are kind of like wildcards. The game also has stone tiles instead of railroad tiles. The biggest difference in Pan'orama is how they do their quests. There's two types of quests. The first gives you a small grouping of tiles with a quest similar to Dorfromantik's "make a region of X tiles." The second gives you an outline of a "building" that you need to fill with specific tiles. The first quest gives you a lot of points (usually 20 to 30 points but can be higher depending on strategic placements.) The second quest gives you some kind of benefit in the area around that tile - either placing down multiple tiles, upgrading a number of tiles to give more points, increasing the value of tiles placed down later, or giving you an increase in the distance you can place tiles.

Both games are very cozy but Pan'orama does focus a little more on strategic placement of tiles - needing to think where you want to put tiles for the future buildings that might come in. Dorfromantik tends to be a little more chill, building regions rather than strategic sections.

I highly recommend both!!

 

[GMBigKev]

A different explanantion is they're both weird solo knock offs of Carcasonne...

I mean in that you're laying tile to make regions sure - but there's a lot more to it than just that since Carcassone has extremely limiting resources and the competition can screw you up.

They're both very cozy and fun.

 

[GMBigKev]

Despite many people saying it, I never really felt that Dorfromantik was laid-back. There's considerable pressure to earn more tiles by completing objectives and getting perfect placement. There's achievements that require scores notably higher than my highest, and I still have no idea how to manage that. Getting more tiles before you run out pretty much requires that you make suboptimal plays just to get some new tiles, even if it means losing some in the process as well.

"Cozy" not really "laid back"

I guess. I was trying to approach it from the angle of a board gamer. Dorfromantik is solo Carcasonne with a much bigger set of regions to build. That's not saying it's bad, just that's what my board gamer brain tells me. I mean Slay the Spire is a deck builder and is called that in reviews, and no one tries to say otherwise, and the first deck builder was Dominion. Why can I not draw the same inference about Dorfromantik?

MtG doesn't count, because there's not a fixed set of cards and, more importantly, you don't change your actual deck in the course of the game (*).

More just the inherent reductionism in the comparison. It's... kind of like a solo Carcasonne but there's a lot more to it than just that.

 

[GMBigKev]

Been replaying Crypt of the Necrodancer.

I'm terrible at Crypt of the Necrodancer.

 

[GMBigKev]

The pain, I can feel it.
Every time I see a cool game that is rhythm based I think, "That looks like fun!"
Then I play the game. And find out that yeah, it IS fun. Or, it WOULD be if I didn't suck at rhythm games.

I panic in the fifth area and usually end up dying there but I make so many mistakes that are just like - of course I can't do that I'll get hit by the monster!

 

[GMBigKev]

I kinda hesitate to point this out, but Steam let me know there is not one, but two Nazi-themed furry games it can offer me. Like, What the fuck kind of overlap is that?

Ok, Nazis, I get. They're a popular antagonist, and sometimes game makers make them playable. Furries, sure. Aside from the more traditional cartoon animal games that have been around forever, modern furries have enough cash to splash on buying games.

But Nazi furries? where the fuck is that commonality?

I suspect there may be some overlap in the Venn diagrams on that. Not saying all furries are Nazis, but sometimes people who are not socially accepted also tend towards other things that are not socially accepted.

Also could have been created as a joke?

It's a weird overlap for me, because I'm familiar enough with furry history to know it basically evolved as an offshoot of gay culture in the 20th Century (speaking of not socially accepted), and generally plays fast and loose with sexual norms. So I might see how Nazi/Furry could be a kink thing, it also seems weird to go that direction, considering the outcasts the culture originally evolved from.

As for nazi furries, I suppose you're always going to have a minority set of people in any population that intersect with anomalous interests. A cursory google turns up this Slate article that suggests one reason being they're indoctrinated at early ages because of the outcast factor, which sort of makes sense.

FWIW - and this is veering OT so apologies - Nazi Furs are roundly denounced by the furry community as a whole. There is an overwhelming majority of furries who are in some way queer (there are a lot of transgender furs) and they have made it clear that hate has no place in their community. Most furry spaces are Nazi-free because the people who organize those spaces condemn, denounce, and eject Nazis or other folks with hateful ideologies. They want furry spaces to be safe spaces for queer people, and if they accept one Nazi - well, that quickly goes away.

 

[GMBigKev]

But to hop back on topic:

Hi-Fi Rush. Get it. Buy it. Support the developer that made it. This game is slick, and polished, and gorgeous, and funny, and fun, and I'm really awful at rhythm games but it does its best to make it easy for players who are not so good with rhythm stuff.

 

[GMBigKev]

Not sure how it happened, but I've fallen down the Pokemon rabbit hole. Ended up playing Sword when I was down with a respiratory infection and have just kept rolling on from there. I'm about 3/4 of the way through Arceus, 1/4 way through Violet, and recently started Black on my steam deck with Retroarch. It's funny considering growing up, the only Pokemon I actually got into was Stadium on the N64, and that was just me and my friends messing around.

White was the last Pokemon I enjoyed playing - other than Let's Go Eevee.

 

[GMBigKev]

Vampire Survivors updated yesterday. New achieves and a new map. No new characters or weapons.

 

[GMBigKev]

Since no one else said it: this game looks nuts.

disappointed.gif

 

[GMBigKev]

I'm enjoying Teardown

Its a voxel based heist game where the whole map is destructible. It starts out simple smash an old house, steal some records, etc but they start adding alarms that force you to plan out and prepare your route in advance

This game has a ridiculously fun speedrun:


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrQ_tFJ2cEA

 

[GMBigKev]

/runs off to pitch Goat Library Sim... in which you play a goat running a library and have to resist eating the books and magazines.

Well we all know that goats are avid consumers of media.

 

[GMBigKev]

I started playing No Man's Sky and you know what, in general it's pretty decent. I suddenly am now the commander of a frigate battle group which is weird but okay, and I'm finding a lot of the general gameplay loop interesting. The planets leave me with a lot to be desired and I hate the Sentinels soooo much... but it's enjoyable. Solid 8/10.

 

[GMBigKev]

I reread this, and... Soul Master is an early game boss?

Sounds like this game is longer than I thought it would be... Though I'm trying to explore everything, so that could be it.

FWIW - it took me a while to beat Soul Master in my game for much the same reason. There is a linear path one can take, but it's more fun to explore.

 

[GMBigKev]

I'm playing Kingdom: Eighties - and it's very Eighties and there's a minor story so it's a bit better than Kingdom but still - it's Kingdom in the Eighties.

 

[GMBigKev]

Got Cult of the Lamb and Neon White for Steam Sale.

Cult of the Lamb is pretty fun, but I really just wanna help out my followers more than anything else!!

Neon White is slick, and tough, and fun.

 

[GMBigKev]

Then you are misunderstanding the core point of the game. Followers are currency, and the only reason to help them is higher level followers are higher value.

Nooooooooo

 

[GMBigKev]

The 360 controller had a notoriously bad dpad, unless you got one of the swanky late-model Limited Editions with a rotating dpad to switch between the lousy 8-way rocker and much nicer setup. (I've still got a shiny gold version somewhere in an entertainment center.)

Every now and then I'll watch this Battletoads Race between 2/3rds of the Runaway Guys (ProtonJon and NCS) and their friends (Patrick and SuperJeenius) and I think it's SuperJeenius who - about 60% of the way through the race - states he's using the 360 controller and the other three guys all shout "What are you doing?!"

Patrick was using a keyboard.

 

[GMBigKev]

I got Cyberpunk 2077 on the Steam Sale and have been playing it.

Tis pretty good! Though I find it hilarious that I have to swap my keyboard to controller when I'm driving around because I can't mouse-and-keyboard driving and can't controller the shooting part of the game...

 

[GMBigKev]

I've been sitting on it for months. And I'll continue to sit on it - waiting on Phantom Liberty to drop.

And I hear you about input swapping - there have been some games where I've bounced between KB&M, gamepad, and a HOTAS setup. ALL the USB ports!

I basically just run everywhere (side note, running is actually pretty fun) unless the distance is more than 1.5 km or the mission requires the use of a vehicle.

 

[GMBigKev]

You can't M&K driving in CP2077 because it's fucking awful.

Even in games where it's done well, driving is one of the things where the analog input of a controller is a million times better than doing the same with the keyboard.

Yeh, controller's not much better but it's manageable at least

 

[GMBigKev]

I'm one of those weirdos who decides to play games years after they come out.

So I'm playing La-Mulana. It's very obtuse. Very hard. Your character is the floatiest mother-hecker in video gaming. Half the time I play I'm just wandering through trying to find what to do next.

But I looove it.

 

[GMBigKev]

Obtuse is right, but I love 2d platformers that try something different. I've barely started the sequel, but it looks to be more of the same. I need to dedicate a stretch to playing it or I'll be totally lost.

I'm about... maybe halfway into the first game (I just beat Viy and opened the Tower of the Goddess) and I know that's my next step. I have to open Eden I know, which requires going through most of the Tower.

 

[GMBigKev]

Judge asks you what your defence is
a button: Not guilty
b button: Make sarcastic remark about judges look
x button: Crouch down and seal everything off judge becasue your sneak and pickpocket skils are both 100
y button: See a doctor because you are clearly delusional at this point from one too many late night gaming marathons as there is no judge nor is there any cake

[30% chance of success]

 

[GMBigKev]

Leia wouldn't count anyway as she's Force-sensitive (albeit untrained).

The biggest example that always shows up in this kind of conversation is Han cutting open the tauntaun with Luke's saber on Hoth. It doesn't even appear to be difficult for him to do, it takes him a second of examination and he flips it right on (facing the right direction, even). IIRC in ROTJ Luke asks Han if he can reach his lightsaber when they're caught in the Ewok net trap, implying again that Han could use it to cut them free.

In the prequel trilogy, of course, there's a huge counterexample in General Grievous - who is canonically non-Force-sensitive but wields four lightsabers.


In TFA, the First Order Trooper who calls Finn a TRAITOR!!111one uses some kind of shock riot baton. The easy assumption is that the electrical field helps it block the lightsaber, but I have no idea how it's "supposed" to work canonically.

There are other melee weapons that make more sense since their wielders tend to have a more ceremonial role: the Imperial Guards (red robed guards in Return of the Jedi) carry spears/pikes and Jabba's Gamorrean guards carry axes. Again, both more ceremonial/intimidation guards moreso than actual combat forces, and there are easy parallels in our own world.

Maybe Finn in Force Awakens - but there's definitely some thought he was supposed to be Force Sensitive as well?

 

[GMBigKev]

So games I've been playing - at least until my GPU crapped out* that are pretty fun that I got in a Steam bundle together:

The Wandering Village - I quite like this game for the most part. It's a good strategic colony builder within a really good story hook (on the back of a giant beastie crossing over a vast wasteland.) Graphics are charming, the concept is sound, and it works as a good colony builder. I have a few major gripes with it though:

• I wish harvester jobs would just go out and start harvesting stuff on their own.
• There's so little space in the game to build it feels super cramped.
• Getting colonists is a very slow process so half the time you're just sitting and waiting for things to do.

Other than that I do really enjoy it. Highly recommend.

Terra Nil - Not the game I expected at all. I thought it would be a similar colony builder but it's really more like a puzzle game instead. You're tasked to clean up the wasteland (this is why the two games were a bundle) and you plop down buildings to do so. Once you've cleaned enough of the space, you then have to adjust the climate and put the biome back together right, then you have to get animals in, get your stuff out and go. It's quite a fun game, the concept is good, and it's got a kind of calm charm to it once you've cleaned up. Again, gripes:

• Solving the main puzzle of each section is a little bit of "if... then.." and doesn't really engender creative solutions.
• Some of the animals can be extremely finicky to find ("you need 20 tiles of ice, 20 tiles of snow, and an elk herd nearby.")
• It broke my GPU!!

Also recommended, though it's probably a bit short.

*My GPU just shuts off when it gets to 65 degrees. My fan doesn't kick on. My computer doesn't shut down. It just turns off and THEN the fan turns on. I dunno if it's overheating or if something else is wrong. It is a seven year old GPU so it's about time for a replacement...

 

[GMBigKev]

I did not enjoy Dragon's Age... Don't know what it was it just never clicked with me.

 

[GMBigKev]

I got all the achievements in Terra Nil and I'll go ahead and give my review with putting all that behind me:

Once you've accomplished all the main tasks, they open up four new maps that are based off the original - with a much harder 'puzzle' element to each one. This shifting of difficulty comes with some pretty rough headscratchers but once you've figured it out you're good to go. It's definitely a decent game. Pick it up if you see it on sale.

 

[GMBigKev]

I started playing Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. But alas, my GPU is still not working right and having 5 FPS during a game requiring (as I'm to understand) a lot of twitch responses during combat and platforming is probably not good.

So I bought it for my PS4 on Amazon.

And the delivery driver threw the package onto someone else's porch and I have no clue where it is cause there's no numbers on the porch and the only thing I know is it's a red brick house with white basement shutters and the door has white trim...

So now I have to work through Amazon to get it delivered again despite there being a limited number available on the website because some dumbass driver decided "this is fine" when they didn't check the number on the package and the BIG ASS NUMBERS above every door in the neighborhood.

 

[GMBigKev]

Someone shoved my game into the mailbox so I have it now.

Our living room is a shambles at the moment so I can't play it.

Maybe I'll start tonight? My wife's out at pottery class so I'll have an opportunity to do so.

 

[GMBigKev]

Oh look, a way to basically disable rapid-press QTEs and just turn them into press-and-hold? Sold! Fucking SOLD. That only took three dives for me to go, “yeah, I don’t need to be slapping the shit out of the ‘A’ button all the time, thanks!”

This is the best addition ever to games. I don't care about QTEs anymore and they are actively painful.

 

[GMBigKev]

I need to finish CrossCode one of these days.

Which probably means starting over, because it's been long enough that I have no idea what was going on any more.

I'm annoyed at the second temple in CrossCode... I can't kill the monsters in there and it's frustrating and I feel dumb...

 

[GMBigKev]

October 24. I need to wait til October 24. Cities Skylines 2 is coming out. It's going to be much better than CS1. Though it's a Paradox game so it's going to have a hundred billion DLCs...

 

[GMBigKev]

Still frustratingly impossible to play anything modern with my GPU on the fritz, so I can't play Cyberpunk yet. (I can barely play FF14 and that's so annoying - I lag out during boss battles all the time now.)

So, I've been playing Dorfromantik, Neon White, and Skyrim again.

Dorfromantik is a lovely chill tile building game, and I'm trying to get my last two achievements in it (30,000 points and 75 rail tiles connected) which is very hard because you have to balance placing perfect tiles with also trying to complete 'quests' in order to get more tiles to place and it's also got a lot of luck (I had one game where I started with eight forest tiles with quests in a row and couldn't quite put them all together because they'd end up closed off and incomplete.)

Neon White is a fast-paced platforming game, and I'm trying to get the last two achievements in it (the full-game Hell rushes) which is hard because you have to play 100% of the game with only one life, can only take three hits (though you can replenish your health), and have three chances to use an item card that gives you whatever skill you want in the game.

Skyrim is Skyrim. I'm playing a conjuration-based stealth archer.

 

[GMBigKev]

Heh, reminds me of Crypt of the Necrodancer, where the hardest game mode is a no-hit, no-missing-the-beat-even-once mode (with Aria).

As a big fan of the gameplay (and music, which of course goes hand-in-hand with the gameplay), the difficulty of this mode was quite annoying. Why is my ear-eye-brain-hand coordination not that of a perfect robot? Why, I ask you?

Yea - the issue with the Hell Rush isn't that it's hard. It's that there's 97 levels. You're bound to make a mistake at some point just from not being at the right place at the right time or acting too quickly or something like that. It's going from A to 97 without skipping a beat or without missing your jump.

 

[GMBigKev]

View attachment 63905

 

[GMBigKev]

FFS, I can't even tell what game you're talking about, but I'm certain it either has its own thread, or should.

No thread I can find but eh, heck it. I'll make one cause could be fun discussions and sharing of good seeds.