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

[Doomlord_uk]

Stuff like that, for a gaming account... write the details down on a big piece of card and keep it somewhere safe but obvious. It's not the biggest deal in the world if someone steals it later on (if your house got burgled, you have bigger issues). I know writing passwords down is a bad idea in general, but in your own home, for a gaming account, it's probably the smarter move. And yes, as he grows up, he'll want to create a legit account. Or learn to be happy with fake accounts.

I have a good personal 'fake ID' I sometimes use - easy to remember for me. I'm over 13 though, so I do have that advantage

Steam actually seems wildly incapable of remembering my age...

 

[Mister E. Meat]

That TASBot run was really incredible and I appreciated the detailed explanation on the Retro Game Mechanics channel too.

 

[Klockwerk]

Hey someone clue me in with Ubisoft games.

My son is 9, he has his own Xbox Live account. He really wanted to play Riders Republic, so I bought it and installed it... loaded it up and it needs a Ubisoft account. He doesn't have a Ubisoft account... checked into it and the age limit is 13.

Did a quick online chat with a Ubisoft rep and seems there's no way around this.
Pretty disappointing... he just wants to play the game. Why does there need to be a secondary account to lock him out?

Argh. I know he can just play the game from my account, but I don't want to go through that route. Kind of bullshit... am I missing something here?

Create an account now with a new email address and a different birthday. Use it until he's 13, and then he can create a new one, logging into the old one as required (or buying favourite games on the new account when on sale).

 

[Diabolical]

Just played through the Cult of the Lamb demo, published by Devolver. I loved the look of what I had seen so far, but the demo? Yeah. I won't preorder things, but I'll be picking this up when it launches next month.

A roguelite combat game with some management aspects to build a Cult? Yes please! And you play as a little lamb in a crazy world inhabited by freakish beasts and cute forest creature to convert in a strangely compelling/cutesy/terrifying art style?

Yes please!

 

[MrLiNcH]

Just played through the Cult of the Lamb demo, published by Devolver. I loved the look of what I had seen so far, but the demo? Yeah. I won't preorder things, but I'll be picking this up when it launches next month.

A roguelite combat game with some management aspects to build a Cult? Yes please! And you play as a little lamb in a crazy world inhabited by freakish beasts and cute forest creature to convert in a strangely compelling/cutesy/terrifying art style?

Yes please!

I too played the demo. Thought it was a lot of fun. I'll still wait on the review since I'm short on cash at the moment.

 

[CuriouslySane]

The Looker, an irreverent parody of The Witness, is free on Steam and worth every penny.

 

[invertedpanda]

I finally beat Control.

I bought it not too long after it was released, but never finished it.. What I did play I LOVED, though.. And the ending was awesome. I swear, I've never seen a better story delivery in a game, and ordinarily I hate metroidvanias.. But this one? *chefs kiss*

Doing some side-questing and will hit the DLC next. Taking a break from my usual fare for now just so I can avoid hating the games I'm covering.

What I love about Control is the end-game is still there as a single-player game.. You can really keep exploring, doing the random missions that come up, and overall working to max out your character.

More games need this sort of system. I was able to get a lot of life out of games like Ghost Recon Breakpoint because there was a daily mission system. Skyrim had the radiant quest system (and mods galore and fun creating builds).

We just need more end-game content for single-player games. So many are like.. "Oh, you're done? Ok, well, here's a bunch of multiplayer"

 

[Diabolical]

Started up Alien: Isolation last night. Even the first 40 minutes or so is ambient and creepy. Can’t wait to play it some more this evening. When it’s dark.

 

[Deleted member 14629]

The Looker, an irreverent parody of The Witness, is free on Steam and worth every penny.

"This is certainly one of the games of all time." Is the only review I needed.

 

[krimhorn]

I finished Tell Me Why last night. It took me a while to get through because, while I loved it in the moment, it was tough to bring myself to find a 3-4 hour block that I was motivated to play each chapter in. It's a story about a brother and sister that haven't seen each other for a decade, after he was institutionalized for killing their mother, reuniting and trying to find some element of peace with their pasts - both the shared and unshared. The game made some small amount of waves for featuring a trans man in a main character slot who just kind of is. His transition is a part of him and is referenced at times but most of the game you kind of forget about it as he is allowed to be a full character. Much like Dontnod's previous works the two characters have magic powers but aside from a narrative "Twinlepathy" the main power is that of memory, namely "visualizing" their memories that acts quite a bit like a metaphor for a conversation about a shared memory with a "Show don't tell" interface. The end result is a mechanic that progresses the story without being a silly magic power like the first Life Is Strange had.

I really liked the game overall. If you have GamePass it's available there and you might have picked it up on various storefronts last month as it was free most everywhere for Pride Month.

 

[Mister E. Meat]

The Looker, an irreverent parody of The Witness, is free on Steam and worth every penny.

"This is certainly one of the games of all time." Is the only review I needed.

I liked the developer description of the game:

The Looker is a single-player game that respects you as an intelligent player, and it treats your time as... reasonably valuable (I mean, don't let me pull you off solving the Riemann hypothesis or anything).

 

[Kilgaine]

IIRC, Hacking difficulty 2's are the worst. The 3's and 4's require more hacks, but the time is more forgiving, but the 2's give you little enough time that you have to hurry in a way that makes the terrible controls all the more obvious. It feels poorly calibrated vs. the other Hack difficulties.

If you didn't know: the "height" of the walls determines how hard you bounce off, so you can use that to decide which wall to skate near in case you bounce off it.

Yep, hacking 2 is the worst level in Prey. The later ones are still the same thing, and you don't really get any more time per needed connection, but all the time is in one big pool. Early on, you have lots of time, reducing stress, and then if you do well, that time carries over to the later attempts.

I failed Level 2s routinely, but almost never 3s or 4s. Even with high skill levels, 2s sucked.

I appreciate this from both of you. I was ready to just ignore hacking and say the hell with it on anything stuck in there that I couldn't find with another way. I think I upgraded my hacking finally this morning and yeah, a hack level 3 was more simple than the next 2 or 3 hack level 2's I did, which is weird, but a relief.

Starting to get pretty strong in the game, even though I had avoided using the typhon powers for the most part. Well, now that I found you can refill your psi-power with drinking fountains, I said the hell with it and started unlocking some of the abilities I had avoided, like the fire-based abilities. Yeah, they're freaking strong.

I'm still enjoying it, although, 21 hours in now, sometimes gathering all the garbage is a burden. Knowing I can get more sweet-sweet neuromods makes it worth it, even when my inventory is full and I still haven't found the recycler in a new area.

I like the combo of sneak attack with the wrench, then going into the slow time and just beating the crap out of a phantom. It doesn't feel totally overpowered, which would be satisfying but would take the danger out of the game, but it does feel like I don't fear most battles. Gotta love it when I get a crit and they just fall over too. I think I used a sneak attack on a nightmare with the wrench and even did a pretty good chunk of its health before I had to pull out the shotgun. Now that I am more willing to use typhon powers I could probably nuke them with fire...

 

[krimhorn]

The Looker is definitely the best examination of existential neoplatonism with a minor treatise on nonconformist rationality that you will ever play.

And it's a pretty amusing puzzle game too.

 

[Ecmaster76]

The Looker, an irreverent parody of The Witness, is free on Steam and worth every penny.

It definitely got a few chuckles out of me. Thanks!

 

[Paladin]

Quick question for anyone who is bothering with Diablo Immortal:

I have played a few hours into it and found it to have some of the bones of a Diablo game, which I enjoy. Is there a way to play in real single player mode? There is just soooo muuuuuuch craaaap on the screen once you have multiple other players in the instance. It's horrible. It ruins the immersion and feel of the game completely. The chat and stuff is a huge distraction and I hate the multiplayer aspect. I understand why it is done that way (though I wish it could be made less visible)... I just wish I could turn all that stuff off. I'd even consider paying for that option. I ain't paying for anything else in this game though!

 

[Diabolical]

Very quick search shows no.
You can’t.

Which makes sense. They want your money, and this is what all of the research and time and $ they’ve put into how best to extract that money from their customers means you get to enjoy having all that shit on your screen. Have fun.

In an actual single player game, I’ve ran into the xenomorph for the first time in Alien: Isolation. In my head, I know it’s no different than other games that have an overriding ‘escape from the monster/baddie/ghosty/etc’ mechanic. But god damn watching it come out of that vent was fucking terrifying! As a side note, this is one of the first times I’ve ever had the brightness set as low as the dev’s recommend, and left most of the visual aspects alone (film grain, etc). The only thing I did was increase the FOV, because the very narrow view you start with looked awful on 3440x1440 ultrawide.

So yeah, everything is very dark. And I’m scared to turn on the lights. And the sound design is very, very good at getting you to freak out. Having a good time with it.

 

[Nekojin]

Quick question for anyone who is bothering with Diablo Immortal:

I have played a few hours into it and found it to have some of the bones of a Diablo game, which I enjoy. Is there a way to play in real single player mode? There is just soooo muuuuuuch craaaap on the screen once you have multiple other players in the instance. It's horrible. It ruins the immersion and feel of the game completely. The chat and stuff is a huge distraction and I hate the multiplayer aspect. I understand why it is done that way (though I wish it could be made less visible)... I just wish I could turn all that stuff off. I'd even consider paying for that option. I ain't paying for anything else in this game though!

As bad as it is now, wait until the hacking community figures out how to do duping within the game. It'll be a hundred times worse.

 

[Paladin]

Yeah, I'm pretty much on my last straw with it. I love the Diablo 'universe' but this thing is nigh unplayable.

 

[Deleted member 14629]

I've settled myself to either never playing it at all, or seeing if it ever gets less P2W with new ownership. So disappointing that they're seeing such crazy money on it.

 

[kperrier]

Just wait for D4. A mill a day looks, to me, to be pretty good. They are not going to walk away from that for D4.

 

[Deleted member 14629]

Just wait for D4. A mill a day looks, to me, to be pretty good. They are not going to walk away from that for D4.

My big concern is they're going to see that money and push the same way for D4.

 

[sword_9mm]

There will be 'microtransactions' in D4 but nothing like Immortal imo.

Is there a game out there without that crap now? Even if it's just new shirts or skins or something? Seems like every game now has some sort of store attached.

After the auction house I can't imagine Bliz doing another fuck-up with D4.

 

[Technarch]

Just wait for D4. A mill a day looks, to me, to be pretty good. They are not going to walk away from that for D4.

My big concern is they're going to see that money and push the same way for D4.

You misspelled "foregone conclusion".

 

[Quarthinos]

There will be 'microtransactions' in D4 but nothing like Immortal imo.

Is there a game out there without that crap now? Even if it's just new shirts or skins or something? Seems like every game now has some sort of store attached.

After the auction house I can't imagine Bliz doing another fuck-up with D4.

Factorio doesn't have any kind of after purchase monetization, at least not in game. And lots of console games that are released once and never touched again.

 

[kperrier]

Factorio has been well worth the $20 I paid 3 ish years ago? They have a DLC/expansion coming out Soon(TM) and I am more than happy give them $30 (the current price of Factorio) for it.

 

[Diabolical]

Factorio has been well worth the $20 I paid 3 ish years ago? They have a DLC/expansion coming out Soon(TM) and I am more than happy give them $30 (the current price of Factorio) for it.

This. Holy shit did Factorio consume my entire gaming world for several months. Well north of a hundred hours. Right up there with Stellaris, with the exception of once I ‘quit’ Factorio I managed to stay away.

 

[sword_9mm]

Never heard of Factorio and after watching some video it's 100% not for me.

 

[ferzerp]

Factorio has been well worth the $20 I paid 3 ish years ago? They have a DLC/expansion coming out Soon(TM) and I am more than happy give them $30 (the current price of Factorio) for it.

That was KSP for me at something like $14. Steam says 125 hours, but the steam keys didn't happen until I'd already played it quite a bit.

 

[Lt_Storm]

Never heard of Factorio and after watching some video it's 100% not for me.

You would be surprised... It doesn't look like much, but neither does cocaine.

 

[Robotank]

Never heard of Factorio and after watching some video it's 100% not for me.

You would be surprised... It doesn't look like much, but neither does cocaine.

I actually think this is the magic of Factorio's incredibly high review score. It's a niche game that hits hard for certain people and anyone outside that target audience can understand it's not for them.

 

[Thorvard]

Never heard of Factorio and after watching some video it's 100% not for me.

You would be surprised... It doesn't look like much, but neither does cocaine.

It's the farthest thing I'd ever expect my son to be interested in, but he's obsessed with it. Plus he ended up getting 3 of his friends hooked as well.

 

[Tom Foolery]

Never heard of Factorio and after watching some video it's 100% not for me.

You would be surprised... It doesn't look like much, but neither does cocaine.

It's the farthest thing I'd ever expect my son to be interested in, but he's obsessed with it. Plus he ended up getting 3 of his friends hooked as well.

The cocaine, or the Factorio?

 

[Diabolical]

Never heard of Factorio and after watching some video it's 100% not for me.

You would be surprised... It doesn't look like much, but neither does cocaine.

It's the farthest thing I'd ever expect my son to be interested in, but he's obsessed with it. Plus he ended up getting 3 of his friends hooked as well.

The cocaine, or the Factorio?

Why not Zoidberg both?!

these jokes may be in very bad taste. if so, very sorry.

 

[CPX]

Never heard of Factorio and after watching some video it's 100% not for me.

You would be surprised... It doesn't look like much, but neither does cocaine.

It's the farthest thing I'd ever expect my son to be interested in, but he's obsessed with it. Plus he ended up getting 3 of his friends hooked as well.

The cocaine, or the Factorio?

I'm now imagining a Miami-based crime comedy centered around software piracy, thanks.

 

[Kilgaine]

Quick question for anyone who is bothering with Diablo Immortal:

I have played a few hours into it and found it to have some of the bones of a Diablo game, which I enjoy. Is there a way to play in real single player mode? There is just soooo muuuuuuch craaaap on the screen once you have multiple other players in the instance. It's horrible. It ruins the immersion and feel of the game completely. The chat and stuff is a huge distraction and I hate the multiplayer aspect. I understand why it is done that way (though I wish it could be made less visible)... I just wish I could turn all that stuff off. I'd even consider paying for that option. I ain't paying for anything else in this game though!

I played it for about 30 minutes before I couldn't stand it. I was really looking forward to this too, since I wanted a decent game to play on my phone when I don't have access to the console or whatever (2 year old and all). I had been playing Final Fantasy 5 on my phone (purchased it for $15), and after playing Diablo Immortal off and on for a couple of days in small 5-10 min chunks, I found I had less desire to play that than to play FF5. Like, graphically it looks great. The animations are excellent. It controls really well. But the gamification of everything (as in, currencies upon currencies upon currencies) makes it feel so incredibly hollow. The addition of multiplayer everything really takes away any mystery or immersion in the game too. The chatbox at the bottom, anytime I leave town to go kill stuff there's 3 other people around doing the same thing... For some reason it just kills my interest.

I uninstalled it and haven't regretted it. If you have never played Diablo 3, and you're looking for a single player experience, Paladin, I would highly recommend you pick that up, with the Reaper of Souls DLC and play that instead. The story/writing is awful, but it has the atmosphere, and the gameplay is great. In fact, Immortal feels like 90% of it was straight up copied and pasted from Diablo 3. And if you feel like enjoying the end game (which can be REALLY fun at least once or twice), it has that as well in the seasonal content.

If you have already played Diablo 3, well, you're probably still better off going back to play it again instead of bothering with Immortal. I hear the content is fine for F2P up to level 50 or so, but all of the F2P mechanics just make it repulsive to me. I'm not hating on others for playing it, but when most of my loot is a bunch of coins and seals and crests, and I don't even know what to do with them, I just can't play that in a loot game.

 

[malor]

D3 is always-online for no good reason, so I've never been willing to buy it.

 

[Paladin]

Quick question for anyone who is bothering with Diablo Immortal:

I have played a few hours into it and found it to have some of the bones of a Diablo game, which I enjoy. Is there a way to play in real single player mode? There is just soooo muuuuuuch craaaap on the screen once you have multiple other players in the instance. It's horrible. It ruins the immersion and feel of the game completely. The chat and stuff is a huge distraction and I hate the multiplayer aspect. I understand why it is done that way (though I wish it could be made less visible)... I just wish I could turn all that stuff off. I'd even consider paying for that option. I ain't paying for anything else in this game though!

I played it for about 30 minutes before I couldn't stand it. I was really looking forward to this too, since I wanted a decent game to play on my phone when I don't have access to the console or whatever (2 year old and all). I had been playing Final Fantasy 5 on my phone (purchased it for $15), and after playing Diablo Immortal off and on for a couple of days in small 5-10 min chunks, I found I had less desire to play that than to play FF5. Like, graphically it looks great. The animations are excellent. It controls really well. But the gamification of everything (as in, currencies upon currencies upon currencies) makes it feel so incredibly hollow. The addition of multiplayer everything really takes away any mystery or immersion in the game too. The chatbox at the bottom, anytime I leave town to go kill stuff there's 3 other people around doing the same thing... For some reason it just kills my interest.

I uninstalled it and haven't regretted it. If you have never played Diablo 3, and you're looking for a single player experience, Paladin, I would highly recommend you pick that up, with the Reaper of Souls DLC and play that instead. The story/writing is awful, but it has the atmosphere, and the gameplay is great. In fact, Immortal feels like 90% of it was straight up copied and pasted from Diablo 3. And if you feel like enjoying the end game (which can be REALLY fun at least once or twice), it has that as well in the seasonal content.

If you have already played Diablo 3, well, you're probably still better off going back to play it again instead of bothering with Immortal. I hear the content is fine for F2P up to level 50 or so, but all of the F2P mechanics just make it repulsive to me. I'm not hating on others for playing it, but when most of my loot is a bunch of coins and seals and crests, and I don't even know what to do with them, I just can't play that in a loot game.

Yeah I agree. I love the mechanics of just bashing some monsters, seeing cool dungeons/environments etc. and getting cool loot to upgrade my character all with the background of a basic adventure story of beating back some evil tide of monsters and a big bad. If this game focused on that with some add-on of things to buy so you can pay to win in PvP or upgrade faster in PvE or just to make your stuff look cool, that would be fine.

The way they have other players constantly in your way, annoying chat (read: constant pestering from scammers, people begging for something or other, etc.) and confusing currency of 30 different kinds... it's just stupid. I see why they do it, they're raking in money for the time being. Of course, it can't keep going very long, I would hope. A couple of months and the people willing to pay will have purchased basically everything and realize that they are just spending money to look good and no one cares anymore. Hopefully the money machine will run out and maybe they will have to consider actually making the game more playable. Maybe in a year or two it will be fun, or it will just be dead. We'll see.

 

[Kilgaine]

Yeah if you haven't played Diablo 3, I think it's worth it, especially with the Reaper of Souls pack.

Of course, you could stop giving Blizzard money, and instead get Path of Exile for free, if you haven't played that. That's F2P, but doesn't have all the annoying stuff that Diablo Immortal has. I thought they were working on a mobile version as well, and if it's still actually in the works, I have some hope that they wouldn't go as greedy as Blizz did.

 

[whoisit]

HROT - Think Quake 1 but in old Eastern Europe/Soviet Bloc. It's still in early access, but has released two of three planned chapters.

Story: Hell if I know. You start out in an underground bunker, escape, and shoot a weird variety of enemies. Some type of outbreak/disaster/event has occurred. All of the human enemies are wearing gas masks, some of them have an idle animation showing them vomiting before replacing the mask and attacking you. There's even a horse with a gas mask that attacks you. That's not even counting the gorilla, spiders, rats, floating heads, front end loader, and horse/pommel gymnastics training equipment. For all I know, they are all normal and you might be the evil thing attacking them unreliable narrator style.

Graphics: Think Quake 1 in software mode, but more brown. No, more brown than that. There is an experimental option to turn on OpenGL graphics, but it detracts more from the game's aesthetic than it adds in my opinion.

Gameplay: Key hunts, fast firefights, and weapons that are punchier than their sound effects make them seem. Levels generally open up additional paths back to locked doors as you play through them. Most monsters are strategically placed in a level, but there are some set pieces that teleport enemies in like Serious Sam/Doom 2016.

Thus far the only things I would term as weaknesses in the game are the weak weapon sounds. They all just sound anemic. Hopefully these are just placeholder sounds and will be replaced with some punchier ones for official release. The other is the keys and the doors they open could be marked better. It's not Redneck Rampage bad, but there have been times when I have a key but you can't tell what door it opens so you just try all the locked doors until you find the right one.

Fun and weird. Keep your eye out for this one when it officially releases. It might be right up there with Dusk for retro shooter fans.

 

[Paladin]

Yeah if you haven't played Diablo 3, I think it's worth it, especially with the Reaper of Souls pack.

Of course, you could stop giving Blizzard money, and instead get Path of Exile for free, if you haven't played that. That's F2P, but doesn't have all the annoying stuff that Diablo Immortal has. I thought they were working on a mobile version as well, and if it's still actually in the works, I have some hope that they wouldn't go as greedy as Blizz did.

Yup, I played and enjoyed Diablo 3 a while ago, never felt the need to go back over and over once I had played through the main story a few times. I enjoy the novelty of the game and the story more than the repeat grind of leveling up to the max and getting ultimate gear or whatever.

I tried PoE for an hour or so a while ago and found the skill tree so overwhelming that it pushed me away from the game a bit. I was pretty frustrated with it. They should have a simplified option for people who want to play through it a bit more casually, it seems like a great game but it might be more of a time investment than I am looking for.