What Are You Playing, Part 3: The Assassination of my Wallet by the Cowardly Sale

[Rakaydos]

14 hours, 1 minute.

With the schematics for a Prawn suit, I had some resource collection to do. No idea how to make Aerogel, but diamond was in Shale and titanium is in wreckage, so I moved a scanner moduel closer to the shale deposit I detected, above a big drop, with a wreck below. (approximately 700 south by 300 west, on that map, I think)

In the interest of exploring that wreck, I built another minimal base- a tube, solar panel, and two hatches- on the ledge above the wreck, about 200m down, to use as an air station. And because I was on a roll, I built another one about 300m down- too low for solar panels, but close enough for a power relay. The next one at 380m or so is built, but the power relay isnt chaining to it.

Using these airstations to explore the area, I have enough lithium for the prawn suit, and also found a nice load of ruby and uranite. Near the end of the session, I found a single gelsack- which unlocked how to make aerogel... but I didnt find another gel sack before another commitment came calling and I had to save/quit.

[factotum]

You definitely need to find the Seamoth depth upgrade, from the sounds of it--it's a lot more convenient than having to build new bases as air stations all over the place, especially since it sounds like you still don't have a multipurpose room (so no bioreactor).

[Corlindale]

Been getting a bit into Slay the Spire again. I used to find the Defect somewhat incomprehensible, but I think it is gradually turning into my favorite class. I especially enjoy the ridiculous power-escalation you can get late-game, where you are doubling powers or playing powers that give you more powers which you then double again, it's hilarious.

Also seems to be quite a bit of deck diversity possible. My first win was a crazy Dark Orb + Multicast combo deck, the second was a heavily defensive frost/claw deck, and most recently I had a fantastic run with a lightning deck. It ended up being heavily focused on Static Discharge, to the point where every hit I took would often channel a crazy number of lightning orbs. It was fun to fine-tune my block each turn to let the tiniest sliver of damage through, just to see the crazy elemental devastation that would occur in response. Also got Echo Form with Bottled Tornado and a good amount of Energy boost, so I could reliably have it on all the time in every single fight. Great fun.

Unfortunately I never saw Electrodynamics (except once where I swear Creative A.I. just wanted to taunt me by giving me a brief taste of its power), which would have been really amazing in this deck. Lack of targeted damage was definitely an issue vs. Donu and Deca at the end, because I couldn't follow the usual strategy of bursting down one at a time. Still won, but barely.

[Cozzer]

In the end I downloaded the Crash Bandicoot trilogy remake for Steam. It was a really good decision.

Just completed (with gems) the first game. The other two will probably feel a bit too easy now (the first game is notoriously hard), but I don't really care - I play this for the moment-to-moment fun, and that's just as good as I remembered.

[Saph]

Finally finished Phoenix Point for the first time.

It's pretty good! Kind of easy (and I was playing on max difficulty) but the game's still being tuned. I've heard that the earlier versions skewed the other way and were very hard, so I suspect there's a lot of rebalancing still to come.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Using these airstations to explore the area, I have enough lithium for the prawn suit, and also found a nice load of ruby and uranite. Near the end of the session, I found a single gelsack- which unlocked how to make aerogel... but I didnt find another gel sack before another commitment came calling and I had to save/quit.

Spoiler: Tip for the Gel sack

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If you’ve got the outdoor grow bed, put the gel sack in it and hit the gel sack with the knife - this will let you harvest seeds, so you can plant more of them. You can do the same with the mushrooms and a couple other plants in game.

[Rakaydos]

I was asked to stop clogging up the main thread with a personal "lets-play".

The subnautica playthough discussion is being moved here: https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...laying-thread)

[Man_Over_Game]

Been getting a bit into Slay the Spire again. I used to find the Defect somewhat incomprehensible, but I think it is gradually turning into my favorite class. I especially enjoy the ridiculous power-escalation you can get late-game, where you are doubling powers or playing powers that give you more powers which you then double again, it's hilarious.

Also seems to be quite a bit of deck diversity possible. My first win was a crazy Dark Orb + Multicast combo deck, the second was a heavily defensive frost/claw deck, and most recently I had a fantastic run with a lightning deck. It ended up being heavily focused on Static Discharge, to the point where every hit I took would often channel a crazy number of lightning orbs. It was fun to fine-tune my block each turn to let the tiniest sliver of damage through, just to see the crazy elemental devastation that would occur in response. Also got Echo Form with Bottled Tornado and a good amount of Energy boost, so I could reliably have it on all the time in every single fight. Great fun.

Unfortunately I never saw Electrodynamics (except once where I swear Creative A.I. just wanted to taunt me by giving me a brief taste of its power), which would have been really amazing in this deck. Lack of targeted damage was definitely an issue vs. Donu and Deca at the end, because I couldn't follow the usual strategy of bursting down one at a time. Still won, but barely.

I've always had a hard time with the Defect. It focuses on the long-con, and doesn't really have many "adaptive" strategies. Generally what happens is that you either stomp most things, or you find that they stomp you, as you focus on a singular strategy until you find something it doesn't work against.

I kinda think it's poor design, tbh. It makes the Defect feel like your deck, or RNG, matters more than your in-game decision making, since most of the ways you get countered are "Well, I have no way of blocking that much damage" or "Well, I have no way of bursting that creature down", or "I can't afford to play my power-based deck if I want to survive". Where the Ironclad or Silent aren't forced into any one solution and can adapt on the fly if needed.

Don't get me wrong, the Defect can be fun to play, it just feel like the game is picking a strategy rather than actually playing it.

[Anteros]

I was asked to stop clogging up the main thread with a personal "lets-play".

The subnautica playthough discussion is being moved here: https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...laying-thread)

I don't mind your posts. You're not posting any more than a lot of others have about their own games, and it's not obtrusive. I might be biased though because Subnautica is my favorite game.

I've always had a hard time with the Defect. It focuses on the long-con, and doesn't really have many "adaptive" strategies. Generally what happens is that you either stomp most things, or you find that they stomp you, as you focus on a singular strategy until you find something it doesn't work against.

I kinda think it's poor design, tbh. It makes the Defect feel like your deck, or RNG, matters more than your in-game decision making, since most of the ways you get countered are "Well, I have no way of blocking that much damage" or "Well, I have no way of bursting that creature down", or "I can't afford to play my power-based deck if I want to survive". Where the Ironclad or Silent aren't forced into any one solution and can adapt on the fly if needed.

Don't get me wrong, the Defect can be fun to play, it just feel like the game is picking a strategy rather than actually playing it.

I've got a few wins as Defect, but I'm not good at it by any stretch. Most of my wins have come more from oversized decks and just throwing out as many cards as possible in a round than any kind of real strategy. In general I'm not a huge fan of "set things up in advance before you can play" as a style so I don't particularly like the Defect or the newest hero either but that's just my personal preference. Defect is the only character where I've ever just taken every single card offered to me, let the deck bloat as large as possible, and have it actually work.

[Zevox]

Finished up Okami today. It's a really good game, for sure. Great Zelda-esque adventure, but very distinct from the actual Zelda games. I mentioned before that the abilities you get really do make it feel like you're playing a god, and that only gets more true as time goes on - especially once you pick the time-slowing ability, or power up your Inferno ability to conjure a huge orb of fire that can deal huge damage to every enemy on-screen if you have enough ink pots to spend drawing it. They do some cool things with defensive uses of abilities you wouldn't necessarily expect, too, such as being able to deflect a dragon's fire breath by causing the wind to blow it away.

The boss fights were quite well-designed and fun too, especially the later ones. Orochi, Nine-Tails, and Yami are real stand-outs, as they should be considering their roles in the story. Yami especially made for an excellent final boss, having ways for you to use almost every ability you've acquired throughout the game in fighting him. Also helped that he was the only actually challenging boss in the game, with four forms and dozens of different attacks for you to figure out how to handle.

If I have one major criticism, it's definitely that the game is just too easy. Very rarely did I even feel the need to use healing items during the game (and I had plenty of them), and only once, against Yami, would I probably have lost the first time had I not used them. Game could definitely have stood to make enemies more aggressive, or their abilities more difficult to avoid.

If I have a second major criticism, it's Issun. Yeah, he had his role in the story towards the end, but good lord did 90%+ of his dialogue make me want to strangle him. He is an idiot, a shameless pervert, and quite the jackass throughout the majority of the game. I wish he were only as annoying as people thought Navi was - or half as helpful as she was.

On a separate note, I did continue to play some Soul Calibur 6 this week. Mixed bag on finding games in ranked - some days it wasn't much of an issue (mostly ones where I got people who rematched a lot), some days it took quite a while. A real pity the game came out around the same time as Smash Brothers, if it hadn't been overshadowed by that, I might have played a lot more of it. I really like 2B in particular, her play style is probably my favorite, even above my preferred base roster characters, so it's doubly a shame that she didn't release until a couple of weeks after Smash and thus I hadn't played her until now. In general, I feel like if any series were going to get me more into 3D fighting games, it'd be this one. Soul Calibur somehow feels more approachable than Tekken does, like it's easier to wrap my head around what's going on and what I need to be doing than it is in that series. Pity then that the player base has obviously shrunk quite a bit and even finding matches is a pain - to say nothing of the netcode not being great as well. I pretty strongly suspect that if I were more experienced at the game and trying to do more precise counterplays than I'm really capable of atm, that would be frustrating me more.

Probably going to switch back to one of my more typical fighting games of choice soon, but it was nice to revisit Soul Calibur.

[DeTess]

I just recently played and finished 'spiritfarer' and I found it an incredibly enjoyable experience. There are no enemies, no time limits and no failure states. Instead there's you, and about a dozen friendly spirits that you help with moving on after death over the course of the game. You should expect to cry at least once during the course of the game though, as chances are very good that the story of at least one of these spirits will get to you.

[Zevox]

So yesterday I played though Raji: An Ancient Epic, an indie game that was just released on the Switch after that indie direct. It's, well, very short and sadly pretty mediocre. I could go into details, but what it boils down to is that the gameplay is serviceable but nothing special in any area, the storytelling is iffy, and visually it's fairly good but it's annoying that the camera is locked to being pretty zoomed-out all the time. The best part about it is the use of Hindu mythology - in fact, you frequently run into these murals on walls throughout the game which, when examined, have Durga and Vishnu (two gods who narrate to you throughout the game) explain stories from Hindu mythology that the murals are portraying, which is neat. Unfortunately those stories also have nothing to do with the story of the game itself, so you really might as well just google "Hindu mythology stories" and you'll probably get the same result. As for the game's own story, well, the ending is perhaps the game's biggest single weakness...

Spoiler

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After you defeat the final boss, you see him clone himself a ton (something he does during the final boss fight, though this time he creates a lot more), and enter a cutscene where you're told that he overpowers you. Then he opens the evil gateway that he was trying to open... with the help of your little brother, whom you spent most of the game trying to rescue, and had successfully rescued earlier. So, I guess your little brother is evil now? Except the game ends with Raji and her brother meeting back up in a desert during a sandstorm and hugging, so maybe not? Unclear.

So yeah, this ending is either sequel bait, or the villain just wins despite you beating him in the fight. Odd decision for an indie game from a new developer which cannot guarantee it'll even have a sequel, to say the least, and a rather disappointing note to end on.

Yeah, wish I could say there was more to recommend the game, but there's really not. I bought it for $22.50 due to a small sale that it was on, and feel like that's more than it's worth. $10 feels more like what this is worth, maybe $15 at a stretch.

After that letdown, I decided to do something I've been thinking about doing for a while: dig out my X-Box 360 and download and re-play Banjo-Kazooie for the first time in I've lost track of how long, since I lost my old N64 copy of the game some years ago. Pleased to see that they still have X-Box Live in operation for the 360 and I could indeed do that. Picking up that game again is like putting on an old, comfortable pair of shoes. It's still so much fun, and feels so nostalgic. I feel like I remember where everything is and I'll be able to 100% it easily - hell, I still remember the cheat codes, even many of the ones for the giant eggs and the ice key that never actually wound up getting used for anything. I cleaned out Mumbo's Mountain and Treasure Trove Cove in under an hour of play time, so I'm guessing the game won't take me too long. Might play through Banjo-Tooie again afterwards, perhaps.

[warty goblin]

Playing Anthem reminded me of the substantial pleasures of wandering around a big map, finding points of interest, shooting the bad people who live there, and taking their stuff to further virtuous causes. And by virtuous causes I mean "moar gunz."

Unfortunately Anthem mostly reminded me of this in a negative sense, since its weirdly reticent to actually let you wander around and shoot dudes, and very eager for you to play Loading Screen Simulator 2019, so I switched back to The Division 2.

Which reminds me how much I like the Division 2, particularly compared to Division 1. The larger number of weaker enemies allows your guns to feel powerful, and since the tougher enemies are tough by virtue of armor you can shoot off, they aren't just giant arbitrary HP sponges. The cover system remains probably the best ever developed, and you're squishy enough for it to matter.

And compared to Anthem it just works. The only loading screens are launching the game or fast traveling, and they're not that long. You can tool around the map like a proper muderhobo, exploration is fun and rewarding, and the shooting itself is super crisp. The powers still feel a bit anemic, but this just foregrounds the excellent shooting, which is more engaging and active then a combat loop built around waiting for your win button to come off cooldown. The formal narrative tild through cutscenes is abjectly terrible, but it takes up like 5% of your time, and the informal narrative of puttering around the ruins of DC helping settlements is good. Anthem's formal story is also bad, but it takes a lot of time, and the world building is so sparse and weak, and the experience so horribly broken up by loading screens, that the informal narrative of jetting around and doing stuff never, ahem, really takes off.

[MCerberus]

And compared to Anthem it just works. The only loading screens are launching the game or fast traveling, and they're not that long. You can tool around the map like a proper muderhobo, exploration is fun and rewarding, and the shooting itself is super crisp. The powers still feel a bit anemic, but this just foregrounds the excellent shooting, which is more engaging and active then a combat loop built around waiting for your win button to come off cooldown. The formal narrative tild through cutscenes is abjectly terrible, but it takes up like 5% of your time, and the informal narrative of puttering around the ruins of DC helping settlements is good. Anthem's formal story is also bad, but it takes a lot of time, and the world building is so sparse and weak, and the experience so horribly broken up by loading screens, that the informal narrative of jetting around and doing stuff never, ahem, really takes off.

The division makes me angry with its setting though because they touch on so many interesting things in apocalypse setting. You're a vigilante member of the illuminati, your organization is the source for actual supervillains, and the 'good guys' may be actively holding back the reformation of society. But then they completely just have you play the hero in a desperate attempt to avoid having to introduce these themes.

[Zevox]

Finished up Banjo-Kazooie tonight. Only took about 7.5 hours total, got all meaningful items (jiggies, notes, empty honeycombs). Yeah, even after all these years I still have that game almost memorized, only briefly tripped up at a few points. I love it so. And I was actually surprised that Gruntilda was a harder final boss than I thought - she's a lot better at aiming those fireballs to track your movement than I remembered.

Definitely going to go to Banjo-Tooie tomorrow. That'll be interesting, since I remember a lot less of that game, and certainly played it far fewer times back in the day.

[warty goblin]

Finished up Banjo-Kazooie tonight. Only took about 7.5 hours total, got all meaningful items (jiggies, notes, empty honeycombs). Yeah, even after all these years I still have that game almost memorized, only briefly tripped up at a few points. I love it so. And I was actually surprised that Gruntilda was a harder final boss than I thought - she's a lot better at aiming those fireballs to track your movement than I remembered.

Definitely going to go to Banjo-Tooie tomorrow. That'll be interesting, since I remember a lot less of that game, and certainly played it far fewer times back in the day.

I always find it interesting how much of games I played a long time ago I remember. I fired up Sacred again for a bit a couple weeks ago, and damn if I didn't still know the location of every single enemy in the starting area, the optimal quest rotation, the best place to spam shop inventory respawns, and a whole bunch of other crap. It's a bit freaky really; just imagine if my brain had decided to latch onto something remotely useful.

[IthilanorStPete]

After reading this excellent Let's Play of Football Manager 2014, I'm considering getting the latest iteration of the franchise and doing an LP of it here, even though I barely know anything about soccer football. Would people be interested in following along with my misadventures?

[Zevox]

I always find it interesting how much of games I played a long time ago I remember. I fired up Sacred again for a bit a couple weeks ago, and damn if I didn't still know the location of every single enemy in the starting area, the optimal quest rotation, the best place to spam shop inventory respawns, and a whole bunch of other crap. It's a bit freaky really; just imagine if my brain had decided to latch onto something remotely useful.

Yeah, I know what you mean. I even found myself falling into the same patterns of what I visited in each stage when in Banjo-Kazooie that I had when I was younger - turns out younger-me had more less optimized that to minimize back-tracking. To say nothing of remembering the most effective moves to handle different enemies (to be fair, for most of them it is the same one, the rat-a-tat-rap), the few moments when it was best to employ limited-use resources like the gold feathers that grant invincibility, even largely-pointless tricks like how to jump up onto a statue you're not supposed to be able to reach to get one jiggy just a little earlier than normal.

By contrast, started Banjo-Tooie today, and while I definitely remember what I'm seeing, it's more of a "this is definitely familiar" feeling, rather than an "oh, I know where everything is and the best thing to do at all times without having to think about it" sort of feeling. Which is pretty nice, because it means that now I'm actually playing the game the way it's meant to be - exploring and figuring things out as I go. I do a lot more back-tracking that way, but it's because I'm getting the experience of finding things I didn't expect. It's not entirely like playing a whole new game where I have no idea what's around any corner, but it's a lot closer. Banjo-Kazooie is a game I'll always love playing and find fun, but I'll likely never have that kind of experience with it again, no matter how long I go between playing it. It's nice to have Tooie turn out to be a Banjo game where I can have that experience again, at least partially. Heaven knows I'm never getting a true new Banjo game ever again, after all, so I'll take as much of that experience as I can get where I can get it.

[NRSASD]

I've been participating in the Cultural Phenomena That Is Blaseball (pronounced blaze-ball, not blase' ball). It's just a weighted random number generator, but the fandom is utterly fantastic and a real riot. Their public discord and twitter presence is a great time to be around. Highly recommend if you're looking for a fun timewaster to distract you from 2020 in general.

[danzibr]

I just recently played and finished 'spiritfarer' and I found it an incredibly enjoyable experience. There are no enemies, no time limits and no failure states. Instead there's you, and about a dozen friendly spirits that you help with moving on after death over the course of the game. You should expect to cry at least once during the course of the game though, as chances are very good that the story of at least one of these spirits will get to you.

Ooohh nice, sounds like my kinda game.

Thanks for sharing!

[AlanBruce]

I have continued with my Hollow Knight blind run.

I don't know if anyone else here has played it, but what a beautiful and punishing game! I have, by sheer dumb luck, stumbled across upgrades, but not without dying. Many times.

Of note, Deepnest. Screw Deepnest and burn it with fire.

On the plus side, I met the Grimm Troupe and its leader gave me a little imp that is rather helpful.

[Cespenar]

So I've been trying something called Fae Tactics lately. To be very brief, Final Fantasy Tactics-ish mechanics, wonky writing which kind of slowly grows on you because of all the continuity and worldbuilding attempts, and a lot of bells and whistles which makes it much deeper than it seems on first sight. Also, a lot of content.

Funny because I started it alongside Othercide (which is another tactics game with a sort of "souls-ish" storytelling), which seems to have maybe ten times the production budget of it, and Fae Tactics still just blows it out of the water.

I have continued with my Hollow Knight blind run.

I don't know if anyone else here has played it, but what a beautiful and punishing game!

Yep, there were pages upon pages of nothing but Hollow Knight talk on this thread at some point. Pretty famous game.

[Razade]

I just recently played and finished 'spiritfarer' and I found it an incredibly enjoyable experience. There are no enemies, no time limits and no failure states. Instead there's you, and about a dozen friendly spirits that you help with moving on after death over the course of the game. You should expect to cry at least once during the course of the game though, as chances are very good that the story of at least one of these spirits will get to you.

Does it have enough content to make up for the 30 dollar price tag?

I have continued with my Hollow Knight blind run.

I don't know if anyone else here has played it, but what a beautiful and punishing game! I have, by sheer dumb luck, stumbled across upgrades, but not without dying. Many times.

Of note, Deepnest. Screw Deepnest and burn it with fire.

On the plus side, I met the Grimm Troupe and its leader gave me a little imp that is rather helpful.

No one likes Deepnest. Especially if you get there without some good upgrades.

[Aotrs Commander]

VERY strong recommendation for Disco Elysium, which is basically the Planescape: Torment of detective games.

(It is not, despite what you might think, a 1970s-ish period piece, it's actually set on its own complex world which I won't elaborate on because fun, but that is, I feel worth mentioning.)

Would definitely be Cop of the Apocalypse again...

(It's also 25% of Steam until Thursday, worth noting.)

[Cespenar]

No one likes Deepnest. Especially if you get there without some good upgrades.

I actually liked Deepnest, in a "meta" sense. Basically, the area made sure that the player experience more or less reflected the intended in-character experience, which is a huge game design plus in my book.

[MCerberus]

Would definitely be Cop of the Apocalypse again...

I really like the setting because it's something that doesn't come up in apocalyptic fiction: you're right before the collapse. Usually they put you after the big event happens so you can shoot bandits and mutants all you want, but it's rarer that you're living out the dying gasps of civilization as we know it. Kind of like the original Mad Max or Deus Ex, which has several endings where you put down the current structure of society like Old Yeller.

[Aotrs Commander]

I really like the setting because it's something that doesn't come up in apocalyptic fiction: you're right before the collapse. Usually they put you after the big event happens so you can shoot bandits and mutants all you want, but it's rarer that you're living out the dying gasps of civilization as we know it. Kind of like the original Mad Max or Deus Ex, which has several endings where you put down the current structure of society like Old Yeller.

Spoiler: Disco Elysium

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It's also subtle about it. It wasn't until I was a good way in (Wednesday) and I learned about the Pale and was like "oh snap, this is like, Ravenloft or something!"

And only when you finish the Rave club quest does it really start to sink in.

If you went through the game without doing the side-quests (though, I mean, why would you?) you could miss it entirely.


And it's a quiet soft of death as well - and in fairness, after the apocalpse, there wouldn't be any wasteland or mutants. It's more a sort of huddling around the embers of dying fire - and I like that. Small and understated.

It is the sort of game that you want to have a sequel, but you sort of know it couldn't have one.

[Eldan]

Cop of the Apocalypse

Spoiler

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The part I like most about that is when you talk to the Phasmid and he tells you how afraid everyone else is. Because humans made the Pale, but now it is eating everyone.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Just had another fantastic Slay the Spire run. Got a Grand Finale right out of the gate as the Silent (Pandora's Box for starting relic) and, armed with the knowledge from the last time this happened, was able to build a deck that was completely unstoppable. By the end I had 4x Backflip+, one Acrobatics+, and 3x Prepared+. Starting in the 2nd act, I was able to make it through all 18 cards in my deck on turn 1 every time to play both Grand Finales. At about the halfway point, I was able to do it twice on turn one reliably, and before the 3rd boss I picked up Concentrate for some extra energy. That wasn't enough to go infinite, but it brought me close enough to infinite to kill Donu & Deca on turn 1, barely. The Heart was trickier, but restarting the fight a few times got me to a strategy for perfecting it (which for some reason isn't an achievement). Perfected all 4 bosses, and got a new personal high score, though not by much, since I didn't get to fight as many elites as the last time this happened.

[warty goblin]

So I've been trying something called Fae Tactics lately. To be very brief, Final Fantasy Tactics-ish mechanics, wonky writing which kind of slowly grows on you because of all the continuity and worldbuilding attempts, and a lot of bells and whistles which makes it much deeper than it seems on first sight. Also, a lot of content.

Funny because I started it alongside Othercide (which is another tactics game with a sort of "souls-ish" storytelling), which seems to have maybe ten times the production budget of it, and Fae Tactics still just blows it out of the water.

I've been poking around in Othercide as well, and been favorably impressed so far. To be fair, deeply metaphorical and highly abstract game about suffering and sacrifice with a soundtrack like the melody of a doom metal band on a bad day pretty much has my name written all over it. It's sort of an arthouse version of a Tanith Lee novel almost, except less messed up. It does a very good job of making its mechanics reinforce (and to a certain extent) create its them and tone as well, which is a thing a lot of games do badly at, or just completely fail to do. And completely eliminating healing might be the gutsiest move I've seen a strategy game take in just about ever.

I'm not sure it has enough unique content to really remain interesting over however many hours it takes to beat, but this is true of pretty much every vaguely XCOM-alike game I've met. The combat remains interesting for, let's say 50% of the total running length, and then it's just more of the same with bigger numbers.