What are you playing 4: HD Remaster Gold Collector's Edition Thread of the Year

[Iruka]

After seeing some videos on youtube of some guy streaming Heroes of Might and Magic 3, I dug HOMM3 Complete out from my GOG library and am currently playing through the campaigns. It is still addictive as hell. Finally beat that one difficult map in the undead campaign of Restoration of Erathia (after consulting a walkthrough; I had to be much more aggressive), finished the following campaigns and went right into Armageddon's Blade. To be honest, sometimes that campaign feels a bit like a fanmade custom campaign. Ridiculously huge armies right from the start, rather wordy story texts with their tone all over the place and that new character who is so mysterious and poerful and has a full body tribal tattoo. It just looks like something I would have made as a teen.

I know people say Undertale is a great game, but everything I've ever seen of it suggests it's got combat taken directly from a bullet hell game and graphics that would not have looked out of place on a 1984 ZX Spectrum title, so it just doesn't appeal.

After hearing that it was the best game ever and warned to avoid all spoilers, I was rather disappointed to learn that I had play bullet hells to progress. Never made it past the second or third, I am just not good at them.

[Lord Raziere]

I know people say Undertale is a great game, but everything I've ever seen of it suggests it's got combat taken directly from a bullet hell game and graphics that would not have looked out of place on a 1984 ZX Spectrum title, so it just doesn't appeal.

Except I found even the first fights so grating and annoying, I gave the game up less than an hour in when I was told there would not only be more of that, it would get worse.

Okay cool, both of your opinions are "I'm not involved in this fandom because my tastes make me turn away at first taste" we get it, thats valid, either watch a lets play to see what your missing without playing it yourself or move on if you have nothing else to say about it.

[Anonymouswizard]

Eh, Undertale combat isn't bad, it just wasn't good enough to hold my interest and is another game that juniors difficulty up a notch due to my disability. It's graphics, while not the most appealing, at least have a very distinctive style and were something that I very much enjoyed during my attempt to play if. Maybe I'll go back to it one day and try to stomach the combat until the game gets interesting, there were bonus of it but other games grabbed my attention when I tried it.


Oh, got to Gran Soren in Dragon's Dogma, and switched to Sorcerer for a while to buff up my magic. Then after doing the dungeon next to the Pawn Guild for a bit trust to do three Salomet's Tome quest, cleared out one bandit camp fine, and got killed in the way to the next by a monster that took off half my HP in a single hit.

I think I might switch to doing Mason's new quest first. I'm enjoying the combat a lot more now that I've actually been able to buy some skills, and will be switching to Mystic Knight once I hit level 20 because swordplay is more fun when you're recharging Stamina.

[Rynjin]

Yeah, the area around the bandits is deceptively dangerous.

BTW, you don't need to worry as much about minmaxing your stats when leveling these days. With Dark Arisen, the biggest factor is gear, so there's no more of that tedious "Well I want to play a Magick Archer but I will be literally incapable of doing anything if I don't level from 10-200 as a Sorcerer first".

[Anteros]

Okay cool, both of your opinions are "I'm not involved in this fandom because my tastes make me turn away at first taste" we get it, thats valid, either watch a lets play to see what your missing without playing it yourself or move on if you have nothing else to say about it.

Not liking something is a perfectly valid opinion and people are allowed to talk about it if they want. If nothing else it generates discussion.

[Eldan]

Okay cool, both of your opinions are "I'm not involved in this fandom because my tastes make me turn away at first taste" we get it, thats valid, either watch a lets play to see what your missing without playing it yourself or move on if you have nothing else to say about it.

Uhm, why so hostile? The discussion was about people being turned off by the combat, so I added that that's absolutely a thing that can happen.

[Anonymouswizard]

Yeah, the area around the bandits is deceptively dangerous.

BTW, you don't need to worry as much about minmaxing your stats when leveling these days. With Dark Arisen, the biggest factor is gear, so there's no more of that tedious "Well I want to play a Magick Archer but I will be literally incapable of doing anything if I don't level from 10-200 as a Sorcerer first".

I mean, I'm also sightly underlevelled, but it just meant 'turn it off for today, come back to a different quest tomorrow', not any kind of rage quit. It's good when, even though I've missed some of the early quests, I feel like the game is giving me options that I can pursue.

And yes, I get that gear is now the bigger factor, but I still want the my Strength and Magick at about the same level because I find it pleasing and I'm probably going to be switching between classes a bit anyway. Also Magick Archer just has the weirdest stat growths in the game, I think it focuses on Magic Defence? It's the kind of stat growth I'd expect from the Mystic Knight, who's set up for tanking and buffing allies. But yeah, I'd not be overly worried about getting my stats just right even if this was the original version, this is just me going with the flow for a bit and building a stat I want at the same time.

[Cespenar]

Yeah, chalk me up as one of those who was interested in Undertale's gimmicks but couldn't get past the bullet hell jank.

It may be one of those rare games (for me, at least) which are experienced better through Youtube videos.

[Wookieetank]

Yeah, chalk me up as one of those who was interested in Undertale's gimmicks but couldn't get past the bullet hell jank.

I only made it past the bullet hell jank thanks to unbridled stubbornness, and even then, the amount of frustration I experienced from that put a damper on my enjoyment of the game. I wanted to like this game, and did enjoy the asthetics/music/story, but they gameplay left me wanting, and I didn't bother playing through more than once.

[Cespenar]

I only made it past the bullet hell jank thanks to unbridled stubbornness, and even then, the amount of frustration I experienced from that put a damper on my enjoyment of the game. I wanted to like this game, and did enjoy the asthetics/music/story, but they gameplay left me wanting, and I didn't bother playing through more than once.

Very understandable. I recognize the need of a basic gameplay sequence to package the narrative gimmicks, but bullet hell is a very niche and divisive genre to choose as that package anyway.

As overdone as it may sound, I think a classic retro platformer would do better in that sense, a la Cave Story. Or some kind of puzzle game, as my second choice.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Little Nightmares is on a massive sale on Steam, so I picked it up. Fun so far.

[AlanBruce]

I just begun playing Resident Evil Village.

I have played the previous titles and really like them. I also am a big Bloodborne fan and somehow, this new entry manages to merge both rather well. Combat is a lot of fun, exploration is heavily rewarded, enemy variety is plenty - a big change over RE7’s monster roster- and they even take some risks with the style at one point, which I believe pays off.

My only issue thus far is the story, since I really hope we get a throwback to the lore from the original games. The protagonist got rewritten and is far more relatable this time, which is a plus. That being said, first person perspective for me doesn’t truly do it when it comes to these games.

[Resileaf]

I've completed the golden ending in Undertale today. Since I already knew the majority of the game's beats, there wasn't really anything that took me by surprise, except for some minor things I did differently than what I've seen before. I did enjoy my time though, and I'm rather proud of myself for having beaten Omega Flowey without dying once.

Next up on my backlog is Shovel Knight.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Next up on my backlog is Shovel Knight.

Oh, I love Shovel Knight. (Where the heck did I buy it from? I'd like to replay it, but I need to redownload it, and it's not in my Steam or GOG libraries...)

Just finished the main game of Little Nightmares. Done two of the three DLC chapters. Not a very long or especially challenging game, but it's fun and creepy, and it's also super on sale from Steam.

Also picked up because they were on sale: Carrion and Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. Looking forward to playing those.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

In what I can only think of as a sign that the videogames press has the analytical skills of a wet sock, I can't find anybody who seems to have noticed this. All the reviews are like "art style good, game hard, plot hard to follow" because apparently they're taking the supernatural hanger for the concept at face value. The lack of imagination, of willingness to engage with a game at any level more intellectual than "what's the best build for this character" is just sad, in a game that so obviously should be taken non-literally.

I noticed that about that new game that came out for the PS5, Returnal, which is also a very rogue-like game with the protagonist stuck in a time loop on an alien world.

I couldn't play the game myself, as I don't have a PS5, but I watched some people play the game and especially the cutscenes and saw people arguing about what was going on in the story and I was like, "OMG, it's about trauma and how coming to terms with it can make you feel like you're trapped in a loop, reliving the trauma over and over! It ain't SUBTLE!" Again, people seemed more interested in treating the game like a literal series of events, and the ending a puzzlebox to solve, like they're expecting some sort of more intense actionized sequel where Atropos invades Earth or something! This is how you get Jarhead sequels. Do you want Jarhead sequels? Because this is how you get Jarhead sequels!

[LibraryOgre]

Oh, I love Shovel Knight. (Where the heck did I buy it from? I'd like to replay it, but I need to redownload it, and it's not in my Steam or GOG libraries...)

Epic? Maybe a Humble Bundle?

[Anonymouswizard]

I noticed that about that new game that came out for the PS5, Returnal, which is also a very rogue-like game with the protagonist stuck in a time loop on an alien world.

I couldn't play the game myself, as I don't have a PS5, but I watched some people play the game and especially the cutscenes and saw people arguing about what was going on in the story and I was like, "OMG, it's about trauma and how coming to terms with it can make you feel like you're trapped in a loop, reliving the trauma over and over! It ain't SUBTLE!" Again, people seemed more interested in treating the game like a literal series of events, and the ending a puzzlebox to solve, like they're expecting some sort of more intense actionized sequel where Atropos invades Earth or something! This is how you get Jarhead sequels. Do you want Jarhead sequels? Because this is how you get Jarhead sequels!

I've not played it or seen the cutscenes, but that makes sense. Sounds like a great concept for a rofguelike style game.

But people seem to want to pretend that all games are is shooty bangs bangs simulators with no deeper meaning, which is just urgh. Things do not have to be literal, and even if they are they don't have to be straightforward or easy.

But then again I'm sure there's people who can read Revalation Space and not get the ideas of the destructive pursuit of knowledge and desparate clinging to fa;lse hope that form the core of it's storylines. So I'm not shocked.

I mean heck, my latest game idea literally revolves around a gameplay mechanic that I haven't thought of a metaphor for yet, I should have a think about it (who am I kidding, I'm totally using Quest for Knowledge and the Futility of Searching as elements).

[Triaxx]

Okay but must every game have 87e3 deeper meanings? The aliens are invading. That doesn't mean they're here to teach us a narrative lesson on our socio political structure. Sometimes they're just here to steal our resources. And we want to hand them over one face full of lead at a time.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Okay but must every game have 87e3 deeper meanings? The aliens are invading. That doesn't mean they're here to teach us a narrative lesson on our socio political structure. Sometimes they're just here to steal our resources. And we want to hand them over one face full of lead at a time.

I agree. "Deeper meanings" often just end up being anvilicious (warning: TV Tropes) and jarring. Not always, but often. And frequently, such games neglect things like, well, game in the interests of "developing the themes and meanings". And/or come across as highly insensitive in their attempts to be sensitive. Or just pompous and overbearing.

But worse than developer-intended deeper meanings are inserted deeper meanings. At least when people insist that everyone else has to see those and treat the work as if those were intended. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Sometimes a poem about getting it on is just a poem about trying to convince someone to sleep with you. Not everything is, nor should be, deep. There's room for both deep philosophical games weaving a deeper truth[1] and surface-depth "watch the loot and gore splash on the screen while you kill some demons" games[2].

[1] recently, I'd say the best of that category for me was Nier: Automata, which I only recently played (behind the times, I know). It was a good game, combined with brain-twisting ideas about identity, truth and illusion, and what it means to be alive and human. Plus the bitterness of revenge and the need to work together. All packaged with some great music and visuals.

[2] into which category I put Diablo III. Something to be played when I need to decompress and just mindlessly kill things for a while. Best done on easy so the demon gore can flow more freely.

[Anonymouswizard]

Okay but must every game have 87e3 deeper meanings? The aliens are invading. That doesn't mean they're here to teach us a narrative lesson on our socio political structure. Sometimes they're just here to steal our resources. And we want to hand them over one face full of lead at a time.

Sounds like a colonialism allegory to me

But yes, not every work has to include such meaning, and being no deeper than 'the aliens are invading, fight them off in turn based combat' isn't an issue. The issue is when people don't try to discuss if there is a deeper meaning, or get overly attached to one interpretation (including the literal one).

Sometimes the curtains are blue to indicate a character's emotional state. Sometimes they're blue to set up a world building element that'll be used to make a point later (this world has from our of the resources for red dye, part of a pro-sustainability narrative). Sometimes the curtains are just blue, it's an incidental detail the author put in as part of avoiding The Plane of Disembodied Dialogue. But without reading the author's mind we can't know for sure.

Adding themes to games is hard, because ideally you should add those themes to the gameplay in some fashion. If your hand is about the futility of searching massive you just make the levels harder and harder until you hit an incomplete and vague ending. If your game is a city builder about how societies never change then maybe instead of randomising events you assign each specific start conditions while making them mundane things like protests blocking your transport routes. Heck, what annoys me about RPGs with But Thou Must dialogue is that it's in theory a great way to explore being in a position where you can't choose for yourself (something I'd have loved to appear more in Shin Megami Tensei IV Apocalypse with it's 'you are the servant of a god who can control you if you try to disobey' setup).

It's why Disco Elysium gives you stat boosts for taking drugs. The game is about a broken man who feels like he's become reliant on such substances, and now you run the risk of feeling reliant on them for their ability to make passing checks more reliant. While addiction probably isn't the main theme it is something the have tries to tackle.

[warty goblin]

I noticed that about that new game that came out for the PS5, Returnal, which is also a very rogue-like game with the protagonist stuck in a time loop on an alien world.

I couldn't play the game myself, as I don't have a PS5, but I watched some people play the game and especially the cutscenes and saw people arguing about what was going on in the story and I was like, "OMG, it's about trauma and how coming to terms with it can make you feel like you're trapped in a loop, reliving the trauma over and over! It ain't SUBTLE!" Again, people seemed more interested in treating the game like a literal series of events, and the ending a puzzlebox to solve, like they're expecting some sort of more intense actionized sequel where Atropos invades Earth or something! This is how you get Jarhead sequels. Do you want Jarhead sequels? Because this is how you get Jarhead sequels!

I suspect abstraction and layered meaning is harder to do, or easier to miss, in games due to their interactivity. A person engages with a book by imagining it; the words are already abstractions decoded and rendered by your mind, it isn't exactly a huge leap to add another layer to that. And while a game's systems are in some level abstractions (at least if you're approaching things through a simulationist lens) your engagement with them is generally pretty literal. I need to push this button to lower that bridge so I can kill those alien zombie dudes. Basically everything interactive in a game ends up very instrumental, which encourages thinking about everything instrumentally.

Okay but must every game have 87e3 deeper meanings? The aliens are invading. That doesn't mean they're here to teach us a narrative lesson on our socio political structure. Sometimes they're just here to steal our resources. And we want to hand them over one face full of lead at a time.

So I think it's necessary to distinguish between a political analysis of a game, and taking a more metaphorical or abstract view of the game as a narrative. Pretty much every cultural creation has politics baked into it because it's made by humans and humans are very political animals. Since (most) games are absolutely obsessed with power, its acquisition, and its use, they're even more inherently political than, say, a poem about chocolate tasting good.

But looking at a game (or anything else) in terms of its politics is different than it telling a story or communicating an idea in an abstract, symbolic sort of way. XCOM 2 is political as all getout - it's a game about anti-colonialism! - but while you can look at the game's inherent politics there's not really anything beyond the surface reading of it. The aliens aren't some complicated metaphor for climate change or cancer or getting dumped or your pet dying or anything, they're just there to be shot.

My beef wasn't that the games press were failing to do a political analysis of Othercide; the gaming press does political analyses on the regular, and while I usually find them kinda rote and basic, they're a completely legitimate way to approach games criticism. No, my complaint was they took this abstract, symbolic and very personal story about pain, being reduced to an object for others to fix, and the trauma and sense of temporal dislocation that comes with disease - that came out in the middle of a pandemic - and they completely missed all of that. It's like reading Ozymandias as an archeology report.

[Triaxx]

But looking at a game (or anything else) in terms of its politics is different than it telling a story or communicating an idea in an abstract, symbolic sort of way. XCOM 2 is political as all getout - it's a game about anti-colonialism! - but while you can look at the game's inherent politics there's not really anything beyond the surface reading of it. The aliens aren't some complicated metaphor for climate change or cancer or getting dumped or your pet dying or anything, they're just there to be shot.

Except of course when they are metaphors for those things. I prefer games that are sufficiently abstracted that they could be a metaphor for anything, or nothing at all.

I've seen Ozymandias read that way... it was as horrible as it was hilarious.

[Resileaf]

Just completed the main story in Shovel Knight. I should probably be doing all the expansions too, but the backlog demands moving on (I'll get back to it, not to worry).

Next up will be Psychonauts.

[Rodin]

I value both types of game equally. Left 4 Dead is about killing zombies with your friends, and it doesn't get any deeper than that. You don't explore the world they created or analyze where the plague came from - it's all about getting a group of your friends from point A to point B while wisecracking and shooting everything that moves. The Last Of Us is a zombie setting, but it isn't really about the zombies. It's a story about parenthood and loss. Both are excellent games and I wouldn't try to change either by adding or removing deeper meanings.

The mix is very important - whenever I play a game with a moving story I have to stop playing that type of game for a while. I play something meaningless until I've had time to process what I just saw.

[Man_Over_Game]

Just found out Risk of Rain 2 was for Switch, been playing a lot of that.

Unfortunately, the control scheme is not set up for RoR2, and I've been having to redo where buttons go based on how much precision I need when I use them (triggers for important stuff, buttons for auto-aim or delayed powers), but that doesn't quite cover the need for precision across different character aiming types.

For instance, the Mercenary only really cares about what he's aiming at for his dashes, and otherwise needs to turn on a dime, so you're caught in a Catch-22 where the sensitivity is too high to land your dashes, or it's too low to turn a 180 when you need to. The Switch joycons are notorious at having poor scanning capability of the level of depth your pushing at, so it feels like it's not a perfect match for a game that's actually really dependent on your aiming ability at far-off, tiny targets.

Although, weirdly enough, the Loader actually feels playable now. It took a while for my brain to click, but it only took about a half-hour to get the spiderman swings and launching punches down, where I've spent several on PC to no avail.

[Mechalich]

My beef wasn't that the games press were failing to do a political analysis of Othercide; the gaming press does political analyses on the regular, and while I usually find them kinda rote and basic, they're a completely legitimate way to approach games criticism. No, my complaint was they took this abstract, symbolic and very personal story about pain, being reduced to an object for others to fix, and the trauma and sense of temporal dislocation that comes with disease - that came out in the middle of a pandemic - and they completely missed all of that. It's like reading Ozymandias as an archeology report.

My reaction to playing Othercide - on the base difficulty level - is that the game is so incredibly punishing that everything comes down to the desperate analysis of the tactical map and the story basically recedes into the distance. You only actually progress the story in any significant fashion when you defeat a new boss, and that's many gameplay hours apart at best, with probably an entire new run per boss. Because the game's brutality meant I could only ever play a few missions at a time before becoming ridiculously stressed, the story just sort of slipped away. I'm not surprised that the gaming press, most of whom probably never even got past the Doctor, missed the metaphor.

[warty goblin]

My reaction to playing Othercide - on the base difficulty level - is that the game is so incredibly punishing that everything comes down to the desperate analysis of the tactical map and the story basically recedes into the distance. You only actually progress the story in any significant fashion when you defeat a new boss, and that's many gameplay hours apart at best, with probably an entire new run per boss. Because the game's brutality meant I could only ever play a few missions at a time before becoming ridiculously stressed, the story just sort of slipped away. I'm not surprised that the gaming press, most of whom probably never even got past the Doctor, missed the metaphor.

This is I think fair, the no healing except by sacrifice thing is extremely brutal, especially since interrupts all require sacrificing HP.

Sometime since launch they added a mode where you recover 50% of your max hp at the end of every day, which makes things way easier. Honestly maybe a bit too easy, since most encounters can be beaten taking well under 50% damage, so you hit pretty much every battle with a full tank of gas. Bosses still beat the crap out of me, but it isn't hard to do the legwork to get geared up for the next boss attempt anymore.


Took a short Othercide break to mess around Legend of Keepers: Career of a Dungeon Manager, a game that really isn't much about management of dungeons or anything else, has a strangely inconsistent tone, not a lot of depth, and really top notch pixel art.

So the structure of the game is that you play the ruler of a fantasy dungeon, and need to stop heroes from breaking in, killing you, and taking your stuff. Every hero incursion plays out over a number of screens, where the three marauding heroes take damage from a single trap, suffer the effects of a single spell, fight three of your monsters, or if they complete all that, you yourself. Usually there are two traps and two monster rooms per run. The battles are that two lines of dudes style popularized by Darkest Dungeon, with each attack hitting front, center, back or all three positions. There's a nice variety of heroes, and lots of cool monsters to fight them with.

Unfortunately this is also where the shortcomings in the design start to show. The literally 1 dimensional combat space removes almost all positional strategy, leaving only rote RPG number comparison. About the height of actual tactics is putting the ice elemental in the spot attacked by the monk who does ice damage. Attacking is mostly a matter of sticking as many DoTs and debuffs on enemies as possible, because this game sure loves those. Probably because it's the only form of complexity the combat allows.

Between hero invasions, you have the "management" portion of the game. Monsters that die get resurrected for free, but are stressed out, so you need to cycle them out for R&R. Otherwise you choose some random events to respond to, and can spend resources to level up your monsters, traps, and so on. So far as I can figure, the best strategy is to spend most of your money upgrading a couple monsters, which you stick in your second monster room, where they inevitably beat the absolute snot out of the hero party, who have been debuffed into the dirt by that point. After a while you have to fight some tougher "champion" heroes, after which you win and can advance your boss character down a very dull skill tree. There seems to be ascension levels and everything, so if for some reason you want to turbo-grind your life away on this you can.

The tone also doesn't really work. There's a very jokey frame narrative where you're working for the Dungeons Corporation, which is predictably corporate. So you're kinda set for this silly parody sort of fantasy, but then the combat and death animations are weirdly brutal, the background art has people being roasted on spots, and it's like the art department didn't talk to the writers at all.

The pixel art is absolutely fantastic though. If the devs ever made a proper RPG thst looks like this, I'd be all over it.

[-Sentinel-]

I'm playing Mass Effect: Andromeda these days, and so far I'd say I'm enjoying it even more than the original series. I like how it emphasizes the RPG elements over the shooter elements, e.g. loose quests rather than a string of "bottled" missions, plus all the exploration. Story-wise, I also like the fact that the player-character is a youngster just learning the ropes instead of a seasoned veteran.

[Cespenar]

Took a short Othercide break to mess around Legend of Keepers: Career of a Dungeon Manager, a game that really isn't much about management of dungeons or anything else, has a strangely inconsistent tone, not a lot of depth, and really top notch pixel art.

I tried its prologue, I think, and it seemed like less than the sum of its parts to me. Can't really recommend.

It's interesting, though, that there are now an uncountable number of games around that has really stellar pseudo-pixel art. I guess it's reasonable since we're well into the Indie Renaissance, but still.

[LibraryOgre]

Trying to speed-run murder to get Strong's affinity to maximum in FO4. Just, bop around the Capitol Wasteland, killing as many Super Mutants, Ghouls, and Raiders as I can. I then send him to Coastal Cottage, which is important to nothing, and let him live out his life in peace on the farm.