Video game spotlight thread
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So, I recently bought Starbound, quasi-sequel to Terraria.
Starbound
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyMJE9ZHIqQ
So far, I... don't like it as much as Terraria. The problem is, what I really liked about Terraria is make the entire world my oyster, so to speak. Build sky bridge above the whole map, level everything up so I can run around really fast without obstacles, make a delux vertical shaft straight to hell... Then get bored and start again with a fresh world.
With Starbound, there are multiple worlds, but each world is smaller and more limited. I tried setting up a nice base on the first world, but it turned out there's really no point. There's nothing special to find. All weapons and materials are limited to the basic noob stuff. I couldn't even craft a nice house with walls or anything.
The best strategy seems to be to quickly go in and out, collecting only the materials necessary to advance the plot. After all, I'll soon depart to a different planet with better stuff to find, so why bother building up a base in the initial backwater? I presume the same limitation will apply to second world as well.
Maybe at some point I'll find a place where I can settle down and set up a real Terraria-esque base. But so far, I don't get that vibe from this game.
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Maybe at some point I'll find a place where I can settle down and set up a real Terraria-esque base. But so far, I don't get that vibe from this game.
You can progress through the game as quickly or slowly as you like, the "progression gates" are clearly marked in your mission computer.
Your teleporter can always teleport you to your home planet, regardless of where you are in the galaxy. You can move your home planet at any time.
Some systems have planets specifically designed to be canvases to build on.
Personally, I use my ship as my base. Go back and look at the screenshots I posted, even the starter ship can fit everything you need. And it works especially well now that you can increase its size. And it means your teleporter is RIGHT THERE handy.
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That's a fighting game? Are you sure? It looked to me like a brawler. I'll admit, though, that I haven't played it.
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In other news, inspired by one of my favorite youtube videos, I decided to play the same game as them, using infinite lives, ofc. Currently stuck at the end of Volkmire's stage. I've beaten the SNES version, and this one is certainly more frustrating. Great game, though.
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That's a fighting game? Are you sure? It looked to me like a brawler
There's a difference?
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Battletoads is ridiculously hard.
At least the NES version is, I vaguely recall the Genesis/Mega Drive version was easier.
Anyway, I just finished The Talos Principle. On its face, it has some similarities to Portal, but is considerably less linear and the puzzle types are a bit different.
You also need some lateral thinking to find the hidden stars in each area... quite often, you have to figure out how to bring things out of a puzzle area into the area hub (there are 3-5 puzzles per hub1) while avoiding the Emancipation Grid.
Well,OK, it's not an Emancipation Grid as those are from Portal. However, they're fields that you can pass through and objects can't (except paintbuckets) and thus serve the same function: To prevent you from taking objects past a specific area.
13-5 puzzles per hub, 7 (well... 8 really) hubs per world, and 3 total worlds. The previously mentioned puzzles add up to 132 puzzles for puzzle pieces, plus there are 3 to unlock hints, the introduction puzzle at the start of the game, 5 more puzzles in the Tower, and the final extremely long puzzle... so 141 puzzles total and 30 secret stars. The game is actually pretty long!
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A pretty substantial one? They tend to have altogether different control schemes, for one. The one in fighting games is a pain to program. We got ours working around six months ago, after being sure we had it working a year ago. We hope we don't need to get it working again.
@powerlord: The cool thing about the SNES version is that it's a shortened remake of the NES version, with considerably better graphics. Some of the differences are quite interesting, like parts of the surfing level being in the bike level, and no brawling in the bike level. And then you have the snake level, which, in Battlemaniacs, has ice bits where you have to jump JUST RIGHT and then duck and slide under spikes. I highly recommend it.
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@powerlord: The cool thing about the SNES version is that it's a shortened remake of the NES version, with considerably better graphics. Some of the differences are quite interesting, like parts of the surfing level being in the bike level, and no brawling in the bike level. And then you have the snake level, which, in Battlemaniacs, has ice bits where you have to jump JUST RIGHT and then duck and slide under spikes. I highly recommend it.
As opposed to the Genesis/Megadrive version, which is just a port of the NES game. It might be missing the Clinger Winger level towards the end of the game, but that level was buggy in 2-player mode on the NES anyway.
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Transmissions: Element 120
It's very short, but it's free and if you're a fan of Half-Life 2, you should try it. If it were called "Half-Life 3 Tech Demo" I would believe it.
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you should try it.
How would you know? Did you start downloading it a month ago?
<Yes, I saw your other post in whichever thread that was
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I have to say, i really enjoyed Dragonball Xenoverse.
I got two characters to max level, and got all the dragonballs 3 times before getting bored. Apparently the max level went to 85 yesterday, and they increased the likelihood of the special events that give you items and skills. Next DLC should be out some time soon too.
Also, they fixed the thing where you'd get booted to the main menu when the server fails.
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Darkest Dungeon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhVA17lgb0M
This game has a really steep learning curve. Your heroes will die. Permanently. Frequently. And yet you'll keep playing. The art is stylish, there's context-sensitive music, and it's reasonably polished for an early-release game.
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Pong + Pacman + Space Invaders!
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From the site:
Linux: you may have to enable "allow executing file as program" for the runner file. It's under properties/permissions.
Because uploading as a tarball with proper permissions is completely unheard of!
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Shh....I'm trying to unlock the bug tracker easter egg feature.
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Pong + Pacman + Space Invaders!
Do you ever see something and think "I can't believe no one's ever thought of this before"?
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They probably did. They just didn't crow about it because its not very fun.
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Because uploading as a tarball with proper permissions is completely unheard of!
That is all too common. Probably 75% of everything I ever download as an executable for Linux has wrong permissions set.
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Do you think it'll run on this?
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Hey, that belongs in the status thread!
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Microwaves are too interesting a topic to restrict to one thread.
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I heard good things about the Darkest Dungeon. I might give it a try over weekend. Or I might just keep up with Starbound. It's growing on me.
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I was quite enjoying Starbound until I reached the robot boss and my friends stopped playing. Can't win.
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The robot is super hard. And it doesn't allow turrets when fighting him.
Use mods to cheat.
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He doesn't even use the same patterns. After around four attempts, he killed me immediately with an attack he hadn't used in any previous attempt. I could probably do it with my energy shotgun, just not solo.
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I was quite enjoying Starbound until I reached the robot boss and my friends stopped playing. Can't win.
Ugh, I hated that with terraria too. They ramp up the difficulty to the point you need to go multiplayer to win. IF I WANTED TO DEAL WITH MULTIPLAYER, I WOULDN'T BE PLAYING A SINGLE PLAYER GAME, NOW WOULD I?
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Terraria never does that. You can kill the dungeon gaurdian on your second night.
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I'm talking after the wall of skulls thing, when everything gets harder. I feel like I exhaust all the materials, but I still can't defeat the super hard skull thing that appears on "This is gonna be a bad night" nights. Maybe I should grind more, but the game becomes boring at that point and I usually just give up.
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So, with Batman: Arkham Knight coming out in a few months, I've been thinking about playing through the Arkham games again. Well, it won't be "again" for Origins since I haven't actually played it yet, but eh.
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You mostly just get adamantite as fast as possible, then upgrade to the holy armor. Haven't gotten that far in over a year though, so presumably it's different now. When they added a couple bosses, I went back and had a really hard time against plantera, but did eventually win. The golem was surprisingly easy, though. It's worth doing anything you can to get all five light disks or the dao of pow early on, since they aren't too difficult, and the hardmode accessories are overpowered.
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Have you tried a shield?
My buddy (who took 11 tries) eventually beat him by using a shield and carefully-selected movement skills.
I did 7 tries, and with a shield I got the robot down to about 5% health or so, at which point I said, "good enough, I declare I win" and found a mod.
BTW if you do kill him with a super weapon mod, make sure you don't kill him too quickly. If he doesn't do all his attacks at least once, he won't drop the correct item when you kill him and you won't get the quest marked as complete.
Ugh, I hated that with terraria too.
It's easier to level "past" the boss in Terraria. You can do them all solo without too much trouble. (Remember it's a building game-- you have to BUILD shit to win on almost every boss. ESPECIALLY Wall of Flesh.)
Starbound, however, once you reach a boss you really have no way of leveling "past" the boss short of taking 20-second trips on planets you can't really survive on and hoping to be lucky enough to get a mineral you need before you die.
I'm talking after the wall of skulls thing, when everything gets harder. I feel like I exhaust all the materials, but I still can't defeat the super hard skull thing that appears on "This is gonna be a bad night" nights. Maybe I should grind more, but the game becomes boring at that point and I usually just give up.
Once you unlock the last two biomes, you're kind of "done" with the Terraria content. (Unless it's massively changed on the last patch.) All bosses past that point are just gravy.
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Starbound, however, once you reach a boss you really have no way of leveling "past" the boss short of taking 20-second trips on planets you can't really survive on and hoping to be lucky enough to get a mineral you need before you die.
It's even worse, because you can't go to those places or mine those ores unless you beat the boss in question. I like the game, but I hate that they pulled that.
Once you unlock the last two biomes, you're kind of "done" with the Terraria content. (Unless it's massively changed on the last patch.) All bosses past that point are just gravy.
They've added new stuff to craft and a bunch of new NPCs, but nothing that, in my opinion, changes how 'done' you are.
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It's even worse, because you can't go to those places or mine those ores unless you beat the boss in question. I like the game, but I hate that they pulled that.
I don't mind it, I just think the bosses are too hard. (And they don't scale with the difficulty you selected when creating your character, also.) If my friend, who is an expert in dozens of games, takes 11 tries to beat your boss-- your boss is too hard.
They've added new stuff to craft and a bunch of new NPCs, but nothing that, in my opinion, changes how 'done' you are.
IIRC you need to kill one of the post-Wall of Flesh bosses to be able to build the angel wings. I can't think of anything else.
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I just think the bosses are too hard.
My whole problem. I don't mind bosses being gates to progress, but in most games, you can do something elsewhere that gives you what you need to beat the boss that will allow you to progress. In this game, it's 'I hope your friends are good at this and you got the best armor available!'
IIRC you need to kill one of the post-Wall of Flesh bosses to be able to build the angel wings.
It's like, one kill-worth of robotSkeletron souls, 2-3 Hakus, and a few harpies. But Skeletron is the easiest hardmode boss.
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Anyone looked at the current Humble Bundles and/or have an opinion on these games?
- Frozen Synapse Prime
- Shattered Planet
- Skulls of the Shogun
- Auro
God, most video game ads suck and tell you nothing useful about the game. Watch the one for Skulls of the Shogun. See if you can make it to the actual gameplay without skipping.
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looks like a lot of these have letsplays on youtube. that's where i get most of my game reviews these days. ;-)
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I've looked up frozen synapse and skulls of the shogun before. I remember nothing about skulls of the shogun, but frozen synapse always makes me go looking at it, because it looks nice and has a cool name. But it's just a top down tactics game, which doesn't interest me in the slightest.
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Frozen Synapse Prime
I haven't played the Prime version, but I have mixed feelings about the original. I felt like it was a game I really wanted to like a lot more than I actually liked. I saw it described it as "Rainbow Six 3's planning mode, the game", and that's a reasonably accurate description. I am a big fan of RS3, and that's why I got it. And it does the tactics part really really well I think; if Frozen Synapse's controls were in RS3 you probably wouldn't be able to get me away from the computer for a couple days. But I think a combination of the boring-to-me setting/theming, some "unrealistic" things like the grenade & rocket launchers (maybe "unrealistic" is the wrong word and it's more the theming again), and the lack of the active-skills-based half meant that I didn't find it compelling.It short: definitely go watch some YouTube videos of the gameplay and not just the trailer, because I've heard a lot of people say good things about it. But it may or may not appeal.
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I never think of watching let's plays for some reason, which is weird because my son watches a ton of them.
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Some early access capital-ship space combat game is free on steam this weekend. And you get it permanently if you play it at all. Somehow the deal had already started yesterday, so I played a bit of it. It's quite good. Except that it's a team game where the long range ships aren't available until you've played a couple matches, so you're doomed if the enemy team displays any teamwork or has a sniper. Your team will never have either.
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I think it's called Fractured Space or something. I really wanted to try it, but the "Install" button in Steam didn't work and crashed out Steam instead.
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That's the one. Worked fine for me, but it will be a while before I can use a ship that isn't lame. I almost have enough points to unlock a second United Space Research ship, and I'm somewhat tempted to go for the sniper, because of how bad it makes the one I use feel. But I'll probably head toward the heavy ship.
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Frozen Synapse Prime
The original Frozen Synapse was lazy.
Prime looks like an actual video game.
It still probably sucks.
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Some early access capital-ship space combat game is free on steam this weekend. And you get it permanently if you play it at all.
It's free-to-play so that's less impressive than it sounds.
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Well, I don't think it's free-to-play yet, so it's still something at least. But it does make the move make more sense.
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"You get early access to a game that will be free-to-play when it's released."
Point is, that's not very impressive.
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No disagreement here.
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Fractured Space
Went to look for it; turns out I already have it, and it's installed. Odd; I don't remember buying and installing it…Anyway, if it's free, why not? I have enough HDD space.
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My only problem with it is that it feels like it could use some sort of mode outside combat, where you can organize teams or something. But early access, so whatever. It plays well enough.
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Just saw the ad on Steam, downloading it as we speak. From the reviews it sounds like a space themed MOBA. Probably won't appeal to me much, but I'll give it a go
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pacapong by kingPenguin
