What Games are you playing 2016?

[Cotigo]

The Talos Principle - Almost beaten. Only Levels 5 and 6 from the tower, and one of the World C star levels left to go. I got frustrated and rage quit on Tower L5 because I am really bad at using the Recorder, and that puzzle has the most time shenanigans out of anything else I've beaten so far.

This game is good. Really good. Best game I've played so far this year.  Gameplay-wise, they do a really good job of making the main game puzzles feel satisfying to solve, and hit a really nice balance curve on the difficulty. None of the puzzles feel impossible, and the few times I've gotten stuck it's always because I've still been learning the new gimmick they introduced, or because I was being really dumb Like, I forgot I could just carry the laser connectors and hop on the fan to move them over walls in Prison Break, so instead I kept sending it over with the box. Dumb dumb dumb..

The other puzzles, star hunting and the tetrinomino puzzles, were really hit or miss. Star Hunting more hit than miss, Tetrinominos the opposite. Star-wise, the game was at its best when it was making me try to use different levels within a world in conjunction with each other, and at its absolute worst when it wanted me to check every fucking nook and cranny to find bullshit to be able to get the star. I'm not ashamed to say I FAQ'd a lot of the star locations.

The Tetris puzzles were fine as ways of breaking up the pacing, but got really tedious toward the end. Maybe I'm just bad at them, but really I just ended up brute forcing every one of them and lucking out on the solution. I never really developed a system or method for figuring them out, I just kinda dicked around until things fell into place. Fine in the beginning, but reaaaaally grating, especially after tonight's session when I just wanted to finish the goddamn game already.

Plotwise, I'm reserving full commentary until I get the last two endings, though I will say two things: One, I'm more pleased with it than I anticipated early on. I always looked forward to finding the next archive interface module/time capsule recording, and the QR codes were always a joy to read/find. Two, wow the game doesn't even try to bridge the gap between its gameplay and its writing. So much so, that when the game did try to give me hints about how to find a secret, it went over my head. To be specific, I didn't pick up that the QR code on the World C messenger island was telling me how to find the star hidden there. This is very late in the game, and up until then I had never had to make any sort of overt connection between the action of solving the game's puzzles and thinking about what I was reading. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, and for the most part I actually like it (except for that one instance, actually). It gives the game a nice rhythm, and makes the act of playing the game almost zen-like. Solve a puzzle, read philosophy, ruminate, solve a puzzle while ruminating, read mythology, be questioned on your beliefs, ruminate, solve a puzzle while ruminating... Just, I can see this being a common complaint about the game. I have a feeling, though, that the type of player who would take issue with this probably wouldn't like the core conceit of The Talos Principle to begin with.

Will probably go into details after I see how they handle the last two endings. In any case, if you like puzzle games and introspection you really should go play this game.

[Fenrir]

Very cool


I read some bits about how the Talos principle was made, the few days when I was completely obsessed with it.
Basically the Serious Sam guys made the jammer, and thought this could be a really interesting item to use in puzzles (it really is). They started building a game around that and it slowly expanded.

Then they realized that, because they were the Serious Sam guys, they really needed someone else, anyone else to tell a story, so they just decided to get maybe the best writer in videogameland right now, AKA "the dude who wrote the Swapper"?
And I am pretty sure they just told him "You have free reign, tell whatever you want, but you need a justification for solving puzzles and no humans in your story because humans are really hard to model mate"

[Sierra]

But I used the level 5 miracle liberally and it helped a lot. I don't know how you are supposed to deal with the final phase of the fight with just regular melee. Especially just a dagger.

An LP fight I watched on YouTube suggests the answer to this is poison dagger. I don't know how you get this but I want one. Anyway I'm not going back there until there's absolutely nothing else I can do.

The sound mimics make is just the best. Another way they are like Dark Souls mimics, yes.

[Fenrir]

POIZN dagger yes
Have you tried getting an alchemist yet? You should get an alchemist.

Momodoma 4:

Is not that much like Dark Souls? Either Notmiki is throwing "like Souls" as a buzzword to make us play games (AND IT WORKS) or it's just that I played S&S which is just pretty much a direct Souls copy on a 2D plane instead of a very different game that takes some elements from Souls. (item recharge at savepoints + atmosphere kinda? + roll I guess but it's a stretch) It mostly reminds me of Monster World 4 instead.

It's not amazing but pretty decent so far.
I'm playing on Hard and way too many things are one shotting me. On the other hand, things that do not one shot are not threatening at all, because I have an OP POIZN build: I have infinite POIZN arrows, and POIZN heals me, so at any time I can just shoot a POIZN arrow at a wall and just bask in the wonderful deadly POIZN clouds to fully heal. This is absurdly overpowered but also so cool I don't mind at all.
I've played for 2 hours and uncovered 50% of the map. Pretty short!

[Sierra]

I did get an alchemist. And I did get POIZN dagger. Also a cool sword whip that is my main weapon now. But it turned out the real answer for that fight was just coming back with air dash and a holy shotgun*.

I still died once before winning because on the first attempt the swordsman followed me into the boss room again and constantly ported around the platforms after me until he finally knocked me down to the lowest floor and then stomping happened and then falling into pit happened. Seriously, random enemies should not be able to chase you into boss rooms. That's bullshit.

My exploration options right now are whatever's east of the ziggurat but fuck white knights, and a creepy dark cave where a ghost screamed and immediately one-shotted me. Fun times.

I also found Howl's Mal's Moving Floating Castle and Mal pretty promptly Homing Soulmass'd me into oblivion. This is a real beef I have with the game--it's far too easy to accidentally stumble into boss rooms. I mean, it happens constantly. Just while I'm casually exploring. Oh I'll just poke into this next room before stopping, why not, it doesn't look like anything significant should be in there oh wait there's a boss here and I have zero chance to survive because I'm almost out of healing just from exploring the zone. Then I inevitably die because I don't have the resources to experiment and learn, and the boss eats a zone's worth of salt. I mean, fuck, Bloodborne didn't warn you with fog gates either, but at least the boss rooms were architecturally obvious from afar.

(*I wish somebody other than gold mask dude actually sold bullets. That's the most useless, out of the way sanctuary to visit, and that god's healing item sucks too. I'd happily overwrite it with my own deity, but I'm paranoid it'll piss off the vendor. I still have never changed religions, goddess of light all the way.)

[Cotigo]

Then they realized that, because they were the Serious Sam guys, they really needed someone else, anyone else to tell a story, so they just decided to get maybe the best writer in videogameland right now, AKA "the dude who wrote the Swapper"?
And I am pretty sure they just told him "You have free reign, tell whatever you want, but you need a justification for solving puzzles and no humans in your story because humans are really hard to model mate"

That would explain a lot.

[Fenrir]

Cid I come with great news

- Like in Souls you can teleport away during boss battles. So far I have never not been able to escape a boss fight (though it has been close/very stressful) Just buy like 50 guide's horns because they cost nearly nothing, and you're set
- Changing someone's religion doesn't piss him/her off, I tried it with the Threes sanctuary. It might change the vendor's wares though so I wouldn't try it. Have you tried levelling up your religion? Levelling up religions is good. Your pals will have more items for sale, including bullets probably

[Fenrir]

I have completely missed Mel. Where is she?
The only place I seem to be able to go to right now is filled with platforms, unicorns, and hate.

[Grefter]

You need to go get the Hydra Venom from the the swamp in Home and save Kid.

[Sierra]

I have completely missed Mel. Where is she?
The only place I seem to be able to go to right now is filled with platforms, unicorns, and hate.

Mal's castle is accessed from the valley between the Red Hall and the Dome. You need both the invisible platform brand and air dash to make the jumps, anti-gravity brand to fly upwards, and then wall jump to climb up a hollow floating tree.

Also not sure how to rank up religion. I summoned a leader in one zone, I guess you give him items and that's it? I gave him some dead body parts and he boosted my healing, so that's nice. OH, I also learned that enemies can totally follow you into a sanctuary and kill your friends (who will try and defend the sanctuary, but not perfectly). Fortunately, the vendors do respawn.

And I guess I will just keep warp items in a quickslot from now on.

[Fenrir]

Ok!

Yeah you level up religion by giving items to your leader. I got 5 upgrades out of 7 by playing normally and I had to farm the last two (Almost painless but also kinda pointless, because I got no new miracles from it) The items needed to level up religion depend on your religion.

I like the different estus depending on your religion, especially the crazy one that poisons you

[Captain K]

Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes:  If you think people are salty at DeNa about RecordKeeper, you haven't seen anything yet.  These idiots managed to piss off 90% of their playerbase in the space of a week.  Okay first of all unsurprisingly it's a grinding game.  You get your Star Wars character and then you have to level them up and you also have to equip them with gear which has levels.  Some of this gear requires 50+ pieces, with a 25% drop rate from a battle.  So imagine doing the same level of FFRK 200 times to get one thing that you want.  And you have to do this multiple times for each character.

So they recently raised the level cap, which means that some new gear is equippable that wasn't before.  Except that they also added 50 more pieces to some of these gears... pieces which AREN'T EVEN IN THE GAME TO FIND.  But you could have crafted these gears *before* the level cap raise because the gear was able to be found then.  So some players who pre-crafted the gear have a 3-tier advantage over those who didn't.

So the company's response last week was that there will be new ways to get gear so just relax.  And that there would be something big on Monday.  So everyone waited to see what the something big was yesterday.  It was a just a teaser.  For new content that's still a month away.  So yeah they made an announcement to hype an announcement for something that's still a long ways off.

Needless to say the playerbase is not amused.

Marvel Avengers Alliance 2:  So since Star Wars is fucked, started trying this out.  Fairly decent.  It's 90% the Marvel characters from the recent movies, so missing a lot of characters I would want to play like the Fantastic Four.  Focusing on leveling Drax the Destroyer because HE IS TOO FAST.

----

Niu, do you know anything about Kingdom Hearts X?  Comes out on mobile in 2 days, couldn't tell from the trailer if I would like the gameplay or not.

[Captain K]

Either Notmiki is throwing "like Souls" as a buzzword to make us play games (AND IT WORKS)

Guys I am playing this 2D Souls game and it is brutal.  You have to really learn the enemy patterns because everything can kill you in one hit.  There's no estus, instead you can eat a mushroom which doubles your hp.  There's this one area that's underwater and there are enemies everywhere but you can barely move, it's horrible.  And later on there's these guys that throw hammers at you and they're so hard to avoid.  Hardest thing about the game is that it is timed, you can't take your time and eliminate enemies one by one, you've got to rush through each area.

[Scar]

That's....salt and sanctuary?

Also. ...man that new ff15 demo was bland as hell.

[NotMiki]

Momodoma 4:

Is not that much like Dark Souls? Either Notmiki is throwing "like Souls" as a buzzword to make us play games (AND IT WORKS) or it's just that I played S&S which is just pretty much a direct Souls copy on a 2D plane instead of a very different game that takes some elements from Souls. (item recharge at savepoints + atmosphere kinda? + roll I guess but it's a stretch) It mostly reminds me of Monster World 4 instead.

The latter, I'm sure.  I find the flow of combat in Momo4 very much like Dark Souls, but that really depends on your points of emphasis.  Obviously the high level of character mobility, lack of stamina bar, lack of startup frames on attacks (other than itemcasts) is not particularly Dark Souls-like, but the general mental approach to combat of "I need to pick a good plan and perfectly execute it, and if things go badly I am going to dodge-roll the fuck out of there" feels very similar to me.  Not to mention the setting, plot, presentation of snippets of lore through item descriptions, tone, etc.  (Also the developer has said that Dark Souls was a big influence, so there's that.)

[Cotigo]

Re: Momodora's Dark Soul's-ness:

Yeah I'm gonna agree with Jim on this. I thought the parallels were fairly apt. Emphasis on exploration/difficulty of combat, threadbare plot with some lore for those who want to dig into it, etc. Is it Dark Souls ripped and put into 2D like Salt and Sanctuary? No. Is it a 2D platformer obviously inspired in part by Dark Souls? Yes. A more accurate synopsis may be, "Dark Souls and Castlevania had a baby and Castlevania got full custody in the divorce."

Talos Principle - Beaten. That last puzzle was pretty fun, and I think actually on a timer? Or I screwed up by failing to imprison Samsara the first time around. Not sure!

Anyway, going more in depth into the plot and my early misgivings. I'm going to continue to refer to the writers as "the developers" even though that's probably not the case since I already wrote some of this and don't feel like changing that. It felt like it was going to be very sophistic and shallow while pretending that the philosophy 101 ideas Milton was introducing you too were the height of depth. Early on, I felt it was definitely cool and made me think about the world in a way I hadn't really been since taking my first few critical theory courses in university, I couldn't help but think that the developers were in their early 20s had taken their first couple courses in philosophy and were using Milton as a mouthpiece to open players up to how right nihilism is via introductory philosophical discourse.

The moment The Talos Principle went from being a good game to being a great game was when it became clear that that was the whole point! The moment where the game finally let me turn his reasoning back on himself was pretty dang satisfying and made me realize I should have had more faith (heh) in the writer there. Not to mention that it makes perfect sense narratively, as you are a blank-slate AI first learning how to think in order to grow into a capable, functioning mind. Plus, this was probably the best tact to take, given some reception to the game I've read online. This may well have been many players' first introduction to metaphysics so starting at the bottom floor was an absolute necessity, and it paid off pretty well. I saw a number of people who studied hard sciences in university praising the game for opening their minds up to concepts they hadn't considered, so... yeah.

As a final note on that, I love that the game basically gives you a valid option for dealing with Milton in his last message to you no matter your worldview. If you want to address his criticism through the eyes of someone who deeply values their religious faith, you can do so. If you want to take his criticisms at face value and not question them further, you can. If you want to do what I did, obviously you can. Amazing.

That said, after that exchange there's no more of it (at least if you handle it the path I took; there may be multiple results to this, I'm not sure). I was a bit disappointed there wasn't more of it in the real ending, honestly.

Story-wise, finding each new snippet that gave you a hint at what was happening to humanity that lead to the need for the Talos Project was excellently done and well paced. While I played through pretty linearly (literally, I didn't move on to the next world before completely clearing out the previous worlds), I'm pretty confident that the way these journal entries get introduced would work just as well played a bit more out of order, too.

I'm not sure I'll play a more mature game anytime soon. Maybe the Witness? I've heard that that's JoBlow mostly wanking though so probably not.

In any case, it still probably would have lost to Undertale for my favorite game I played in 2015 had I played it last year. I'm pretty irrational about my love of that game though.

EDIT: Oh yeah, regarding endings: Ending C (get all stars and sigils) was a gip. I feel like they knew this, though, given some of the epitaph options.

Ending A (don't ascend the tower) was great for what it was. Ending B left me a little disappointed, frankly, but it had a kitty so I'll let it slide.

Side note, will probably get the DLC at some point when it's on sale, but at the moment I'm pretty burned out so I'm going to let this rest fondly in my memories for the time being.

[Scar]

Anyone play the DS game, black sigil?

It looks like it borrowed heavily from Chrono Trigger, and I wanted to know if it's worth dropping cash on.

[Sierra]

I like the different estus depending on your religion, especially the crazy one that poisons you

It's pretty cool in theory, in practice I haven't tried most of them though.

Hey, what do weapon upgrades cap out at in this game?

[Random Consonant]

Anyone play the DS game, black sigil?

It looks like it borrowed heavily from Chrono Trigger, and I wanted to know if it's worth dropping cash on.

Don't play Black Sigil it's awful.

[Fenrir]

Either Notmiki is throwing "like Souls" as a buzzword to make us play games (AND IT WORKS)

Guys I am playing this 2D Souls game and it is brutal.  You have to really learn the enemy patterns because everything can kill you in one hit.  There's no estus, instead you can eat a mushroom which doubles your hp.  There's this one area that's underwater and there are enemies everywhere but you can barely move, it's horrible.  And later on there's these guys that throw hammers at you and they're so hard to avoid.  Hardest thing about the game is that it is timed, you can't take your time and eliminate enemies one by one, you've got to rush through each area.

I laughed way too much at this

That's....salt and sanctuary?

RIP Fenrir
1986-2016
Died laughing

Anyway Black Sigil is a fucking abomination. Don't be tempted by its Chrono Trigger graphics. It is like a Dark Souls mimic, except worse.


El Cid: No idea yet

[Fenrir]

Momodora 4 does try Souls storytelling devices and atmosphere, kinda
But man as soon as that giant anime girl with giant anime breasts showed up, we were all out of Darksoulstown and right into Tohouville

[NotMiki]

Momodora 4 does try Souls storytelling devices and atmosphere, kinda
But man as soon as that giant anime girl with giant anime breasts showed up, we were all out of Darksoulstown and right into Tohouville

*cough*

[Fenrir]

Dude haven't you read all the lore
She's clearly not real
So it's totally different

[Fenrir]

For real though, fair point
The monsters and bosses are all so cute though!

[NotMiki]

For real though, fair point
The monsters and bosses are all so cute though!

Yeah, the Touhou vibe is real.  Just couldn't pass up that opportunity.
Amazing chest ahead!