Leaderboard

I've been meaning to check this game out for ages and finally had a chance to play it online with a mate last night. The premise is you're a clean up crew sent in after the events of your typical first person shooter. Armed with a mop and a variety of tools you have to go in, clean up the bodies and mop the place up. The twist comes in all the physics based sillyness. We played a level set in a space station with a switch that turned gravity on and off. It's just that we didn't realise the switch did that and suddenly there are hundreds of body parts bouncing around, splattering blood everywhere, which then gets stood in and suddenly there are bloody footprints everywhere. It's got a real dark sense of humour to it as well. My wife gave me one of 'those' looks when she saw me laughing at my friends attempts to stuff a rag-doll cadaver into an incinerator, innards flying everywhere. Despite leaving the place immaculate, we got demoted. Turns out jettisoning rubbish into space is frowned upon and we should have used the incinerator on the ceiling more. Can't remember the last time i've laughed so much at a game.

While i'm on a soundtrack kick: Shadow of the Beast - the opening tack to one of the hardest games ever made. Used to creep the hell out of me when I was a kid. Grandia - what a game. I love how the theme transitions to 70's TV theme disco to sincere violin music and back again. Doom 2 Hell on Earth - some strange part of me misses midi music. Takes me back to sitting in front of my mates 486 SX25 and quite literally being blown away by this crazy new genre of game - the first person shooter. Fatal Racing always struck me as a game that should have reached a wider audience than it actually did. Used to play this to death split screen.

it's a legendarily terrible game. It's the Dark Souls of being a bad game

@OCH I think he might have been joking also, did you just refer to Battletoads as a gem?

Well the orange raccoon avatar was a bit of a giveaway.

If you’ve got the digital copy, you’re ok. If you’ve got the physical copy you need to: - Put the game in - Hover over it on the menu and press “+” - You then need to select the option to register your game and claim your coins - Once this is done, you will get the code emailed to you. - Redeem the code on the Nintendo shop to download Piranha Plant ? You only have today to do it though! EDIT - Yeah, what @DANGERMAN said ?

The reward is far greater than the punishment. The mystery and difficulty are important design elements of the game. The crowning achievement of the game is the beautiful, labyrinthe world that grows far beyond the scope of what you could have imagined, and the journey you take to see it all. A journey that would mean a lot less if you hadn’t discovered everything for yourself one step at a time, and overcome obstacles along the way.

Oh! I also got challenged to a duel by someone who had just shot someone else to death Naturally, I'd poked 6 holes right through the other guys head before he even got his hand on the gun. Then everyone got angry at me and I got a $20 bounty on my head. I've been paying off my bounties as I've been playing, but I only had about $4 on me at the time. I surrendered to the sheriff, not wanting to push my bounty any higher. Spent a night in the cell and my bounty was gone! I thought this would be a great way to shake off my $300 I'm Stawberry. I went into strawberry and fired my gun into the air, then surrendered when the sheriff rocked up. Sitting in the cell feeling smug about having just saved $300 and John and Charles rock up and bust me out of prison! Awesome, but my bounty went up to $325...

Okami?

Yeah logic isn’t really applicable. In Leon’s Scenario B in the original,Mr X smashes Ada into a control panel,causing it to be destroyed,and her bleeding out,badly. Yet she survives that,to later throw Leon a rocket launcher for the final fight with Mr X. How did she survive? Errrrm....

The best Zelda game.

You were never explicitly shown Ada survived in the original, depending on what scenarios you played...

Well, you might not, its unclear, despite them tweeting some kind of spreadsheet about it...which is an indication of how stupid some games have become.

Hunk... Tofu isn't "real"

I know it's not out yet, but some of Anthem's music is awesome. Particularly like this track: I really liked this track from Into the Breach as well: Flinthook - a game i'm inherently crap at, also had a cracking 8bit soundtrack. Here's one of my personal highlights:

I've been listening to A Perfect Circle's latest (Eat the Elephant). I wasn't that taken with it at first but after a few listens it's really good. Maynard still has a ridiculous voice, and this album is more like Thirteenth Step in that it's focused on songs and melodies I've also been listening to Mono's new one, although still only a couple of times. I love Mono, and they have experimented with a vocal track this time, but aside from that it's very Mono. Considering they started out feeling a bit like they were taking inspiration from whatever Mogwai did the album before they've really nailed a sound. They do beautifully delicate better than anyone, then they go loud with the best, it's a very Mono album. I'd love to see them live at some point too, but they always seem to come around at the wrong time

The weirdest thing was the sense of pride we had when we went back through the level and seeing how clean it was.

WAYS TO PLAY ANTHEM.

Depends on the content added. I prefer paying for a meaningful content drop. I don't like banking on some mugs dropping silly money on cosmetics. A game like this people expect regular content. Destiny and Division struggled to keep up with demand. If you're competitor is offering more regular content they may disperse elsewhere. I'm assuming they're going for a live service type thing. They may do it differently. We'll see. Loads of the Destiny community got invited to the studio to cover it. I get, and they, the feeling that's the market they're aiming for, despite the genre differences. So it's going to be interesting going forward.

There are absolutely Dark Souls comparisons to be made... which is funny because I've never been able to get into Dark Souls but I absolutely adore Hollow Knight. I think that's because a lot of the similarities are thematic and specific design elements, whereas in core gameplay Hollow Knight is obviously still a 2D metroidvania (and imo the best one I've ever played). The lack of direction is one of my favourite things about the game, I really appreciate how much it respects the player's autonomy and own ability to find their path. With the lack of direction, at the very beginning you are only given the task of "explore" but relatively quickly you gain an overarching goal that gives high-level direction to your wanderings. Once I hit that point I felt it was the perfect amount of direction I needed, as the game left me alone to work out the specifics. I don't think any of the enemies are cheap, and I found the platforming perfectly good (the only time it goes overboard with that is at one specific point when getting the true ending). The charm system is really good at offering the player various ways of countering any specific weaknesses they have in the gameplay, like eliminating knock-back or giving you a quicker or longer slash (something I found very useful for downslash jumping off enemies and spikes). On exploring new areas I always made it my priority to find the map of the area, and as such I never found myself wandering blind for too long. Boss rooms are usually signposted so can be avoided and the paper/page trails direct the player towards the map location from a screen or two away. I also always had equipped the charm for showing my location on the map screen, so even without a map I knew roughly where I was.

Yeah, I'd say comparing it to Dark Souls is as apt as comparing it to to Metroid or Castlevania, it's clearly lifting from all those games

Just because you said it was a lazy comparison I will go through it. Losing money on death but getting one chance to reclaim it benches are bonfires big high health pool bosses that can kill you in a few hits no direction throughout the game minimal story, dotted around lots of backtracking some eventual shortcuts you open up Now those are just bullet points, perhaps its a bit lazy still so to dig deeper. The general setting of the world is similar, its a world that is in ruins, the area you play in is referenced to as a ruin, its long dead and past its former glory. There is some sort of Curse on the land, the people you infrequently meet in the bowels of the land have generally given up on living or any hope of the future, the creatures in the journal are said to seek out death and are referred to as pitiful spirits. You meet a warrior knight who seeks out glorious death. You are a hollow....knight.

Assuming it's not too late, you register your game card on the Switch (press start, I think, on the game icon), register it, then you get an email with a code

I'm with @Sambob The Dark Souls design is a huge detriment to Hollow Knight, one that is massively exasperated by the lack of map. If you had a map it would at least take some of the pain away from redoing your hard work. Given how often money is of no consequence its not even like you get anything from the Souls design. Then when you do find a shop keeper with an item you want the map and traversal system just adds a layer of chore to the threat of muttering and sighing. Whatever I think of them I can see why people like the challenge of the Souls series, but I can't see how Hollow Knight wouldn't be a better game as a traditional Metroidvania, the exploration and combat (I actually found the combat a bit laggy) is what it does well

Personally I love the feeling of stepping into the unknown it gives you when accidentally wandering into a new area. I don’t find strong enemies cheap or unfair, I just haven’t figured out their patterns yet. Walking into a boss area unknowingly can be annoying, but if I pay attention to where I’m exploring I can usually get back there within a minute of two so it stops being a problem. The only ‘souls like’ element this game has is losing your Geo when you die so I don’t get much of the comparison to be honest, it just feels lazy. Everything else is pure Metroid and I love it.

The game punishes exploration, rather than rewards it. No maps until you find the hidden map man, therefore early on in an area you are faced with : Harder, newer enemies More difficult platforming elements No idea where a save is No idea where yo ass is Occasional surprise big bosses that you are locked into without warning. Likelihood of spawning back so far away its the 1950s. These all combine to create a very high chance that you will lose any money you might have collected up until that point. If you need something like the lantern which is 1800 then you are going to be carrying a fair bit of dollar around, and so unless you grind for it (unfun) then you are going to HAVE to enter an unexplored area at some point whilst carrying a large sum of money. As a result exploring new areas is an essential part or progressing the game but is likely to end up punishing the player rather than rewarding them. Even after you've got the lantern out of the way you basically have to get on the money saving hamster wheel because you need to constantly buy badges to be able to get the chance to buy notches to then buy yourself a good collection of powerful badges to face the new areas you have to explore. Whilst there is fun in the game its often in spite of the combination of mechanics that conspire to hinder rather than empower the player, which is where its telling you to fuck off. Its all very simple when you think about it dear. ? PS. People that like dark souls are sadists and probably play video games on pc with half of the required keys removed from the keyboard because its engaging.

Piranha Plant is now available to download ? Also, it’s the last day you can register your physical copy and get him for free.

I already quoted you without an edit stamp, you can't back out of this.

I'm sure when the game actually starts more discussion will happen. I don't really want to give the why's yet. And, y'know, no one is forcing anyone to read the thread.

Welcome @OrangeRKN. I used to post on GRcade a bit as well, but have had to scale back on my forum time so sacrificed that and bordersdown (formerly NTSC-UK). NGamer mag was the best. Enjoy your stay!

I seem to remember a few people playing this, apologies if I've missed a thread, I can't see one Persona Q came out a few years ago, back when people other than me played the 3ds. It's the teams from either Persona 3 or 4 set in Etrian Odyssey gameplay. It's a dungeon crawler with turn based combat based around formations. You have 5 people in your party and they have to be lined up along the front and back rows, so 3 at the front 2 at the back. The people at the back should have range, the people at the front more hardy. I expected it to have more concessions to Persona than it has but apart from the ability to call in a 2nd Persona its almost identical to an Etrian Odyssey game. So far, and I've only just started the 2nd floor, its a bit less forgiving in terms of health recovery than I expected, but also easier than a real Etrian Odyssey, so a bit of an odd mix. I'm not sure how much I like it. It's certainly worse than the 2 Etrian Odyssey Untold games I've played, they're outstanding though, and the mainline Persona games I've played. Teddy and his quips can fuck off, that much I'm sure of