Sly's St(r)eam Tombola Thread: Children of Morta

[Sly Reflex]

Binary Domain is a silly game.

[DANGERMAN]

It just gets better as it goes along too

[Sly Reflex]

I just got the French agent. I'll probably smack the rest of it out tomorrow, depends on how much difficulties I have.

[Sly Reflex]

Binary Domain was alright, but a bit ropey.

 

I did Superliminal as well, just a 2 and a half hour game. Worth a look if you like more artsy puzzle stuff.

 

Bully is up next.

[Sly Reflex]

That's Bully done. It's aged a bit, but it's still great. There's so many little touches and details that I never noticed before. The PC version is a bit of a crashy cunt though. Blame Windows 10, apparently.

 

We're on Horace now. It's very British.

[DANGERMAN]

yeah, I kind of liked Horace, at points really liked it, but it was a bit hard going at some points

[mfnick]

I love the writing and story in Horace but found the gameplay really dull after a point. Shame as I’d really like to see what happens but the mediocre platforming, puzzles and collectathon nature of it really puts me off. 

[Sly Reflex]

It's made me laugh and made me feel nostalgic a few times. However, if you're not from that era and don't know all the references it's chucking out, it might be a miss.

 

I like how close some of the rips of the songs are. Watching the boat sink and then it playing My Heart Will Go on in a knock off pub singer style was great.

[Sly Reflex]

I had to give up on Horace. It decided it wanted to be a shit knock off Super Meat Boy, but without any of the accuracy in controls. It's a hard game to recommend really, pacing is all over, difficulty spikes for no reason. Awful boss fights. I gave up at a point where it told me to go back to a location, but didn't give me any maps or pointers to where I needed to be going. It's a novel game and you're mileage may vary with it, but it's very much a caveat emptor game that you need to be aware of what you're getting into.

 

 

[Sly Reflex]

Been a while since I updated this, huh?

 

Anyway, Horace was charming, but shit and frustrating, and not in a good way. More nostalgia, less asking players to make pixel perfect jumps.

 

Dear Esther got played after that. Still pretty good, although, very short. I managed to pull some of the ghost stuff on my one run through, which was kind of nice. Not the most upbeat story though.

 

Batman Arkham Asylum after that. Aged pretty well overall, but the fighting feels a bit shit now. I think we've come a long way in regards of the auto combat tippy tappy buttons thing where it looks cool, but there's not really much feedback with it. It's kind of laughable how barebones it all is, but it was the first to do that sort of thing that particular way, so whatever.

 

Yooka Laylee come in after this. I thought this was a 3D game with DLC, but it turned out to be a 2.5D one. I didn't like it all that much. Gave me the same vibes as the DK games of recent, including the bullshit near vertical difficulty spikes. For me personally the having to replay levels to progress because the currency in game acts like Yoshi coins in SMW, except you exchange them to open gates to get further into the game. Not for me, thanks.

 

Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion. Cute little 2 hour jaunt. Was alright. Parts of it teetered on outstaying their welcome. You could do worse for an evening, but it's hard to recommend otherwise.

 

Next up. DOOM Eternal.

[mfnick]

One of the greatest games ever! I can see you hating the platforming though. 

[Sly Reflex]

It's good so far. The difficulty is sort of riding me though, but the way it all feeds in to each other is all so satisfying. It's hilariously gratuitous as well. 

[Nag]

Knock it on to easy and become a  god until the last boss.

[one-armed dwarf]

Doom Eternal is one of those games I wanted to be good at, and I got pretty good at it on a controller. But this game, this game is a fucking keyboard and mouse game. You cannot get anywhere near as cool gameplay with it on a controller.

 

The way high skill players leverage the momentum available and sort of drift highspeed around in the air destroying things is a thing to see. Like, Cacodemons aren't just enemies to kill, they are grappling points to keep moving. Zombies are anchors to ground you or catapults to swing you in another direction. I guess this is a spoiler cause it's late game gameplay

 

Spoiler

 

 

Also look at how clearly colour coded everything is in this game, with all the chaos. It's crazy and fast moving, but you can identify 'oh that's armour, that's one of the big bastards with rockets on his back'. Compare that to some other action games, which get all of this visual language stuff horribly wrong

 

It's the only fps I can think of that has this sort of character action approach to it, so it's a bummer I just sort of hate playing it for some reason. meh

[DANGERMAN]

I revisited Doom Eternal on Steam Deck, it runs great, but there's so many button inputs. It made me feel like someone's dad holding a controller for the first time since the NES. Loved it when I played it on pc, but it's always got you on the edge of being in trouble 

[Sly Reflex]

I am actually towards the part you pasted @one-armed dwarf. I'm just on my way to get the super shotgun.

[AndyKurosaki]

I had the same experience with Horace. It’s an interesting idea, and some of the retro callbacks are fun. But then it plays like absolute arse, so I fucked it off. 
 

Doom Eternal is brilliant, except for the shite platform sections. 

[Sly Reflex]

Still good. Ended on a boss tonight with the Shield where you have to dodge the skipping ropes. Had a few runs at it but got him beat eventually. I think I'm heading into the final act now. Good game, I feel like I'm constantly on the edge because of how it's designed.

 

Some better sign posting for where you are meant to be going might have been nice, there's several times I've been lost because it's not been clear where I should be going.

[Sly Reflex]

I am almost certainly in the final act now. Chasing down the last boss.

 

I think for the most this game does everything right, but there's times where it's just like "NO, FUCK YOU! NO FUN HERE!"

 

Like, it sometimes just decides to give you an enemy that killed someone previously, and while sometimes this is fine there's occasions where it's like I'm up to my neck already, I've not gone above 50hp since I come here, I'm hanging on by the skin of my teeth, can you just relax for one fucking moment. I'm all for a challenge, but it takes the piss sometimes. I'd say the majority of my deaths spin out from being gangbanged against a wall, it happens way too much where something will scuff you and before you can really do anything you're hemmed in and that's it.

 

I get that the whole emphasis on the game is aggression, but there's a line you can't really cross because the stuff you get via burning and glory kills doesn't counteract the incoming damage.

 

I don't particularly like the way it deals with instructions either. When it says break the chains or whatever, why not tell me after the wave. When you tell me in the way it makes me look for a way to complete the objective whilst under fire. Tell me after. Or tell me the waves are infinite until I achieve the objective. Just word it better. It's a small grievance, but it's one that's easily solvable by just being direct with what is expected of you right at theta moment.

 

Not a fan of the platforming, but then again I don't hate it. Really my biggest bug bears on this game are the boss fights are all kinds of ass. I don't know what they were going for but I don't like it all that much. The skipping rope shield guy was such a pain, but the real piss take was the recharging shield boss that flew and also set the stage on fire and could only be beaten by punching them. It's needlessly convoluted and there's so many things to take into consideration that I nearly quit the game there. Kudos to anyone that beat that using a controller because without being able to quick select through my weapons so I could chain up to it, I would have been fucked.

 

I'll probably (hopefully) finish this next stream. Then it looks like we're onto Nickelodeons take on Smash Bros, which is a swerve I didn't see coming.

[Sly Reflex]

DOOM Eternal done. It's good. You should play it. Hard though, excruciating in places.

 

Not Smash Bros next!