Sacked That Off Mate

[spatular]

I think the thing with roguelikes for me is that if a game is a roguelike it instantly puts me off, which was the same for into the breach. But I still will play some roguelikes if I like the gameplay enough to overcome the roguelike stuff. What I like about into the breach it’s all about the combat, I’m rubbish at turn based combat normally, but into the breach is pretty different in how it’s shows you what will happen next, and it’s more like a block puzzle game, like how can I get that bug to fall down a hole or attack another bug instead of a building. The combat really clicked with me and I prefer it to any other turn based combat game. But If you don’t like the gameplay then you won’t like the game and that’s cool. Similar for returnal the main gameplay stuff is great, and I’m not keen on nearly everything else about the game including the roguelike stuff.

[Nag]

Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl... 

 

Probably one of my quickest sacking offs ever... booted the game, got to where I took control and it's basically pitch black even with the torch on and then a load of HUD icons appear and I realise I just can't be bothered with the game full stop... delete.

[radiofloyd]

Iconoclasts - might be the first time I’ve posted in this thread but yeah, the frustration to fun ratio just swung too much the wrong way for this one.

[Maryokutai]

Not actively, but passively stopped playing XEL because it kept crashing on me during what I presume is its finale. I was playing the infamous Switch version as the result of what can only be some masochistic tendency and was really willing to see it through despite the 20fps, the streaming issues, low resolution, bugs and glitches but now the game is just telling me to get lost. After all that 'work' I'm actually a bit pissed about it, because under all the technical issues the game itself isn't actually bad either.

[Maryokutai]

I think I'm done with Kingdome Come: Deliverance (1). Played for about 3 to 4 hours but there's so much friction for everything you do, and even when you pull it off it's not particularly rewarding. The setting is actually rather interesting and while it might seem boring on surface-level to run around in a 'nerfed by reality' version of most fantasy RPGs, it does have something to it. But playing it feels like work. One of its worst decisions IMO is that saving is limited to a very expensive resource – I get the idea behind it but instead of forcing me to live with the consequences it just means I'm going to play it in the safest and most boring way possible.

 

I'm not ruling out that I might revisit it at some point, because I now know what I'd be getting into, but for the time being this is considered shelved. 

[Sly Reflex]

Does it use something akin to the ink ribbons in the old Resi games or something? I thought you could just save as and when you wanted.

[Maryokutai]

Yeah, it's a bit like the ink ribbon situation, but it doesn't have save points. So you can save wherever, whenever from the menu but it will consume one item, and they are both rare and expensive, at least in the early game.

 

It also does create temporary save states when you go back to the title screen though, so you don't need to give up your real life to play it at least.

[one-armed dwarf]

My feeling with this game is that at somepoint something will eventually click and it will become my next hyperfixation like Morrowind/gothic/pathologic, cause I like these types of RPGs with crunchy systems and friction. But I did also find the type of friction in KCD to be utterly uninteresting as it was mostly in the way the character animates. Its focus is on the utterly mundane, which again is a thing I think could be really interesting but the onramp to getting hooked on what it's trying to do seems a hell of a lot steeper than these other games listed.

 

I do like the idea of the whole ink ribbon save system thing tho. I don't know how onerous it gets but I like the idea of it making you sit with the consequences of bad decisions and not to save scum. I think that's something Disco Elysium should have implemented, altho I'm happy to accept the bad outcomes in that cause the game writing is on another level and makes everything just work super well.

 

I got as far as just past the prologue, I saw the title drop. So maybe when I'm in a gaming mood again that'll be the one I try. I guess then I should say that I'm dropping Arkham Asylum. It's just boring, overly basic and with really really annoying characters. Mark Hamill sucks as Joker, well in this game anyway

[Maryokutai]

Not to turn this into a KCD topic, but I don't think the game is overall mechanically polished enough to warrant the save system. I usually don't save scum bad dialogue choices either (though I also feel this should be a player and not a design choice), but looking at the lockpicking for example, which is both badly explained and questionably executed. With free saves I would have just dumped all my money on lockpicks and brute forced through a couple of easy locks to get a grasp on the system but its situations like these where the limited resource simply resulted in me not engaging with the feature at all instead. It's likely these are all just early-game issues and when you get into the groove everything clicks into place, but I'm not in the right mindset for that kind of game at the moment.

[Nag]

I think it's time to admit to myself that I've officially binned off...

 

Okami HD (Series X) and Baldur's Gate 3 (PS5)

 

As much as I hate not finishing games I've not played either of these in probably around 5 months and I've completely forgotten what I was doing on both of them... what with upcoming releases and backlogs on both machines unfortunately I can't see myself returning to either of them.

[DANGERMAN]

I think I'm joining you in posting on here but for Look Outside. I don't think I can be arsed with its bullshit and kind of regret the time I spent on it, given it was the last 2 days of my week off. Really wish I liked it more, and there's a good game there, but I didn't seem to experience it

[shinymcshine]

I like Wingspan (boardgame) so bought it a while ago on the NS - but I just can't get on with it at all.

 

No idea quite what it is - but the interface just doesn't feel intuitive whatsoever - and despite knowing how the gameplay cycle works, I just get so frustrated with not knowing what to press in order to undertake that basic turn actions - no idea quite why this all rubs me up the wrong way - perhaps also because the interface looks way too cluttered with unnecessary artwork - but every so often it'll give it another try, and then within 15 mins sack it off as frustration sucks away any enjoyment.

 

Maybe it's because I'm always trying to play it handheld - and on the big screen it might be better, but the point of buying it was to play ad-hoc on the move....

[one-armed dwarf]

Doom: The Dark Ages

 

I have a few weeks left on the GP sub, but right now I feel like it would just be performing an obligation to wrap it up. I was enjoying it well enough for a bit, and said as much in the thread, but there's something so boring about its action that once you get past the novelty of learning how it all works, it's like you feel trapped in the paddling pool or something. I understand now why they have all these difficulty sliders, it's to make it look like there's way more going on in the game cause you can push the difficulty really high. But it doesn't prevent it feeling so linear, just feels like it's masking some design issues that can't be fixed that easily.

 

Jeff Gerstmann called this way more expressive than Eternal but it's the least expressive game I've played in a long while imo. All the player expression you want so long as it's press right click when the green happens

[one-armed dwarf]

Fallout (original)

 

Not sure that I'm 'done' done with it, I might try it some more, but feel enough done to write a slightly sniffy impression of it as I don't see myself wanting to spend more time with it right now. On the one hand, I was surprised by how much it is like the newer games specifically when it comes to character building. Same SPECIAL system, affects skills mostly the same way although they make sure to tell you the formula it uses to calculate their effect on stuff as it's a turn based game and not an action one. So that's the type of thing you got to know. Other difference is it has things like armour class, like Baldur's Gate, but apparently damage resistance is more important so not a major thing

 

I liked the different choices some quests gave, where you can do things like take money from Keith David up front to assassinate somebody, then also take an advance payment from the cops to snitch on him. Altho this specifically is where I hit the wall, I'm getting smacked around by him pretty hard. I think I made some really bad build decisions maybe, or I need to come back later, but something about the world and storylines aren't really making me feel like the hard work is worth it with this one. At least, not right now. May re-roll in the future cause I think doing a melee build without full agility and 1 point in luck (along with a perk that disables crits) hasn't exactly set me up for success early in life

 

Interesting thing about this game: it has a hard time limit. You're supposed to get a chip to fix the water filter of your vault or something, or else it's game over. 140 in-game days I think, I am at around 90 left. Old RPGs don't fuck around. 

[Maryokutai]

I might get back to this at some point far in the future but after the first hour or so I'm done with Transistor. I just don't get how this wants to be played, unless it really does revolve around using timestop, blowing all your cooldowns and then running around like a headless chicken until everything has recharged – in which case I simply don't like its 'flow' at all.

The art design and atmosphere is top notch like with all of Supergiant's games but after Bastion, which might be the most overrated indie game out there, and Hades, which as a roguelike is fundamentally uninteresting to me, I might have to come clean and admit I just don't particularly enjoy their output.

 

A bit like an indie Fromsoft: super beloved and critically acclaimed games but I just don't get them at all.

[one-armed dwarf]

Might be done with Kenshi. It's full of design ideas that I really really like, but they are not all implemented well and the flaws it has are fatal. Strange things like how it will despawn terrain, allowing you to build bases on top of it, but then spawn the terrain back in and trap your characters inside rocks. A gameplay flow that's based around taking punishment over and over, an unintuitive framework for figuring out the best way to do things. It feels like a hugely interesting game being held back by intractable levels of technical debt. Making Kenshi 2 my most anticipated RPG sequel, but playing this version is asking a lot. Each moment of wonder is a punctuation point between hours of 'why the fuck did my guy clip outside the base, and a bunch of dinosaurs clip their way back in and eat everyone' , and having to bandage everyone and drag them to bed to recover, or fight through a load more murderous dinosaurs to buy them some limbs to replace their old ones

 

Now I'm downloading Satisfactory, to see if that gives the same fix without feeling like I have to dive into debug modes to use drag and drop tools to sort out my engineers that live inside rock formations now

[shinymcshine]

Dredge - played it for 3 hrs and nice ideas seem trapped between repetitive fetch and carry quest, mixed in with dull, yet essential, fishing tasks in order to buy upgrades etc

 

Clair Obscure - tried it for around 90 mins, and felt way too much like a JRPG from 20+ yrs ago, and actually made me wish I was playing them instead - the early drip feed of story just wasn't engaging me, whilst combat felt like Xenoblade on the Wii (not a bad thing, but not exactly a novel idea - I've got a feeling Shadow Hearts (PS2) had something similar too ?).

[one-armed dwarf]

Absolum - Yeah, not for me I think. Did a few runs and it's that type of combat again with a lot of emphasis on parries and dodges and stagger systems, so nothing particularly original. You have strikes for quick pressure and slashes for big openings, and you stack different effects on them, you can do airborne combos and cause impact when you land, stunning enemies. It has a separate sword clash parry system, DMC/FFXVI style, where you put your active frames against an enemies active frames which is neat. You can grab enemies and throw them into the wall to do wall combos. It's a very nice looking game but for some reason is a headache inducer, even when I turned screen shake down to 0. Not one for me, I skipped every line of dialogue lol. 

 

I know there's a lot more to it that I'm deciding not to look into, but it's just that refund timer is tempting me to just call it off now and stick with Hades 2. That game is fundamentally great to play even at level 0, and I just don't feel that with this, which is part of the reason why I have trouble with this genre, finding the satisfaction at the ground floor. It is a thing which eludes me in so many of them, this included (which is also the problem with Hades 1). 

[radiofloyd]

Silksong goes here for now.

 

Back in 2017 the first game took over my life for however long it took to complete, can’t quite say the same for Silksong and I think 50 hours is enough of my life to give it.

[one-armed dwarf]

Returnal

 

Nothing to add really to the posts in the other thread, but this has the worst pacing of progression I've ever experienced in a run-based game if you're someone like me who's struggling with its mechanics, which when combined with its lack of gameplay options makes it maybe the worst Sony exclusive I've played this generation. Takes all the worst parts of roguelikes and keeps none of the good parts. If you suspect that the things you've heard about this game won't be your jam, trust that instinct and save your time and money