Video Games

The Triangle, Square, Circle, Cross levels are cunts.

It's such a great game though. Haven't played this week but I think I'll get a few hours tonight to edge closer to completion.

I just reached Crumble Rumble 3 and am worried about what will come later.. haha.

Good / awful news: Balatro out on mobile/ios…

This is probably my favourite game I've never actually finished. Pop-in on PS4 was game breaking, especially as you go deeper and deeper. Sequel was cool but nothing can quite evoke that same sense of awe and terror simultaneously.

Just started The Last of Us Part 1 (latest remake) which is now included with PS Extra.

The graphics are one of the best I’ve probably seen. I’m in constant awe!

Wait till you play the last of us 2 remake!

(Or Alan Wake 2).

I have no idea why I'm still going.... I can feel the lost of completion already and I'm no where near close to the end yet.

Side note, a reaper leviathan sent my Titan2 to the sky.... Now it's a forever sky-sub

Meh...

1 Attachment

nothing can quite evoke that same sense of awe and terror simultaneously.

The PC versions of the Subnautica games support VR (the native implementation is a bit scrappy but there's an excellent mod). I can testify to the intensity of the awe and terror when played like that. "I know there's a leviathan around here somewhere... OMIGOD IT'S BEHIND ME!"

@ChainBreaker

I have no idea why I'm still going.... I can feel the lost of completion already

As long as you're able to maintain your base (or bases) and incrementally improve it while not dying of starvation or thirst, you're not losing anything. It's a survival/exploration game; the burn is supposed to be slow. Cautious explaration brings you tech that let you improve your bases and vehicles so that you can survive better and explore more, which leads to building multiple bases so that you can explore even further and find more tech, and so on. The notional deadlines of the game are all triggered by story progression, not actual time played.

If you want to avoid the feeling of repeated loss of progress, you need to spend more time on base building/maintenance than story progression.

If you want to avoid the feeling of repeated loss of progress, you need to spend more time on base building/maintenance than story progression.

I think this is why I dislike a lot of games.

Smashing through a bit of the mafia remake and loving the fact it's just story, go here, do this, set piece, get on with it kinda stuff.

I think this is why I dislike a lot of games.

There are definitely a lot of games where what I've just described is bad design and punishing grind. But in Subnautica it's purposely part of the game experience and fits in. It's a survival game where progressing from teetering on the brink of death to building the technology to let you build the technology to escape the planet is the point. You're not just tediously searching the wilderness for loot, you're finding and exploring lots of creepy wreckage for both tech components and documents that explain why and how your ship crashed. They did a pretty good job of sprinkling the exploration and survival with surprises and rewards. You also know very little about what the main story is till you go look, cause it's a mystery/survival/exploration game.

So I think your point is valid about a lot of games but not so much with this one. That said, there's grind and there's core game activity that some people don't like, so they call it grind. Which it is, to them, but they should have bought a different game. Some people said Assassin's Creed Black Flag was a grindy game, because they're weirdos who don't like being a pirate.

Hmm, I think I actually like a grind, I just don't have time for it anymore. Getting lost for 40 hours doing something essentially pointless is wonderful in and of itself, but I just need something that actually progresses these days.

I've tried to like the Assassins Creed games, I bought them at the start, I've tried them on GamesPass and I always stop playing about 20%-30% of the way through as they're just all so samey. They're boring

It's such a fun game though. Subnautica 3 is coming soon too, apparently (and using Unreal 3, which will make it puuuurdy).

Good / awful news: Balatro out on mobile

This has been my day.

been enjoying lucky tower ultimate early access on steam after seeing it on youtube a few times.

controls get a bit fiddly when you have a lot of stuff going on and have yet to make any significant progress but have died dozens of times in hilarious ways.

https://youtu.be/lsL_sj-HRvM

For the Dredge fans.

https://youtu.be/yXQipk_mBAo?si=uHypZT1STEzHR5o4

oooh cheers.

I always stop playing about 20%-30% of the way through as they're just all so samey.

All?

The first one was very thin and repetetive; even most committed OG creed fans admit that. If it hadn't been for the crazy SF conspiary-theory satire that framed it, I doubt anybody would have bothered sticking with it at all. The second one was a huge step up in every way, and added a fair amount of side content, but the next two were about the same Italian guy doing more or less the same thing (they were supposed to be DLCs but grew big), with only incremental changes to gameplay. So if you weren't sold on Super Ezio, it would get tired before his third outing. If you stopped there, fair comment.

By the time of Black Flag, though, they'd reached GTA San Andreas levels of things to do besides stealing cars - I mean, stabbing people in the back - which has kept on increasing as the series progressed. The tone and balance became so varied from game to game, some of them requiring almost no stabbing at all while often making you wait 20 hours for your secret stabby knife that you weren't going to use much, that the player base became hugely factional. There were endless arguments about what makes a "real" AC game, and whether the latest one qualified, even before the three huge RPGs that mostly tried to be as unstabby as possible. If they're really that samey, somebody needs to have a word with the fans.

They're boring

Aye, well, there's a clutch of committed Dredge fans on here and others who find it boring. So it goes.

Yes, all.

Tried Black Flag, Valhalla also.

Hats off to your dedication. 20% of Valhalla is longer than the whole of Black Flag.

I finished the London one but that's it. I always like the idea, enjoy the first bit but get bored as the story slumps along and the gameplay settles into repeating the same missions once you've learnt all the mechanics. Black Flag was interesting for a bit longer, and I've not played too much of origins yet so will likely get back to that and try Odyssey at some point if it stays on gamepass.

I finished the London one

Syndicate seems to be the least liked in the whole series, probably because it's the only one that doesn't take itself seriously and indulges in a lot of high camp Music Hall comedy. I liked it for the same reason. I liked being able to defend Karl Marx in a pub brawl, and I loved standing on the top of a stolen hansom cab and shooting at enemy carriages like I was in some Jellied-Eel Western, particularly once my gang had grown to the point where they were following in two other carriages in full Keystone Cops mode.

Generally, the AC games aren't good at storytelling (huge swings in quality over the length of any given one) and terrible at pacing. The ideas are usually good (some of the ones in Valhalla were really good and innovative for the series) but their actual implementation is often frustrating, and only partly because their toxic marketing department had a habit of messing the studios around. Several of the games were massively rewritten because the devs planned for a female protagonist and the marketing dept said "People don't buy games with female leads".

try Odyssey at some point

Do you have time for that, given what you said previously about time and grind? You're looking at 45 hours minimum, and that's if you work carefully from a walkthrough so that you know which of the many story lines are actually essential. Odyssey is where they really decided to stop guiding the player through the plot and let the player find it for themselves. It's quite well done, for once, but the game is huge. They also locked a significant part of the story in a DLC; on my first attempt, I got that far and just gave up from burn out. You might find that it can only be completed by one of your descendants using an animus to pick up from where you left off.

Judging by the length of each of my comments on this topic, I've definitely played too much Assassin's Creed.

Do you have time for that, given what you said previously about time and grind?

No, I'll start it one day and give up after a bit of jumpy, sneaky, stabby.

I'd disagree on AC1. It was groundbreaking at the time, the ability to effortlessly parkour around a city intuitively was genuinely brilliant. The combat was basic but animations kept it enjoyable and made it more expedient to escape than fight. And that was fine because exploring and learning the cities was a joy. Retrospectively, it won't hold up to modern expectations but to say people wouldn't have stuck with it without the sci-fi plot is wild.