Patient Gamers

Patient gamers might be interested in this news.

I think this is funny for this comm, i'll take down if everyone else thinks its in bad taste.

I think I played whichever one was on my Amiga waaaay back in the day, and whichever one was on PS3 for a bit. I was also a big fan of some of the Might and Magic games, which I feel were something of a bridge between the old dungeon crawlers and something like Morrowind.

Anyway I was thinking of trying one out again. Any recommendations, maybe one with modern QOL features to ease in?

I see there's a remake of Wizardry 1(?) and remasters of the Etrian Odyssey games in the past couple years. I'm also kind of intrigued by Undernauts, which looks like it might throw a little Shin Megami Tensei flavor in?

Hey, so for some time now i had this problem... I have been buying games from both gog and steam... No drm option is good on gog but there are some festures missing from what steam has, for example being able to buy games from trading cards... What should i do? Focuse on buying games from gog and if there isnt a game then buy it on steam? Or maybe just buy games on steam?

I played 1-4 back in the day, but my memory of the details is pretty fuzzy. Something something Umbrella releases a new virus like iPhones every few years, something something, somehow Wesker returned.

Anyway, I hear 7 is kind of a soft reboot? Is that a good one to get back into the series with, and not have to know 12 games of plot?

And if 7 is good, does 8/Village follow directly from that without needing too much prior game knowledge?

Here are a few things I like about those games:

• "on rails" progression - no loot, any new gear is discovered as part of the story (e.g. OG Zelda -> blue ring -> red ring); minimal loot
• hard, but fair, boss fights
• dungeon feel - less emphasis on puzzles, more on working room to room to find items to access the boss
• minimal emphasis on stats, so grinding shouldn't be a thing of playing normally
• forced usage of gadgets/types of weapons

Examples of games that qualify:

• most Zelda titles - A Link to the Past, Link's Awakening, Ocarina of Time, Skyward Sword; not BotW or TotK
• Ys games - esp. Ys 1 and Ys Origin; later titles lose focus IMO (more gear, more leveling, etc)
• Okami - boss fights aren't exactly what I'm looking for, but the rest of the game is close

Examples that don't qualify:

• Diablo and similar - far too much loot and skill trees
• Dark Souls - it's close, but the variety of equipment is a bit much; I want less choice, not more,; but DS is pretty close
• Assassin's Creed - "boss fights" are usually lame, too much focus on upgrades, stealth isn't really my thing

Games on the fence:

• Tunic - I've played an hour or so and it was tons of fun
• Titan Souls - finished and loved it, just worried mentioning it will take people off track since it doesn't have any progression, dungeons, etc
• Furi - again, loved it, but like Titan Souls, it's a bit of an exception

Basically, I want a game that forces me to learn and adapt using the limited tools the game provides. Here are things I absolutely want to avoid:

• feeling of being OP - causes me to drop most (a)RPGs
• lots of choices - if I get an upgrade, it should be strictly an upgrade (e.g. more damage)
• loot - I hate managing inventories (exception: switching gadgets to solve puzzles/different enemy types) and buying/selling stuff; I want that progression managed for me

Basically, I shouldn't have to think outside solving puzzles and fighting bosses.

Indie games are preferred.

Platforms:

• PC (or emulator) - preferred, esp if I can use my Steam Deck
• Switch
• Wii

I don't think I've ever played a game that has infuriated so much me with little things as much as this one. There are just SO FUCKING MANY little things that feel wrong that it really fucks up the experience.

I don't remember exactly when or where I got it, possibly a Fanatical bundle. Cheap game, good looking, "mixed" rating on Steam. "Can't be that bad". Indeed, it's not "that bad", but it's infuriating in the amount of little things that are kinda bad, that bad or really bad.

Now, the game is really good looking, the pixel art is a joy to see and the Castlevania SotN influence is extremely obvious, down to the double jump wing-flap and "ghosted" silhouette. Also, one of the characters, Allure, is like a cross of Alucard with Zero from Mega Man X. The control is great, though there is a big reliance on dashing for avoiding damage. In later dungeons, there's also a significant player skill requirement to get past some asshole-designed traps.

Some of my biggest gripes:

• Game has no pause, it acts like a permanent multiplayer server.
• There is zero in-game information for a LOT of important stuff. This is so bad that I only learned about certain features by reading the game description - like how raids are only supposed to happen every 7 days - and fucking patch notes, and even those can be stupidly unhelpful, like this absolute gem: 200% increased Floating Island. Buildings you can place on the town don't have a description, so other than the obvious mines, you're on your own to find out what each building produces or does.
• I still have no clue what Spirit does. It's one of your stats and that's it. Doesn't increase your hp/mp regen, doesn't increase how much you heal with magic, doesn't increase damage.
• Missions are all over the place and sometimes make no fucking sense. Hell, one of the very first missions asks for 30 flowers and 30 spores. The problem is that you only get 1, maybe 2, when you harvest them, and there are NOT 30 of them in the forest maps. Whenever the mission asks for a specific monster to be killed, prepare to wait forever for respawns and RNG.
• RNG will ruin your day when it comes to finding certain monsters or items. Watermelons are a low chance drop off chopped trees in the jungle. Milk is another item that's hard to come by due to low drop rate and you'll need 20 for one of the missions. Clay and Sand only drop from specific monsters and, despite being somewhat common construction materials, there is no building that collects them automatically - but you can still get osbidian mines!
• Inventory auto sorting sucks, the only consistent thing is that it puts consumables first, crafting materials second, equipment third. Other than that, it's whatever wherever, like how wood will be stuck between Topaz and Sapphire, while Amethyst goes way below on the list. It doesn't even stack together the same item. If you have a 23 and a 4 stack of wood, auto sorting won't make it a single 27 stack.
• Maps are uninteresting and have nothing worth exploring, no secret anything anywhere. They're also an OPTIONAL, completely linear progression. You automatically unlock new portals by leveling up. Oh, you have to mentally learn where each portal takes you, nothing is labeled
• Relics. They're little things that will sometimes appear in specific places in certain maps (yes, even this is fucking RNG dependent). They give small, permanent bonuses to your stats. The problem is that you lose ALL of them on death. They can reappear, if RNGesus deems it funny to see you losing it again within a minute.
• Crafting interface is fucking awful. Want to make 99 iron ingots? Gotta click the + button 98 times, then click "Craft". You can't see any recipes that you cannot make at the exact moment you open the menu - if you're not near an anvil, you cannot see the list of armors and weapons, period. The only "sorting" here is by tier
• You get absolutely no heads up about incoming raids. A purple health bar just shows up in the top middle of the screen when one starts and that's it. If you're too busy doing a dungeon or fighting a boss, fuck you.
• It takes like 14 or 21 in game days to even get the first raid and, judging by the achievements, the vast majority of players never even bothered to go that far into the game.
• Dungeon traps are 1-hit kills and their collision boxes are slightly larger than their actual sprites. Enemies will often walk around spikes, harassing you while you are unable to deal with them unless you kill yourself trying to kill them
• Elevators. They're sooooooo fuuuuuuuuckiiiiiiiiiing sloooooooowwww. There aren't many, but the few that are there will annoy the hell out of anyone
• Balance gets worse as you level up. From level 35 and onwards, nothing makes sense anymore. Equipment affixes/suffixes become less and less useful, as many of them are static numbers, like +50 atk, when simply changing ONE item from tier 8 to tier 9 can give you a 100atk boost. Armor values are the only ones that seem to grow little by little as levels advance.
• Imagine Diablo 2 loot drops, but worse in just about everything - lower drop rates, unhelpful extra effects, less time .
• Most dungeons' mythic loot is no different from heroic loot and tier 8 instead of 9.
• The witch boss always spawns a pool in front of her, making it near impossible to beat her with melee characters. There are many other situations where melee characters get shafted by asshole design and almost none where they shine over the ranged characters.

The game was abandoned less than a week after the 1.0 release in May 2022. A 1.02 patch was promised in June but never delivered. During the early development, it was marketed as something inspired by Terraria. It seems that any Terraria influence outside collecting resources has all but evaporated.

I have more gripes, but the ones above are those that I think are the most annoying. Like I said, there are just so many "little things" that it builds up the annoyance into full frustration.

One thing that didn't make the list but is worth mentioning is the amount of translation errors in PTBR: there are lots of words that were left in english. I understand the economic reason for thinking in english first (selling in USD is 5x more profitable) but come the fuck on, the entire dev team is Brazilian.

I don't feel comfortable using a mouse and I have no interest in working on my mouse skills. I play all of my games with either a controller or a keyboard, and I'm looking for 3rd-person shooters I can play with a controller.

I'm mainly interested in action games. I'm OK with a world with gated areas a la metroidvanias/soulslikes, but I'm not interested in full-on open world or narrative-driven games.

Examples of 3rd-person shooters I enjoyed playing with a controller: Gungrave, Vanquish, and Evil West.

Examples of 3rd-person shooters I don't enjoy and have no interest in: Uncharted, The Last of Us, Red Dead Redemption, Dead Space, Control/Alan Wake, or GTA.

I mainly play on PC, Steam in particular, but I'll boot up emulators if the game is worth it.

Choice paralysis can hit you even if it's only about two things. In this case it's about two games that you will play for hundreds of hours.

I had “Horizon Zero Dawn” in my library for 3 years before I finally started a serious game and finished it this year. Currently replaying it again.

The successor is now on sale on Steam: €36.

I put “God of War” on my Steam wishlist after finishing “Horizon Zero Dawn” for the first time. I was looking for more open-world games of this kind, and it got recommended by fans.

It's now on sale on Steam: €20.

I can't play them both at the same time. And after playing one of them for 100 to 200 hours, the other will be on sale again.

What would you do? GoW, so that you don't stick in the same world for too long and have some variety in your escapism? Or HFW to see how the story continues without wasting any more time?

Would HFW disappoint me on my GTX 1070? Compared to HZD?

Hey all, Sorry if this is not a great magazine to post this. I'm looking for a nice cozy game (for a non-gamer!) to play for about an hour or so a day instead of doomscrolling. I like the idea of a game where I can make slow progress, though I don't tend to like the traditional RPG style. But something like a slow moving simulator or whatever could be great (for example, I really enjoy MiniMetro on mobile). Thoughts?

Assuming the equipment was also saved so you could still play the games, and every game in existence you don’t mention gets permanently destroyed, and no new games are ever to be made.

Inspired by a video by OutsideXbox from a few years ago, I thought it would be a fun idea to see what this community would choose. You can choose to be selfish and pick games you personally want to always play, or try to figure out what games would be best chosen for humanity to save for whatever reason. I’d also love to hear why you chose your games. Do they have a special meaning to you? I want to hear your stories.

I finished the main Crown of the Magister campaign and wanted to check out some of the custom ones while I ponder whether to create a new party for Palace of Ice or not.

I downloaded the top 20 or so custom campaigns from the workshop, but so far the first hour or so of the few I've tried haven't been super gripping. I know that's not much to judge them off, but it doesn't help me decide if they're worth continuing with.

Which ones get really good, in your opinion? I have the Unfinished Business mod for max level cap and more classes, but I'm not using the 6-man party option, which I know a few campaigns are tuned for.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/49151220

I wanna get into it! Again!

Grapple Dogs: Cosmic Canines is the follow-up to 2022's Grapple Dog. The story picks up where the first game ended, with protagonist Pablo being recruited to save the world using his excellent grappling skills. This time, we meet a new character, Luna, who is playable alongside Pablo.

The grappling hook-focused platformer gameplay is back as well, where your speed and agility depend on your ability to swing to build up momentum.

You might see the bright colours, high-resolution pixel art, and lively energy, then remark, "this is like those Flash games Nitrome used to make!" That's what I thought as well when I discovered the previous game in the series, Grapple Dog. It turns out that the main developer, Joseph Gribbin, used to work for Nitrome, so that makes sense!

Top dog theming

Grapple Dogs: Cosmic Canines is a little more serious in tone but is still overall a simple, light-hearted 2D platformer story. This time around, the story gets bigger and the stakes get higher. There are more high-resolution cuscenes, they're more elaborate, and they're sometimes even animated. Pablo joins the fight against a multiversal threat, right after the ending of the first game and an off-screen wardrobe update.

I appreciate the more imaginative level theming this game presents. The first game relied on safer concepts for level themes — you know, beach, ice, forest, those kinds of themes. The elemental abilities introduced in this game made me expect more of the same for Cosmic Canines, but that pleasantly turns out not to be the case. You get to visit places like a futuristic monkey world, a noir cat world, and a frog dictatorship world.

Instead of having only one of these settings for each chapter, Cosmic Canines goes for variety. This is a multiverse we're saving, after all! Each chapter features multiple worlds, which sometimes reoccur between chapters.

Hanging with Luna

The most obvious addition to this game is Luna, a new playable character and the deuteragonist of the story. She and Pablo begrudgingly meet after they both respond to the call to protect the multiverse. The game has you playing as both characters in an even split, with half of the levels for Pablo and half for Luna. Like Pablo, she is indeed a dog and has a grappling hook, but otherwise has different abilities. And also a gun.

Luna introduces shooting gameplay to the Grapple Dog formula, with free 360° aiming. I find her controls more complex than Pablo's because her gameplay involves aiming and shooting in addition to grappling. Her levels also have a greater focus on combat and precision platforming compared to Pablo's, which focus more on swinging and maintaining speed. It sometimes feels like she only grapples as a commitment to the title of the game.

Luna also marks the first time I've ever decided to play a game by alternating between a controller and keyboard/mouse! Pablo's controls are exactly what I was used to from the first game, so I stuck to playing as him with a controller. In contrast, I found platforming and aiming at the same time to be easier with a keyboard and mouse, so I use those when I play Luna's levels.

Introducing Luna as another protagonist gives the game the opportunity to have more character interactions that are more substantial. There wasn't too much for Pablo to talk about in the first game. We even get a bit of character development for both protagonists in an otherwise straightforward, light story.

Swing to this beat

The soundtrack of the first game was great and that continues to this game. We can thank Queenjazz for this, who returned to make the soundtrack for Cosmic Canines, this time accompanied by WangleLine and HYPHA. I'm fond of the funky, sample-heavy style, which reminds me of the soundtrack of Jet Set Radio.

I actually discovered the first game, Grapple Dog, through Queenjazz. I found her in the music credits of Hypnospace Outlaw, looked up what other music she's made, and saw the soundtrack of Grapple Dog there.

Sequel hooked

As a sequel, Grapple Dogs: Cosmic Canines grapples with the same kinds of things that challenge all sequels. In its case, rather than being just a pack of additional levels, it chooses to expand on the mechanics of the first game and ramp up the difficulty faster. However, it still has to devote teaching time for the players who didn't play the first game.

Compared to the first game, there's less of a focus on pure grappling hook platforming, like needing to build up really fast jumps and swings or testing your agility with tricky grapple point placements. Grappling is obviously still around and critical to the game, but the levels devote more of their "difficulty budgets" on challenging you with the newly introduced abilities. For example, Luna has a very long dash in the place of Pablo's ground pound. Her levels, then, have a lot of large gaps to cross or walls of hazards to dodge using that dash.

With this expanded story and scope, I see parallels with Portal 2's position as a sequel to Portal. Like with Portal 2, Cosmic Canines is a bigger adventure with more to do, but as a result, it loses some of the simplicity and purity of the first game. It does make callbacks to its history, with some mechanics from the first game reappearing, but each of those only reappear once. Overall, though, I don't see this as such a tragedy: there's more to enjoy in Cosmic Canines than in the first Grapple Dog. Nothing from the first game is really gone in the move to this one.

One thing I did notice as a Grapple Dog veteran is that this game feels easier overall. Time trial and bonus level requirements seem to be a lot more forgiving than the previous game. Additionally, you had only four hit points in the first game, but that's now upgradeable to eight, which lets you play a lot more recklessly. This doubled health is especially handy for getting fast times in the time trials. Why navigate around the spikes when you can just eat the damage and jump through to the other side in half the time? It was really only in the post-game levels where I felt the pressure to be careful with my health.

It's hard for me to tell if this game feels easier because I already had a lot of experience from the first game or because this game really is less difficult. The frist Grapple Dog did get some criticism for being too hard, so Cosmic Canines could have been designed in response to that.

Also, there's a level editor! I'm not much of a level designer, but it's cool that I can have even more Grapple Dog to play.

Finish line

Just completing the campaign doesn't take too long. A basic run will get you to the weak ending, which has a cliffhanger and some incomplete character development. If you want the good ending, though, you'll have to be more thorough in collecting items and getting good times in the campaign levels. That will unlock a series of post-game levels called the Trials of Egress. These levels are especially lengthy and difficult and will demand a deeper understanding of the game's mechanics.

And there's still more! There are secrets all over the game that you can only access by cleverly using game mechanics in ways the game otherwise never tests you on. You'll need to figure those out for 100% completion.

And yes, you can pet the dogs.

They just released the sequel, (sadly not up to its predecessor from what I gathered), and it's Halloween, so what better time to talk about this special vampire game?

It was the last game by Troika and they were creating a mix of RPG and Acton and an early version of open world with a lot of incredible side content. And it is precisely this optional content that fleshed out the world so much and made it feel more real. The action part was not exactly stellar, although it was kind of funny as a Nosferatu in the late game to simply be invisible for ever and just stealth takedown all the enemies. Boss fights did not go so easily in contrast... I would even say the main story is nothing to write home about, although with a fun twist. The side content is what I enjoyed immensely however. Because it didn't feel like the game was telling me: oh, go down that alley, it looks like there could be something with a big arrow. Instead I was simply put into the world and was free to explore it. And if I stumbled on something, that made the enjoyment that much higher, because I felt that exploration was rewarded.

It's great strength is also that it takes role playing serious and let's you commit to a certain character. Depending what vampire clan you belong to, your game experience can be very different. I chose the butt ugly Nosferatu, which meant I couldn't even be seen on the street by humans without them calling me a monster and attacking me. So i was forced to move in the sewer or go invisible. That made certain interactions much harder. But other Nosferatu NPCs were cool with me but aren't so friendly to normal pretty face vampires in contrast to how they treated me.

This game is set in the Vampire: the Masquerade setting of World of Darkness, which is normally a tabletop RPG. You do not need to know anything to enjoy the game. It contains a lot of explanation for new players to understand the world. For me it was also the entry point without any other knowledge before.

If you want to try it out: use the fan patch, it fixes bugs and adds some cut content.

So to those who played it: tell us some of your stories and what you liked about this game, to wake the interest of new players.

Just to make one thing clear from the start: this game is many things, but it is certainly not a Metroidvania in the tradition of the Castlevania series. The only nod in that direction is that in most levels there are some small hidden areas with collectables that you can only reach with later abilities. But that means you need to replay an otherwise fully linear level just to reach that small thing in the middle. That is a pretty bad design choice.

But with this caveat out of the way, so that you don't have false expectations, now to the good stuff and why I still recommend it:

It is a good game, if you look at it separated from its series. The art style and especially the music are of really high quality! The gameplay itself is entertaining and was for me a good mix of not too hard and not to easy.

Gameplay wise it is an action hack&slash in the style of God of War. That means it is mostly linear levels with boss fights at their end. The puzzles are just to break the stretches between fights but don't annoy. I enjoyed the combat and also most of the boss battles. The best fight in my mind isn't even the final boss, but rather the one directly before it. Because that fight feels like a knights duel with a very competent opponent similar to your own character where it's really about being able to utilise your combat abilities most effectively instead of a puzzle boss like the final boss is.

The problem is with how those levels are connected though. The story is sometimes a bit too forced and also disjointed for my liking. It strings together the levels and explains why you are doing certain things, but it still didn't flow nicely in my eyes. The DLC is even more forced and fast, where certain things happen at a breakneck speed. The development team had problems if I remember correctly, so the DLC had to come out fast. It ended on something that just screams': we didn't have money for the proper story, so here is the absolute quickest skeleton version of it. Sadly the result of that is the DLC just doesn't have a good story.

I still like it however due to the atmosphere of the game, which is simply wonderful. The loading screen to each mission has only spoken text, but the voice actor for the narration is from none other than Patrick Stewart. I didn't recognise his voice at first, but was simply wondering who has such a great narrating voice. After looking up who the narrator was, I wasn't surprised anymore that it was such high quality.

The music also helps carry the atmosphere and is something I highly recommend you check out, even if you don't play the game itself. The Orchestra is really used to its full potential here, producing not only bombastic songs, but also quite and solemn ones. After playing through the game I bought its soundtrack and still listen to it. It fits well to the theme of the level and what is happening in the game at the moment. In my opinion they utilised music very well in this game to enhance the atmosphere of the moment.

Last but not least, while art design is subjective, I really like Gothic spires and architecture in general, so the castle levels were my personal highlights. And especially the later levels are a feast for the eyes.

OneShot is similar to Undertale, in that the story is the most important part, while gameplay is just to give the player something to do, here even more so then in Undertale. In OneShot the player is however acknowledged from the first moment as somebody different from the protagonist. That would be Niko (who is most definitely not a cat!) but is referred by most in the game world as the messiah, because they carry the sun of this world and is supposed to bring light back to their world.

The sun is missing for a long while and thus most of the world is in ruin. Niko themselves comes from a different world though and wants to go home to their mom. And so you help navigate Niko through this world by solving puzzles and encouraging them to carry on. These puzzles sometimes cleverly make use of the fact that it is a game on a PC and has interesting metapuzzles. Which is one reason why I highly encourage to play it on a PC and not on a console. The fourth wall breaking stuff don't work as intuitive if they have to be faked.

In between you will meet a lot of NPCs on your way who need your help or will help you. All of them nice people, I don't think there is a single bad person in this game. Still it has a very melancholic feeling to it due to the end of the world looming on the horizon. And yet you will find a lot of beautiful places in this world, nicely portrayed in pixel art style. With the Solstice update released, the story is now fully completed. If you enjoyed Undertale for it's story and don't mind even less game play, then give this game a try, it's roughly 6h long.