Just finished playing The Swapper. That game is preeeeeetty goooood. There are a couple puzzles that I had to look up. One I was just missing a step I should have seen and the other I was actually doing it right but the margin for error was small enough that it makes it seem like the wrong solution.
Just finished playing The Swapper. That game is preeeeeetty goooood. There are a couple puzzles that I had to look up. One I was just missing a step I should have seen and the other I was actually doing it right but the margin for error was small enough that it makes it seem like the wrong solution.
I really enjoyed the music, visual look and environment generated by the game. I hope more developers look into making all attributes of their games as good as the base mechanic.
I finally wrapped up a bunch of the Steam games I was playing, and the next one up is Reus. I've only done the tutorials so far, but it's doing a good job of scratching this world-building/god-sim itch I had.
Oh and this seems like it's officially the end of my "play the entire steam library in alphabetical order" challenge that I laid down 2 years ago. I got all the way through 'E' and that's a lot further than I thought I would make it. Back to staring at a wall of 100 library games and forcing myself to make a decision on what to play next.
I need a service that looks through all the unplayed games in my Steam library and tells me which ones are any good. Especially after Humble Bundles leave me with games I've never heard of.
Been back on the 3DS primarily. I put a few hours into Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars. Picked it up in a discount bin (it was a launch title) because I remember hearing some glowing remarks on Penny Arcade about it being a hidden gem. It is not. Surprisingly, it's a top-down, squad-based tactics game which sounded really cool, and also had some neat mechanics, but ultimately was a slog. I put over four hours into it, which was already too much, getting through 2 of the 7 mission sets. It's simply a game that doesn't respect your time, and the optimal strategy is often the most boring one.
Azure Striker Gunvolt is a different story. I would place this a notch below Shovel Knight, but Gunvolt is still a solid game. It's absolutely an SNES-era game heavily inspired by Mega Man, but not a Mega Man ripoff at all. It does some really cool stuff that is better described by you watching a trailer.
The only knock is that getting through levels is very easy, and they expect the challenge to be in replaying levels for speedruns, score, or other achievements (which rewards you with material for a crafting system, generating new weapons and equipment). That's not my jam, although I spent maybe 30 min replaying some levels just to try it out. I still enjoyed checking out all of the great design work that went into Gunvolt as I breezed through the levels. Also, the bosses are great, and actually difficult at times! I died probably 2-3 times on each boss, and then 10+ times on the final boss before I mastered all of his patterns and took him down.
You do get a free copy of an NES-era "de-make" of Gunvolt if you buy the main game over the next 2-3 months. Not sure if it's worth it or not, as I haven't tried playing it yet, but better to get 2 games for $15 than 1.
I swear I got that final boss down to the last hit 4 times before I actually finished him off, completely fucking it up each time. A calamity for the ages.
By the time I got back to his last bit of health again, I had mastered all of the previous boss forms to the point of barely even getting touched, so I had my full special power bar charged. Said fuck this, threw three offensive powers at him and called it a day.
Been playing some more Zelda on 3DS (the inbetween worlds one). I think I need to go get more heart containers... or those crab critters for weapon upgrades...
Gunvolt is not as good as the original Megaman Zero series, but it is still enjoyable.
I just finished Steamworld Dig, it was a really cute game, although it's more suitable for the portable crowd. Currently waiting for Shadowrun: Dragonfall's directors cut to play next.
Tried the first level of Mighty Gunvolt this morning, playing as Gunvolt. It really does feel like Azure Striker, in that I beat the level with my yes closed, but then the boss was way harder. I am ashamed to say I did not beat him w/ 4 tries. Let's blame it on 5AM.
I am not that far in. I'm a level 8 Awoken Warlock. I've just started the story quests on the Moon. It's been a tough transition for me to play an FPS with a controller vs. mouse/keyboard. I still don't like it, but am improving. I had to change to a lower sensitivity to get better aim.
As for gameplay, I'm really enjoying it. If you've listened to the most recent FKftG, Dave and Joel sum up most of the things I'm digging about the game (with comparisons to Borderlands/Warframe/Mass Effects):
Halo combat with RPG elements.Lack of loot grind, along with feeling the need to constantly upgrade weapons. You can buy new gear, but you get better rewards from quests from what I've seen. It seems for most part that currency is for giving you different looking emblems. There is still grinding with the doing patrols. You don't have to do them or need to do them, but it's there.Vacuum pants to where the occasional drop of gear/weapons along with ammo gets automatically put in your inventory so you don't have to worry about looking at an item on the group and having to press a button to pick it up.Not having to go to a vendor to get rid of older weapons/gear. Just hold a button and turns into money (glimmer).Ability upgrade tree. You keep upgrading your abilities you unlock as you level, and they get cooler with each upgrade.Smarter AI with the enemies. They actually are smarter with hiding behind cover and they are vary.Speeders. I feel like a I'm in Return of the Jedi with those speeders.Actually have to aim throwing grenades. In BL2, I just throw grenades knowing it will pretty much hurt people and kill them. In Destiny, if I don't arch it right it will fall short.The BGM during instances. The one during The Last Array was pretty intense.
I still enjoy Borderlands, in spite of its many flaws. It has a lot of bad things that I don't mind and I'm ok with that.
Jeremy doesn't like we can't chat when we are in the city/The Tower. I told him that's what I love about the game. I don't really have to interact with other players and don't have to see the stupid crap people chat about. The only time I actually work with others are with the random public events that calls out to any players in the area to work to kill some random boss/group that comes down.
I am interested with doing online group play, however I know I will be horrible in pvp. I am not good on PC, so on console I would probably be even worse. It would be cool to see the Crucible area at least. There are also group Raids and Strikes that I can try to participate in.
Graphics are wonderful. It was odd in regards to the initial set up, the game was asking me to put it on the lowest brightness and everything was so dark. I changed it to brighter settings and looks better.
My only current grip is the lack of maps. I can't remember the terrain for the life of me or if I was in a certain area. Also the mini-map to direct you where enemies are. I wouldn't mind a more precise map like Borderlands to show their exact location. It probably makes it easier, but I would like that option. Other than that, it's been good.
I am rotating through my three characters with my Warlock at level 10, Titan at level 8, and Hunter at level 3.
One thing I do not like is that you can't trade items between players. You can hand down weapons to your other characters but armor is class specific and I HATE HATE HATE converting awesome armor into glimmer because it is too low level. At least I can hand down awesome weapons to my lower level characters.
In fact it appears that what rarity on weapons does in game turns is lower the level requirement. So an uncommon level 4 gun is equal to a level 8 common gun.
Strikes and Crucible are. Crucible is the PvP and plays out sorta like a Halo match. Strikes have matchmaking but the Raids (I don't think they're actually available until this Tuesday) require you to find a group to play with and have high level gear. They also require 6 people. They purportedly don't give you matchmaking because you need to figure out what to do a little bit like WoW Raids used to be.
I would have preferred if your Steam list of friends was transferred across and you could invite or join through the Steam infrastructure but you still need to use a Quake Live account.
The option of starting with incredibly powerful weapons seems to be a weird choice, there is less emphasis on grabbing up armour and extra health when someone can spawn in with a rocket launcher, rail gun or even lightning gun.
On top of this, there is a slow health regeneration plus an auto strafe jump. There are also indicators as to when items spawn.
With all this in mind if you played Quake 3 when it first came out and are moderately okay at twitch shooters, you can easily top the leader board every game. Kids these days can't seem to dodge rockets.
Destiny continues to take up my free time when I get home. I'm finally level 20 and haven't completed the Strikes on Venus. While I'm higher level for the area, the enemies hit hard. I have to take cover.
I really like how they are making world events such as this week is the Queen's Bounty to earn favor/rep. Too bad most of the bounties require PvP and goals that I will never attain. Wish there were most PvE focused ones.
I'm noticing more loots drops of guns, and I'm getting more annoyed with that. I don't want to have to compare stuff. I want what to use what I'm currently using and eventually get a new upgrade in a level or so.
Now that I'm level 20, it's the first level cap. I have to now get armor with a "Light" attribute to level up higher. Had no idea that was part of the game until the game told me. Now, I have to read up on it and other things. I guess that's ok because I was reading more about the lore of the game along with each race/factions.
Yeah I got my Pac Man CE DX+ on last night. I enjoyed playing that game on my Lumia when I had it, but procrastinated buying it on Steam. I took one stab at every challenge on the Championship II map, and my scores are in "not too shabby, nothing to brag about" territory. Now to decide whether I want to put the time in, sharpen that stick, and chase friends on the leaderboard. At a minimum I am going to check out other maps.
Yeah I got my Pac Man CE DX+ on last night. I enjoyed playing that game on my Lumia when I had it, but procrastinated buying it on Steam. I took one stab at every challenge on the Championship II map, and my scores are in "not too shabby, nothing to brag about" territory. Now to decide whether I want to put the time in, sharpen that stick, and chase friends on the leaderboard. At a minimum I am going to check out other maps.
If you look at the rankings you will see that most people simply haven't even completed every mode on every map. For example Your rank on Championship II - Score Attack 5 minutes might be
hundreds/tens of thousands
but your rank on Dungeon Time Trial might be
hundreds/a thousand and change
You can achieve a very high overall ranking just from completing every map on every mode.
Yeah I was looking at just a few specific modes, not the overall. After one try, I peeked at my scores for 5min and 10min score challenges, and among 9 or so friends, I was in 4th place on both. Probably sitting in the valley between those who attempted to improve upon their scores and those who also just tried it once.
And I am definitely not in the hundreds on anything. That is Scott territory. I think my best public ranking was 10,000 out of 160,000 and I don't even remember what mode that was. It might have been one of those higher-level roll-up scores.
Yeah I was looking at just a few specific modes, not the overall. After one try, I peeked at my scores for 5min and 10min score challenges, and among 9 or so friends, I was in 4th place on both. Probably sitting in the valley between those who attempted to improve upon their scores and those who also just tried it once.
And I am definitely not in the hundreds on anything. That is Scott territory. I think my best public ranking was 10,000 out of 160,000 and I don't even remember what mode that was. It might have been one of those higher-level roll-up scores.
I did a tutorial for friends on a recent trip. Might have to do it again for the Internets.
I've been playing a lot of Smallworld 2 since I got it in the Humble Bundle. I like it a lot, but now I need to convince my friends to get it so I can play against people other than AIs.
Small World 2 was so fucked up when it first debuted. A strong online player crowd, but the app lacked such basic features as a turn timer, or the ability for AI to step in should someone drop out of a game (these games just crashed).
They released Version 2.5, fixing damn near everything. But it was too late, and now there are no players in the lobby. They waited too long, and now their candy is gone.
Given its Humble Bundle status, I'll have to peek back in and see if there are more players now.
Small World 2 was so fucked up when it first debuted. A strong online player crowd, but the app lacked such basic features as a turn timer, or the ability for AI to step in should someone drop out of a game (these games just crashed).
They released Version 2.5, fixing damn near everything. But it was too late, and now there are no players in the lobby. They waited too long, and now their candy is gone.
Given its Humble Bundle status, I'll have to peek back in and see if there are more players now.
Then the Steam version was an incredibly poor port, a bunch of people bought it and all these small things had been ignored, including being able to play it in full screen.
Comments
Oh and this seems like it's officially the end of my "play the entire steam library in alphabetical order" challenge that I laid down 2 years ago. I got all the way through 'E' and that's a lot further than I thought I would make it. Back to staring at a wall of 100 library games and forcing myself to make a decision on what to play next.
Azure Striker Gunvolt is a different story. I would place this a notch below Shovel Knight, but Gunvolt is still a solid game. It's absolutely an SNES-era game heavily inspired by Mega Man, but not a Mega Man ripoff at all. It does some really cool stuff that is better described by you watching a trailer.
The only knock is that getting through levels is very easy, and they expect the challenge to be in replaying levels for speedruns, score, or other achievements (which rewards you with material for a crafting system, generating new weapons and equipment). That's not my jam, although I spent maybe 30 min replaying some levels just to try it out. I still enjoyed checking out all of the great design work that went into Gunvolt as I breezed through the levels. Also, the bosses are great, and actually difficult at times! I died probably 2-3 times on each boss, and then 10+ times on the final boss before I mastered all of his patterns and took him down.
You do get a free copy of an NES-era "de-make" of Gunvolt if you buy the main game over the next 2-3 months. Not sure if it's worth it or not, as I haven't tried playing it yet, but better to get 2 games for $15 than 1.
By the time I got back to his last bit of health again, I had mastered all of the previous boss forms to the point of barely even getting touched, so I had my full special power bar charged. Said fuck this, threw three offensive powers at him and called it a day.
I just finished Steamworld Dig, it was a really cute game, although it's more suitable for the portable crowd. Currently waiting for Shadowrun: Dragonfall's directors cut to play next.
I am not that far in. I'm a level 8 Awoken Warlock. I've just started the story quests on the Moon. It's been a tough transition for me to play an FPS with a controller vs. mouse/keyboard. I still don't like it, but am improving. I had to change to a lower sensitivity to get better aim.
As for gameplay, I'm really enjoying it. If you've listened to the most recent FKftG, Dave and Joel sum up most of the things I'm digging about the game (with comparisons to Borderlands/Warframe/Mass Effects):
Halo combat with RPG elements.
Lack of loot grind, along with feeling the need to constantly upgrade weapons. You can buy new gear, but you get better rewards from quests from what I've seen. It seems for most part that currency is for giving you different looking emblems. There is still grinding with the doing patrols. You don't have to do them or need to do them, but it's there.
Vacuum pants to where the occasional drop of gear/weapons along with ammo gets automatically put in your inventory so you don't have to worry about looking at an item on the group and having to press a button to pick it up.
Not having to go to a vendor to get rid of older weapons/gear. Just hold a button and turns into money (glimmer).
Ability upgrade tree. You keep upgrading your abilities you unlock as you level, and they get cooler with each upgrade.
Smarter AI with the enemies. They actually are smarter with hiding behind cover and they are vary.
Speeders. I feel like a I'm in Return of the Jedi with those speeders.
Actually have to aim throwing grenades. In BL2, I just throw grenades knowing it will pretty much hurt people and kill them. In Destiny, if I don't arch it right it will fall short.
The BGM during instances. The one during The Last Array was pretty intense.
I still enjoy Borderlands, in spite of its many flaws. It has a lot of bad things that I don't mind and I'm ok with that.Jeremy doesn't like we can't chat when we are in the city/The Tower. I told him that's what I love about the game. I don't really have to interact with other players and don't have to see the stupid crap people chat about. The only time I actually work with others are with the random public events that calls out to any players in the area to work to kill some random boss/group that comes down.
I am interested with doing online group play, however I know I will be horrible in pvp. I am not good on PC, so on console I would probably be even worse. It would be cool to see the Crucible area at least. There are also group Raids and Strikes that I can try to participate in.
Graphics are wonderful. It was odd in regards to the initial set up, the game was asking me to put it on the lowest brightness and everything was so dark. I changed it to brighter settings and looks better.
My only current grip is the lack of maps. I can't remember the terrain for the life of me or if I was in a certain area. Also the mini-map to direct you where enemies are. I wouldn't mind a more precise map like Borderlands to show their exact location. It probably makes it easier, but I would like that option. Other than that, it's been good.
I am rotating through my three characters with my Warlock at level 10, Titan at level 8, and Hunter at level 3.
One thing I do not like is that you can't trade items between players. You can hand down weapons to your other characters but armor is class specific and I HATE HATE HATE converting awesome armor into glimmer because it is too low level. At least I can hand down awesome weapons to my lower level characters.
In fact it appears that what rarity on weapons does in game turns is lower the level requirement. So an uncommon level 4 gun is equal to a level 8 common gun.
Has anyone played in Strikes, Raids, or in Crucible? I think I'll get a one month PS+ to check it out. I imagine it's like normal MMO online PUGs.
I would have preferred if your Steam list of friends was transferred across and you could invite or join through the Steam infrastructure but you still need to use a Quake Live account.
The option of starting with incredibly powerful weapons seems to be a weird choice, there is less emphasis on grabbing up armour and extra health when someone can spawn in with a rocket launcher, rail gun or even lightning gun.
On top of this, there is a slow health regeneration plus an auto strafe jump. There are also indicators as to when items spawn.
With all this in mind if you played Quake 3 when it first came out and are moderately okay at twitch shooters, you can easily top the leader board every game. Kids these days can't seem to dodge rockets.
Still fun if you want to kill some time.
I really like how they are making world events such as this week is the Queen's Bounty to earn favor/rep. Too bad most of the bounties require PvP and goals that I will never attain. Wish there were most PvE focused ones.
I'm noticing more loots drops of guns, and I'm getting more annoyed with that. I don't want to have to compare stuff. I want what to use what I'm currently using and eventually get a new upgrade in a level or so.
Now that I'm level 20, it's the first level cap. I have to now get armor with a "Light" attribute to level up higher. Had no idea that was part of the game until the game told me. Now, I have to read up on it and other things. I guess that's ok because I was reading more about the lore of the game along with each race/factions.
hundreds/tens of thousands
but your rank on Dungeon Time Trial might be
hundreds/a thousand and change
You can achieve a very high overall ranking just from completing every map on every mode.
And I am definitely not in the hundreds on anything. That is Scott territory. I think my best public ranking was 10,000 out of 160,000 and I don't even remember what mode that was. It might have been one of those higher-level roll-up scores.
They released Version 2.5, fixing damn near everything. But it was too late, and now there are no players in the lobby. They waited too long, and now their candy is gone.
Given its Humble Bundle status, I'll have to peek back in and see if there are more players now.
I have it but hardly ever play it.