The Video Game Thread
- Thread starter James Stevenson
- Start date
I guess the last boss of Star Allies is pretty epic. I haven't played it myself, but I love the whole "mirror lake under the night sky" aesthetic. Ignoring the time I dropped Epic Yarn, the last time I played through a Kirby game since they were on the Nintendo DS I think, and those games didn't really offer the same in terms of visual impact.
landofMordor
Administrator
Has anybody here ever beaten the boss in Faster Than Light (2012 sci-fi roguelike, kinda like if Dark Souls's gameplay had Among Us's spaceship and cute characters)? I'm like 50 hours in and still haven't even come close (well, that's not true, I came close twice but not that close). I'm looking for any quality spikey YouTubers or forums, and/or your biggest level-up moments.
I've beaten the rebel flagship several times. If you'd like we can meet over discord and I can walk you through a good run at some point once I'm out of school! Otherwise, I can send you some Youtube runs. I haven't been active with the FTL community for a bit so I would have to find the relevant YouTubers I used to watch but thee is some good information.
I know Dunkey liked the new Kirby game.
I'm not usually one for single-player non-roguelikes, but I quite loved Tunic. What a cool little world they built, definitely scratches that Link to the Past itch.
I've beaten it. But that was like 8 years ago or something.
Speaking of single-player non-roguelikes*, I recently finished The Outer Wilds (not to be confused with The Outer Worlds aka Crappy Fallout Nostalgia Wank In Space) and it ticked all the boxes for a space fan like me, kind of like a hybrid of Baby's First Kerbal Space Program and Myst. It's a refreshing indie game in that it's not just a walking simulator, and adding that extra bit of tension does wonders for my engagement with the story. It's short enough (maybe ten hours?) that it doesn't overstay its welcome, for those of us with limited gaming time, but everything is perfectly fleshed out for that length. Overall, it's my favorite thing I've played in multiple years and I think it's just fantastic, enough that I want to gush about it unprompted online.
*kinda. The whole premise is that the sun explodes every 22 minutes, so everything resets after that time except your knowledge, so I guess it is kind of like a hardcore roguelike? But very different in many ways, especially with how non-infinite its replay value is.
*kinda. The whole premise is that the sun explodes every 22 minutes, so everything resets after that time except your knowledge, so I guess it is kind of like a hardcore roguelike? But very different in many ways, especially with how non-infinite its replay value is.
Now that I think about it, I remember lots of wins via boarding parties. Disable some key part of the enemy ship and send in the clowns.
landofMordor
Administrator
Thanks for the FTL advice, y'all. I found a couple deece YT videos and have already picked up some good tips and patterns that I have always been too low-level focused to observe before. @TrainmasterGT , I'll take you up on that sometime this summer 
But... I've offered you Spire coaching like 12 times.Thanks for the FTL advice, y'all. I found a couple deece YT videos and have already picked up some good tips and patterns that I have always been too low-level focused to observe before. @TrainmasterGT , I'll take you up on that sometime this summer
I want to play Tunic, I just don't want to play games on my computer so I'm kind of hoping for a Switch release.
landofMordor
Administrator
Haha I’ll take you up on that, too, but I mostly play spire at like 0400 your time
Yeah, I played it on the Xbox. It was one of those surprising Game Pass additions. I'm sure it'll get ported. I will say though, technically the game seemed very unoptimized. Usually loading is super snappy on the Series X, but the load time after dying was annoyingly long for this one.
landofMordor
Administrator
OK good news, I just beat the boss in FTL for the first time! Unlocked a Mantis ship and am trying it out (quickly learned that it is horribly, horribly vulnerable to fire)
You gotta get a Rock crewmate!
It's 100% not a roguelike¹.
It lacks the all-important emphasis on randomness-driven system mastery, and instead focuses on... scenario mastery? I think that's the best way to phrase it? Basically, it gives you a big list of things you need to accomplish within its limited timeframe, and your different "runs" are all about learning what works, what doesn't, and what your biggest priorities are.
I think the best comparison is that Outer Wilds is like learning to speedrun a game, except without such a total focus on going fast. You spend your first "runs" getting used to the game, spend the following loops figuring out your route, and eventually do everything within the time limit. I'm honestly a little sad that there aren't more games that do something similar — most time-loop-y games I can think of are either linear-ish adventure games that incorporate time travel into their plot or are split into levels that you loop through individually. I think Prey: Mooncrash is literally the only other game I can think of that actually goes for a game-length time loop,
¹ People calling things that aren't roguelikes roguelikes is one of my pet peeves. Seriously, it's gotten to the point where it's like if we kept the term "Doom Clone" and applied it to literally every game with a first-person perspective.
I have finally finished my playthrough of Elden Ring. Took my time with it after that initial launch weekend and spent a lot of time just finishing up as many side quests as I could while advancing through the story. Clocked about 165ish hours by the end. This was simply the best game I've ever played.
Agreed!
Haha, I was wondering if you were going to call me out on this when I wrote it.
Sorry, it's like the one thing I'll yell at someone on the internet over. I have opinions about roguelikes, mostly as a result of how incredibly lazy most mainstream applications of procedural generation have been. If every game that people were saying had "roguelike elements" approached their procgen with a fraction of the rigor that Ultima Ratio Regum does, I'd have far fewer complaints.
(I will admit that that's a really high bar to clear...)
True...
I'm just a little salty that "we made procedurally-generated levels for our game, because we couldn't afford to hand-craft everything" has turned into a selling point, especially since it feels like that's the only thing that anyone ever uses procgen for (I know that's not literally true, but that's what it feels like).
EDIT: Like, I was just thinking earlier today that you could probably make an engine that spits out the structure for a random Pokemon game without too much hassle, because the overall structure is pretty linear and each gym is basically its own self-contained thing.
I'm just a little salty that "we made procedurally-generated levels for our game, because we couldn't afford to hand-craft everything" has turned into a selling point, especially since it feels like that's the only thing that anyone ever uses procgen for (I know that's not literally true, but that's what it feels like).
EDIT: Like, I was just thinking earlier today that you could probably make an engine that spits out the structure for a random Pokemon game without too much hassle, because the overall structure is pretty linear and each gym is basically its own self-contained thing.
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I like procedural generation if its done decently; I'm not a fan of how often it's tied to permadeath. I'd like to play my unique-to-me world and be able to save and try again etc. The two concepts just seem to go hand in hand very often for some reason. I guess because it's trickier to have a flushed out story, its common to replace that with systems mastery gameplay. But I don't have enough time to master their system, so I usually just give up after dying on floor 2 a couple (dozen) times.
would anyone have any interest in playtesting a custom card battle game over untap.in? i made one that’s an homage to a very old, very dead anime-style tactical card duel game and am working on uploading all my card images to untap for goofing around with it.
