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Mnemoidian

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Games I played 2017

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  • Played Overcooked in a group of 3. And as much as I really like it - I feel that "star based progression" rarely works for me. We wound up needing to replay pretty much every level to get perfect scores to be able to progress, and after a while we noticed that we weren't reallly having fun anymore - 3 players seemed to be a bit undbalanced on some levels...

  • Is it good? No. It's Drawful, still.

    Heeeeeeey....

    Anyway, good game.

  • Pretty much all of these games are pretty average, but Tee.K.O. is amazing!

  • Don't start the show with a showstopper? NOT 2017! Finally installed Revive and played Superhot VR.

    ... and again, Superhot is SUPER. HOT. SUPER. HOT.

    ... It's really good.

  • Finally got around to playing this. I remember being very disappointed that it wasn't another "dig" game - because I really liked that, and while this is good - it's not AS good.

    Oh well!

    2 years later: It's good, but I still kind of wanted another Steamworld Dig.

  • Cool game. But turned out to be more rogue-like/lite than I bargained for. Really like the game and the overall concept, but the "runs" concept is kind of turning me off the game.

  • On the one hand - this is a great Open-world game. On the other hand, it's not a revolution in game design - it's more lightning in a bottle... while other developers will be able to take parts of it, and refine existing concepts.

    But it's fun, it's different from other current open world games. But with a couple of weeks of perspective, I've grown a bit cold on the game - it's very good, but not a classic.

    Largely because the game falls apart in the same place almost all other open-world games struggle: the story. While I like the dungeons, I think that all of the boss fights in the game are bad. Especially the Ganon one.

    I understand why they included weapon durability - it drives you to try out all weapons. But the way it works, it becomes very grating.

    Cooking... barely works.

    On the positive side, I really like climbing and flying. They may be the best realized traversal mechanics I've seen in openworld games so far - to the point where Horses feels entirely superfluous.

  • Gameplay matched to the music can make most games pretty good - but Crypt of the Necrodancer remains a great Roguelike/lite.

    Expansion (AMPLIFIED) is also good!

  • Very, very, very dissappointed.

    As much as I think people are overreacting, it's not as bad as people make it out to be. In fact, I'd say that it's on par with Mass Effect (1) in many facets.

    Just how Mass Effect 1 had a terrible inventory system, poor combat - but strong story, setting and characters... Mass Effect Andromeda has a strong setting, strong combat, better inventory than ME1, but characters that don't quite bloom the same way some of the ME1 does - but I still found Cora, Jaal, Nakmor Drack, Peebee and Vetra to be good characters. Lexi, Suvi, Gil and Kallo are pretty interesting as well - only character I didn't like was Liam.

    One place where Andromeda really falls down is in enemy design. In my opinion, Mass Effect 3 is a study in amazing enemy design - every enemy has a purpose - and will force you to change your strategy to survive and defeat it.

    For the Reapers; the Ravagers force you into cover, while the Husks drive you out of cover. Brutes forces you to keep moving, as does Banshees, who also divides your attention.... and so on. Meanwhile, I don't think any of the enemies in Andromeda are memorable, and I don't remember them pushing me around the battlefield in a similar way to ME3 at all.

    The only exception to this is the Architect - which is the best designed enemy in the game, but is suffering it's own set of problems.

    Overall, it's a decent game, but you should probably play Nier: Automata instead...

  • I don't know how to talk about Nier: Automata.

    I knew some things coming into the game, but I was still surprised at the design choices presented. Nier: Automata is brave in experimenting with mechanics and themes that are rarely handled with this level of grace and subtlety (at first) - while also having a clear escalation in everything it does.

    There's a lot of story telling in the game mechanics of the game, like how 9S is weaker, but has access to a super-powerful hacking ability. How A2 and 2B fight with subtle differences.

    And those ends. I didn't think E would get me, but it did.

    I can see myself talking about this game for the years to come, and I kind of wish that I had gotten onboard with the series sooner.

    Biggest dissappointment is that I haven't been able to sell more people on trying it.

  • I want to like Flinthook... I wanted it to be a new Rogue Legacy. But as good as the grapplehooking is, the levels aren't built for zipping around (or it's too hard to get to the point where I can do it), and I've just kind of bounced off of this.

    Another of my big complaints is that while you chose which ship you want to assault each round - the modifiers weren't phrased clear enough, and the effects of them are mostly not strong enough where you can tell a diference.

    Cool setting, cool idea, bit meh implementation.

  • Hotline Miami featuring Nightcrawler? Perfect description and plays almost exactly like you want it to.

    Only way this would be better was if the game was a few stages longer (challenge levels!?) and/or you could skip dialog/cutscenes and restart levels easily.

    Beyond that, very cool game.

  • Feels a bit like a cross between a clicker and a football manager.

    Cool aesthetics, interesting concept... not my thing.

  • Cool game mechanic, but the story didn't work that well on me.

  • Prey has a really strong start, through a pretty strong early middle. And a pretty ok ending.

    It really sags in the late-middle, leading into the end though.

    There are some cool things going on here, and I do appreciate the amount of thinking the game made me do about Mimics. It's almost a shame that the game gives you an easy-out from the mimics so early... but then again, without that, I think the Mimics would've gotten very one-note. So maybe it's not a problem?

    I did find it curious that others are also calling it "More System Shock than Bioshock" - and atleast for me, that's more about tone than it is about setting.

    To me, System Shock has a darker tone, and despite everything, it has a more existential, sombre tone than the Bioshocks - which are also exploring existentialism, but there's often some sort of spark of life to them, something that refuses to die.

    Prey is a lot more about asking you why you bother going on - just give in, it would be so much easier... ?

    But maybe I'm projecting.

  • Best clicker I've tried in some time.

    I like trippy things, and Spaceplan goes some trippy places. So that's pretty cool.

  • You know what? A lot of bad things seem to have been said about this game and it's cast.

    Personally, I decided to give it a go after it was added to the Origin Access Vault - and I found the cast to be... surprisingly lovable. They're goofy cartoons of people - and there's this weird way they talk to the camera/player that's really weird.

    But... they really lean into their weird version of reality. A world where Monster seem to be the most common beverage.

    It's no Underground, but it's pretty good!

  • "Diablo Clone" kind of sells PoE short.

    It's really good, though it appears to be largely built around a marketplace that largely has been built by the community.

    A marketplace that is "kind of" supported by the developer, but not really - meaning that there's some tools for the community to make the selling of items in the game easier, but not none for making buying items simple (ie: no auction house).

    As an Action RPG, it's on par with Diablo 3, potentially with even more variables. I think that so far, I am more fond of the Diablo 3 mechanics, but I'm expecting that I will give PoE another go, what with Fall of Oriath releasing in August.

  • Plays like another Korean Action RPG MMO.

    It's fine. Has some cool ideas, but it's pretty bland. Made me think that I should give The Secret World another run.

  • It never really dawned on me that it was "Basketball", but I guess that's accurate.

    For some reason, I've been disappointed with both Pyre and Transistor (though, my memory of Transistor is now very positive?) now, but am still hyped for whatever Supergiant does next.

    (Spoilers)

    Generally, I think Pyre played great, and that the characters were really good. Some of the game mechanics are kind of in conflict with itself - for instance with you only allowed to get rid of characters you use a lot.

    There's also a lot of mechanics that are never explained, leaving you to guess what they expect from you - such as the endgame mechanic.

    Honestly, I think the game felt a bit "cheap" compared to the previous Supergiant games - though game-mechanically, this was probably my favorite.

    Another thing that I was missing from the game, compared to the previous games - was a great Ashley Barret song. I know she's featured on the soundtrack, but there's no song as memorable as Build a Wall or Become One.

    And yeah, I understand that it's a bit funny to expect something that specific from Supergiant.

    But isn't that also a compliment towards Supergiant? That I have such high expectations on their games?

    Anyway...

  • Played another round of multiplayer Astroneer. Turns out not a whole lot had changed since January.

    Still instable multiplayer, though synchronization seems to have improved.

    Still can't tell if this is a shallow game that pretends to have depth or a game with depth that is just hard to find.

    Will probably give it another go in another 6 months or so.

  • Great in Co-op, pretty thin in single player...

    Played mostly co-op. Bunch of really dumb hijinx!

  • Some of these games are ok, but feels like one of the weakest jackbox party packs so far.

    Some feel straight up uncomfortable to play even...

  • Bit odd. I was really hyped for Tacoma - but it wound up pretty much swinging and missing for me.

    It's charming and does what it does well enough... just, I don't know, didn't do much for me?

  • I've been wanting a Metroidvania for a while - Hollow Knight was pretty much exactly what I was looking for.

    If there's one complaint I have against the game, it's that it doesn't breadcrumb you in the right direction very much - and I wound up spending more than 20 hours in the game, largely just running back and forth between different areas I knew I hadn't explored yet (by looking at the map), trying to find an area I could explore.

    This was hugely time wasting... and past the 12th to 15th hour somewhere, I started feeling very bored with the game, and feeling impatient about getting to the end of the game.

    Ultimately, the story is a big vague, but fine. It's a decent Metroidvania, with some pretty fun abilities.

  • So. This is difficult to talk about.

    On the one hand, I feel like this game pushes a lot of game development forwards quite a lot. Storytelling, Mental health, Binaural audio, etc.

    On the other hand, the game mechanics themselves are utterly mediocre and repetitive.

    There are effectively 2 game mechanics in the game: Combat and Puzzles. Combat consists of throwing random assortments of about 6 types of enemies in increasing groups.

    Most of the time, the remaining enemies will just stand there, waiting for you to turn your back.

    These enemies are in theory fine from a variety point of view.

    It just happens so often - and in such a predictable way. Much like cover shooters of a certain age had waist-high walls in every combat area, Hellblade has circular arenas. Everywhere.

    The second game mechanic is the puzzles. Effectively, you go to a thing, it tells you "Hey, do a photohunt for these perspective puzzles! It'll be great!" and you roam around for a while, until the game tells you "Ok! You're close!"

    These happens dozens of times during the eight hours of the game as well. It's almost as tedious as the combat becomes.

    Arguably, the permadeath is the third mechanic - but it feels kind of tacked on. I see where it comes from, I see why they did it. It's an elegant solution to their story.

    But I absolutely hate it.

    I died 3 (4?) times during the game, 2 of those times was a result of the game breaking - Senua would either become immobile or get stuck in a wall in a sequence where not being able to move was a death sentence.

    This resulted in me reaching near the end of the game with no margin to the poorly described failstate of "The story ends when the rot reaches Senua's Head". And her head was very clearly being affected by the end of the game. I also noticed that the game would adjust the mount of rot on her arm at some parts of the game... giving me little feadback about how close I was to the fail state.

    So, basically, I reached the game with a mix of Boredom and Annoyance, as much as I was interested in seeing what would happen to Senua.

    ... and then the game ends the way it does.

    At the same time, Senua's story is intriguing. So it's frustrating that the game is the way it is. It feels so much like a game with troubled development that went made a number of choices that they were not able to back away from.

  • It's hard to defend Sniper Elite.

    It's literally a game that does one thing - X-ray kills.

    But it does it so good.

    (oh, the second thing is Cooperative play. Xray kills + Coop = Glory!)

    Some great humor regarding the Arcadia (poorly pronounced Orchidea) and how poorly the story was communicated in the final act.

    But, hey, we had a ton of fun. So, eh?

  • War of the Chosen specifically.

    This expansion is weird. I feel like one of the problem I had with the base game was that it's too busy - it takes the freedom away from you, forcing you to play the game more like the game wants you to play it, and despite appreciate the developers trying something new, I felt like it didn't really work for me.

    So it's weird that what DID work for me was adding more systems on top of the base game - and in many ways, even more challenges.

    But, on the other hand, not only is War of the Chosen adding the chosen, and some new challenging missions and enemies. The addition of the new skill system works pretty well (except when it doesn't, but more on that later), increasing the power of each soldier by quite a significant degree - as does the resistance order system, which adds even more power to the soldiers by giving the soldiers sent out even more buffs.

    Add in the Alien rulers DLC, and the items you receive from there, and some of your soldiers will end up being monsters. Several of my top soldiers wound up with well over a hundred kills over the campaign, with aim rarely dipping below 85%, dodge in the 60s and significantly increased movement range. She was a literal monster - often far scarier than most of the aliens.

    Countering this is a system that I actually felt worked surprisingly well - the stamina bar. It really forces you to move out of your comfort zone, creating a much larger group of soldiers (I wound up with not only a A team and B team, but also a C and parts of a D team)... and I quite enjoyed the larger roster (and I felt it works better than the Long War system).

    But, for all of the good, there are some less positive and negative parts as well.

    Most of the additions in War of the Chosen are not properly integrated into the campaign - despite the introduction of many of the new systems giving the indication that they are well-integrated.

    For instance, the new factions initially felt very well produced (and don't get me wrong, they are all very interesting - the Reapers are probably the ones that change up gameplay the most - though all 3 factions seem like specialized facets of the Ranger class (with the Templars focusing on the Melee/Reaper part of the ranger, the Reapers the concealment parts of Rangers - and Skirmishers being a mix of the Ranged combat elements and melee) - but the communications you get from the faction leaders after certain missions are animated but not voiced - which I found very jarring.

    The "new" skill system - which works quite well with the new Classes (again: Reaper, Skirmisher, Templar) - and are very interesting with the other classes is tacked on, on top of the old system in a rather annoying fashion. I don't have any issues with you needing to build the training center to be able to access the additional skills for all your other soldiers that the new system provides you. But, the new system to only be accessible through the actual Training Center is very bad design, as it means that the normal case of you manipulating your soldiers (when you are sending them on missions) - still presents you with the old system, which does not allow you to see or spent the new Ability Points - for that, you need to back out of the mission/team setup screen, find the training center ijn the Avenger, do whatever you wanted -> go back to the GeoScape and then open the mission again.

    Is it a dealbreaker? No. But it's very annoying to have to be forced to do this whenever you want to decide which soldiers you want to focus on, or what abilities you will be able to unlock... it's just really tedious and adds friction.

    Then there's the Chosen. They do add a menacing layer to the game... but except for the Nightmaiden (melee/teleporter), I never really felt like they were a real threat.

    The Nightmaiden? I had a nightmare defeating her. Taking on the Chosen Stonghold she held was a real nightmare (potentially because I either waited too long, or didn't wait for Plasma weaponry).

    The other 2? I don't think the Hunter damaged me, and the Warlock spawned about a dozen zombies before I did the mission to take him out.

    On top of that, I found most of the weapon rewards to be rather underwhelming - they were just heavily modded versions of the basic plasma weapons - and I woound up not even using the Hunter's rifle - as it was actually worse than the state my Plasma sniper rifles were in with mods, largely because it doesn't have an expanded magasine, which is something that I really like (especially for classes that can take many overwatch actions, I feel that the magasine size is probably the best weapon modification.

    Also, regarding the Chosen - I was kind of sold on them "being like the Nemesis system from Shadow of Mordor" - but I never really felt that way. Sure, they were menacing and communicated. But they never really evolved in my game (sure, they got some new abilities and resistences, but it never really changed much...)

    But maybe that changes a lot more if you play another game?

    Speaking of which, the breakthrough/inspiration research tree thing is an interesting way of shaking up how research is approached. I think that I will be annoyed if this becomes the mainstay in the series, but I agree with Firaxis that the normal way of doing research has become one of the staler and (negatively) predictable portions of the game, and I like that they tried something.

    I previously mentioned the Alien Rulers DLC - which I felt they had integrated mostly quite well into the expansion... though I did feel disappointed at the lack of the mission explaining exactly what was going on with them. Despite the option I chose was to "integrate" the DLC into the campaign, the way it was handled, it felt very tacked on.

    Shen's gift however, was completely marginalized, both in content and in functionality... since the mechanical SPARK units don't really gain any of the benefits that War of the Chosen adds to XCOM2, and are expensive to create - it becomes really hard to motivate their use.

    But I think that my greatest complaint is about what War of the Chosen does to XCOM 2 - I believe I spent about 50 hours on XCOM 2 originally - and almost 100 hours in War of the Chosen.

    The unfortunate reality is that the combat becomes a slog at that point. With my soldiers as powerful as they were in the last 20+ hours, it wasn't really a challenge, it was just something I had to do - I even wound up trying out skipping some missions, but even doing that just meant that I had to play EVEN more combat missions.

    I feel like that for a campaign of this length, the game is going to need a lot more variation.

    Oh, and if there's one thing that still enrages me (and I accept how utterly unreasonable this is), it's hacking.

    Even though it effectively has the exact same properties as shooting - for some reason, I always feel like it's bullshit when I fail, and not all that much fun when I succeed. Additionally, most of the rewards are either meaningless or overpowered.

    I think I would rather see the Haywire protocol be turned into a mechanical verison of mind control... or entirely removed, because something about it is just annoying.

    Overall - I think War of the Chosen is pretty good, but it does feel a lot like how Firaxis often handle their one expansion per game - it's bolted on, and the seam is not very pretty.

  • Pretty good. Didn't knock my socks off in quite the same way as the first one did. Though, thinking about it - that may have been because I had no expectations on the first game - in fact, it seemed like a throw-away game about digging. Finding that it had a lot more depth was a welcome surprise.

    SWD2 felt quite expected to me. It's literally more of the same - and I'm not sure if some of the powers were really the best thing for the franchise, as they seem to be invalidating the majority of the platforming mechanics twice during the game (once in a softer manner, once in a very hard manner).

    That said, playing it with a killer cold may have impacted my appreciation.

  • Heat Signature is a weird game for me.

    The moment I saw the first videos/gifs of the game, I KNEW I had to play it.

    Years later, when it was released, it was everything I thought it would be... but nothing else.

    And in there, lies the duality of my feelings for the game.

    The moment-to-moment game is great, but there's not much of a hook...

  • This made me really angry.

    I don't even care about the lootboxes, this is a bad game.

    The story is lazy. Completely giving up on being canonical was a bad idea. I don't like it, and I wish I had known about it before I bought the game, so I could've avoided it (despite not being a big lord of the rings fan, this feels like a waste of time)

    The characters are lazy. There are only a handful of characters, but for some reason they had to turn Shelob into a half-dressed sexy lady. All of the humans are lazy and basically write themselves.

    And they recycle other canon characters in non-sensical ways. Meh.

    The game mechanics are rehasehed from the first game. The nemesis system is good. And it's extensions are excellent. But it's not enough to build a game on.

    And some situations are just nonsensical - I had one of my (favorite) charmed captains ambush a orc that was about to kill me.

    Apparently, that orc was my captain's bloodbrother, and him executing the orc in my defense, meant that *I* had killed his bloodbrother, and I was eventually forced to kill him after many betrayals.

    And the game is way too long - outlasts its welcome by far. And the Shadow Wars chapter is entirely tone deaf to the length of the game, in my opinion.

  • I think this is my favorite Zachtronics game, and I can see myself messing with this for a long time to come.

  • While I haven't really had issues with the older Assassin's Creeds (such as Syndicate), Origins represents a return to form.

    Bayek is a good character, Aya is a good character. Both are strong, individual characters together and separately. And both have character development over the game.

    It doesn't go where you expect, or want it to go, but I think the game is better for it.

  • I love this game.

    I played it through with the same friend as I played the first (previous?) game with...

    The start is rough, and could probably be improved greatly. The first 10 hours or so we kept talking about the game not working for us, but it eventually clicked, and each combat became this wonderful puzzle where we half of the time just wound up cackling insanely with what we managed to concoct with the mechanics of the game.

    Their baffling choice to remove the rock/paper/scissors system from the co-op game, and forcing co-op games to have "a talky" guy is terrible.

    It's not an even experience, and there are some poorly balanced areas, quite a lot of bugs.

    I understand why my friend got angry with the end... and I feel like I betrayed him, because *I* saw it coming, and tried to prepare for it (though, I the game ended before I could achieve what I wanted to do). And sure, him resenting the end does impact my feelings of the game - it feels pretty flat to me.

    But it also cannot change the fact that between the first 10 hours and the last 2 hours, I had over 100 hours that were mostly amazing.

  • Technically, it's not out. It's in early access, and I haven't seen the more recent, larger changes.

    However, this is already one of the greatest Roguelites made. Can't wait to see where it ends up.

  • It's good. But it didn't hit me as hard as the first one did.

    I'm not sure why, it could just be where I'm at. But the first game hit me really, really hard. The whole breathing exercises... the whole...

    This game, much like it's protagonist for most of the game, feels like it's limping along until it "gets started" in the last act.

    The execution and the flying farmhouse are really amazing scenes that did things that I didn't expect...

    But I do feel like it was unnecessarily gory at times.

  • I love this kind of clever puzzles.

    Doesn't hit very hard, but it's cool.

  • Great aesthetics, and I like a lot of what the game does.

    It does a lot of interesting thing with the elder sign mythology, but it's missing something that would make it an amazing metroidvania, and instead, it just lands as a well-animated and clever, but ultimately middling game.

  • It looks great, it's serene. But it didn't even his me as hard as Journey did.

  • Reminded me a lot of Crusader: No remorse, for some reason.

    It's cool, pretty clever, but it doesn't really do much for me...

  • I don't have an analogue to the experience Mae has in Night in the Woods, but I have experienced many of the other things she goes through through out the game.

    The self-doubt, the failures, the... pain.

    Night in the Woods hit me hard.