I've spent 2-3 hours with Devil Daggers over the break and really like it too. I've no real quake/cs background so I was pretty happy with my best run being 190 seconds. My one knock against it would be, for me, so much of the run depends on how fast you kill the 1st spider when it shows up and what the state of the arena is then. I feel like I'm coming to an end of my time with it now but thats not really a negative. I'll probably look up a few tips and high level runs before calling it quits.
But on a serious note, I've really enjoyed MLG's dota 2 content last year and this is a little worrying.
Also a small sort correction just on your point about Dota 2. Broadcasting rights gets a little weird around Dota 2. Anyone can get buy a tournament ticket (TI is free to watch for all) and stream the game from their client, it does also get even a bit more weird and frowned upon if you are using the TO's in-game commentary. I can't remember a time when Valve has stepped in to protect a tournament from rebroadcasters at all (which I've seen include pro-players doing their oen commentary, and sometimes with TO's blessings, alternate language commentaries). TO's dont really seem to have much legit power, and aside from whining about rebroadcasts on twitter/reddit etc. They're go-to is usually complaining to twitch.tv which cause of their obvious close relationships, tend to aggressively side with TO's.
There wouldnt be a lot of incentive to watch an MLG stream of TI. Valve tends to invite the majority of popular casters and analysts to TI, and I don't see it being received well and it would create a very weird dynamic if whoever was left went to MLG.
Seen as I just beat Wolfenstein: The OId Blood I think there's 2 if not interesting, simply pretty fun loops regarding item/health/ammo collecting in both these games (base game + expansion). The first one is outside of combat, where you scour the area looking items, preparing for the next fight. You might run across secret areas, you take in the smaller details like propaganda posters and magazines etc., or if there's an overabundance you can tell there's a big fight coming up.
The second loop is doing all this while in combat, you have to juggle knowing the enemies positions and where they can from/go to along with keeping track of where you havent checked yet and safer routes to there. All this on top of the regular mechanics of just being in a firefight really makes you feel rushed and pressured and it's great
Probably the first thing that comes to mind for that second question is Hearthstone. Good production values, engaging progression system, the arena mode, not utter dog shit f2p system (its not good, but at least its not heroes of the storm). The one big weakness is something that cant really be changed, and that's an incompetent balance team, which is so typical of a modern Blizzard. I really liked the game when it was in beta but as narcissistic as it sounds, I dropped it because I could tell the devs weren't up to balancing it well. Pretty much everything I hear about it from friends that play it daily has only reinforced that.
There's a couple of easy answers for the first question; minecraft, fifa, forza, but those are more down to personal taste. I'm honestly so tempted to say MGSV:TPP for this, I can see how its really fantastic on so many different levels, from armpits to ai, but I really wanted to play this like MGS3 where I go silenced tranq only for as long as possible, but because of the way the game is designed I need to fulton everyone so I dont have to worry about them getting up, and then need to call in a supply drop to repair my silencer, which really sucks and interrupts the flow of play. I also think that taking over outposts is a huge missed opportunity, you are capturing these soldiers by the dozen, why couldnt I reach some high (scaled appropriately) requirement and put my own soldiers into the different outposts. For a game that caters to so many different approaches its pretty disappointing that the way you want to do it isnt available.
Might come back to that first question as I'm sure I can have a better answer at some stage
Thanks again for these articles Austin, really get me thinking about the games I've played. I've a bunch of new notes to put in my google doc of games played this year
My submission should probably Valdis Story: Abyssal City, a game that inspired me to (badly) write my first ever review on this site. It's a gorgeous 2D action game thats like a cross between DMC and metroid/castlevania.
While it does a couple of interesting things with the narrative, it just plays really well. You dont have the variety of attacks DMC offers but a magic system helps compensate for it. What really sold me on the game was when I hiked the difficulty up one level early on in my first playthrough, and realized that one of the regular enemies had a specific counter to my go-to combo (it was something like hit>>hit>launch>hit) where they would interrupt me before i could hit the launcher. This took me a bit to figure out what was going but when I did I could experiment and find a new combo that wouldnt trigger the counter.
Also dude, im super jealous that you're playing XBX, really looking forward to it, though I might have hard time finding people to play it with.
irishalwaystake's comments