The worst kind of an Internet-herpaderp. Internet-urpo pahimmasta päästä.
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they’re not really platformers like, eg. Mario, they’re a lot slower with the focus being on environmental puzzles (levers, boxes, elevators, avoiding obvious enemy sight etc), with the occasional escape sequences here and there. The puzzles aren’t really any sort of headscratchers, basically “how do I get there? oh, I drop this box to break the floor here (telegraphed hard)”
If Little Nightmares -series is familiar, they’re basically like that. While the puzzles aren’t hard, they’re generally timed to allow the obvious enemy to get close enough for the player to “pucker up” a bit and then flee the scene with a relief.
I’m going to go with Euro truck simulator 2.
The experience of chill driving across europe and listening to podcasts is nice. The game isn’t complicated enough to affect listening experience, but also engaging enough on it’s own right that it stays interesting.
I have probably seen 80% or so of the roads and cities, bit they still feel fresh… Could be that I’m forgetting places faster than I’m getting familiar with them as well.
I do have a steering wheel and pedals, but they’re just too cumbersome to get out and my wheel stand is made for someone at least 20 shorter than I am, so the experience is hampered a bit anyway. Because I’m lazy I’ve just resulted to driving witn mouse and keyboard combo.
Edit: typos. Typing on phone is butts
I could see a single short mini-episode where Duke shoots shit up and saves the day, and that’s the depth it goes. A whole series? Kinda seems a bit too thin for that.
Besides, considering the character: if they keep him as is - some people are gonna raise hell. If they don’t - other people gonna raise hell. I don’t see there being a winning move here.
But, eh, whatever. If someone really wants to spend money on making it happen, sure, go ahead.
edit:
“It’s a middle finger to everybody,” Shankar said when describing his vision for Duke Nukem. “When Duke Nukem blew up, a bunch of people sat around trying to turn it into a brand, when it’s just a middle finger. Duke Nukem can’t be made by a corporation, because the moment a corporation makes Duke Nukem, it’s no longer Duke Nukem. I don’t intend on having anyone tell me what to do on this one.”
as the article says. I guess they have a vision, but at the end of the day, a “middle finger to everybody” doesn’t seem like a commercial success. Oh well, remains to be seen what comes out of this.
I did like Control, and I do like coop-shooters… but I would prefer some story campaign instead of few repeatable/grindable mission-types with minor run-to-run variance.
Overall, I’m definitely wanting to play through this to completion.
So, this game does have some story arc? Genuinely do want to know.
havent tried it, but lutris has epic support: https://lutris.net/games/epic-games-store/
now… is it an improvement? again no idea because I don’t use epic
Kinda cool this kind of “work sims” keep popping up. Though I tend to lose interest in them after few hours, as the gameplay generally turns to routine and becomes fairly boring… that said I don’t even know how many hours I’ve spent driving a truck in Euro Truck 2 so… not all routines are the same, I guess?
Is the game fairly dimly lit or is your store just trying to save on electricity?
I’m just spitballing, but the ip owner needs to do something with the ip so they can keep it? IIRC similar things have been mentioned here and there when some long forgotten ip suddenly gets a new loweffort installment.
So, could be that they were making the extraction shooty anyway, so they slapped Marathon on it “just to refresh the timer”? I dunno if that’s how it works, not a lawyer.
depends entirely on the game, how it loads stuff and how big the stuff is.
100 GB openworld game? HDD probably is going to struggle with the asset loading, probably leading to stuttery gameplay or very noticeable pop-in
<10GB game with closed arenas/levels? Probably loads everything at the start of the level, might take slightly longer on HDD, but probably doesn’t make any difference after that.
it’s been mostly “Unnamed Space Idle” (idle/autoplay game with some interactivity), recently opened a new gameplay part in it and, well, it’s slow and idle waiting and few tactical decision making here and there. According to steam I’ve wasted like 1200 hours on it… which is kinda wild.
I also played and 100%'d “Exit 8”, it’s one of those anomaly spotting games. Not difficult at all, nor does it really have a failstate either. You just go on in a looping liminal subway hallway and turn back if there’s something out of ordinary. Dunno really if it’s something I’d recommend it or not, it’s about an hour (give or take) worth of gameplay if you’re into those kind of games.
well, they’re up for now. The games aren’t too expensive either, so get on it if you’re at all interested. :)
The gog version might come prepackaged with an older version of scummvm (basically an app to run older adventure games), you might want to get the latest version from https://scummvm.org/ and add the game manually into it, there’s been some advancement with graphics scaling etc.
But, yea, I’d say the LSL7 is the best of the older games, doesn’t have any player deaths / gameover -nonsense, but there’s a casino section (staple of the series, kinda) where you have to win in gambling to proceed - but you can savescumm through it if you can’t be bothered to play it for realsies (essentially just save every time you win, check what opponent has and then reload & play accordingly. slam dunk).
Other than the forced “gambling minigame” the puzzles aren’t “moon logic” per se, but do involve some creative/jokes thinkywork.
Along with the regular point&click verb-menu, there’s a free text-input for some dialogue/item manipulation/etc. IIRC there’s like 2-3 things you need to do with it to beat the game (they’re fairly obvious), otherwise it’s for eastereggs.
Huh, end of an era for Larry -games? Some of the games are pretty good and goofy adventure games.
Haven’t really played the text-parser ones, they were a bit before my gaming era, and I really don’t enjoy the brutal difficulty of older adventure games - they went out of their way to kill or softlock the player character if you didn’t know exactly what to do.
I do like Larry 6 and 7 quite a bit, they’re later games of the Sierra -catalogue and have evolved past the “hehe, lets kill the player on every possible situation because fuck you”.
While conservation of games is important, it’s not like the games are going to vanish even if they’re not actively sold (on steam) anymore. Archive.org and abandonware sites have carried them for ages anyway.
edit: oh, apparently the rights to Leisure Suit Larry are owned by Codemasters - and they’re owned by EA now, afaik. Might have something to do with the delisting.
since you brought up stardew and ac, fishing doesn’t need to be the main focus/gameplay of the game?
Far Cry 5 has fishing, can’t remember if there’s different fishing gear really.
Warframe has fishing, but it can take quite some time for a new player to get there. The “openworld” areas on planets have spear fishing you can do for faction rep. etc.
“Already?” :D
Man this game has been through some dev.hell, I guess. Seems like their kickstarter project promised this would have been out in february… 2013. Oh well, better late than never.
Never really played the OG Space Quest -games, mainly because I just don’t enjoy the occasionally brutal late 80’s/early 90’s Sierra -adventuregame design where games contain a lot of softlocks and instant death traps. I’d assume SpaceVenture has moved on from those practices, though.
Wishlisted. Thanks.
I only longingly looked at the screenshots of Sam&Max in some gaming magazine at the time, managed to get the game waaayyy later. But man was it worth the wait :)
You’re welcome! Also, there are still some more-or-less indie devs who keep the point&click adventures alive, afaik most, if not all from Wadjet Eye’s catalog are great, eg: The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow, Strangeland, Primordia… worth checking out!
point & click adventure games? Some older ones can be aquired for cheap, or even free as some of them have been released as freeware.
some suggestions in no particular order, some are older (like, DOS old, but still good today, imo), some are 2010’s or so:
- TellTale Sam & Max -episodic games (3d, cartoony, comedy)
- Monkey Island -series, parts 1-3. (2d, cartoony, comedy, pirates, yarharhar) (Later games in the series are pretty finicky to get running/stay running.)
- Sam & Max: Hit the road (2d, cartoony, comedy)
- The Dig (2d, scifi)
- Full Throttle (has a modernized remaster) (2d, “scifi”, biker-theme)
- Flight of the Amazon Queen (freeware) (2d, ~40’s vibe, “retro-scifi”)
- Beneath a steel sky (freeware) (2d, scifi, comedy, some gore)
Ones that have some keyboard usage, but are mainly mouse driven (or can be mouse driven)
- Grim Fandango (modernised remaster, original doesn’t do mouse) (3d, latin-american land of the dead, comedy)
- Indiana Jones & The Fate of Atlantis (some occasional fights where keyboard would be preferred, most of these can be circumvented though) (2d, some comedy, ww2, I mean, it’s indiana jones)
The older ones can be played via Scummvm (https://scummvm.org/) - it’s basically a simplified launcher/runner just for adventure games.
I’m a bit two minds about Content Warning - on one hand, it’s simple to pick up and it’s definitely goofy and, fun? But lack of meaningful permanent progress kinda brings it down for me.
Essentially, you can do “fine” with the basic gear (camera, flashlights), but you get more views (ie. money) with better gear - assuming you actually can capture some footage the game-logic deems worthy. Lost items can occasionally be found in the spoopy-place later on, but not guaranteed. Also replacing/buying new gear is kinda expensive, and dead teammates cost money to bring back (but you can’t go to debt because of it, iirc, so that’s nice).
The runs, at least for us, are usually VERY short, like few minutes in and out. Your runs are limited by oxygen, health and amount of footage you can record - which is 30s. so make it count. So basically how the runs go:
- find the first monster
- goof with it and try not to die
- okay steve died while goofing with the monster, but I got it on film!
- RUN AWAAAY with camera set in selfie-mode and try not to die
Usually monsters can be found very quickly, sometimes it takes a while. But usually run is over in few minutes, the prepwork before taking a dive tends to take longer :D
AFAIK There are some “hidden puzzles”, like combine some bones or whatever to summon a spoopy secret monster or such, but I haven’t seen them myself, just seen some mentions about them occasionally.
Also, It has mod support too. We tried a few:
- longer/infinite film - initially we thought this would be great, but that just defeated the whole point, recorded footage started to drag on and on and on… Short film forces you to really asses the situation and only record peak footage, instead of meandering nonsense.
- More/infinite money - While it was dope to finally test the equipment we were usually too
stupiddrunkbad to be able to afford them, the items range from useless single use toy to needlessly expensive for what they are. - More days - same, kinda defeats the point.
- free hospital bills - a good one, imo. The game is punishing enough as is.
Maybe a bit more durable dudes or longer/infinite oxygen tanks would do, dunno.
Doesn’t sound like a glowing recommendation, but in general I’ve never had bad time in the game. The runs are just over bit too quickly, but then again starting a new doesn’t take long either. It’s decent at minimum.
Our group got Lethal Company - and promptly refunded, none of us really felt it. Later “Content Warning” was given free, which we got and still occasionally play, it’s okay - if a bit jank. We’ve been discussing about this one, but it just screams streamer/youtuber-bait to me, and while it is exceptionally fun to watch good streamers having a banter and laughs. I dunno if it holds as well for us, it kinda feels like we’d play it once or twice and then drop it entirely.
Visually the game is on point, though. The southpark-esque “canadian” way the robot-characters talk is hilarious, and the slight eye movements really sell it.
oh I wasn’t going to go on a rampage about fake pixels or anything, honest question about performance. Kinda wild it tanks that hard beyond 1440p. There’s few games where I run DLSS even if performance-wise it isn’t neede - just because it does better job with antialiasing than whatever TXAA/TAA/FXAA/whatever postprocess AA there usually is. A lot less crawling pixel edges in fine details etc.
Also, just heads up if you ever intend to go for Arkham Knight - IIRC the good ending requires finishing all joker stuff (incl. the collectible trophies). I got no time for that nonsense so just watched the ending on youtube after getting bad ending. :D
Arkham City is great! Plays well, sounds dope, looks still pretty darn good. The artstyle is still a nice balance between realistic and stylistic, which doesn’t age as hard as realistic, imo.
Got to ask, FSR really needed? Shouldn’t this run at 4k even at fairly modest/toaster-ish pc now? Or does FSR provide better antialiasing results than whatever the game does without it?
Once upon a time I did 100%'d Arkham Asylum, but bailed out of that plan on Arkham City - the amount of collectibles, challenges and secrets was just too much. (And then Arkham Knight came along and turned it way past 11, didn’t bother to finish the game because screw those Joker races.)
No matter what sensitivity my mouse is set to I seem to get stuck when turning. On a controller I can turn completely in a circle, but not with a mouse unless i’m missing something.
are you using running in circles as a benchmark? as a one continuous loop that is not going to happen with a mouse unless you have infinite desk and arm lengh. Generally mouse users do circles in segments: turn a bit, move mouse back to center and repeat as nescessary.
If you’ve mostly used controlles, yea, m+kb is going to feel unnatural. Same applies in reverse too. Different worlds - it can take quite some time to get familiar with the other.
the character models were as weird looking as you’d expect from the era
Oh sure! Love the lowpoly/pre-rendered backgrounds aesthetic. The aliasing thing I mentioned earlier is just a “petpeeve” of mine, I can’t stand the jagged edges / lack of antialiasing. The rough pixel edges of the modes look so out of place when the pre-rendered backgrounds are so smoothly antialiased.
Though, there’s an argument to be made that when playing in modern high resolution, the character models are a lot sharper than the upscaled/blurry backgrounds :D
Some of the puzzles are obtuse to the extreme, and silly. There’s one that’s almost legendarily bad, so it has that bit of history if you’re interested lol.
I guess same goes for pretty much every point&click adventure game, sometimes you just need to be in the same “headspace” as the puzzle designer to get it, otherwise you just don’t.
But, sure I’m down for some history of a bad puzzle! I love obscure tidbits of old games.
oh man, The Longest Journey has been on my todo list for eternities. Ages ago I was being a pixel-peeping-perfectionist and I hated the aliasing on the character models - but now that ScummVM does the game perfectly I really have no reason to wait… but… here we are.
Since the game is dear to you, how about some motivational sales pitch for it? Why should I drop everything else and go play the game right now? :D
same deal, favorites change according to mood, but there are overall few mainstays:
Indiana Jones & The Fate of Atlantis.
It’s a childhood favorite I return to every now and then. It’s a point&click adventure, and to me it’s essentially the 4th (and last) Indiana Jones movie. :D
Apart from one or two bad bits the game pulls, it’s otherwise pretty logical from start to finish. 3 different paths from mid to late game, and mostly good voice acting (for the time). I know the game by heart at this point, but still it feels fun to play, every time. Nostalgia-goggles probably play a big part.
kinda spoilery descriptions of said bad bits
- there’s a “puzzle” where you need to go back and forth trading items between 2 characters, until eventually some hint from the recipient drops. Not hard, just… tedious.
- the hot air balloon controls are bad. Not impossible to use, but just imprecise for no real gameplay reason.
- if you didn’t LOOK at one specific Atlantean cupboard’s door, you have no clue how to solve a later puzzle. Though, you can return to the cupboard, but nothing hints there being instructions for the later puzzle on it.
Cyberpunk 2077
I know it’s a divisive game, don’t care, works for me. The bleak vibes of the game just speak to me. Have played it through several times since launch, occasionally still find new things here and there. Not the deepest rpg around, but a good action-rpg with neonlights.
Unnamed Space Idle
I’ve been on this idle/timewaster for way over a year, slow progress raising the numbers all the time. Sure it’s a bit low on gameplay, but absolutely neat little game to occasionally click few times when watching some longform content or so.
Electronic Arts games have mtx. Full stop. Expecting anything else is delusional. Sure, it’s a great day when, in modern times, they release a game without any. But, you know, hell freezing over first and all that.
edit: and even without mtx, I’m not sure they make games anymore that even remotely interest me, probably, I haven’t checked in a while. Last I checked was ME2, iirc.
This looks absolutely delightful. Thanks for sharing!