What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[Obscura]

Vanquish Tactical Challenges.

The campaign is lame even on hard mode (less AR with the same fights basically just turns it into another cover shooter...), but the TCs are amazing. This is the game I was expecting. If only the campaign played anything like this.

The Tactical Challenges are indeed amazing, and are incredibly fun to play, but Hard mode doesn't change how long you can stay in AR. It only ups the difficulty slightly (the biggest adjustment is you take a bit more damage), but Hard mode isn't a huge jump from Normal mode.

You probably meant to say God Hard, which vastly alters things due to longer AR emergency cooldown, enemies dealing way more damage, etc. However, I wouldn't say God Hard "turns it into another cover shooter". I do wish there was a mode with God Hard's additional enemies and difficulty without the reduced AR (something in between Hard and God Hard) because of how brutal the jump in difficulty is... but God Hard is still set apart from other average cover shooters by the insane mobility you have and your incredibly useful moveset. It's brutally unforgiving, and enemies are super aggressive but the dodging capabilities you have and the ability to slide from cover to cover, etc, still sets it vastly apart from say Gears of War where you're probably hiding and resorting to blind firing.

I meant hard (I haven't tried God Hard yet), but I could have sworn I had a bunch less slo-mo time? Going from Campaign Normal to Campaign Hard, it felt like I couldn't use the slo-mo at all, and then when I went to the TCs, it felt like I could sit in it all day.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Campaign Normal to Campaign Hard, it felt like I couldn't use the slo-mo at all, and then when I went to the TCs, it felt like I could sit in it all day.

It's really easy to show that only God Hard difficulty only has reduced AR by going into each difficulty mode and timing the length of time it takes to drain the AR meter from full to overheat. Normal, Hard, and all the TCs are the same. Not sure if the Casual difficulties adjusted it as I haven't actually played them through. The TCs use Normal Difficulty as far as I can tell as the difficulty setting (I've done deathless runs of Normal, Hard, and beaten all TCs so I'm quite confident from my experience the TCs are all set to Normal difficulty).

It's worth noting that God Hard keeps the same boost drain as all difficulty modes so it's only using manual AR that has shortened duration. Edit: and overheat also takes way longer to recover from regardless of what triggered it including melee attacks, so melee needs to be done only when it's safe to do so (last enemy, when you have an LFE to keep a Romanov stunned, etc). Enemies in God Hard recover from EMPs much faster so they're not as good in an emergency!

[Mischief Maker]

Oh wow, I'm finally getting good performance out of No Man's Sky!

You've gotta manually edit TKGRAPHICSSETTINGS.MXML. Apparently the game doesn't detect CPUs or is overly cautious, but it was trying to generate its universe using only a single thread on my machine. So I changed NumHighThreads from "1" to "4" for my quad core CPU and NumLowThreads to "0." The stuttering is gone and I'm seeing the kind of performance that Sean was getting on early preview vids.

My computer is aging, but it's still stronger than a console, goddamnit!

Maybe I can actually squeeze some enjoyment out of this $60 alpha test?

[wizkid]

The limited continues definitely scared off some people, since training the game is a lot harder, but in general it's a pretty hard game.
I can't really compare the game with the first two, since I never really put the required amount of time into the US release, but it's definitely not just the amount of continues. The Japanese version has infinite continues like the other games, and on my first, blind playthrough of the game I didn't even use one, the game is that easy. So there are a lot of little changes here and there, mostly in the damage scales and items available to you, that made the US release a lot harder.

funny thing is, few years ago, when i was rarely playing non-PC genres, the japanese version seemed pretty difficult and US version straight up impossible, i haven't played many platformers or run-n-guns since then, so i guess i have mostly shmups to thank for improving at ninja gaiden.

[NYN]

That substance talk on Vanquish moves my pump organ like a smack does a bubble butt.
(with consent of course)

[Immryr]

Started trying to learn some speed run tricks in super metroid today. Managed to get some simple things down like the mockball to get early supers and the ice beam, and the wall jump into kraids lair without high jump boots. Haven't been able to get the Alcatraz escape or the kriad quick kill. I think I'll need to practice the latter on an emulator so I can save state it, the run back from the ship if you fail it is pretty long!

[ryu]

Sonic Mania

In a way it's better than I expected, in a way it's worse. Stages are filled with gimmicks that all fit their visual themes very well and genereally add to the experience rather than distract from the core gameplay. I was a bit afraid the game would be rather stale, but it's not at all. The downside is that it plays really hectic - every stage feels like playing Casino Night. There's platforming sections too, but they get kinda drowned out by all the back-and-forth hick-hack that makes up the bulk of the game. The game's also a bit too easy for veterans. Lots of rings everywhere and you can regrab your last ring as often as you get the chance to (in some of the classics the last ring would fall straight through the ground after a couple of hits).

My overall impression is still very good. Music and art are great, and they went all out on the remix aspect in ways (all positive) I didn't expect.

[Sumez]

Aren't ALL the Sonic games extremely easy though? Except from the very few sections where they inexplicably "forget" to give you any rings after a checkpoint.

What I'm more interested in knowing is, does the game actually do anything to reward someone playing well? Ie. getting a good time and/or keeping a lot of rings till the end? The old MegaDrive games were bafflingly bad at going that (except I guess the very first requiring 50 rings at the end for a potential emerald), and if you want to make a new classic Sonic game and improve on anything, that's what I would focus on.

[ryu]

Aren't ALL the Sonic games extremely easy though?

Not necessarily if you commit yourself to ingoring the continue option. That's how I play them and I can only reliably beat S3&K, but even there I can manage to screw up if I have a bad day.

What I'm more interested in knowing is, does the game actually do anything to reward someone playing well?

Sadly not. You require a certain amount of rings to unlock bonus levels at checkpoints (similar to S3&K), which reward you with medals that unlock various extras. But you have to be incredibly bad at the game if you're having a hard time getting to these stages.

The bonus stages are all Blue Sphere. If you perfect these with all rings you get gold medals, but I'm not sure if these are really required for anything.

I agree the first game did it best with a ring requirement at the end of the stage.

[Xyga]

Some of those spheric special stages were a fucking nightmare. *faint/barf*

[Sumez]

Not necessarily if you commit yourself to ingoring the continue option. That's how I play them and I can only reliably beat S3&K, but even there I can manage to screw up if I have a bad day.

Why would the continue option even matter in a game that gives you 30-80 extra lives throughout the game? I think the first Sonic game is the only one I've ever Game Over'ed in.

The bonus stages are all Blue Sphere. If you perfect these with all rings you get gold medals, but I'm not sure if these are really required for anything

I was thinking about the actual primary stages though. It really sucks how there's never any real consequence of getting hit in any of the classic Sonic games. :\
Going for the Blue Spheres stages in S3K and getting all the emeralds was a fun challenge. But the game didn't care about how you actually played the game.

[ryu]

Why would the continue option even matter in a game that gives you 30-80 extra lives throughout the game?

That's happened in one or maybe two of my S3&K playthroughs. Depending on how you play you might not end up with that many lives.

I was thinking about the actual primary stages though.

I know, that's why I put that remark into its separate paragraph.

Maybe others share this view and it'll be loud enough to be heard by the dev team, so Mania 2, if that should happen, might be better in this regard.

[Blinge]

I always felt that the gotta go fast! games actually reward slow methodical play so you can actually collect rings.

I guess you could say git gud and keep replaying the game until layouts are memorised so you can speed through them without running into damage but they aren't games I ever want to play more than once in a blue moon.

[null1024]

Crazy Taxi [PC].
Finally cleared all the Crazy Box stages [and thus, finished getting all the Steam achievements].
Stage S-S was a real treat after all that other annoying shit. It's just a big time-attack loop around the city.
I kind of feel like I super-cheesed Stage 3-S though [do a single Crazy Dash between targets, don't drift, just brake hard before while still holding gas, repeat until stopped and in position].

the only thing left for me to do is break $20k in arcade mode, and that's still not happening any time soon
My last few runs barely break $10k before I run out of time.
Honestly, it's all dumb shit like me just barely not getting the +5 bonus [thus, my time starts getting chipped away] or getting hit with the wall stick right as I slide into the destination.

Also, holy shit the arrow in the "Original" course sucks. The map itself is pretty cool, but it's absurdly easy to make a wrong turn and be stuck without a way to actually get to your destination without turning back, which never happens in the Arcade course's big loop.

[BrianC]

Lots of rings everywhere and you can regrab your last ring as often as you get the chance to (in some of the classics the last ring would fall straight through the ground after a couple of hits).

I remember the GG/SMS games being a bit different in regards to rings (only one showing up after you get hit). Some of the bosses even had to be beaten without rings in the first two GG/SMS Sonic games. They still weren't too hard, though a few of the bosses in Sonic 2 GG were too cramped. I like how Sonic Mania has some nods to the SMS/GG games (a certain section of the Flying Battery Zone is a good example).

[Kiken]

With my purchase of a Switch, I picked up Splatoon 2. In single-player mode I've gotten past the first boss and last night took the plunge into online multi-play for about an hour.

[wgogh]

Also, holy shit the arrow in the "Original" course sucks. The map itself is pretty cool, but it's absurdly easy to make a wrong turn and be stuck without a way to actually get to your destination without turning back, which never happens in the Arcade course's big loop.

My brother would always complain about that. It seemed to be important to have a defined route, knowing any place you need to go.
Even in Crazy Taxi 3, the arrow in this map still terrible.

[null1024]

Lots of rings everywhere and you can regrab your last ring as often as you get the chance to (in some of the classics the last ring would fall straight through the ground after a couple of hits).

Mania changes the ring bounce mechanics in one fairly important way: rings now bounce off the sides of walls instead of snapping to the top of a surface, making things much easier since rings don't just tend to rise up out of reach anymore. In 1-3&K, rings will only bounce off the top of surfaces.

also, ring collision is loads more robust in general in Mania, a lot of the "rings falling through the ground" behavior you'd see in 1-3&K was just the ring not treating that surface as one to bounce off of in general

Also, holy shit the arrow in the "Original" course sucks. The map itself is pretty cool, but it's absurdly easy to make a wrong turn and be stuck without a way to actually get to your destination without turning back, which never happens in the Arcade course's big loop.

My brother would always complain about that. It seemed to be important to have a defined route, knowing any place you need to go.
Even in Crazy Taxi 3, the arrow in this map still terrible.

Now that I'm thinking about this again, I remember reading an interview where the "Original" map was more designed for you to really memorize the layout rather than just follow the arrow, being designed for a home environment more conducive to getting lost, rather than the arcade where that shit would put players off and look for another game, but it's still a poor excuse if it's true.

[Durandal]

I forked over the twenty bucks to pre-order Dusk and gain access to the first episode because my spending habits are getting out of hand.

I finished the episode and it's OK I guess? If I had to describe what makes it different from being 'just a Quake clone', its that it's more focused on dodging very fast projectiles in large open areas and sometimes in small buildings like some kind of Psikyo game. However, there's a weird contradiction where fighting in open areas is easy as long as you pay attention from which direction the projectiles are coming from as you circlestrafe around them no matter how many enemies there are, and fighting in close quarters is easy because you only fight a handful at once with plenty of opportunity to break line of sight as the super shotgun will take care of most enemies in one hit. The reason for this is that for the outside most of the projectiles you'll have to dodge are just straight-forward fireballs and enemies are incapable of leading shots, and inside the enemies are not bulletsponges so you can waltz over them like it's nothing with the SS or double shotgun. In any case, tight quarters and bulletsponge enemies is what made Quake work. Dusk could either do that, or opt for more traps where you're stuck in a sticky situation and can only push forwards to survive.

The outside fights suffer the problem of being too circlestrafe-centric with no geometry or projectile types to mix things up beyond circlestrafing and crouchsliding in a certain direction. We could have had homing projectiles, wide projectiles, bouncing projectiles, spread projectiles, lasers, and so on. But the only things you'll dodge are fireballs, faster-than-fireballs bloodballs (?), cyan arrows which are just fireballs which deal more damage, very short streams of bullet projectiles, and a shotgun spread of really fucking fast pellets fired by scarecrows and by extent worth strongly paying attention to. The only way you can reliably dodge scarecrow blasts is if you stand really far away which gives you enough space and time to dodge them properly, or to get up very close and crouchslide away the moment they start to fire. The only thing I wish to change is that the random shotgun spread will at least always allow you to slide underneath it. Maybe I could bait them to fire higher by jumping more often? Scarecrows certainly are a high priority threat, and I wish other enemies in the game had more well-defined roles like that other than being minor variations on the Imp. There's also the occasional boss monsters which in turn do fire more interesting stuff like homing projectiles and wide spreadshots, but are still incredibly simple to deal with.

There's farmers with a chainsaw in their hand and a paper bag on their head, and they feel like neutered Ogres. They have to briefly stop before attacking with their chainsaw unlike the Ogre, and they don't have any ranged attack capabilities either. This makes them an absolute joke to deal with outside given your massive maneuverability and the power of the super shotgun which can fell them in one blow. And even inside you have plenty of time and space to deal with them. They really need some kind of buff.

The weapon balance is decent. Dual shotguns are better at controlling crowds than the SS, especially with the fast-fire totem. The assault rifle is for laying down continuous fire and stunlocking enemies from longer ranges, the crossbow can penetrate through enemies and walls which makes it useful if you memorize all enemy positions, and the hunting rifle acts as a sniper rifle which is capable of dishing super-shotgun level damage on a single target from any range. You also get the Riveter which fires rockets at a ridiculous rate and is pretty fucking overpowered, but ammo for it is very scarce. There's also a Mortar which fires arcing grenades to bounce around corners, but they need to be manually detonated and don't detonate on enemy impact. I feel like the Mortar and Riveter should have been fused into one gun, but since this is a Quake clone alternate fire modes are out of the question. I only wish that the pistols were removed outright and replaced with the shotguns instead. It's not like anybody ever uses the pistols after getting the shotgun given the liberal amount of shotgun ammo scattered everywhere. The pistols don't even share their ammo pool with other weapons. The shotgun could function just fine as a starting weapon given that it can be 'upgraded' by picking up another shotgun and dual-wielding it. Even though the pistol is dual-wieldable in the same manner, it has no business with having a role as starting weapon since the shotgun does everything better anyways wheras later levels start off with shotguns instead of pistols too. I also wish that binding multiple weapons to one input was a thing. I don't want to reach all the way over to fucking 9 to equip my rocket launcher.

Another important thing to note is that the levels in Dusk are balanced around pistol starts which you can enable for each level by ticking the Intruder Mode checkbox when starting a new game (though technically you'll spawn with only your starting melee weapon instead of a pistol, but you can kill enemies by picking up shit and throwing it at them, so no biggie). Though this still brings with itself the problem which the original Doom had, namely that by balancing each level around pistol starts instead of one continuous campaign players who are playing without pistol starts will find themselves swimming in ammo and health. And even then from what little I've played on Intruder Mode the amount of ammo placed is a bit too forgiving even on the second-highest difficulty.

Sound design-wise it's incredibly underwhelming. The soundbites of the cultists or any of the enemies have fucking NOTHING on any other first-person shooter out there. Instead they will only whisper things like HERETIC or BLOOD in a Batman voice, but also stuff like DOOM, MARATHON, and DUKE NUKEM 3D: WORLD TOUR. I found it pretty silly to be honest. The Mortar and Riveter literally sound like wet farts, there's no way explosive weapons can produce such underwhelming sounds. The only weapon with a really good kick to it is the Super Shotgun, and maybe the dual shotguns as well. Enemy pain grunts aren't satisfying either. Music is mostly dark ambience and heavy metal when you get into a serious encounter, but rarely anything special.

Visually it's rather amateurish, even compared to old 3D games like Quake. The models for the cultists and chainsaw guys are too blocky and end up looking too cartoony as a result. It kind of suffers the same problem most modern pixel art does where the art is built as pixel art from the ground up rather than normal 2D art being downscaled to fit the restrictions of the sprite sizes. There are too many models (like some of the weapon viewmodels) which are more low-res then they have any right to be. Even the visual effects are amateurish. Blood splatters are just strings of red squares. Devil Daggers did a much better job at nailing the Quake aesthetic.

It's also rather unfortunate that Dusk does very little to offer it's own unique things on the table. Most of the weapon and enemy designs are stock standard, with the crossbow being ripped from Heretic. Using MOUSE3 to whip out your sickles gives you the message MIGHTY SICKLE ENGAGED, and you'll also come across a computer displaying a screenshot of the game itself as a message saying I DON'T HAVE TIME TO PLAY WITH MYSELF appears on screen. It's one thing to go full reference county, but to copy quotes from other games is just lazy.

Level design-wise I think it's alright. The levels themselves are pretty varied in terms of setting and combat encounters, with plenty of secrets hidden everywhere. There are some signs that the guy in charge knew what he was doing, as there are several subtle tricks used to keep you on the right path while there's still a ton to explore. It's pretty much Build Engine-style but with more open areas as a result of there being no hitscan enemies whatsoever. There's plenty of shit you can interact with, like flushing objects down toilets and cooking meat, but that's about it.

I still liked it overall, but when I consider the direction Dusk takes for its combat I think it could have been explored much more thoroughly to provide a more tight experience. Who knows what the upcoming two episodes will have to offer. Many people have been saying that even on the second-highest difficulty (whereas on the highest difficulty you die in one hit) the game is too easy, so hopefully the developers are working to rebalance their game for the better. I'm going to do a full playthrough on the one-hit kill difficulty with pistol starts, all secrets, and no mid-level saves and see how I feel about Dusk then.

[729]

-

[Mischief Maker]

Sky Rogue

What a pleasant surprise! A roguelite version of Ace Combat.

All fun unrealistic Top Gun combat, none of the pretentious navel-gazing plot.

It's a pity the graphics are basic (but colorful!) polygons.

[kaicooper]

playing Commandos: Behind Enimey lines 1998
thisss what i call a great Classic game..one of hardest game ever
u need patience and plan to succeed..20 missions
i spent hours planning in just single mission..this's amazing

if you really digging stealth games..play this Masterpiece
one of best Real-Time Tactical Strategy game
------

thanx goes to my 2016 GOTY = Shadow Tactics and Satellite Reign

[Stevens]

playing Commandos: Behind Enimey lines 1998
thisss what i call a great Classic game..one of hardest game ever
u need patience and plan to succeed..20 missions
i spent hours planning in just single mission..this's amazing

if you really digging stealth games..play this Masterpiece
one of best Real-Time Tactical Strategy game
------

thanx goes to my 2016 GOTY = Shadow Tactics and Satellite Reign

I don't know how well it has aged, but I was a huge fan of Airborne Ranger on the C64 as a kid. You may want to look into it.

[null1024]

Sky Rogue

What a pleasant surprise! A roguelite version of Ace Combat.

All fun unrealistic Top Gun combat, none of the pretentious navel-gazing plot.

It's a pity the graphics are basic (but colorful!) polygons.

Is the handling in the final version different from the demo they released a while back?
I'm big on Ace Combat, but the demo felt really naff.
also, flatshaded polygons are love

[Mischief Maker]

Sky Rogue

What a pleasant surprise! A roguelite version of Ace Combat.

All fun unrealistic Top Gun combat, none of the pretentious navel-gazing plot.

It's a pity the graphics are basic (but colorful!) polygons.

Is the handling in the final version different from the demo they released a while back?
I'm big on Ace Combat, but the demo felt really naff.
also, flatshaded polygons are love

I don't know if I'll be of much help to you because I didn't play the demo, nor have I played an Ace Combat game since the Balkan War on PS2.

That said, it plays like I remember from Ace Combat. There are a multitude of planes in the game, all with different handling. The demo probably had the medium fighter which is the joe average plane in this game. The light fighter is super zippy and the heavy bomber is a lumbering ox in comparison.

A big thing with let's play footage is the early levels are sparsely populated and meant to be farmed for upgrade cash while mission 5+ (orange sky) start to get really hectic with swarms of fighters, floating dreadnoughts, and carriers spitting out an endless stream of drones.

[Blinge]

Last Guardian actually runs well on muh shiny new Pro. :O
God I love the aesthetic - no one does ruins quite like Team Ico.

Also Fire Emblem 6- Binding Blade. I started because the colourful footage of later GBA games made me want to check it out, didn't realise it's often listed as one of the harder FEs. I might've avoided this one!
So far it's.. okay. Definitely feel more pressured by some scenarios in the early game than I did in Shadow Dragon or Path of Radiance.

Also slogging my way through the Snow Queen route of Persona for half hour sessions here and there. Glad I gave the original ost a try for this second play.

[Vexorg]

Destiny 2 open beta (PC):

Pretty much more of the same if you played the first Destiny. The beta is rather limited with the intro mission, 1 strike and some PVP (which I suck horribly at). I played a decent amount of the first Destiny but lost interest after a while, mostly because it made a good mindless "mess around when you're bored" type game. I might pick it up at some point, but most likely not for $60.

[null1024]

Sonic Mania [PC].
Game's fucking ace.
shame Sega went and sneaked Denuvo in like they knew they were doing something wrong
everyone expected it to have it, but for a fair bit after it went up, nothing on the Steam page or in the EULA did it mention it
I'm more pissed at the fact that they were so sneaky about it, you can't really go and say, "oh, that's not on the Steam page? oops" when it's been an actual question put towards Sega for some time now.

really might as well not bother buying any Sega anything again if they're just gonna keep at this
also, as far as we can tell, someone screwed up [non-Denuvo related] and made it require an internet connection to start since it pings Steam on boot, but you can do a quick and dirty hex-edit to fix that

Some of the people I've seen complaining are kind of retarded and should recognize that Steam is literally a DRM system too, but Denuvo being present screws up a fair bit of mod potential and it's written by the same worthless hacks that did SecuROM [and that last bit should speak for itself].
and it's not like the game's not gonna be cracked within a week anyway

[gbaplayer]

Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade (GBA)
Damn that game is tough, tougher than every other Fire Emblem game i played so far.
But it is the same fun as ever.

[Sumez]

Some of the people I've seen complaining are kind of retarded and should recognize that Steam is literally a DRM system too

It does feel kind of hypocritical to complain about DRM on a Steam game.