Board 8 > transience's video game topic 49: look over the horizon, a lot of games are nier

(+) Yeah! (+)

SgtSphynx posted...

Played a decent chunk of Horizon Zero Dawn, I really like that game. Also, I though I was pessimistic about humanity's future, but what I have gathered about the events that led to the world of Zero Dawn almost make me look optimistic.

How far are you?

It's not the first piece of media to suggest that will be our downfall, and certainly not close to the most notable!
---

You know that point in the preview on GB with Brad talking over it where he went outside a gate and met a dude fighting a machine? I'm in the area beyond that gate and am wrapping up some side quests and getting collectibles before moving on with the main quest, and that area is like three times as large as the beginning area.

And what I mean about making me almost seem an optimist, is that I may think that is possible, but they went at least three or four times further with it than I would have. I don't yet have all the pieces to say that what i think happened actually happened, but there is a path that is forming leading up to the events that seems to suggest what I think.

Basically:

A -> B -> C -> D -> E

A, B, and C are the events that I am piecing together. I only really have B, but A has been hinted at and then the combo of A and B somewhat suggests C.

Hopefully that makes any kind of sense, really trying to not spoil anything, not that I am very far to spoil anything.
---

hey icon, is BOTW a good kid game?
---

transience posted...

hey icon, is BOTW a good kid game?

it's a big open world from Nintendo. It's full of mystery and potential I think you need to do a bit of groundwork to get a save off the plateau, but beyond that, absolutely. Sophia is really excited to try it, she loved the trailers with a focus on the animals of Hyrule. she hasn't tried it yet because she's kind of obsessed with Snipperclips.

protip: letting two kids play Snipperclips is an exercise in patience.

SgtSphynx posted...

And what I mean about making me almost seem an optimist, is that I may think that is possible, but they went at least three or four times further with it than I would have. I don't yet have all the pieces to say that what i think happened actually happened, but there is a path that is forming leading up to the events that seems to suggest what I think.

there's a really great part where you learn about the moment of the fall, and it's a bit of black comedy that reminded me of Portal.
---

I can only imagine

we rented sonic racing transformed today and isabella still can't get above 10th place
---

Julian is better at Sonic All-Stars Racing Transformed than me. Sophia learned last year that going backwards in Mario Kart 8 might not be the best strategy.
---

belle has tried for years and still doesn't get the concept of going straight. like there's a straightaway and she just careens off the side randomly, it's amazing
---

haha yeah! Sophia did that too at the start. something about tiny hands tugging at analog sticks, assuming that'll fix everything
---

in all the Switch excitement I neglected to look at this month's Humble offerings. Morphblade is included! It's the new game from Tom Francis (RockPaperShotgun, Gunpoint). That's awesome.
---

things overheard while the kids play Zelda:

"you'll want to play on my file Sophia because I have really good trousers."
---

hey kleenex, are you still using your pi?
---

not so much over the past few months. new games and all.
---

but you still like it? no complaints?

my daughter keeps asking me about computers and motherboards and I thought putting together a pi might be a fun project
---

oh yeah, it's great. the ps1 emulation has been a little spotty on it but everything prior works just fine. biggest complaint was the difficulty getting a PS4 controller working with it, never did figure that out. still, glad I decided to invest in that kit over the NES mini
---

Alright just spent most of the day A Ranking Mission 4 & 5 in Bleed 2. I rescind my comment on the default setup being the best. I think it's legitimately impossible to get a good time rank on Mission 5 without liberal use of the rocket launcher and pass-through dash attack.
---

did you ever look into overclocking?

every time I would hit a wall in very hard on Bleed 2, the rocket launcher would magically get me out of a jam.
---

nah, never felt like messing with it once I got retropie set up and configured the way I wanted it.
---

I felt like I didn't need it *too* much on the previous levels, although it helped here and then. It was an absolute necessity on M5. Tons and tons of little clumped up objects begging to be aoe exploded, from both normal enemies and bosses.

I really want to see a video of someone doing that mission and getting an S rank for time. I blazed through it as fast as humanly possible and borderline cheated through some areas using Dash 2, and I still only could get a B Rank in time after a LOT of tries. Bleed 2 seems like a much tougher game than the original. There's just way more bosses in each level.
---

I handled it pretty okay until the last level. man did I suck at a couple of the bosses there.
---

kids while playing Snipperclips: at each other's throats

kids while playing Zelda: calmly working together, passing the controller back and forth while Sophia explores and Julian does combat
---

Torment: Tides of Numenara is real good. Exactly what I wanted out of a Planescape spiritual successor and I'm only a few hours in.
---

it hit at the wrong time for me but I've liked what I've heard from people who have played it. I only managed to get three screens in, which in typical Torment fashion means about 30 minutes, and I found the set-up fascinating. You have this Changing God who the locals believe is a vain deity because of its ever-shifting appearance, but really the Changing God is using these husks to research and outrun a cancerous shadow growing inside it. When the parasite inside the god finally catches up, the god tosses aside the husk - and because this is a Torment game, you play the husk the moment it was tossed aside, wrestling the collected consciousness of all the Changing God's past lives in order to forge an identity for yourself.

that's my s***.
---

Beat Night in the Woods. God damn that is a good game.
---

The more I play of Zelda the more I like it. It's very overwhelming at first but once you get your bearings and stop trying to play it like a Zelda game, is clicks.

I do think the inventory management could be a little more elegant though.
---

I saw Gerstmann tweet that maybe the inventory stuff was designed with a second screen in mind.
---

Yeah I could buy that.
---

Beat Level 6 of Bleed on Very Hard only getting hit once. The more I play this, the more I think this is legitimately one of the best action games ever created. The guy who made this has design sensibilities that AAA games with 50+ developers and millions in funding couldn't figure out.
---

I like the description of Bleed 2 as a 2d Platinum game
---

Yeah, that's pretty apt. A very condensed version of a Platinum game - but not at all in a bad way. As an adrenaline junkie who craves the random action games that make me want to push my limits (but is also very picky), this is so amazing to have. There's the Souls series, Devil May Cry 3, Metal Gear Rising...and now Bleed 1/2. Good stuff.
---

got to try the switch at a friend's place. joycons feel nice in my tiny asian hands. snipperclips demo is neat. don't know why my friend bought 1-2 switch instead of that.

zelda looks good. very seriously considering buying the wii u version since he's down with lending me his wii u while he plays on the switch. also my chance to finally play the bayonetta games too!

oh but yes the desyncing issue is real. apparently my friend died multiple times already playing zelda because of it. he was even having some problems while i was there. that sucks.
---

Hmm, won't get it this month.

But Nier: Automata, Steam vs Playstation 4?
---

Ask again in 11 days when the PC version is actually out
---

I finished Horizon last night. I enjoyed my time with it, but it's not what I expected. It invites comparisons to grander games, like Fallout New Vegas (due to the pedigree of the writing team behind Horizon) or The Witcher 3 (due to pre-release interviews where the devs talked about inspirations, and the game has at least one direct Witcher reference I discovered), and those comparisons are unflattering. Those games are leagues ahead in world-building. The way major character arcs fade in and out of the background, reflecting the politics of the world, revealing interesting information about people or places, and how all this often begins with a rather innocuous start is exhilarating. It makes the world feel alive and each new encounter a chance for discovery. Horizon doesn't have that. The world doesn't react to you, it serves you. It's dry, empty, save for the enjoyment that comes from looking at all that's around you.

What the game does accomplish is something I think soft sci-fi does so well: put a human face on larger-than-life problems. The way Aloy's story is told alongside the story of the end of the world is consistently engaging. Each mystery unearths another mystery waiting for an answer. There are times when you're two steps ahead of Aloy, and I wish it played with this dramatic irony more (at all), but it wasn't frustrating. The audio and video codecs you find along the way do a better job of establishing the setting and characters than the people you meet out in the world.

From a gameplay perspective, I wish there was more to do - and I mean that in a good way. The game does a good job of creating fresh scenarios for each combat encounter, so while I'd like more robot dinosaurs, I was satisfied with what the game had. On hard, each fight has to be taken seriously. It's easy to be overwhelmed by enemies, and you need to conserve your resources for the larger encounters (special robot dinos, dungeons, major story beats), so encounters have a bit of risk/reward to them.

I updated my album of Horizon screenshots with two dozen more pictures. Spoilers: the game is still pretty in the second half.

http://imgur.com/a/IehS7
---

voltch posted...

Hmm, won't get it this month.

But Nier: Automata, Steam vs Playstation 4?

https://twitter.com/bleatingheart/status/838902844145172481

why wait
---

thanks for writing that up. Horizon sounds like a game you could skip and be okay, but one that fans of the genre can appreciate if they've played other tent pole releases.
---

the comparison I kept making in my head is that Horizon: Zero Dawn is a really good Rise of the Tomb Raider.

also, I've been down on Sony games for the last couple years (I liked Gravity Rush 1, The Last of Us, and Tearaway, not much else), but the last couple months have been great. The Last Guardian, Gravity Rush 2, and Horizon back to back to back is a solid line-up.
---

Sony this Nintendo that, where's the halo wars 2 love???
---

never heard your last guardian take!
---

GANON1025 posted...

Sony this Nintendo that, where's the halo wars 2 love???

I'd give it some but I want to finish my replay of the first one before I start it. <_<
---

it's everything I love about Ico, but twice the length and lesser for it.
---

http://i.imgur.com/13YYBOk.jpg

indisputable proof that life is good
---

Got that Tearaway game on PS+. I tried out a little of that Disc Jam or whatever it's called and holy wow I spent way too much time on the curve shot of the advanced tutorial. I played my first match against a guy whose PSN was literally BlindCripple and I lost. Kinda surprised he could make that PSN name though >_>

Is Disc Jam cross-compatible with Steam like Rocket League? Because I've run into some truly repugnant names that way.
---

iiicon posted...

Is Disc Jam cross-compatible with Steam like Rocket League? Because I've run into some truly repugnant names that way.

There isn't crossplay yet but there might be soon(tm)
---

Finally managed to beat the last two bosses of Bleed 2 without getting hit on Very Hard. I felt real good about this until I looked online and saw people speedrunning all of Very Hard in record time while never dying. I'm still going to post my records here because holy hell I spent too much time fighting these a******s not to post it *somewhere*.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0ostWkHmTk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZI0exF9SI8

Think I'm finally done with the game, was an awesome trip. Thanks again to tran for showing me this series as I 100% never would have found out about it otherwise. It and Shadow Hearts are the B8 specials for me.
---

b8 specials? those are my games! glad you like Bleed 2. I need someone else to share in my enthusiasm.
---

I think Shadow Hearts is you + Heroic Mario. You guys spread that series like crazy. Funny thing - I met one friend ten years ago (that's still a friend!) because he asked me if I knew what Shadow Hearts was and when I said yes he went "wait, seriously?"

I might actually like the Bleed series more than you by now! It's real good stuff. And I'm with you on sharing the enthusiasm - anytime I want to say something about the game I have to come here because there's no other outlets! I've been trying to get my friends to look at it but that's a lost cause.
---

haha, heroic mario. if only you were there for when I converted him!
---

I just watched your second video. wow. I would never be able to do the.. laser thing chasing you fight like that. you can tell how hard you tried by your skills in the menus.

I also never even considered slowing down time for the ping ponging of the last boss! that fight seems a lot more manageable than the laser guy. ugh.
---

Yeeees menu skill. I probably broke a world record at one point.

The laser chasing robot was the huge roadblock. I hated that fight. Even after you get used to its mechanics which feel totally different from the rest of the game, the real big issue is that sometimes he chases you down and fires five lasers from all his cannons - and if he does so at a spot without several stone blocks for you to hide behind, you're completely screwed. There's probably a way to get around that but nothing I tried worked, so if that happened it was an auto-lose for me. I basically had to pray and hope for the best. By far the hugest headache out of the five phases.

Ping pong might actually be easier without the slowdown. It's easy to run out of meter in the middle of it and if you do you're gonna get hit because of how jarring the change in speed is. In one of the ping pongs I actually do run out of meter at the very last split second - was a close call! I was too nervous to try it without slowdown though as if I lost it would mean fighting the underground laser machine again.

EDIT: Also the laser robot is like, half of that entire video. Why does it take so loooong auuugh. You don't want to know how much trouble that gave me.
---