Board 8 > February Game of the Month Club ft. Astalon, PARANORMASIGHT, and Titanfall 2

(+) Yeah! (+)

KCF0107 posted...

If you are someone who collects free games on Epic, you might have Doors: Paradox in your library as it was given away this year.

Yep, just a few weeks ago! It was on my paper backlog, so that was nice. It's supposed to only be 5-7 hours long too, so not a big lift time wise.

Might check out Doors, then. Probably a pass on the other two.

Oops, forgot to nominate anything

KCF0107 posted...

If you are someone who collects free games on Epic, you might have Doors: Paradox in your library as it was given away this year.

Thanks for the shoutout on this. Wouldn't have thought to check.

Beat Titanfall 2

I don't play shooters often but that was pretty fun.

Doors: Paradox looks cute and it's only about 5 hours long apparently so I might give it a shot if I can get it running on Steam Deck. Nothing else for me in March unless I buy Pizza Tower :o

Played some more Titanfall and oh man this campaign is really good, people weren't lying. The level with time traveling might be an all-time great.

I think the difficulty on normal is about right for me (a person who is bad at shooters) but man, these mercenary bosses were not prepared for someone who plays this game's multiplayer. None of them have lasted more than about 10 seconds. Ash was dead practically before her warp ended.

Beat Titanfall 2

Pretty great campaign all the way through, though the story itself ended with a real whimper instead of the bang it should've. Between not getting to fight Bisk and the fake-out BT death which was reversed almost immediately which was followed by a real BT death almost immediately which was possibly then reversed again almost immediately it really felt they just forgot what writing was for a minute there. The obvious Apex Legends plug makes it seem even more trashy. At least the final wall running section was cool.

Actually, Apex Legends wasn't even conceived until they were finished with Titanfall 2

I'm not claiming you're lying (and that was my understanding of the timeline as well) but I straight up can't believe that, it was so blatant. It was like if Ganondorf looked Link straight in the eyes and said "You should join the Smash Brothers" at the end of Ocarina of Time and then you're expected to believe SSB64 wasn't planned by that point.

Played about 30 minutes of Titanfall 2. Seemed well made, but I'm probably not going to end up going back to it this month, I just don't think I'm in the mood for a first person shooter.

I made a lot of progress in Astalon yesterday. Up to the ruins of ash.

also got a bad ending in Paranormasight but I still have a little further to go.

ok on the last boss in Astalon. kind of annoyed that I got so close to beating it, and kind of don't want to bother trying to clean up a bunch of upgrades I missed to make it a little easier right now so I'll just try to come back to it a little later..

Ok I think I just have the true ending left to do in Paranormasight so I should probably wrap it up today.

I finally put some commitment to Astalon. I'm about 20% done with map/items, so it is an almost certainty that I won't be this by the end of tomorrow, but I'm making headway. I used the archer quite a bit at the beginning, but her (seemingly) smaller attack hitbox and low attack speed make her kind of useless for my playstyle that I've settled on, so I'm been focused on the knight and mage and grabbing her when I need her for platforming.

While I'm enjoying this quite a bit, it does take some retro design choices that were better left in the past. The multiple, spaced-out fast-travel systems, predominantly unclear and expensive upgrade system without refunds, marginally helpful map (I find going off of memory/feel better so far), and just being weird all around regarding health do put a damper on this.

If you're having trouble with the lack of ways to regenerate health, buy Death Orb ASAP. It doesn't fully solve the issue but it's very, very helpful.

Cody has beaten Titanfall 2

JONA posted...

I don't play shooters often but that was pretty fun.

About sums up my thoughts. Effect and Cause was definitely the highlight for me, it felt like the game peaked there.

Beat Paranormasight

I had a lot less to go than I thought. Unfortunately, despite knowing what to do I ended up spending like 2-3 hours replaying bits trying to find the exact spot I needed to be at to get the true ending.

Anyway in general I liked the art (though I couldn't help but laugh a bit at the duck faces), story was a bit silly at times. The gameplay/puzzle aspects of it were mostly pretty simple, I didn't really care for the 360 degree setup and there was very little to interact with most of the time, and so it would have been better if it either leaned into gameplay more like the ZE series or if it leaned away from having interactive elements and focused more on the story than not really doing either well.

Also it seemed a bit on the low budget side. Like it felt like the developers wanted to include voice acting but couldn't afford it particularly since they have that one meta puzzle, that they must have come up with it early on but felt it was too clever an idea to drop from the final game despite not really making sense without voice acting, and there's some parts where there's a reveal instead of say having a flashback scene to show what happened or go into character motivations in more depth it just updates the character bios and notes with a summary of what happened. It's not unreasonable when it's talking about events that would have happened hundreds of years ago, but it still kind of falls flat with the true ending in particular (especially since I had worked out that twist really early on).

It's not terrible, but there's definitely better options out there.

I'm going to try to hurry up and finish Astalon tonight too. I got a lot more powerful from a few hours of side exploration so the final boss shouldn't be too much trouble at this point.

Marsupilami is on sale for $4 USD on Steam until March 4th
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1586700/MARSUPILAMI__HOOBADVENTURE/

IIRC it's been in a couple Fanatical bundles too. Nothing right now I don't think but you might get lucky during March.