tjs282
Stone \ Cold / Fish
I refuse to believe that you've ever been a low-life dirtbag
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In What Electronic Entertainment Have You Been Partaking #18: Reticulating Splines
- Thread starter aimeeandbeatles
- Start date
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Agreed. I'm a huge Resident Evil fan so I suffered through Revelations just to say I finished it. I got Revelations 2 but haven't gotten around to playing it yet. Apparently it's supposed to be much better than the first though.
As far as the story: Yeah, Capcom created a pretty convoluted and very difficult to understand plot. It also doesn't help that they've retconned it all to hell, which makes it even more difficult to understand. However, I think that's part of the reason they are doing the remakes. They are trying to clean up the plot and lore to make it more coherent and easier to understand. That's why Capcom has been pretty clear that the remakes are establishing a "new canon" and a lot of stuff, including the original versions of the games, isn't relevant to the canon anymore.
Started the Bounty of Blood (the third story DLC for Borderlands 3). Enjoying the narrator, he fourth-walls a bit (and more than a bit) here and there. Should be good fun to see if he ends up being a character I've met.
I don't mind grinding guns, farming out the endgame missions and so on, but I really do enjoy just blasting through plot.
I don't mind grinding guns, farming out the endgame missions and so on, but I really do enjoy just blasting through plot.
Been playing Torchlight 2 which I got for free for some light relief.
Pretty easy hack'n'slay but some interesting tactical choices between the classes and how you level them up.
Pretty easy hack'n'slay but some interesting tactical choices between the classes and how you level them up.
I have so many hours in Torchlight 2. I'm glad to see it's reaching more and more folks, long after its release. Holds up surprisingly well, imo.
EgonSpengler
Deity
- Joined
- Jun 26, 2014
- Messages
- 12,260
I started Green Hell yesterday, something I'd been keeping an interested eye on for years. It's a hardcore survival game, even moreso than The Long Dark, imo. I died on the first day something like 10 times before I figured out what I needed to know to make it to Day 2. Unlike The Long Dark, there's a huge amount of crafting involved. Some of the "blueprints" for tools and shelters will be magically revealed to you by way of your in-game notebook - that is, your character surmises how to build something - but it's still up to the player to figure out which components are needed for many of your most crucial tools. For the most part, the game does a good job of making things intuitive. So far, everything I've thought should work has worked. otoh, the game doesn't hand you very much, and learning is mostly through trial-and-error (or, rather, trial and in-game death, over and over). It took me forever to figure out how to find a critical component of fire making. I mean, it's the jungle. Everything's soaking wet. With the crafting, you can combine components semi-randomly and it'll tell you whether they can be assembled into something.
My latest playthrough is on Day 9, and I've got a nice little camp going, except that I'm constantly running around for food and materials and have been unable to explore much or progress the story. So clearly there's another hurdle I need to get over. I think if I just stay where I am, I'll slowly lose ground and starve to death in another week or two. That's provided I don't get killed by a leopard, as has happened once already. The only "soft counter" to the leopard I've found so far is...
Unlike The Long Dark, Fallout 4's survival mode, or Subnautica, your character in Green Hell has a Sanity meter in addition to Health and Energy, and there are four different nutritional meters you have to maintain - Water, Carbs, Fats and Protein - so you have to eat different things, and your Health meter suffers if you're low on any one of them. It seems like my character's Energy meter depletes very fast, too, so I'm wondering if being low on any of the four foods impacts your Energy as well as your Health. One time, my character face-planted into the dirt mere feet from his hammock, just out of exhaustion from the day's work, which I thought was a little dumb. But, then, I've never been stranded in the jungle trying to hunt tapirs with a sharpened tree branch, so what do I know? I'm curious to find out what happens when your Sanity meter is depleted, but one death at a time.
My latest playthrough is on Day 9, and I've got a nice little camp going, except that I'm constantly running around for food and materials and have been unable to explore much or progress the story. So clearly there's another hurdle I need to get over. I think if I just stay where I am, I'll slowly lose ground and starve to death in another week or two. That's provided I don't get killed by a leopard, as has happened once already. The only "soft counter" to the leopard I've found so far is...
Spoiler :
Unlike The Long Dark, Fallout 4's survival mode, or Subnautica, your character in Green Hell has a Sanity meter in addition to Health and Energy, and there are four different nutritional meters you have to maintain - Water, Carbs, Fats and Protein - so you have to eat different things, and your Health meter suffers if you're low on any one of them. It seems like my character's Energy meter depletes very fast, too, so I'm wondering if being low on any of the four foods impacts your Energy as well as your Health. One time, my character face-planted into the dirt mere feet from his hammock, just out of exhaustion from the day's work, which I thought was a little dumb. But, then, I've never been stranded in the jungle trying to hunt tapirs with a sharpened tree branch, so what do I know? I'm curious to find out what happens when your Sanity meter is depleted, but one death at a time.
aimeeandbeatles
watermelon
- Joined
- Apr 5, 2007
- Messages
- 20,112
Some of these randomized names lmao
@Kyriakos
‘Metamorphosis’: The Kafka industry makes its way to video games
“Metamorphosis” (All in! Games)
By Christopher Byrd
September 8, 2020 at 7:00 a.m. MDT
Add to list
Metamorphosis
Developed by: Ovid Works
Published by: All in! Games
Available on: Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
In hindsight, it was inevitable that someone would opt to gamify the work of Franz Kafka. As the novelist Joshua Cohen pointed out in an extraordinary essay in The Paris Review, the culture industry that has flourished around the genius from Prague has produced “thousands of essays and academic papers, more than a hundred biographies, more than a dozen films and TV shows, not to mention the Kafka-branding industry, which includes a computer font that reproduces the author’s handwriting … and smartphone covers emblazoned with his face, und so weiter.” Video games have long trafficked in the absurd and impractical so why not extend the Kafkaesque to the medium that gave us the Mushroom Kingdom?
“Metamorphosis” (All in! Games)
“Metamorphosis” refashions Kafka’s most famous tale, about a man who wakes up to discover that he has been transformed into an insect, into a sprightly puzzle-platformer which made me laugh on several occasions.
Unlike the novella on which it's based, the Gregor Samsa of the game does not wake to find himself with a carapace and twitchy little legs in the apartment he shares with his family. Rather, he awakens to a hangover and is unsure at first where he is until he recognizes the familiar sight of his friend Josef K.'s lodgings. (Yes, that Josef K. — the much put-upon protagonist of Kafka’s unfinished novel “The Trial.”) Evidently, the two had spent the previous night celebrating Josef's birthday.
“Metamorphosis” (All in! Games)
Even with his aching head, Gregor is in good spirits when he gets up with the intention of saying goodbye to his friend before heading off to work. But after opening the door of the guest room he emerges into an unfamiliar halfway, flanked by photographs that jog his memories. Curiously, as he passes the people in them acquire insectlike characteristics. At the end of the hall, Gregor finds himself standing before a door but when he opens it he discovers that the room’s furnishings dwarf him in size. Unable to grasp the severity of the situation, Gregor tells himself that his friend must have orchestrated an elaborate prank.
Tiny Gregor eventually threads his way to a desk where he discovers a mysterious letter that alludes to the present difficulties of his circumstances and concludes that, “We hope you have what it takes to get to Tower!” Leaving the room, he soon finds that his limbs have changed into those of a bug. At the far end of the corridor he enters a ventilation hole that takes him to another room where he discovers a letter that mentions “the sorry state he now finds himself in” and offers an employment opportunity at the Tower. Then he falls through the document into a twilit realm inhabited by other bugs who sympathize with his disoriented state. After passing through the area he ends up back in Josef’s apartment, watching helplessly from inside a drawer as a uniformed man rifles through his friend’s things while he sleeps. Worried for his friend, he crawls over to Josef’s bedside clock and triggers the alarm. Upon waking, Josef is startled by the man who makes vague insinuations that Josef has run afoul of the law. From there the game deftly intertwines the fate of Gregor with that of his friend who struggles against the snares of an inscrutable, dehumanizing legal process.
“Metamorphosis” (All in! Games)
Along his meandering journey to the Tower Gregor encounters a variety of oddities, from an insect lounge situated in the gramophone of a lawyer’s apartment, to the inside of a pneumatic tube system that processes legal documents. These areas are populated by an assortment of outlandish characters such as insects who engage in philosophical jousting and another that complains about his recent divorce and the burdens of “larva support.” Literary buffs will find plenty of winks to other characters from the works of Kafka and Shakespeare as well as references to other canonical writers.
In terms of gameplay, the puzzles in “Metamorphosis” typically involve rotating gears, jumping on buttons and, more generally, finding solutions to the personal problems of Josef K. and the insects along the way — Gregor will often need sticky fluids, such as glue or ink, to climb up vertical surfaces. The platforming sequences are fairly forgiving which keeps the narrative humming along smoothly.
As much as I enjoyed my time with “Metamorphosis,” I should note that its stiff character animations make the human characters look like eerie-looking puppets. Moreover, I encountered a few audio hitches and a program crash that resulted in my Xbox turning off. Regardless of these technical shortcomings, I would not deter anyone who is interested in seeing how the Polish development studio, Ovid Works, has created the most recent, splendid homage to one of the supreme literary figures of the twentieth century.
‘Metamorphosis’: The Kafka industry makes its way to video games
“Metamorphosis” (All in! Games)
By Christopher Byrd
September 8, 2020 at 7:00 a.m. MDT
Add to list
Metamorphosis
Developed by: Ovid Works
Published by: All in! Games
Available on: Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
In hindsight, it was inevitable that someone would opt to gamify the work of Franz Kafka. As the novelist Joshua Cohen pointed out in an extraordinary essay in The Paris Review, the culture industry that has flourished around the genius from Prague has produced “thousands of essays and academic papers, more than a hundred biographies, more than a dozen films and TV shows, not to mention the Kafka-branding industry, which includes a computer font that reproduces the author’s handwriting … and smartphone covers emblazoned with his face, und so weiter.” Video games have long trafficked in the absurd and impractical so why not extend the Kafkaesque to the medium that gave us the Mushroom Kingdom?
“Metamorphosis” (All in! Games)
“Metamorphosis” refashions Kafka’s most famous tale, about a man who wakes up to discover that he has been transformed into an insect, into a sprightly puzzle-platformer which made me laugh on several occasions.
Unlike the novella on which it's based, the Gregor Samsa of the game does not wake to find himself with a carapace and twitchy little legs in the apartment he shares with his family. Rather, he awakens to a hangover and is unsure at first where he is until he recognizes the familiar sight of his friend Josef K.'s lodgings. (Yes, that Josef K. — the much put-upon protagonist of Kafka’s unfinished novel “The Trial.”) Evidently, the two had spent the previous night celebrating Josef's birthday.
“Metamorphosis” (All in! Games)
Even with his aching head, Gregor is in good spirits when he gets up with the intention of saying goodbye to his friend before heading off to work. But after opening the door of the guest room he emerges into an unfamiliar halfway, flanked by photographs that jog his memories. Curiously, as he passes the people in them acquire insectlike characteristics. At the end of the hall, Gregor finds himself standing before a door but when he opens it he discovers that the room’s furnishings dwarf him in size. Unable to grasp the severity of the situation, Gregor tells himself that his friend must have orchestrated an elaborate prank.
Tiny Gregor eventually threads his way to a desk where he discovers a mysterious letter that alludes to the present difficulties of his circumstances and concludes that, “We hope you have what it takes to get to Tower!” Leaving the room, he soon finds that his limbs have changed into those of a bug. At the far end of the corridor he enters a ventilation hole that takes him to another room where he discovers a letter that mentions “the sorry state he now finds himself in” and offers an employment opportunity at the Tower. Then he falls through the document into a twilit realm inhabited by other bugs who sympathize with his disoriented state. After passing through the area he ends up back in Josef’s apartment, watching helplessly from inside a drawer as a uniformed man rifles through his friend’s things while he sleeps. Worried for his friend, he crawls over to Josef’s bedside clock and triggers the alarm. Upon waking, Josef is startled by the man who makes vague insinuations that Josef has run afoul of the law. From there the game deftly intertwines the fate of Gregor with that of his friend who struggles against the snares of an inscrutable, dehumanizing legal process.
“Metamorphosis” (All in! Games)
Along his meandering journey to the Tower Gregor encounters a variety of oddities, from an insect lounge situated in the gramophone of a lawyer’s apartment, to the inside of a pneumatic tube system that processes legal documents. These areas are populated by an assortment of outlandish characters such as insects who engage in philosophical jousting and another that complains about his recent divorce and the burdens of “larva support.” Literary buffs will find plenty of winks to other characters from the works of Kafka and Shakespeare as well as references to other canonical writers.
In terms of gameplay, the puzzles in “Metamorphosis” typically involve rotating gears, jumping on buttons and, more generally, finding solutions to the personal problems of Josef K. and the insects along the way — Gregor will often need sticky fluids, such as glue or ink, to climb up vertical surfaces. The platforming sequences are fairly forgiving which keeps the narrative humming along smoothly.
As much as I enjoyed my time with “Metamorphosis,” I should note that its stiff character animations make the human characters look like eerie-looking puppets. Moreover, I encountered a few audio hitches and a program crash that resulted in my Xbox turning off. Regardless of these technical shortcomings, I would not deter anyone who is interested in seeing how the Polish development studio, Ovid Works, has created the most recent, splendid homage to one of the supreme literary figures of the twentieth century.
Akka
Moody old mage.
Wowowow !
Kingdom of Amalur : Reckoning is FINALLY on GOG !
Too bad I replayed it not long ago, or I'd just jump into another playthrough (this game is just far too long to play it again so soon
).
But that's frigging good news !
Though I'm not sure how I feel about the remaster thing. I kinda liked the original graphics which were of a "age well" style, and I don't know if the new ones will be really better or looks actually more dated quicker. We'll see.
Kingdom of Amalur : Reckoning is FINALLY on GOG !
Too bad I replayed it not long ago, or I'd just jump into another playthrough (this game is just far too long to play it again so soon
).But that's frigging good news !
Though I'm not sure how I feel about the remaster thing. I kinda liked the original graphics which were of a "age well" style, and I don't know if the new ones will be really better or looks actually more dated quicker. We'll see.
AdamCrock
Polish Pirate
Yeah, Ultima VII Blackgate with Exult + font mod.
AdamCrock
Polish Pirate
I'm waiting for an inspiration to play that title
I had it installed once but couldn't finish. The game looks amazing however the controls felt a little clunky for me. When I'll have more time I plan to reinstall and finish it 
Anyway how's Your experience with it so far ?I bought it as hidden gem to be played somewhere sometimes. And 7 months of home office made restI'm waiting for an inspiration to play that title
I really recommend Exult. Graphics enhancement does not matter much (default GOG version with Dosbox allows about the same options), but controls are much better (shortcuts(Eating!!!), portraits). Most comfortable for me was moving on numeric keypad and clicking and talking/taking/using items by mouse.
In first cca 5 hours I was quite bored. The trivial dialogues were pretty much overwhelming and I was still confused why everybody acts like my friend. But then I have started noticing how the game was ahead of time. World with interactive items and objects (sitting in pubs), companions with personalities (Dupre is well known and has dialogue with every barman in Britannia) and NPCs with small own stories, people with own life duties, changing time and weather, books which actually helps you to learn about items, locations and language, writings in own symbols etc. lore made from previous sequels...this all makes very lovely world, much more live than Baldurs gate or Fallout. The feel is somewhat like group isometric elder scrolls.
Its played somewhat more as adventure than the RPG. I mean you can beat dragon quite easily and still fail to beat some small slime creatures. The fights are somewhat automatic, you can choose companion AI, the char stats and equipment matter, but not that much. Your decision who to confront and when with general luck are quite fine enough to win the battles.
Simply put, its not the best RPG ever, but it has its unique charms and its really not some zombie retro gaming.
And so far it doesnt seem as some very long game where I would spend tens of time. I recommend find the magic carpet (down on the picture) and online map for easy moving around the world.
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AdamCrock
Polish Pirate
Thanks for such a detailed review it certainly stirred some inspiration I think I'll look into Exult soon - might fix the controls issues I had when first played and who knows I might even be able to finish it this time
it certainly stirred some inspiration I think I'll look into Exult soon - might fix the controls issues I had when first played and who knows I might even be able to finish it this time As some might guess from my earlier rant and subsequent rave, I am playing Shattered Union again. The game is so simple and should only have limited replay value, yet I keep coming back to it after all these years. I've been playing it off and on since my early 20s. It was also my most successful series on my failed YouTube channel.
This time I'm playing as the Great Plains Federation since my hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio is within it's territory. Just barely though as it sits right on the border with the New England Alliance (which controls Northern Kentucky for some odd reason). I opened up with an attack on the Republic of Texas since they seem to have the richest territories this time around (territory bonuses are somewhat randomized each playthrough). It went poorly. I won, but it cost me so much that the victory wasn't worth it and I now don't have the money or forces to adequately defend my territory if I'm attacked. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping I get lucky and don't get attacked before my next turn.
This time I'm playing as the Great Plains Federation since my hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio is within it's territory. Just barely though as it sits right on the border with the New England Alliance (which controls Northern Kentucky for some odd reason). I opened up with an attack on the Republic of Texas since they seem to have the richest territories this time around (territory bonuses are somewhat randomized each playthrough). It went poorly. I won, but it cost me so much that the victory wasn't worth it and I now don't have the money or forces to adequately defend my territory if I'm attacked. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping I get lucky and don't get attacked before my next turn.
AdamCrock
Polish Pirate
Aww.... Your Mechwarrior content was pretty awesome !!! I appreciate it !
You're a good strategist ! Aww.... Your Mechwarrior content was pretty awesome !!! I appreciate it !
Thanks. Although I would say I'm only a mediocre strategist and a pretty good tactician.
Like when I play XCOM, I can wipe the floor with the aliens in any battle under just about any circumstances, but I tend to struggle and barely hold everything together in the strategic layer of the game.
AdamCrock
Polish Pirate
IMHO in strategic layer it's only what You're willing to "pay" in order to achieve "something" an example :
That's because the game is flawed , it do not adjust for real combat conditions. You're not flawed - as far as I know You're a killing machine , so I better watch my words xD
Oh wait I've played X-com - the expansion is harder IMHO but I've just settled with my sniper doing all the work
Word of advice though :
Thanks. Although I would say I'm only a mediocre strategist and a pretty good tactician.
Like when I play XCOM, I can wipe the floor with the aliens in any battle under just about any circumstances, but I tend to struggle and barely hold everything together in the strategic layer of the game.
That's because the game is flawed , it do not adjust for real combat conditions. You're not flawed - as far as I know You're a killing machine , so I better watch my words xD
Oh wait I've played X-com - the expansion is harder IMHO but I've just settled with my sniper doing all the work
Word of advice though :
Spoiler :
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