What are you playing now?

[Mazy]

Finished Transistor.

 

It's interesting in terms of gameplay. It feels like they hit the nail on the spot with regards to the design of skills and how they work with each other. It's amazing to just sit and try to find out what the best combination of skills is. Towards the end it does get a bit too easy, being that you can unlock way too much goodness. I rarely died or lost anything, and so the challenge level isn't really there. Unless you try the challenge rooms themselves, which are pretty damn good too. It's like playing a puzzle game with multiple solutions to each puzzle.

 

On the other hand, the narrative suffers immensely. There's a talking sword that accompanies you throughout the game, and about 10% in I just had to mute it simply because it becomes too annoying. I don't need to get told every little thing about what color the walls are or being reminded verbally that I am transitioning between level segments when I am, indeed, transitioning between level segments. It's like having a kid running around you constantly asking, "HEY! WHATCHA DOING? OH YOU DOING THAT? COOL CAN I JOIN?" It absolutely ruins the mood of the game, which is a huge shame because the environmental storytelling of a collapsing city is beautiful and inspiring.

 

The dialogue in general also suffers from trying to hard to convey something in a different tone than usual. I assume it's an attempt to make the characters more believable, but it's like everyone in future talks like a hipster would talk if they were in a game. This ties into the narrative as well, and it quickly brings the game down from its lofty game design heights.

 

On the other hand, the soundtrack is excellent. Not as good as the Guacamelee one I'd say, but still very fitting dark ambient electronica mixed with some pop here and there. It definitely helps level the mood just a little bit.

 

In summary: Game is awesome, art is awesome, but feel free to play it with muted voices as they will bring down the atmosphere. You lose some of the story/narrative, but from I glanced it really isn't that important. Most of the good stuff is conveyed well enough through environmental storytelling. Soundtrack is good too.

 

Initially I really liked how they incentivize mixing the different skills together and using them all as attacks/upgrades/passives to get more backstory, but at one point it just started feeling a bit too messy for me when there were too many to choose from and I feel it made the combat less fun in the last 1/3 of the game. At least I think I would've enjoyed a lot more if I'd been less of a completionist and just stuck to the combos that I liked, rather than experimenting as much as I did. Also I kinda lost interest in the story as the game progressed.

 

But yeah, I agree that their narrative style fell somewhat flat for me as well. Somewhat reminiscent of Bastion, but they delivered much better with Bastion's style of narration.

 

Anyway, was okay, no way near as good as Bastion (not that you can really compare the two), tho they get big props for creating a pretty fresh style of turn-based/real time combat and with a really unique presentation.

[Sentura]

I used the challenge rooms to test out different skill combos, which I then used back in the real world. The challenge where you had to destroy x amount of waves was particularly great, because you were forced to make the best out of your skills given the memory constraints. I could then iterate on each wave and respec skills as I saw fit to make it work... and sometimes I found really good combinations and ended up sticking with them (such as crash/bounce and jaunt/dot).

[Taylor Swift]

playing old team fortress classic

[Pampers]

Got Rayman Legends during the steam sale. Now I've never liked Rayman games, but this game is one of the best plattformers I've played in years.

[dux]

Need for Speed Underground 2

[will2k]

Getting a bit nostalgic and replaying some random missions in Delta Force 1 and 2

[Vilham]

Xenonauts, its pretty damn awesome, has some crashes and has hung once though.

[KoKo5oVaR]

Dwarf Fortress 0.40, finally !

 

Go get it

 

http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=7622

[Vilham]

nope, dwarf therapist doesn't work with it. Until that works I am not going near DF.

[KoKo5oVaR]

Bah, change the labor pref of each migrant dwarf when they arrive in line and you're good

[Vilham]

Yeah but first 20 or so dwarfs i dont assign specific jobs. Only after that do I start giving them actual jobs.

[PogoP]

Graphics still look like shit, bloody programmer art.

[KoKo5oVaR]

Install the mayday pack, it looks like less shit

 

*active proselytism*

[Pericolos0]

I'm playing it as well, new version is soooo awesome. GOTY 2014 for me already lol

 

I used to play with mayday's pack but now I actually prefer using the taffer ASCII pack:

Colors are soft on the eyes and you can pack a lot on the screen at the same time.

 

Dwarf fortress is weird in that it actually plays better the more obscure the graphics are imo. The game is really all about letting it work in your imagination, what's on your screen is just information.

 

It's too bad that the UI and ASCII graphics are such a deterrent for many people, you're all missing out on one of the best and most complex games ever made .. There's nothing else like it.

[KoKo5oVaR]

http://www.duderocket.com/site-content/001770-world%E2%80%99s-most-successful-slacker