June | 2018 | adrift

Archive for June, 2018

Yesterday Origins

2018/06/28 in gaming, screenshots, spoiler, steam

I know, I know. During Steam sales people are supposed to buy games, not play them… Anyway, many years ago I played Yesterday and liked it (I considered replaying it before starting the sequel, but if I’d do that, I’d never get anywhere). I’d forgotten 75% of it, BUT luckily this sequel was released like 2 years ago. The game is a quite solid, good adventure. The graphics are its highlight. Pendulo games always look perfect. Shocking really.
Speaking of Pendulo, these people need to step up their marketing or something. I never know when they are working on a new game and only ever learn of it by sheer coincidence. Right now they are supposedly working on a game called Blacksad and not even their very own Twitter account is mentioning it. What’s up with that? Having people know about the game long before release is super important. I don’t even know anything, but I know that.
There was one single bug in the game that was angering me and I feel quite strongly that they should have patched this out (but given its 2 year age it’s way past the point where this actually might have happened). It’s possible for red text to appear on the upper left of the screen and who likes to have that over their game? I don’t. I had to figure out what triggers it and how many buttons I have to press in what speed and order for it to go away – mostly.
So yeah, I’m still wondering if they are doing a third one. The game doesn’t necessarily demand it (although I was left with some questions), but then again: I wasn’t expecting a sequel to Yesterday either. :D
They also had a slight story-oversight at the end. Throughout the entire game it was explained explicitly, that 2 people max can use the potion. And then suddenly at the end it’s enough for 3. How did this get past QA? :P

random links (36)

2018/06/22 in links

Pillars II Update #50 – New Patch and What’s Coming in July

RED SHELL Spyware – “Holy Potatoes! We’re in Space?!” integrated and removed it after complaints

No, The Witcher 3’s Ciri won’t be appearing in Cyberpunk 2077

Former Telltale CEO Sues Telltale Games

Why Skylake CPUs Are Sometimes 50% Slower – How Intel Has Broken Existing Code

Will AT&T Be Able to Handle HBO?

Retrohistories: Secret of Vulcan Fury: Trek’s Lost Adventure

2018/06/11 in gaming, science fiction, videos

Bayonetta

2018/06/10 in gaming, screenshots, spoiler

The best description I ever heard about Bayonetta, is that people like Baynetta more than they like her game. That’s so true. Not that the game is bad or anything, but… It’s not among the games I would play several times. I was glad I was done at the end and especially some of the boss battles felt like a massive grind. The worst boss battle was definitely the monster on the water, one miserable QTE miss and the whole painful process starts from the beginning. I’m so glad these vanished from most games in the following years. Can’t remember the last time I played a new game which was QTE heavy.
So since B2 isn’t on PC and probably never will be, I guess I’m supposed to watch it on YT now. :P

Cyberpunk 2077 – official E3 2018 trailer

2018/06/10 in gaming, science fiction, videos

Cosmic Star Heroine

2018/06/07 in gaming, science fiction, screenshots, spoiler

Playing Chrono Trigger got me so pumped for this genre, that I immediately wanted to continue playing something similar to it, which obviously brought me to CSH (I could have gone CrossCode, but that’s not done yet). It’s not a bad game at all, and yet what I couldn’t get myself to overlook, is how CT still does tons of stuff better than this game. Part of what was so deeply satisfying to me in CT, isn’t just that you get to make certain decisions, it’s first and foremost that you are confronted with their outcome. Deciding to play the optional sidequest to restore a desert, results in a nice forest in the future. It’s not going to happen otherwise and the game can be completed without doing any of it. That’s just fantastic. This is what makes everything feel rewarding.

Lots of characters change their lines after a certain change occurred. Some of these changes might be small, but these methods have an impact regardless. CSH has almost none of that. The game is extremely linear, I don’t think there is ever any choice and as far as I know it has one ending, where CT has 13. With a few exceptions, most characters never change their lines and I never really met anyone again later. Even if, since all quests always end the same way, it still wouldn’t feel as rewarding.

While the combat system appears to be very similar at first glance, it too is hardly a match for CT. A major strength in CT is, that especially most bosses require some sort of trick, they expect the player to learn a certain strategy or figure out a weakness. Some of them are almost like a riddle. It took me quite a while, until I understood how to defeat the son of sun for example. In CSH, it’s usually enough to just do damage until the enemy folds (I never started healing a foe because I used the wrong type of attack). There are a lot of different abilities, but since it’s almost always about doing nothing but damage, it suffices to simply unload the entire arsenal until the battle is over. Dynamics also don’t change during battles.

Further, the combat in CSH feels a lot more tedious, because everyone just stands around, no matter what anyone supposedly does. This is boring. In CT, there are countless animations for each attack and characters actually run up to the enemy to strike them and it’s fun to see all that (I never got tired of seeing Frog fly around to do a sword strike or whatever). Every character has their own styles and this isn’t even taking into account, how many possible combos exist between all the heroes.

There is one thing that CSH does better, each shop allows to “buy & equip” in one step. That’s really nice and should be adopted by pretty much every game in existence. :P

Another interesting part of CSH is a timeline during combats, which outright states who gets to make an attack and in which order. In CT this will surprise the player and at best one can learn through observation, when a foe is going to do what. Maybe this is better, because it makes things feel more dynamic? Not actually sure which method is better in the end. This timeline sure does make it easier to plan ahead, in any case.

CSH has a ton of characters, I probably would have reduced the number of party members by 50%. :P Maybe they were “cheaper” to do than more reactivity, or that’s just how the devs wanted it. I don’t know. Anyway, CSH ist still quite the valiant effort and I had fun playing it. It took me about 20 hours less to complete than CT, which is still a long game. If I wouldn’t have liked it, I couldn’t have finished something of this size.

What I was really into, was how they give the player some closure for each of the major characters at the end. Never would have expected it. I’m always in favor of that. There was one single thing I didn’t do. The optional dungeon for Lauren. The first 2 dudes in the dungeon were already a lot harder than the final boss of the game (it’s supposed to be this hard), so (with a heavy heart) I decided to skip it. I also never touched Dark Souls, probably for the very same reason. Not my cup of tea.

The humor in the game might not work for everyone, as it seems to be too close to being a fan version of whatever thing I actually wanted to see. There were some really good lines in the game, I thought, other times it feels as if they are just referencing too much pop culture and should have used some restraint.

And I know it’s not fair to talk about CT all the time in the text about another game, but the soundtrack couldn’t possibly compete. I said it’s unfair! The music isn’t bad though, but what could possibly be on par with the epic CT soundtrack? I know right?

Long story short, people who are into CT should play this too, as long as they don’t expect an adventure that’s as unforgettable and epic.

btw: CT has NG+ and a new patch came out today. :P