🚀 go-pugleaf

Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

>
> * Injustice: Gods Among Us (new)
> There are certain genres of games for which I am just not suited.
> MOBAs are one; so too are realistic driving simulators. For all that I
> can admire the craftsmanship that goes into designing such games - and
> have an earnest desire to appreciate them - I just do not find them
> that compelling to play. Punch-n-kick brawlers are another example;
> they are colorful, fantastical, and frenetic, often with rewarding and
> challenging gameplay, but I have neither the temperament to master or
> even long endure their game-play.
>
> Still, Injustice: Gods Among Us looked as if it might have been the
> sort of game to keep me playing through to the end, if only for its
> over-the-top combat and action-packed (if somewhat predictable)
> comic-book storyline. I mean, who /wouldn't/ want to play as Superman
> and punch an opponent into outer-space? I mean, that's the sort of
> thing a lot of us have probably wanted to do ever since we read our
> first issue of Action Comics!
>
> Alas, it wasn't to be, and I'm not sure I'm to say whether it was
> because of my own failure or the game's. When it comes to brawlers, I
> tend towards button-mashing anyway, but even given my primitive grasp
> of brawler mechanics, I didn't think Injustice's combat was
> particularly well done. There were just too many options and powers,
> and rather than  super-powered I felt overloaded with options. Even
> were I not, the game felt gimmicky, too overloaded with action
> cut-scenes, weird mini-games and quick-time events. I never felt as if
> I were given an opportunity to hone my skills because every other
> fight it seemed that the game changed everything on me.
>
> Ultimately, I gave up on actually playing the game and just watched a
> let's play of the cut-scenes, which was okay. It certainly didn't
> encourage me to keep playing, or try other brawlers. On the other
> hand, that got me into reading the comic prequels, which I found far
> more enjoyable than either game or video, so I guess something
> worthwhile came from the experiment.
>

I think I mentioned the control issue with it on the PC, any of the 
combos that have you going a direction (i.e. left/right etc.) after 
pressing a button, and then pressing another button don't work or are 
extremely difficult in timing especially with the xbox controller of 
kb/mouse.  I've got a logitech gamepad on order as supposedly it works 
better with that one - also wanted one I could use with MAME.  Not that 
you actually need any of the combos.

I did finish it on normal and played some of the battles with characters 
as you get to stick to one character for a bunch of fights and see their 
ending to the main campaign. You can beat it easily on very easy setting 
as my son was playing it and with just hitting punch over and over.  I'd 
suggest trying the different combos and find about 3 you like for a 
character and sticking to that.  You might also enjoy the battles more 
as you get to play one character through a bunch of battles instead of 
being constantly switched in the main campaign.

I thought it was o.k. but it did tie in with what's going on in the bat 
vs. sman movie and gave me more insight as to what was going on when I 
watched that.  I haven't read any comic books in ages, last was about 
50-100 binge on Deadpool about 7 years ago.  This hasn't given me the 
itch.  Though I did try running some marvel superheroes RPG on Play By 
Post for a bit last year.  Only got through 3 battles before the slow 
pace of PBP got me to drop it.

----------------------

What have I played this Month?  I've posted most of what I've played so 
as to keep me from bursting at the seams waiting for the monthly thread, 
but here's the recap:

Cosmochoria **** PC Indy.
It's hard to qualify what this game is, that's a good thing in this 
case.  It's 2d, the graphics aren't 8-bit, I might describe them as a 
bit Tom Wham sort of cartoon-like and whimsical.  You travel from planet 
to planet using your rocket pack and plant plants, which heal you when 
you've terraformed a planet.  Meanwhile aliens try to kill you, and you 
try to kill them/defend yourself with a combination of tower defenses 
and your hand-held blaster.  Thoguh this is not a tower defense game. 
It has rewards that become accessibly only upon your death and starting 
a new game.  Typically you're going to die a few times between each 
boss, but fortunately you can start your new game progressed after the 
last boss you killed.  I loved this game, easily the best game I've 
played since Dark Souls.  Yes that means it beats out Fallout 4.  It's a 
bit shorter though, perhaps a couple weeks to complete it.  There are a 
number of hidden artifacts which can make the game easier/harder on a 
new game when applied.  I found only about half of them by the time I'd 
finished the game, and although I loved the game I didn't feel the need 
to try to collect the rest of them.  My one complaint is that only the 
first available upgrade for your laser blaster is good.  The mostly 
costly  ones are worse than that, with two exceptions - (avoiding 
spoilers) one is about equal to it, the other becomes available only 
when you fight the last boss.  I wish they'd changed the order of the 
availablity of the weapons.  I highly recommend this game.

Injustice Gods among us ** PC DC Comics Fighting
Steam says I played this this month, but it probably wasn't more than 15 
minutes.  As I spoke enough about this above no more here.  Other than 
to say I'll leave a final verdict for when I try it with another 
controller.  If it wasn't DC heroes and the somewhat interesting story 
I'd probably give this a stinking one * for a fighting game so far.

Singularity *** PC FPS time manipulation
Best FPS I've played in a long time.  I'd probably give this higher 
rating if they'd included subtitles, combined with the directional 
speech makes it difficult to follow.  (Un?)fortunately they repeat 
themselves enough that you get the idea anyway.  I was wary of the time 
manipulation, figuring it was going to be some sort of time puzzle game, 
but it was more like having a time weapon (age/freeze enemies).  There 
are some puzzles, but they are for the most part well marked and 
ridiculously easy.  I never had to look up any spoilers for them, and 
was never stuck - other than early in the game when I chose the wrong 
weapons and ran out of ammo for them, I almost gave up there, but 
preserved and was able to eventually get through that spot after about 
20 tries.  Which brings up my other complaint - you can only carry 2 
weapons of your arsenal and if you choose poorly you would have to start 
the whole game over due to the console type saving, to help others avoid 
this, DO NOT TAKE THE PISTOL if you have any other weapons available. 
Unlike most of these types of games the time manipulation device is so 
powerful that the game actually gets easier as you go along and get it 
upgraded, by the end of the game you start feeling like a super-hero or 
god.  This game has been compared to Half-Life, and it does have a 
somewhat similar feel, if perhaps a bit shorter and more linear.  It's a 
pretty good game and I'd recommend it if you can get past it's 
shortcomings (console type single auto-save, limited weapon loadout & 
ammo, and no subtitles).

Darkmaus *** PC Indy, 2d, Dark Souls inspired.
If you liked Dark Souls I'd recommend this, it was giving me flashbacks. 
  Though 2d the shadowy graphics are very atmospheric and feel artistic. 
  You play an undead mouse with weapons similar to what you'd find in DS 
(bow, sword, spear, fire spells) fighting zombie animals.  I didn't 
finish this, not because I wasn't able to progress, I just think I 
wasn't quite ready for the level of difficulty and pulse-pounding this 
game gives.  I will probably go back and finish this next time the DS 
bug hits me.

Ubermosh Black * PC Indy.
POS, horrible graphics & gameplay, should've returned it on Steam, but 
it was on sale for $1 and I didn't bother.  Don't check this out.  Read 
my full post on it if you give a damn.

Mini Ninjas ? PC Indy?
I've only played this a little bit, just through the tutorial, I think 
it might be aimed at kids and I wasn't quite in the mood yet.  It 
reminds me of some of the 3d adventure Nintendo games so far.

Gas Guzzlers eXtreme *** PC Indy Weaponized Car Racing
This is exactly what it sounds like.  It looks really good for an indy 
game, fully 3d racing.  You race or destruction derby cars with weapons 
- there are some races you can do that don't have weapons and only 
powerups.  It's pretty good for what it is.  I haven't beat the campaign 
yet, but I have the top car you can buy.  Read my post on it.  All I've 
to add to that is that some of the more expensive weapons I thought were 
crap are actually quite good in the destruction derby events, although 
you don't need to buy them for those as they're in there as power-ups. 
I've played a couple other of these types of indy games (Zombie Driver, 
Wasteland Angel), but this is by far better than any of the others.

The Crew *** PC Driving
Free on Uplay.  I've mixed feelings on this,  On the one hand it's a 
great driving game.  On the other it's online only and my lag is 
horrendous, and the lag does affect your car's speed and acceleration 
(seems really stupid, can't it just assume you're doing whatever you 
were doing the last input it got and jump you ahead?).  I've noticed 
it's far worse when doing PVP, and far worse in cities, this makes the 
PVP almost unplayable - fortunately you get rewards even if you're last 
which I always am if it's not in the wilderness.  I think it might have 
something to do with my older CPU as it's a (unoptomized) console port 
and it chews up my CPU and doesn't seem to impact my smoking new 
graphics card at all. But it also seems to have something to do with the 
online nature.  I've been trying to mostly play on the weekdays as it 
works better then.  Well it was free, can't complain too much, though it 
does have micro-transactions, which seem to be completely unnecessary so 
that doesn't really hurt so much.  I keep coming back to this, I've 
found I love tooling around in my raid (offroad) car, and the fact it 
has a bunch of semi-real locations in it, including my home city (not 
that there's much to see there).  If this actually ran well on my 
system/network I would've bought the DLC Wild Run which includes 
Motorcyles, as I loved motorcycles in GTA III VC, which still stands as 
my favorite car-based game of all time.

- Justisaur