melkathi

2019 saw quite a few games, and I think I ignored most of them. My personal gaming highlight was finally finishing Chaos Gate after 20 years. Of games that released this year, it seems I played 12. And an expansion. So in random order (because the term random has to appear somewhere in these kind of topics on this forum) : Breach was this year's grand failure. A multiplayer game with one player taking on the role of the bad guy and the rest teaming up to defeat them. It had a lot of potential and when it worked it was fun. But they may have entered early access too early. Or perhaps the idea was too complicated to ever properly balance. The community was too small, the wait times too long, and the skill and power difference between players too great, so the game was removed from the Steam store and the server shut down. Age of Wonders: Planetfall took the loved franchise away from fantasy and catapulted it into science fiction. It did a lot right with new systems, using the new setting to improve and innovate. It also did some things wrong. The new research felt dull. The economic research tree especially felt like the same slog every game. I'm waiting for the next DLC (one is already out), but mostly hope for more customization options for my leaders - they all look too alike. Triumph joining the Paradox family of course had people worried about nickle and diming with lots of tiny DLC, but so far that hasn't happened. Dark Future: Blood Red States was a hell of a lot of fun during the beta weekend. The launch version not so much - some missions had gotten so easy I could play through them literally without looking at the screen. Auroch has worked on the game and improved difficulty, making exploding cars a lot more fun again. Re-Legion is a cyberpunk RTS with a lot of neon. The premise is great, and you do get to make choices in shaping your cult. The gameplay seems to have you rushing your opponent though with a lot of converted civilians turned soldier, hoping your numbers are greater than his. So basically it is Syndicate's Persuadatron turned into a game of it's own. As an RTS not memorable. As a persuadatron horde simulation? Great. Woven had failed on Kickstarter. People are idiots. Or don't check Kickstarter for computer games for their kids. Woven is cute and well written with exploration kept interesting through little puzzles. My problem? Missing a collectable in an area I can't return to. Now I have to restart. Again. Spellcaster University is a casual Hogwarts simulation, where you build a new wizarding school to train wizards to face the Dark Lord. Cute graphics and quirky options can sometimes be overshadowed by bad luck with random events and simply not drawing the card you need. Narcos: Rise of the Cartels is not a bad game. But it isn't a great game either, but had people hoping for something like XCOM. Eventually I'll finish it. But with so many options out there, and the ability to just play old Jagged Alliance games, it just hasn't managed to convince me that there is a reason for it. Stygian has so much potential to be one of the best RPG games. Sadly the Kickstarter did not net as much money as the devs would have needed to complete their vision. They tried anyway and ran out of money. They released the game and did not slap an Early Access label on, which many believe was a mistake. Instead of people getting a half finished game with potential to improve and a clear indication of this, people were sold a complete game which was half finished. The devs disagree, but are pretty alone with that opinion. What is there is amazing. But it is impossible to overlook the big hole left by the things that aren't there. Pine has you exploring an island, searching for a new home for your tribe. You enjoy long walks on the beach, the mountains, the swamp, the forest... gather materials to craft new equipment and cook food to eat. You meet a number of tribes of animal people and eventually have to ally with one to gain the assistance you need to establish a new home for the humans of the island. I find it hard to decide who to ally with, but also to remember what resource I get where. Phoenix Point came with a lot of promise and riled people with the Epic store timed exclusivity. In the end people who'll wait a year may get a good game. In the current state the game just isn't there yet. Not because it is inherently bad (though the free aim issues should have been fixed a year ago), but because there is so much missing and the devs don't seem to understand what the game promises. Vampire: the Masquerade - Coteries of New York "gets" the World of Darkness like no vampire game has before. It doesn't get it's chosen medium. A visual novel RPG where no choices matter and the player, regardless of character or decisions during the game, is railroaded into one, single ending. And the store had promised multiple ending. Now it promises multiple variants of the ending. And on a personal note, and a lifelong Brujah, that is not what I pictured when I was promised a Brujah. Carpocalypse I haven't played enough and am missing screenshots. You take on the roll of a little girl (Jess) who's family moves to a new town where she goes to a new school. Everyone at the school is playing this one card game that is super popular. And which promptly gets banned when weird things start to happen. Build your deck and battle other kids in card battles, while exploring a story which seems similar in tone to Costume Quest. I'm looking forward to actually playing through this one. Spellforce 3: Soulstorm was the DLC for Spellforce 3 that released this year and motivated me to also finish the core game. The story helped flesh out the history of the game world, though the new UI and keybinding was extremely confusing. Spellforce 3 had moved away from the old formula, which was bad enough, but just as I had gotten used to it, the DLC changed everything again, feeling even more alien. On top of that, the game was obviously written in English, even though it is a German series, with a bad translation. That left a very sour taste.

The store description claims there are more endings, but the players refuse to count the ability to commit suicide two ways in one specific situation early on as extra endings

So, Coteries basically allows for two playthroughs so you can do all side-missions. Three if you want to play around with some choices in some of them. The game apparently only has one ending, a very disappointing fact.

Good article. And nice to see he is aware of Fate of the World.

Finished my first playthrough of Coteries. Yes, depending on reading speed I'd say between 4 and 5 hours. You don't get to finish all side missions, so on a future playthrough you can do different things. It may matter how early you do certain things. I think there were 3 typos (Boos instead of Boss at one point) and they were all pretty close to one another. Once a character called another Declan, just for the story to then tell you that Raoul walks away... I found it a bit stiff that sometimes you are referred to as "they" because they didn't have the text adapt to your gender. That said: very atmospheric vampire game. The visual novel medium allows it to tackle the subject of a fledgling vampire struggling with suddenly being a monster; the underlying struggle of every vampire to stay sane. Obviously some clans will make for a more interesting tale than others. Going to play it again to see if there is a different ending.

Playing Coteries, and while the writing is good and the characters interesting, I am unsure about replayability. The feeding mechanism can be frustrating, as you can't just waste a night to hunt but are limited to the feeding opportunities the story provides you with (which also sadly hurts the Ventrue feeling they built up so nicely early on). On the other hand it helps showcase you are an extremely young vampire who does not yet know how often, when and where to feed properly.

Being a Ventrue sucks. Or doesn't because nobody tastes well enough to suck.

After being disappointed with Phoenix Point I decided to give in to shopping therapy after all. Weak me is weak.

I am a bit miffed with the free aim problems, because we kept telling them about them in the backer builds.

I was looking at MW5, but the PCGamer review put me off. Apparently you destroy civilian targets and the game uses that as flavour and cringe worthy comments?

Yeah, the price tag is a bit high for a visual novel. Checked reviews and apparently Coteries is 4-6 hours long. A bit too pricey for my liking.

So I quit and am uninstalling the game. Here is the second feedback post I made on the Snapshot forum. And it is something I can't skip around, an ethical block I have I can't break for a silly game: I started the game with a bit of trepidation but also looking forward to the tension between factions. I expected hostilities would translate into raids, stealing resources, sabotaging structures, destroying aircraft. Then Synedrion went to war against New Jericho. A Synedrion death squad attacked a New Jericho haven in North America and murdered all 7500 inhabitants. With infiltrators and snipers, the haven inhabitants hadn’t even noticed they were under attack until people started dropping dead left and right. They panicked and tried to run, tried to hide. But Synedrion infiltrators appeared out of nowhere and shot them as they ran. The civilians were herded into the power station, locked in and the generators rigged to explode. Boom. 7500 humans killed. New Jericho of course retaliated. Synedrion families were hiding in basements, but the New Jericho soldiers just hosed every hole they could see with flame throwers. By the time Phoenix Project strike teams returned from defending havens from Pandoran attacks in Europe and clearing out a lair in southern Asia, over 30.000 people had been slaughtered across America and Australia. And the death squads were already attacking other havens. And the leaders send me messages as if we were allies? Where is the option to arrest them and put them on trial for war crimes? Or send in a strike team and execute them? They order the systematic slaughter of children. I don’t want to play with these factions. I just want to shoot their leaders.

The accompanying quote from the soldier was "Missed the shot."

Tonight I quit the game not to go to bed, as I did the other nights, but because I felt there was no point playing. I wrote some feedback on the snapshot forum and will copy paste it here: The name "Phoenix Point" creates expectations of the game. A world devastated by a deadly virus, overrun by lovecraftian, mutated monsters, the name suggests an initiative that aims to see humanity rise like the phoenix from the ashes. And it suggests that the game will be about this attempt. You are put in charge of the Phoenix Project and start discovering it's history. But you don't actually get to be the Phoenix Project. You read well written exposition about it, but the actual gameplay isn't about it: You recruit soldiers from the three major factions, who have split the world between them. Neutral havens are extremely rare. In the backer builds this was different and it created a different feel. In the launch game you are thrust into a world of three huge nations. So you get your personnel from them. You also get your tech from them. You have a research lab, but all you independently research is journal entries with Phoenix Point exposition. To get tech and affect your gameplay you either reverse engineer faction equipment or are granted knowledge by them. And then they start hostilities and instead of aliens humans fight each other. And they are committed. They wipe out each other's havens at a crazy pace. In the end the three factions dominate everything about the game: story, gameplay, aesthetic. And all that ties in with the game's name are a few cutscenes. They could have called it The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. It would have been more fitting: Synedrion, New Jericho and Disciples of Anu. Though I am probably being a bit unfair to New Jericho here. I tried to warm to the research system where you don't get to research but the npcs do. I tried to overlook how the map was swamped with havens of the three factions, greatly limiting exploration. But now that I am staring at a geosphere where those three factions are killing each other, and what I thought the game would be about - defending humanity from an "alien" threat - is sidelined so the factions can do their thing, I am feeling that maybe I should just let them play their game. After all, the Phoenix Project and I, the player, are just along for the ride and not important to the game.

Reached the point in Phoenix Point where the factions start all out war between them. All the fighting against the Pandorans they never did, they do now. Within 5 minutes New Jericho and Synedrion each wiped out two havens of the other.

Well, Phoenix Point is XCOM alright. Sniper has a "sure" shot. The whole enemy square within the reticule. Can't miss, what with this being true trajectory. As he fires, the idle animation of the target opens the tiniest gap between arm and torso. Obviously the bullet goes through that. Enemy breathes out, chest deflates and dodges the bullet.

You should have some time. Scyllas started showing up when I already had two manticores and 16 soldiers. Just that while my experienced soldiers are level 7, some of the newer ones I take out in the field aren't. Especially the priests, who I like to use even at low levels.

Today's Hotfix: We have just deployed a hotfix patch for Phoenix Point taking it to version 1.0.54580 Patch Notes: Fixed a crash that occurs when launching the game with certain locales. Fixed an issue with invalid targeting when behind cover. Fixed various sound issues. The main purpose of this hotfix was to resolve the crash at launch issue. We have a larger patch on the way later this week to address some of the other issues. We will continue to identify and work through the reported issues and release patches as soon as they’ve been resolved. We ask if anyone encounters bugs in-game to please report them with the F12 tool - as this sends important game-state data directly to our QA team and allows us to more easily identify the issues. It was rolled back and then applied again with this note: The patch was temporarily rolled back and has now been reissued. This should have resolved the missing save game issue. Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience and minor heart-attacks all around.

You'll do great.

With FF7 from the Squeenix store the irony is you had to download an installer from their site. But that went online and didn't actually have the game downloaded...

Today I searched for video game news in an attempt to take over the Computer and Console section of the forum.

Is that like my signature but better because it is yours? 😛

First EA killed Darkspore single player, leaving me without a game. Then Squeenix killed their shop, leaving those of us who had a game on their site without games. Now gearbox is killing single player Battleborn? Yeah, I am going to limit my game purchases and concentrate on getting my money's worth out of what I got, while I still got it.

Maybe it's a nod to the old Sierra era?