What Are you Playing Now: Living the Good Life

[melkathi]

My current Steam review for Evil Genius 2.

It may be unfair.

But do I care?

 

The game looks pretty. Prettier than many base building games. Sadly that is what it has going for it.

Controls are wonky. Having recently replayed the original game, everything about the controls in this one felt off.
The game allows you to rotate the camera by keyboard with the Q and E keys or by mouse by holding the mouse wheel. Pretty standard - until you try to rotate while in build mode. Then keyboard rotation is blocked. Why?
Some menues I can close with ESC. Not all menues.

The UI is intrusive. It takes up too much of the screen when I would like to have room to see what I am building. The tutorial pop ups make things worse. Especially as, after having popped up, you can't make it go away. Traditionaly, when a message pops up, you are allowed to click OK. Not here. It is there to stay until it decides that it wants to leave. Of course it won't stay gone. It pops right back up. Again and again. Because large flashing messages increase your enjoyment of the game...
Alerts for the world map will show up, but you can't tell what they are. Yo jsut know something is going on, not what.
You may get a generic alert icon persistently sitting there on your screen that doesn't alert you to anything. So within the first couple of hours, the game is training you to ignore it.

In preview videos - and there were a lot of amazing preview videos - the developer talked about the old game and how it forced you to build rows upon rows of lockers to get minions. How you ahd to build so many power generators. This game would slim that all down. Indeed. You build multiple lockers at once. Generators are slimmer. Yet, I have in the first hour, build rows upon rows of lockers, just as I would in the first game. Perhaps more. And I definitely have build more generators than I would throughout a whole game of Evil Genius 1, while still following the tutorial.

I am not going to criticise the changes to the world map. I haven't seen enough of it to judge whether long term they make sense. Do I want to find out?

There may be fun down the road. But with the way the UI is and the controls work, my eyes are too tired and I am too frustrated to care.

[ComradeYellow]

My backlog is immense.

I dunno I'm just feeling non-committal lately.

Everyone has that one game that they can replay over and over w/o issue, just like everyone has that one liquor that they can bottom and wake up just fine. 

I think I'll just stick to my digital safe space for now.

[Humanoid]

49 minutes ago, ComradeYellow said:

Everyone has that one game that they can replay over and over w/o issue, just like everyone has that one liquor that they can bottom and wake up just fine.

 Day of the Tentacle, Flying Brick Apple Cider.

Edited March 30, 2021 by Humanoid

[melkathi]

Figured out the Camera Rotation problem.

A Dev Genius, to be Evil most likely, in the preset keybinds of the game, bound the same keys to multiple things. So Q and E rotates the camera, but also changes the build menu tabs...

[Keyrock]

3 hours ago, ComradeYellow said:

Everyone has that one game that they can replay over and over w/o issue, just like everyone has that one liquor that they can bottom and wake up just fine. 

Grim Dawn and Chopin Vodka.

[ComradeYellow]

6 minutes ago, Keyrock said:

Grim Dawn

Shaman + Soldier (Warder) best class. 

[Keyrock]

23 minutes ago, ComradeYellow said:

Shaman + Soldier (Warder) best class. 

Coincidentally, I ran a Warder last time I played the game. Great class indeed.

[Theonlygarby]

3 hours ago, ComradeYellow said:

My backlog is immense.

I dunno I'm just feeling non-committal lately.

Everyone has that one game that they can replay over and over w/o issue, just like everyone has that one liquor that they can bottom and wake up just fine. 

I think I'll just stick to my digital safe space for now.

I am in the same place for the last few months.  I can play video games for like 15 minutes before I get bored.

 

I think its been since cyberpunk actually.  I had such high hopes and then didn't really like it and nothing has been able to hold my attention since...  

     

[melkathi]

Two things improve Evil Genius tenfold.

1) Turning off the tutorial. The message spam decreased. The annoying minion pop-up taking up too much space? Gone! The whole game becomes a lot less annoying. If I hadn't bought in on GMG, which didn't allow a refund (and it is the first time I thoroughly re-read the EULA to see if there was a chance), I would have refunded this game at 30 minutes playtime. Without the tutorial, and messing with keybinds, I played an hour without wanting to punch the devs.

2) Accepting that the game is not so much an Evil Genius sequel, rather a Protoss Base Simulator. The frequency with which the game tells me that I need additional pylons... erh power generators, is so starcrafty it can't but be intentional.

[LadyCrimson]

On 3/29/2021 at 7:56 AM, BruceVC said:

One of my brothers stopped playing it because he said it became too much of a grind despite enjoying it in the beginning 

Interesting you have a similar view 

Most (not all, but most) survival type games become a grindfest at some point. Whether for resources or for keeping up repairs or for food stocks or weapons or ammo or whatever it is ... it's the basic gameplay loop after all.  Like in 7 Days, I don't know how (or why) anyone would to play the same save to try to reach lvl 300.  You'd have your mega base and best gear long long before then and all you'd be doing is grinding upkeep and XP. Or ignoring all of that and building castles instead. 

Re: Evil Genius 2 - hmm, doesn't sound good.  Don't really care about sale prices but does sound like one should wait and see if they fix/change any of these QoL/UI annoyances.

[melkathi]

Seriously though, disabling the tutorial, while making the start a lot harder, improves the game a lot. But they need serious balancing work.

You build an infirmary. The basic medbed requires 10 power. The power generator you can build at the start of the game produces? 10 power.

You want to train guards? You need a prison with a holding cell and an interrogation chair. Those will require a power generator to cover their power needs.

You will need a training room, and as the punching bag requires another 4 power, you'll build another power generator. The chalkboard to train a scientist is 4 power, so that generator covers it. But to equip the research lab to do the requires tier 1 research to get to tier 2 research and the new power generators? That will require two generators worth of power.

Of course you have at this point built a generator to cover the cantina, two generators for the ops room...

So not having wasted energy and build more than the bare minimum of power using items and no traps, you have built 10 generators instead of maybe 4 in the old game?

[LadyCrimson]

I would also like to know why they thought blurring the top section of the screen was something they should do. I can see it in that video review, and people on Steam have posted screenshots/said there's no obvious way to disable it.  That would annoy the heck out of me.

Oh sure it's something I could put up with if the gameplay design was stellar, but so far doesn't sound like that will be the case, either... why would you do this type of graphic blur for this type of game? 

[Keyrock]

1 hour ago, melkathi said:

2) Accepting that the game is not so much an Evil Genius sequel, rather a Protoss Base Simulator. The frequency with which the game tells me that I need additional pylons... erh power generators, is so starcrafty it can't but be intentional.

A Nydus Worm appears in your natural's mineral line... 

[melkathi]

Someone on Steam explained why the ESC key doesn't always work to leave menus: the tutorial pop-up message breaks the ESC key functionality...

[Malcador]

53 minutes ago, melkathi said:

Someone on Steam explained why the ESC key doesn't always work to leave menus: the tutorial pop-up message breaks the ESC key functionality...

Times like this I feel I could have made it as a game developer.

[Bartimaeus]

1 hour ago, melkathi said:

Someone on Steam explained why the ESC key doesn't always work to leave menus: the tutorial pop-up message breaks the ESC key functionality...

Escape inconsistently closing sub/menus is a serious pet peeve of mine. I remember when I tried to play one of the Baldur's Gate Enhanced Editions, they made what were previously consistently closing menus in the original games no longer closable via escape. I take my keyboard shortcuts very seriously - that one little change drove me quite mad.

[BruceVC]

I'm still playing Far Cry 4 and the inevitable " Ubisoft fatigue of non-primary missions " is starting to manifest itself. Its still fun all the activities but I am going to now focus on the main missions so I dont get bored

I have  enjoyed some of the moral choices you have to make around who in the Golden Path you support especially around whether the selling of Heroine  can be used to fund the legitimate objectives of the good guys. It was  a tough one but I decided to destroy the drugs and poppy fields because despite the financial funding,  that is relevant, I believe the benefits of selling Heroine are not worth the long term damage done to society as its such an addictive and destructive substance 

 

[LadyCrimson]

*install Dungeon Keeper 1/Gold (GoG version) on current PC for the 1st time*

---oh god the edge scrolling is way too fast and why does it look so pixelated ... oh wait I remember
*hit Alt+R*  ... there, less pixelated.  Also, that seems to slow down the mouse scrolling/game speed, which is perfect. 

....it's still installed on the old PC but it's good to know it works ok on Win10/faster PC.  Except on Win10 it has this weird "press 1-5 to start game/see options/exit" type of dos menu initial start screen, whereas it doesn't on Win7.  Interesting.

[Keyrock]

I have a mild desire play an Ubisoft game. I haven't played one since Watch_Dogs 2 several years ago. The thing about Ubisoft games is that they're all generally pretty good, they're not earth shattering, but pretty good. It's just that they're all essentially identical. If you play all of them you get burned out, but if you only play one once in a while it's good fun. It's like eating a bowl of Fruity Pebbles; if you eat Fruity Pebbles every day you'll get sick of it, but if you only have a bowl once in a blue moon, it's a perfectly tasty cereal.

Ubisoft - The Fruity Pebbles of video games.

Edited March 31, 2021 by Keyrock

[Oner]

Went silver mining in Valheim with one of my friends, all was going smoothly until the nightly rescue dog squads started combing the area in search of golem and drake victims.
Us. >.>

[BruceVC]

41 minutes ago, Keyrock said:

I have a mild desire play an Ubisoft game. I haven't played one since Watch_Dogs 2 several years ago. The thing about Ubisoft games is that they're all generally pretty good, they're not earth shattering, but pretty good. It's just that they're all essentially identical. If you play all of them you get burned out, but if you only play one once in a while it's good fun. It's like eating a bowl of Fruity Pebbles; if you eat Fruity Pebbles every day you'll get sick of it, but if you only have a bowl once in a blue moon, it's a perfectly tasty cereal.

Ubisoft - The Fruity Pebbles of video games.

You have described Ubisoft games in an  accurate  way like you normally do around your feedback of games. The way you explain your gaming experience often resonates with me 

They good but not excellent and yes you can become fatigued/burned out which is why I generally play then 1-2 times a  year ....but not more than that 

 " Ubisoft - The Fruity Pebbles of video games  " ...classic 

[marelooke]

14 hours ago, Malcador said:

Times like this I feel I could have made it as a game developer.

They make me fee like I definitely wouldn't be able to make it as a game developer...

The way games are just cobbled together in general without anything resembling a development process, the total lack of any competent UX design in most games,... I swear I'd go postal within a year.

Edited March 31, 2021 by marelooke

[melkathi]

Oh, God. Who comes up with these idiotic ideas? Just when you think you overreacted with the bad review, the devs decide to prove they can do worse.

Agents go invisible or disguise as a minion and wander around your base (multiple floors) planting tiny items. One plants evidence, the other explosives... you have to realize it has happened (no alert) and then manually search the whole base for these to tag them for destruction.

[Keyrock]

21 minutes ago, melkathi said:

Oh, God. Who comes up with these idiotic ideas? Just when you think you overreacted with the bad review, the devs decide to prove they can do worse.

Agents go invisible or disguise as a minion and wander around your base (multiple floors) planting tiny items. One plants evidence, the other explosives... you have to realize it has happened (no alert) and then manually search the whole base for these to tag them for destruction.

If the faux minions left subtle clues, this would be awesome.

[melkathi]

You can click each of your 100 minions, the profile will be the original one. And yes, if they do something minions shouldn't, you can recognize the agent animation for that action.