What are you playing right now?

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I played a little bit of Hollow Knight but I'm really not feeling it. I'm far from averse to metroidvania style games, but from what I played there is an overabundance of straight line level design and basic platforming. The lack of colour variance or saturation is really unappealing to me, I don't like the character's design, and the animations lack personality or impact, they have a real Newgrounds vector animation feel. So, I'm running in a direction, pressing square to make enemies disappear, picking up coins, while looking at a desaturated blue image. Frankly, that's boring.

Maybe this is on me, perhaps I didn't give the game enough time, people whose opinions I generally trust have told me that this game is good. For now though, I'd rather play Momodora 4 again.

I've seen a lot of games like that, and I'm not sure what the appeal is. It works okay in Gunslugs, but I've played demos of other games that I had to quit before finishing.

Risk of Rain looks like one of those games, but everyone I know says it's awesome?

Project: Overkill, an ultraviolent PS1 isometric action game. I'm trying to finish it before the ancient disc throws in the towel. It's a tough nut to crack; I'm using cheats and still getting smacked on the midgame levels.

To be fair, I watched some gameplay of later sections of Hollow Knight and it looks a lot more interesting. The thing is, most games of this type have upgrades but not really transformative ones, so my expectation when playing this one was that things wouldn't change so much. In actual fact you get dashes, double jumps, wall jumps, air dashes, dashes with i-frames, you can bounce on top of enemies with your sword, various different attacks inc projectiles... you go from slow movement and pressing attack until the enemies disappear, to twitch reflexes and complicated platforming. They should probably have started with more abilities because it feels like if, idk, Dark Souls started you without a dodge, block or any moves besides the light attack.

Radiant Historia. The bonus boss is headache-inducing.

Risk of Rain is.... hmm. Well, "difficult" sums it up well. In that it'll tend to shred you really quickly. It has roguelike elements (permadeath, some randomness to the levels) and a difficulty level that constantly rises as each run goes on. The game is actually very skill-based but it becomes extremely hectic very quickly. Combat has a higher focus than the platforming aspect and the game will generate an enormous number of enemies, many of which will have quite a bit of health, and you arent fighting just one at a time, instead you might have to deal with 30 or so in a big confusing heap (but you're expected to make sense of it anyway). Boss fights are pretty awesome but can also be a source of frustration. Either bosses or enemies can kill you very fast, and the higher you let the difficulty meter go, the more bonkers everything gets. If I recall correctly the highest difficulty on that meter is just named "HAHAHAHA" which sums it up well enough.

A given run generally takes around an hour or so, I think. There are lots of fun items to find (as in any game with roguelike elements, there's a high focus on items). And the combat is fun; you dont just hit one button here. Every character has 4 main skills/moves/whatever (and these are REALLY varied and creative, they did a fantastic job making the characters interesting and unique), as well as a dodge roll they can do (and jumping is also used for dodging, it depends on just what needs dodging at the time). And if you've got an active item, that's another function you need to worry about. Considering that the game's core mechanic is the constantly rising murder level, part of the challenge is to master the use of your character (and there are many) in order to defeat chaotic hordes in the least amount of time, before everything becomes overwhelming. Granted it'll usually do that to some degree anyway.

The game was very popular for good reason. It's very hard and can be frustrating, and a couple of the unlock conditions for certain things are bloody stupid (hell, I'm STILL missing a character because argh) but the game as a whole is fantastic. But only get it if you like a major challenge. It's one of those that's likely to take you some time to beat for the first time, and it only gets harder from there. Very unforgiving.

I've put alot of hours into it myself. Actually just rambling about it is making me wanna have another go at it.


As for the graphics, I thought they were pretty darned nice myself. There's one specific area that's got the "blue" look but other than that they're quite varied. Screw the snow zone though, I always hated that place.

Again.

I just meant the part about flat games. All the screenshots looked very flat, and I've played very few side-scrollers that restricted Y-movement and weren't boring.

I think the last flat game I played was Legend of the Dark Witch...I downloaded the demo and decided not to buy the full game.

"Cool, it -is- just like Mega Man! ...if Mega Man didn't have any stages..."

Eleven Table Tennis against an aspie friend of mine I have moved too far apart in real life to be able to meet. He's very good at it doing lots of crazy tricks I'm not able to comprehend. But I'm learning and gradually getting better. Just finished an two hour match where I managed to win somewhere around 35-40% of the matches while he was practicing some hilarious funny tricks, not all of them working out for him and to my advantage

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhuiwps6Mxg
http://store.steampowered.com/app/48831 ... Tennis_VR/

The game doesnt restrict vertical movement as much as you think. I looked at the screenshots on the game's store page... yeah, they look horizontal. But I think they were chosen because they show off things like the game's background, for instance. Hell, same with the game's trailer; it seems to go out of it's way to avoid showing vertical areas or climbing/falling despite them being half of the bloody game.

Look at this: http://i.imgur.com/riUI0Mn.jpg One of the seemingly really-horizontal screenshots on the store page is a zoomed in version of a section of this map. This is one of the two level types you can get as your first level in a run, and it's generally the most simple of all of them. Alot of your time in a map like this will be spent on that complicated left section. Horizontal sections are actually the fastest to complete.

The game though puts a really high emphasis on climbing ladders/ropes (which are everywhere), jumping to/from those things, and most important of all, diving down long distances. There is fall damage in the game, but you can dodge-roll just as you land to prevent all of it (or certain items can cancel it) and this is something you need to do *frequently*, particularly during the teleporter-spawn-rush that happens at the end of each level (which is where the combat becomes this massive battle).

Different levels have different focuses on terrain types. For example the snow zone is mostly vertical; it tests your ability to deal with ropes and falls during combat, which can be problematic. Or the mushroom zone is one gigantic loop, with a horizontal section on top and bottom, vertical on left and right, and a complicated middle zone in the center (the overall stage map being shaped like a square).

Also your jumping ability, small though it is, is really important. Overall, if you find yourself spending too much time just on one horizontal plane, chances are, you're either A: about to be dead or B: about to generate a situation where you'll soon be dead. ANd lastly there's also things like bounce pads (shoot you upwards an extreme vertical distance really fast; to be used with great caution).


Honestly if the game had really boring/flat level design, I'd never have gotten into it, because frankly I hate that sort of thing. I need dynamic level design in order for a platformer to work for me. I saw the Dark Witch game, and I see what you mean, that game really is one of those, I'd not have liked it either.

Tetris on NES

Good ole Crash Bandicoot in his PS4 reboot.

Super Mario 64 DS.

Warframe for the PC, the game I always go back to

Got back into Dishonored 2 a week or so ago. I was stuck at one part for a while so I stopped playing. Picked it up again and got past that part on my first try. I forgot how great this game is. Going to have to pick up Dishonored: Death of an Outsider when I'm finished.

I might play Metroid Zero Mission this week.