I'd agree with you were it any other publisher, but Square-Enix is pretty much the video game embodiment of Hanlon's Razor.
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STEAM Announcements & Updates 2014 III - Don't Believe The Tags
- Thread starter MRORANGE
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I'd agree with you were it any other publisher, but Square-Enix is pretty much the video game embodiment of Hanlon's Razor.
Speaking of emulation, I've been meaning to try the next Igavania for ages (finished Circle of the Moon last year). Should I bother with Harmony of Dissonance (I don't mind the chiptunes), or do I skip directly to Aria of Sorrow (which everyone and their dog says it's the best thing since sliced bread)?
I was thinking there was something official about it. Ah well, nbd. I still have the stats and figures I need, just wanted more.
Atraveller
Banned
The sales number would be higher if Asians could buy this game.
The only reason I feel to skip Harmony of Dissonance, beyond the music for some, would be if you are worried about being burnt out at the whole idea of the open world castle design, as it's "two layers" system mixed with smaller rooms leave a lot to be desired and for most aren't as fun to explore. Thus at it's worst it's a "just okay" Castlevania and due to a low difficulty is easy to rather blaze through as long as you don't mind or seek complete collection and of course it's still fun. I enjoyed it, and if nothing else made me appreciate the far grander Aria of Sorrow in comparison.
That said, you really miss nothing special or unique if you do skip it now.
YianGaruga
Banned
Play Aria of Sorrow immediately. It's perfect. You're not missing anything by skipping HoD.
On the other hand, considering the fact that it looks like we're not getting any more of these games, and the pickings for the genre is even pretty slim on Steam, I don't see a need to blow through them ASAP. Even a bad Catlevania is a good game.
I wouldn't want anyone to play the N64 games, advise against the English Simon's Quest (bad translation hurts the game too much and forces a walkthrough), and tell people to skip The Adventure (due to the much better remake on WiiWare) because they are bad games and terrible Castlevanias. Mirror Of Fate being up to the eye of the beholder, and preference in what you want out of a Castlevania nowadays.
Harmony of Dissonance? It's not a bad Castlevania, it's just an okay Iga title that is fully competent in design and premise. So aye, I second the thought of playing it just because we really aren't getting more titles like it any time soon.
Harmony of Dissonance? It's not a bad Castlevania, it's just an okay Iga title that is fully competent in design and premise. So aye, I second the thought of playing it just because we really aren't getting more titles like it any time soon.
Rickenslacker
Banned
Never played the Quake 1 Mission Packs before, so as a little tangent to all the Doomin' I've been doin' I decided to finally see what they're all about.
Here's my playthrough time tally with my Quake playthrough time as a reference, all of them played on hard.
The packs were made by different developers (Hipnotic and Rogue) and they both have their own styling and additions to them. Armagon was a bit more impressive with the visuals, shotgun blasts would leave markings on walls, you'd have more unique visual aspects to the levels like an energy bridge, just things like that. In terms of new weapons you had a proximity mine launcher, which acted as an alternate grenade launcher that ended up being mostly useless; laying traps for enemies to walk into just isn't in the scope of Quake combat. You also get an automatic laser rifle, close to the ones the laser guards use; looks like three rocket launchers taped together but was the most useful of the new weapons and a pretty worthy inclusion to the arsenal. Last weapon you get is Mjolnir, Thor's hammer itself; as cool as this sounds it's not very worthwhile in practice and I'd rather use my cells for the LG or the aforementioned laser rifle -- dunno how you'd go about reloading a hammer either. The new enemies mostly suck, unfortunately. You have scorpions with nail guns for claws, which is admittedly a great concept, but not very fun to fight. You have large airborne mines that home in and track you, which you can only seem to combat indirectly by making them hit a wall -- they use a lot of these throughout and are incredibly annoying. I do like the gremlins though, which are kind of look like miniature fiends, but instead of lunging towards you they steal your weapons and try to run. They added a new item, the horn of conjuring, which spawned a (random?) enemy type as an ally, which you could identify with their emitting glow. Pretty cool to have a shambler on your side I gotta say. Level design was nothing really special though and enemy placement was kind of scattershot. They loved plopping shamblers wherever they felt like it.
Dissolution took a different approach with weapons, instead of adding anything completely new it added alt ammo for a bunch of the existing weapons. With nail guns you can find, get this, lava nails, and they don't end up changing things radically. They do more damage, they have a different sound effect, woo. Grenade and rocket launcher get multi-grenades and multi-rockets, the lightning gun gets a plasma ball the spits out chain lightning. The added enemies are mostly fine, being variants or reskins of existing types, but the one really different one that gets sprinkled about most really sucked. Flying wraths that do the homing projectile shtick for attacks, seems to be the popular choice between the two different developers and they were both butts. We already had the revenant-like in Quake, can we please just leave it at that. There were also some flying swords which were notable in how lame they were to fight. Again, level design wasn't all too special and the amount of ammo you get is excessive, I was almost using rockets and multi-rockets exclusively. Neat thing about both mission packs is that they both have cutscenes; they're simple and crude, but actual cutscenes. Boss fights in both were pretty dull, but that was kind of the norm for the time, the one in Armagon (well, Armagon himself) felt reminiscent of the final Q2 boss.
I mean, they were more Quake to play but I'm not really regretting having not played them sooner. Still, they were fun and being as short as they were never started feeling like they were stretching thin. I'll have to give the Q2 expansions a whirl eventually.
Here's my playthrough time tally with my Quake playthrough time as a reference, all of them played on hard.
The packs were made by different developers (Hipnotic and Rogue) and they both have their own styling and additions to them. Armagon was a bit more impressive with the visuals, shotgun blasts would leave markings on walls, you'd have more unique visual aspects to the levels like an energy bridge, just things like that. In terms of new weapons you had a proximity mine launcher, which acted as an alternate grenade launcher that ended up being mostly useless; laying traps for enemies to walk into just isn't in the scope of Quake combat. You also get an automatic laser rifle, close to the ones the laser guards use; looks like three rocket launchers taped together but was the most useful of the new weapons and a pretty worthy inclusion to the arsenal. Last weapon you get is Mjolnir, Thor's hammer itself; as cool as this sounds it's not very worthwhile in practice and I'd rather use my cells for the LG or the aforementioned laser rifle -- dunno how you'd go about reloading a hammer either. The new enemies mostly suck, unfortunately. You have scorpions with nail guns for claws, which is admittedly a great concept, but not very fun to fight. You have large airborne mines that home in and track you, which you can only seem to combat indirectly by making them hit a wall -- they use a lot of these throughout and are incredibly annoying. I do like the gremlins though, which are kind of look like miniature fiends, but instead of lunging towards you they steal your weapons and try to run. They added a new item, the horn of conjuring, which spawned a (random?) enemy type as an ally, which you could identify with their emitting glow. Pretty cool to have a shambler on your side I gotta say. Level design was nothing really special though and enemy placement was kind of scattershot. They loved plopping shamblers wherever they felt like it.
Dissolution took a different approach with weapons, instead of adding anything completely new it added alt ammo for a bunch of the existing weapons. With nail guns you can find, get this, lava nails, and they don't end up changing things radically. They do more damage, they have a different sound effect, woo. Grenade and rocket launcher get multi-grenades and multi-rockets, the lightning gun gets a plasma ball the spits out chain lightning. The added enemies are mostly fine, being variants or reskins of existing types, but the one really different one that gets sprinkled about most really sucked. Flying wraths that do the homing projectile shtick for attacks, seems to be the popular choice between the two different developers and they were both butts. We already had the revenant-like in Quake, can we please just leave it at that. There were also some flying swords which were notable in how lame they were to fight. Again, level design wasn't all too special and the amount of ammo you get is excessive, I was almost using rockets and multi-rockets exclusively. Neat thing about both mission packs is that they both have cutscenes; they're simple and crude, but actual cutscenes. Boss fights in both were pretty dull, but that was kind of the norm for the time, the one in Armagon (well, Armagon himself) felt reminiscent of the final Q2 boss.
I mean, they were more Quake to play but I'm not really regretting having not played them sooner. Still, they were fun and being as short as they were never started feeling like they were stretching thin. I'll have to give the Q2 expansions a whirl eventually.
YianGaruga
Banned
He can still play HoD down the line if he craves more. I'm not a fan of the "save the best for last" approach since you could be burnt out on the genre by then and miss the really good games.
gamersgate daily deal is The Walking Dead Season 1 -75%
I'm not even gonna talk about my luck this time
poopninjamvc3mk
I sucked six dicks to get this tag.
Just got back on the gaf and seen that I won the Deadly Premonition bundle. Thank you based Myshkin ;_; if you see this
Any opinions on PixelJunk Monsters Ultimate? It's stupid cheap on Gamersgate right now and I kinda want it, but I'm not very well-versed in TD games. I love Defense Grid and Super Sanctum TD, but they're pretty much the only TD games I've played so I don't know the genre very well.
I did pick up Defense Technica too, since it's even more stupid-cheap, but I have no idea if it's any good.
I did pick up Defense Technica too, since it's even more stupid-cheap, but I have no idea if it's any good.
Man, I haven't played UAKM since 1995 or so and I thought it was the coolest thing back then. I'm assuming it's one of those games that's better NOT to revisit...Gez said:
Ban Puncher
Member
I had to custom build a TV cabinet that has the screen at actual eye level because everything in the stores had it sitting up in the stratosphere.
It's probably got something to do with spiders. Or boats.
Seems fine to me, playing as we speak. Only bad thing is the controls as it was before WSAD and you had to push your mouse forward to move and the arrow keys look up and down.
Are you seriously doing what you alluded to a month or so ago and saving up bundle titles to reclaim the "record"?
pretty done
Member
loving the shit out of this PC I got off craigslist for $750 today
i5 4670k
GIGABYTE Z87MX-D3H
GTX 760
8GB
250GB SSD
750W PSU
Dell U2412M
now to continue building my Steam library of games I probably won't play
i5 4670k
GIGABYTE Z87MX-D3H
GTX 760
8GB
250GB SSD
750W PSU
Dell U2412M
now to continue building my Steam library of games I probably won't play
CheesecakeRecipe
Stormy Grey
loving the shit out of this PC I got off craigslist for $750 today
i5 4670k
GIGABYTE Z87MX-D3H
GTX 760
8GB
250GB SSD
750W PSU
Dell U2412M
now to continue building my Steam library of games I probably won't play
dayum, that's a steal for all of that
UnrealEck
Member
loving the shit out of this PC I got off craigslist for $750 today
i5 4670k
GIGABYTE Z87MX-D3H
GTX 760
8GB
250GB SSD
750W PSU
Dell U2412M
now to continue building my Steam library of games I probably won't play
That's a nice system. You'll run out of disk space quickly though with Steam.
Are you seriously doing what you alluded to a month or so ago and saving up bundle titles to reclaim the "record"?
pft thats cheating!
loving the shit out of this PC I got off craigslist for $750 today
i5 4670k
GIGABYTE Z87MX-D3H
GTX 760
8GB
250GB SSD
750W PSU
Dell U2412M
now to continue building my Steam library of games I probably won't play
<--- is jealous
seems legit to me
pretty done
Member
I already ordered a 1TB HDD from amazon, but oh man SSD is so glorious.
Yes because its meant to have the same animation and frames as the show. Its probably the only game where 30FPS is acceptable in 2014.
loving the shit out of this PC I got off craigslist for $750 today
i5 4670k
GIGABYTE Z87MX-D3H
GTX 760
8GB
250GB SSD
750W PSU
Dell U2412M
now to continue building my Steam library of games I probably won't play
We got the same system, I have an Asus Z87 Pro as a mobo though. It's a great system but I don't know how it will hold up in a couple of years, I had some difficulty maxing out AC IV
YianGaruga
Banned
One of my irrational fears is being forced to go back to an OS not on a SSD.
It would suck so much
PandaPedinte
Member
I read the last posts of the Gabe AmA thread and some people are really mad about him not answering directly "whens HL3?".
Holy shit! Nice catch. Very nice. Great PC with a great monitor.loving the shit out of this PC I got off craigslist for $750 today
i5 4670k
GIGABYTE Z87MX-D3H
GTX 760
8GB
250GB SSD
750W PSU
Dell U2412M
now to continue building my Steam library of games I probably won't play
It's like being mad at rain, snow or storm at this point, though
Atraveller
Banned
Second hand?loving the shit out of this PC I got off craigslist for $750 today
i5 4670k
GIGABYTE Z87MX-D3H
GTX 760
8GB
250GB SSD
750W PSU
Dell U2412M
now to continue building my Steam library of games I probably won't play
ashecitism
Member
oh god that Amy Hennig thread...
pretty done
Member
Yea but everything seems pretty new, the guy even gave me all the boxes for every part for warranty purposes. The monitor especially seems really good but I need to search around for some calibration settings. I plan on using the Dell IPS for m/kb games and my Panny plasma for pad games.
Will upgrade the GTX 760 to something better once I feel like I need to, but for right now the system overall is giving me a gaming boner. It makes me
Atraveller
Banned
Steam thread is a safe haven.
Atraveller
Banned
Too bad Dell don't make 16:10 displays in the ultrasharp product line anymore, I use U2414H myself.
I always think this is the one I missed the boat on but that's 2009.
Lord British
Member
Eh, I didn't like it. Really slow and irritating.
Defender's Quest is the way to go.
---
Boy, it took me a couple of worlds to warm up to Volgarr the Viking, but warm I have. I'm up to World 4 now, after really butting my head against worlds 1 and 2. World 3 wasn't too bad at all; it's really satisfying how I feel my own skill at the game is growing, rather than just rote memorisation. Sure, I die a lot, but I get a lot less frustrated. Great game.
Oh, thanks. Slowness is pretty much a dealbreaker for me.
This is another game on my wishlist... What kind of progression does the game have? Unlockable levels, obtainable items? It seems heavily Magic Sword-inspired so if it doesn't have loot I'll be disappointed.
Thanks for the opinions, guys. Don't worry, I don't think it's possible for me to burn out on a Metroidvania genre, especially with the spread I'm playing them.
Harmony of Dissonance it is (once I 100% LEGO LotR).
Really loving the Retroarch emu/frontend, framerate slowdown to match monitor VSync (no choppy scrolling on your 59.9991 Hz panel), real-time rewind and automatic 'save state on exit, reload on start' are features that honestly should be included in all emulators.
Harmony of Dissonance it is (once I 100% LEGO LotR).
Really loving the Retroarch emu/frontend, framerate slowdown to match monitor VSync (no choppy scrolling on your 59.9991 Hz panel), real-time rewind and automatic 'save state on exit, reload on start' are features that honestly should be included in all emulators.
I was thinking about this last night. There are many times I buy a bundle for a specific game I wanted to play, only to forget about it the next day and let it rot in my library forever.
With so many games you end up forgetting what you have, or what games you wanted to try. And yes, playing something means you have less time to play another thing.
$3.99. I was going to also post the blurb but the actual app store page isn't up yet.
+dubstep +fauxhawk +extreem tactics +could be fun
It's even worse than that, I get distracted all the time by new games I wanted to play coming out, I leave older started games I like and move to new and then I like those too, but then something new shows up that I was meaning to play too and so on and so on, it's never ending story. Accessibility is big part of a problem. Let's say on PS3, I have to care about disk space, it's pain to download, or I need to change a disk if I want to play other game, so I stick with one and finish it. On steam I play like 20 games at once, at least I think I do, and that number is constantly growing. As ridiculous as it sounds, steam screws gaming habits (><)
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