A photograph of one of the original Lume sets. I rather love this; it's an adorable, hand crafted testament to the game's unique visual style. (A colourful hemispherical set, not unlike a pop-up book, depicting a bucolic countryside scene.)
Happy Wednesday, all! For those of you who may be new: here in that liminal moment between the week’s sluggish start and jubilant end we chat about what brings us all together: the games we’re playing!
Time for our questions three!…er, four:
- What games have you been playing lately?
- Are there any you would recommend to other Border House readers?
- Are there games that have you ranting or raving?
- Are there any games that you played and want to see covered on the site?
I’ve been up to my eyeballs in work, lately, and so my attention has turned to a variety of smaller, quicker games that nevertheless made *quite* an impression on me. Magical Diary has to have been the breakout hit of the lot, but I’ve also toyed around with Sins of a Solar Empire, Tropico 4, and Lume. Syberia 2 calls to me and I’ll (hopefully) play it sometime before summer’s end.
I also finally gave in and bought a Nook, so on a personal level I’d definitely appreciate any recommendations other Nook users may have for fun games and apps!
(Photo Credit: Lume Blog)
Orcs Must Die! 2 is the only thing I’ve really gotten around to lately, and though it’s still got great action gameplay (though the mouse response is somewhat more erratic, making it harder to target enemies), I’m irritated somewhat by the female character, the Sorceress (who was the villain in the previous game). I’ve not played much, so I don’t exactly have a good feel for what the game does yet, but the way her legs and posture are designed, as well as her battle moaning, are somewhat offputting already. Of course, her figure is also
The two of them, male and female, seem to play quite strongly to the thuggish quarterback and sadistic cheerleader stereotypes you find floating around in pop culture; since she’s now on the “good” side, though, presumably they won’t be able to portray her power as somehow threatening… though you never know.
On the plus side, her victory dance seems pretty much just as goofy as the male character’s.
OMD!2 tops my Steam wishlist since I loved the first game to bits, but yeah I don’t like her design either. Of course, me making the “mistake” of mentioning that caused me to catch flak on a forum I generally like to visit as a pretty decent place. :/
Have you developed a feel of the difficulty compared to the first game yet? I heard it’s been ramped up quite a bit if you’re running solo, that guardians die like flies, and that traps feel less effective than in the first game. That worries me a bit, since having to defend 2+ avenues of approach with less effective killzones is going to be a real pain — you can’t be everywhere at once to support the traps. And I like having a chance to sit back and smirk as by traps gib stuff once I have the money for a decent layout, at least now and then.
My partner’s been playing, but I’ve watched him at both this game and the first, so I don’t think my impression is miles off base: the difficulty has absolutely been ramped up. It’s not, on the whole, a bad thing: there’s less of a “training level” feel even to the beginning of the game, and some of the sadistic aspects of the difficulty level absolutely fit the game’s ethos of mass slaughter. That said, it feels like there are more big bads this time around that only the player can really manage–so while traps don’t seem ineffective (from my one-removed POV), they do seem occasionally insufficient and that … does feel wrong.
He’s still loving the gameplay and I still think it’s great to watch; he’s also only had one failed level (at about a third of the way through? half? I’m not sure), so more difficult doesn’t mean impossible. On the whole I approve of the changes in this area, but they’re not without issue.
From what I’ve found – you can’t ever mention a complaint on the clothing or design of a female character without getting people up in arms. It’s pretty frustrating – even if you’re trying to have an honest discussion about it.
I was disappointed that OMD didn’t have a woman option and mentioned this on Robot’s forums. The short answer was that the game’s lore wouldn’t have accommodated a female (apparently). So the option of at least being ABLE to play one in the second game made me happy. Just don’t look at the optional outfits for her (*cough*swimsuit). The one which seemingly is the most conservative requires you to complete the entire game on the hardest difficulty as well…
I’ve played a good 3 hours of the game so far, and it feels like it requires some work to get traps/abilities up to the level where you can tackle the levels with less fretting. But I enjoy the difficulty so its not a big deal for me, just wish the maps had more obvious choke points.
“From what I’ve found – you can’t ever mention a complaint on the clothing or design of a female character without getting people up in arms.”
Yeah … you can consider yourself lucky if you don’t get personally insulted and “only” face the usual derailment and shut-up tactics. I got more of the same last night in a discussion about GW2. It gets really depressing. And of course showing any emotion on the issue is bait for instant dismissive personal attacks.
(GW2 looks good to me overall now, which only makes the bad parts stand out all the more glaringly — and that frustrates me because the game looks positive enough to not “need” T&A parade to get attention like it was a piece of vaporware.)
I was disappointed that OMD didn’t have a woman option and mentioned this on Robot’s forums. The short answer was that the game’s lore wouldn’t have accommodated a female (apparently).
Err … what? The dead mentor narrator in OMD! explicitly says that the sorceress was the star of their order because she turned evil.
And as for the outfits, I was hoping you could just buy them with skulls, but the demo had no info on that. Pah.
I do want to play this, especially if I can rope a friend or two into it, but yeah her design doesn’t make me happy at all. Telling myself that it could be worse is no comfort because that’s just damning with faint praise.
One of the outfits (whatever one the top right one was… it’s escaping me at the moment) is available for 50 skulls from the start. So it’s something? The others will most likely be achievement based.
Err … what? The dead mentor narrator in OMD! explicitly says that the sorceress was the star of their order because she turned evil.
Yeah… being that there was definitely women in the order, changing the origin story for a female protagonist would be fairly trivial (in my opinion at least). HOWEVER, seeing that they have a comic done for the limited backstory of our male-warmage – guess they can’t gender bender.
I gave it some thought today, and was thinking about what would result from them just changing gender and nothing else. This would result in a female playing the “quarterback” cliche, and I guess they didn’t want to go that route? Though, I think if done with care, it’d be a pretty interesting character.
In regards to GW2, have a link to that discussion? I haven’t actively looked for people talking about it since I know how the talks go. It’d be nice to see some discussion on it that doesn’t result in personal attacks… However, I did write out a mini-rant here http://gw2.sholin.net/nefa/2012/06/11/i-was-on-your-side-arenanet/ regarding some of the character they put out. In all, I’m quite excited for GW2 since the stories seem much more fleshed out then they were in the first game. I generally liked the armour designs – if shown on their own. The males armour is so different at times it doesn’t even seem close to a set.
Re: GW2 armours
I still remember quite a lot of discussions on the GW2Guru boards. But they’ve since been buried by other threads. The general consensus was that there should be more variety and sets should look equal among m/f characters. Sure there were lots of people throwing around the usual “you just want all female characters to be dressed in burkas!!” and “it’s a fantasy! who cares!!111″ but the more reasonable people seemed to be on the same side (which I found surprisingly refreshing for a forum like that).
Regarding that particular armour in your rant: Oh gosh, I hate that artist or rather his designs with the heat of a thousand burning suns. Hyojin Ahn is a great artist from a technical standpoint but he really has issues when it comes to armour design. I’m convinced this guy isn’t physically capable to depict female characters in a non-sexualized way. All his armour designs have this weird dichotomy between m/f characters where the guys get to be cool and the women get to be sexy no matter what. The icing on the cake is that “Asia grind game aesthetic” which is so out of place with regards to the rest of the game’s designs it’s just baffling to me.
Then again I also remember that on one convention in South Korea(?) they that all the female characters starting out in those “sexy” outfits and someone clumsily explained that this was done cause that’s what Korean gamers expect for their games. So it could indeed be a thing to appeal to the Korean marked. Maybe there’s even some pressure from NCSoft or something.
But meh, I don’t like pandering to sexist people in general – no matter if they’re from Korea or the US or Europe. :/
I’m not 100% sure whether the effectiveness of traps has been reduced, but what I can say is that several of the levels are clearly designed with co-op play in mind, and running from one end to the other makes things very difficult indeed (and there are far fewer of those teleportation portals to help you move around). I think I only really lost once in the original game, but I’ve had at least 3 failed attempts so far in OMD2, and I’m only about halfway through.
Playing as the Sorceress, I also find it harder to kill mobs with my default weapon, and I seem incapable of scoring any headshots – which means killing ogres is significantly harder than in the first game. The only way I’ve found to effectively kill them is to charm them and let their friends do the work for me – I suppose that’s the idea, but I do miss the headshots.
Finally, for some reason, the controls seem less responsive than they were in the first game, making it a bit harder to swing about and accurately pick off orcs. I’m still playing around with the look sensitivity to try and find the sweet spot.
Still a great game, but gets a bit more overwhelming a bit more quickly than the first one did, I find.
Still GoG with its stream of unbelievable great old games, after finishing fantastic LBA1 and being in the middle of maybe even better LBA2 I picked Master of Magic and it has been eating my time ever since. I couldn’t make this 1994 gem work under Windows XP nor W7 before, even under DosBox something was always amiss, sound problems or sluggish combat but GoG version works flawlessly. I also picked Master of Orion 2 ( another my favorite 4 X strategy) and Fallout 1 but they will have to wait till my last with MoM is seated, probably 3 or 4 games with different traces and different magical specialization ( death magic , yay ).
Now you reminded me of my urge to dust off MoM “sometime”. That really is a great game that deserved a proper sequel for modern machines, I’m baffled that there isn’t one seeing how everything and its grandma gets sequels. What sort of wizard are you running?
I play custom wizard, now sorcerers Freya with Life magic specialization and warlord and myrran trait and high men as my race with invincible paladins to faceroll opponents, bah still fun. I can’t believe MoM still doesn’t have a proper remake, the only thing from “spiritual successor” flop Elemental I would take to MoM remake was a neat idea of increasing adventuring “technology”, with its development more higher level encounters appeared on map ( keeps, dungeons etc.), it worked similar like certain techs from Civ that when discovered “unlock” previously hidden resources tiles on map, that would allow for high end encounters even late in game, whereas in MoM at that stage map is pretty much cleared out. With addition of bigger map Civ5 style and more opponents but keeping rest intact Mom remake would be perfect.
Have you played Fall from Heaven, the Civ 4 mod? It was the spiritual successor to MOM before Elemental was created. The lead designer of FFH went on to design for Elemental. Good stuff. It was my biggest gaming obsession for a few years there.
Still working on El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron, and I started Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep. It’s adorable, although I think I’ve already guessed half the main plot.
Also, still can’t put down Theatrhythm. I unlocked 99 dark notes and so help me, I cannot find a Navy shard to save my life. I just want my dragoon, okay? It is not an FF crossover game until I have Kain.
I’m mostly playing Facebook games right now. Dragon City being the top one. I need to play Etrian Odyssey more.
Last week I started Corpse Party (PSP). It is a pretty awesome horror game. There are some minor flaws, such as sometimes not having much of a clue where you went amiss when you hit a Wrong End, but those are overshadowed by the awesome music and, as I said, the horror. It has simple graphics and a lot of text, here and there some fullscreen images, and very good voice-acting.
Now I’m playing A Witch’s Tale (DS), which at first seemed a little disappointing, but is turning out to be quite challenging. The beginning was very hand-holdy, the story and characterization are very simple, and the interface is very sluggish if you don’t keep tapping the touchscreen to speed things up. A few more clues on where to go next, or where spots of interest are in dungeons would have been useful too. It’s growing on me though, so I think I’ll stick with it.
On the PC, I checked out the demo for Lilly Looking Through. It is a puzzle adventure story which looks very pretty. I think I’ll buy that later on.
I really liked the Lilly Looking Through demo – it’s on my watch list
I finished Sword & Sworcery, which I’d say is well worth the effort as a short adventure game. No complaints, excellent protagoniste, quirky storytelling, engaging story, memorable graphics. Some of the controls are a bit weird since it’s a port from a touch-screen phone to PC, but it worked well enough. I missed out on one side quest which had the consequence of making me wait two real-world weeks to progress (or messing with my computer clock, but if you do that IT KNOWS and gives you a cheater achievement).
I also finished Cave Story+, at least for one of the endings. I’ve played it a lot before but never pushed through to the ending. I enjoyed this one too – lots of very fun, likeable if shallow characters of both genders, most of them non-human, and those humans of an ambiguous light-ish skinned race (to me – although they could be Japanese, like the author). Great platforming and shooting.
I started Avadon: The Black Fortress, a new old-school Black Isle-style RPG. Lots of racial and gender diversity to pick from in the 4 player character options, and among the NPCs I’ve met so far. Not much to say about the story yet, although I did let out a tired sigh when I realized my first quest was to an area infested with giant rats.
I’m still on the TF2 and Isaac trains, too. Still problematic, still amazingly fun.
Mmm yeah, I think Spiderweb Games is pretty good about gender diversity. I’ve only played Avernum: Escape From The Pit but I was able to make a full party (4 chars) of women of all different races, even skipping over the women in bikini armor. I think the NPCs were a little white-heavy though, and that’s not a thing that makes sense within the storyline, since the people thrown into the pit come from all over the world. And the gameplay rocked. ~80 hours of engrossing storylets and great tactical battles and secrets for about ten bucks.
OTOH, I’m pretty sure there was a giant rats infestation quest in this one too…
I just started playing the Uncharted vita game, Golden Abyss. It’s okay. There are SO many different collectibles, there are glyphs and all these things you have to examine and take pictures of and take charcoal rubbings of and ugh. It’s kind of annoying. It’s way over-use of the touchscreen, which normally doesn’t bother me. Some of the touchscreen controls are quite good, though, like “painting” the path of where you want Drake to climb, which is much easier on your thumbs than holding the stick and tapping X.
It’s okay.
Dude what are you saying. Uncharted Vita is fantastic! So good! I love that game.
Ofc, I think our opinions on the Uncharted series were like complete opposites already before now, haha.
Well, admittedly, I’m only in chapter 2… but I’m annoyed with trying to keep track of all the random crap I’m supposed to find, and I’m dreading the inevitable UST between Drake and Chase (who is otherwise awesome).
Okay, holding the parchment up to the light was really cool.
I’ve been playing Loren – The Amazon Princess a lot lately. It feels a lot like a D&D 4th edition adventure, straight up. It’s pretty fun for that, especially when I feel like my old GM is behind it. (He’s not, but it’s got that feel sometimes.) Worth checking out if you miss being at the table.
I’ve also been playing a fair bit of The Secret World, though not as much since my homework load got heavy this week. The investigative missions are particularly fun, and feel like the best part of the game. Digging into what’s happened in the game’s backstory through discussions and google searches feels so immersive.
I’ve mostly been playing Alan Wake and League of Legends. Also played a bit of Titan Quest with three friends from the Border House community. Hopefully we can find time to play more, though it’s difficult to get everyone online/available to play at the same time.
Hoping to find some time to play more of the Book of Unwritten Tales within the next week, and preferably much less League of Legends.
Currently putting some hours into Dragon’s Dogma, which is okay but flawed. The pawn recruitment system is a good idea (although it took me ages to realise that the two pawns you ‘recruit’ don’t level up…) but the biggest problem is it doesn’t really give you any idea of how difficult any particular quest is. So you try a quest, get your a** handed to you, then try it again after levelling up a bit, still get wiped, and so on. I’ve had a quest that I’ve had since very early on that I still can’t complete despite having level 15 characters…
Still enjoying it enough to carry on for now, though.
I’ve been getting stuck into Bioshock a bit more, but also spent most of Saturday playing act 2 of Dragon Age 2 and remembering why it was my favourite part.
I’ve also started Botanicula and Splice, the latter of which I’m getting rather addicted to. I love the look of it, and the music. The puzzles involved lot of trial and error to begin with, but now I’m getting the hang of them.
Have had a horribly sore back since yesterday, so I’ve picked up Skyrim again — the only game I can play lying in bed (on my PS3)! I’m starting over with the aim of playing with magic a bit more this time round.
Act 2 is sooooo good.
Just got Goldeneye HD Reloaded and played online with my brother and strangers. This feministic username profile dominated the matches. Fortunately, I did not hear any disparaging remarks toward her on PSN.
I’ve been playing Fallout: New Vegas for a week or so, and found the world and the gameplay really fun and immersive once I got the hang of it. There’s still a lot in the game that I just don’t get, but I’m afraid to look it up because it seems to be impossible to avoid spoilers online nowadays. I guess I’ll just have to find things out the oldfashioned way of trial and error.
I also tried to play KotOR, but my computer failed me, so I’ll have to borrow a computer from someone if I want to play it. :/
I’m sure you could ask folks around here for specific, non-spoilery help. Enough have been around the wasteland a few times I bet, myself included. What have you been wondering about?
I figured out most of my questions by trial, error and reloading since I wrote the above, but right now I’m mostly wondering if I’ll always get alerted if I kill someone/something that is a major plotpoint? Since you can pretty much just roam the wasteland and shoot at stuff, I’m afraid that I’ll mess up some great storylines. Once in the game, I got a message that I failed a certain mission (one that I hadn’t activated yet) when I attacked a certain person. Will I always get those kind of messages, so I can reload if I want to play the storyline?
Picked up Seiken Densetsu 3 (Secret of Mana 2) again after listening to an LP of SOM at work for a week. Really amazing game and just as innovative as SOM, but in entirely new ways. Real gem.
And still with The Secret World. Finished the main story and started a new character, because vertical progression is a drug. Too bad the game is so alt-unfriendly, but the things that make it unfriendly are what make the mission and ability systems great.
And feeling the impending gamepocalypse of GW2 on Aug 25. Can’t imagine I’ll ever play any other game after that day.
Ooh, [i]Seiken Densetsu 3[/i]. My favorite [i]Mana[/i] game. Six different openings and three different endings, you don’t see that kind of replayability even these days. And that’s not even going into different combinations of party members and their individual skill developments. And the setting is just lovely. A real gem indeed
Went back to KOTOR 2 to play the final iteration of the Restoration Mod that was just released. There’s a lot of jarring dialogue triggers, but I still love the game to bits. …Mostly, anyway. At the time I came out I was only playing male characters, and playing through as a lady now has highlighted a lot of less pleasant elements and what folks have called the “Hey Sweetheart” method of gender differentiation, which really irks the hell out of me.
Still have an inordinate irrational love for it, though.
Bwah. At the time it/the game came out, even.
Also by triggers I mean the actual mechanical scripts that cause dialogue to come up (e.g., when your alignment slides just far enough to either end of the scale it immediately brings up a scene no matter where you are or what you’re doing; it startled me a bit and would make things confusing to someone who hadn’t practically memorized things, I bet.)