toxicitizen

Yeah, Stardew Valley looks great. The launch hype got to me so I bought it back then even though I didn't really have the time for that kind of game. I've been meaning to go back to it for a while now. Oh and I missed it earlier but yeah, Hyper Light Drifter starts out pretty brutal. It gets much easier once you get good at the combat. Best advice I can give if you're just starting out is go east, not west.

Yeah, at some point I'll do like I did with Subnautica and just stop playing and wait for the full release. But man, this game is addictive in a way Subnautica simply wasn't. Last night I kept telling myself I'd turn off the game soon but ended up playing until my butt was numb. The core gameplay loop is just that much fun. It's borderline Civ-levels of "just one more trip out to grab some stuff". Then you get back and it's "well I guess gotta check on my slimes and gardens and collect/sell". You go to bed and the next morning "wellll.... maybe just one more trip out to grab some stuff". It's just straight up hard to stop playing. The Far, Far Range isn't actually that big, though. There are a few extra areas you can unlock, so I'm probably gonna stop before I unlock them all. At least keep some content fresh for the full release.

Slime Rancher is a game where you catch slimes with a vacuum cleaner gun and put them in force field cages. Then you feed them and they poop, you collect the poop and sell it at a vending machine for money so that you can buy stuff to catch more slimes and get their poop to also put in the vending machine for more money to buy more stuff to catch more slimes to sell more poop and also you can grow vegetables and stuff. In other words, Slime Rancher is the motherfucking GOTY and holy shit where did my saturday evening go?!

Even if it's only half as good as the first one, it's gonna be great.

Dead Space 2 is arguably better than Dead Space 1. It's a bit more action-y but it's not like the original wasn't, so I didn't really have a problem with it. At least it's not like Dead Space 3 where you're getting into cover-shooting gunfights against human beings. :/ But yeah, I thought DS2 was just a better game overall. As for me, I decided to start on a low-stress note with Resident Evil 0. I put a few hours into it back in January but wasn't able to finish it before the onslaught of winter releases, so it got shelved indefinitely. Started over and I'm already almost back to where I was. It's not as good as REmake but it's old-school RE so it's still pretty good. Also, playing it reminded me that January isn't too far off and the last couple years we had HD remasters of REmake and 0. So, I started wondering if Capcom might announce something soon, like maybe Code Veronica HD or something? It wasn't until the next day that I remembered that Resident Evil 7 is a thing and is, in fact, coming in January. I think you might have a marketing problem, Capcom! Show your fucking game already if you want me to get hyped for it! https://uk.gamesplanet.com/game/alien-isolation-steam-key--1096-1?ref=itad

Damn, must be something on my end then. Weird. I've already tried different browsers and disabling extensions, so that's not the problem. :/

If you guys aren't big on horror games, I guess Mafia III is also pretty spooky?

Bought this yesterday because Zachtronics is the best. Also, today was Humble Monthly day. I got Grim Dawn like a week ago as the early unlock but only got the rest of it today. I usually approach this as a "Do I want the early unlock game for the price of the bundle?" kinda purchase and everything else is a bonus. It would be foolish to look at it any other way. I was vaguely interested in Grim Dawn but not enough to buy it at this price, I was actually planning to cancel this month and forgot. Some months have been better than others but so far there hadn't been any month where any of the secret games were particularly amazing. That all changed today because I got Slime fucking Rancher! Been interested in it for a while now but it never quite hit the right price for me to bite. So, that was a really nice surprise. I would've been so bummed out if I'd actually cancelled. Oh and btw, has anyone else been having issues with imgur lately? It's been a pain in the ass for me for a couple weeks now, I wasn't even able to upload these pics, it just hangs on "processing" forever.

Since Mal posted the last one, here's Super Bunnyhop's newest video. Another one from his trip to Japan, this time about gaming restaurants. Doesn't look as great as their arcades but still kinda neat. The dorkiness of that Capcom bar is just adorable in the cringiest way.

Ah, ok. It was already pretty high when I first checked so I was wondering if they had some early big investors or what. The late 2019 date isn't too surprising, though. It's clearly in the very early stages. They refer to all the art as being "prototype screenshots" and the gameplay trailer really looks like more of a pre-rendered proof of concept than actual gameplay. Also, did you follow the whole legal thing surrounding the investment aspect of Fig? They only managed to clear that very recently, so until like last week Psychonauts 2 still couldn't receive the investment half of its funding.

Looks like moving to Fig didn't have much of an impact on their chances at successful crowdfunding. The campaign launched today and it's already a little over 75% funded. Seems like a sure thing already. I would've been really tempted to get in for a free copy of Stasis but the 25$ tier is sold out, for some reason. :/

Dude, beat your own damn games! I already have enough trouble keeping up with mine as it is...

Ended up cancelling most of my Fall pre-orders except for Trails of Cold Steel II but I just got this as an early birthday present. Probably won't get around to it for a little while (I've barely touched Cold Steel II and I'll have to finish that first) but I was a little worried it would become hard to find sooner rather than later, so I'm glad to have my copy waiting for me on the shelf.

Quantum Break. (sorry about the double post but this is going to be another wall of text, so I thought it better to keep them separate) God. Fucking. Damn it. Why did I even play this? I should've known better. I knew the IP is essentially DOA and I knew I would love the hell out of it. After Alan Wake and this, it's getting kinda hard to be a Remedy fan. I really hope that if they ever make another big, story-focused game (and they've hinted that they have 2 such projects in development atm) that they'll at least be smart enough to NOT set it up as the first installment with the assumption of sequels. Like, seriously, it's basically a curse at this point. Max Payne killed off most of its cast and left little room for a sequel: massive hit and they regretted doing so when the time came to make Max Payne 2. Alan Wake and Quantum Break were both set up as obvious first installments with sequel hooks and cliffhangers: both fail to sell enough to get sequels greenlit. Just... fucking hell. And I don't think Remedy own the Quantum Break IP, so unlike Alan Wake, there's no room for delusional, wishful thinking "a sequel totally might happen one day!" hopes. But I digress. Quantum Break's pretty great! Not sure why some people thought it sucked, to be honest. I mean, it's no Alan Wake but it's kind of like a Max Payne spiritual successor? I've been kinda meh on shooters for the past 2-3 years and it's a Remedy game, so the story was obviously the main appeal here. But I genuinely loved the combat in this one. The time powers are pretty rad to play with. The only time you need to hide behind cover is when you're waiting on your powers' cooldowns. As soon as they're ready, you go right back to time dashing, time stopping and just generally fucking all kinds of shit up. It's pretty goddamn fun! ...except for the final boss fight. He has this weird instakill attack that was some horseshit-level garbage. It's the section of the game I had to restart the most. Way to end a great experience on such a negative note. Although, to be fair, I didn't go out of my way to explore for upgrade points, so none of my powers were maxed out. It's entirely possible I was underpowered and made it more difficult than it should've been. Another aspect where I didn't expect the game to blow me away like it did is the production values. It's admittedly been a while since I've played any kind of huge blockbuster kinda game, though. So, I guess it might not have been as impressive if I had played Uncharted 4 or Rise of the Tomb Raider earlier this year. But yeah, Quantum Break has some pretty impressive stuff going on. There's your more "typical" action set pieces, like crossing a bridge that's half-frozen in time mid-collision with a huge boat. But there's also some pretty cool looking visual effects. One area has this whole fucked up time thing going on so it's constantly shifting as you walk through it. You see not only the lighting changing constantly to reflect the passage of time but also the entire geometry of the area is changing on the fly around you as you see the machine that was in there get built in fast-forward. Here's a clip of it, finding a good one without some obnoxious let's player's stupid-ass commentary over the footage was way more difficult than it should've been... Anyway, cool stuff! Contrary to what you might've heard about the UWP version of the game, the Steam version is actually pretty solid. The one major drawback is by design and it's that the game uses some pretty heavy (as in computationally expensive) global illumination, so it doesn't run as well as you'd expect it to. I wouldn't say it has performance issues, though, because the scaling option is there to try and mitigate it, which is something. Basically, if scaling is on then the game is actually rendering at a lower resolution (in my case, setting the game to 1080p meant it was actually rendering at 720p) and upscaling to your selected resolution. This makes the game run much better but results in the final image being super blurry, which really sucks considering how good the game looks otherwise. On the bright side, this game is going to still look pretty good in a few years once we have hardware that can brute force through it and run it at high resolution with scaling turned off. Oh and there's also that TV show thing. I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about that, to be honest. It wasn't as awful as I expected, I actually kind of enjoyed the episodes. When it was time for one to start, I never felt like skipping them or turning the game off or anything. And it does allow them to flesh out some of the villains in a way that wouldn't have normally been possible in a game. Here's the thing, though: this IS a game. The TV show aspect didn't hurt the experience but I don't think it particularly improved it either. Having little live-action clips playing on TVs in Alan Wake was a cool idea, it helped flesh out the world, set the tone and just generally added to the experience. Having about a third of Quantum Break's story being relegated to actual TV show episodes didn't feel particularly necessary or even worthwhile, though. Especially since you can actually skip them and not really miss out on anything crucial. I don't think the game would've been worse off without them. Gonna have to call this one a failed experiment, I think. So, yeah, really glad this one made its way to Steam. I really enjoyed it, despite the few unresolved plot threads that were clearly intended to be picked up in a sequel. The most frustrating part of that was Microsoft's bullshit PR spin: "Quantum Break sold, like, totally super great, you guys. Totally. Just, you know, not every game needs a sequel and stuff." Then there's the fact that Microsoft and Remedy's partnership has ended. At least it had something of a satisfying conclusion to the game's events. It's clear the story's not over but it's not a straight up cliffhanger like Alan Wake, it's more like a sequel tease. Speaking of which, those Alan Wake easter eggs were just mean. Prior to QB's launch, Remedy seemed to be strongly hinting that Alan Wake 2 was next but that's clearly not happening. But hey, at least their next game shouldn't be locked down by bullshit exclusivity to shitty platforms. So, that's something... Anyway, now that I've wrapped this one up, it's time to get started on my spooky games marathon!

I beat a bunch of puzzle games. So, after beating Talos Principle, I kinda wanted more quality puzzle goodness. So, first I fired up The Witness because I still had that timed challenge thing to do. Kept me busy for a couple hours and reminded me of how awesome The Witness was, which is what led me to the first entry: Braid. Like I said, I was reminded of how great The Witness is, so I decided to revisit the game that originally brought Jonathan Blow into the spotlight. I played it years ago when it came out on PS3 and thought it was alright but had a little bit of trouble with it. This time, it felt much easier and I actually appreciated it a lot more. There's some pretty clever puzzle design in there. I didn't even attempt to do the speedrun achievement back then but I'm tempted to go for it now since it's the only one I'm missing. I also had no idea there was a true ending, so I'll probably keep at it until I've at least collected all the hidden stars. Q.U.B.E. Director's Cut. Basically, a Portal-inspired first person puzzle game but without any of what made Portal so great. I played the original release a while back and thought it was kinda meh. Not bad but not particularly fun. Pretty sure I got this rerelease for free, so I thought I'd see what's different. For one, they actually added a story that's entirely told through voiceovers. It's pretty fucking lame and dumb but I love that they cared enough about their mediocre little puzzle game to actually go to the trouble of adding it. I can appreciate that. I don't think the actual campaign changed at all except for the ending sequence, though. I don't think I'd recommend it. Unless you already own it, I guess. Puzzle Dimension. This one I had been playing through back in july/august but ended up stopping, for some reason. I think because Deus Ex came out or something like that? Can't remember when I stopped exactly but it wasn't because of the game itself. It's actually pretty damn good! It originally came to my attention a little while ago when Matthewmatosis did a video on an old PS1 puzzle game called Kula World in which you control a ball through abstract, grid-based 3D levels. I thought the game looked fun but I wasn't going to bother hunting down a physical copy for an obscure PS1 game. Then someone on reddit recommended Puzzle Dimension as a similar game, and through the magic of cheap game bundles the game was already in my Steam library! Anyway, it's essentially the same game as Kula World and was even made by some of the same devs. It's pretty good, if you like this type of game it's definitely worth a look. Oh and I guess I also finished Picross E last night. Bought Picross E2 right away. I don't know what I'll do once I make it through the entire series, I don't think I can go back to pooping without Picross!

Ghostbusters' a good one, actually. It might not be horror/spooky but it's definitely Halloween-y. I played a little bit of it when it first came out and it was pretty good, think I'll add it to my list. Would probably be a good idea to play some lighter stuff between games like Amnesia and Outlast. Metro 2033 is great and has some pretty spooky parts! Oh. Well, it's bound to go on sale around Halloween. Speaking of which, there's currently a robot-themed Midweek Madness sale on Steam. SOMA is on sale, if anyone's interested. I recently played it and it's pretty damn good. The Five Nights at Freddy's games are also on sale, if you're into those.

First Alien Isolation and now Alan Wake?! Man, you guys have much better games to play through than I do. Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure I have Dead Space 3 on Origin but I wasn't a fan of the direction they took it into, so there's a reason why I still haven't played it. But if I somehow manage to beat my entire list and need something else, I think I'd be more likely to do that Resident Evil 4 professional difficulty run I've been putting off for a while. Oh and I guess I still need to play through the RE5 DLC episodes. And I'm just now remembering that the Penumbra games exist. Yeah, Dead Space 3 ain't happening. As for whether specific games count or not, let's just say anything that qualifies as even remotely horror-ish/creepy counts? I mean, I've got Grim Dawn on my list. I forgot to cancel my Humble Monthly sub in time, so I need an excuse to play it lol.

Alien Isolation is a legit great game regardless of spookines. You should play it anyway. Sure, why not? It's basically Resident Evil in space. Necromorphs are totally spooky.

You guys planning on playing some horror games this month? Each year, I tell myself it would be fun to play some around Halloween but I never end up actually doing it. I was already trying to convince myself to finally play Amnesia soon, so I figured I might as well just run with it and do a full month of focusing on my horror backlog. Had a look through my Steam library and here's what I've got so far: Some of these have been on my backlog for a while, so it would be good to finally scratch them off. Anyone else planning something similar? If so, share your plans/progress in here!

That's pretty awesome. I played a ton of Uplink back in the day but never actually finished it. Might have to give this mod a shot at some point.

Ha, really? You've certainly picked some rather niche, very Japan-centric ones to focus on. Not that I disagree with your choices, I just never really thought of those as gateway games.

Seems there's some fuckery going on with the physical edition, with people apparently getting emails about a delay from Amazon and being asked to confirm they still want their order. Was already kind of annoyed about not having my copy shipped until next week, so it sucks but I decided I'd rather miss out on the physical extras and get to play the game tonight rather than wait and risk it being delayed beyond next week. Cancelled my physical order and bought it directly from Steam instead.

That's the date the crowdfunding goes live on Fig. Coming to PC, Mac, Linux, PS4 and XO. Speaking of which, this should be moved to multiplat. (ffs, Ethan!) Also, sounds like they've teamed up with the Stasis guys for the art/art direction. So, that's an interesting choice. That game looks pretty damn good. Some more details:

So, uh, this is actually pretty alright? I would've expected complete shit but it almost sounds like old-school Metallica.