#driftiniplays — Public Fediverse posts

tried out the code rapid demo and uhh 4 hours just went by like nothing? I guess I like this just a smidge

this is kinda what I expected armored core to be (I only played some of 3 so I expect this is more akin to the modern AC entries) and it's really fun

the physics are visibly jittery for some reason but it's not to a degree that affects combat

movement also feels awesome and weighty

the game also lets you make a teto build with literal twin drills for weapons which is. insane

I tried my hardest to not reference eva/gundam with my color schemes and whatnot but the devs literally added a gundam head so all that went out the window at the 3rd hour of gameplay

oh and the game gives you a fucking explosive bow WITH an altfire that ricochets from and to nearby enemies, as early as mission 2

anyway yeah this is great and the few issues I actually did find annoying seem to be just normal early demo nitpicks

#driftiniplays #coderapid

alright I guess this is the start of the new vegas thread (playing with viva new vegas extended)

first impressions from my first hours of gameplay: I'm not yet completely bought on the game, mostly the gunplay being.. shaky at best due to tanky enemies and inconsistent accuracy (when I was like lv2 I tried shooting a gecko with a shotgun and it felt like the pellets were actively drawing an outline of the target) (or even funnier, when sunny smiles gave me the varmint rifle at the very beginning to shoot some bottles, NONE of the shots would land unless I got within spitting distance of the targets), I'm pretty sure that'll get better as my stats improve though

I guess the world isn't exactly as monotone as it seems from the outside

one of my major gripes so far besides the gunplay is the incredibly clunky inventory and shop UI, and the way going over your carry weight by even just 1lb instantly turns you into a particularly squishy turtle (though I'm willing to take the blame for that cause only after closing the game I realized I should stash things I don't immediately need back in goodsprings or whatever)

also because I hate myself I started in hardcore, I'm fine with gradual healing, but water and food feel more of a chore than anything, so I might disable it later on if I get tired of it

regardless of the negatives I'll definitely keep playing though, I'm fairly sure the game gets a whole lot better once I get far enough

#driftiniplays #falloutnewvegas

in a timespan of over a whole month, and after a total of 105h of playtime, I have finally run out of places to explore and contracts to do in my first project silverfish save

as you'd expect from that kinda playtime, I absolutely LOVED my time with this game, I think it might just be one of the best games I played in the last few years

movement is quite fast for the kinda game it is, the gunplay is excellent and guns are mostly balanced through ammo type, recoil and muzzle velocity rather than random spread, enemies go down about as fast as you do, the world feels really deep and shrouded in mystery, the exploration rarely disappoints, and the hard difficulty makes it so the occasional horror element truly does scare you as there's a very real risk of death around every corner from the earlygame all the way to the lategame

on top of those solid fundamentals, there's a lot of additional depth to the game in the form of a large variety of de/buff-granting and special effect-triggering artifacts to experiment with, and a character editor to start the game with a custom set of traits (both negative and positive) and to belong to a different starting faction, of which a few already have their own unique contracts and mechanics

on the technical side of things, while the game runs on ue5 it performs shockingly well even on my GTX 1650 (which is actually below minimum requirements) and 8GB of RAM, achieving 60fps or more for most of the time at maxed out graphics

and yet, this is still no more than a beta which is still in very active development

for 30€, a game like this is an absolute steal and I couldn't recommend it more if you don't mind the difficulty (which you can actually tweak to some extent, but I haven't messed with it so idrk a lot)

#driftiniplays #projectsilverfish

I didn't like the robo designs in this one as much as arena's, the general direction for most of them is way more toyish (which fits with robos being mostly toys in-universe) compared to arena's far more mechanical designs. but personal preferences aside, the robos still objectively look good and are instantly recognizable mid-gameplay which is what matters most

in conclusion, Custom Robo has really impressed me! it's way more polished than I expected for being an N64 game, and the combat system being better than the much newer DS game was absolutely NOT on my bingo card

since finishing this one a few months ago, I have started playing Custom Robo Battle Revolution for the gamecube, so I guess that'll be the next one in this thread

you should absolutely check this one out though!!

(2/2)

#driftiniplays #customrobo

after finishing Arena, I was left craving for more so I went back to the beginning of the franchise and played the original Custom Robo on N64

first things first, the game has only been released in japan, so if you want english text (which you probably do) you're gonna have to rely on Star Trinket's patch. for the most part, the translation is great and might as well pass off as official, but it does crash when fast-forwarding certain lines of dialogue, so you might want to go easy on your A-mashing when characters are talking

the plot follows a similar structure to Arena's but with far less twists and turns. overall, it's way more compact and it doesn't take that long to finish (I think I did it in 4 to 6 hours?)

the game is far more streamlined: the only robo you can use (in the story mode) is Ray, and parts don't need to be bought as in most cases you can unlock them right after beating opponents who use them (so absolutely zero grinding, which wasn't much of an issue in Arena anyway)

unfortunately, the story mode loses a lot of steam near its end as it basically turns into back-to-back battles without much else (a lot like Arena)

there's also some postgame content in the form of an arcade mode which gives you complete freedom in choosing which parts you want to bring into battle, including robos other than Ray and a few illegal parts, there's definitely a lot of fun to be had there

what left me thoroughly surprised is how tight the combat is - I felt Arena had a really solid combat system, but the N64 original somehow manages to be even better thanks to the buttery smooth 60fps, the reflections of explosions on the stage floor (on N64??) and the relatively goofy but really pleasing sound design

the parts ecosystem is unsurprisingly way smaller than Arena's, but the variety is still strong enough to keep things fun

(1/2)

#driftiniplays #customrobo

I finished custom robo arena last week, it's quite a great game for how obscure it is

the story is fairly engaging at first, but after a rather cliche villain reveal and a pretty rushed-feeling endgame, it kinda loses steam

there's quite a bit of sidecontent and postgame to enjoy in the form of battles with special objectives (like achieving combos with a given amount of damage) and rematches with like a dozen story characters, locked behind requirements that you're likely to satisfy without even realizing if you naturally experiment with a lot of parts during the main story

that said, the postgame doesn't really have much (in the way of story) beyond the new fights and the ability to buy illegal and military parts (which you can't use in many places but they're fun to collect regardless)

but while the plot doesn't always shine, the gameplay absolutely does, the battles are really a lot of fun thanks to both the solid gameplay mechanics and the sheer variety of different guns, bombs, robos and whatnot you can use

the controls are really streamlined, you don't need any more than 5 buttons excluding the d-pad, and it makes picking up the game really easy as a beginner (while mastering it remains quite hard cause the skill ceiling is driven WAY up thanks to mechanics like several different blast types for explosions, the plethora of combos exclusive to certain combinations of parts...)

oh yeah also you can pose your robos in like dozens of dioramas for each of your saved builds and I spent more time on that than I'd like to admit, it's surprisingly fun even if the touch controls are inherently imprecise

I actually liked the game enough to bother beginning to check out the rest of the franchise (expect me to write more about it)

#driftiniplays #customroboarena

I spent pretty much the entirety of yesterday starting a new playthrough of custom robo arena

I had been playing it as a kid but I never finished it, so a year or two ago I started a fresh save to try and actually finish the game, except I had dropped it again

now we're at the 3rd playthrough and I hope this is gonna be the one I'll finish

some of the dialogues are quite darker than I remember (one kid in particular mentioning he lives in a district crawling with criminality, and a few days later saying his dad got beat up and his mother is afraid of going out, ON A DS GAME)

#driftiniplays #customroboarena

last night I played SULFUR for a couple hours, I gotta say.. it's kinda surprisingly good???

it's a roguelike fps with a little bit of exploration, a little bit of scavenging/crafting/cooking, solid gunplay, weapon customization with attachments, enchantments and so-called oils and a very distinct artstyle

it's on sale rn, 19€ is quite a good price to get the game at

#driftiniplays #sulfur

a couple weeks ago I played the ultrakill demo, after about uhhh 3 years of saying to myself over and over again that I'd eventually play the game

my impressions were pretty good, probably no better than that only because I haven't really got the hang of the gameplay just yet

speaking of the gameplay, ultrakill is the first game I've ever played that feels like it's raising my blood pressure at least threefold at all times (reminder that I only played the DEMO with seemingly 1% of all the wild shit you can do further into the full game's campaign)

I might?? actually buy the full thing, that pressure thing is probably the biggest one holding me back rn lol

anyway I found it pretty insane for being made by a one-man-team, I have no idea what kinda blood rituals you need to do to achieve a mere fraction of the power of hakita, zun or the likes

#driftiniplays #ultrakill

aaaaaaaaalright, tagged most of my game opinions posts with #driftiniplays

last night I started playing azure sheep, it seems pretty good for its time (2001) even though it overuses useless corridors in level design, and stretches the idea of making you go through background locations from hl1 pretty thin

oh also at a certain point, azure sheep introduces its biggest gimmick, being an npc companion you gotta drag behind you for.. most of the foreseeable campaign apparently

now just stop and take a moment to imagine how hl1 would be like if you had to drag around a barney for the whole latter half of the campaign, with the shit pathfinding of goldsrc, awful accuracy, friendly fire and whatnot

if the thought of that seems awful, yeah that's pretty much how it seems azure sheep's latter half is gonna be like

I might actually drop the mod out of frustration cause I wasted time for like 1h yesterday trying to make my companion not get herself killed by 3 vortigaunts in a point where I was supposed to rely on her to progress (and had no weapons)

#driftiniplays #halflife

last night I played paranoia which I can confidently best describe as goldsrc slavjank

to put it briefly, you play as a spetsnaz tasked with clearing out a group of terrorists who took hostages in a building, but around the midpoint of the (1h30m-ish) campaign the game turns more to a scifi horror mood.. and that's where the game lost me tbh

at the beginning paranoia seems to present itself as a realistic-ish fps with some interesting mechanics (more like gimmicks really) like being able to manually flip up or down your helmet's face shield, slow pacing, and while the gameplay isn't exactly great and the gunplay has a long way to go, I kinda enjoyed that part because of those unusual quirks

then comes that horror part and the game completely shits the bed, between zombies that take like 50 knife swings to kill (and you WILL use the knife cause you'll be out of ammo) and whose ai you'll have to cheese to keep progressing in the campaign, and an ai companion who will give you a game over if he gets himself killed (very easy when new enemy soldiers come in and your weapons' accuracy sucks)

the endgame is nothing too insane, you pretty much just shoot 3 rockets at a helicopter and it's over

I don't think playing the game is really worth it, but at the same time I do respect it to some level because there was definitely some love put into the project, there are some neat things they managed to implement in goldsrc like texture materials, a hl2-ish flashlight (without dynamic shadows obv) and the game really doesn't feel like a half life mod or something like that

oh also it is still an indie fps made in 2009 so it's probably pretty insane the devs managed to make this in the first place

#driftiniplays

over the past couple days I played and finished opposing force for the first time, I think it brings a bunch of QOL and cool features like

• actually useful allies (medics & engineers)
• a melee that doesn't suck (wrench altfire my beloved)
• rope physics in goldsrc??????
• barnacle grappling
• nv goggles much more useful than the world's tiniest flashlight
• a much better replacement for alien grunts (not a fan of the pit drones and shock roaches though)

the problem is that many of these cool features just aren't capitalized on enough, barnacle grappling remains nothing more than a gimmick, engineers probably bust like 3 doors at most in the whole campaign

another issue with opfor is how it retreads old ground (the pit worm is nearly identical to hl1's tentacles and barely adds anything new to distinguish itself) and how surprisingly short it is (it felt?)

that's a shame cause what is there is mostly quite great, I really like the location design and the gameplay is just as fun (if not more than) the base game, not to mention hard mode didn't feel tedious at all (enemies still did feel like they were tanking too much damage from weapons like the smg but it's not as bad as I remember hl1 being)

#driftiniplays #halflife

oh yeah also I bought black mesa, curious to see how it handles things

#driftiniplays #blackmesa

alright finished hl1 mmod on hard

interloper felt very spammy with enemies and I ended up cheesing a bunch of fights with the hivehand's new tertiary fire

nihilanth was uhhhh not fun, what ruined it for me was the teleports to other arenas, weren't it for that it would've been just an okay fight

#driftiniplays #halflife

alright I just finished it on very hard

it's insane how this game gets the fundamentals just as insanely right as titanfall 2

I guess I'll go into spoiler territory for more detail about my opinions on the campaign

#driftiniplays #trepang2

It'd be real funny if I came back home and bought hyper light breaker only to find out that 16GB ram requirement was dead serious and the game won't run decently on my desktop

I hope this post is not a sign of things to come

#driftiniplays #hyperlightbreaker

started and finished re3re today

good game absolutely, but kind of a downgrade compared to re2re as an actual survival horror

the whole game is a lot more linear, also the final boss goes a bit overboard for what I think should be a re game lol, but what do I know I've only gotten into the franchise like half a week ago

overall the focus feels a lot more on the action movie vibes, rather than puzzle-solving and tension like in the previous game

also nemesis didn't feel nearly as intimidating as mr. x from re2re and I think that's due to how you mostly interact with it in fights and cutscenes, compared to mr. x where 90% of the interactions are in-gameplay

anyway next stop is re4, prooobably going for the original instead of the remake for this one, seeing as how it's not one of the "classic" entries with the gameplay from re1 to 3, the graphical downgrade will feel quite jarring probably lol

#driftiniplays #residentevil

re2re status update: I finished the leon campaign, went into claire's expecting it would've been mostly the same save for a couple different story beats and weapons but.. nope

first arc seems to play pretty much the same but then the campaign takes a massive swerve and throws you into completely new locations, exploring a different side of the story and whatnot

did I mention this game the game looks extremely good and fits under 30GB on top of all that??????

#driftiniplays #residentevil

picked up castlevania harmony of dissonance to fight the boredom these days, I gotta say it actually is pretty fun when the game starts throwing in stuff like the spellbooks to mix up gameplay

for context, my first impression 3 months ago or so was that it tried way too hard to be a sotn clone except the protag is a belmont again, and I dropped it after like 2h.. until a couple days ago

#driftiniplays #castlevania

got symphony of the night running on my 3ds following most of the instructions in the pinned comment on this video

I had started the game a couple years ago on my pi4 running LAKKA, but the save got corrupted or smth and I just gave up on the game since I didn't wanna recover like 3h of progress

but last night I finally started a new playthrough on my 3ds, and it surprisingly works pretty decently

the linked video is slightly misleading (for me at least) since the game absolutely doesn't run at super stable 60fps, but it doesn't lag horribly either, just hitches a bit with a lot of screen effects or 3d backgrounds but that's about it, normal gameplay is 0-1 frame of lag away from being 100% smooth I think

playing on pc or any other platform with ps1 emulation is definitely a better choice, but to me it's charming playing sotn on 3ds since I got started with the franchise as a whole on my dsi as a kid

#driftiniplays #castlevania

last night @vl1 showed me this game on itchio with undertale-like fighting and themed around mesmerizer, I gotta say I've been having more fun than expected with it, especially since I have never played undertale nor deltarune

I recommend y'all to give it a shot, it's really well made (also it's absolutely littered with more teto references than I can figure out)

#driftiniplays #hatsunemiku #kasaneteto

metroid fusion is kind of a black sheep in the franchise but I absolutely regard it as one of the best 2d metroids

it manages to leverage the story to the fullest to make just about every location (which is well designed to begin with) incredibly memorable, the game map keeps morphing (sometimes radically) as the plot advances and it's just something really unique in both the metroid franchise and maybe even in the metroidvania genre*

*that said I have seen a few metroidvanias that, like in one of fusion's story arcs, locks you into a relatively small section of the game map making you feel powerless for an hour or so, until you break out from there a lot more powerful than before - I really love that trope(?)

#driftiniplays #metroid

I'm still playing fc5 with only two weapon slots and no max ammo/throwables upgrades, and I feel like the game is a lot more fun like this

#driftiniplays #farcry5

so I started far cry 5 and.. damn this feels very different without the minimap and all

I think I'm really gonna like this

#driftiniplays #farcry5

performance troubles aside, borderlands 3 has seriously impressed me with its buttery smooth movement, this kinda feels like the first time I played Titanfall 2 several years ago lol

the fundamentals in general (satisfying gunplay, movement...) are a gigantic improvement over bl2 (whose early game was mostly kept afloat by the engaging story)

#driftiniplays #borderlands3

I still don't really know what to think of cod games after having played 5 in the last couple months

they certainly are very heavily scripted and the difficulty is handled in a pretty meh way, you rarely are afraid to die unless you're like very far from a checkpoint (which never happens) since health fully regens in a matter of seconds

as far as modern fps games go (so with regenerating health and other tropes like sprinting etc), I think far cry games handle health the best way, with partial regeneration and limited healing (that keeps you unable to sprint or use guns for a moment)

another thing from cod games I'm not a fan of is how you're absolutely SHOWERED in ammunition, you have no incentive to try and make each shot count, and having the equivalent of like 20 mags on you (for your primary alone) when starting a mission is pretty ridiculous

they could've totally made ammo scarce to incentivize you to pick up guns off the ground for a practical reason instead of sheer preference

still I understand how this franchise isn't really about being very skilled or anything, story and spectacle are its bigger focus and I'm fine with that, it pulls them off well

#driftiniplays #callofduty

guess I'm playing the og modern warfare

I've been curious about that trilogy for a while and I think it's about time I dig in

#driftiniplays

yesterday I got an uh, "trial" of rivals of aether to see if buying it is really worth it (as someone who drops fighting games after a month at most) and so far I've played the game for like 5h total, I'm really liking it as the characters don't take inhuman skill or much time to learn

the characters I play are clairen, mollo, shovel knight and olympia

if I do keep playing the game and having fun with it for some time, I'll def buy it on steam when it goes on sale, I don't have spare money for games right now + 30€ is far above any pc game I ever bought

I'm actually serious about the buying the game part since I get objective advantages in the form of the plethora of workshop content and online play (which one could argue is the whole point of playing this kinda game to begin with)

#driftiniplays #RivalsOfAether