The 2024 what are we playing thread

In the end I caved, because the time seemed right to upgrade our decade old computers. After putting them together I wanted to experience a game like Forbidden West in all of its modern glory.

What was something of a problem was the initial setup. In the previous game HDR seemed to Just Work™ and look good, but perhaps that was an illusion. In Forbidden West I had to look up what the weird words even meant. Also I strongly suspect the dynamic range aspect of the whole affair is overall fairly insignificant in making the game look better, but that it’s mainly the 10-bit that comes along with it.

Horizon Forbidden West is a pretty decent if not excellent game so far, though I did get stuck in the environment a few times which I don’t think ever happened to me in Zero Dawn. For example I would be innocently swimming around underwater with as a result clipping through the edge of the level being unable to get out. (I only remembered I had an instant travel backpack available after I reloaded my save…)

One of the more annoying things it did was a few hours in, when you exit the tutorialish environment to enter the roll credits Forbidden West and it played this half hour movie instead.

In the simplest terms it’s basically the first game but even better looking, new enemies, some improvements, some questionable changes. One improvement is that surplus gets automatically sent to your stash rather than having to go breaking up parts as you’re wandering about. That was just annoying. But somehow this is coupled to being able to refill your health herbs and such from your stash while out in the wild??? (Maybe it’s 'cause I didn’t play on ultrahard or whatever but you can still die in one hit when you mess up so the difficulty doesn’t seem like it’s way too easy). I hadn’t realized this medicinal berry refill possibility at first because it doesn’t seem to make any sense.

They added swimming (notably missing from the previous game with loot frequently being unattainable). But then just every underwater cave you swim into is blocked off due to not having diving equipment yet to go deeper until you’re a third? halfway? through the game. In retrospect it might make more sense to “rush” through some of the main story to attain things like diving equipment, but I suppose it doesn’t matter too much since you can fast travel back later with campfires.

And then finally, I found the final fight(s) in Burning Shores a bit of a bore. A matter of the boss enemies being invincible except at the right time when they’re vulnerable. On the flip side, maybe it was what they wanted the final fight in Zero Dawn to be? It was good spectacle though, visually very impressive.

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The non-instantaneousness was compensated by a save/load screens in both Maniac Mansion and Zak. Even on modern systems using SCUMMVM, you should enable them!
Saving or loading only involved swapping disks. But you had to do that anyway (actually flipping over to the other side of the floppy) when entering the second floor in MM or flying abroad in Zak.
(What do you mean, you aren’t playing the C64 version?)

The actual process of saving a file or loading a file only took a few seconds where our anticipation was accompanied by a humming soundtrack of disk drive clicks and buzzes. The only dreadful thing would be if you hear the retry sounds too often and realise you might need start all over again and use a new disk that wasn’t completely wrecked.

(I can still hear the load error clicks when trying to reach the Great Pyramid in Cairo in my nightmares)

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That’s the reason I’ve bought Horizon: Zero Dawn :slight_smile:. As for Forbidden West, I’m still holding out. In the meantime I got Atlas Fallen, which took about a year to come to GOG. It gives off similar vibes, though I haven’t actually tried it yet. For some reason, I’m not in the mood for playing video games at the moment, even though my wishlist and backlog keep growing.

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Atlas Fallen looks like it could be interesting.

I’m currently playing GENBA no Kizuna (as mentioned here), a murder mystery visual novel where you play rookie police officers thrust into the midst of what may or may not be a gruesome crime or a horrible accident. It takes place shortly before SHINRAI - Broken Beyond Despair, but it’s its own separate thing.

I quite like it so far, decent graphics, nice music.

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Are you sure? :wink:

And don’t forget that you needed a whole disk side for one single save game!

I played Prim. It’s fairly short, and not too hard. I did get stuck for a bit, but there are several things to do in parallel, so it wasn’t too bad. As usual, I did not spot an item and, in the other case, that an object had two distinct hot spots. Despite the high-res graphics, a bit of pixel-hunting seems to be required still.

Story-wise, the early part of the game is very well written and got me immediately hooked. But as the game progresses, the gameplay and the story become more disconnected. There’s a very specific objective for the player, and all the puzzles revolve around that, but the cut-scenes focus on a completely different aspect of the plot.

The writing itself is pretty good, though. I played in German, and there is one part in particular where one pun follows the next, and when you think this can’t go on for much longer, there is still more. No idea how well this translates to English, though.

Puzzles are varied, including a kind of logic puzzle and some mini games. For the logic puzzle, I would have liked the game to take notes for me (and it may have, but to me it looked more like the hint system, so I didn’t dare look). One of the mini games is a collectible card game, and while at first it seems totally optional (like Gwent in the Witcher 3, or something), it’s actually required for a puzzle chain. Unfortunately, it’s not as good as Gwent. Just another variant of Top Trumps.

For me, the biggest issue with the puzzles was that some of them can be solved too early. I acquired the key to a locked room, and the means to climb down a mysterious well, only for my character to tell me “I don’t have a reason to go there, yet”. I mean, opening up a new area is the biggest reward an adventure game can hand out, and here it ended in disappointment not once, but twice!

Anyway, overall it was still a pretty fun game, but not quite there with the genre’s greatest.

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Is that due to Just released adventure games - #1023 by Someone or are you guys just that in sync? :smiley:

Actually, I returned home from work that day with the intention of posting about the release, but @Someone beat me to it.

I backed it on Kickstarter, but if that hadn’t been the case I guess I might have bought it there and then! :slight_smile: And despite my criticism, apparently it’s the one game I felt compelled to play and complete right now, so I am quite satisfied with what I got.

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So I’ve started playing Zak.
I initially tried both the regular version and the FM Towns version, and I preferred the FM Towns version, so I’m sticking with that.
I’ve done a few things like walk up the street, take a plane somewhere, etc. just to take a look around the game and get a feel for it.

I haven’t read the newspaper stuff yet, I’ll do that next.
I’m approaching playing Zak kinda like a long-term project, I’ll chip away at it now and then.

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Please report here (in the forum) your progress, if possible. :slight_smile: I’m really curious how you like it and how you get along.

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I just played Small Saga. A bit late I suppose; I backed it on Kickstarter and it came out a year ago. Anyway, if you played the demo you pretty much know what to expect. It’s a cute looking game, reminiscent of a Super Nintendo RPG. Just more of that with more variation.

Edit: worth noting there’s also https://needleknight.com/
Not a game exactly, at least not so many years later.

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It’s never too late to play a game! :smiley: (I still haven’t finished Monkey Island 5 … :see_no_evil: )

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As you know I only played Zak a few years ago, but that’s different because I didn’t buy it on release day. :wink:

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well, playing is used very loosely here… as this is the original demo.

and

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just finished the demo for Loco Motive which I guess is an expanded version of the 2021 game jam version. the demo’s pretty long. the animations and voice acting are very impressive. the humor is too, the puzzles are fine but kinda simple, but it’s just a demo. full game later this year.

my singular minor quibble is they shoulda kept the pixel vibes throughout the UI and on screen text.

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Finished:

  • The gardens between (iOS) : a puzzle game with time travelling
  • Hidden Folks (iOS) : found all of them
  • Gibbon (iOS) :
  • The Oregon Trail (on iOS): Didn’t die once.
  • Sam and Max 305 (the city that dares not sleep)

Started:
Creaks

(Very very slowly) progressing in:
D&D Pools of Radiance

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Played Loco Motive. Really like the visuals (some great and lavish animations, too!), music and most of the voice acting. Overall it felt quite polished, though I noticed a couple occasions where the z-order of sprites and scenery was messed up. There’s also a chapter or two taking place earlier in the day, and all the backgrounds reflect that, except when accessing the outside platform of the last wagon, where it’s still night-time. And, perhaps most grave, I had a conversation about things I should not have known yet, including a spoiler for a future puzzle.

Speaking of puzzles, the game was mostly easy, but as usual I did get stuck a number of times, without a clear idea what to do next. Or, worse, with the wrong idea. In the end, I managed without the integrated help system, but there was a lot of running in circles and trial and error involved. Luckily, traversing the train from one end to the other is fairly quick.

The writing is okay, though given the premise (murder aboard a train), I’d have expected a bigger focus on investigation, with multiple probable suspects and their unique motives. Instead, the plot mostly revolves around chasing a MacGuffin that promises to identify the killer on the spot. On the bright side, the characters are all fun and quirky, and there is an unexpected twist or two as well.

In conclusion: not bad, but nothing special either. (If I think of the precious few games I tremendously enjoyed over the last couple years, I guess those were either eliciting strong emotions, or giving the feeling of discovering new and unknown territory. This one does neither. Maybe I’ve consumed so much already that everything starts to feel a bit same-y? Scary thought …)

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Thanks for the warning. I think it would be wise for me to wait for the developers to fix some issues, especially this “broken” puzzle.

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I noticed that there was a demo for the upcoming game “Kathy Rain 2”, and since it’s short, it’s the kind of game I can afford to play.

The first thing that impressed me was the quality of the graphics. The backgrounds are stunning, animated with subtle movements of characters or objects. The demo features five “rooms”, one of which is quite large. Everything is detailed and feels alive, also thanks to the ambient sounds.

It was a pleasure to meet the protagonist again. The voice actress of Kathy does a good job of conveying her scrappy and rebellious nature. Voices are used in the introduction and at the end, while item descriptions and dialog are text only. I don’t know if this will change in the full game, but I’m okay with text only as well.

The writing is generally good, but there was a point where it felt a bit amateurish, especially the way a newspaper is written. I think a more formal tone would have made this aspect of the game more believable.

The puzzles were a mixed bag. One big puzzle was interesting but not too difficult: it required some research, observation, and some typing. On the other hand, a puzzle in the demo uses Quick Time Events, which almost always frustrate me to death. I hope they will be a minor feature of the full game. Overall, these were good puzzles, and I didn’t see any design flaws.

The only aspect I didn’t like was the interface, specifically the way topics and items can be mentioned to a character during a dialog. It felt a bit clunky and unnecessarily convoluted, but that might just be a matter of habit.

The demo felt like a nice cookie to bite into. Looking forward for the full game to be released.

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Finished:
Creaks: descend into a dark version of Fraggle Rock with (action-y) puzzles from Aminata (machinarium, samorost- but not as difficult as those).
Very Little Nightmares: made me curious about the Little Nightmares game it is said to be a prequel to. Pretty easy puzzles in a very atmospheric (disturbing) setting.
Room Two: fun escape room puzzles, but the story that ties it together is weak and contrived

Started:
The Lost Crown ( a ghost hunting adventure, not the Prince of Persia game). The voice acting is so terribly bad it becomes funny, which is a welcome thing to offset the genuinely creepy spooky things. Like spending the night on a haunted cemetery, or the poor 3D facial models that make the main character look like he’s possessed when he goes to sleep.
The Critter Chronicles (Book of Unwritten Tales): hello moon logic!

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