stonechalice wrote:

This game seems perfect for someone who fancies launching their console out of the window after stabbing themselves repeatedly in the dick.

Isn't that your reaction to most games?

Unlikely wrote:

That's put me right off (unblockable attacks, memorising combos), not that I have a PS5.

I've done the first boss now and although there are technically unlockable attacks, it's easier to avoid them than you may think. As your holding the block button already you flick the left stick and it slips the unlockable attack and leaves them open.

The camera does need some of your attention during the fights, particularly those ones in tight spaces. It's a slight annoyance at times but I've found myself becoming more aware of my positioning in the middle of the ruck so try to keep my back from being up against a wall. It's not perfect and oddly they address it early on in the old boy corridor scene and their fix works wonderfully but strangely it doesn't do it again, not what I've seen anyway.

The combat is amazing, its brutal unflinching but feels fair. Bobbing and weaving then parrying for a finish, dive over a table grab a bottle smash it over someone's head to lead to another finisher. It's exhilarating stuff. The baseball bat is fucking glorious to use. They first hour of gameplay is realy something. I could do some scenes over and over to get better it just feels so good to clear a room.

That's a few thoughts so far any way.

Time_on_my_hands wrote:

The SkillUp review dropped on YouTube.

I take note of this guys opinion, but I think he reveals way too much about a game over the course of a review. Spoiler warning!

I think I'll bite on this game at £20. I fancy something with a high skill ceiling, but OlliOlli World drops tomorrow, so that's the one.

Someone else mentioned they found the Roguelike element of this off-putting. The thing that is very un-Roguelike about this is the lack of randomisation to the levels. You are repeating exactly the same layout over and over from what I can see.

Not sure I’d class anything without some amount of randomness as a roguelike, personally speaking.

He's a fucker for spoiling the fuck out of games. I'll never forgive him for his Returnal review. How he didn't get more backlash for that I'll never know.

Yossarian wrote:

Not sure I’d class anything without some amount of randomness as a roguelike, personally speaking.

Roguelike seems to be used for anything run based, but yeah. The rogue part always implied changing parameters to me.  But then is something like Meat Boy Forever roguelike/lite (loosely speaking) due to the random level 'chunk' stitching?  Or the original Toejam & Earl?

You can restart from any level you've reached. But only at the lowest age you've reached it. So if you beat a boss as an old codger, you may as well repeat the level again and do it better, so you can start the next one younger from then on.

Cupatay wrote:

There are permanent unlocks, you unlock skills in what order you please so long as your young enough to learn the particular skill. Unlock it 5 times and it becomes permanently unlocked. I'm not sure yet wheather unlocking it 3 times in one run carries over so you need to unlock it another twice or whether it resets.

It does carry over, yeah. But first you have to unlock it for that run again, and then start putting XP into the permanent unlock.

Sounds like MBF probably counts then.

If I had a time machine, I’d go back and kill Spelunky when it was a baby.

Most of the best strategy games have rogue-like elements. They’re pretty much an essential part of it.

But I can’t help but think it’s popular because it’s an economical way of making a game, and extending its length. Nearly everyone I try I would prefer as a straightforward run through.

I'm with Monkey on this, but the rogues that have got their claws all the way in are genuinely wonderful (Hades, Scourgebringer, Dead Cells....I want to type Flinthook so I will).

I've been an advocate of having a traditional structure as an option in these games for ages. Fix a seed, call it arcade mode and let the genre purists cry themselves to sleep while stubborn knuckledraggers like me enjoy the game with or without permadeath and without having to provide 20+hrs of footage to the gittin gud montage.

You can refund games after a trial period on PC, right? There's a chance that has something to do with it too.

Yossarian wrote:

monkey wrote:

Most of the best strategy games have rogue-like elements. They’re pretty much an essential part of it.

But I can’t help but think it’s popular because it’s an economical way of making a game, and extending its length. Nearly everyone I try I would prefer as a straightforward run through.

That might explain why they’re popular with devs but not necessarily why they’re popular with consumers.

A good roguelike for me offers a satisfying chunk of gameplay, with a definite start and end which I do not need to dedicate hours to.

The randomness also means that each of these chunks of gameplay are different to ones that I’ve experienced before, and offer up the possibility of becoming hilariously OP for a short while which is always fun, although in non-roguelikes, it’s fun for an hour or so, and then I end up never playing the game again as there’s no longer any challenge.

With a good roguelike, there are all kinds of ways to achieve a ridiculously OP build which means lots of space to experiment, and it’s opening up that room to experiment with practically no risk attached to doing so that makes them so compelling.

Yeah I absolutely get this but they rarely grab me in that way. I often find the procedural generation isn’t varied enough so it doesn’t feel completely new. Part of it, I think, is some deep-seated PTSD from too many hours of 8-bit games at a tender age. The trauma of the lost progress from a lapse in concentration.

In this case, with the absence of randomness, it does seem like an optional arcade mode would work.

I think the issue is the aging mechanic, which they've made a big deal out of. The truth is they could probably remove it, or at least make it one game mode, but they've tried to make it central to the experience without really doing anything interesting with it.

This fancy aging system.
Is that not just traditional lives just counting up rather than down?