Epic Games Store (now with free games!!)

[Rorschach]

Didn't know that, will give it a go next time.

[Ambrose Burnside]

Three free games this week, the remastered versions of both Darksiders AND Darksiders 2, plus Steep.

I already had Steep because the Ubisoft Store gave it away for free during one of their promotions, but I claimed it again "just in case".

Far out

[Peppermint Lounge]

This shit is nuts. Backlog is an outdated term. Our PCs are now simply video game juke boxes.

[Vince]

They also had the brilliant Yooka Laylee (2D version) for free yesterday. A steal if you ask me.

[F for Fake]

Totally fine with 8 year olds getting addicted to Fortnite and ruining their lives before they've begun as long as I get free games!

[flipswitch]

As long as they’re not using your credit card, good for them.

[Deef]

The free game this week is Horace.

I like what I've seen so far (guessing I've put about 8 hours into it). These days the 2D indie pixelart platformer doesn't exactly scream "must try" but I would say that Horace stands out. It's a fairly big world, delivers a heap of off-genre moments and minigames, and presents really well with the main character narrating everything while the pixelart takes advantage of modern tricks. They're the main things you'll get from the trailer.

And there's a Douglas Adam's reference? Sold.

But the real reason it stands out is the amount of heart there is in this game. Even when you already get that vibe practically guaranteed from anything 2D, pixelart, and indie, Horace takes it nek level. Heart because of the moments where it breaks genre either just to refresh you, or to get completely weird. And because of the character's voice and innocence as he narrates everything. Or the references, everywhere. *So many* moments in the game are a sneaky reference to something (in my head just now I was able to pick over 20); sometimes immediately obvious, sometimes after-15-minutes-of-not-noticing obvious. It feels borderline IP infringing, what with the amount of jokey acknowledgements this game has, and honestly I don't think I've seen a game's nods to the past hit my age group this well. If you were born early 80s you'll appreciate it most; it's literally made for you.

But best of all has to be the odd joke it throws in. Rare, and so random. I posted the above video because other trailer videos have what could be the best joke in the game... damn. So frikkin' funny. It's just such a feelgood moment when you see how well the devs are channeling their audience. I didn't know wtf was happening, then ... "OHHHHHHHH." Then "I cannot believe it just did that." And actually I came here to write this post just because of another one. They're rare, added to the game with a light hand, but great because it also means they come completely out of nowhere, and you just know the devs put it in for absolutely no other reason than to be completely, randomly funny. Stuff like that, where you see the devs adding yet another reference or joke or unexpected switch of genre... any kind of moment, just because they want you to enjoy that moment... that's why I say it has a lot of heart.


... I just discovered it has a boss rush mode.

Anyway I'm not really talking about the game itself; just here to vent a bit at how much I've enjoyed all the 80s/90s bits.

[Deef]

I doubt I'll try this week's game, The Bridge. Doesn't look like my kind of game.

Farming Simulator 19 next week though... I am ready.

[Ambrose Burnside]

Have never understood the appeal of Farming Simulator (or any of those types of games, Truck Simulator etc).

Will claim it as always, can't see me ever playing it though. I'm not a farmer or a truck driver, but those sorts of game still feel too much like work, the last thing I want to do after a day of actual work.

[pilonv1]

Truck Sim is nice and relaxing

[t0mby]

Every time I hear Farming Simulator I'm reminded of that Farming Simulator video with Skrillex - Bangarang, fuck I laughed.

[lestat]

With the number of games Epic has given away this year. I'm not surprised to see this headline.



I can see Epic here is trying to give people a sizable library so they feel invested in the platform like Steam.

[Gamma]

I doubt I'll try this week's game, The Bridge. Doesn't look like my kind of game.

FWIW it's a pretty solid puzzle game, I played through it a little while ago on the Switch. Sort of a bit like Echochrome / Monument Valley but the puzzles have physics elements as well as Escher shenanigans.

[Deef]

Yeah I gathered as much. I just get bored quick with puzzle games; Antichamber being the big exception for me. Man I love Antichamber.

[Gamma]

If you're going to make an exception, Antichamber's a pretty damn good one from what I've played of it. Top of my "games to get if I ever get a PC" list, followed by Stephen's Sausage Roll.

[Deef]

I loved it and I'm tempted to hijack this thread for it. But I wrote a big Antichamber speel in the 'rate the last game' thread so I'll spare everyone. Not quite up there with NiGHTS and Star Control II for me, but definitely in some kind of special list.

[Deef]

Well Farming Simulator is, surprisingly, as dull as it appeared.

I was wondering if it were perhaps more gamified than it looked from the outside. It isn't. Getting money for stuff was unexciting, the stuff to be got was unexciting. Not a lot compelling the player to keep going.

It also isn't complex enough early on to sink your teeth into. It looks like you drive tractors around. You drive tractors around. I say early on because I understand things do get more involved later. There are other types of farming that come along, including animals, horseback riding, and some forestry equipment, but too late for me to bother with when there's such little already going on. Plus I am apprehensive that future complexity wouldn't just be a result of me giving myself a lot to do, rather than the game providing a lot of intricate decision making.

And it's not really a simulation. The only sim aspect it got right was the absence of dressing anything up; everything is functional only. The realism side of simulation isn't pushed outside the main steps of farming (cultivate, then sow, then harvest, then collect, then sell). Restrictions and ramifications otherwise are laughably minimum-effort; drive over vehicles and through pedestrians, hold up traffic (a whole 3 cars) forever, run faster than cars, run on cars, building interiors are meaningless shells with janky collision detection, hire and fire workers with 1 key, drive the train into any machine and it doesn't matter, drive over anyone else's crops with no effect, drive a tractor into a lake and leave it there. I haven't tried it but I am pretty confident that the horseback riding would be just as uninvolved and clunky as the normal running around is. The various vehicles are also all super simplified in their control. There are only gestures to the nitty gritty of farming, no complexities of managing a farm, and no effort put into the play of anything that isn't driving a machine around. So the word "Simulator" in the title is a bit clickbaity. It would be better named "Farming Gestures 19" or something.

And yet, I have to sit there and slowly drive my tractor into town and back to sell seed. Repeatedly. This was boring af.



Summarising the above:
- It is as non-gamified as it looks.
- It felt too low in complexity to me at the start, for too long.
- It puts little effort into the sim concept.
- In short, it is what you think it is.

I'm sure there's enjoyment to be had with the right mindset. You can play co-op online (I can't imagine this... let's drive tractors together?), there are even competitive leagues it turns out. But there's little to compel the casual gamer, nor the sim seeker imo, so I think enjoyment really would be more about the player than the game.

[Peppermint Lounge]

So a desktop version of Carcassonne this week (pick it up, Cletus) with Kingdom Come: Deliverance coming up next week.

[Gamma]

Well Farming Simulator is, surprisingly, as dull as it appeared.

Thank you for taking one for the team. "Let's drive tractors together"

[Deef]

Looking forward to trying out Kingdom Come today. Skyrim's between getting a run on the PS4 lately so I'm interested to see how KC compares, at least in breadth (since it certainly looks shinier).

Randomly tried Enter the Gungeon last night and was pretty impressed! Just good fun. I didn't even get past the first stage, yet at the same time I never felt at all like the game was difficult or unfair. Just me messing up, "I know next time I'll get it, no problems!" To me that felt like a really good sign. The control was also feeling pretty good, with the floors sometimes being bigger than the screen and the camera moving around to accommodate your focus. Just all nice and smooth and the good kind of unnoticeable.

Lots of character in the game too, from how many ways Sir Manuel tells you that shooting him is getting less funny, to the juiced-up pigeon hulking out of his feathers. A few different classes to try too. There was a neat little mechanic for flipping up tables and using them as barriers, which I liked for its originality (as far as I've seen anyway). I'll be interested to see how much that comes into things as the action gets more intense; sounds kinda cool.

I also really liked how, on retries, the stage's randomised re-generation went beyond just the map layout. Completely new enemies were showing up, a new extra weapon to find, completely changing the level's play, and once even an entirely different boss.

Worth a try if you're into the top-down twinstick / KBAM shooter.

[Deef]

Just Cause 4 coming next week.
Heard some criticism about it but JC3 was pretty fun and knew what it was so I'm interested.

[Deef]

For The King is this week's game and it's actually pretty good. I'd recommend if the following blurb perks your interest.

It's turned-based RPGing on a tiled map with 1 to 3 players in a local or online co-op. There's randomised map generation and limited lives, interesting classes and clear (and cool) chance-management mechanics. And combat scenes ala FFVII.

I'm liking it a lot, especially the way it feels like it could be a giant living tabletop game. The low-poly aesthetic is friendly and appealing, the mechanics are simple to get into but have a lot of complexity to keep you intrigued, and the co-op aspects of the gameplay work nicely. You have to rely on each other to survive (the game warns that single-player is very tough, which I can believe).

Combat is either one-off battles where the scene switches from the overworld to a single battle scene, or dungeon crawls where you have to get through a sequence of fights (if you get through) before you can return to the main map. One of the neat tricks we were using was when I could reset the order of turns in combat (for ourselves and enemies), and choose the right moments to maximise my team-mate's chances to attack, since she had the big damage items.

With this all being turn- and timing-based, I also liked the way it felt like a really cool, active board game. One of the most important things to manage is your "Focus", which is like saying how many coin flips you have available, applicable to many aspects of the game but mainly used for battle.

Events and night-day cycles tick along as well, keeping the play compelling the entire time, plus there's a constant tension being applied by rising levels of "Chaos" that will quickly start hacking away at your HP every turn if left unchecked. There was a very, very light sprinkling of random encounters but if that sounds worrying don't be; they're really uncommon. Random appearances frequently occur however, but they're nearly always somewhere that you aren't, so you still have the choice about how to address them.

I've been playing it in local 2-player and the difficulty curve eased us in long enough to get a grasp of the main mechanics, but then ramped up quickly, changing our play into a constant discussion of what we were thinking. It's rogue-like, so after a string of uphill battles and nice wins, we were finally overwhelmed and that's it; start again. Up until we died, literally every battle was of interest to us; we cherished the fights that looked simple and became anxious over everything else.

Actually the very first thing the game does, even before the title screen, is basically tell you that you're going to die and to get over it... in its own lore-friendly way.



We died after about 5 hours of play over 2 sessions, and felt like we'd played a good game. Tomorrow we'll probably start again, which I'm looking forward to.

[Peppermint Lounge]

New store - Robot Cache.

https://store.robotcache.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

This one allows you to sell your digitial games back for 25% of the buy price. Users can also use the client to mine a cryptocurrency called Iron which can be used alongside regular funds to transact on the store.

[Ambrose Burnside]

Rumours swirling that this week's Epic Store freebie will be GTAV.

[Deef]

I've still barely tried it so I'm sort of keen... except I've played it on the Youtubes too much.
Anyone know what being free is likely to mean for modding?