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General Video Game Discussion
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Post by
Jubilee
My thoughts were exactly the same as TotalBiscuits if you want to watch his review of it
Post by
Thror
General thoughts on Duke Nukem?
Never played the original Duke's. I watched about a zillion vids (also vids that weren't just first impressions. I never understood the angst some people displayed when they had to play through an intro that wasn't full of gatling gun galore.) about the new Duke, and it didn't seem much like my cup of tea. I liked some of the silly thingies like crushing cans and stuff, but otherwise it seemed pretty bland, so I decided to pass. The price tag was kinda high for a game I had bad references for, and I refuse to pirate.
Have you guys seen this?
Post by
Neffy
So, I don't know if anyone of you guys checked this out, but during Quakecon 2011, John Carmack did his usual
Keynote
session. In the video he states that:
PCs>Consoles
360>PS3
Console wars are over. You don't argue with Carmack.
Post by
Adamsm
Sure you do.
Post by
Thror
So I finished
Cthulhu Saves the World
today at 4:30 am, and now I am in the mood for a short review!
So, Cthulhu Saves the World is an old school styled RPG with a lot of genre parody mixed in. The world is displayed in ye olde graphicse and could remind you of old Final Fantasy or Pokemon games. Combat is turn based, typical for many jRPG's, but there is an interesting twist to it. Speaking of twists, this game has a few of them, and they are damn enjoyable. More on that later. Now it's time to introduce the characters and story a bit.
The story is pretty simple. Cthulhu, an ominous god of darkness, is about to destroy a world (the narrator implies there are more of them), when he is suddenly stopped by an unknown hero, who curses Cthulhu, removing most of his power. The only way to break said curse is to become a True Hero. Thus, in order to destroy the world, Cthulhu has to save it first. You will be saving the world from many dangers, that are fairly generic in nature, but thanks to the general parody atmosphere, coupled with how crazy the enemies that actually threaten the world are, your journey hardly ever goes from
very amusing
to just amusing (and never below that).
On your journey, you are accompanied by an odd bunch of companions, who mostly pale in weirdness compared to the octopus headed Cthulhu (although for those familiar with Futurama, he really doesn't look that uncommon), but are still fairly weird. The first character you meet is a chick that desperately falls in love with Cthulhu, despite his exotic looks, and wants to become his girlfriend for the rest of the game. I can mention there is also a crazy old man (who is beyond godlike at healing and buffing), and a necromantress available as followers, along with four more characters, but describing those would be spoiling.
There were a few features that I found very interesting and that I really liked.
Random encounters
are present, as expected, but! There is a
cap
to them. After hitting the cap, you no longer get random encounters in the location where you are capped. The cap usually sits at 25 encounters per dungeon. It has two major effects. Firstly, it cuts down on the annoyance and frustration that random encounters can eventually generate, especially with maze-like dungeons with many hidden chests. Secondly, if you never go past the cap when in a dungeon (you can go past the cap, will explain), you level at a steady and controlled pace, and as a result, boss fights are often just the right difficulty (not easy to win, but not impossible). On the other hand, if you prefer to farm for exp and out-level the game, you can, by picking the "Fight" option in the menu (while in a zone where random encounters are possible). This option basically starts a random encounter instantly, at your whim. Enemies are randomly chosen from the standard assortment of monsters for the given location, and everything works as in your common random encounter. No need for silly running back and forth when you wish to farm!
In combat, you have a "
Combo
" counter. Basically, every hit you land on the enemy (including DoT ticks) increases your Combo counter. There is a single shared combo counter across all your characters (you can have up to four party members in a fight at once, Cthulhu included). Stacking this combo counter up enables you to launch powerful finishing moves. Mostly you will be finishing with Cthulhu, but other party members bring finishers too. There are also abilities that reset the Combo counter to zero, like Group Heal. This brings a lot of strategy into boss fights, where you will often be hoarding a lot of combo points and waiting for just the right time to blast a finishing hit, and a lot of hard choices in the leveling process, where you will be able to pick between an ability that generates 1 combo point but is pretty strong, and an ability that generates 5 combo points but does less damage than the first.
Now that I mentioned
leveling
. Firstly, when you get Exp, every companion that has joined you gets the same Exp. Which means even the ones that "sit on the bench" level at the same pace as your main characters. This brings space for experimentation, and you can always freely swap party members in and out to check their abilities, without any negative impact to your game. And secondly, every time you level up, you get to choose between two possible bonuses you can get from the levelup. These bonuses go from simple Stat bonuses, through new (and more powerful versions of old) spells, to new passive abilities. What I really found interesting about this is that you can actually build your characters in various interesting ways using this system. The very first character you meet, Umi, has a Heal as her ability. I imagine a lot of gamers will automatically set her into the "caster-healer" role in their minds. What you wouldn't think of at that point is that Umi can actually be built to become an extremely powerful debuff-based physical DPS. Almost every character in this game can be twisted into a different and surprising role when leveling correctly, and this brings quite a bit of spice into the leveling system, along with
replay value
.
Speaking of replay value! Upon completion of the game, you are offered four new game
modes
to play with, and all of them are totally asking to be at least tried. There is a Highlander mode that makes you gain a LOT more experience, but you can only bring one party member (+ Cthulhu, so two people per fight max), a score attack mode, which grants you a sum of points for defeating bosses at the lowest level possible (I assume these points are meant to serve as bragging rights), then there is an Overkill mode, which bumps you to level 40 right after the first encounter (perfect for checking out how you can build characters in different ways), and lastly... the
Cthulhu's Angels
mode. Right. I thought this game couldn't get any sillier, and then I saw this, and my mind was blown. Anyway, Cthulhu's Angels is a mode where you get to play a different main character (the Necromantress). In the Cthulhu's Angels alterate universe, Cthulhu is too lazy to dispel his curse by himself, and decides to use hot chicks as his champions (and tools). This mode seems to be HUGE. I only completed the first location on it so far, but everything seems to be altered. Dialogues, companions (the Necromantress you play as a main character also seems to have a different skilltree than the one you can have as a companion in the original game), even all the bosses I met were different. I am very curious about how the game will end up in this mode, so I am definitely in for a second playthrough.
I would also like to praise the soundtrack, which is just amazing. It has a lot of catchy tunes, especially the combat music, which is very dramatic and dynamic. One of the towns has a sax in it's background music, and bringing a saxophone always gives you more affection points from meh.
Overall, I think this is an exceptionally good game. It accomplishes everything it wants to accomplish extremely well, and was super enjoyable all the way through. The Indie gaming scene has produced another gem! Costing a measly sum of 1,99€ and offering over 12 hours of gameplay for a single playthrough, this is a good game to recommend. Also,
10/10
!
Post by
Neffy
Sure you do.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvdf5n-zI14
Post by
Skreeran
I've been trying to play Knights of the Old Republic, but I'm just having a difficult time getting into it. I was hoping for a Mass Effect type game, but it's more like Dragon Age. I don't really like having to pause and tell all my party members what to do for every single battle. And will I ever get a lightsaber? ;_;
Edit: Oh, and thanks Thror. I had actually just been considering buying Cthulhu Saves the World. Your review tipped the scales.
Post by
138638
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
530888
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
138638
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
530888
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Skreeran
I've been trying to play Knights of the Old Republic, but I'm just having a difficult time getting into it. I was hoping for a Mass Effect type game, but it's more like Dragon Age. I don't really like having to pause and tell all my party members what to do for every single battle. And will I ever get a lightsaber? ;_;
Edit: Oh, and thanks Thror. I had actually just been considering buying Cthulhu Saves the World. Your review tipped the scales.
I played it recently, it's basically an older version of DA:O with a Star Wars skin.
If you don't have a Lightsaber I'm going to assume your in Taris, that place was head-bashingly boring, the game starts to pick up after you leave that planet, it's basically like DA the fade, and just like in the fade,
there's a mod to skip it
you have to re-start the game and beat the tutorial, then it gives you an option to skip it and it'll give you all the companions Ls/DS points etc. you would have gotten should you have done the planet normallyYeah, I'm on Taris. Good to know it picks up after that.
Right now I'm trying to figure out how to get past the Rancor. I found a datapad that said the Black Vulkars (or whatever) had a synthetic bait scent, so I figure I'll have to head all the way out of the sewers and back up to the surface to get it from them...
Post by
Thror
Heh, indeed, KOTOR1 was rather annoying off the start. It becomes a lot better the moment you get a lightsaber.
Hmmm, I haven't played KOTOR2. I wonder where can I get it o_O Checked Steam and GoG and I didn't find it. Not sure if I wanna go out of those waters...
Btw, I never found journeys into the Fade boring in neither DA1 or 2. It was fun to be able to run around like a golem and do the ground smashing attack...
Post by
Thror
Turns out KOTOR2 has never been distributed online. *!@#.
Post by
Jubilee
There's always the possibility of picking up a hard copy from ebay for under $10. If you use a cd crack you won't even have to bother with the disks once you have it installed.
Post by
Skreeran
Or just Torrent it. I mean, the creators don't get any money from you buying it second-hand, so why not just cut out the middle-man?
Post by
Azazel
Or just Torrent it. I mean, the creators don't get any money from you buying it second-hand, so why not just cut out the middle-man?
Turns out KOTOR2 has never been distributed online. *!@#.
Post by
240140
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Jubilee
Azazel, that's not what Thor meant by distributed online. He meant legitimately. I've got a iso (a direct rip of the disk) of the game somewhere in my dc share right this moment. If, Thor, you do want to torrent it, I can try to find the correct torrent hash for it for you and then I'll make sure my copy is seeding.
I have the urge to play Zelda. Really bad. REALLY BAD.
WHICH OOOOOOONE?
Post by
240140
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
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