Games That Don’t Have a Thread Catch-All

That actually sounds really interesting. If it ever comes to something other than Steam, I might check it out. Thanks!

BuzzW wrote:

I did too and I have some thoughts on Fuser

- It costs $150 so far. That's $60 for the base game (100 songs), $40 for VIP Edition (25 more songs), and another $50 for the first season pass (I think this is like 21 songs plus some outfits). This is roughly the same price I paid for Rock Band songs. I understand most of the money is probably going to license holders too. So it might be fair, but it still hurts.

- The steam version crashes constantly. You can still play the game because it autosaves after everything you do and it doesn't take long to load up, but man it's annoying.

- This isn't really a music making game, so much as it's a music performance game, a la Rock Band. Or maybe it's best described as a hybrid between the two. You have to come up with your own mixes and there's a lot of room for creativity there, but you also have to time everything correctly and think quickly. You can't just lay out your song and hit play.

- There's a HUGE social element to the game. Everything you do can be shared, liked, etc. You can join live freestyle sessions with other players. You can submit a mix to a weekly contest (note: voting on these contests seems to be the quickest way to level up your profile). You can battle other players (haven't tried this, don't know how it works).

- If you don't like any of the social stuff there's not a whole lot to do. The campaign is an extended tutorial really. You can solo freestyle and hear some nice music I guess

Overall I think I'm having fun but I can't convince any of my friends to buy it so far, so we'll see.

I just wanted to quote myself to say that the crashing issue on steam seems to be fixed. Everything else I said is still true. Also Chumbawamba costs $1.99 and its not in the season pass

With Fuser, the thing that keeps me from enjoying it immensely is that the songs are so obviously not the original recordings. To make things worse, the songs are mostly done on generic sounding MIDI instruments. With RockBand and GH they didn’t use the original recordings either (I think there were a few exceptions) but they took great care to make their versions of the songs sound incredibly close to the original recording.

Since you said that I've been listening to the tracks and I think you're right, I can hear it. From your posting though I think I've gathered that you have a way more musically trained ear than I do. I probably would have kept playing blissfully unaware tbh. If I'm remembering right, Rock Band tried to have original recordings whenever possible, but Guitar Hero didn't. I could be wrong though.

I remember in the heyday of Rock Band, somebody I knew looked at all my plastic instruments and asked, "But why not just play a real instrument and join a band?"
I said "because real instruments and bands take practice and dedication. Rock Band is a video game I can play after work."
I think Fuser is the same thing. It's a great (and very expensive) game for people like me who don't know much about music and just want to pretend to be a DJ and make some cool stuff with a virtual crowd of thousands cheering for me. But I could see it falling short if you have actual musical training.

I suspect some of the key change/tempo change stuff really needs something other than the original masters in order to work well without a lot of distortion.

kazooka wrote:

I suspect some of the key change/tempo change stuff really needs something other than the original masters in order to work well without a lot of distortion.

Sure. I agree with this.

What gets in my craw is the weak MIDI performances. They’ve already proven that they can get some studio musicians together and make very convincing sound-alike recordings. With those isolated instrument tracks, adjusting speed and pitch and even major and minor tonalities is basic.

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Hey, Buzz.

I sincerely hope I haven’t soured you on it. If I have, I’m sorry.

I kind of bounced off of River City Girls, a sort of remake of River City Ransom. But I suspect that's more about me not clicking with the genre rather than anything about the quality of the game. That said, this may have the best soundtrack I've ever heard, at least on par with Sayonara Wild Hearts.

I started ignoring River City-likes years ago. I was fortunate enough to be there when it first came out. You can’t replicate that sense of discovery and joy.

When I was in high school I had one gaming buddy. One of us bought a used cartridge of River City Ransom. We took it home and quickly passed it off as a janky Double Dragon clone. I liked the art style, so I kept playing. All of the text was in Japanese so we were kind of lost. Then I found the first hidden store, which probably wasn’t hidden, just that we didn’t read Kanji. We’d had this huge WTF moment and suddenly my buddy wanted to play it too. Haha. Good times.

I enjoy the River City-like games and I feel RC Girls was the best one since the original in the franchise, but Scott Pilgrim is the best of them all, and I don't even care for the Scott Pilgrim name. I played RC Underground and was generally bored and had to push through, while RC Girls was pretty fun all the way through. The environments were easier to get around and between and everything was done better, like a modern retro-styled game should be.

Do people put games like Castle Crashers and Streets of Rage in the same category as River City Ransom? I think of RCR as more of a sub-genre so I tend to separate it from Castle Crashers.

Was the OG River City games the first action RPG? I’ve always thought of them as such.

RawkGWJ wrote:

Hey, Buzz.

I sincerely hope I haven’t soured you on it. If I have, I’m sorry.

Nah no worries! It'll take more than that for me to quit having fun with it. After all, I spent $150 plus $1.99 for Chumbawamba. Also one of my mixes was voted in the top 25% that week, and I have followers now!

Dragon Slayer, a Japan-only Famicom release from 1984, was apparently the first real-time play ARPG, according to various sources including Guinness World Records. River City Ransom was four years later and is a side-scrolling beat-em-up, as we'd call it today, in spite of being labeled an ARPG. Dragon Slayer, by contrast, was a top or isometric view, open world game.

Castle Crashers is my favorite of the genre.

BTW, Guardian Heroes got ported to the 360 and then ported to the Xbox One for $5 or so.

I'd put Full Metal Furies up next to Castle Crashers - but it's different and probably needs at least 1 friend to enjoy properly. I played it through with my wife. It also requires quite a bit of lateral thinking to reach the end -or just looking up some downright weird solutions to the big puzzle.

Robear wrote:

Dragon Slayer, a Japan-only Famicom release from 1984, was apparently the first real-time play ARPG, according to various sources including Guinness World Records.

Wow. That was in the way back. I bet that even predates Gauntlet. RawkGWJ needs a clue. Badly. Gauntlet released in arcades in 1985, and was one of the first dungeon crawlers. not an ARPG

Well, dungeon crawlers started in the *70's*, but Dragon Slayer was the first one to add the top view/isometric realtime openworld elements to the formula. There are apparently big arguments as to whether "Adventure" or "Rogue" are ARPGs, but for me, the "wandering around while stuff wanders around you, open world, in an RPG" is the main element. So... Side scrollers, maybe, but I associate side scroll fighting games with the beat'em'up fighting games. That's my split. If you could imagine Diablo done with the same technology, it would not be the same game with worse graphics, if you follow me. But Dragon Slayer... You could implement Diablo in Dragon Slayer.

Still, River City has some strong RPG elements, shops, buffs, people going by, so an argument could be made.

Shattered: Tale of the Forgotten King is leaving early access and releasing officially on February 17th.

Never heard of it before. Looks neat.

I know it's been discussed in here before, but I am really enjoying Maneater. It's hitting that same vibe as Crackdown 3 did for me a couple years ago: it's an old-school open world game with an aggressive power curve that doesn't ask the player to stick around for 100 hours like most open world games seem to do these days. I'll happily run around a map hoovering up icons, but I don't need or want every world to be the size of The Witcher 3.

Maneater is also a really good example of whatever the opposite of ludo-narrative dissonance is. Ludo-narrative harmony? A shark hell-bent on a quest for revenge against humanity is the perfect protagonist for the kind of mayhem in this game. The ocean is kill-or-be-killed, and the humans are all targets that your shark wouldn't have any moral qualms about eating. With so many games falling into a trap of trying to present sympathetic characters who are also serial killers and mass murderers by the logic of the game's mechanics, it's nice to find one that actually finds a solution for that.

You would think that the opposite of dissonance would be assonance, but alas, it is harmony.

Or resonance?

"Consonance", usually.

IMAGE(https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/1366540/header.jpg?t=1611695626)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1...

Dyson Sphere Program is a Factorio-like that dropped last week and after a few hours I'm mighty impressed.

Yeah, it is already pretty good, can't wait to see how they build on what they have! There are some rough edges (of course) but they mostly just that: rough edges.

Have close to a dozen hours in Dyson and it's really blowing me away.

It truly nails that sweet-spot between Factorio and Satisfactory (think the dry complexity of EU4 vs. the eye candy/simplicity of modern Civ).

Im enjoying it too and Im somewhat surprised at the number of people who jumped in! 8000 reviews (Overwhelmingly Positive) in the first few days suggests around 100k people buying an Early Access game on or near day 1 (by gross estimation of 1-3% of customers reviewing a game), and clearly hungry for another factorio-like.

The only thing I couldnt wrap my head around at first was water pumps. I had it facing the wrong way. If you look closely at the hologram you can see pipes running down on one side. That side should be just in the water.

I really wanted to develop a game like this after watching this Kurzgezagt video, only in their fun art style.

Sales are even more brisk if you can believe it.

Dev announced today that the sold 350,000 in the first 7 days.

Really happy to see it hitting the ground running as it should serve to inspire a productive Early Access cycle.

So you guys I've fallen in love with Project Cars 3. It's the perfect simcade racing game with tons of progression and hooks for me. It's just so, so good and now I'm playing it every day along with Bloody Rally Show.

Aaron D. wrote:

Sales are even more brisk if you can believe it.

Dev announced today that the sold 350,000 in the first 7 days.

Really happy to see it hitting the ground running as it should serve to inspire a productive Early Access cycle.

That's fantastic! And well deserved. The game is polished and fun even this early in Early Access. I'd say it feels more like a full release with a lot of content upcoming.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I know it's been discussed in here before, but I am really enjoying Maneater.

This is my shark. When it dodges, it turns into lightning. It can also slow down time. Game of the year.

IMAGE(https://i.ibb.co/gSKwMsc/2021-01-27-23-11-28.png)

This is my shark. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My shark is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life. My shark, without me, is useless. Without my shark, I am useless. I must swim my shark true. I must bite faster than my enemy who is trying to kill me. I must bite him before he bites me. I will...