[Event] The PokeCommunity Game-Along

[gimmepie]

Played a couple of hours of tLoU. God I love this game. I'm only a small way into it but I'm still just as enraptured now as I was when I first played it years ago.

 

[pkmin3033]

I'd quite like to play Borderlands this month, but realistically speaking there is no way I'll finish it - I'm still trying to clear up MHW and I've barely scratched the surface with Ghost of Tsushima. So this month I shall be playing Bioshock on my Switch! I've been meaning to replay that for a while anyway, so...should be good!

 

[Cherrim]

Portal 2 is pretty short, so I've finished it already! I'd forgotten just how good the game is. I could do without some of the... dated humour (punching down is not funny no matter how witty the voice doing it is!!!) but the way the game slowly introduces mechanics and story elements is just... augggh so good. I wish Valve wasn't so allergic to the number 3 so we could get another sequel to build on all this. ;_;

 

[gimmepie]

Just got through the Ranch House scene. The whole game is written really well but that scene always hits so hard.

 

[Janp]

THE POKECOMMUNITY GAME-ALONG - Bioshock Infinite

FINAL PART

​

Finished Bioshock Infinite already. The game still looks beautiful and plays good today. My FPS skills were rusty from not playing FPS for years. When I was choosing a game for this month, I found out that I haven't played a proper FPS in years. Which is interesting, since FPS genre used to be my most played genre when I was younger. But aside from Bioshock, I've played Portal 2 and Far Cry 5 in recent years. I remember playing Borderlands Pre-Sequel when that came out, but it's already 5 years ago. But I'm getting a little off-topic here.

Bioshock really scratched my FPS itch. I finished it in a matter of few days and I wished it was a little bit longer. The gunplay was fun, even though I sticked to carabine and shotgun for majority of the game. I prefer long-ranged weapons, but sniper rifle didn't really feel like a good main weapon to use in the game, so I picked carabine as my main weapon. And I had fun with it. I was able to hold my ground against enemies far away and close.

As for Vigors, I mostly used Murder of Crows. It worked for my long-ranged style and the stun was awesome. I was able to headshot almost everyone. I also used Possesion on turrets to lock my enemies between me and them. Oh and Undertow was also awesome. I've used its charged effect to grab enemies from far away and bring them to me, while stunning them, and finishing them off with shotgun.

I also forgot a lot about the story. I remember the plot twist from the end of the game, but I somehow thought that the Siren is reccuring opponent in the game and I don't remember Handy-men being so hard to kill. I died on every single one few times and never found a plausable strategy to beat them. But overall I enjoyed the story. It also made me watch the launch trailer again and I realized how much different the final game is when you compare it to that trailer. I then watched one of the first gameplay videos from that year E3 and it looked so different. The shown game had more eerie feeling and more team work with Elizabeth, but I'm still satisfied with the final game. And now I want to replay first two Bioshocks and play Burial at Sea, since I never played it.

 

[gimmepie]

Finished the University segment (Go Big Horns). Every time I see Joel get impaled on that bit of rebar or whatever it is, I wince. The whole segment was easier than I remember it though. Here's hoping the same is true for some of the Ellie solo stuff coming up cause I remember some of that, especially the stuff in the town during the blizzard, being pretty damn hard.

 

[gimmepie]

Game finished! I could continue singing the game's praises, but instead I'll just say that even having played it before, it still hits just as hard. It's such a fantastic game. I really hope that the hate for the sequel has been at least a little overblown.

 

[pkmin3033]

Spooktober

I'm not sorry. Nope. Not sorry at all.

To the surprise of absolutely nobody, this month's Game Along theme is Halloween! Break out (or into) your haunted mansions and castles, mow down your zombies, vampires, and werewolves, because this month, anything and everything that would fit a Halloween theme goes! Remember that horror is a theme as much as it is a genre: if it has an ominous atmosphere with eldritch abominations (think Bloodborne here, an action-based title with heavy horror elements in level and monster design) then it probably counts! At the same time, if you want something more lighthearted but with a clear spooky theme - for example, something like Luigi's Mansion or Medieval - then that's perfectly fine too!

It's Halloween, you know what I'm on about. If you don't, drop your game of choice in here for approval or denial, same as always. Have fun!

 

[Janp]

I was holding off from starting Amnesia: Machine for Pigs for the last few days because I was expecting this. So that will be my game.

 

[gimmepie]

I'll play through Little Nightmares this month.

 

[pkmin3033]

This month I'm going to gnaw my way through A Plague Tale: Innocence, which has been on my to-do list for a while now~

 

[Janp]

THE POKECOMMUNITY GAME-ALONG - Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs

FINAL PART

​

Night time? CHECK!
Home alone? CHECK!
Headphones? CHECK!
Ready to get scared? CHECK!

Everything was prepared for the great horror night. But then...

The game launched in weird resolution, so I decided to change it in options. I had to restart the game, but it launched in a way I could only see about a third of the screen. I tried changing the resolution again just in case, but after getting same results. After searching for this problem on the internet, I found out it's pretty common bug. But after trying several fixes, it stayed the same. So I had to pick one of the smaller resolutions.

At this point any atmosphere I built up before launching the game almost destroyed. And then I started the game, heard the first the very forst dialogue of the game and completely lost it. It sounded so bad. Reminded me of "Don't do it, I'm a virgin" line from... ehhm... I don't think I'm allowed to say from where it is from.

Anyway, any horror atmosphere was gone at this point, so I might have been a little bit more critical towards the game. But the first few minutes were meh. In the first game, you get your objective right at the start of the game. Here, you're just walking around the house and trying to figure out what to do. Like at one point I was going in circles in one location, trying to interact with things there and had no idea what to do. Then I went through the same room again and got a note in journal that I can interact with a tube and stuffed grizzly that I couldn't interact with before. And after interacting with them and meddling with valves, I was once again stucked, because there was nowhere to go. I had to go back to that room with grizzly to trigger a jumpscare there and then had to return to valves, where new passage opened.

Now, I have to say that the game built the scary atmosphere again after about an hour when I got outside the house and got to the church and the machine. But I still had problem with what to do or where to go. The original game always told you in pretty nice way what is your current objective, which this game kinda forgets to do.

Enemies in this game are also really weird. They look cool, but you can pretty much sprint past them and nothing happens. They don't even chase after you in some instances. There are apparently more types of enemies, but I don't think I even met them. I had like 3 encounters with enemies throughout the whole game, which was weird. I expected more of them. But I also watched a walkthrough and apparently skipped some enemies. It reminded me of what we used to say with my friends to each other: "You're either too blind to see the scary stuff or you're too stupid to realize it's supposed to scare you."

Anyway, I got through the game quickly, beating it in around 3 hours. In those 3 hours, I got scared only once. When my girlfriend came home. Otherwise it was mostly boring walk through creepy locations. Especially the Machine location was really well done. And the music was also great. But they couldn't save the game for me. Not really a great start for spooky October. I'm considering picking up another game to play for this month's Game-Along.

 

[gimmepie]

I got past the guy with the long arms today. I've learned that I have trouble seeing the leech things in the first segment and also the lanterns that act as save points lol. I do enjoy the game though. It's fun and the setting is really cool, like someone mixed Ghibli and nightmares.

 

[machomuu]

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night sign me up babe let's gooooooooooooooooo

 

[pkmin3033]

I actually finished last Sunday, but here I am now, remembering to type some thoughts about A Plague Tale. xD

It was...OK! In the opposite ways I was expecting: I loathe puzzles, and this entire game was basically one environmental puzzle after another. But the gameplay was brilliantly designed and only became frustrating towards the end where it dropped the subtlety for "kill these people before they kill you" which...was not as fun as it should have been, considering rats. No, the gameplay was great. It was the narrative that sent me to sleep. The story was very uninspired and the cast was absolutely dreadful. But you know what? As long as one element of a game is good enough to override my complaints, I really don't mind. I can sit through a few boring dialogue scenes for the sake of fun gameplay!

 

[gimmepie]

Finally got around to finishing Little Nightmares. Once again, I have so many questions about the world that game is set in, but overall the environmental storytelling in that game is really well done. The ending sequence where you walk toward the exit is also very, very satisfying.

 

[Cherrim]

I couldn't pick a scary game but then near the end of the month I downloaded the free to play version of Plants vs Zombies on mobile to see how the experience was and ended up beating it. Zombies count for scary, right? Literally mowed 'em down, like it said in the prompt. ;)

 

[pkmin3033]

^ It's zombies, it counts :3

November - Visual Novls

It's NaNoWriMo! Since there aren't too many games that will allow you to actually write a story, for this month's Game Along your task is to read one! Visual Novels are video games, don't @ me. Your choice can have additional gameplay mechanics (e.g. Danganronpa or Ace Attorney) or be a pure text-based experience! For games with branching paths, you only need to view the "true" ending if one is available, otherwise pick your favourite ending and roll with it. As they're primarily linear experiences with a few gameplay sections and dialogue choices, Telltale games are OK for this month too.

If you're stuck for ideas with this one, there are plenty of free visual novels on Steam and itch.io that will only take up a couple of hours of your time~

Any questions, ask in here as usual. Have fun :3

 

[Janp]

Great, I wanted to read through Nekopara again before Volume 4 is released. I already finished Vol 0 and 1, so I'll continue with Vol 2 and 3 for this challenge.

 

[gimmepie]

I'm split between a few option, but I think I'll just do DDLC for this month then. It's short so I can always go back and go through a different one after if I want haha