If you’d all just play Opus Magnum, we could end the thread right here. :P
You know, it kind of takes a bit of the fun out of explaining it but a bunch of us (ok, mainly me) have this game to see how far we can pull a thread off topic before someone screams. You should try it, it’s fun!
Can you tell us a little bit about it?
I like the idea, it is just the thread starter is a real douche!
Forgot about Slime Rancher. That’s totally my game of the year so far.
What a joy to play! Folks gathered around the TV to watch the slimes and help explore. :) I even got most of the achievements, which is something I never do.
You really need to play Witcher 3
Sure, so it’s the new Zachronics game. They’ve made several of these systemic, free from puzzle games (Space Chem, Infinifactory, Shenzhen I/O) before. The common characteristic of these games is that you’re building some kind of machine to solve the puzzle constraints, but you have a lot of freedom to invent your own solution within the constraints of the system in general, and specific puzzle.
Opus Magnum is without a doubt the most approachable of these games so far. You are an arrogant young alchemist in a strange pueodo-Victoria era city, it has a bit of a Dishonored feel to the the setting. And you are tasked with using a machine called the transmutation engine to solve a series of puzzles where you turn a set of input alchemicals into the required output alchemicals using a series of module tools.
This game succeeds, where people might have bounced off earlier Zachronics games, is that it’s much easier to solve the puzzles, and the fiction makes a lot more sense. I blasted through the puzzles pretty quickly, putting in quite rubbish looking solutions. But when you complete a puzzle, you see how well you did against three metrics, and how that compares to all players and other players on your Steam friends list. So you can, if your that kind of person, take up the challenge and try to beat your friends score.
I’m gettin there, I’m gettin there. . .
I’m hoping there’s a little time to play Has Been Heroes and Battle Realms before year’s end so I can at least put a handful of games onto my year-end list :). This thread will be referenced if I suddenly, I dunno, lose my job or something, hah
Here’s my initial solution to the first puzzle in the game, to give you a feel for what it looks like:
Edit: If you want to slightly spoil yourself, head over to the Opus Magnum thread to see my current fastest solution to this puzzle.
I’m currently in a optimisation battle with my brother to make Invisible Ink the fastest.
It might not be a bad one to play first? It’s relatively standalone, and some of its more egregious narrative sins probably won’t register if you’re new to the series.
Its open world gameplay will always be pretty shit though. (The set piece levels are often really good, there’s just a lot of filler in between.)
ME3 is, if you don’t buy all the DLC.
From Software has never developed anything that could be considered a “AAA” game, Bloodborne included. I’ve played handheld games and indie games with higher budgets than most of their stuff.
Just to double check, you’re saying that Bloodborne is not a ‘AAA game’ and that Mass Effect 1 is? Okay dude, you got me, this must be upside down Wednesday.
ME1 was certainly a AAA game, it was (if nothing else) a huge deal when it first came out. But Bloodbourne is as well.
In my book, anytime studios ask me to cough up $59.99 for a game, that’s a AAA game.
You would think that, but a few releases this year really felt like they were missing an “A” in AAA while still charging $59.99.
I still stand my that rule of thumb, even if not ever AAA is … good, or worth buying. They generally mean huge budgets, big marketing pushes, and all the things that bring a game into the strange and unnecessary “AAA” category.
I agree with @Scotch_Lufkin. If you’re selling for $59.99 out of the gate, you most definitely are equating your game with the AAA designation.
MSRP doesn’t determine whether something is “AAA” - even ignoring the examples of games that don’t meet an arbitrary quality threshold for the $60 price point, there are far too many examples of $60+ games with rather low budgets, that sell for that price because they’re niche and have to make money across far fewer copies, for that to be the case. (Look at something like X-Plane or the new Danganronpa game as examples you can find on Steam right now.) “AAA” is very much a function of things like budget, studio size, and marketing spend, not how much a consumer would expect to pay on release.
So then Bloodbourne would certainly qualify, as would Mass Effect.