Hm, played it twice with my wife.
You can state everything from the get go but if it is not right, it doesn’t get locked in. The only things you can find out or tell the game is who is who and how they got murdered and by whom.
Not sure about any door you can’t pass through. You can’t leave scenes in general.
By browsing (briefly) through Wikipedia, apparently the room was the lazarette? It was locked, and the only way to “access” it is to solve the rest of the mysteries which I didn’t do (I want to say I got about… 40? Enough I was thanked for my efforts).
But it’s a wood door on an old ship. There are hammers nearby. Heck, there’s a cannon and ammunition as memory serves…
I mean, I’m okay with locked doors in games, theoretically. But I don’t like doors that are arbitrarily locked for “plot” reasons without further justification in which the game has made it very obvious that answers you need are behind said door, but you can’t get it right now because of “reasons.”
It’s a pet peeve. Jade Empire had that problem (“Your kung fu is good, but it has this weird flaw that I can’t explain to you that you need to know about but not be able to fix until it kills you…”), a bunch of the old Sierra Adventure games had it (“Oh, yeah, the shapeshifting demons that everyone knows about that have been trying to sabotage this peace accord will probably just ignore the fact that we are ignoring them…”), Persona 3 has it (“Huh, this totally helpful teacher doesn’t seem suspicious at all despite all the suspicious things he has said AND all the clues I’ve been given that directly contradict what he has said the solution will be…”)…
Not a big deal, honestly, but the puzzle of the game for Obra Dinn was very elegant, and not for me.
In contrast, I found the Layton puzzles rather boring. Not that I can remember either game all that well anymore, but iirc the Witness iterated on new concepts into ever more involved puzzles, giving me the feeling of learning, while Layton was a scattering of traditional discrete puzzles. I can see how the different approaches might appeal to different people. I also liked the world of the Witness, which contained a lot of opportunities for “discovery”, while Layton never felt like anything more than some script between puzzles.
(And I prefer Zachtronics-style puzzles to both: create your own problems while stumbling around in search of optimized solutions)
Spent some time trying to hack various Borderlands to work as split-screen co-op, but then realized Serious Sam Fusion works right out of the box, and is probably a better fit for my (our, or should I say her) needs. Much shooting was had.
“It’s all fun and games, until someone loses an eye”.
Might work on console. not sure never tried it.
Borderlands is not exactly kid stuff though?
On a different note I tried the Witness which thanks to some humble bundle or steam sale has been in my library for ages. A bit brain twisty it gets but so far pretty neat how the puzzles develop.
my partner says on PlayStation Borderlands 3 and 4 have very good split screen modes.
Might be relevant if I had a console! For PC you need to use third party tools.
Bought Chronoquartz during the Steam Christmas sale to play with my wife.
It is a timeloop puzzle game, very similar to Minit if anyone knows that one. But instead of having 60 seconds like in Minit here you have 10 rooms or rather 10 times you can leave a room before you die.
So you have to use that time to gain knowledge, find items etc. to solve puzzles and progress the story. It is done in a very clever way and the different “regions” have different game mechanics. I like it and it is not really easy. Some head scratching happened but till now we didn’t really get stuck.
I remember looking into this a long time ago. I found it equally surprising that 1) they don’t just include split screen on PC if it’s already implemented in the console build and 2) it’s possible to hack it together somehow.
I can’t remember if Borderlands works the same way but to get Left 4 Dead split screen working on PC it literally involved running two instances of the program windowed side by side with a wrapper running to pass input to them both. I did play some of that with a family member and had fun, but probably more hassle than it was worth.
Yeah, similar thing for Borderlands, and all third party split screen hacks.
Had to do the same with Subnautica. Consoles are better for split screen games but not amazing. Have you tried It Takes Two or Split fiction with the kids? They were quite fun here.
Yeah, have taken all three kids through it takes two. (Bizarrely doesn’t have save slots, so had to do the playthroughs sequentially.)
Yes, had the same annoying problem. I -think- Split Fiction may have slots, but I could be wrong.
Quite often on modern consoles there aren’t save slots but if you launch the game with a different user’s profile then it loads that user’s save information, but if they’re relying on that for the console release I guess there’s no easy way to manage it on PC.
Someone made a “hot take” where they said that Dispatch is just Twilight for dudes.
Anyway, so I’m downloading the game…
I picked up Mechwarrior 5: Clans a little while ago because it was on sharp sale.
It’s been good! The gameplay suffers a little from your lance mates (“star mates,” technically) constantly getting in the way of your shots, but you get used to switching camera perspectives periodically to see if there’s a 60-tonne companion standing directly in front of your ER PPC to absorb shots meant for downfield.
I just finished the Turtle Bay arc, which, for a Battletech grognard (such as myself) was a joy to witness. It’s one thing to know that the Smoke Jaguars were the worst of the worst, but it’s interesting to see it from their perspective. The Galaxy Commander (uh… army general?) that ordered the orbital bombardment and destruction of Edo was acting out against being out-manuevered by criminals. Outsmarted, not only by barbarians, but by barbarians who are considered scum by the rest of the barbarians. And those barbarian-barbarians outsmarted him.
Justified? Never. But understandable? Oh yes. The Clans were told they would be welcomed as heroes, and instead every step they took the locals fought with everything they had.
To (slightly mis-)quote Mollari from Babylon 5: they fought in the skies with ships, and when they ran out of ships they fought on the ground with tanks, and when they ran out of tanks, they fought with guns, and when they ran out of guns, and fought with fists."
It’s been a lot of fun to witness. And despite the silly linguistic thing that they have to keep trying to justify (it is canonical that the Clans don’t like contractions… “Lazy and enormously disrespectful,” apparently, but portmonteaus are great… so the ridiculous “batchall” is good, but “don’t” is grounds for dismissal), I think the story is being told really well.
I’m curious about what happens next. I know what eventually happens to Smoke Jaguar (I mean, who doesn’t!?), but between Turtle Bay and Tukayyid… I don’t think I’m aware of what they did. Looking forward to finding out!
I loved Dispatch. It’s not a perfect game, but it was perfect for me.
As a huge fan of Mechwarrior 4 I was very interested in Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries but I didn’t have my joystick anymore and enemies being teleported in fights really ruined it for me.
But Mechwarrior 5: Clans has a better reputation, so I have it on my list. I still don’t have a joystick and I don’t see myself buying one just for one game series but I remember how much I loved controlling the Mech with it.
Though I think a good friend of mine could have one… have to ask him.
In other news I bought some games during the Steam Christmas sale. We are going for a weekend trip to Berlin tomorrow visiting friends and I want to be prepared.
For myself:
Conscript: A survival horror (whatever that means) game of WWI. You play as a French soldier living through the war looking for your relative? To be honest I don’t know much about it but it sounded very interesting.
Slay the Princess: Choose your own adventure style, you have to go to a cabin and slay the princess. You don’t know anything about her, just that she has to die. That’s the start of it. Apparently the story is great.
As long as you’re here: Well, this is the shortest game and probably the least “game”. It is a drama about you having Alzheimer and how you and your family deal with that.
For couch “coop” with my wife some detective / puzzle games:
Strange Antiquities: You own a store for antiquities. Every day people come to your store and want you to identify (?) stuff for them. These are like puzzles, you need to consult your books and figure things out. Then there are secrets in your shop you have to figure out too. Got highly recommended too.
The Seance of Blake Manor: We are a PI and have to solve a missing person case at a manor. This game has a time element to it, I guess you have to do a lot of runs before you know for sure what happened. Got stellar reviews.
Blake Manor is not a game you unravel through iterative runs. If you use some common sense you will almost certainly finish in one.