I was enjoying Bridge Constructor Portal but I got stuck on Level 53 of 60. And now these later levels require so many pieces and so much fine tuning that I’ve given up for now. (Also I haven’t yet succeeded getting the convoy through on levels 31 and 47, though I did get the single forklift through.) I am not sure if I’ll continue. Maybe if I get stuck at the DMV for a long wait. It’s fun, but those hard ones are hard! Also there isn’t enough GLaDOS.
And I thought there might be some penalty for going over budget, but if there even is a budget I didn’t see it.
I thought it was rather odd that it calculates up what you spent, but doesn’t do anything with the results. It makes it a lot easier (mentally) to try really crazy solutions, and makes more sense in the Portal universe (can’t really see glados as a penny-pincher considering the random and silly “science” tests) but it still felt a bit weird.
Yeah, that one’s a bit of a nightmare. My drivers ended up flying through the air through most of it, but getting the first one to hit both buttons rather than just barely missing one took a LOT of trial-and-error adjustments of their launches.
I also got the distinct impression that the physics engine changes ever-so-slightly between sending one driver through and sending a whole convoy. In particular, cubes tended to have an annoying habit of bouncing in a completely different way and spoiling carefully-adjusted paths.
Yeah, weird. I haven’t played the original Bridge Constructor, but I got the impression that you actually had a budget to stay within. Maybe that would have made this Portal version just too hard to enjoy. God knows I went crazy on many of the more complicated levels with a lot of probably extraneous pieces. But no matter how frugally I built, at the end it tells me “You wastefully spent: $xxxxx.” At the very least they could get rid of the insulting adverb if you actually use the minimum possible number of parts. I guess scoring the game is just trying to minimize the expenditures, but there’s no reward system in place for that that I can see. Maybe… cake?
I picked this up on Steam today. I was suckered in by the theme, but it’s pretty much Crimsonland with more colors and some fun extra abilities. Not bad though.
Yep, the original has a budget, and keeps track of total scores. It also has achievements for things like building any one (successful) bridge a certain amount below the given budget. The budgets are frustrating at times… they really constrain the solution space, especially with the way the game often limits the materials you can use while also very strictly limiting possible attachment points.
I think the Portal version was probably improved by leaving that out and just focusing on the architectural challenge. Of course, I did start out trying to minimize spend as much as I could, until I realized it didn’t matter. I eventually just took the “wastefully” bit as one of GLaDOS’s usual insults showing that her sarcasm core is working.
“sailing through the air…majestically…like an eagle…piloting a blimp.”
Holy poopsticks I die, all the time, I die. I get parasites and infections! I’m thirsty all the damn time! And suddenly everyone is really hard to kill! I got killed by bloatflies for petes sake! But I like it! Is good! Makes you really plan out your next moves and what you really want to be doing! (4th play through, shut up!)
I keep hearing about how good Subnautica is. Currently I have it on my Steam wishlist waiting on a sale, but I could be convinced to go ahead and pick it up.
I played Fallout: New Vegas on survival mode. I liked it. Mostly it involved taking naps and finding water. Eventually I found a water purifier and some goofy halo thing that constantly healed me (though slowly) so most of the survival stress went away. And once I realized that ammo had weight, I dumped a shit-ton of 5mm and 10mm bullets and regained untold carrying capacity.
I don’t think I played that mode in F4. Did I? Can’t remember. I should try F4 again, though I was ultimately disappointed by it.
I’m also replaying New Vegas! LOL When I die too often in 4 I’ll switch back to New Vegas and go kill some of Caesers troops for a while. Defo the story is better in New Vegas, but the modding of armor and weapons in 4 is amazing and the levelling up never ends, and the DLC is amazing. Dead Money is great don’t get me wrong, but Far Harbor could be a game all on its own!
I like Far Harbor a lot, but all the crafting in F4 was a drag for me, mostly because of how hard it was to collect resources. If I’m going on an actual mission to collect aluminum cans, then I’m not playing a game; I’m homeless in L.A.
I spent a great deal of the game being really frugal with my power armor usage, thinking that fusion cores would end up being a lot rarer than they were. Turns out I keep scrambling for aluminum and copper to keep repairing and upgrading the damned things. Fusion cores aren’t a problem at all.
My other problem with the power armor was after a while I was already so OP it was just more of an annoyance than anything. About the only time I really used it was when I first went to the irradiated wasteland and needed all the help I could get against the super deathclaws and super radscorpions.
This discussion is making me want to play the Fallouts again. I got through 1 and 3, but not 2, 4, or New Vegas. I think I’d go back to New Vegas again before 4, primarily because I found all the crafting and settlement stuff in 4 to be out of place and the VATS changes made it less enjoyable and more FPSy. But now I’m wondering what all I missed out on by not finishing 2…
If you liked 3 at all, definitely play New Vegas. I haven’t been able to get into the isometric Fallouts (I hear they’re swell), but of the FPS ones, F:NV is hands-down the greatest. The factions are interesting, different, and actually deeply affect the outcome of the game. And the DLC is very rich and satisfying.
I had similar problems with both Skyrim and F4: I thought they both dropped the ball when it came to factions and writing and large-scale character motivations. I never found a deep reason to support the Institute or the Railroad, kinda like it was tough to develop a compelling preference for the Imperials or the Stormcloaks. But if you back Caesar’s Legion (or, alternatively, the NCR, or House, or even adopt House’s robot army as your own), goddammit, you’ve committed yourself to something specific.
One of the things that annoyed me in F4 was that I couldn’t delegate resource collection to someone in one of my settlements. I wanted to give someone a good gun and armour, then point them at a nearby location where they could clear it out. Instead I was expected to do all that myself instead of playing the game.
They were good for the late 90’s but even isometric games have moved on and, having tried to replay them recently, the old Fallouts feel a bit clunky now. If you really care about what happened in those games and don’t want to deal with 1990s UI decisions then a let’s play video is probably the better choice.
I’d like to see remakes, kind of like the Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Editions, but I doubt that Bethesda would be interested.
And @the_borderer - so, I take it neither of you got the “Local Leader” perk.
Because with the local leader perk you can connect settlements! You assign one of your useless settlers as a “provisioner” and send them to a nearby settlement. They can only do one, but if you pick one at every settlement you can link all your settlements and they share resources. After I did that I never ran out of anything. I maxed out the mods on all my legendary guns and legendary armour. It was great!
Right now in survival I only have 4 settlements, and I’m at least three level us away from the local leader perk, so I’m a garbage scavenging field. But soon! Soon!! I will be able to link them all and share the wealth!!
When I have a lot of settlers I sent two out to provision so my maps look more like a spider web than this one, but you get the idea.
Lately I’ve been playing Gems of War on Xbox One. It’s a pretty good match-3 style game and a clear successor to Puzzle Quest, plus it has a surprising amount of systems and overall depth. It is free-to-play, with about a half-dozen tiers of loot crates, but there’s still plenty to do if you don’t want to put money into the slot machine. Unfortunately, it only has cross-play with the Steam and Mobile versions, excluding consoles. If you happen to play it on Xbox One and want to join my guild, let me know.
