I thought ACO needed a specific kernel to work? Or was that fsync?

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I love my 4 year old Sputnik XPS13. It cost a fortune - I went for the then-top-of-the-range model (hiDPI touchscreen, 500Gb SSD, 8Gb RAM), but it's starting to show its age a little now. Still runs well, though I had to open it shortly after buying it to replace the dodgy Atheros WIFI card with an Intel 7260 and just last month, I had to pay £20 for a new AX200 replacement because the WIFI kept cutting out. The case comes off with 11 screws and the WIFI card just slots in nicely. No more WIFI drops.

I'd love a new lappy, but it's quite low on my list after all the money I've spent on my main PC this year. Plus, do I really want another Intel laptop when you just covered the AMD-powered Tuxedo gaming laptops (albeit with Nvidia GPUs) a few weeks back? Or the earlier Tuxedo slimbook? Or the KDE Slimbook??

Decisions, decisions.

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Loved the demo. I'll be watching out for this one.

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I love this. Simple, effective. I guess it's a shame that Discord didn't care about their multi-platform strategy enough that it was needed in the first place, but what a cool project.

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Quoting: g000hI think it is sad that people feel they need to save-scum in order to play games. I tend to play all my games as rogue-like permadeath, and if I die I'm happy to start again. Generally if this happens, I haven't played conservatively enough and I'm adjusting my play-style on the next play-through.

This price rise - I notice the game is currently on sale (at 30% discount) - Is the rise referring to the current discount (25th Sept 2020) finishing, or is it referring to additional increase to the regular pricing?

Eh, no - this isn't about save-scumming, it's a lack of being able to leave the game during a several-hours-long dungeon. There are no useful savepoints. It's poor design.

As for playing permadeath - good for you. And if the game is advertised as such, I'd support that. But it's not. You will die playing this, inevitably. And the lack of save points means that when you die (and in this game, you will), you need to walk for 30 minutes from the respawn village back to the dungeon where you died... where you will likely die again. Rinse, repeat.

Lazy, poor design.

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The save system (and lack of fast travel to a lesser extent) is the biggest gripe on almost every review I read on this title. I'm pretty gobsmacked that they added all this new content, but didn't fix the one thing that's dragging their Steam reviews down. The number one review on the page with over 85 "helpfuls" is a negative review of a player wanting to like Stoneshard, but notes the lack of saves! Big oof.

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Quoting: ShmerlWas it inspired by Bosch?

As in, the artist? I don't think so, although there's a bit of overlap in the twisted religious theme. The Wikipedia page for the game cites "the religious art and iconography of Seville, Spain" as the main inspiration.

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I was just commenting recently on another thread that The Witness was a similarly disappointing game that just dumps you onto an island full of incredibly repetitive puzzles with similarly bizarre spikes of difficulty. The Long Gate looks even prettier and appears to have more variety in the puzzle elements, but I completely agree - without some motivation or world building, it's really hard to keep momentum with these games.

I'll stick it on my watchlist and I might end up buying it as an afternoon's distraction, even if I don't come anywhere near completing it.

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Quoting: ageres

Quoting: scaineYou describe Hollow Knight... then recommend Hollow Knight??? Don't forget how useless HK's map is, or that you don't even have a map until you randomly stumble upon the map maker. Sheesh!

HK has fast movement and combat, comfortable jumping, HP regaining from enemies. I haven't had any problems with its map. The map pieces are impossible to miss, and they are located near area entrances. If you want to see really bad map implementation, look at Feudal Alloy. For me, HK is the best metroidvania ever, and I compare other games with it. I'm glad you are enjoying Blasphemous, but I don't like it myself.

Blasphemy mimics HK's movement nearly perfectly, imo. Movement is basically identical, right down to the dash (although Blasphemous adds like a quarter-second recharge to prevent spamming). There's no HP regain from enemies, true - it follow the S&S model for that, limiting your runs to the number of healing flasks you have. However, since enemies regenerate when you restore flasks, it has much the same effect as HK - where you can't heal in HK if you run out of enemies to kill. I actually prefer the Blasphemous/S&S model because it prevents you from needing to kill lots of tiny enemies just to store healing power. Indeed, Blasphemous' map often exploits this, allowing you bypass "beaten" enemies by unlocking gates, pushing trees over onto previously impassable spikes, or granting access to lifts and other shortcuts.

In short, I'm pretty gobsmacked that anyone can both like Hollow Knight and dislike Blasphemous. They're different... but in tiny ways. I also enjoyed Hollow Knight, but despite 50 hours over two runs, I never found the interest in finishing it - both map finding and the "return to scene of death" mechanic made the game just too tedious to deal with. I spent much longer in Salt and Sanctuary, completing it three times. Hopefully I'll have a similar run in Blasphemous.

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I sank 5 hours into this last night, playing till midnight. It's almost like a reskinned Hollow Knight, with the atmosphere of Salt and Sanctuary. The move set is almost identical to HK - moves and attacks are very similar, although Blasphemous adds a wonderful "block" option, and the as the Penitent One, you can also duck. There seems to be a better progression here though, with unlocks that give you powered attacks, combos and a really nice "slide then attack" option.

The guilt system is better than both Salt and Sanctuary and Hollow Knight too. In HK, you were pretty much forced to go back to the scene of your death to reclaim your full health, and similarly in S&S, you rarely wanted to lose a whole run's accrued Salt. But here, you only accrue a little guilt on death, which restricts how often you can use your special ability. I think it also keeps tracks of your guilt on the map, so if it accrues too far, then you can go track some of it down to reclaim it later. Much more flexibility. Like HK, there's also a couple of specials that will allow you to completely "heal up" for a price.

The enemies are generally a that hard-to-achieve mix of "difficult at"first" and then "stupidly easy once you understand their attack pattern".

Beautiful graphics, great sound design. Some of the voice acting is a bit hit and miss, but that's fairly minor. Really enjoying it so far.

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