cavalcade

Absolute elephant in the room energy.

I played a Hitman game! Absolution I think it was. Everything looked very 2012 (bloom lighting ahoy) but it was fun. For a bit. Then I got bored and started shooting everyone like Gears of War. It is actually quite a good cover shooter.

Not for me, but then I play Dishonored like an absolute psychopath and don't really like stealth titles as a rule.

I think calling it Slay 2 was a stretch. There was more additional content in the Monster Train DLCs for each game.

Also, MTs decision to let you mix clans is the genius bit. Every combination opens up new, interesting interactions between cards and powers.

I think Slay isn't a patch on MT2 for a number of reasons, but the pace is definitely one of the main differentiators. I have been playing the odd run of Slay 2 here and there, but the glacial speed to where your deck begins to do something is off-putting. MT2 really has a "just one more deck" factor.

Anyone here "playing" Dispatch? I really like the general flavour. Strong Invincibles/The Boys vibe (SWEARS and hyper violence) but charming all the same. is it really a game though? It has the Telltale "Mr Boogle Will Remember That" aspect to dialogue interaction + some QTEs and minigames (not a surprise considering who the devs are), but basically you're just watching a fairly entertaining cartoon. I am enjoying it, though.

I have put about 5 or 6 hours into it now, and I like some characters more than others, but it's just so slow and I feel more often than not, you can just be destroyed by a bad draw. Also, Monster Train 2's thing where it shows you damage calculations before triggering the end of your turn, really is the way to go. When you have hundreds of variables, I can't really be arsed working out if I'm 1 point of damage short from killing something.

It's also quite samey. It's a flat plane, it's your deck and some things to kill. Every round. MT has the spatial aspect, which means it's almost like two games in one. Slay 2 could have made the ordering of the enemies important, but it isn't really. It also shamelessly pilfers mechanics from Magic the Gathering, which I guess is inevitable after 30+ years of that game exploring every card game design space, but MT/MT2 don't just have to rip off card game mechanics as it has the spatial aspect to it (so, for example, you can have a deck based on moving the enemies around - card position in modern MTG isn't a thing).

It is also strangely unfinished, with placeholder art and no achievements. Which is all very early access, I know, but seems almost like it's in there just for the sake of being in there. Like, most of it is hyper polished and then it has MS Paint art on a few bits. Mmm. And aspects to the UI are just painful - the unlock screen should never have got past a first design meeting. It's woeful to navigate on a pad and is just a wall of useless shit I don't care about. MT is clear about what progression unlocks what, and it's all shown on a normal screen for normal people.

At its core it's the sort of game that's always never going to be shit, just by virtue of the action of playing cards and doing stuff is always going to be fun. I just think it's pretty disappointing after the first game and feels more like a DLC or reskin. The fact the first character you can play is the most boring one from Slay 1 also hammers this home. I'd put it in the same bracket as Balatro. Fine. Reasonably enjoyable. But Monster Train remains the absolute king of this genre by a mile.