TOM FRANCIS
REGRETS THIS ALREADY

Playing Risk Of Rain: The Engineer And The Shitty Lantern

Here’s what Risk of Rain is like. It’s a randomised shooter thingy, and here I’m playing as one of the classes you unlock later on, the Engineer. More thoughts on why it’s good.

Risk Of Rain

Risk of Rain is kind of an action Roguelike: no saving, death means starting from scratch, and it’s all about combat. You’ve got four skills in an RPG-like hotbar, with RPG-like cooldowns, but it feels more like a shooter. You pump out damage rapidly and accurately, and you’re physically dodging enemy attacks to survive.

I really didn’t like it, and almost entirely because of a weird little message on the New Game screen. Continued

To Hell And Back In Spelunky

Last night I accomplished probably the hardest thing I’ve ever managed in a video game: going to hell and back in Spelunky. It only took 41 minutes, but it took me hundreds of hours of play – and about 3,000 deaths – to learn how to do those 41 minutes. Here’s the run: Continued

Assassin’s Creed 4 Parts 1-5: Boarding School

Part 1 is a bit quiet, but the rest should be fine – click the listy icon in the top left to see all episodes. Subscribe on YouTube or follow me on Twitter if you want to know when the next one goes up.

Exploring Eldritch, Parts 1 & 2

I’m playing Eldritch, a first-person horror/shooter/Roguelike with randomly generated levels and Lovecraft monsters.

The game completely changes after book 1 (above). I thought it was some kind of lite action game, then suddenly the enemies get so much harder that it’s more like a stealth horror game (below). Continued

Failing Fast In GTA V, Parts 1-10

About me: I am a bad driver, I don’t know any modern colloquialisms, and I just want everyone to be nice. In this video series, I attempt to play Grand Theft Auto V: Angry Jerks Steal Cars And Money And Yell At Each Other. It goes wrong in what might be record time.

We’re up to Part 10 now, click the listy button in the top left to skip to an episode.

Spelunky Strategy Guide: Finding And Defeating Anubis

Gunpoint Half-Price Sale, Edition Upgrades, And Trading Cards

Short version: Gunpoint is half-price for two days, you can now upgrade between editions, and we’ve added trading cards. Here’s a video explaining all that:

Continued

GDC Talk: How Reviewing Games For Nine Years Helped In Designing Gunpoint

My talk from GDC Europe is now online for free! It has slides so I don’t think I can embed it – I’ll just say the title again and you can click that.

How Reviewing Games For Nine Years Helped In Designing Gunpoint

Tom And Nika Vs The Necromancers Of Monaco, Parts 1-5

I’ve been playing Monaco co-op with Nika, and we’re YouTubing the whole fiasco. We’re up to Part 5 now, click the listy button in the top left to skip to an episode.

I struggled to get into Monaco when it first came out: I found it visually confusing, and most of the classes seemed bad. But over the course of these videos it starts to really click, and at its best it’s a hilarious, calamitous caper.

Spelunky Explorers’ Club

Each day, Spelunky generates one set of levels that’s the same for every player. Each day, we play them. Some of us make videos of our attempts. You can browse mine above (click the listy icon in the top left), or see everyone’s on the blog we set up at https://spelunkyexplorers.wordpress.com/.

On the rest of this post are the earliest dailies we posted. Continued

Comparing Notes In Spelunky’s Unique Daily Adventures

Spelunky is out on PC again! The fancy version this time, and with a new feature that is obsessing me more than ever before. Every day, there’s one set of randomly generated levels that’s the same for every Spelunky player. Everyone gets one try at it, and when they die, that’s it, they can never play it again.

The scores for each person’s attempt are ranked, of course, but I don’t really care about that. The reason it’s so fascinating to me is that it takes a generative game – one that’s different every time – and gives it one of the most appealing things about pre-scripted games: being able to compare notes with your friends. Continued

Round Up Of Contemporary Television Dramas About Two Women Who Switch Identities

There are a lot of these, and I think I’m watching them all. Let me know if I missed one, I will watch basically anything with this concept. Continued

Taking The World With Tourism, A Civilization V Story

I just finished my first game of Civilization V with the Brave New World add on, which is focused on culture and stuff. Here’s how it went. Continued

Half-Life 2 Speedrun Is Beautiful, Ugly

The part where players invent unpowered human flight, and the part where they use the HEV suit’s optical zoom to look at a butt, are the two defining acts of the hardcore gaming zeitgeist.

YouTube commenter nobody960814 explains the trick:

“To prevent bunny hopping, valve created a system where repeated jumping should slow you down. Unfortunately they implemented it by applying a force on you in a direction opposite to the way you’re facing, not the way you’re going. So by bunny hopping backwards, you can accumulate ridiculous momentum.”