Kobayashi Maru time: Two games down, two stealth sequences disabled for the sake of my sanity. I generally try to get through games without cheats, but when a sequence is replacing my enjoyment of the game with pure frustration, I’m not ashamed to find a way around it.
Beaten: Murdered: Soul Suspect
The theme, acting, and style of this game really appealed to me. I think I was expecting something with more action, but this was pretty close to the Frogwares Sherlock Holmes games or something similar. I’m a sucker for disembodied characters hanging around, so this one gets a plus from me. The one aspect that didn’t appeal was the stealth element with demons creeping around when I just wanted to get on with the story. I ended up modding a file to make those creeps ignore me, and thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the game.
[ETA: If anyone needs that fix https://steamcommunity.com/app/233290/discussions/0/619569608641434669/ ]
Beaten: TARTARUS
TARTARUS is a game about poking consoles on a dingy, Alien-esque spacecraft in order to survive. The puzzles were all based around a mix of command line and crude GUI commands, and the whole thing reminded me a bit of Hacknet in space. Unfortunately, the designers saw fit to tack a massively frustrating insta-death stealth sequence with poor directional audio onto the end of the game. It was completely out of character with the entire rest of the keyboard-bashing adventure, and I was seriously pissed. I eventually decided to follow the spirit of the game itself, and messed with the AI files to pass the final sequence.
[ETA: if anyone wants to do the same, I just went intosteamapps\common\TARTARUS\TARTARUS\Content\AI\Tasks and replaced the fire assets with a renamed copy of the FocusCamera asset]
I’m a sucker for disembodied characters hanging around
You must be great at parties!! :D
I ended up modding a file to make those creeps ignore me, and thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the game.
I’ve never played the game, but that sounds great! It would seriously decrease my playtime (I would think) so that’s a good thing. Maybe I’d dig out that game from the backlog if it didn’t have so many collectibles. I hope you don’t mind me peeking, but I saw that you got 185 / 242 artifacts. Was that a chore? Were you trying to get collectibles or was that pretty much from “normal” gameplay? And are the “ghost story” achievements pretty much tied to finding the relevant collectibles, or is there more to it– I saw that you only completed two of them, but most of them were at least partially done.
Were there any other “creep” types than the demons?
I was collecting artefacts, but not really trying hard as I was focussing on the main story. I’ll have to go back for the rest, as there were lots of ‘almost’ ones where I didn’t get the ghost story. You basically find a trail of collectibles that then reveals a little story at the end that doesn’t relate to the main plot.
Also played through the game recently and the artifacts could likely be a chore. Many of them aren’t, but there’s some hidden wall graffiti that I barely got any of. I bothered to hunt most things down without too much trouble, but also didn’t try to do that if it was just going to be more effort than I felt it was worth. So if you’re likely to try for 100%, I’d just take a Guide along for those.
Also, for most of those things, you can go back to get them in the middle of the game, but not once you hit an endgame trigger – after that, you can’t return to collect anything, which really bothered me. Would’ve absolutely gone after them if I didn’t have to re-play the whole game again.
And +1 to the demons just being annoying. Mostly because they feel out of place gameplay-wise, and their screech is horrendous. I’d have settled for a mod that just makes them shut the hell up. They aren’t too much trouble to dispatch though, and once you do, they don’t return. So, again, they’re just a sad nuisance.
Thank you for the additional info. As long as the endgame trigger is obvious/ominous enough, I have no problem going back with a Guide to clean up any missing ultra-hidden collectibles. I suspect I’d keep the demons around just to see how they implemented stealth, then ultimately use the mod as a time- and aggravation-saving measure.
As long as the endgame trigger is obvious/ominous enough
If I’d known beforehand that I couldn’t return, then it probably was. Not knowing that, it wasn’t (though I’ve read that it does explicitly warn you – guess I just clicked past since I was probably getting tired).
I also enjoyed the game and hated the stealth parts. Normally I don’t mind but I thought they were the least fun thing in the entire game. Wish I knew about that trick! :P
Yeah, it felt like they were just padding out the game. They still hang around if you disable them, so its not like you don’t get a creepy effect.
I liked Murdered as well and came up with the same complaint againsed its stealth sequences…ended up just taking forever to finish it wish I knew about the modding trick
Yeah, it was so frustrating, and it stopped being spooky very quickly.