Love Cataclysm: DDA, Caves of Qud., ToME..... should I get Cogmind?

[clarkeveritas]

I've heard of Cogmind for a LOOOONG time.... from looking at the game info on Steam it actually looks cooler than I thought it would be.... anyone give me some spoiler-free general info and tell me how it stacks up to C:DDA, CoQ, ToME, etc? I'm cheap so I won't spend $17.99 lightly. Yes, I'm actually THAT cheap.

[CHOO CHOO]

I said Cogmind had a steeper learning curve than ToME or CoQ because more of the metagame in Cogmind is under the hood, not clearly visible, undercommunicated.

In ToME, nothing is hidden - every variable is plainly visible, your build holds no surprises, at the very most you occasionally need to adapt to make good use of a new item.

I've been playing CoQ for so long that by now I'm probably no longer qualified to talk about its learning curve. But even then, other than the occasional sudden death or fungal infection, there's really nothing unexpected the game ever throws at you.

In both ToME and CoQ, I'd say that you can just look at the presented numbers, make a plan and ride it out. Inch your way forward, kill every living thing in ascending order of level, accumulate XP and unless you have an entirely nonfunctional build, you'll end up being last man standing.

Whereas in Cogmind you can screw yourself over by being too loud, by using explosives, by taking too long...and unless you actually read about the mechanisms online, or you pay very close attention to the terminals, you'll never know why you sealed your fate five levels ago.

[Kyzrati]

Opprinnelig skrevet av clarkeveritas:

What would be the range of times on a winning run.... and please no spoilers.

You'll never hear spoilers from me :). I believe the usual range on a winning run is between 90 minutes for flight/stealth to around maybe 3-5 hours for an average combat run.

That said, it's possible to real-time speed run the game in under 20 minutes, and some runs that want to visit dozens of different optional locations in a single go can take upwards of 8-10 hours each.

The current record is a 26-hour run by zxc, but that's because he'd basically taken control of the complex and was farming for score. zxc is also the speed run record holder, both in turn count and real time :P

[cranky corvid]

Opprinnelig skrevet av clarkeveritas:

One cool tactical (and strategic to a degree) game involving upgrading your killer robot(s) with spoils of war is that Arcen game...... the name is escaping me.... it has a cool theme song. But you pick your 4 robots and you have 50 days until the evil robot overlord's army attacks your resistance base and you pick what to do on each given day to prepare, whether it's taking out key installations, going after certain facilities that are more likely to have parts you need (weapons, shields, propulsion, etc). Bionic Dues! That's it! A cool game that I've been meaning to replay on a harder difficulty. It's a bit deeper than it might appear at first glance.

Bionic Dues was a fun one. Though it does get rather too micromanagey with all the gear slots, and you have to find out which difficulty level poses a challenge for you or it becomes just dead dull. For anyone looking to get into it, I would recommend picking the Shorter Campaign option until you've figured out the difficulty level, and picking only 3 Exos instead of 4 to reduce the gear micromanagement (this makes the game more difficult, but it's also reflected in the scoring - for example, the game effectively treats Easy difficulty with 3 Exos as Normal+ for scoring purposes).

[MikeLIUair]

I have to say, Cogmind is different in many ways with other roguelike games. I bet that if you play Cogmind in the way you play other roguelikes, you will get your ass kicked. Just like someone said that you must follow Cogmind's rule to enjoy this game. Although, everything is quiet different, it's still enjoyable and great.There are a bunch of parts, utilities, weapons to loot. And there are terminals and various stations, which support you with important info,repair some of your part examine prototype parts or weapons, to hack. Enemies in Cogmind are varied and clever, surely, will be challenging to fight. What's more, I think this game is more like a survival game than ToME, DCSS which represent the type of slash&loot. But Cogmind combined fighting and surviving pretty well. You won't be suggested to avoid battle, while you also won't keep fighting and killing all the way though the game. Well, I think you will like this game if you have played a lot roguelike games of different types.

[clarkeveritas]

Wow! I'm honored: the Dev dropped in to comment on my little question-forum-whatnot! Also from looking at some other forums apparently that zcx or xcz or whatnot is some High And Mighty Cogmind Champion of some sort. (Sorry, if i click to go back a page to see his actual name it'll make me start over typing and I'm developing some sort of terrible hand pain from playing too much Battlefield 1.... I've got a pretty wide range of gaming interests.... never got into that Call of Duty though.... just Battlefield... something about those 32 on 32 battles that get the blood pumping) Sorry- just woke up from nap and I'm groggy and rambling. Anyhow- the deal about Bionic Dues and the micromanagement involved.... I personally LOVED it.... tweaking my little death robots to make certain build types based on their base stats and main weapon. With the right parts and the right build you can turn bots that are not front-line death-dealers into absolute monsters.... especially if you find those missions to find the upgraded schematics to upgrade your bot's base stats.

As for the initial question as to if I should pick this up or not- it sounds right up my alley and it definately sounds like replay value could be quite high since there seems to be a lot of freedom in building your robo-thingee. $18 is probably much higher than my average steam purchase (since as i've likely mentioned before I'm quite cheap) but since it sounds like my type of game- giving the player some freedom, high replayability, a game that would reward thinking and strategy/tactics: I think I'll bite the bullet and not wait until it's on sale 11 years from now for $4. Last game I got at full price/near full price was Prey- and that turned out pretty well.

I've picked and chosen Rogue-Likes and Rogue-Lites around the edges..... any other recommendations based on the list of the ones I like? As aforementioned: Caves of Qud, ToME, Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead..... so I suppose that means I like the more RPG-ish ones with lots of depth but I appreciate a good game regardless of anything else.

Sorry this was so long and rambling..... I just woke up and I'm still halfway in dream-land. I am QUITE honored that Mr Dev dropped in, though. I'm not one to idol-worship and if I met an athlete or movie-star I'm not sure I'd really care- but I do have an appreciation of people who actually CREATE things..... moreso than people who throw a ball in a hoop or play make-believe in front of a camera.

[cranky corvid]

Opprinnelig skrevet av clarkeveritas:

Anyhow- the deal about Bionic Dues and the micromanagement involved.... I personally LOVED it.... tweaking my little death robots to make certain build types based on their base stats and main weapon. With the right parts and the right build you can turn bots that are not front-line death-dealers into absolute monsters.... especially if you find those missions to find the upgraded schematics to upgrade your bot's base stats.

My complaint mostly has to do with the enemy HP increasing almost every mission, which means the mission requirements for your weaponry also change, and since the mechanics make gear management like a big interconnected puzzle, that means optimal play involves retooling your builds very frequently. I actually liked the gear management in principle, it's only that the enemy progression mechanics interacted with it in a way that meant there was just an excessive amount of it.

[FaintPulse]

Of the recent batch of roguelikes, CDDA and CoQ really do stand out (I use the word "recent" loosely), but they stand out for their openness, which is a pretty exceptional feature in roguelikes. Cogmind isn't like that. It's a dungeon crawl...with a very interesting lore and world. And it isn't limiting either. Cogmind plays best played slow, in my experience. I carefully think about movement, I sit in place for minutes reviewing my available parts to best min-max for a situation. CDDA can feel like busy work sometimes...there's some drudgery to it. Cogmind feels urgent but thoughtful, like chess.

It can be tough, though. The "hunger clock" in Cogmind is your core, which is prone to damage that's difficult to repair without ascending to the next floor...sometimes my core's so low on health that I'm just running for my life to the stairs, like, forget exploring the rest of that level. There are difficulty settings to make things a bit easier, and you should feel free to use them. This is something to be experienced.

[clarkeveritas]

In some ways I feel weird calling CoQ and CDDA roguelikes.... well perhaps if you emphasize the "like" part. CDDA is like a giant open-world-RPG-sandbox..... it COULD be my favorite thing ever but it's just so unfocused. Give CDDA an overarching plot or long-term objectives to "beat" the game and I'd dive back into that game headfirst and never come up for air. That is where I prefer CoQ..... sure you can't scavenge spare parts until you build a minivan of death with spikes attached the front of it... but you have a goal. Sure you can ignore that goal but for some reason just having it there makes all the difference to me. CoQ is a game, CDDA is a post-apocolyptic sentient-mold-and-zombie-filled-bionic-supersoldier-including life simulator. And it's great- just there comes a point where I'm like "Ok, I have 49 different guns and enough ammo to blow up the moon, enough food and water to last me months- but what can I do but go from town to town meeting NPCs." Great, great fun but it made me discover that I do need some direction- even if I choose to ignore it.

One game that I'm not sure if it qualifies as a roguelike (maybe barely) but that I was really impressed with was Teleglitch. You get one life, it's hard as $#%, you scavenge and craft, you have to make it though 10 levels but have some freedom as to how to get through them. The graphics are primitive but they work MAGIC with those graphics. Cool story, too. It's kinda a top-down shooter..... or twin-stick shooter might be a better term.... but.... it's just one of those things that is better experienced than explained. RockPaperShotgun (the site the turned me onto CDDA) has a nice writeup on it in their "Have You Played It" section. A great section to find games to play if you are running dry on ideas.

[CHOO CHOO]

Teleglitch is great fun, agreed.

[Kolbex]

Yeah, love Teleglitch.

[[57th] AngryHatter]

Telengard!

[zxc]

I had trouble getting into CoQ. I've had a few goes but bounced off it several times esp. with UI. I eventually did play one game that got past the early game but my motivation petered out. I really like the muts and the world, but this is one roguelike which will take an above average amount of effort from me to properly get into and enjoy/master.

TOME is really easy to get into, especially since it is so similar to RPGs, but my problems with it mostly stem from how overwhelmingly bloated it is with stats and items, as well as how slow/long it is with 90% of the fights being trivial. My motivation to play it went down after my first win, even though there are higher difficulties and many classes. It's far more reliant on meta knowledge than Cogmind, e.g. knowing which skills/stats scale well through the game, branch order, boss fights and ambushes, the relative relevance and importance of most stats.

With Cogmind you can just pick up and win on one of your first games (we've seen it several times now especially with the most basic types of wins). However, winning is not the hardest thing to do in the game, by a long way.

[clarkeveritas]

Phrases like "winning is not the hardest thing to do in the game, by a long way" are one of the reason's I'm quite interested in this game. Picked it up last night- didn't really mess with it very much but I'm about to jump into it now and see what's going on.

[zxc]

Yeah, for instance I've got a little over 50 wins but I don't have 100% lore or gallery, nor have I beaten many of the challenge modes that exist. And there is a lot of variation with wins (currently several 'endings', lots of branches which are optional to enter, etc).

[clarkeveritas]

Spent the last 5 hours in it- reminds me of a more roguelike Teleglitch in a way in that it's somewhat (for me so far) a mad scramble to get ahead of the item curve. In typical "me" fashion I breezed through the game pretty far (at least I THINK) and then had much less luck in later runs..... I've always had crazy-good beginner's luck in most things I do, games included. In Teleglitch it was a scramble to get LOTS of healing items and ammo for the better weapons- in Cogmind so far I've been trying to stockpile backups of Generators, Propulsion, and a few weapons. Not sure if I prefer Energy Weapons or Kinetic..... I suppose that all depends on how your run is going. I had one where I had a bunch of generators running and was energy-weapon-blasting everything and one where I was using 3 gauss cannons with a rocket launcher. I already love the variety in..... everything.... and my builds have been adding a second generator slot, not messing with propulsion slots, and addings TONS of utility and a couple more weapon slots. There are just too many cool utility items and since I can't choose between them I've been adding more slots. I never read guides and I don't want to know lore, secrets, whatnot. Individual advice on builds is fine but if there is some "Magic Bullet" build that is what everyone goes for: I don't want to know. Actually I take that back- I wouldn't care if someone told me but I'm going to try to plow through using my own strategies and tactics. Like so far I've been more interesting in having lots of armor plating, targeting computers, weapon shielding, etc and skimping on everything else. Rather have 3-4 weapons that have a high chance to hit than a bunch that spray all over the place. I'm sure going for a "5 propulsion shots with flying-doohickies" could just zip by everyone- but since I'm enjoying exploring and seeing what's there and looking through datapads/terminals I'm thinking I won't go that route. Glad I like the game since I paid a little more than my average game- I'm the type that waits for Summer/Winter/Whatever Steam sales and pick off what I want at like 90% off. Didn't mind paying $18 for Cogmind, though.