Good game, but lacks some clarity.

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Ithiloneth, Dec 3, 2014.

  1. Ithiloneth

    Ithiloneth Intergalactic Tourist

    Hi!

    So I have been playing quite a bit of Halfway over the past 1-2 days and I absolutely love it. However there are a few things that I feel need more introduction or explaning as I still don't fully understand them. Note that I may have been a bit to hasty with the tutorial as I restarted the game quite a few times just wanted it over with.

    First of, I did not know that you can only use 5 stims/character. And even if I did, I had no idea the stims would have "MK II" versions. This can make the gamer feel a bit tricked and unless the surprise and possibly broken character you can get from this is what you want then that is all good and well. Maybe the team didn't actually know about it and they discovered it once someone did use too many?

    And then there are gun types. Which gun has what accuracy curve? What up with some guns using more than one shot but only dealing, seemingly anyway, the dmg of the first? And if this is true, why the remarkable relative power of the sniper rifles? My entire squad, well not 13, is rocking these things.

    I have managed to find solutions tosome of these problems in my own way. I found the balance file in the lists folder and added it to my mod. There I set the max stim use to 100.

    I read online about the weapons hit chances and understood the difference between the weapons hit rates. Only thing I really don't understand is the fire rate of some weapons, is it just because the animation has X shots?

    Either way, thank you for making a great game and I hope to see more Halfway content, sequel? , DLC? Around the corner.
     
    • Lomax

      Lomax Space Hobo

      Totally agree; both in that it's a great game and that it's lacking in clarity. The game brutally forces you to carefully consider every move, every step, every piece of equipment, every single bullet - yet it fails to provide sufficient level of detail in some areas, making an informed decision impossible. Like you I got some distance into the game before realising that a) after five stims have been applied to any one character, any subsequent ones will have no net effect and b) that the stims come in different strengths. I now have a team of eight where no-one is particularly good in any role, and many have used all five stim slots. I've also had trouble pairing the correct weapon with the correct character; not knowing how well a particular gun "aims" makes this more difficult than it needs to be. And I agree with what you say about sniper guns and tactics being superior; I can't seem to make any good use of melee/tank type characters, except in those rare occasions where you can use one to literally block the enemy's path. This is partly as you cannot fire even a close quarters weapon at an enemy that is immediately adjacent; you're forced to waste a precious AP to move away before firing, or you're limited to punching them on the nose. Consequently my squads always consist predominantly of sniper types, plus one or two guys with assault rifles.

      So much I like about the game though, in its best parts it comes close to X-COM Terror from the Deep in atmosphere and tension - though that masterpiece remains on the whole unsurpassed (and by some distance too). I love the soundtrack, which despite being on repeat for hours on end never becomes annoying! More than anything I like how hard it is; you're forced to think before you act and tactical mistakes are rarely forgiven - a rare quality in a game in the instant gratification FPS killfest era...
       
      • Seminus

        Seminus Halfway Developer Developer

        Hey everyone,
        Thanks for the feedback and we are glad that you liked it that much, that you sat down and wrote some very useful feedback.
        We do agree, that the game lacks some information and is not always 100% easy to understand.
        We had some discussion during development about how much information we are going to present to the player and how much he needs to find out by himself. I agree that some stuff like the stim pack limit could have been presented a bit smarter then we have done it.
        I will add it to the list of things we will add with a future patch.

        Thanks again for playing the game and giving us some feedback :)
         
        • Ithiloneth

          Ithiloneth Intergalactic Tourist

          Actually you *can* fire close range weapons at enemies who are directly adjacent. Simply Target them and right click to swap between melee and firing mode ;)
           
          • Mithrian

            Mithrian Orbital Explorer

            Hey!

            I bought this game on GOG and just finished playing it. First impressions were that this is a great game, and I wasn't disappointed. I loved the pixel art and the general graphics style, but I have some comments to share.

            The whole playthrough started off interesting because of those random hyperspace jumps that make you wonder what the hell is going on. Most of the time some new enemies would appear during the jump. The idea is nice, but it gets a bit boring after a while because it seems to be the only way new enemies can appear. It's always the same.

            The levels are geometrically well designed apart from some random garbage preventing you from taking cover at certain locations (usually behind pillars). But honestly I had expected that the level maps would be a lot bigger. They're simply so very tiny, and certain missions are even split into several smaller levels. It's also strange because during some of these missions your team will fall back to the main base instead of continuing to the next area. Not that I'm complaining, just... unusual game design.

            I like that the ship overview map offered some optional missions, and the game could (IMHO) use a few more of these. The game appears a bit rushed at the end when your team skips a large portion of the ship to reach the bridge. The ending was rather interesting when I got a nice surprise at the final mission where I was teleported to that strange crystal dimension for a boss fight.

            Finally, the last thing that bothered me was the accuraty of some weapons at close range. I hated how my characters would often miss enemies that were only one, two or three blocks away, despite their accuracy being very high. You're not supposed to miss at point-blank range, right?


            My 2c... thanks for a great game.
             

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