Tokyo Jungle

Nah, I mean sometimes all the food from a certain region will just vanish and ok, yep, at that point in theory I can check the map and go where the food is...but that often can be further away than I can travel without dying.

I dunno, maybe I'm just rubbish at it but it's not a fun dynamic either way.

well there's also the presents you get. A bedwrap allows you to reup all toxicity/hunger/stamina/life, there are power ups as food etc
but yeah, i can see where this is not for everyone, sure.
I just don't think it's broken per se. it just is trying to usher you forward.
Just finished a 68 year lyceon run; killed my first couple of dinosaurs. A pterodon was hunting me for a minute, then divebombed and planted it's beak in the ground, missing me. While it tried to dig it's head out, my pack and I tore it to shreds. It then promptly turned poisonous in the toxic rain. I was one-shot killed by a rambling dionychus shortly thereafter.
love this game

I want to be doing that! Instead I'm a limping deer looking for a bit of cabbage.

PROTIP: don't play the herbivores

Yeah so the gameplay mechanic is v v confusing. Story mode, I play a chapter, it's pretty easy, I complete it, but the next one remains locked. Challenge mode, I play it, I do ok, I complete a bunch of challenges... but then I die and I'm right back at the beginning. No new animals unlocked, and the 'continue' option on the front screen remains mysteriously and confusingly unavailable. What am I doing wrong? Or am I just not surviving long enough? And Jim's right about the frustrating lack of food, and the enemies seem similarly fickle. The first time I had the challenge to clear out an area of alley cats I was overwhelmed by hundreds of them. The next time it was deserted. Combat is no less inconsistent, the tutorial makes it sound fairly clear when to dodge and when to strike but when it comes down to it the crucial icons appear infrequently, seemingly randomly, and so briefly as to be useless.

I think I could like this game well enough if I knew what I was meant to be doing.

okay, so let me address a few of those points:
you open story chapters by finding "USB sticks" within the survival game. I'm on the tenth story chapter. those USB things show up on your map and often require trucking into dangerous territory.

The only way to acquire new animals in the game is to either beat the boss animal in a specific territory or to claim a specific territory. In either case, you have to get through 20 years of life AND two generations before that option is available.

one of the toughest thing about this game is that it often gives you the option of opening a story chapter, beating the challenges you have in this time period or unlocking a new animal... but you have to pick one. it can be maddening.

you're right in saying that you can't carry animals from past generations on continue; the "continue" is only usable if you opt to save in one of the nests instead of mate. It took me forever to figure that one out.

for combat, you really should just dodge only if you get that blue fang mark or if there's a mega-attack (like the lion's claw) bearing down on you.

i TOTALLY get that this may not be every(any?)one's cup of tea; it's a crazy, weirdly organized game and terribly capricious. I'm completely into it.

basically, you need to struggle with it for several hours and then it opens up

Thx frx. 20 years! I think I was pretty close to that in my last game. Knowing how to save should definitely help.

it's not so much 20 years as it is that you've either accomplished or failed two challenges i think.

I never save TBH; a good playsession keeps me for about fifty minutes... one minute = one year of in-game time. I've had one run where i got all the challenges up to level B. That shit is hard! You have to plan ahead, beat the challenges fast and then head to where you're going to need to be for the next set before they even start.

http://www.gamefaqs.com/ps3/605579-tokyo-jungle/wiki/3-1-unlocking-animals-simplified-and-explained

what's crazy is that they don't even HINT at all that stuff! you gotta figure it out by playing!
This, I think, is why I like the game though: it's an abstract logic problem to be solved. Dark Souls did a lot of that.

subscribing to what everything's been said - came to this for the LOLs and after several horus of incredibly frustrating trial and error, I am now seriously addicted.
One thing though - what exactly is the incentive to breed? I'm always bummed to lose my "boss" status without any clear reward.

you can die from old age. there's also a status boost if you mate with average or prime females. But the biggest incentive is that you have other pack mates, effectively "extra lives" to transfer to if your avatar is killed or dies of hunger or toxic exposure.

Ok another question: is there any way to get rid of a "desperate" female (urgh...!) or to identify her status before she clings to you?

Desperate females have black hearts. Prime have sparkly hearts. Approach with caution, once you touch a mate, the rest disappear for that mating cycle.

Desperate females have black hearts

^new dn up for grabs right there

they also have fleas! best avoided unless you're desperate to reproduce, which is often a great motivator
so many life lessons

the beagle is awesome

I could use him to one-shot LIONS

then he got munched by an alligator ;_;

I'm a little frustrated just now; trying to up from the hyena to the cheetah but to do that you have to take the cheetah territory and those fuckers travel in packs of five and are crazy fast. I think i have to sneak around them because they're just destroying me when i take them on one-on-one with my pack.

kind of tempted to play herbivores for a while just to improve my fleeing ability/reflexes

I'm gonna win out all the carnivores then go back to that

there does seem to be some slight arbitrariness to which animals you can uses to rofflestomp others, like should a beagle actually be able to one-shot a lion? I mean obv the answer is YES AWESOME but it's still a little weird

the unlocks are steady but it is a repetitive game.

Feeling this atm. Best run is 40 years with a cat. Just unlocked the Beagle, am hoping that the steady progression of bigger animals to kill will keep my interest. It's gotta be more exciting taking down dinosaurs with a hyena than taking down chickens with a pomeranian, right?

How do the presents work? Do they instantly apply? I don't think so 'cause I got some pet food but my hunger didn't decrease. But I couldn't find an option in the menu for picked up loot.

Up on the d-pad for your item menu.

The unpredictability of who-kills-who really helps suck the fun out of this. Like, I should be able to see a hippo and think "hey, I bet my tosa could have a crack at that" but in practice it's not worth the risk of instadeath, the only way to play this game is ultra-conservatively and that's just not very enjoyable (yet for some reason I've still not given up on it, despite all my complaining). Still having problems with food just drying up too, it's not unusual to get a "head to shibuya suburbs" challenge then check the map only to find that it's 3 regions away, and all those regions are completely empty. At that point the game isn't even "complete these challenges carefully" but "decide which of these challenges are even feasible and if it's none, just tread water for 10 years and hope you get luckier when the next batch pop up".

Also, is it just me or do siblings have a lower top speed than your main character? It seems I either have to keep stopping and waiting for the rest of them to catch up, or else I can just press on and hope they catch up eventually (which is the option I'm usually forced into by hunger, and the outcome of that is usually "siblings go missing and don't come back").

The unpredictability of who-kills-who really helps suck the fun out of this

Can't you tell the likelihood of instakill by how fast you get a red circle? or am I making this up?

"siblings go missing and don't come back"

I've noticed them get trapped when I dashed up some stairs too quick for them to follow, but then they magically appeared by my side again when I got too far away from them.

Ah well, maybe mine got eaten. Anyway dishonoured is getting delivered in the morning so I guess I'll probably never come back to this. C&P DISAPPOINTMENT OF THE YEAR.

tbh this is the most fun I've had with a videogame all year aside from Pinball Arcade

the whole mindset of "find a rhythm and survive as long as you can" really appeals to my arcade side

yeah same here - such a relief not to have to deal with cutscenes

it's like, this is sort of what Diablo III was aiming for in terms of zen button mashing repetition but missed the mark on due to the stupid, stupid story

(not that anyone plays Diablo games for the story)

it is very very zen and enjoyable in that fashion. i like doing a three life run and walking away from it. I dunno, this is gonna be a top three game for me.

ok - still completely addicted to this and actually having dreams about it - BUT I am still stuck at fucking alley cat level. When do bosses appear? It seems I only recently got, after god how many hours, the option to beat the beagle boss. How long is it gonna take me to have the option to beat zebra or t-rex boss??
Also, is there no way to speed up the game over menus? I do not give a damn how well I rank againts the other nerds playing this game today.

I guess you're not fulfilling the prerequisites for the unlock challenge?

http://www.gamefaqs.com/ps3/605579-tokyo-jungle/wiki/3-1-unlocking-animals-simplified-and-explained

I keep on shooting myself in the foot everytime I get to around the 40 year mark. Everything is going hunky dory and then I see a horse or whatever and think "yeah I can take down a horse!" and then I die.

haha OTM

the worst is when it's dark and I see the red bite indicator come up just on the edge of my visible area, so I go for it and then it turns out to be a hippo

i cannot beat this fucking cheetah challenge!
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/605579-tokyo-jungle/64214819

sneaking around with L1

hold triangle to sacrifice a packmate

well i'm learning things here.

you know there's a digital manual with this game right? just go to the menu screen by hitting the PS button

does the digital manual tell you how to access the digital manual?

maybe they mentioned it in the tutorial and i missed it.

lol, that's true for every digital download game! They pretty much all have manuals.
tap the PS button and look at GUI drop down menu and push up or down till you see manual. It loads like a pdf on the screen.

well it took me like three years to realise the controller was wireless so ¯\(º_o)/¯

hahaha no wai

ps3 was 2nd hand so no manual there either. i did use to wonder why the cable was usb but it had a cable so i assumed it was wired! i guess i just never thought "hmmm i wonder if this wired controller will still work if i unplug it".

that's adorable

okay, beat the hyena stage and now have the cheetah and the bear.
They're fascinating and really change gameplay. The cheetah is a killing machine with almost endless stamina... and 15 hunger. So the catch is that you always have to be hunting and you can starve very quickly.
The bear is a tank; i finally took out a crocodile with one. The only problem is they're immensely slow and even the power hit tends not to connect. So you're constantly lumbering after small guys. You have to fight through the first twenty years just to get to a point where you can get animals that won't run on contact.

so jealous - still trolling the gutters as a beagle...

okay, just did a 101 year run as a polar bear. at the end, i was set upon by an entire pack of homo erectus (!!!!) who promptly beat me to death.
i think i'm going to do the last three story missions and then put this one in the ground. It's been fun!

guys, there's an aibo hidden in here

This is one of the games that supports remote play on the vita btw. So I play it in bed these days.

lol i REALLY fuckin loved this huh

yeah this game is sick. it is crazy this is the first time this idea has been made into a game, it is such a good idea for a game. and it is fun as fuck.

i really like the story so far. i have only unlocked the first two animals. Pomeranian's story is so great, a day has gone by with no food, he is wearing a sweater and is hungry af. amazing.

survival is cool. is there an end goal to these? like an area boss or something that you can unlock? i haven't managed to uncover an entire map yet. it is cool how they made the world so dangerous in so many ways, it really feels apocalyptic.

is there a way to escape radiation? it was raining and the radiation level was going up so i stayed indoors. yet the level kept going up and eventually i started losing life and died. is there a way to avoid this?

Ha surprised to read back and see how much I didn't love it at the time, I've only got fond memories of it. And hazy enough memories that I can't answer any of those questions Adam, sorry.

so im unlocking items of apparel here -- "Hip Hop Bandana", "Moustache Glasses", etc. are you telling me i can be the king of the jungle while wearing Groucho glasses?

it seems like herbivores last longer between meals, which makes you play in a different way. i like the strategizing you have to do to survive, the resource management and exploration go hand in hand with the gameplay. if you are full and come upon a few plants you will want to save food sources for later, unless you want to become a Boss, resulting in a stronger overall lineage.

its a choice you have to make. not many games do that. every play has these moment by moment choices thrown at you which could each effect your descendents. you see the butterfly effect play out in real time, over and over again. this is a game about material existence.

i feel like drinking the water is what leads to radiation poisoning and inevitable death. which makes complete sense, and is kind of like, holy shit video game, getting real for a minute here. damn.

"along with Pomeranian pride, an uncontrollable urge has awakened"

holy shit this game is dropping Devo references.

What platform are you playing this on? Did they re-release it for ps4?

I'm assuming PS3 - I don't think it's got a PS4 release, but it was free on PS+ for PS3 a couple of months back.

this game remains a main reason I want a ps3

playing on ps3. it's $19.99 from the Playstation Store

i would rebuy this on ps4 for sure

on sale today for £3.29 which was finally low enough for me to go in

Okay, there's only one way to get this on PS4, which is PSNOW; i finally have a reason to try that free week
https://www.playstation.com/en-us/explore/playstation-now/games/

nice, good time to try out NBA 2K18 also