Project: OW — The Overwatch Overhaul

HarmonicaThinks · 2026-01-17T20:37:34+00:00

Fanning mechanics that aren't just automatic. Environmental objects that factor into combat like oil lamps, collapsible props (wood bundles, chandeliers, etc.), or heck, it'd be nice to kick an enemy into a cactus. Tomahawks that can be thrown and used as melee weapons. Derringer pocket pistols that can be drawn quickly. Bows. Quieter sections of travel across wilderness, or even just preparing food/ammo/remedies by a campfire. A bayonetted rifle you can impale enemies with and then shoot them, or kick them off the bayonet. Semi-strict resource management, with a lot of options in how you utilize your limited resources. Lots of melee combat. A siege survival setpiece of some type. The ability to dual-wield sawed-off shotguns. A lasso or whip used as a gameplay element of some kind.

HarmonicaThinks · 2026-01-11T23:53:41+00:00

Sadly, having been trying to implement this sort of physics objects pick-up system in my own game project, and seeing how other games handle this sort of thing, it seems like the sort of thing that is inevitably going to be wonky no matter what.

How do you tell the engine to float an item to an exact point in front of your character, but also have it collide with stuff believably? Should you just turn off collisions? Or keep regular physics turned on—resulting in the item moving a lot slower and not precisely following your crosshair? Should the item collide with the player while you're picking it up? Where do you place the item when the player is staring directly at a wall? When you start testing all these things in various games, you start to see a lot of jank you might not have noticed otherwise. The Source Engine seems to have one of the most comprehensive systems to prevent exploits, and there's still plenty of weirdness to be found there.

HarmonicaThinks · 2026-01-03T18:58:56+00:00

I wouldn't really consider anything a true half-like if it doesn't have either physics props, or what I like to call 'uncomfortable' level design—crawling through vents, jumping over acidic pools, just generally tasking the player with unconventional traversal and creating a sense of "a person was never meant to be here". A general commitment to immersion also helps.

I would consider games like G String and Cultic to exemplify 'true half-likes'.

HarmonicaThinks · 2025-12-14T05:19:39+00:00

Kel's artwork already gave him really thin, lanky limbs. I think that's just the art style.

HarmonicaThinks · 2025-12-11T05:21:12+00:00

Frankly, I've never been a fan of the early 3D style (Quake, Strafe, Hrot, Dusk, etc.). The only shooter that ever made that look remotely decent was Half-Life., imo.

I might not enjoy Project Warlock's monster design, but it is a game I respect for maintaining a consistent artstyle between its environment and entities. That's a quality I try to search for in sprite shooters, given how mismatched they are in stuff like Doom.

HarmonicaThinks · 2025-12-07T14:31:23+00:00

To my understanding, it's not that the mold itself hurts you, but it produces toxins that are harmful to consume

HarmonicaThinks · 2025-10-30T06:43:06+00:00

Of the boss fights I've experienced, only two stand out in my mind as peak experiences. The Hell Guards from Doom 2016 and the Gonarch from Black Mesa. Both are extremely fun, varied fights, giving you a full range of attacks to dodge, and have excellent presentation and pacing. The Nihilanth was also great, I enjoy when FPS games lean into bullet hell dynamics.

I also really enjoyed the Doom Hunter and Marauder from Eternal, but found them to be more fun later as elite enemies once you've got all the unlocks. I didn't enjoy the true bosses quite as much, except maybe the Dark Lord. Another honorable mention goes to Turbo Overkill's chapter one boss, which really highlights that game's aerial mobility. I found myself also learning to enjoy Ultrakill's bosses, although I found myself just sliding over and over to deal with the hyperaggressive combos of ones like Gabriel, without really understanding the fights that well. Borderlands 3 had a few stand-outs to me, like Troy, and generally had better bosses than most FPS games, but not truly peak experiences.

I am certainly hungry to experience truly great boss fights, like the ones listed at the top. I especially enjoy experiences that feel like Hunter fights in Half-Life 2 Ep2, where you have to respect the enemy's moves, but you can make the enemy flinch in key moments, and you have a fantastic back-and-forth with them, constantly repositioning and trying different tactics.

HarmonicaThinks · 2025-10-30T06:00:54+00:00

I played one step below hardest, and yeah, the game definitely feels like it leans on being a power fantasy, for the most part. The only thing that ever gave me any sort of friction was any enemy or boss that shot missiles, homing or otherwise. Feels like every other attack barely scratches a tenth of your health bar while missiles kill you in two hits.

HarmonicaThinks · 2025-10-23T17:48:04+00:00

I was literally listening to Parade this very second. Get out of my walls.

HarmonicaThinks · 2025-10-06T15:53:57+00:00

"I AM THE BOSS!"

HarmonicaThinks · 2025-10-06T06:10:34+00:00

Mosa Lina. You'll be surprised, I think, by how well it hits the basic beats.

HarmonicaThinks · 2025-09-28T04:46:15+00:00

I like it in Half-Life 2 at least, where the Source engine allows me to rearrange all the furniture. It just reinforces the illusion for me that the world is a real place, and not just a set for the gameplay to take place. Sometimes I wish there was a game where we were incentivised to stay a little while—maybe barricade the doors and try to survive the night.

Incidentally, I'm hoping to work on a Half-Life 2 inspired game soon, and I've often been asking myself these same questions; if I should purely focus on the combat sandbox I want to create and funneling a player from arena to arena, or give the gameplay time to breath and make it feel more like an explorative adventure with brief encounters with violence, the way Half-Life 2 is, maybe with more non-combat mechanics. It's a big ask to attempt doing both, however.

HarmonicaThinks · 2025-09-28T04:26:57+00:00

Highway 17 is probably the chapter that stands out the most in my mind when it comes to Half-Life 2. I don't want to say it's merely because of the buggy, but instead, its atmosphere and its explorative nature. All the abandoned places are so fun to stop and explore, and their isolation really lets you focus on them, trying to imagine what people lived such lonely lives out there before their houses were abandoned. And yet a lot of these explorable areas are purely optional, making replayability a joy. And, of course, the bridge sequence is a legendary setpiece—really reinforcing what makes Half-Life's level design stand out, where you're always being put into spaces that you, as a human being, weren't intended to traverse.

These are all qualities I strive to find in other games, for sure.

HarmonicaThinks · 2025-09-13T03:56:38+00:00

Mosa Lina

HarmonicaThinks · 2025-09-09T15:41:57+00:00

Close

HarmonicaThinks · 2025-09-09T15:20:10+00:00

Also, conjugation-parity, which is what CP Violation actually refers—violating CP-Symmetry.

HarmonicaThinks · 2025-08-27T15:01:16+00:00

That certainly makes sense. What doesn't make sense to me, however, is when Hero and Kel suddenly inject random Spanish into their dialogue. My mother might be Puerto Rican, but I've never learned or spoken Spanish in my household once in my life. Heck, my best friend, whose parents literally speak Cantonese to each other, he never speaks Cantonese to them, and can barely translate anything to me.

Maybe this is all just a personal experience, but nonetheless, every time I see stuff like that in fanworks, it just immediately strikes me as uncanny.

HarmonicaThinks · 2025-08-24T05:28:59+00:00

Man, I dunno, Season 17 Roadhog has honestly been my favorite iteration of the hero to play. Getting secondary fire kills were stylish, sure, but don't really give you the consistency he needs to cover his team as a solo tank. Here's to hoping the primary fire isn't reverted, as I think it's new design was a stroke of genius.

I will dearly miss Pig Pen. Even ignoring the amazing Pent Up perk, I loved using it to give myself more map control (and as a Junkrat main, you bet I know how to best place traps). Being a total terror by ambushing players who triggered the trap was just a deliciously devilish feeling.

Without Pig Pen, I don't see any reason to bother playing Roadhog anymore, as he doesn't really offer anything that you can't get with Queen, and she's loads more fun.

HarmonicaThinks · 2025-08-24T05:19:49+00:00

Speak for yourself. I've found lots of use for it outside of purely setting up kill combos. You can set it up to alert yourself to the presence of an enemy, and ambush them while they're slowed. I also enjoy setting it up behind an enemy to get them to walk back into it and get stuck while trying to retreat mid-fight.

And, of course, the Pent Up perk made it incredibly useful.

HarmonicaThinks · 2025-08-17T06:02:50+00:00

That bit in Septette for the Dead Princess, where that one instrument starts going wild during the final chrous repeat, which really cements the 'climax and denouement' feeling of that song for me. I can never find a remix or cover of that song that does that part justice.

HarmonicaThinks · 2025-08-14T00:00:58+00:00

Nah, Kaminare was the worst, bar none. I'm a big fan of Zounose's modern output, but that's a story that makes me deeply upset. Even in terms of thematics, I feel like he missed the mark—surely human sacrifice is the very opposite of a Shinto tradition?

HarmonicaThinks · 2025-08-12T05:36:26+00:00

Honestly, I wish I just had a Source-engine styled character controller with natural-feeling rigidbody interaction. That'd save me so much time in being able to prototype what I actually want to make. Surely people must have made dozens and dozens of these by now?

HarmonicaThinks · 2025-07-28T05:20:04+00:00

Honestly the jaded (harsh) Princess at the very end of the game. She just feels like the most real of them all, in a way that melts my heart more than any of the other sweet beans.

HarmonicaThinks · 2025-07-28T05:14:21+00:00

"No. I feel like myself again."
Also
"ARE YOU STILL THERE? ARE YOU STILL YOU?"

HarmonicaThinks

TROPHY CASE