Monaco - co-op stealing of stuff

Could have sworn there is a thread for this somewhere, but search came up empty.
Anyways, for those not aware of this game a short summary - Monaco is an IGF winner that will likely be released in March, after a long phase of teasing people with gameplay videos. The game is about robbing places in real-time, using specialized personnel and little to no violence. Co-op play is possible and definitely encouraged.
And it just became available for pre-order via the Humble guys.

Oops. Looking at the current gameplay vid there is a bit more shooting than I remembered. So, the game is about robbing places in real-time, using specialized personnel and some violence.

I love the top down aspect with LOS , anyone want to split a 4 pack?

:)

Sorry, too late for me. Hope to play with you guys once it is out, though.

arstechnica interviewed the lead developer.

Apparently you can pre-order this on steam now because FrankA just gifted me a copy, thanks Frank.

Actually, I got it directly from the game's site, which uses Humble Bundle to process the payment and then dishes out Steam keys!

Doesn't seem to be a way to do it on Steam yet.

Apparently a week until this is out. Currently Steam has it for 10% off. Anyone interested in playing some multi next week?

Totally. I think I can get the GF into it too, if they allow mixing of local co-op and online. Like Halo used to.

I'm in. If there's enough people it's probably worth another steam group.

Anyone want to do a 4 pack? I'd be in for 1 copy. I'll even host if there is enough interest.

I'd get in on a 4-pack.

Is there local co-op? suddenly I'm a lot more interested.

When I played it at PAX last year there was, so I assume it will be in the final release. Also the Steam page specifically lists "Local Co-op" as a feature.

yeah its single player and co-op!

I bought a 4 pack, so there is 1 spot left. If interested PM me, and then paypal me $10 via the "gift" option.
PMed XenoCrash who was interested earlier.

ALL GONE , XenoCrash, whyyyyy were you not online. :(

1.ME
2. Kildar (on the other forum)
3. Timsfker (on the other forum)
4. ME (for a friend who just asked me , lol)

Ok, this is a lot of fun so far.

I'll be around to play today on Steam - csl_ggoo is my handle.

Still fun. But surprisingly enough, multiplayer with random strangers still is not.

I'm still stuck in the tutorial levels, I guess, but any ideas on how big this game is?

edit: Looks like 21 maps.

Made a Steam Group. Public for now but will be going invite-only in a couple days to prevent spammers.

Where did you go Morberis? I was trying to invite you to game and all of a sudden you were offline on both Steam and Mumble.

Played 3 levels with the locksmith, quite a fun and lovely looking game!

Played the first 6 missions solo and then 3 missions co-op with Inigma and Phydeaux. It's great so far. Playing co-op is really fun, but I will definitely want to play through all the missions solo too. By the 5th mission I felt like I the mechanics, especially stealth, really clicked and I was able to make a plan and (almost) successfully carry it out. Looking forward to playing more online and off. Also, the level editor should be out soon too!

I like the premise of this game, but I find the graphics really difficult to parse. Half the time I don't understand what is going on.

Sorry, girl friend called. I'll be available again this afternoon/evening

Copy-pasting my thoughts from another forum:

Playing Monaco, ran a couple hours of jobs last night. Not sure what I think. The first time we ran it we were with someone I know from TSW and his friend, and they just kind of bum rushed through everything. For one thing, it's not how the game is meant to be played -- you're supposed to take some time and find ways to get through without setting off alarms or being noticed by guards. For another, the bum rush plan works a little too well -- it's a bit too easy to salvage most fuckups, even huge ones. It does that stealth game thing where once you lose the heat they go back to their normal patterns like nothing ever happened. I want fucking up to cost you. I played some more later with a crew more predisposed to play "properly" and it was more fun. My crew changed members a few times and so we repeated a bunch of heists, and even when you "know" how everything works, it's tense. This is definitely a game to choose your partners carefully.


On the game generally: it isn't quite what I expected. There's a plot, kind of, and the missions are in its service. I was expecting something closer to Payday, a bunch of disconnected heists. Not sure if the reality is better or worse.

I like the tactical depth afforded by the different options for crew members. Do you take the Mole, so you can make your own paths through walls? The Cleaner, so you can take out unsuspecting guards? I got really lucky and blind-picked the Locksmith on a mission where it was super useful. One complaint is that some classes have abilities that are useful but boring, like the Locksmith; the worst offender is the Lookout, who is so incredibly useful it seems insane not to take her, but whose ability is passive and not that exciting to use. Plus it forces you to move slowly a lot since your crew is depending on her ability to sense guards. Anyway, since a mission might play differently depending on who you have with you, replays can be pretty neat.

At first the game is a bit of sensory overload, and it's hard to tell what's going on. After you acclimate to the game's vocabulary it becomes much easier to play.

Yeah this is exactly what my reaction has been. I really want to like the game and I have been playing through the first few missions but I'm concerned that the level of abstraction and the very jarring nature of the LOS approach is going to make it hard to enjoy.

Right there with you guys. I admit that last night I was distracted by a friends kid who kept asking me what was going on and grabbing at the controller, but I was still having a very hard time trying to make sense of what I was looking at most of the time. The visuals are cool but imprecise.

I think that this is actually intended. The game is supposed to play either deliberately or like a chaotic cluster-fuck of a heist, but the rapid descent into chaos is a key element of the design and has been since its inception. The bum rush was always talked about as a viable approach.

Tonight we experimented with not running a Lookout. In some ways it's better, in some ways it's worse. You are losing a ton of information by not having one, but you can manage, and it allows you to have other, more active tools in your arsenal. Taking the Mole has served us very well in some levels; the Locksmith is also very useful, especially when you start encountering more complicated locks. Hacker is incredibly but randomly useful -- on more than one occasion I've had stuff get disabled in the nick of time.

So the scoring system doesn't punish bum rushes, or reward proper play? That would be the natural way to correct detrimental play in a game focused on chasing high scores, like Monaco.

Ooooh, do I ever love the visual style on this.

Bum rushing is fine for the first few levels, but later on it becomes an increasingly bad idea especially after armed guards and turrets are introduced.

I picked this up yesterday, it's pretty neat, but it does get a tad repetitive, especially if you replay a bunch of missions. That said, they do keep introducing new obstacles to keep it somewhat fresh. Hunting down all the coins is not my idea of a good time though. I think it would play best on a console though, with everyone on the couch yelling at each other about what to do.

After the first few missions,coordination becomes much much more important, although in the few games I played online today there always seems like a "get to the chopper" moment when everyone just needs to haul ass to the staircase or escape.I only played with a few pickups, but it would be nice if people would at least stick together. It reminds me a lot of the early days of Left 4 Dead coop where everyone would run everyway.

I love the pickpocket and the mole, someone needs to be the lookout for an effective cleaner.As I start encountering more double locks I could see the locksmith being more useful, but so far it seems like the least special class.

I'm a decent Cleaner.

Locksmith is useful not just for double locks, but also for opening safes under time pressure.

This strip perfectly encapsulates the Monaco experience I had when I played with one particular guy:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2013/04/26

He preferred the Pickpocket, but otherwise, identical.

I actually don't like to play with him because it makes the game way less fun to me. Sometimes a job goes bad and you have to cut and run, but I want to at least try to do it well.

Dufresne and I just went in on a four-pack of this, expecting we can offload the other two to interested parties. Any takers?

Played this a bit with Hawkeye Fierce today and this is probably my single biggest complaint with the game. There's WAY too much going on onscreen at any one time, especially with particle effects. (WHY would you have fire particles look identical to treasure?) I also often try to run somewhere that turns out to be impassable, usually on levels with multiple floors. Showing lower floors in the background when you're on higher floors doesn't help.

A couple of things have improved my experience with the game. First time through a level, I play really methodically and slowly, trying to recover every coin (usually with the lookout). This gives me a good feel for the layout of the level despite the confusing graphics. If I don't manage to get through without dying, then I play the level again, this time ignoring the coins and just trying to get the the end without dying. This nets me 3 achievements for the level (finish solo, collect coins, don't die) and gives me a good feel for whats going on. Then you're either ready to try the level in multiplayer, or go for a high score, or just move onto the next level.

I also prefer to play with the Xbox controller rather than keyboard and mouse.

Do you guys still have a copy? If so I'm interested!