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Super No Vacancy
Jul 26, 2012

I think the meta storyline in Assassin's Creed is the most interesting thing about it. :shobon:

Period pieces bore me. The whole corrupted-cyberworld aesthetic is what hooks me in. And the conspiracy stuff.

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Stare-Out
Mar 11, 2010

Well, at least we can agree that both aspects of AC compliment each other extremely poorly and awkwardly. :hf:

Dvlos
Aug 26, 2003

"I came here to argue with you about a freaking television show!"
Playing through Goldeneye: Reloaded and Resistance 3 with a sharpshooter is kind of um, interesting, kind of a semi-passive little workout trying to swivel back and forth playing. I'm surprised how much I'm enjoying Goldeneye though.

BlindNinja
Sep 2, 2004

lurking in the shadows

Dadjacket posted:

I mean the genre didnt die, it just moved to handhelds because they're cheaper to develop for and have a bigger install base in Japan, where the games actually make money.

e: dudes I've been burned on Something Awful Games Subforum recs of Tales games before. Why should I trust that Graces F is great when Vesperia definitely wasn't? The dog didn't even smoke.

It's the only Tales game I've played, but it reminds me of Star Ocean Second Story in so many ways. Combat is a blast, and you can even hand your friend(s) a controller for some couch co-op.

ChetReckless
Sep 16, 2009

That is precisely the thing to do, Avatar.

Shalinor posted:

For those that don't follow the PS Store thread, this month's NA PS+ freebies are actually really good: Spec Ops, Disgaea 3 (PSP), The Cave, and Joe Danger 2: The Movie.

... and anyone with a Vita, I think even non-PS+ people: Sony is giving you a bunch of free games right now (Wild Arms PS1, Patapon PSP, Piyotama PSP, Patchwork Heroes PSP)

I never thought I would, but I'm starting to seriously consider picking up a Vita. Just knowing that starting Day One I'll already have a big library of games (including Disgaea 3, woo) to play with is really tempting. Then there's all that PS4 stuff...

Shalinor
Jun 10, 2002

Can I buy you a rootbeer?

ChetReckless posted:

I never thought I would, but I'm starting to seriously consider picking up a Vita. Just knowing that starting Day One I'll already have a big library of games (including Disgaea 3, woo) to play with is really tempting. Then there's all that PS4 stuff...
Yeah. Between their stellar treatment of indie devs, and some of the games, the PS4 hookup... and Gravity Rush, which I still really want to try - they may tempt me into a portable purchase.

The only reason I got an Apple device was as a potential dev device, and that turned me into a tablet gamer, so who knows. Maybe I'd dig a Vita.

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

I'm waiting for the price drop honestly. Japan got one and even if it isn't in the works yet it feels inevitable. The Vita is doing a good job of being tempting with PSN+ but there are no must-haves and the longer I wait the more games I get for free that I might otherwise be tempted to buy.

Liar Lyre
Jun 3, 2011

Here to deliver
~Bad Opinions~

ImpAtom posted:

I'm waiting for the price drop honestly. Japan got one and even if it isn't in the works yet it feels inevitable. The Vita is doing a good job of being tempting with PSN+ but there are no must-haves and the longer I wait the more games I get for free that I might otherwise be tempted to buy.

I'd just wait for a sale. It'll probably be a nice low price at Black Friday.

Harlock
Jan 15, 2006

Tap "A" to drink!!!

Last black friday was a white Vita with rear end Creed, Playstation All-Stars, 4 GB memory card, and I think 3 months of PSN+ for $180. That was a pretty great deal.

Aphrodite
Jun 27, 2006

Spermando posted:

It doesn't matter if it has more assassinations than AC1 if they're like the no-context, two-minute affairs in Brotherhood (go to this waypoint, stab a dude who you haven't heard of before, watch Ezio lurch over them and say "rest in peace", move on the next target).

In Brotherhood they're all the multiplayer avatars, so they actually have backstory and stuff. It's just in the MP.

Renoistic
Jul 27, 2007

Everyone has a
guardian angel.
I loved the chase after every assassination in AC1, where the bells would ring and the whole god-drat town would be after you.

Night Shade
Jan 13, 2013

Old School
I picked up Sleeping Dogs off ps+ on the weekend. I'm having a blast playing it, it's refreshing having a GTA-style open world game that doesn't just focus on gunplay after the first five minutes. Plus when you do get guns in missions, the bullet-time-cover-vault mechanic makes you feel like a total badass.

Electromax
May 6, 2007
While FF7 may be the first game I was obsessed with, Wild Arms on PS1 will always have a special place in my heart that FF7 doesn't. Snatch that game up if you can stomach old JRPGs and you have a Vita.

Something about the vibe of that game - the chill frontier motif and the music with the whistling and the zelda-lite dungeons were great, I feel like that game could be legendary if it had come out on SNES with 2D fight graphics. It pretty quickly fell behind after FF7 hit though, it seems. Only 3 protagonists who are partied up pretty much the entire game, but similar to FF6 in some ways. It had optional super-bosses that you reached in a lot of different ways, an arena/colosseum, several different map vehicles including a giant walking robot, a not-terrible story that didn't delve into too much JRPG teen angst stuff, and some of it got pretty tough. It ain't pretty in battle anymore though.

Most of that holds for Wild Arms 2 also.

Overlord K
Jun 14, 2009
I'm going to just be clever and quietly put all the free Vita games from PS+ in my shopping cart, then someday when a Vita game comes out that is actually a must have for me, or there's just a price drop, I might cave for one.

For now though I'll just keep building up the digital Vita library that I can't actually play yet. :v:

BrownThunder
Oct 26, 2005

EXTEND BEN!
Forever and ever and ever

Cowboom has a bunch of beat the hell up Vitas right now for $120 if that's what it takes for the dog to bite.

http://www.cowboom.com/product/1150385

That Fucking Sned
Oct 28, 2010

Overlord K posted:

I'm going to just be clever and quietly put all the free Vita games from PS+ in my shopping cart, then someday when a Vita game comes out that is actually a must have for me, or there's just a price drop, I might cave for one.

For now though I'll just keep building up the digital Vita library that I can't actually play yet. :v:

That's how they got me to buy one as well. I had so many free games from PS+ and Cross Buy that I've barely spent anything on my Vita since I bought it.

MUFFlNS
Mar 7, 2004

Apparently pre-production on Dead Space 4 has been canned and EA has shut down Visceral Montreal after the game performed below expectations and first week sales were much lower than Dead Space 2. That's another franchise that's died thanks to publisher greed alienating their fanbase.

quote:

As well as discussing Dead Space 4's alleged cancellation, our source also gave us further insight into Dead Space 3's development, telling us that the game was almost cancelled partway through its development, and saw continuous cuts made to its budget throughout production.

Weapon-specific ammo was allegedly switched for generic ammo late in development, too, as a method for shoehorning in the game's controversial micro-transactions.

EA also advised Visceral that Dead Space 3 needed to appeal to a wider audience than the series' previous two titles, our source added, and the studio was reportedly told to focus on action over horror in an effort to make the game feel more like BioWare's Mass Effect.

Bravo EA :allears:

Stare-Out
Mar 11, 2010

I'm so glad there's only one IP EA has that I'm interested in. Still, I'm now pretty nervous if they're out to gently caress up Mirror's Edge 2. :ohdear: But yeah, that's cartoonishly dumb/evil corporate behavior.

Cardboard Fox
Feb 8, 2009

[Tentatively Excited]
That's not really surprising. Didn't they say a month ago that Dead Space needs to sell 4 million to continue as a franchise or something?

Maybe EA is starting to look at Battlefield as their only metric. "If it doesn't sell at least 10 million, it's not worth the investment".

axelblaze
Oct 18, 2006

Congratulations The One Concern!!!

You're addicted to Ivory!!

and...oh my...could you please...
oh my...

Grimey Drawer
EA really seemed like they had maybe changed their ways and had become pretty cool the first half of this console generation.

Nope, just as bad as ever. It's like someone hypnotized them for a few years and then when they came to they had all these new IPs that weren't making Madden money so they went to work trying to make all of them cash cows and stripping everything that made them interesting out of them.

MUFFlNS
Mar 7, 2004

Meanwhile the biggest and best-selling franchises in the industry continue to be the ones that stick with what works and cater to their fans :aaa:

axelblaze
Oct 18, 2006

Congratulations The One Concern!!!

You're addicted to Ivory!!

and...oh my...could you please...
oh my...

Grimey Drawer

MUFFlNS posted:

Meanwhile the biggest and best-selling franchises in the industry continue to be the ones that stick with what works and cater to their fans :aaa:

Which is why EA is making their franchises as much like those games as possible! :downs:

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

MUFFlNS posted:

Meanwhile the biggest and best-selling franchises in the industry continue to be the ones that stick with what works and cater to their fans :aaa:

No, man, you don't get it. Everything needs to be melded into a homogeneous sludge comprised of what is popular in media and in other games. That is how you get new fans.

I said come in!
Jun 22, 2004

MUFFlNS posted:

Apparently pre-production on Dead Space 4 has been canned and EA has shut down Visceral Montreal after the game performed below expectations and first week sales were much lower than Dead Space 2. That's another franchise that's died thanks to publisher greed alienating their fanbase.


Bravo EA :allears:

EA was doing so good back in 2009 through like 2011. Now they are back to being a lovely publisher/developer. Their next franchise that they decided to ruin too is SimCity. I don't know anyone at all that is interested in that game, it just looks really bad. My childhood. :(

Space Kablooey
May 6, 2009


Signing up with EA for publishing is almost like selling your soul to the devil at this point. Yet, developers still do it. :sigh:


I know the answer is :10bux:, but still. It's almost like there's no alternative or anything.

Space Kablooey fucked around with this message at 14:46 on Mar 5, 2013

That Fucking Sned
Oct 28, 2010

MUFFlNS posted:

Meanwhile the biggest and best-selling franchises in the industry continue to be the ones that stick with what works and cater to their fans :aaa:

I don't understand why EA wants Dead Space to compete with Mass Effect. They own Mass Effect, so why do they want another series which is exactly the same, but without the RPG elements? If they stuck with the original game's design, they'd have an excellent cross between Resident Evil 4 and Alien, rather than Stompy McCussFace's Guide to the Galaxy.

MUFFlNS
Mar 7, 2004

I honestly had to do a double take when I saw the Dead Space 3 gameplay reveal at E3 since I thought I was watching footage of a new Gears of War game. Weren't we talking the other day about the new game from Insomniac being changed into some generic gritty cover shooter thanks to EA's focus testing or whatever? What a mess.

That loving Sned posted:

I don't understand why EA wants Dead Space to compete with Mass Effect. They own Mass Effect, so why do they want another series which is exactly the same, but without the RPG elements? If they stuck with the original game's design, they'd have an excellent cross between Resident Evil 4 and Alien, rather than Stompy McCussFace's Guide to the Galaxy.

That's a big part of why I love the original Dead Space and will always consider it to be a classic, it was the best Alien game that's ever been made :3:

Harlock
Jan 15, 2006

Tap "A" to drink!!!

I said come in! posted:

EA was doing so good back in 2009 through like 2011. Now they are back to being a lovely publisher/developer. Their next franchise that they decided to ruin too is SimCity. I don't know anyone at all that is interested in that game, it just looks really bad. My childhood. :(
If you can get over the controversial always online DRM/gameplay, the game is pretty fantastic.

Dead Space being dead as an IP is a real bummer. The first game was such a victory for survival horror. You could see the writing on the wall when it did gangbusters that it would slowly begin to change by the time Dead Space 2 information leaked out. By the time 3 came out, it was too late. EA, for whatever reason, squeezed too much blood from that stone and changed it significantly.

The guy from EA who stated it must sell x amount of copies to even be viable in the future was the inscription on the tombstone before the game was even released. So I suppose not real surprising.

I said come in!
Jun 22, 2004

Harlock posted:

If you can get over the controversial always online DRM/gameplay, the game is pretty fantastic.

Sadly I cannot, i've played a couple PC games with an always online DRM system, and got burned pretty hard by all of them. I've sworn to never play them again. It doesn't matter how stable your internet connection is, they never ever work correctly.

Dross
Sep 26, 2006

Every night he puts his hot dogs in the trees so the pigeons can't get them.

I said come in! posted:

Sadly I cannot, i've played a couple PC games with an always online DRM system, and got burned pretty hard by all of them. I've sworn to never play them again. It doesn't matter how stable your internet connection is, they never ever work correctly.

I played all the way through Starcraft 2: WOL's single player campaign when it was brand new while tethered to a phone with one to two bars of signal, so YMMV.

Temascos
Sep 3, 2011

Why on earth did EA think they needed to sell 5 million copies? Dead Space ain't exactly a Fifa in terms of sales, if they weren't confident about its budget then surely they could lower it and sell to a niche audience?

Visceral already did the engine by the time DS1 was released, have them use that and say "Go nuts, do whatever in order to make the story good and deliever value to customers" but instead they pull some mass market crap and it blows up in their faces. Idiots. EA was doing so well too, but now they've fallen back into stupid territory.

FedEx Mercury
Jan 7, 2004

Me bad posting? That's unpossible!
Lipstick Apathy
I thought Dead Space was fun but it has nothing on the atmosphere and horror of Alien. Mostly because they never bothered hiding the monsters, they're just always out in the open flailing their meaty tentacles at you.

I said come in!
Jun 22, 2004

I always felt like Dead Space 1 was kinda the true spiritual successor to System Shock 2.

Harlock
Jan 15, 2006

Tap "A" to drink!!!

EA is hemorrhaging money pretty badly. They're out to trim pretty much any studio/game that doesn't meet certain sales expectations. They pump money into these bloated advertisement campaigns on games with already inflated budgets and expect it to pay off. The AAA games model is not really sustainable as it stands. There's nothing wrong with niche games that sell a little but might present a profit because of a lower budget, but that's not EA's MO.

thefncrow
Mar 14, 2001

That loving Sned posted:

I don't understand why EA wants Dead Space to compete with Mass Effect. They own Mass Effect, so why do they want another series which is exactly the same, but without the RPG elements?

Because if that happens, they can develop Mass Effect and Dead Space games on 2 year dev cycles releasing in alternating years, ensuring that they have one of those games ready to go every year.

Think "Treyarch CoD" and "Infinity Ward CoD", although that's broken down now.

Neddy Seagoon
Oct 12, 2012

"Hi Everybody!"
To be fair though, Dead Space 3 really did need to lean more towards action than survival horror, simply because there's nothing for Isaac (and consequently, the player) to be scared of anymore. He knows the Necromorphs, how they work and how to kill them. Dead Space has the aspect knowing nothing about what happened and exploring the ship to solve the mystery. Dead Space 2 has him helpless and escaping from a whole lot of people who want him dead or captive with no idea who to trust whilst he's slowly going insane. DS3 has him actively choosing to go on the mission in question, sane and ready for action with full knowledge of what he's likely to face. Combat-wise, the dev team really did put it best as to why there are human enemies as well as Necromorphs - it's the big final clash with the Unitologists. The crouching mechanics and whatnot aren't elegant, but they're decent enough to work.

Universal Ammo is a little bit of a cop-out, but it still kinda fits with the resource-strapped SCAF and how the weapon crafting mechanics work. It keeps the full array of parts viable and interesting to reward experimentation, rather than making some types wholly ignored due to scarcity of certain ammo types. Losing Dead Space 4 is sad, but at least it got a decent cap on the trilogy rather then getting the franchise killed off before the overarching story was done.

(For the record, I loved Dead Space, but DS2 was my favourite overall out of all three)

Ineffiable
Feb 16, 2008

Some say that his politics are terrifying, and that he once punched a horse to the ground...


Neddy Seagoon posted:

To be fair though, Dead Space 3 really did need to lean more towards action than survival horror, simply because there's nothing for Isaac (and consequently, the player) to be scared of anymore. He knows the Necromorphs, how they work and how to kill them. Dead Space has the aspect knowing nothing about what happened and exploring the ship to solve the mystery. Dead Space 2 has him helpless and escaping from a whole lot of people who want him dead or captive with no idea who to trust whilst he's slowly going insane. DS3 has him actively choosing to go on the mission in question, sane and ready for action with full knowledge of what he's likely to face. Combat-wise, the dev team really did put it best as to why there are human enemies as well as Necromorphs - it's the big final clash with the Unitologists. The crouching mechanics and whatnot aren't elegant, but they're decent enough to work.

Universal Ammo is a little bit of a cop-out, but it still kinda fits with the resource-strapped SCAF and how the weapon crafting mechanics work. It keeps the full array of parts viable and interesting to reward experimentation, rather than making some types wholly ignored due to scarcity of certain ammo types. Losing Dead Space 4 is sad, but at least it got a decent cap on the trilogy rather then getting the franchise killed off before the overarching story was done.

(For the record, I loved Dead Space, but DS2 was my favourite overall out of all three)

At this point, if we were getting a DS4, it should be a reboot or set in some colony that slowly gets infected and you play as a new guy.

Just give me a spinoff with a Mars base, that starts out with you doing routine mining, and slowly over time there are more infections, more things going wrong, and the climax would be just making a way to escape.

Make it slightly metroidvania, open world and if you need to put in co-op/multiplayer, make it work like Journey. Bonus points if friendly fire was on, and there are aliens that can infect and mimic people, so you might not know if that guy that just walked in the room is on your side or not. And he's thinking the same thing.

Neddy Seagoon
Oct 12, 2012

"Hi Everybody!"

Ineffiable posted:

At this point, if we were getting a DS4, it should be a reboot or set in some colony that slowly gets infected and you play as a new guy.

Just give me a spinoff with a Mars base, that starts out with you doing routine mining, and slowly over time there are more infections, more things going wrong, and the climax would be just making a way to escape.

This already exists and it's called Dead Space: Extraction :ssh:.

Granted, it's a rail shooter, but god drat if the story isn't way better than it has any right to be.

MUFFlNS
Mar 7, 2004

Harlock posted:

EA is hemorrhaging money pretty badly.

Aren't most companies in this industry though?

Not to be all doom and gloom, but I saw something earlier about Sony selling off another huge chunk of shares it had in some company (they've been doing this with others too, as well as selling anything else that they can like that building in New York) and it looks like Nintendo is really struggling to sell the Wii U. Comparatively Microsoft has a lot of cash but their entertainment division is also hemorrhaging money like crazy, and we have a lot of publishers in financial trouble with studios throughout the industry closing constantly.

I kinda wonder if by the time the next console generation ends, the industry will be quite different and some notable companies will have gone under? I know there have been mumblings of another video game crash and while I don't think it will be quite that bad, I have a feeling things might be shaken up a bit.

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Sprat Sandwich
Mar 20, 2009

drat can I just say PSN+ is great. I am currently (very slowly) installing Vanquish and downloading 5 other games. This loving owns.

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