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Action Tortoise posted:For the first and third part of RDR. Mexico was pretty bleak at the end. Yeah, but it took itself seriously. The situation in Mexico was treated by all of the characters as a really serious and lovely thing to have happened, whereas the same situation in GTA would have been the butt of endless, obvious, fairly unfunny and grating jokes that a high-school English student might find nuanced. Basically, the themes of RDR were explored from the viewpoints of the characters experiencing them, and the writers trusted the player to think about them with only a little coaxing. I didn't realize it until DStecks pointed it out that the lack of a radio is actually a really, really key part of why this is the case.
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Aug 14, 2014 08:57
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Tiggum posted:I find this hilarious because of the number of times I've seen it go the other way. Similarly, in CoD: Modern Warfare 3 there are a few bits of dialogue from the supposedly British characters that they wouldn't actually say. The one that really stood out was referring to the Underground as a "metro" at one point.
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Aug 14, 2014 10:07
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Danger - Octopus! posted:Similarly, in CoD: Modern Warfare 3 there are a few bits of dialogue from the supposedly British characters that they wouldn't actually say. The one that really stood out was referring to the Underground as a "metro" at one point. Maybe he spent some time in Paris?
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Aug 14, 2014 11:06
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Accordion Man posted:Really Rockstar's main team just screams well off middle-aged white dudes that were hip once and are desperately trying to be that again and they act like petulant teenagers in their attempts. Now that Del Toro and Kojima have opened the door for Hollywood collaborations in gaming it's only a matter of time before the South Park guys and Rockstar team up to make gently caress You, Caring Is For Fags: A Game For People Who Were Cool And Edgy 20 years Ago.
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Aug 14, 2014 12:58
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I don't remember San Andreas being up its own rear end with ~nihilism~. I do remember a jetpack. Maybe Niko would be happier if he had a jetpack.
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Aug 14, 2014 15:44
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Byzantine posted:I don't remember San Andreas being up its own rear end with ~nihilism~. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvauZAsWjwM But that would make GTA4 not super-depressive.
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Aug 14, 2014 18:11
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Byzantine posted:I don't remember San Andreas being up its own rear end with ~nihilism~. Well, there's this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWasjEknVOA (Jesus, does everyone have to have an elaborate intro bit now?)
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Aug 14, 2014 18:18
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I think most of these are legitimate criticisms of Grand Theft Auto, but I don't necessarily agree that something with a big budget can't be satire. I certainly don't agree that non-Americans can't competently write about the flaws in the American Dream, especially when - as they are Brits in this cases - the UK has a pretty serious case of "51st state stigma". Not that this angle is ever really used in GTA, perhaps barring a throwaway line in IV about rich Brits buying luxury houses in Eastern Europe which they then never use. I want to see a GTA-styled game set in today's London... Totally agree that most of GTA's "witty observations" at this point are really bad though.
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Aug 15, 2014 07:08
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Rockstar also doesn't understand "show, don't tell." Really, Niko? the war changed you? Maybe you could show that instead of just announcing it to whomever you're talking to.
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Aug 15, 2014 12:35
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Yeah Sleeping Dogs was my thing dragging GTA5 down. Bought GTA on release day despite myself, got suckered by the hype machine I guess  Biggest problem was having played Sleeping Dogs not too long before. GTA5 was fuckin intolerably poo poo in comparison. Almost everything GTA did, Sleeping Dogs did 10 times better (and looked better). I couldn't live without the slow-mo when shooting from cars etc. It felt like I had gone from playing a current-gen game to one from the PS2 era. And why in fucks name does it take Blizzard so long to release patches for Diablo 3? Some nice changes coming that might tempt me back into the game for a while and they take MONTHS to just release the loving patch with some improved numbers on things. Blizzard are also seemingly loving terrified of the notion that monks do respectable damage, approaching buffing the monk class like they are disarming a nuke, meanwhile crusaders get set bonuses and relentless buffs that make them do absurd DPS because they are the poster-boy of the expansion. And holy poo poo make some new loving maps for rifts how hard could it be
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Aug 15, 2014 13:06
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A lot of the satire in GTA5 fell pretty flat but they knocked the Weazel News parodies out of the loving park. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwM5qouf3Ns&feature=youtube_gdata_player I've been playing 1999 Mode in Bioshock Infinite before I play the dlc and for someone who spent the past 19 years trapped in a tower Elizabeth sure seems to to yawn a lot. Is this non stop thrill ride boring you? She seemed pretty excited at the beach but after that she just kind of rolls with things pretty casually. Also I executed the crazy cavalry commander but his name still showed up in the jail afterwords Having replayed the previous 2 Bioshocks recently it's really apparent how badly they fumbled the weapon upgrade system. None of the weapons really felt all that unique and you ran out of ammo so fast you were constantly switching weapons. I also never seemed to get the upgrades I want from the vending machines. I use the carbine, hand cannon and sniper rifle whenever I can but the only upgrades I ever seem to get are for the Vox Repeater and lovely hail fire, which I used maybe once or twice.
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Aug 15, 2014 14:05
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grittyreboot posted:Rockstar also doesn't understand "show, don't tell." Really, Niko? the war changed you? Maybe you could show that instead of just announcing it to whomever you're talking to. I feel like I have a lot of patience, because I maintain that the showing is almost there. It has problems coming out though, firstly in characters not drawing it out adequately, and secondly in the nature of the game itself. Niko is a lunatic. He's an extreme sadomasochist. There's almost something clever in it all, because for all of his dwelling on the horrors of the war, he actually can't help but kill people because a part of him loves doing it (which he constantly disguises as "just being good at it"). Only Roman consistently brings this up, but the dynamic between the two leans heavily in Niko's favour; Roman, for all of his isolated touching, "serious" moments, is a bit of a buffoon. In story moments, it's simply not shown enough as you say. Niko's psychotic screaming of "I'll rip your loving heart out!" during any number of mindless shoot-outs should be at least a bit disturbing, but nobody in-game really reacts to it. The player does, and that leads to the second point... The second point is just one of the big contradictions GTA has to live with. I think they can ask some interesting questions and provide some adequate drama on the back of silly, racy jokes, but it gets harder to sustain the above narrative of Niko when one of the big appeals of the game is the ability to mercilessly kill populations of no-name, no-character computer people. Gamers themselves are complicit in this, as it seems like the big defence of the series whenever a political opponent comes along is that it allows them to "let off steam". It puts whatever point Rockstar are trying to make (and they're not very stable writers to begin with) in jeopardy.
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Aug 15, 2014 15:31
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Mackers posted:Yeah Sleeping Dogs was my thing dragging GTA5 down. I'm pretty sure they have no idea what they want to do with the monks. They should just remove them from the game and bring in a Druid or something so they can just start from scratch. They want to maintain the "feel" of the class but there is no feel anymore. It's just gimmick builds/abusive mechanics. Which is loving required because that's what it takes for the class to be competitive with every one else.
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Aug 15, 2014 15:34
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It is annoying how long the D3 patches take, but it's also a game with no subscription fee and no possibility for revenue beyond the next expansion so they probably have a tiny team working on a patch that has a pretty substantial amount of content. If we were paying a monthly fee then I'd say we can bitch, but I honestly think we should be grateful they're adding content at all and not just saving it up for an expansion in two years.
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Aug 15, 2014 15:41
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Hedgehog Pie posted:The second point is just one of the big contradictions GTA has to live with. I think they can ask some interesting questions and provide some adequate drama on the back of silly, racy jokes, but it gets harder to sustain the above narrative of Niko when one of the big appeals of the game is the ability to mercilessly kill populations of no-name, no-character computer people. Gamers themselves are complicit in this, as it seems like the big defence of the series whenever a political opponent comes along is that it allows them to "let off steam". It puts whatever point Rockstar are trying to make (and they're not very stable writers to begin with) in jeopardy. I still feel like Rockster just don't understand the sandbox genre, which would be an understandable flaw if it weren't for the fact they invented it. The way that every story since San Andreas has completely fumbled handling that freedom, how it appears to be steadily getting worse about giving you that freedom, and some of its more mean-spirited moves in GTAV, really bring forward the message of 'we don't know why you like this game, but if you aren't playing it for the reasons we think then you are Wrong'. Fortunately, it seems the rest of the city sandboxes on the market have grasped it. I haven't played Sleeping Dogs, but Saint's Row loving nails it, and Just Cause 2 and Farcry 3 Blood Dragon (if you want to count it; I haven't played the actual Farcry 3 though) both seem to really know what they're doing.
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Aug 15, 2014 15:55
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mr. mephistopheles posted:It is annoying how long the D3 patches take, but it's also a game with no subscription fee and no possibility for revenue beyond the next expansion so they probably have a tiny team working on a patch that has a pretty substantial amount of content. If we were paying a monthly fee then I'd say we can bitch, but I honestly think we should be grateful they're adding content at all and not just saving it up for an expansion in two years. On the other hand, World of Warcraft has gone about eleven months since the last major content patch and has another three to go before the next expansion. 
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Aug 15, 2014 16:02
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Cleretic posted:I still feel like Rockster just don't understand the sandbox genre, which would be an understandable flaw if it weren't for the fact they invented it. I think that's why it is understandable. They had this great idea that they didn't really know what to do with, but once they'd put it out there a bunch of other people looked at and thought "Oh, this has possibilities." Just because you had the idea doesn't mean you're any good at actually executing it.
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Aug 15, 2014 16:53
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Cleretic posted:I still feel like Rockster just don't understand the sandbox genre, which would be an understandable flaw if it weren't for the fact they invented it. The way that every story since San Andreas has completely fumbled handling that freedom, how it appears to be steadily getting worse about giving you that freedom, and some of its more mean-spirited moves in GTAV, really bring forward the message of 'we don't know why you like this game, but if you aren't playing it for the reasons we think then you are Wrong'. San Andreas had that exacy same bullshit too. CJ talks about not wanting to get back into a life of crime and is blackmailed with a handgun that killed a single cop, and then slaughters hundreds of rival gang members and policemen to change the color of that area on the hud and them steals a tank just for laughs. The gameplay was just fun enough to make up for it and the story wasn't as heavily in the forefront as it would be in later games.
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Aug 15, 2014 16:59
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...of SCIENCE! posted:San Andreas had that exacy same bullshit too. CJ talks about not wanting to get back into a life of crime and is blackmailed with a handgun that killed a single cop, and then slaughters hundreds of rival gang members and policemen to change the color of that area on the hud and them steals a tank just for laughs. The gameplay was just fun enough to make up for it and the story wasn't as heavily in the forefront as it would be in later games. I think the games should have a sanity check that makes [protagonist] say, "I'm not down with killing folks." if you haven't been going on any shooting sprees between missions, and say "When do we start?" if you have. Stuff like that. Don't change the gameplay or the missions if you don't want to, but don't expect me to believe that my avatar with a hundred-plus body count is afraid of killing.
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Aug 15, 2014 18:01
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This is basically what Saints Row, especially SR2, did right straight out of the gate. The first game you're a silent protagonist who makes a couple of jokes and just nods and goes out and kills tons of people. Then you play SR2 and the game goes "Did the PC kill everyone last game? YUP. Make him a psychopath" and then you're blood crazed lunatic and surround yourself, more or less, with more blood crazed lunatics. Well Gat, Shaundi and Pierce, but Gat counts as five or six lunatics on his own. "There's no statute of limitations on murder" "Why the gently caress not!?"
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Aug 15, 2014 18:50
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SpookyLizard posted:This is basically what Saints Row, especially SR2, did right straight out of the gate. The first game you're a silent protagonist who makes a couple of jokes and just nods and goes out and kills tons of people. Then you play SR2 and the game goes "Did the PC kill everyone last game? YUP. Make him a psychopath" and then you're blood crazed lunatic and surround yourself, more or less, with more blood crazed lunatics. Well Gat, Shaundi and Pierce, but Gat counts as five or six lunatics on his own. With the exception of Gat, Shaundi, Pierce, and Carlos (don't forget he voluntarily got shanked to help the Boss break out of prison) weren't really psychotic. They had personalities that meshed well the Boss's, but nowhere near insane. And that's part of what makes SR fun. Hell, all the other non-GTA sandbox games had stuff that people griped about (e.g. Panau's size in JC2, SR2's controls and PC glitchiness) but they were in no way a slog to play through.
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Aug 15, 2014 19:03
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...of SCIENCE! posted:San Andreas had that exacy same bullshit too. CJ talks about not wanting to get back into a life of crime and is blackmailed with a handgun that killed a single cop, and then slaughters hundreds of rival gang members and policemen to change the color of that area on the hud and them steals a tank just for laughs. The gameplay was just fun enough to make up for it and the story wasn't as heavily in the forefront as it would be in later games. Yeah I said 'since San Andreas' and I intended that to include San Andreas. Tommy Vercetti is literally the only time they got this right.
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Aug 16, 2014 03:11
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I thought Tommy was hilarious, but I thought the controls in the Vice City era were too janky so I never finished it. I keep trying out GTA games but never really like them, really. I disliked the controls in Vice City, felt directionless in San Andreas, hated the driving and the characters in 4. I came the closest to really like GTA with 5, but I never finished it and my friends have moved on from the multiplayer, the only part of which we were interested in being the indefinitely delayed multiplayer heists which are probably vaporware at this point.
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Aug 16, 2014 03:53
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Cleretic posted:I still feel like Rockster just don't understand the sandbox genre I feel like Ubisoft has fallen into this hole too. rear end Creed 2 and Brotherhood were great games but jesus christ rear end Creed 3 was so bad.
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Aug 16, 2014 04:10
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I started on San Andreas, so every other GTA is a step down\back\off a cliff. CJ might start off being "iuno about this", but that doesn't last past like..mission three. Then you're off stealing sound trucks from beach parties, running over survivalists with a combine harvester, and dogfighting the US Air Force over not-Hoover Dam.
Byzantine has a new favorite as of 04:18 on Aug 16, 2014 |
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Aug 16, 2014 04:13
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Byzantine posted:dogfighting the US Air Force over not-Hoover Dam. GTA: New Vegas
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Aug 16, 2014 04:33
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StandardVC10 posted:GTA: New Vegas That would be awesome and you know it.
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Aug 16, 2014 06:32
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LoonShia posted:That would be awesome and you know it. Eh, if it was just the New Vegas setting, Rockstar would manage to poo poo it up. "Hey Courier, you want to go bowling?"
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Aug 16, 2014 06:44
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The plot stuff of GTA4 was nowhere near as annoying as "chase this dude and kill him oh but 99% of the chase is scripted and he's invincible"
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Aug 16, 2014 07:27
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kazil posted:Eh, if it was just the New Vegas setting, Rockstar would manage to poo poo it up. CAESAR, MY COUSIN!
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Aug 16, 2014 08:32
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It's not quite got the post-apocalyptic thing, but there's a fun Vegas rendition in San Andreas if that helps! I know a lot of folks like San Andreas; I do too (well, except those mountain bike races). I still feel like the final act is weak though, thick as it is with mixed ideas and messages. CJ can never leave the Grove spiritually, that's been established, but in a more pleasurable twist on the crime fiction formula, he does manage to make his fortune elsewhere without repercussions. Sweet might have a point (in terms of the subculture) if CJ really did turn his back again and spurned everything that "made him", but his fortune was made entirely through crime and he even gets his hands on Ryder partway through his adventure. There's some element of coming through for your friends and community, like helping Big Bear get off the crack, and of fighting the crooked police forces... but these aren't really given much immediacy, the rationale for CJ returning to the hood is "just because". In one way it almost feels like a dangerously simplistic hood story (written and designed by white Brits who, as related in the Kushner book, were terrified of scouting real-life South LA). You're also thrown back into the monotonous gang wars feature. In the end you will discover that there's nothing more hood than standing at a petrol station, hoping Ballas spawn in the distance so you can snipe them.
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Aug 16, 2014 11:06
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Cleretic posted:Yeah I said 'since San Andreas' and I intended that to include San Andreas. Tommy Vercetti is literally the only time they got this right. Uh, Trevor? Even with Michael it's justified in that he's clearly as much a violent psychopath as Trevor is, he just really wishes he wasn't.
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Aug 16, 2014 13:40
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DStecks posted:Uh, Trevor? Even with Michael it's justified in that he's clearly as much a violent psychopath as Trevor is, he just really wishes he wasn't. I haven't played GTAV, so I'll grant you that one out of ignorance, but from what I've heard he seems to be part of a greater issue of GTAV just sort of hating you for wanting to play your way. An unrelated thing that I'm realizing after picking it up for the first time recently: Wow, Baldur's Gate feels old beyond its years. It might've been made in 1998, but the fact it's based on D&D 2e rules combines with the slightly archaic interface to make a game that, instead, feels like a really good mid-80s game to me. It's honestly a bit impressive that it's managed to make Nethack feel modern in comparison; at least Nethack is more streamlined.
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Aug 16, 2014 14:38
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Cleretic posted:
Baldur's Gate: EE fixes most of technical shortcomings of the originals although the inherent design problems of 2e remain: inns are useless, rolling for stats is dumb, alignment is nothing more than good and evil, early-game is utter hell and there's too much trash combat. When people praise Baldur's Gate they mean the sequel, which is excellent despite being based on the same ruleset. The reason people are excited for Obsidan's Pillars of Eternity is it's billed as a call-back to the Infinity games, but it fixes all the bullshit in all the old tropes and conventions.
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Aug 16, 2014 15:06
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Terraria has some bizarre design choices. After you beat the boss in hell, you go into hardmode. This creates two "invasive" biomes, which spread aggressively and will destroy all the natural ones, depriving you of a lot of resources you need. How do you combat this? You dig a three-block tunnel straight down to hell. Two around every chunk of land you want to protect. This is incredibly tedious, even in a game mostly about mining. But that's not enough! You also get mobs that spit the corruption over your tunnels so you need to build walls too. Still not enough? As you progress in the game it'll randomly spawn hidden blocks of the invasive biomes, probably inside your painstakingly quarantined "good zones", and you'll have to find and isolate those too which takes insane amounts of effort. It feels less like I'm playing and more like I'm working now, except I'm not getting paid. So that was how far I got. VVVVV ...of SCIENCE! posted:Terraria stores characters and worlds separately, so you can create a new world and bring your character over there to access any biomes that aren't in the world you're playing now and then bring those resources back to your home world. The game actually encourages it with the way that you only have access to half the resources in any given world (tin vs. copper, etc.), I don't know if it's even possible to have a world with every biome. Somehow I never realized this, probably because I'm dumb. Thoughtless has a new favorite as of 16:27 on Aug 16, 2014 |
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Aug 16, 2014 15:30
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Thoughtless posted:Terraria has some bizarre design choices. After you beat the boss in hell, you go into hardmode. This creates two "invasive" biomes, which spread aggressively and will destroy all the natural ones, depriving you of a lot of resources you need. Killing hard mode bosses significantly slows down the spread of corruption/crimson/hallow.
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Aug 16, 2014 15:44
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Thoughtless posted:Terraria has some bizarre design choices. After you beat the boss in hell, you go into hardmode. This creates two "invasive" biomes, which spread aggressively and will destroy all the natural ones, depriving you of a lot of resources you need. Terraria stores characters and worlds separately, so you can create a new world and bring your character over there to access any biomes that aren't in the world you're playing now and then bring those resources back to your home world. The game actually encourages it with the way that you only have access to half the resources in any given world (tin vs. copper, etc.), I don't know if it's even possible to have a world with every biome.
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Aug 16, 2014 15:57
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Hedgehog Pie posted:Sweet might have a point (in terms of the subculture) if CJ really did turn his back again and spurned everything that "made him", but his fortune was made entirely through crime and he even gets his hands on Ryder partway through his adventure. Yeah, but none of that helped Grove Street. CJ's been off gallivanting through the state making himself rich and powerful while his home and gang goes to poo poo.
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Aug 16, 2014 20:02
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Byzantine posted:Yeah, but none of that helped Grove Street. CJ's been off gallivanting through the state making himself rich and powerful while his home and gang goes to poo poo. That's bullshit, I know for a fact that there is an infinite supply of molotovs, aks, sawn-off shotties and pistols in my house up for the taking. God drat Sweet should get off his rear end and blast some fools.
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Aug 16, 2014 21:14
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Byzantine posted:Yeah, but none of that helped Grove Street. CJ's been off gallivanting through the state making himself rich and powerful while his home and gang goes to poo poo. True, though you'd think getting Ryder and Pulaski would be veering in this direction. I think the whole situation just strikes me as weird. Grove Street is a horrible place, that's why gangs of competing interests spring up around the area, giving their members just a little bit of purpose. CJ ascends in what's really the only feasible way, since East Los Santos is governed by crack dealers and corrupt cops (the story is forced to conclude on a more positive note here, but it's hard to see if anything really changes). Sweet has some delicate moments realising all of this when he sees their house getting robbed and when he almost succumbs to the temptation of crack, but otherwise the romance of the hood is played fairly straight. The parting line seems to be that Grove Street - where these characters will apparently live and die forever - isn't that bad after all... despite all the evidence to the contrary, all the bad memories and dead bodies it conjures. On the other hand, you can get a fighter jet to spawn on the roof of Mrs Johnson's house. Small victories.
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Aug 16, 2014 22:45
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