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Exit Strategy posted:Not sure if it's been posted yet - Only up to about Page 13 here, but someone reminded me of it. I am the only person on Earth who actually liked Singularity, the FPS. And the thing that pushed me over into liking the horrible, linear thing was the little touch at the end. Not to pick on you but I'm wondering why linear is such a dirty word to people thesedays with games? I mean, yeah, Farcry, Skyrim, etc are great and all since they let you explore but a good deal of me likes when a game is linear since you play through, get the experience and that's it, no real frills. Sometimes I don't want a CYOA with a game but that's just me 
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Nov 23, 2014 19:52
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Tracula posted:Not to pick on you but I'm wondering why linear is such a dirty word to people thesedays with games? I mean, yeah, Farcry, Skyrim, etc are great and all since they let you explore but a good deal of me likes when a game is linear since you play through, get the experience and that's it, no real frills. Sometimes I don't want a CYOA with a game but that's just me I think I misspoke. The linearity of the game isn't bad - its storyline proceeds across a single set of events, which is fine, and there's no gameplay variation, which is also fine. The issue I have with Singularity is how limited the TMD's applications are. You can use it as a method for manipulating the age of your enemies in a very limited way or altering a very few things in the environment.
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Nov 23, 2014 20:00
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I liked Singularity.
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Nov 23, 2014 20:00
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Exit Strategy posted:I think I misspoke. The linearity of the game isn't bad - its storyline proceeds across a single set of events, which is fine, and there's no gameplay variation, which is also fine. The issue I have with Singularity is how limited the TMD's applications are. You can use it as a method for manipulating the age of your enemies in a very limited way or altering a very few things in the environment. The developers agree with you, they were hamstrung by console limitations and budget to the point where they had to pretty much scrap and rebuild the game over the span of less than a year.
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Nov 23, 2014 20:10
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oldpainless posted:I liked Singularity. I'm actually trying to think of other games that give you two explicit options for a choice and accept a third. That really did push me over into loving that game.
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Nov 23, 2014 20:12
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Exit Strategy posted:I'm actually trying to think of other games that give you two explicit options for a choice and accept a third. That really did push me over into loving that game. I guess there's a time or two in Spec Ops: The Line that has that happen where there's a rather blatant option but you could do something else that's a little less obvious. Such as when you encounter the crowd that beat/hung one of your squad mates. The obvious choice is to fire into them but you can also put some warning shots over their head to have them scatter.
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Nov 23, 2014 20:15
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nael posted:I won't be able to play Far Cry 4 until I get my next paycheck, so I've been replaying 3. I noticed that when the molotov throwing guys are walking around outside of combat, they take drinks from their molotovs. That can't be healthy. Well, they ARE completely poo poo faced and stumbling everywhere. 
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Nov 23, 2014 20:32
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Exit Strategy posted:Not sure if it's been posted yet - Only up to about Page 13 here, but someone reminded me of it. I am the only person on Earth who actually liked Singularity, the FPS. And the thing that pushed me over into liking the horrible, linear thing was the little touch at the end. It didn't crop up in this thread, but I definitely posted about it in the previous one. It might've been my first post in it, even. But yeah, I love that little touch. Raven always makes really likeable B shooters.
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Nov 23, 2014 20:48
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Exit Strategy posted:I'm actually trying to think of other games that give you two explicit options for a choice and accept a third. That really did push me over into loving that game. At the end of Mass Effect 3 I shot the kid instead of instead of choosing one of his bullshit endings. It was perfect. My paragon Shepherd finally snapped.
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Nov 23, 2014 20:49
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Exit Strategy posted:Not sure if it's been posted yet - Only up to about Page 13 here, but someone reminded me of it. I am the only person on Earth who actually liked Singularity, the FPS. And the thing that pushed me over into liking the horrible, linear thing was the little touch at the end. I enjoyed Singularity. Hitting enemies with the bubble that slowed time and then walking up and depositing a slow-motion bullet into each of their faces hadn't gotten old by the end of the game.
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Nov 23, 2014 20:56
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Yeah, Singularity was fun. I liked trying to figure out exactly what was changed in the "Good" ending.
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Nov 23, 2014 21:00
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Tracula posted:Not to pick on you but I'm wondering why linear is such a dirty word to people thesedays with games? I mean, yeah, Farcry, Skyrim, etc are great and all since they let you explore but a good deal of me likes when a game is linear since you play through, get the experience and that's it, no real frills. Sometimes I don't want a CYOA with a game but that's just me Saying that "people find linear a dirty word" is a pretty big generalization, there are plenty of different opinions and it depends a great deal on the title in question. A game being too linear can be a valid complaint for one game but linearity can just as well work for a different game. In any case, there is a middle ground between a complete tunnel that gives you no freedom at all and a completely open sandbox that allows you to go and hunt for bears in the mountains. Take for example Deus Ex games; Even though you'll eventually go from Point A to Point B, you can also find all kinds of alternative approaches to various situations and different paths with extra rooms/goodies/notes/what have you if you choose to explore a bit, something a lot of people enjoy doing. Such a game can definitely suffer from limiting your freedom too much. It can also often feel like a waste if the developers have made some really cool environment you'd like to see more of but you're never given the option to leave the same hallway no matter how pretty the view from the windows is. Obviously the opposite applies too, if a game is trying to maintain a particular pace and flow with its story or action, it can suffer from having too many distractions that break them. If a game is meant to be a tightly-packed and -scripted experience, trying to unnecessarily jam in side quests and collectables will just take away the focus from the game's actual point. This doesn't come up as an issue as often because you usually have the option to ignore the side stuff even if it's there whereas in a completely linear game you don't have the option to do the opposite. TL;DR: Variety is good.
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Nov 23, 2014 21:02
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Tracula posted:I guess there's a time or two in Spec Ops: The Line that has that happen where there's a rather blatant option but you could do something else that's a little less obvious. Such as when you encounter the crowd that beat/hung one of your squad mates. The obvious choice is to fire into them but you can also put some warning shots over their head to have them scatter. Or you could have stood there and died for your crimes. 
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Nov 23, 2014 21:10
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Professor Wayne posted:At the end of Mass Effect 3 I shot the kid instead of instead of choosing one of his bullshit endings. It was perfect. My paragon Shepherd finally snapped. That's the only ending I haven't seen, but I like that despite Bioware's passive-aggressive "well gently caress you too, buddy!" response, that IS a perfectly viable way to end the game, as you'll then be shown that the next cycle of life finds all the data Liara put together on what you discovered re: the Reapers and THEY find a way to defeat them.
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Nov 23, 2014 21:39
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Exit Strategy posted:Not sure if it's been posted yet - Only up to about Page 13 here, but someone reminded me of it. I am the only person on Earth who actually liked Singularity, the FPS. I'm pretty sure most people who played it liked Singularity.
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Nov 23, 2014 23:12
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Professor Wayne posted:At the end of Mass Effect 3 I shot the kid instead of instead of choosing one of his bullshit endings. It was perfect. My paragon Shepherd finally snapped. The final line the Catalyst delivers when you do this is so goddamn good. Also, the blue option reveal was nothing short of wonderful. At various points throughout the game, you get to hear variations on: "Look, there's no controlling the reapers" "Seriously, they can't be controlled" "Dude nobody can control the reapers" "The reapers cannot be controlled" "Look what they've done to you! You can't loving control them ok?" And then, right at the end: "Oh I guess you can control the reapers" 
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Nov 24, 2014 00:59
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That goes hand in hand with the conversion ending. You stopped Saren in ME1 from doing exactly that, now its one your choices, and for all intents, the one BioWare really wanted people to do.
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Nov 24, 2014 01:13
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Alteisen posted:That goes hand in hand with the conversion ending. You also stop the Illusive Man only a few minutes earlier, finally convincing him that the idea of being able to control them is a false idea put in his head by the Reapers so they can use him as their pawn. Then the Catalyst tells you,"Oh but don't worry, that was just him, YOU can totally do it okay!"
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Nov 24, 2014 02:29
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Professor Wayne posted:At the end of Mass Effect 3 I shot the kid instead of instead of choosing one of his bullshit endings. It was perfect. My paragon Shepherd finally snapped. poo poo, I didn't even think that was an option. I like it better than the others. The whole time playing through the games, I was thinking that I'd like it to end that successive eras failed to beat the reapers, but got closer and closer, and that this era, we'd figure out how to do it, but fail. And then make it seems like we gave the next group the info they needed. I picked up Valkyria Chronicles on steam. It's like a tactics game, but without the grid, so your characters can run freely as long as they have AP remaining. What I like, vs other tactics games I've played, is that you can sacrifice using some of your characters in any given turn to let one character move multiple times in one round. The AP they have each time you do that drops, but it's really great if you make a mistake, or are exploiting a weak spot or something. That's a feature I'd appreciate in almost any tactics-type game.
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Nov 24, 2014 03:51
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So how do the revamped ME3 endings work now? Are the 3 colour coded options now "trick endings" where your mind controlled main character thinks they did the right thing, or is it played completely and optimistically straight?
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Nov 24, 2014 04:03
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I mean, I always played the game with a "kill the bastards" approach so I didn't notice much difference. As I understand it, the endings are all such that the reapers, ultimately, lose. So, it's all very optimistic. Even the one where you give up, basically.
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Nov 24, 2014 04:05
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Phobophilia posted:So how do the revamped ME3 endings work now? Are the 3 colour coded options now "trick endings" where your mind controlled main character thinks they did the right thing, or is it played completely and optimistically straight? The revamped endings added more stuff to show the aftermath of your choices, the ending options remain the same
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Nov 24, 2014 04:14
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It clarifies some stuff (like showing what happens to the teammates you bring on the final mission) and takes out the plot point of destroying all Mass Relays. Probably because someone realized that kind of kills the franchise.
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Nov 24, 2014 04:17
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WHAT A GOOD DOG posted:I mean, I always played the game with a "kill the bastards" approach so I didn't notice much difference. As I understand it, the endings are all such that the reapers, ultimately, lose. So, it's all very optimistic. Even the one where you give up, basically. I just looked up this one since I hadn't even heard of it before it was mentioned a couple posts up, and no it's pretty bleak. It implies that the reapers eventually lose against a later generation of the universe but trillions of sapient beings still died because you didn't do anything.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bApdjLFcVUk
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Nov 24, 2014 05:23
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muscles like this? posted:It clarifies some stuff (like showing what happens to the teammates you bring on the final mission) and takes out the plot point of destroying all Mass Relays. Probably because someone realized that kind of kills the franchise. Given that they connect all the different star systems and trade routes and all that it's also not much better at all than just plain old losing, it just takes longer since all existing technology is built upon them.
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Nov 24, 2014 05:24
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I thought that, in an age of endless sequels and spinoffs, destroying the mass effect relays once and for all at the end was a refreshingly brave and bold choice rather than leaving the door open for more sequels. So of course everybody complained about it and then they retconned it.
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Nov 24, 2014 05:30
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Is Joker still flying the Normandy in front of the wave of destruction for no real reason during the ending just so he and his robot girlfriend can be Adam and Eve on a new planet?
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Nov 24, 2014 05:32
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Pidmon posted:Is Joker still flying the Normandy in front of the wave of destruction for no real reason during the ending just so he and his robot girlfriend can be Adam and Eve on a new planet? I believe that's another part they add a scene in for. As for the Mass Relays retcon, I'm glad they did it because it came off as super out of left field in the original ending and leaves more questions than answers, mostly from the fact that Sol system would have a ton of different alien races in it because of the final battle.
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Nov 24, 2014 05:43
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...of SCIENCE! posted:I thought that, in an age of endless sequels and spinoffs, destroying the mass effect relays once and for all at the end was a refreshingly brave and bold choice rather than leaving the door open for more sequels. Well, as written, it literally killed most of the population of the galaxy either through starvation or because "the mass relay exploding kills everyone in the system" was a plot point, depending on how you read it.
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Nov 24, 2014 05:58
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That's if you blow it up by force. There's nothing to say the self destruct behaves the same way. But they retconned it out anyway.
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Nov 24, 2014 06:08
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...of SCIENCE! posted:I thought that, in an age of endless sequels and spinoffs, destroying the mass effect relays once and for all at the end was a refreshingly brave and bold choice rather than leaving the door open for more sequels. They were always going to be making sequels anyway so it doesn't really matter either way.
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Nov 24, 2014 06:17
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'Shoot the kid' was added in the patches - before then you just had to pick a colour or hang around forever. As for the starvation thing, I thought that was just about the Normandy crew - You've got aliens and humans with incompatible biologies, and if the Mass Relays aren't working there's no rescue coming, so half the ship is dying of food poisoning. The planet isn't going to grow two different types of DNA-based food. Mostly the ending felt lazy because instead of, say, the galaxy coming together, finding a weakness in the Reapers or the McGuffin turning off their shields or something, you just assemble the plot device and press a 'win' button. In the end, everything you did was pointless because it was all about pressing that button. But this is the thread for little things, so I'll say that I like how Bioware at least put a token effort into explaining how their weird stuff works in ME. Like biotics - their bodies are full of element Zero since birth, and when electricity through nerves triggers them it makes the funky power fields. And then the humans (and a few others) use some cybernetics to make specific muscle movements trigger specific effects, so when Shep throws a field out it's not that they actually need to give it force, that's just the intuitive motion their rig was set up with. I always wondered what would happen if you tased one...
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Nov 24, 2014 12:56
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...of SCIENCE! posted:I thought that, in an age of endless sequels and spinoffs, destroying the mass effect relays once and for all at the end was a refreshingly brave and bold choice rather than leaving the door open for more sequels. It was stupid any way you sliced it. You've pretty much doomed a bunch of tiny colonies to a slow death, stranded who-knows-how-many ships, and probably plunged a planet or two (along with a couple million space stations) into civil war/general chaos because they rely on off-world commerce. RentACop posted:The revamped endings added more stuff to show the aftermath of your choices, the ending options remain the same The revamped endings were actually a pretty great effort when you consider they were probably put together on a shoestring budget and limited time. And as for something good with ME3, the apartment party. I loved that there were a massive number of different ways it could go depending on what you set the music to and when. "Shepard." "Wrex." "Grunt." "Shepaaaaaaaard." 
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Nov 24, 2014 15:08
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Captain Lavender posted:I picked up Valkyria Chronicles on steam. It's like a tactics game, but without the grid, so your characters can run freely as long as they have AP remaining. What I like, vs other tactics games I've played, is that you can sacrifice using some of your characters in any given turn to let one character move multiple times in one round. The AP they have each time you do that drops, but it's really great if you make a mistake, or are exploiting a weak spot or something. That's a feature I'd appreciate in almost any tactics-type game. I especially like that they gave some unit types limited ammunition, so you can't just spend all twenty of your CP to have Largo pop tanks all day (well, you sort of can, you just need an Engineer near him to reload him once in a while). This game is just full of little things. I love the battle chatter over the radio, the comments your units make when traits kick in or when they do something ("Hi, I'm Ted!" *blam blam blam*), and that each and every one of your units has his or her own personality. The separate weapon upgrade trees are cool, too. 
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Nov 24, 2014 15:08
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GOTTA STAY FAI posted:This game is just full of little things. I love the battle chatter over the radio, the comments your units make when traits kick in or when they do something ("Hi, I'm Ted!" *blam blam blam*), and that each and every one of your units has his or her own personality. True, but you've got no real reason not to take the damage upgrade tree though. I did love that a lot of their traits are actually based on the character profiles though. One of the older soldiers has a small mention in his profile that he hates being around Alicia because she reminds him of his daughter, who died. He has a debuff that drops his accuracy if he's anywhere near her on the battlefield.
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Nov 24, 2014 15:11
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StandardVC10 posted:Persona 3: I like how you can see Tartarus in the distance when you're running along the monorail track in the first boss mission. My favorite little thing about this mission is the music - I think this is the first time in the game that they play this track https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buX9FRzYwmw
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Nov 24, 2014 17:53
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I'm playing my first real Dynasty Warriors game (DW8 on the Vita), and so far my favorite little thing is knocking an enemy officer off his horse, then stealing his horse and running him down with it.
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Nov 24, 2014 18:24
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Not really my favorite thing, but thread-appropriate nonethelessDwarf Fortress Devlog posted:Today saw the addition of an oft-requested feature -- the ability to geld! We stayed away from new parts, but there's a body part tag for it on appropriate male critters, as well as a job and so on. The job takes place at the farmer's workshop after the animal is designated in a way similar to slaughtering. The process is modeled with a wound within the existing framework.
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Nov 24, 2014 19:42
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In Xenoblade Chronicles the main character's weapon, the Monado, is an energy blade that can cut pretty much anything, but in an early cutscene it's revealed that it just bounces off of other people. This isn't really a problem for most of the game since your main enemies are monsters and evil robots. Midway through the game, however, there's a sequence where you're attacked by assassins. If you have the main character in your active party during this segment, all of his attacks will do 1 damage to them, and they'll bounce off the assassins as though the attack was blocked. Just like the cutscene showed, the Monado won't work on other people. What's neat about this is that aside from the 1 damage, there's nothing during the sequence to explicitly remind you of this plot point. It's on you to remember why your attacks aren't working, and change your strategy accordingly.
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Nov 24, 2014 20:57
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So far, Dragon Age Inquisition is an entire game of awesome little things, and I'm finding more to love every day. One thing I just noticed... the party selection screen is a deck of cards with stylized portraits of your companions, and those portraits change as you progress through their stories. The art direction in this game is really lovely, and I'm kind of regretting not paying more attention to stuff like that.
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Nov 25, 2014 02:30
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