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Eclipse12
Feb 20, 2008

As a kid, I was frustrated by games that "promised" a certain type of gameplay when in fact you spent most of your time doing otherwise. Two notable examples are Battletoads on NES and Earthworm Jim.

In Battletoads, the first level is a beat-em-up with fun mechanics and good controls. But that's the only one. You then have to race hover bikes, race against a rat, race against a gear, race on snakes, races against an orb, ugh. Oh, and these parts are all instant-death situations where the combat is minimal if present at all. Even the other very few more traditional platformer levels are more puzzle-like than brawling. And it wouldn't be that big of a deal if the opening stage didn't set a completely different expectation.

Same for Earthworm Jim. Sprawling sidescroller, sure, with fun guns and gags. But then you're racing a crow, escorting a dog, navigating a horrendous water maze, and so on. The game has boatloads of charm, and in limited amounts those change-ups can be fun, but mostly they're just frustrating.

I'm all for games having variety and experimentation, but not when it isn't fun.

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Oxxidation
Jul 22, 2007
You have to understand first and foremost that Battletoads existed to hurt you.

Deceit was just one of the many tools it used to this end.

Rockman Reserve
Oct 2, 2007

"Carbons? Purge? What are you talking about?!"

Eclipse12, you’ve pretty much described why I hate most BMUs in a nutshell, better than I could. (Notable exceptions: the TMNT games, and The Bouncer for PS2).

Oxxidation posted:

You have to understand first and foremost that Battletoads existed to hurt you.

Deceit was just one of the many tools it used to this end.

I recently found out that in the arcade version, at least, every boss past the first one is totally immune to damage for the first 30s of the fight at a bare minimum, but attacking them will power up their counterattacks anyway.

gently caress Battletoads, it’s a total shitpile of player-facing animosity and bullshit.

Nuebot
Feb 18, 2013

The developer of Brigador is a secret chud, don't give him money

SiKboy posted:

Sounds a lot like real life. Except the bit I snipped out.

One of my party members is a minority race and while he was running back to town, a bunch of slavers started chasing him to beat him up and enslave him. They followed him for miles, past every other member of my squad, including one man who did nothing but mine at a rock for the past week or so and was slowly starving to death because he lived for nothing more than his rock; they just really, really wanted to enslave this bug man. Bug man ran into town, past the city guard and right into the police station where the entirety of law enforcement stood and watched as like twenty dudes just dogpiled onto him and beat the poo poo out of him and tried to drag him away to sell as livestock to other people.

He got a bounty for breaking out of his slave chains.

RagnarokAngel
Oct 5, 2006

Black Magic Extraordinaire

I remember this being in the news because the PS3, having less ram than the 360 it was eventually impossible to play if your playtime went long enough.

Ugly In The Morning
Jul 1, 2010
Pillbug

RagnarokAngel posted:

I remember this being in the news because the PS3, having the less ram than the 360 it was eventually impossible to play if your playtime went long enough.

The PS3 did not get along with Gamebryo Bethesda games at all, it was almost impressive.

small ghost
Jan 30, 2013


This explains so much

Inspector Gesicht
Oct 26, 2012

500 Zeus a body.


Ugly In The Morning posted:

The PS3 did not get along with Gamebryo Bethesda games at all, it was almost impressive.

The gamebryo doesn't get along with any hardware, it's balls.

On the opposite end we have the RED engine that has excellent streaming of memory, which makes all the maps seamless although all the physics stuff is kinda janky. Even better is the FOX engine that delivers superb performance regardless of hardware, but suffers by being Konami exclusive.

The Outer Worlds may not have been the second coming of cyber-christ but it had the good sense not to let you pick up forks off the table and complicate things.

Perestroika
Apr 8, 2010

Perhaps against my better judgement I went and picked War Thunder back up once again. It's still grindy as gently caress, but fun enough for when you just wanna shoot tanks or planes for half an hour on occasion. But since I last played, they've added one thoroughly dumb thing with their visual customization. You see, you can plonk a variety of visual bits and bobs on your tank, like jerry cans, extra tracks, helmets, that sort of thing. Pretty much all of those cost the real-money ingame currency, which is fair enough. It's purely visual, after all.

But then some genius decided one of the customisations should be actual pieces of camouflage. Just huge pieces of shrubbery that you can stick to your tank. If you put them on the right way, you can make your tank functionally indistinguishable from a regular bush. As long as you don't move, you're almost impossible to pick out from the front. So now what you've got is what's functionally half of an invisibility cheat that you can buy for real money, which is... not ideal.

10 Beers
May 21, 2005

Shit! I didn't bring a knife.

DrBouvenstein posted:

Started playing The Witcher 3 on PS4, thanks to the Netlix series, and God-drat I feel like I'm doing something wrong because combat is hard as gently caress.

I'm still low level, only 4 (also found like 3 or 4 shrines for the extra skill points,) but I'm still easily dying to, like, a pack of 3 wolves.

I am trying to do mob-management, but I feel like there is massive input lag, or something. I try to dodge/roll, but it doesn't happen half the time, or I feel like it happens way later than when I push the button ("way later" feeling like a second, but it's probably only like .25 second.)

But honestly, the biggest issue is I just am not doing enough damage. Should I have better equipment by now? I've upgraded both swords to newer ones I've found maybe twice but there weren't HUGE jumps in damage, maybe the new range is only like 10-15 more than the starter set?

I'm using oils when I can, as well as signs, potions, and bombs, but I feel like I'm wasting bombs for low-level mobs. I know they refill with a meditation so long as I have the right alcohol, but now I'm running out of alcohol if I have to meditate after drat near every fight.

It took me over a dozen tries to finish that drat werewolf quest because he was just healing so much faster than I could dish out damage, and I had to bring the difficulty down to the second lowest setting. Right now, I'm keeping it there...I don't want to go to the lowest, because I want SOME challenge, but to quote Lisa Simpson:



And then on top of it load times for a saved game feel like they take forever on PS4...I timed it, and it's only like a minute and a half to two minutes, but the last couple games I've played (FC5, RDR2) don't have nearly as long a load time (with the exception of the initial load time when you first start, especially for RDR2.)

The igni sign is great for early wolf packs. Also in the brown skill tree is a skill called Gourmand that makes the health regenerated from eating food last for 20 minutes. Super helpful early on.

wafflemoose
Apr 10, 2009

Eclipse12 posted:

In Battletoads, the first level is a beat-em-up with fun mechanics and good controls. But that's the only one. You then have to race hover bikes, race against a rat, race against a gear, race on snakes, races against an orb, ugh. Oh, and these parts are all instant-death situations where the combat is minimal if present at all. Even the other very few more traditional platformer levels are more puzzle-like than brawling. And it wouldn't be that big of a deal if the opening stage didn't set a completely different expectation.

Check out the arcade game sometime, it's pretty much a pure beat-em-up without none of the gameplay roulette horseshit the other games in the series had.

Rockman Reserve
Oct 2, 2007

"Carbons? Purge? What are you talking about?!"

Gamebryo has 0% to do with the memory issues in Bethesda games and has been used to great effect in a ton of games not made by noted bad-game-programmers Bethesda.

Kit Walker
Jul 10, 2010
"The Man Who Cannot Deadlift"

Morpheus posted:

I'm playing through the original Final Fantasy Tactics at the moment, and man, it is full of a lot of bullshit isn't it?

Beneficial spells that can fail on your own guys.
The inability to know why one enemy does 30 damage to a guy with a spell, and another does 103 at the same level with the same spell.
Losing takes you back to the title screen, an element I'm glad has been mostly dropped from modern games.
Unskippable cutscenes that you have to tap through all the dialogue for.
It's tough to know if an attack can hit an enemy from your movement destination, but once you've moved you're no longer allowed to undo it. So if you move, and find the enemy is actually .5 height units too far from you to hit, well, tough poo poo. The computer, of course, does not need to worry about this.

Other people have already touched on the Faith and Zodiac systems so I won’t rehash that. But I will say that the Brave stat is also important and determines the chance of reaction abilities kicking in (they activate Brave% of the time assuming you meet the conditions). Also the game can be really technical but half of the fun is mastering the system and completely breaking it over your knee. It’s a surprisingly well-balanced game and there’s a reason SCC (straight class challenge, where you make all your units the same class and only use the abilities of that class) were so popular

Eclipse12
Feb 20, 2008

wafflemoose posted:

Check out the arcade game sometime, it's pretty much a pure beat-em-up without none of the gameplay roulette horseshit the other games in the series had.

I vaguely remember seeing that arcade game as a kid and, shockingly, that it had a ton of blood and gore. But yes, that's what I was looking for instead in what the NES offered

OutOfPrint
Apr 9, 2009

Fun Shoe

food court bailiff posted:

Gamebryo has 0% to do with the memory issues in Bethesda games and has been used to great effect in a ton of games not made by noted bad-game-programmers Bethesda.

This. Gamebryo isn't a modern super engine, but it gets a bad rap by being associated with Bethesda's incompetence. It was a hell of a PR coup that people blamed the engine more than the developer.

Der Kyhe
Jun 25, 2008

Eclipse12 posted:

I vaguely remember seeing that arcade game as a kid and, shockingly, that it had a ton of blood and gore. But yes, that's what I was looking for instead in what the NES offered

If it makes you feel any better almost everything in NES library that wasn"t by Nintendo was more or less similar bait'n'switch stuff from other consoles, arcade cabinets or Amiga/PC.

Towards the end of its lifecycle NES was so far behind in computing power you almost always felt at least a bit ripped off. Except with some clear exceptions like the first Ducktales.

Der Kyhe has a new favorite as of 21:41 on Jan 19, 2020

Der Kyhe
Jun 25, 2008

Edit != Quote

RagnarokAngel
Oct 5, 2006

Black Magic Extraordinaire
Nintendo actually had a requirement later on that the games not be clones of the arcade so they could claim to be a different experience. In some cases this worked for the better though, like Ninja Gaiden.

Morpheus
Apr 18, 2008

My favourite little monsters
It's annoying that Tokyo Mirage Sessions added dlc and even stuff like the ability to put glasses on the main female character, but still the characters will shoot out Japanese and stuff during combat with no subtitles or anything.

I mean, I know it's stuff like 'i can do it!' and whatnot, but still. It's a little jarring.

CordlessPen
Jan 8, 2004

I told you so...
I finally tried out Just Cause 4 and I have to say that it's way better than I thought it would be. All the major changes are, in my opinion, for the best and I absolutely LOVE what they've done with the Chaos mechanic. The only thing, however, is that the game is way too easy now, mostly because the checkpoints are so generous; it saves literally every few seconds, even during missions. Not that I absolutely want to replay entire missions, but when death means going back a few seconds, getting all your health, vehicles and allies back and all enemies are gone, it makes victory feel a little... empty.

Still a really fun game, despite some really odd graphical issues.

Eclipse12
Feb 20, 2008

Replaying Doom 2016 and I'm annoyed at how important the secrets are. It really slows down the otherwise frenetic pace. Sure, the original games had secrets, but they weren't as crucial to find since once you had the full load of weapons you couldn't miss anything permanent, so that just left extra armor and health. But the remake ties secrets into upgrades, so I'm constantly grinding to a halt to backtrack. Sometimes they're even missable where after a certain part you can't reach them anymore and have to replay the level to pick it up. Such a shame.

Oh, and this is doubly so for the challenges of "Kill X monsters in this contrived way." Those are even worse.

moosecow333
Mar 15, 2007

Super-Duper Supermen!
I want to download Doom 2016 but it’s 60 gigs and I have no interest in any of the multiplayer stuff.

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010


Ignore my posts!
I'm aggressively wrong about everything!

Eclipse12 posted:

Replaying Doom 2016 and I'm annoyed at how important the secrets are. It really slows down the otherwise frenetic pace. Sure, the original games had secrets, but they weren't as crucial to find since once you had the full load of weapons you couldn't miss anything permanent, so that just left extra armor and health. But the remake ties secrets into upgrades, so I'm constantly grinding to a halt to backtrack. Sometimes they're even missable where after a certain part you can't reach them anymore and have to replay the level to pick it up. Such a shame.

Oh, and this is doubly so for the challenges of "Kill X monsters in this contrived way." Those are even worse.

Once I realized that Doom 2016 was a Metroid Prime game and not a Doom game, I started enjoying it a lot more.

DoubleNegative
Jan 27, 2010

The most virtuous child in the entire world.

moosecow333 posted:

I want to download Doom 2016 but it’s 60 gigs and I have no interest in any of the multiplayer stuff.

Wait, they cut down on the install size?





:v:

Eclipse12
Feb 20, 2008

Pretty sure on Steam you can choose not to download MP now. Could be wrong.


Cleretic posted:

Once I realized that Doom 2016 was a Metroid Prime game and not a Doom game, I started enjoying it a lot more.

Will say, Iooooove the lore.

Tiggum
Oct 24, 2007

Your life and your quest end here.


The levers in Doom 2016 that unlock the Doom 1 and 2 levels don't stand out at all. I've looked up the locations for a couple of them only to realise that I'd already been there and walked right past them because they just look like set dressing.

Mierenneuker
Apr 28, 2010


We're all going to experience changes in our life but only the best of us will qualify for front row seats.

I am playing Metro Exodus for a second time. It has a New Game Plus mode where you can enable certain modifications to make the game harder or easier. One of them allows you to enable a 24 hour light-dark cycle. Normally the open-world levels need 2 hours of real time for a day to pass, with that modification it'll take 24 hours (not synced with the real world however, so it doesn't matter when you start playing). During the evening more mutants spawn, but the sight range of human enemies is limited. They also tend to use flashlights, which makes them easier to spot and let's you know in what direction they are looking. It's a definite advantage if you want to be stealthy. Which you do if you are playing on Ranger Hardcore difficulty.

The 24 hour light-dark cycle however has an unwanted side-effect on the Taiga level. The level starts at 17:00 and part of the first section seems to be designed to be finished as the sun has set. It seems impossible to finish in a stealth manner while the sun is still shining. You can normally rest at certain spots to fast-forward the in-game clock, but there is no such resting place at the start of that level.

So now I'm probably going to leave the game idle for two hours just to watch an in-game sun set :shepface:

Edit: Beat it. Turns out if I walked really close to a wall I could trigger a conversation between two fellas, even though I wasn’t even that close to them. In Metro games people tend to move to a different spot after they’re done talking.

Mierenneuker has a new favorite as of 17:45 on Jan 20, 2020

Ugly In The Morning
Jul 1, 2010
Pillbug

Eclipse12 posted:

Pretty sure on Steam you can choose not to download MP now. Could be wrong.



I think you can avoid downloading the DLC stuff for MP, but you still have to download MP.

You can, however, absolutely butcher the game files to bring the amount of space it takes on your drive down to 35ish GB. You have to download the whole thing first though.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/379720/discussions/0/152392786909065160/

SubNat
Nov 27, 2008

Here's to hoping they won't do the same with Eternal, but they probably will, considering how they're ramming multiplayer/invasions into the singleplayer campaign anyhow.

Alhazred
Feb 16, 2011




In Shadow of the Tomb Raider there's a huge chunk of the game where you're forced to wear one type of clothing.

Captain Hygiene
Sep 17, 2007

You mess with the crabbo...



Alhazred posted:

In Shadow of the Tomb Raider there's a huge chunk of the game where you're forced to wear one type of clothing.


Doubly painful because that's time wasted not being able to shank regular badguys as PS1 Lara

0 rows returned
Apr 9, 2007

ive been replaying re2make in preparation for re3 and whooo boy is getting to the sewer section a run stopper

Inspector Gesicht
Oct 26, 2012

500 Zeus a body.


Knowing that the Tunnel of Flesh exists in RE2 is the first step to beating it. I really hope a future Resident Evil is set in a domestic place like a school or a hospital. When you cross the halfway point you get access to... another domestic place like a school or a hospital. The mansion, police-station, and plantation of Resident Evil work so well because they're all lived-in places. In other words they're "Residences" that's full of "Evil". Its harder to get attached to secret labs and industrial factories.

*

What are the worst open-world maps in games? Places that are too large, too bland, or oddly distributed?

Los Santos in GTAV is dull, dull, dull because it has the one city and the other 70 percent of the map is just empty mountain. No collectibles worth finding nor any means to track them. Just about all the activities are story-gated.

Mierenneuker
Apr 28, 2010


We're all going to experience changes in our life but only the best of us will qualify for front row seats.

Gun is an early open world game with not a whole lot in it. That makes sense, because it was wild west while (obvious inspiration) GTA3 took place in urban areas. Red Dead Redemption shows they were just a couple generations too early with that idea.

The first Assassin’s Creed always felt like a proof of concept, because the actual content was uninteresting and insanely repetitive. The cities themselves were also not very unique, (something they fixed in the sequel) and traveling between the cities felt like pure filler.

Mierenneuker has a new favorite as of 23:48 on Jan 20, 2020

Doctor Spaceman
Jul 6, 2010

"Everyone's entitled to their point of view, but that's seriously a weird one."

Inspector Gesicht posted:

What are the worst open-world maps in games? Places that are too large, too bland, or oddly distributed?
LA in LA Noire is the first one that springs to mind.

BioEnchanted
Aug 9, 2011

He plays for the dreamers that forgot how to dream, and the lovers that forgot how to love.

Mierenneuker posted:

Gun is an early open world game with not a whole lot in it. That makes sense, because it was wild west while GTA3 was took place in a modern city. Red Dead Redemption shows they were just a couple generations too early with that idea.

The first Assassin’s Creed always felt like a proof of concept, because the actual content was uninteresting and insanely repetitive. The cities themselves were also not very unique, (something they fixed in the sequel) and traveling between the cities felt like pure filler.

I liked that Gun had a totally optional sidequest with the Ranch, that was neat. That was Red Dead Redemption before the technology existed, and in the same way, due to having ship battles and exploration of islands with a pirate theme, Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat was Assassin's Creed Black Flag before the tech existed.

Dr Christmas
Apr 24, 2010

Berninating the one percent,
Berninating the Wall St.
Berninating all the people
In their high rise penthouses!
🔥😱🔥🔫👴🏻
Assassin's Creed was the first game I noticed where the collectibles had no value except for achievements.

Inspector Gesicht
Oct 26, 2012

500 Zeus a body.


Constantinople from AC Revelations is another one. Where Rome from the previous game had the city, its landmarks, and the surrounding countryside; Constantinople was one large district, few points of interest, and no horse. Nothing happens there of consequence and Ezio has no real stake in what goes on there.

AC III had two extremely baffling underground maps. You'd traverse the proto-sewers of Boston and New York for ages and the only reward was to unlock fast-travel points. You apparently navigate these sewers every time you fast-travel even though it would be much quicker to just physically walk there above ground. The frontier wasn't much better, as it was just the kingdom from the first game with more box-ticking.

muscles like this!
Jan 17, 2005


Mierenneuker posted:

Gun is an early open world game with not a whole lot in it. That makes sense, because it was wild west while (obvious inspiration) GTA3 took place in urban areas. Red Dead Redemption shows they were just a couple generations too early with that idea.

A weird thing about Gun was that there was this entire scalping mechanic that did absolutely nothing in the game.

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rydiafan
Mar 17, 2009


I've been playing Horizon: Zero Dawn, and something that has been dragging it down I have a feeling is going to drag down every game that isn't The Witcher 3 for me, because it was such a great quality of life detail in that game. In Witcher 3 you can hold down the run button while on your mount and the mount would follow a trail/road if you were on one. So even if it was winding up and down and left and right you wouldn't have to worry about manually making those turns. It's such a pain in the rear end in these other games when you're on your horse to have to constantly be following these little mountain paths. and because it's such a pain in the rear end I usually end up either fast traveling or just cutting straight across the countryside, both of which kind of ruin the immersion.

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