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Vandar posted:I have been a fan of Supergiant since day one, and I can't imagine a more fitting word than 'magic' to describe what they do. Every game they've made has been gold and has been better than the last, and every title they've released has just been...utterly charming and wonderful and emotional and perfect. They don't make my favorite games, but they're one of my favorite devs for sure Also model an incredibly healthy workplace, and that's rare af in this industry
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Jul 18, 2021 03:55
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Doing the Lord's Work, J-Ru.
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Jul 18, 2021 06:46
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I'll edit that into the OP. Thanks so much for compiling the list!
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Jul 18, 2021 16:59
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One little correction, please: "a life ruining experience" isn't part of LISA the Painful RPG's title, that statement is something it lists as a feature. My bad, I should've made that clearer. I'm thinking of making more submissions, but everything I want to write about covers heavy topics. I love games of all tones, but the experiences that really stick with me trend in that direction. 
Forsythia fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Jul 18, 2021 |
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Jul 18, 2021 18:10
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I think a lot of us do. I remember someone in the "Recommend Me a Game" thread saying they wanted a downer game that "made them feel like poo poo," and I went "hey, me too!" There was no shortage of suggestions, so it's okay. This is a friendly sadspace. 
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Jul 18, 2021 19:20
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I never got into Hunt: Showdown but I keep thinking about it. It looks pretty cool design wise. Also its basically the Gantz videogame I've been saying Epic should make Fortnite into for awhile.
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Jul 18, 2021 19:36
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Jerusalem posted:
God drat, dude. Thanks for this comprehensive recap but my god how do you do this so well? Between ^^^that TPS Report Up There^^^, your threads on The Wire and The Sopranos, by my count, you've written several books just on this website. Good books. Did you do the Breaking Bad Recap thread too? Are you published at all and if so what did you write about? ... Really cool reading all that up there because every game I recognize has an argument to be made for it and the ones I don't made me intrigued to try them out because of the great write ups and how much detail they went into. This is a very cool thread and a really neat list of games spread over several genres. The people writing about every game do a great job of explaining why they like them. Are we allowed to go more than once? Because I have my #2 game locked and loaded. BiggerBoat fucked around with this message at 21:02 on Jul 18, 2021 |
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Jul 18, 2021 20:59
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BiggerBoat posted:Are we allowed to go more than once? Because I have my #2 game locked and loaded. Allowed? It is expected 
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Jul 18, 2021 21:10
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BiggerBoat posted:Are we allowed to go more than once? Because I have my #2 game locked and loaded. Pretty sure others have. As long as you put lots of thought into your post I can't see a complaint. (Just don't post like "I love game x cuz its good" so someone else can go more detailed if you're feeling lazy haha)
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Jul 18, 2021 21:10
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BiggerBoat posted:God drat, dude. Thanks for this comprehensive recap but my god how do you do this so well? Between ^^^that TPS Report Up There^^^, your threads on The Wire and The Sopranos, by my count, you've written several books just on this website. J-ru toxxed out of watching WWE for a year, and suddenly had way more time and positive energy.
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Jul 18, 2021 21:16
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Shine posted:J-ru toxxed out of watching WWE for a year, and suddenly had way more time and positive energy. Well, that would definitely explain a few things. His Sopranos and Wire rewatch threads that recap every episode are fantastic.
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Jul 18, 2021 21:32
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He’s doing Mad Men right now, continuing his MVP god-tier work.
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Jul 18, 2021 22:57
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Link to his Sopranos thread? I’m on my first watch, Season 2. vvv thank you! doctorfrog fucked around with this message at 07:58 on Jul 19, 2021 |
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Jul 19, 2021 00:18
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doctorfrog posted:Link to his Sopranos thread? I’m on my first watch, Season 2. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3879795&pagenumber=166&perpage=40 drat good thread
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Jul 19, 2021 07:09
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doctorfrog posted:Link to his Sopranos thread? I’m on my first watch, Season 2. Oh boy, you hit the jackpot.
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Jul 19, 2021 08:14
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Pathologic 2 The premise You assume the role of a doctor who is returning to his hometown in the Russian steppe. After a bizarre dream sequence, you step off the train hungry, injured, confused, and surrounded by a distrustful alien culture that does not care and will largely not help you. As you gain your bearings, you learn that an explosive epidemic is incoming, the authorities are too busy bickering with each other to fight it, and you're now trapped in the middle of it all as the world comes crashing down around you. The tone  The game hurls you straight into the deep end with its setting, mood, and mechanics, and it impassively watches you struggle to keep your head above water. All of this is by design. A lot of players don't make it past this point, which is understandable. If you survive the learning curve, you will find a game that truly innovates on the medium: intense, challenging, and satisfying. Not "fun" in the conventional sense, but an experience that is entirely new. The game is very upfront with this reality: you can't save everyone. Your priority should be on keeping yourself from falling over dead from hunger, stab wounds or exhaustion first. Then do what you can to stop the town from being steamrolled by the epidemic. Your victories will be small, but welcome. The gameplay  Pathologic is set in a modestly sized map and takes place over 12 days. You spend your time fulfilling your duties as a doctor, hunting for supplies, investigating promising leads, and trying your hardest to avoid trouble in the streets. It's a game all about risk and resource management, and the clock's always ticking. No discussion of Pathologic is complete without mentioning its worst feature: combat. It's total dogshit, partly by design. You're just a doctor without special powers or training, and looters will destroy you if they catch you unprepared. Thankfully, most combat encounters can be avoided or escaped from, but you'll need to be wary. The survival  This is the only game that I've ever experienced that justifies having survival meters, IMO. They're not a tedious nag, but instead serve a vital purpose as a huge driver of both gameplay and tone. For the first time ever in a video game, I was looting every dumpster and drawer I saw not out of curiosity -- I did it because I desperately needed any edge I could get. You will consider doing hosed-up deeds to just live another day, and probably will go through with some of them. Your morals will almost certainly be compromised due to the insane circumstances. The difficulty "Pathologic 2 is intended to be nearly unbearable", the game itself explains. It offers several preset difficulties and more specific options for pain points you may be experiencing. I recommend starting with the suggested difficulty, seeing how that works out, and if it's too much, ratchet it down to an experience that is hard, yet still workable for you. It's worth the effort. Conclusion Pathologic truly is one of a kind. It asks, "Can you persist in the face of overwhelming odds? What will this cost you?" It's an art game with teeth and it uses the medium exquisitely. I'm normally not drawn to games that are this harrowing, but there's precious few that can create and maintain these kinds of experiences without it being a pointless exercise in poor design or nonconstructive sadism.
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Jul 20, 2021 04:40
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River City Ransom - AKA Street Gangs, aka Downtown Nekketsu Monogatari River City Ransom is the localized version of the third game in Technos Japan's Kunio-kun series, an early franchise that never really properly made it to the US without some pretty heavy Americanizing of the characters and style. Not initially successful at launch in either sales or reviews, the game's eventually become a cult classic, with multiple spinoff/sequels in recent years. Up util DE: Final Cut, RCR is what I'd always without hesitation claim is my favorite all-time game.    The game loads up straight into character select, and one screen of exposition and the title drop is all the story you get to set you on your way. You play as either Alex (white shirt) or Ryan (blue shirt) as you punch and kick your way through Slick's gangs to rescue Ryan's girlfriend Cyndi.    Core of the gameplay is the traditional beat 'em up style. Pseudo-3d movement along the streets. No auto-scrolling like the arcade style of the genre. You have free movement in each section which could be about 1-4 screens long or so. As you enter each section, you're given the area's name and which gang currently claims it as their turf. To get through River City, you'll have to face fearsome gangs such as "The Generic Dudes," "The Frat Guys," "The Homeboys," "The Cowboys," and "The Plague." Each gang tends to have their preferred style and level of aggression, and harder late game gangs will also drop more money when defeated. The streets are also littered with various weapons favored by juvenile delinquents the world over. Rocks, brass knuckles, sticks, lead pipes, tires, trash cans can all be found everywhere. Your choice of weapon may also include anyone currently knocked on the ground, who can be picked up and swung or thrown at your enemies. This includes not only enemies, but the other player if you're in multiplayer. Beware, this also includes enemies being able to pick up YOU. There's no amount of lives or continues, but dying instead costs you half of your current cash reserves, which can be a terrible setback if you've been saving up.     What really set River City Ransom apart was its pioneering of mixing action gaming with RPG elements. You have several stats that can be raised through purchasing items, mostly food but sometimes music, or a slick pair of Texas boots, or even relaxing in a sauna. Punch/Kick/Weapon/Throwing raise your damage, Agility raises movement speed and jump distance, Defense/Strength cover your ability to block/break blocks, Willpower is your chance to get back up and recover health when you'd otherwise die, and Stamina/Max Power govern your health. On top of stat raising items are also books that grant techniques, like Stone Hands and Dragon Feet, which give you triple attacks with punches and kicks respectively, or Acro Circus which turns your jump into a damaging spin-jump. Getting one of the first two books is a major priority and probably the first thing a player saves up for.    To progress through the game, there are several bosses scattered around the city, and all (except Benny and Clyde) must be defeated in order to unlock the gates to River City High. While some bosses will appear immediately in their rooms, most of them require defeating every normal gang member in the area first to flush them out. Each boss can also be respawned infinitely, providing reliable sources of cash.    Finally in River City High, you fight your way up through the floors of the school until you face the dragon twins Randy and Andy, a homage to Double Dragon heroes Billy and Jimmy, with the Double Dragon theme playing during their fight. Significantly more difficult than the rest of the game, with the actual final boss, Alex's former friend Simon who thought changing his name to Slick would make him sound cooler, being a relative cakewalk in comparison.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkT_r3wV_vwRiver City Ransom is just one of the most charming and endearing games I've played. While my screenshots have all been from single player, where the game truly shines is the 2-player action. Shared screen play with friendly fire always on and it becomes an easy game to go from a few "accidental" friendly fire hits to intentionally knocking down your friend so you can throw them at an enemy. The main Running Around theme is one of those songs that is just permanently etched in my mind and so perfectly fits the street fighting genre. The game is available in the NES lineup on the Switch Online package and is easy to jump into. Can take 20 minutes or a couple hours to beat depending on how much you feel the need to boost your stats. It's one of very few games I can always pick up and have my day feel better for playing it. It's a game worth playing solo, and one I absolutely recommend if you've got a friend or family member up for some couch co-op.
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Jul 20, 2021 11:13
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RCR is like  the fighting gameUnderground is basically the sequel: https://store.steampowered.com/app/422810/River_City_Ransom_Underground/ And if you want something even more  , River City Girls is great: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1049320/River_City_Girls/
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Jul 20, 2021 11:43
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Canonically you beat up goons so bad they "BARF!"
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Jul 20, 2021 12:11
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Zerilan posted:River City Ransom - AKA Street Gangs, aka Downtown Nekketsu Monogatari Holy gently caress, I just got hit with the heaviest nostalgia trip of my entire life. Seeing this photo above, I didn't just remember, I was transported back to my childhood. I stood in the local video rental store, in front of the small shelf set aside for a couple of NES games. It was Friday afternoon, school was done, and I had no homework. I had to carefully choose which game to rent. Monday felt like weeks away, and barring some small breaks to eat or sleep, I could play Nintendo that entire time. I picked up the River City Ransom box. It looked amazing, and it sounded like a bad rear end crime movie. I grabbed the empty plastic NES case from behind the RCR box ("BRING CASE TO THE FRONT DESK" was taped on the case), and I knew my weekend was set. My older sister saw that I had a game, and insisted that she be allowed to play. We started a 2P game, and having never played a game with friendly fire before, we immediately beat each other up. This turned into a screaming match, which ended with my Dad yelling for us to shut the hell up, so he can watch the movie he rented. Sister exits stage left, and I spend the next 2 days glued to this game. I am repeatedly getting my face smashed in, but I'm enjoying the poo poo out of it. (Maybe this is where my love for Dark Souls was born?) The weekend went by entirely too quickly, and I couldn't wait to tell my friends on Monday about this amazing game that I'd been playing.
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Jul 20, 2021 14:20
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Final Fantasy 14 Online https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awM5G6xBC2I Incoming rambling rant again, fair warning. FF14’s been in gaming news a fair bit recently, so I figured I’d write a more in-depth analysis of why I enjoy it as much as I do, despite having being an obstinate MMORPG naysayer for years and years of my gaming life. Why is it the one that captured me the most, when I’d tried others and found the traditional behemoths of the genre unappealing? I’ve never been so much as tempted to try World of Warcraft, being mostly ignorant of the Warcraft setting and uninterested in a PVP-heavy experience without much of a story. Guild Wars 1 was something I tried briefly with some friends, who all enjoyed it more than I did - something about the way it looked and played just never did it for me. I fundamentally don’t much care for game worlds where your experience of being ‘the chosen one’ is juxtaposed with the sight of so many others waiting in line behind the same NPC with a quest marker over their head (just ignore that FF14 does this same exact thing for now). GW1 just wasn’t doing enough to suspend my constant awareness that I was playing an MMO with random strangers, my story not truly my own, and not much of one to boot. More lately, I’d tried two others; Elder Scrolls Online and The Old Republic. ESO is… fine, it’s like Skyrim but worse in terms of gameplay, which is honestly kinda impressive. Mostly lost me on gameplay here. TOR is actually a game I’m sorta okay with, in hindsight - I might even go back to it, owing to its class-based storylines which emphasize plot and character development in classic Bioware fashion (though I’m always a little sketchy about Bioware story-writing even since Baldur’s Gate). Didn’t help that I played both games with an ex of mine, which is a lot to get into that I won’t, but let’s just say it’d be hard for me to enjoy them until enough time has passed.  So why is Final Fantasy 14 different for me, and why might it be different for you, curious reader wondering why the gently caress everyone is suddenly talking about it? Short answer to that is because WoW is imploding in a fit of player resentment over Blizzard’s handling of the game itself, and lots of people are looking for an alternative to invest their time and money into in the void left by WoW’s absence. FF14 is the game most people seem to be gravitating towards, helped in no small part by Twitch evangelists and their communities, and a lot by good word of mouth. But they had to pick the game for a reason. Because it’s good, would be my guess. Really good. But also, more cynically stated, it’s very similar to WoW in terms of fundamental gameplay, with some differences, and an overall different, more player-positive design philosophy. It’s telling that, in most patch notes, the most grind-intensive things are almost always made easier and less-time consuming to acquire over time. This is a game that listens to player feedback, and a game that ultimately respects your time as a player, who might not always want to spend the entire day in its gameworld. You can if you want, certainly - there’s plenty to do. Lots and lots and lots to do. But I got into this game about a year ago, before this whole WoW ‘dying’ thing happened. Why did I get into it? It helped that I was depressed and recently heartbroken and in desperate need of distraction, which MMOs provide in spades. It helped that my friend bought it for me, relieving me of the excuse of having to pay for something myself. I could just try it and give it a fair shake, confident that it’d probably be like every other MMO I’ve bounced off of. Anime catgirls? Small children player race? Oh, Japan. I’d try it and play with my friend, certainly, justify the money he spent, but probably no- oh, wait, poo poo I’m having fun.  Not a lot of fun, mind, since you start with A Realm Reborn, which is… rough, to put it lightly. A humongous difference in quality from what preceded it, for sure, but still a bit of a slog. It’s a more traditional storyline, involving finding crystals, black-robed bad guys, big angry gods and you killing them, slightly annoying characters who tag along with you everywhere and tell you, the hero, what to do. Immediately evident, though, is that it bothers with these characters at all. An actual cast - not a great one immediately, one that relishes in anime tropes, but they’re there. This did a lot for me, unlike other MMOs which don’t feature strong supporting characters at all. This felt more like a single player RPG at times, with characters joining you on your quest (conveniently absent for the most part during a fight, mind) and giving you feedback on the story unfolding. Also evident was the generally strong quality of writing in terms of setting - something I consider separate from the main plot. How characters talk and act, how different city-states comport themselves in terms of their histories and cultures, what they say about the world itself and the many monsters inhabiting it. It feels holistic, and not like a theme park ride, not like an explicit video game world. This does a lot for me - I’m a stickler for getting immersed in these settings, and a sucker for good writing and setting-craft. Though not gripping me with the story and main narrative, I was pretty charmed by FF14’s world and its plucky cast of characters.  What about gameplay? I started off as an arcanist, didn’t enjoy it, and swapped to thaumaturge in short order, recommended to me by my friend when I expressed interest in ‘huge numbers.’ Thaumaturge and its eventual evolution into Black Mage provides huge numbers aplenty, though its early game performance in ARR especially can be charitably described as boring. Like most things about the game, though, it would only get better and far more enjoyable with time. The same can be said about mechanical complexity in the dungeons and boss fights (trials) - early game dungeons being obnoxiously annoying to get through (looking at you, Copperbell Mine) with simplistic and time-wasting mechanics giving way to excellent dungeons that feel rapid and fun to run through time and again. Simple boss fights with basic mechanics, again, slowly turning into more complicated dances that require a decent amount of experience and practice. Plenty of other gameplay systems too that aren’t ‘find poo poo, kill poo poo, loot poo poo.’ Buy a house (please be kind to your clicking finger), buy an apartment, set up a wardrobe full of clothes, go gambling in the Gold Saucer, go fishing, make things, fly around and look at stuff, take photos of your character doing cute or cool poses, whatever. There’s a seasonal quest right now where you do an investigation and uncover a mystery. There’s another seasonal quest where you dance to calm a huge bomb from exploding on a beach. Roleplay in the horny part of town if you’re so inclined, whatever. Roleplay with your guild. Join a guild and coordinate hunts for lucrative targets. Do PVP (don’t expect a WoW experience!), which is basically just mock-up fights between peers. Meet new people and spout memes in shout chat. Go on horrific grind-cycles to make your weapon glow in a pretty way. Play an instrument. Collect minions and pets through various means. Absurd amounts of character customization with clothes, weapons, looks and emotes. It’s a lot. It’s an MMO. It does MMO things pretty dang well. Those are all nice and all, and provide me with occasional distraction, but they’re not why I got hooked. ARR’s middling-to-decent performance didn’t get me hooked. ARR and the early game all the way to the first expansion is what’s often called the filter. If you’re gonna bounce off this game, it’ll be in this early stretch - I powered through riding off of my need for distraction and the generally decent enjoyment I was getting out of playing through with my friends and exploring the world.  Heavensward, the first expansion, is where I got hooked. If you get to HW, congrats - you’re in for a good time. Without going into spoilers for any of the expansions, all I can say is that HW provides a great, nuanced take on an otherwise fairly simple fantasy story concept and plays it off really, really well. Stormblood is a bit of a let-down in many ways, which I usually ascribe to split focus and some weird narrative choices, but has definite great moments despite. Shadowbringers is an intricate, nuanced, well-written and wonderfully well-realized culmination of an absurd amount of previously spinning plates that the story had been dutifully keeping afloat up until then. Shadowbringers is one of the best stories I’ve seen in video games, elevating the entire MMO on its emotional heft and excellent execution. If you cared about any of the characters, the world, anything at all about the story of this game, ShB is a profoundly rewarding experience. What can I say about the music? It ranges from orchestral epic to anime OP to weird fusions of both of those, to sick guitar anthems with expert lyrics as the cream on top. I can't rightly say there's anything I've heard in this game, musically, that has annoyed or bothered me. ARR's music is the highlight of that whole experience, and it only gets better, as with all things related to this game. What started as a banger that you loved in the first expansion will swiftly see unseating as you reach some other glorious musical high note. The music is absolutely a highlight of this game, emphasizing the emotional moments, underlining the silly ones, and jacking up the tension and adrenaline rush in boss fights. It all pretty much rules, I love all of it. I haven’t touched even twenty-five percent, I feel, of what this game has to offer. I’ve leveled two jobs over a year, taking it slow, to be fair. I’ve barely touched beast tribe quests, savage or ultimate content (I’ve done a few ultimate trials, I just need to get my friends together to do a static). I don’t own a house or an apartment. There’s so much to do even with the amount of enjoyment I’ve already gotten from the game’s story and plentiful dungeons and trials. You can do as much or as little as you want, and the game will seldom call foul. Like I said, respects your time.  Also notable, I feel I have to point out, is the overall ‘narrative’ of this game’s development itself. Going from the universally reviled 1.0 classic FF14 into ARR is nothing short of miraculous, a testament to the shrewd developers that took over the project after its initial failure. This is the game that genuinely blew up not only its servers at the end of 1.0, but blew up the world to boot, prepping the game for its eventual rebirth. A gamble, but one that massively paid off with its massive quality improvement even in ARR, and overwhelming improvement come Heavensward. And you can tell that the devs give a poo poo, too - for every annoying grind, there’s something in the game that you’ll appreciate for its simplicity and ease. They want you to have fun, ultimately - and in turn, you find yourself rooting for them as well, especially now that the game is seeing so much interest. From rags to riches, to arguably taking the crown on the top of the MMO pile from the long-standing monarch. A crown that was not so much seized as it was picked up off the floor, granted, but it’s still a testament to FF14’s overall quality and consistency. I and many others are awaiting Endwalker in November with no shortage of excitement - the first expansion drop for me, so doubly exciting. The game isn’t perfect by any means. Some storylines are utter duds, very basically written and boring. Some gameplay loops are annoying. Some mechanics are unfair or poorly designed. The community isn’t a perfect utopia of ultra positivity like many would tell you, every MMO will have its lovely players who will occasionally lessen the experience just by existing near you. Don’t get me started on the grind-cycle of relic weapons. But these annoying bits are splashes in a much wider, consistently good-to-excellent sea of a game, by my reckoning, that by the time you reach the last expansion you’ll be utterly hooked despite the quibbles. But it takes time to reach that part - time investment, investment of your patience in getting through lesser parts. Even these lesser moments, however, see elevation in the culmination and progression of this game’s storyline. FF14 is a game, to me, about pay-off. Emotional pay-off, mechanical pay-off, writing pay-off. It asked me to give it a chance, and I did - and I was rewarded for it with what I’ve described previously as the best Final Fantasy game. I meant that, and still mean it. If you’re seeking a deep game to sink your time into, if you’re fleeing from WoW’s burning wreckage, or for any reason at all that any of the above sounds appealing to you, give this game a shot. Power through. Chances are decent you’ll be glad you did, sooner than you might expect. A heart-felt, often challenging, hilarious, silly, melancholic, contemplative and ultimately very fun game waits. It’s one of my favorite games at this point, and I never thought I’d say that about any MMO.  If all that fails, gently caress, I dunno. Make a cute character or something. Or play with goons, check out the MMO subforum for that. I’m told there’s a very compelling free trial or some poo poo, maybe look into that if you’re still hesitating. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uyll1643pcQ Erwin the German fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Jul 24, 2021 |
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Jul 20, 2021 16:03
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River City Ransom is still great, and in 2019 I had the pleasure of introducing a student flatmate of mine to it, playing it on Switch in tabletop mode with the joy cons. Was nostalgia for me, an introduction to a classic for him, and that shared delight of the Switch being a device that you can just turn into a portable co-op retro gaming console. It was good times, good times. Just to lower the tone, worth pointing out there was a ROMhack for River City Ransom called "Pussy City Pimps" which was basically the same game except some really dubious references to whores and hoes, and one of the weapons you can pick up looks like it is a giant fleshy dildo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnHDVZqkSdo&t=21s
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Jul 20, 2021 18:00
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Ah, so that's who stole and relabeled my Saints Row demake
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Jul 20, 2021 20:15
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I still think about how Shadowbringers managed to get into the SA GOTY top ten two years in a row, and that was before everyone and their dog with even a mild curiosity in MMOs decided to give it a shot. Shadowbringers is still my favorite Final Fantasy and pound for pound the best written of them, though. Note I avoided including A Realm Reborn, Heavensward, or Stormblood in that superlative. That said the free trial meme is probably gonna be dead for a while, the current influx of new players has overwhelmed the servers to such a degree that the devs just put out a patch that gives paid subscribers priority in login queues. This will probably be reversed should interest normalize downwards again but for now it's a rough time to be a free trial player.
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Jul 21, 2021 00:27
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Hades spoiled me with the quality and uniqueness of the dialogue. I'm sure someone repeated themselves once or twice but nearly every character having spoken dialogue is amazing. Even after a run where I barely accomplished anything everyone in the hub would have something new to say. It's now odd playing other games where characters say the same lines during each combat encounter.
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Jul 21, 2021 16:31
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Hyrax Attack! posted:Hades spoiled me with the quality and uniqueness of the dialogue. I'm sure someone repeated themselves once or twice but nearly every character having spoken dialogue is amazing. Even after a run where I barely accomplished anything everyone in the hub would have something new to say. It's now odd playing other games where characters say the same lines during each combat encounter. Like I said, it's loving Magic. Greg Kasavin is the kind of writer that I aspire to be, and I generally make it a point to kill those kinds of comparisons when they come around for a lot of different reasons. The sheer volume of dialogue and variety is staggering and a feat in itself, and my brain instantly shuts down when I try and think about what the conversation outline must look like on the backend.
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Jul 21, 2021 19:57
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I've been looking to pick up some games on the cheap so I just want to thank this thread for putting several cool looking games on my list that I might have never known about or considered.
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Jul 21, 2021 23:36
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Groovelord Neato posted:Please don't go. The drones need you. They look up to you. You made me hear it in my head for the first time in 15 years
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Jul 24, 2021 18:44
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Cyberpunk 2077 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvlP4KYW7BE There’s gonna be some early game and other light spoilers in this, fair warning. I've tagged accordingly, but chances are good you already know them all if you've looked into the game any. Still, better safe than sorry. In this thread’s progenitor, I had this game listed as one of my top games I’d played that year. I’m gonna write about it again, longer form as is now usual - but I’m not really intending this to be a sales pitch like the last couple, more of me trying to figure out why I like this game as much as I do. Objectively speaking, there’s a hell of a lot wrong with it. It’s probably one of the most shoddily made games that I do enjoy, as a matter of fact - from trivial gameplay from the mid-point on, baffling balance in terms of weapons and RPG progression, ridiculous Borderlands-esque looting in a game that would be better off without it, to unfortunate depictions in the game’s world of marginalized people. There are parts of this game I look back on and just feel annoyed, disappointed - I followed this game’s progress since it was announced, always excited whenever news came out. That the eventual shipped product was the result of developer crunch, arguably misleading marketing, and aching amounts of corners cut… it’s just sorta heartbreaking, but a useful lesson none the less in tempering one’s expectations. Which is all a lot of damning things to say about a game I genuinely like quite a bit. Are my standards just that low? Probably, when it comes to cyberpunk material. It’s a genre I have always been in love with since Deus Ex, having read books, played online text RP games, written stories, you name it. 2077 is a game that’s very much akin to how Bloodlines was to the VTM setting for me - a well-realized video game depiction of the source material, that being the tabletop RPG Cyberpunk (later Cyberpunk 2020 and Cyberpunk RED). Now, the tabletop is pretty dumb and edgy, just gonna get that out there immediately. It’s amazingly cringe in a lot of ways, very try hard, with very stupid illustrations galore. It does, however, set the expected tenets for what I’ve come to accept the cyberpunk genre as being encapsulated by. Style over substance. Live on the edge. Attitude is everything. Y’know, cringy poo poo that was probably a lot cooler to kids in the 1980s than our blissfully irony-laden brains.  lol, lmao There is, however, a fourth rule, which is to break the rules. This can be taken to mean breaking the rules of the dystopian society, which cyberpunk characters do quite a bit of. I choose to attribute another meaning to it, though, in that cyberpunk - especially good cyberpunk - doesn’t always have to be all style and no substance, all attitude with no nuance or calm, and it can fruitfully tell stories about people who aren’t glass-chewing edgerunners. This last rule is permission to do with the genre as you see fit, and I’ve always ascribed to the belief about cyberpunk that so long as you feel like it’s cyberpunk, it counts. Shadowrun uses fantasy tropes and very rarely tells stories about bringing down the hated system, as Cyberpunk would want you to do. Is that cyberpunk? Yes, I feel. Is Deus Ex cyberpunk for telling a story mostly about conspiracies? Yes. It’s one of those genres where the feeling of it is more important than any rules about what it can and can not be, and that feeling can be subjective. 2077 is a game that has the word ‘cyberpunk’ directly on the tin. This is a cyberpunk game in the same edgy vein that was thought up in the 80s, about style over meaning and attitude over reason, where you play as a lovely merc with the asinine agenda of ‘becoming the best in Night City.’ Becoming the best, naturally, means slaughtering your way through hundreds of gang members and corporate stooges, trying to strike it rich. You have other, equally edgy compatriots in your journey, particularly the lovable Jackie, who gleefully shares in your aspirations while dual-wielding pistols and saying one-liners before shooting people.  That is, of course, until he dies at the end of the first act after a heist goes tremendously wrong, the inciting incident for the real story of the game. The genre, steeped in black-hearted murderers and half-machine, empathy-less killers, is no stranger to letting people die. Jackie, though, I feel represents particular shade being hung on the ‘rules’ of the genre as depicted in its source material. Jackie shot for the moon, wanted to be ‘the best,’ to be remembered as a legend in a city full of horrible people and miserable people who get ground to dust every day. He wanted all the style, all the attitude, all of the edge, and he dies in the back of a cab while your character mourns the loss of a best friend. This dovetails into the game’s actual plot, like I said, which becomes less about being the best mercenary with the highest kill count (though both of these will still happen, of course), and more about saving your rear end from a delightfully cyberpunk brain virus that’s trying to replace your personality and ego with that of a dead rock star. 2077 has a lot of great characters, a smaller world than the previous Witcher 3, and a shorter one. This, I feel, grants it more intimacy with the characters who the game wants you to focus on - Keanu’s only one of them, though arguably the most important considering he shares a brain with you. The game becomes less focused on getting money to be known as the coolest and bestest mercenary, and more about making connections with people who can help you solve the problem of your imminent death - and in making those connections, getting drawn into those characters’ own issues and very cyberpunk problems. Fight off badlands road warriors in a giant future tank. Sneak into abandoned warehouses full of psychopaths who are more machine than human. Track down a serial killer using digital memory viewing glasses. The humanity and motivations of these characters are never quite lost despite the game’s absolute relishing in the genre. Here’s another cyberpunk maxim - high tech, low life. 2077 nails this. Night City itself is also a wonderfully dreary, awful loving place. It’s not quite the rain-drenched, constant neon-bathed synthwave hellscape people wanted, but I think it’s better than that - it’s depicted as being a real city in a way, intended to cram millions of people into it in varying states of awfulness. It’s filthy, it’s fetish-y, it’s full of violence (most of which you’re only told about rather than see, you’ll be the one initiating a lot of it) and misery. It’s the natural conclusion of a world filled with corporations that have more power than nation-states, endlessly trying to out-compete the other, always trying to make things more efficient for their bottom lines. It’s a place where I accept that entire city blocks have been given over to gangs, all with intensely radicalized world views and ultra-violent methods, all the better to survive. The city is a character in its own right, and almost never depicted as a sympathetic one - to escape its awful gravity is a victory in itself.  I’ve already alluded to the game’s main story, but I feel it’s pretty well-told, if a little too brisk at times, a victim of the game’s half-botched production. What’s there, though, is a perfectly good cyberpunk storyline, with a fair share of twists, betrayals, tragic moments, stealth and ultra-violence. It shares space between V’s (your character) quest to get Keanu out of their body and Silverhand’s own past exploits juxtaposed against the ‘current’ day, which emphasizes the underlying narrative of your personalities slowly twisting together. This is a pretty delightful cyberpunk and sci-fi concept to me in general, and the game nails it pretty well, particularly and poignantly in the game’s finishing stretch. In touching upon all that stuff above, with the ‘rules’ of the setting and all, do I feel as if 2077’s story adheres to them, breaks them? It does both. It both relishes in the edge as well as casting a light on it and showing off the ugliness of such a lifestyle. Style will only get you so far without substance - better to have both. No amount of attitude will save you from a bullet or bad tumble, but the game wants you to have it anyway, to live life to the fullest no matter how much the gangs or corporations try to squeeze it out of you, out of everyone and everything. It’s a story about trying to live, the ugly, tragic process of trying to unfuck a hosed situation, and basking in as many genre staples as it can along the way. I love the story. The irony is, of course, the game is a victim to these very same tenets. Style over substance, you say? Sure sounds a lot like the game’s gameplay, to the sight of distant cars actually being mobile .gifs on the horizon that vanish as soon as you get close. Better not be too edgy, or cops will teleport behind you instantly. I can sure feel the attitude of being a badass legendary mercenary as I clear the twentieth loving gang base for basically no reason other than to say I did it, cause that’s the majority of the game’s side content. I played this game as a street samurai quite literally, using a katana and cyberware designed to get in people’s faces and slice them up. This absolutely trivializes the game. You can also play as a stealthy hacker type, looking through walls, turning people’s wetware off, making turrets attack bad guys for you, etc. This absolutely trivializes the game as well.  There’s more difficult builds, but not particularly interesting ones worth noting - why play a cyberpunk game without hacking and being a cyber samurai? What am I gonna do, use a gun and stick to a chest-high wall? No thanks, and that’s boring to boot. The AI is mostly bad, too, so combat eventually became a measure of ‘how quickly can I sprint through this gang of 10 dudes and kill them all in one swing of my legendary Japanese steel?’ Turns out it’s usually in less than thirty seconds, which is novel the first two or three times, and then boring. RPG mechanics themselves? I hope you like incremental, small upgrades in the form of perks. None of them feel especially exciting, and some entire trees are just utter duds. Didn’t help that a good few of them were bugged entirely at launch. It’s a game with a great story and atmosphere and feeling to it - the world feels like the dark future, a bleak one. The game itself, however, the act of playing it? Occasionally brilliant with some of its systems, particularly when it comes to hacking and mobility, in the way becoming more machine gives you options and fun. But it’s mostly just tedious, a baffling Ubisoft-esque race to clear the map of markers and ‘content’ that doesn’t mean anything. The game’s main plot and major side missions are far and away the best content in the game, putting the side mission tripe to shame. It was very buggy when I played back at the start of the year, but I’ve heard it’s better now. Shrug! Maybe, I dunno. Hopefully next time I play it it runs better, though I was blessed with far fewer issues and crashes than most, comparatively.  The music is overall excellent, if we’re talking about the game’s actual atmospheric and combat soundtrack - all of it emphasizes the game’s atmosphere, with industrial and pounding synth. Lots of great leitmotifs from the game’s main theme all over, as well as most of that same music being wonderful listening in general. The game’s radio? Ehhhhh. I barely listened to a lot of it, despite it all being made for the game in a curious bit of fidelity to the world setting. Kudos for that, some of it is good, most of it is bad or forgettable. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCHwMsTlLxo On the subject of sound, I really like all the voice acting, too. Keanu does a great job with Johnny Silverhand in my opinion, and my own character’s Cherami Leigh is always a delight to hear ever since I heard her as A2 in Automata. Lots of good performances all around, such as Judy, Jackie, Panam and Takemura. All in all, it’s a game you’re very much permitted to dislike, in spite of all the praise I’ve given it. CDPR screwed it up - they promised the moon and delivered, comparatively, a rock. Huge articles have been written about the game’s utterly hosed development, from the awful crunch the devs had to face, to the marketing blitz not even close to depicting the delivered game, to the way it was ultimately rushed out the door despite being delayed multiple times. It came out as a buggy mess and received well-deserved critique from people, many of whom were eagerly expecting this to be the title that redefined the RPG genre. It didn’t, not by a long shot - it was, in my opinion, a strictly mediocre RPG with many busted systems and mechanics, that coasted into my good graces entirely off the strength of its narrative and gleeful adherence to the cyberpunk genre in ways that were fun, melancholy, funny and more. The narrative and atmosphere depicts the dark future in a strikingly compelling way, and as a big fan of that genre, I was always destined to like the game for that alone. It’s just a shame that the genre about, in part, corporatism run rampant and cruelty towards workers has to hit so close to home in this case. I myself don’t intend to give them more money until they shape up their act, but I’m at least grateful that the game had something redeeming for me.
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Jul 24, 2021 19:41
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Brave of you to post that here but I agree. 2077, like No Man's Sky, is an actually really good and fun game that was released half-baked and I really hope they get the same redemption arc that NMS eventually did. CDPR hosed their employees who made some absolutely incredible and beautiful artwork. The story and characters are legit some of the better I've experienced in a game lately, short of Disco Elysium. (Nothing compares in writing to Disco) I played on PC and had very very few issues. My gf played on PS4 and the game was extremely buggy, ultimately to the point she had to put it down. But she just started playing it against last week, and while performance on console still isn't great, at least it isn't crashing anymore so its definitely playable and she's going to finish the story.
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Jul 24, 2021 19:44
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So I promised I'd give my impressions of Psychonauts once I got a copy. Unfortunately, I bounced off of it pretty hard. The controls were a mess and the start of the story just didn't hook me at all. I just really wasn't feeling it so I dumped it. I'll probably try it again some day, but so far...eh.
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Jul 25, 2021 00:31
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Great write-up, Erwin the German, and I absolutely agree: despite all the very obvious and unmistakable problems with Cyberpunk 2077, it's still a game I really enjoyed playing in spite of it all. I can't dispute most of the complaints I've heard about the game but I had a blast playing the game anyway, and the ending path I chose - loving off out of Night City and embracing the family of the Nomads who accepted and loved me, with the small glimmer of hope that with Panam we were going to find some way to save V from the damage done by the chip - really felt like the perfect culmination of the way I chose to play and the lessons V learned along the way. I do love that one of the frequent recurring messages of the game is,"Night City is loving horrible, even if you're king of the mountain it is a lovely MOUNTAIN!"
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Jul 25, 2021 00:36
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Gotta admit I didn't see that one coming
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Jul 25, 2021 00:37
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This thread is tainted with sin now
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Jul 25, 2021 01:15
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Regy Rusty posted:This thread is tainted with sin now please find it in your heart to forgive me
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Jul 25, 2021 01:28
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Erwin the German posted:please find it in your heart to forgive me Very well. You are absolved.
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Jul 25, 2021 01:53
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Put your money on the double and play Prey, The Witness, and Outer wilds. Sorry for making GBS threads on The Outer Wilds post. Just that it's best played knowing nothing about it.
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Jul 25, 2021 03:14
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Dominoes posted:Put your money on the double and play Prey, The Witness, and Outer wilds. Sorry for making GBS threads on The Outer Wilds post. Just that it's best played knowing nothing about it. On this topic: There is no Game is one of the best But I'm not going to spoil a single thing for anyone.
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Jul 25, 2021 10:55
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Erwin the German posted:Final Fantasy 14 Online I love FF14. It got me through the first couple of lockdowns last year. If you're like me and freeze up on a lot of RPGs because you don't like the idea of playing alts to try out all the classes, this game is worth a shot. You can just bounce between classes at will, and if you loosely pay attention to managing your XP through the quest and have signed up to one of the bonus XP servers, you can usually juggle 2 or 3 main classes through the entire story. The community is also just staggeringly well behaved. It really flies in the face of people who justify online toxicity with cries of "just mute and move on, its the internet, its inevitable, thats just the way it is". It turns out that's not the case at all, and if you design your game to foster and promote kindness, tolerance and patience above all, people are way more chilled out and friendly. As the player above says, the game respects your time, and a less stressful experience - that feels like its on your side in terms of drops/progression/etc - makes for a kinder playerbase. (The game is also actively and strictly moderated, which helps a ton). As Erwin says, there are still assholes- but I remember each and every time I've encountered someone being an rear end in a top hat in the game because its just so rare. Having come to this game off a years long Dota 2 stint, it was just transformative. It's a cool place to hang out with mostly friendly people. And compared to something like WoW, in terms of the community its night and day. My one big gripe is that although the plot and story are fun, the dialogue itself for the first half of the game is just incredibly poorly written. It's way too overwritten, characters repeat or overexplain themselves endlessly, and it goes for this incredibly stiff medieval fantasy tone that just ends up feeling tedious, unnatural and overblown. You end up skipping through tons of pages of dialogue that are only really getting one or two points across, but inundated with weird medieval protocol and overexplanation. The dialogue gets WAY better from Stormblood onwards though. The writing gets more concise, colourful and fun, and the whole thing just loosens up a little. The plot is still kind of interesting throughout - but boy is the writing tedious as all hell up until that point. Anyway, it's a fun game with excellent music and some interesting boss fights, and its cool seeing them push this incredibly janky horrible game engine from 2011 in whatever crazy directions they can. Playing through the game, you kind of feel like you're playing through the last decade of game design, which is a trip in of itself.
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Jul 25, 2021 22:40
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