PYF little things in games

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Dr Snofeld: Apr 30, 2009

Masa posted:

Far Cry 2 has its problems, but the the way your GPS showed you if you where anywhere near a diamond briefcase was extremely helpful for finding most of them without even needing a guide. And every single vehicle in the game had a GPS unit mounted on the dashboard, which made it even easier (On foot you have to actually take out your GPS to see it).
I also liked that when you look at your map it doesn't pause the game and bring up a map screen, you actually take it out and look at it. I enjoyed being able to glance down at the map while driving to see where I needed to go, and the experience of simulating being a distracted driver in ways that other games don't match every time I crashed into a tree because I was looking at the map instead of the road

Speaking of Far Cry 2, I think it has some of the best enemy chatter of any FPS I can think of. They shoot the poo poo about any old thing if you get close enough to hear, they react differently to you as your infamy increases (from sneering insults to full-blown "OH poo poo IT'S HIM" panic) and as you proceed to gently caress poo poo up they start to lose it and mutter to themselves in a panic.

For all its flaws I really like Far Cry 2.

# ¿ Feb 22, 2012 18:49

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 04:04

Dr Snofeld: Apr 30, 2009

dongsweep posted:

Funny how many people bring up Far Cry 2. It had some glaring flaws but so many great aspects. Personally, I loved how you could start a fire behind you by firing an RPG from a crouching position in a tall grass field.

That game would have been perfect if it was modable. I think almost everyone would just take out the never ending check points.

Far Cry 2 is a game with a lot of very nice little things, but the big problems mean you'd be hard-pressed to notice them.

# ¿ Feb 23, 2012 01:31

Dr Snofeld: Apr 30, 2009

DeathBySpoon posted:

So The End, the sniper that was mentioned, has a pet parrot. During the battle with The End, his parrot acts as a scout and flies around on its own. You can actually shoot, kill, and eat the parrot. The End cries out and curses you for killing his only friend

Alternatively, you can tranquillise the parrot, catch it, and release it while The End is in the same map. It will then fly back to The End and start squawking GRAMPA GRAMPA while he mutters to it to shut up, making it a bit easier to find him.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2012 16:43

Dr Snofeld: Apr 30, 2009

Oppenheimer posted:

Hey I remember that sorrow fight because I was watching a friend play it on two saves, one where he killed noone, and one where he killed everyone he could with shots to the dick. Watching people limp by for like 10 minutes holding their junk was pretty great.

How do you get to that part where you are like a weird vampire snake, I think it's a dream sequence? I think I remember seeing it.

EDIT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ox1mSUTZWPg&feature=related

That's what I was talking about. You have to save and reset to get to that part. I feel like MGS is a goldmine for these types of things.

You could fill a whole page with just Snake Eater tidbits, especially ways to mess with the guards.

You can poison them by capturing a venomous animal such as a king cobra alive and throwing it at them so they get bitten. Alternatively you can destroy the nearest food storeroom, which will make them so hungry that they'll complain endlessly (making it easy to hear them) and go for any food that's lying around, even rotten or poisonous food that you've thrown.

About 6 hours or so into the game, you're on a mountain that has a couple of attack helicopters skimming by every so often - except one of them won't be there if you blew it up in the recon outpost about four hours previously when it was not being used, and you had no reason to even notice it.

Sons of Liberty has its moments too. Late in the game, all the guards on the Big Shell get recalled to another location, and you're told that the coast should be clear on your way to your next objective. Except there's a single guard still around, and if you get close, you can hear the music from his MP3 player and see him bopping his head - he didn't hear the announcement.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2012 21:20

Dr Snofeld: Apr 30, 2009

Something about MGS2 that caught me off guard when I first played it, having only played some of MGS1, was the guards who periodically report in on their radio. If you knock out or kill them, HQ calls to ask why they're late, and dispatches a squad to check on them. They'll find and kick the guy awake if he's KOed but if he's dead they start searching for intruders. I never got the chance to find out what happened if you destroyed the radio of a guard who checks in - do they send people out to check on him then?

One of the biggest missed opportunities with MGS4 is that, while it's still possible to mess with the guards to an extent, it's rare that you get the opportunity to do so.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2012 21:56

Dr Snofeld: Apr 30, 2009

Bixington posted:

Far Cry 2: I'm not sure if it was scripted, but the buddy I chose showed up during a mission and got shot up. He then kept begging for morphine, and its immediately apparent that he's trying to get you to mercy kill him. Too bad the game sucked and I quit shortly after that, but that had some emotional impact.

That's scripted, alas. You can only save a buddy so many times before they die no matter what.

I was not happy when Warren bought it. I gave him as close to a Viking burial as I could manage in the savanna - that is, I threw a molotov on him and watched the grass burn.

Incidentally, some people complain that fires only spread a set distance, so you end up with perfect circles of burned grass. According to the developers, this limitation was added after, during playtesting, a single thrown molotov set the entire northern map area on fire.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2012 02:33

Dr Snofeld: Apr 30, 2009

The 4X game Galactic Civilisations 2 has some pretty advanced AI routines, allowing AI players to, for example, realise when you are massing units near their borders. On lower difficulties some of these routines are disabled. Knowing that some reviewers play games on the easiest difficulty to get through them in time, and fearing that their AI wouldn't get fairly considered, Stardock coded it so that if you amass units on the border on low difficulty, the AI player will message you to say something to the effect of "I know what you're up to, and if this was a higher difficulty I'd wreck your poo poo."

# ¿ Apr 3, 2012 02:29

Dr Snofeld: Apr 30, 2009

WeaponGradeSadness posted:

My favorite thing about this game was the fact that you can do the whole Bond villain thing and execute your minions at will, complete with a cheesy flourishing of the gun and a "YOU HAFF FAILED ME FOR ZE LAST TIME!"

Also there's just something hilariously evil about watching your minions torture and execute some random old lady so they can learn the hidden secrets of how to be a maid.

By clashing cymbals on their head and moonwalking.

# ¿ Apr 10, 2012 23:30

Dr Snofeld: Apr 30, 2009

DeathBySpoon posted:

Welp, I'm gonna go buy Hitman 3 now. This kind of sandbox behavior is just too drat cool to miss.

Blood Money is the fourth one. Hitman 3 is Contracts which isn't nearly as good. Hopefully you read this before you buy the wrong one!

# ¿ Apr 23, 2012 11:18

Dr Snofeld: Apr 30, 2009

MrHyde posted:

If you get it on steam, try the demo first. I'm glad I did because Steam doesn't do refunds and I can't even get the game to launch on my computer for some reason.

But also bear in mind that the demo is of the rubbish linear tutorial level that nobody ever plays more than once.

# ¿ Apr 23, 2012 14:16

Dr Snofeld: Apr 30, 2009

Red Dead Redemption is turning out to be full of these.

There's a button to tip your hat and say howdy to passersby, and they'll respond. At first they just say howdy back, but once your fame is high enough they recognise you and say "well howdy Mr Marston" and such like. Also people start to recognise you in the street, so you'll walk though the dusty town and people will be asking each other, "Is that John Marston?"

# ¿ Apr 24, 2012 02:55

Dr Snofeld: Apr 30, 2009

SpelledBackwards posted:

Regarding Deus Ex: HR

I didn't know you could do either of those things. I apparently took so long to get to that point in the level, because I was too busy checking for loot and XP, that when I got to the hostages they were already dead from the bomb having released the toxic gas. (Why wouldn't shooting it also release the toxic gas?). . I thought it was just scripted that it would always happen the way it happened to me, until I read about other people's experience in that level.

You're thinking of a different part. The bomb in the factory goes off if you spend too long at Sarif Industries dicking around before flying out there. I don't think the amount of time you spend in the factory affects the bomb.

# ¿ Jun 1, 2012 15:35

Dr Snofeld: Apr 30, 2009

Stoatbringer posted:

Doom 3 had an in-game video game - Super Turbo Turkey Puncher!

Some people played it long enough to get the maximum score.

If you get a high score you get an email sent to your PDA from Mars City HR, congratulating you on your score, and informing you that you've been docked time off for pissing about instead of reporting for duty.

# ¿ Jun 26, 2012 00:34

Dr Snofeld: Apr 30, 2009

Tiggum posted:

I loved that. Like, in DX:HR I was constantly finding ammo for the guns I didn't want and very little for the guns I did, but in DX:IW that's not an issue since any ammo you find works in whatever gun you want to use.

It always pisses me off when a game goes "Hey, here's a super cool gun, but don't use it because there's no ammo."

On the other hand, when you run out of ammo for one gun, you've run out of ammo for every gun.

# ¿ Jul 8, 2012 12:52

Dr Snofeld: Apr 30, 2009

BrewingTea posted:

What?! I'm playing Deus Ex for the first time, and when I dropped stuff in my office (assuming it would be there when I got back from the Osgood mission) it wasn't! I just assumed that UNATCO HQ's state didn't persist between missions until I read your post... Weird.

It's a feature added by the Shifter mod. Since pretty much everyone uses it or Biomod nowadays, it's hard to tell what's original and what's new.

# ¿ Jul 16, 2012 19:56

Dr Snofeld: Apr 30, 2009

scamtank posted:

Dawn of War games. The "upgrade armory" structure for the Orks is the Pile Of Gunz!, a little tipi bursting with guns and bombs and bullets and gas cans. So all buildings have a little animation for when they're crunching on something, right? Sparks flying out of the doors, drop pods being caught by landing pads, landing cargo craft, that sort of thing?

The Pile has a little Gretchin diving and swimming around inside the pile. "More Dakka? They're here somewhere, hang on."

I could go on about the different sync kills, too, but there's not a lot of quality footage on the Internet of those.

Relic absolutely nailed the Orks, in Dawn of War and Space Marine. The football hooligan voices and the way they run about chanting ORKS ORKS ORKS ORKS.

# ¿ Jul 17, 2012 14:48

Dr Snofeld: Apr 30, 2009

gooby on rails posted:

Psychonauts is another one of those games that could run this whole thread by itself for a few pages. My two favorite things in it, though:

-Very near the end of the game, you receive a birthday cake. Your mission is to carry the cake a short distance down a hall from one room to another. However, you can also take the cake all the way back out of the area, all the way back across the entire world back to the summer camp you started in. There is no reason you would ever want or think to do this, but nevertheless every character in the camp has unique dialog about the cake if you show it to them.

Is that the cake you use to lure Mr Pokeylope? I knew about all the reactions to him, but I didn't realise there were reactions to the cake, too.

# ¿ Jul 28, 2012 23:54

Dr Snofeld: Apr 30, 2009

Suleman posted:

Such as? I can't remember any characters like that. There's an opportunity to use it on Lili at a very specfic point which some might miss. I can't think of any other problematic ones.

You can't use it on Coach Oleander because he leaves the camp before you gain the Clairvoyance power.

# ¿ Aug 1, 2012 14:05

Dr Snofeld: Apr 30, 2009

Walton Simons posted:

Patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter.

Seen any... elves? Hahahahaha.

# ¿ Nov 4, 2012 02:14

Dr Snofeld: Apr 30, 2009

I've fired up Saints Row 2 again and I'm a big fan of how the boss is such an unrepentant psychopath. Which is a bit of a backhanded complement, but it fits the genre.

SR2 came out at about the same time as GTA4 and plenty has been said about how Niko's character arc doesn't at all fit into a game where you kill dozens of goons in a given mission. This was part of a trend, starting with San Andreas, of Rockstar trying to make their protagonists "likeable," with poor results.

CJ came across as a pushover, except when he was wildly overreacting. Construction workers wolf-whistling my sister? Better bury their boss alive!

The worst example being Vic from Vice City Stories who would loudly exclaim "I'm no criminal" before mowing down gangsters two minutes later.

The Boss, meanwhile, is much closer to the Tommy Vercetti brand of psychopath, but more so. The only things he cares about are himself and his gang - apart from Pierce, of course, but who gives a poo poo about Pierce? The only reason we can see the Boss as a hero is because every other non-Saints character is so much worse. But at least you don't find yourself going from killing sprees to being reluctant to fight in a cutscene or whatever.

I only ever play as the cockney male boss, incidentally. The voice actor goes from humorous to menacing very well.

# ¿ Dec 2, 2012 00:45

Dr Snofeld: Apr 30, 2009

Psalmanazar posted:

Also Cockney Supremacy

My bulky, shaven-headed, besuited cockney Boss is a laugh riot. Something about a big fat guy in a silk two-piece riding around on a moped is just magical.

# ¿ Dec 2, 2012 02:39

Dr Snofeld: Apr 30, 2009

ElBrak posted:

System Shock was all over the lean function, they had the traditional side to side lean, as well as a forward lean so you could peak over ledges in safety.

Hell SS1 had a two-axis leaning grid. Want to lean all the way left? You got it! Squat right down and lean right? Yes sir! Duck down just a little bit and duck about two-thirds of the way to the left? Hah, try a hard one buddy!

# ¿ Dec 12, 2012 22:54

Dr Snofeld: Apr 30, 2009

I recently reinstalled Half-Life 2: Episode 2, and my favourite little thing is your amazing vortigaunt buddy who hangs about with you for the first third or so of the game. Very competent - apparently the vortigaunts did a lot of training or something since HL1 - and wise in that alien sort of way, and just very pleasant to be around. I find myself wishing the muscle car had more than two seats so I could bring him along with me on the road trip.

# ¿ Dec 16, 2012 14:07

Dr Snofeld: Apr 30, 2009

Dickweasel Alpha posted:

I can't actually listen to anything by Khad. That bad.

If I remember right, Khad once got Lowtax to guest on one of his LP videos, and Lowtax didn't know what the gently caress was going on. Later, he got banned for being a consistently awful LPer and poster. Basically, even if you could bear to listen to Khad, he never said anything worth listening to.

# ¿ Dec 31, 2012 01:04

Dr Snofeld: Apr 30, 2009

Inzombiac posted:

So I've been arguing with a few people about this recently but Dark Souls feels like, to me, a spiritual sequel to Shadow of the Colossus.
I hadn't really thought about this until I got to (early boss)Moonlight Butterfly. It's just a beautiful and giant creature that is totally minding it's own business until your power-mad corpse rolls up with swords and sorcery and decide to stab it in the face. My friends argue that every enemy you fight is a demon of sorts that invaded human land and should be treated as such but the fog brought a lot with it and maybe a lot of these creatures were plucked from their homes and are trying to get back. As far as I can tell (I haven't finished it yet and never finished Demon's) they are not an invading or occupying force, they are displaced because of the Fog (?) and are just fine where they are hanging out until you decide that a shield to the throat is a better fate.

As always, I am probably reading WAY too much into it but Dark Souls has this way of silently moving you to think about the deeper meaning of the world and how your actions are selfish. It's the first game since SoC that I felt the world would be better off without the player.

I think you might be getting Dark Souls and Demon's Souls mixed up. The fog is a plot point in Demon's Souls but not in Dark Souls. You're still along the right lines regarding you wrecking poo poo, though. Several of the bosses aren't really evil and are just fighting you because you attacked them, and the hollow soldiers, balder knights and most other humanoid enemies were people like you driven mad by the curse of undeath. Some of them were even on the same quest.

# ¿ Jan 6, 2013 23:58

Dr Snofeld: Apr 30, 2009

On a related note, I just got Tekken Tag Tournament 2 the other day and I like that every character is unlocked from the very start, including ones that you'd think would be unlocks like Prototype Jack or Dr Bosconovich or Jinpachi. And once you punch in your online pass code the DLC characters are added to the list immediately without having to pick them from a DLC store or whatever. Having to unlock extra characters for games you're usually going to be playing multiplayer is a pain.

I think that drat near every Tekken character is in this game, except for all the earlier Jacks which would be pointless, and that yellow dinosaur thing from Tekken 3.

One thing that isn't my favourite is how much I suck at Tekken, but that's neither here nor there.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2013 20:43

Dr Snofeld: Apr 30, 2009

Red Dragon posted:

Even Unknown? That'd be pretty awesome.

Yes, as free DLC.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2013 21:53

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 04:04

Dr Snofeld: Apr 30, 2009

KozmoNaut posted:

I'm playing through Divinity 2: Developer's Cut at the moment, and the whole game is just stuffed full of little things. Despite the bugs and performance issues (stuttering ), you can really feel just how much love Larian Studios put into this game.

It's in everything, like how you can actually be a total dickbag evil bastard without just killing everyone, like the "evil" path is in so many RPGs. Putting stuff like "Yeah, I'm magnificent, I know" as a dialogue option when a peasant is thanking you for clearing the trolls out of their mine is brilliant. Every single dialogue in the game will present you with at least a few ways to be a snarky rear end in a top hat and insult whoever you're talking to, even major plot-related characters.

You can solve that same troll-clearing quest in so many different ways, too. You can kill the sorceror conjuring the trolls, but you can also remove the friendship rune from the portal he's using, turning the trolls on him instead. However, the best solution comes from hunting a bit around the game world and finding a chicken rune. Giving this to the sorceror and convincing him to stop antagonizing the village makes him start summoning chickens for the village instead

The game starts out in Ye Olde Standarde Fantasy Worlde, I guess this probably meant a lot of people found it boring and formulaic. However, once you get out of that starting area, the game takes a sharp turn towards Awesome Town. You'll have your very own battle tower, complete with your own necromancer, alchemist, combat trainer, smith, musician, dancer, minions (Tom, Dick and Harry) who you can send on fetch quests, hermaphroditic illusionist to change your appearance (and gender!) and it all makes you feel like a total badass waging war against another total badass who commands flying fortresses and legions of hilariously evil bastards. Mindreading them (and everyone else, really) usually brings rewards or at least something funny. Seriously, read the mind of everyone in the entire game. It's so worth the small XP cost.

Oh yeah, you can read minds and talk to the dead right from the beginning of the game. And once you're out of the starting area, you can turn into a huge fire-spewing dragon, which is pretty awesome.

Another thing I absolute love is the sheer amount of detail put into the equipment in the game. Every piece of armor, every weapon and shield have such amazing details to look at. There are no basic boring swords and axes, everything has a little special something added. I guess you could argue this makes everything look way too "busy", but I just love the equipment design. Most of the environments are pretty detailed as well, little touches everywhere really makes it feel like everything was made 100% by hand.

So yeah, totally buggy game that required 2(!) re-releases to become playable, ignored by almost everyone, but so ridiculously stuffed full of love from the developers.

This single post made me buy this game on Steam. Well done you.

I picked up StarCraft 2. I'm not likely to be trying any multiplayer, but what I do really like from the campaign is the Terran music. It's just so unlike the usual RTS drums-n-orchestras or metal soundtracks.

What I also enjoy is that on Normal at least playing the game like you would multiplayer (SCVs everywhere and never stop building things) wrecks the difficulty and you can stomp through Zerg bases with dozens of angry redneck Marines. They're such a satisfying unit to use.

Dr Snofeld has a new favorite as of 00:27 on Apr 14, 2013

# ¿ Apr 14, 2013 00:21

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