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Len posted:I don't like falling from heights in games. However, if you did want to take a big leap off the tower you could, and that was fun when you got to the very top.
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Sep 17, 2020 12:57
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NoneMoreNegative posted:I played through Deadly Tower of Monsters last week and this was good in that there was a lot of opportunity for big slip-falls off the tower but they gave you an instant undo teleport button to fix your mistake. I loved that the titular tower was just one huge monolith level, to the point where you could jump off the top of the tower, fall past the entire game, and land right where you started. Hell there were secrets designed entirely around you jumping off of a tall spot to reach something far below.
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Sep 17, 2020 13:16
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Simply Simon posted:We're playing over Steam :/ Some Goon said long ethernet cable.
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Sep 17, 2020 14:10
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my bad
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Sep 17, 2020 14:14
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Morpheus posted:I loved that the titular tower was just one huge monolith level, to the point where you could jump off the top of the tower, fall past the entire game, and land right where you started. lol yes there's a small enclosed area on the ground floor of the island and you think how the hell do I get in here?And later you look down from halfway up the tower and go ahah! To say nothing of the lonely monkey on the tiny island / the ghost ship captain 
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Sep 17, 2020 14:33
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Len posted:I don't know which thread this goes in honestly but this one was higher on my bookmarks list. I didn't mind it in Mario 64 because you have a last-second cancel out of it IIRC.
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Sep 17, 2020 14:36
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My Lovely Horse posted:Pertinent to the recent discussion about how Mario Odyssey rewards you: This video wants to make me endlessly  because I'm someone who is generally more goal-oriented and rewards-driven, but plenty of stuff can make me flip-flop in an instant. Some random rumblings:1) Re: Mario Odyssey. For me the game was fun all the way through the story and my enjoyment only started to dry up once I was methodically crossing off moons from the list. But my actual least favorite aspect of this was Toadette's meta-goals. In my brain, that pushed it from "I'm mostly peaceably (gently caress 100 jump rope and like half the koopa races  ) nudging my way towards completion" to "now I am actively worried about checking in with Toadette regularly and caring about finding all this poo poo".2) Re: Breath of the Wild. Something I appreciate a lot about its design is that it gives you all of your core verbs very, very quickly and then unleashes you into the full gameworld that is tailored around finding creative ways to use them. Said core verbs are also numerous without being overwhelming. I think a big mistake a lot of games make is either going too slow (let's lock all of the interesting mechanics behind tedious crafting) or they dump an infinite number of options onto you all at once and tell you to just figure it all out on your own. 3) A common feeling I get is when a game has a skill tree and I go out of my way to do every last little bit of side content and end up maxing it out 80% of the way through the game at which point my interest in the game starts to fizzle out. Some of it is down to losing the feeling of increasing power, some of it is probably down to a lot of skill trees being badly designed anyway (so I'm less impressed by what I'm actually unlocking and more getting a dopamine hit from the fancy whizzbang UI), and obviously when it comes to many 30 hour open world games burnout can come for any number of other reasons. 4) In general I feel like a lot of games that are supposed to be wide open sandboxes that want you to experiment actually just have one clear (more or less) linear sequence of events that you're meant to puzzle out through trial and error. That to me is not experimentation, it's more like a bad adventure game puzzle filtered through even more annoying mechanics. 5) I also feel like the reason why a lot of games fail to grip me is less that I need a reward so much as I need to see a bigger picture. I think this overlaps a lot with a common board game design flaw where the manual fails to actually convey what the point of the game is. Commonly tutorials will compartmentalize information in an attempt to not overwhelm new players, but often I feel like they go too far and lose sight of the game as a whole. Or at least fail to contextualize what they're teaching. 6) One last actual game example: I had a blast taking over Shadow of Mordor's maps and converting every last orc to my side. This wasn't something I needed to do in any way, but being able to set that goal independently of the game made it one of the most engaging sandbox experiences I've had; that I was enjoying the game enough to intentionally extend my playtime. However, my feelings on Shadow of War were completely the opposite: I [i]hated[/i ]engaging with most aspects of the system because now there was 10x of everything. More regions, more orcs, more types of orcs, more ways to gently caress with orcs, more ways to level orcs up, more ways to have orcs fight or die or not die, more reasons to even bother doing all of this in the first place, yadda yadda. It was exhausting and overwhelming and combined with the story missions largely being afterthoughts or excuses for specific setpieces it made that game feel unpleasantly lopsided. Edit: I guess as an extension of that, I think a lot about how people always say that in the next Elder Scrolls Bethesda should just not even have a main story quest. But to me having that concrete backbone that I can elect to ignore before promptly picking a random direction and exploring thataway is more compelling than if I was just plopped down in the middle of Skyrim and told to go nuts, do whatever. I don't really understand why this is, but that's genuinely part of the appeal for me.  Might be tickling a similar part of the brain that immersive sims do when you "totally outsmart the game" by doing something that was in all likelihood one of many intended outcomes.
John Murdoch has a new favorite as of 20:38 on Sep 17, 2020 |
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Sep 17, 2020 20:28
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What other games rank in the Donkey Kong 64 field of "being excessively complicated for their own good?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYisr6GRJH4
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Sep 17, 2020 20:37
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Inspector Gesicht posted:What other games rank in the Donkey Kong 64 field of "being excessively complicated for their own good?" I've been unsuccessful so far in really getting into Metal Gear Survive, it takes the already-a-bit-obtuse development system from MGSV and ramps it way up since a big chunk of the game is base development and defense. I just want to build gun and shoot zombie  
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Sep 17, 2020 20:43
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Man, it bugs me when games that have a reward for doing tasks don't give you something else when you reach the max of that reward. Generally, I'm talking about experience points here. In Ghosts of Tsushima, for example, you get...what was it, Renown? Legend? Something that levelled you up for winning fights, clearing areas, etc. Once you reach max level, however, fights as pointless as the ones in Paper Mario Sticker Star. And the only thing you can expect from that point on is just some crafting materials to make various equipment better, even though chances are you've already upgraded the equipment you want to upgrade. The right was to do this is in Spider-Man. Once you reach max level, you no longer gain skill points, but can still gain...Mastery Levels, I think they're called. They require a good amount of xp, and the reward for attaining them (something like +1 damage and +1 health, which is minuscule considering you normally get like 50x that per level up), but it at least meant you were still seeing a reward for completing tasks around the map, even though that reward is spaced further out than before. I can justify beating up some bad guys that are wandering around because, hey, still getting tougher. Incidentally I'm playing Forager right now and I've run into the same problem, where I've hit max level and now xp is meaningless. I mean, it's not really a game about levelling up generally speaking, but there's actually an item in the game that makes you slightly stronger that can be farmed from bosses - just give me one of those whenever i get enough xp instead. Make it a reward for sticking through the game to this point, so I can get as swole and destructive as my heart desires.
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Sep 17, 2020 20:51
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muscles like this! posted:I've been playing Bloodstained and while I enjoy the moment to moment gameplay I don't like how much getting new weapons and armor is centered around crafting. Which sucks because the item drop rate from enemies is pretty bad and it also doesn't help that some enemies are in extremely limited locations. Also while there are weapons and armor with unique abilities the majority are functionally the same, just with some minor variation in the stats. I enjoyed it for the 12 or so hours I spent playing it and exploring then just sorta stopped playing and had no inclination to pick it back up at all since
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Sep 17, 2020 22:01
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Inspector Gesicht posted:What other games rank in the Donkey Kong 64 field of "being excessively complicated for their own good?" I've 100% completed Banjo Kazooie a few times, but I've never done much more than I had to with Tooie because it's just so big and complex. I get lost and bored in every level
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Sep 17, 2020 22:12
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Inspector Gesicht posted:What other games rank in the Donkey Kong 64 field of "being excessively complicated for their own good?" Is it cheating to say Star Fox Adventures? Hope you've collected enough baphomdads to summon Prince Tricky. Sort of a different direction but a lot of long running f2p games have a habbit of adding more and more systems to extend their longevity so if a knew player starts in the middle of year 5 they might not even be aware of 3/4s of the systems for improving your character.
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Sep 17, 2020 22:22
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Entirely petty complaint but you can get all the Spiritfarer achievements in a single run EXCEPT for exactly one, which is a mid-game decision with two achievements for taking either branch. So now I'm going to be forever sat at 39/40 because it's way too far into the game to do a quick completionist run and while it's been a fun and chill collectathon to blast through it's not really a game I feel holds much replay value once you know the story outline.
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Sep 18, 2020 00:25
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John Murdoch posted:2) Re: Breath of the Wild. Something I appreciate a lot about its design is that it gives you all of your core verbs very, very quickly and then unleashes you into the full gameworld that is tailored around finding creative ways to use them. Said core verbs are also numerous without being overwhelming. I think a big mistake a lot of games make is either going too slow (let's lock all of the interesting mechanics behind tedious crafting) or they dump an infinite number of options onto you all at once and tell you to just figure it all out on your own. The thing about a lot of open world games is that the new skills and equipment you get are for combat only. For AssCreed, I think in Origins and Odyssey you get some improvements to your underwater breathing but everything else is to kill enemies. But the verbs as you say in BotW are just as useful for exploring and puzzling and fighting. So they can give you everything early but you're thinking of new ways of using it all.
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Sep 18, 2020 01:28
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Ghost Recon: Breakpoint just put out a new update with a new story episode and some other stuff, and I hopped back into it (I still haven't finished the first story episode, much less the second or third, because there's a lot of game there). The update introduced (or reintroduced from what I've read) some really annoying bugs like suddenly finding yourself unable to shoot your weapon, switch weapons, or use your gadgets. The fix for this is to reset your keybindings to default, which is not a solution (the reason I changed from default keybindings is because some of them are terrible). Also, it didn't even work. Another solution is to die and respawn... except that when I died, I did not get the message popup telling me to "Wait for a teammate to revive you or press space to give up." The camera just stared at my corpse for a few minutes until I realized that something was wrong, and killed the game from the taskbar. That's not the reason I'm posting in this thread, though that would have been enough. I finished a mission earlier to hunt down a sniper who had been stalking and killing civilians. I tracked her to her base, where she was waiting with a bunch of other snipers (and other troops). I killed her and looted her body. "You receive +6 shotgun parts." I also got the blueprints for her sniper rifle, which was expected. Her having stuffed her ghille suit with shotgun parts was just a disappointment. Another related annoying thing is that a bunch of the Designated Marksman Rifles (a separate weapon class from Sniper Rifles) require sniper rifle parts to upgrade, even though DMR parts exist. Also, a couple patches ago, they added generic Metal Parts (also used for upgrading) to weapon parts stashes. This is very helpful in Immersive mode, where you can only carry 2 long guns and a pistol (the ones you have equipped) - in gear-score mode, you can break things down and get metal parts from them. This isn't an option in immersive. At first, I was quite happy with the change. Soon I had 600+ metal parts (way more than I'll probably ever need; to compare: before that patch, I had found about 20-30 metal parts total, afterwards I get 16 of them every time I open a parts box). This leads to the drag-down: there is no way to sell more than one thing at a time. Ubisoft, as you may know, loves the push-button-to-fill-bar style of activating things. I can't just press the space bar to sell a thing. I have to hold the space bar until the little meter fills up and a sound plays. And instead of just repeating the action as long as the button is held, I have to press-hold-release-repeat for every single item I want to sell. I never expected to say this, but I went back to playing Alpha Protocol this morning because it's been less buggy (me and a buddy have been chatting about AP recently, and both of us decided to reinstall and replay it again, so it wasn't an entirely out-of-left-field choice). He was going to save Moscow for last because of SIE, but this isn't the thread for Friends Dragging This Game Down. Fifty Farts has a new favorite as of 02:31 on Sep 18, 2020 |
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Sep 18, 2020 02:25
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Breakpoint is also a good example of "open world feels meaningless once you reach max level", at least in immersive mode
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Sep 18, 2020 06:31
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SubNat posted:Been checking out a FFVIIRE LP, and one thing that drags down a lot of japanese developed games for me is just the constant 'random exhale, hmf, hehe, haa' etc etc sounds that get dropped in to fill dead air. What's weird is that the Japanese audio doesn't have a real problem with this, but it's interminable in the English version. I don't know what the voice director had in mind adding all that.
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Sep 18, 2020 06:48
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Lobok posted:The thing about a lot of open world games is that the new skills and equipment you get are for combat only. For AssCreed, I think in Origins and Odyssey you get some improvements to your underwater breathing but everything else is to kill enemies. But the verbs as you say in BotW are just as useful for exploring and puzzling and fighting. So they can give you everything early but you're thinking of new ways of using it all. In general a lot of times games give you abilities that are useful for one situation, because that's what they're coded to do- it definitely takes more work to program and balance something where you just can do something in almost any situation and come up with weird ways to overcome obstacles. I know for BotW they first did some top-down 2D builds that were just looking at all the various elemental interactions (things like fires burning wooden objects) before really delving into the main game.
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Sep 18, 2020 07:49
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I prefer when items/skills that give exploration perks also boost combat in some way because it's, quite frankly, scrub poo poo to not maximize your damage potential at all times.
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Sep 18, 2020 07:58
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Outer Worlds tied damage bonuses to non-combat skills like speech, unfortunately the game was much too easy to notice. I prefer it in games where the effect of leveling is minimal, or more about lowering the skill-floor needed to beat the game. In New Vegas and Horizon you get a skill point and a tiny bit of health on level-up while everything else remains static. Outer Worlds also had this but buggered it up by having weapons with levels, which eschewed the need to modify your own equipment. Really I just hate when all that matters in combat is an abstract "level number" hanging over your head instead of your choice of equipment, abilities, and intrinsic skill. It's the reason Gotham Knights is getting poo poo on because it favours spammy combat full of numbers over the skill-based rhythm combat of the Arkham games.
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Sep 18, 2020 09:00
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Control is a pretty hard game but it handled the rpg-lite aspect well I think, random weapon mod drop system notwithstanding (that element sucks). As you play through, enemies level up alongside the player's keycard clearance level. If you find yourself outmatched against enemies who are your level, it's not a big deal because you can go explore other places with your new keycard and powers and find hidden areas to gain more ability points to raise your health or TK energy, etc. You don't HAVE to do it, but it's a good nudge toward the player that they should periodically go poke around now that they can open more doors.
CJacobs has a new favorite as of 09:21 on Sep 18, 2020 |
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Sep 18, 2020 09:18
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It feels passé to still be saying this in 2020 but I feel like the problem is just getting worse over time rather than better because every game has to be a live service forever game now: can we please stop stuffing crafting and RPG lite elements and +1% Upside Down Backstab On Tuesdays upgrades to perfectly straightforward single player action games I am begging you
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Sep 18, 2020 10:13
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Random mods kinds sucked in Horizon, Dishonored, Prey, Witcher, and Shadow of Mordor. I'd prefer a more static system that encourages you to mix up and try different loadouts. Something like the Tonic system from Bioshock 2 but in a more challenging game.
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Sep 18, 2020 10:17
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Inspector Gesicht posted:Outer Worlds tied damage bonuses to non-combat skills like speech, unfortunately the game was much too easy to notice. This is what is annoying me about AC Origins, how everything is levelled and gated. These lions over here, they're two levels below you, so you can slaughter them in two hits. But those hyenas there are five levels above you, so each time you hit them you only take off a tiny sliver of health! Wasn't too bad in Syndicate because there were only 10 levels and your power was mostly tied to your equipment, so you could still take down higher level enemies. But in Origins there's about 70 levels and the scaling means things below you are trivial, while things a few levels above you are virtually impossible.
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Sep 18, 2020 11:07
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exquisite tea posted:I prefer when items/skills that give exploration perks also boost combat in some way because it's, quite frankly, scrub poo poo to not maximize your damage potential at all times. Until you get to a skill level where you intentionally lower your damage so enemies stay alive longer to be clowned on.
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Sep 18, 2020 13:37
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Sorry, pretty sure what I'm going to kvetch about, I already have, so using this to check my posts here. disregard.
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Sep 18, 2020 17:35
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MisterBibs posted:Sorry, pretty sure what I'm going to kvetch about, I already have, so using this to check my posts here. disregard. Video games are bad sometimes
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Sep 18, 2020 19:42
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bony tony posted:Video games are bad sometimes Yeah right. And what evidence do you have to support this claim?
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Sep 18, 2020 19:51
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Playing through the Batman Arkham games for the first time. Not sure if I need to be spoilering a 10 year old game, but near the end Batman beats the poo poo out of Joker, then the ceiling falls on Batman and Joker walks over to kill him with a knife. Then, a leader in the league of assassins sneaks up behind the Joker and instead killing him, knocking him out, or just knocking him aside, she bother offers herself as a hostage and to give him the secret to eternal life. She just seems terrible at her job. Not too long later, we meet up with Joker who both has the antidote and access to the rejuvenation pool, but instead of using either to cure his imminently fatal disease, he waits around for Batman to show up and stop him. The Joker also seems terrible at his job. Is his kink to craft elaborate plans that he ensures always ends with Batman stopping him? I am not at all familiar with Batman lore, but they seemed to be implying that there was some long history and romance between Batman and Talia. But at the end of the fight, he carries the Joker's body out and just leaves hers behind? I get that video games plots are often a jumble of cliches and contrived decisions to lead from one set piece to the next, but parts of the Arkham games really stand out to me as being particularly bad.
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Sep 18, 2020 21:57
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jjack229 posted:The Joker also seems terrible at his job. Is his kink to craft elaborate plans that he ensures always ends with Batman stopping him? Yes.
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Sep 18, 2020 22:06
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My read on it is that to the Joker, it was probably only ever halfway about finding a cure for the poison. The other half was about finding a way to dangle his life over Batman's head, as in "you want to save me even though I'm a villain, but how will you do that when my life is in my own hands, not yours?" Like yeah he could just use the rejuvenation pool, but that'd mean Batman wouldn't be challenged to make a tough call like he wants. But of course the obvious flaw in this plan is, yknow, self demonstrating. If you give yourself literally only one way out of your predicament and then that one way out is rendered null, you can't save yourself NOR can the other guy save you. The dumb part is that he seems to genuinely have not considered that given how he scrambles for the cure vial once it breaks, which is out of character for him. CJacobs has a new favorite as of 22:15 on Sep 18, 2020 |
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Sep 18, 2020 22:11
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Far Cry: New Dawn So there's a ranking system, from level 1 to Elite(level 4). A level 1 weapon is almost useless against any level 2 or up, but the only change in the enemies is that they wear more shoulder pads and ski goggles. Pretty sure a level 1 bullet would gently caress up even the hardest pair of Oakleys. Also the twins are really not good antagonists, just because they are loving poo poo up in Montana that doesn't mean I want to team up with Joseph Seed, the guy who spent all of Far Cry 5 setting up a drug cult that started a nuclear war.
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Sep 18, 2020 22:14
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Your Gay Uncle posted:Far Cry: New Dawn
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Sep 18, 2020 22:17
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Your Gay Uncle posted:of Far Cry 5 setting up a drug cult that started a nuclear war. I mean, they didn’t start it, just predicted it. I was not down to team up with him either, though. It felt weird after all the hosed up poo poo he did in 5.
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Sep 18, 2020 22:20
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Blood Dragon is the only good Far Cry.
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Sep 18, 2020 22:20
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Lunchmeat Larry posted:New Dawn is the first Far Cry I played after 2, which I disliked for other reasons, and I was genuinely astounded by how depressingly soulless it was. The shooting is kind of decent I guess but otherwise it was a wretched, fundamentally unpleasant experience ...And New Dawn is a massive upgrade from the weirdness the Far Cry 5 had. It also allows you to actually take vengeance on the shithead cult leader because for some reason Ubisoft decided that Farcry 5 ends in either A) everyone dies or B) your character becomes a slave. If you played a women character, that is... questionable.
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Sep 18, 2020 22:21
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jjack229 posted:
Batman has a kid with her, but she also masterminded a giant anti-capitalist murder criminal empire to oppose Batman's "Batman Incorporated" project where he creates and trains a league of international Batmen. It's....complicated. Grant Morrison has done a lot of writing featuring her and has said that he drew on his experiences as a child of divorce, so...yeah. I'm not sure how much of that is canon to the Arkham games, but there is an implied history there at the very least.
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Sep 18, 2020 22:26
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rydiafan posted:Blood Dragon is the only good Far Cry. Blood Dragon lets you use Robocop's gun but it loving sucks. There are no good Far Cry games. 
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Sep 18, 2020 23:07
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The Arkham games are all terribly written apart from Origins, which is regarded as the worst because gamers are idiots.
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Sep 18, 2020 23:08
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