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smuh
Feb 21, 2011

So Watch Dogs has a pretty bland radio song selection. Thankfully the original music for the game is kickin' rad - but the thing is, you only hear parts of it during specific story missions. I really wish for an option to switch from the radio into the actual game soundtrack.

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smuh
Feb 21, 2011

WEEDLORD CHEETO posted:

I feel like the new Wolfenstein takes itself way too seriously for its own good. On one hand, it should be a fun pulpy adventure with space Nazis and robot dogs and evil brain monsters, on the other, the main character gruffly reminisces about the horrors of Auschwitz, watches Nazis snatch babies and throw them off bridges or whatever, and has to watch his friends being tortured to death. Stop this
I thought it took a perfect path between total seriousness and juvenile comedy all the way through. I kept getting reminded of Tarantino's movies due to how smoothly the both 'styles' blended together, and still the writing remained very entertaining from beginning to end. Also it takes place in the continuity where BJ has already killed Mecha Hitler and like, a shitload of zombies or whatever, I can't even remember what went on in RTCW anymore. Plus there was the magic poo poo in Wolf2009.

ANYWAYS, content:
Watch Dogs on PS4 let me play online today for the first time in a month. Ubisoft really took that long to unfuck their network issues that straight up didn't let some people into multiplayer at all. And the funny thing is, the problems started when they made an update which was supposed to fix already existing network problems!

smuh
Feb 21, 2011

muscles like this? posted:

Also, just read that Bungie is patching Destiny next week to change the way Engrams work. They'll no longer give an item of lesser rarity and are supposed to be adjusted so that they more frequently give a higher level one instead. For example, I've played the game for over 30 hours and had the higher level thing happen exactly once.
Sheesh, I've got 78 hours and not a single time have I gotten a Legendary out of an Legendary Engram. The loot system in the game is just insanely frustrating and it manages to remind you of it every time you play the game, by teasing you with good stuff and then laughs when you inevitably get more garbage bullshit that you're already drowning in. Not to even mention how frustratingly rare upgrade materials are, I've been stuck at level 27 for what feels like an eternity now since I can't get my equipment upgraded no matter what.

smuh
Feb 21, 2011

DStecks posted:

OTOH I find it hard to sustain disbelief when I as the player character am a loving god of war, and nobody seems to acknowledge that. That's part of what made Half-Life 2 so great, the game was fully aware that Gordon Freeman having the body count that he does is completely loving nuts.
And yet, all conversations were really awkward because Gordon never spoke a word back when everyone was fawning over how super badass and cool he was. That's the thing dragging HL2 down :colbert:

...well, that and the "cutscenes" which where also gameplay meaning there was no way to skip people droning about bullshit for like 20 minutes in a boring rear end room.

smuh
Feb 21, 2011

can we possibly perhaps never again talk about missable content in videogames please

smuh
Feb 21, 2011

All right, Kiefer in MGSV: Dude never speaks. Big Boss is silent for what seems like 80% of the game, almost making him a silent protagonist. Someone asks him a question and he doesn't answer, instead the character speaking to him answers himself, making all character interactions with Boss feel really odd. There aren't even grunts when he falls down or gets shot at or anything, making it super strange when he talks since you really don't expect that to happen anymore; you start to think of him as a mute without realizing it.

This also gives the character a completely different feel and personality since he won't react to anything and seems devoid of emotion, hell, he seems confused all the time, as if he's scared to ask anything so he won't seem stupid. It makes me wonder why they changed the voice actor if they didn't have the funds to make him voice the entire game.

There is however the notable exception of tapes, of which there are plenty of and he DOES ask questions in those. I guess doing mocap and voice acting at the same time turned out to be the super expensive part?

So basically, Kiefer Sutherland being expensive turned out to be the thing dragging the game down. Which is something I really didn't expect.

smuh
Feb 21, 2011

Morpheus posted:

"I hunt monsters"

*proceeds to slaughter human bandits all over the place*


Actually in one of the witcher 3 trailers he kills a bunch of dickheads and when the last guy is like what the hell you doing buddy, he goes "killing monsters" so your complaint was addessed before the game even got out!

And one guy in the game makes fun of the cheesy line in the trailer too which belongs more in the good stuff thread tho

smuh
Feb 21, 2011

got Mad Max for ps4 a while back for cheap, decided to try it out today and found out the controls were apparently designed by someone who had never played a videogame in their life??? Now that may sound like an exaggaration but let me tell you this: shoot is mapped to the O button by default. The O button. What in the gently caress.

Granted, you CAN change it to "alternative controls", so shoot moves to r1. Uh, but wait, isn't the usual shoot button for literally every other ps4 game the loving trigger, r2? It sure is. It sure as hell is, god damnit. I can not get over this.

e: also jump is l2. cool.

smuh has a new favorite as of 13:26 on Apr 30, 2016

smuh
Feb 21, 2011

Yeah you're right, seems like I jumped the gun there a bit. Jump at l2 still weirds me out but that's something easier to get over. Man, I was sure I was going to be poppin fools left and right though, guess that teaches me to play games for more than five minutes before throwing a tantrum

smuh
Feb 21, 2011

Alteisen posted:

My biggest gripe with DS3 is both how worthless armor is and how bosses deal % based damage, so even if you have like 50 vit, it doesn't matter, you're still dying in like 3 or 4 hits when you're close to the end.
Wait, is that confirmed? So bosses always do, say, 20% damage with a certain attack? Seems like that would make armor and vigor completely useless for boss fights.

smuh
Feb 21, 2011

RyokoTK posted:

Hey do you remember the first time you opened a mimic chest in Dark Souls and died?

So does DS3, because every loving chest is a mimic and now you can fight them for the low low benefit of two rusted coins.
Well, that's the only way to surprise anyone with mimics anymore I guess. I mean nobody expects them to be everywhere, right? Anyways I dont get why people always say they have to fight em, the talisman trick has been known since ds1 to get the item without any trouble

smuh
Feb 21, 2011

Strom Cuzewon posted:

Wolnir is so janky in terms of difficulty. If you have the damage to break his bracelets he's comically easy - I never even saw him summon skeletons - but if your dps is even slightly too low he'll just mob you with skeletons and it becomes a hideous slog.
Wolnir is just a straight up bad boss, but the way I think he's lovely is that if you break his right arm bracelet first, he's powerless. He has never in my 4 playthroughs been able to summon skeletons or make any dangerous attacks if you do that. However, if you break either of his left hand bracelets, he won't lose any of his moveset and might even become more dangerous. I'm not sure if his moves change but still, right hand first=ridiculously easy bossfight and easier than ds1 pinwheel, right hand first=actual challenge. It would be fine if there was any visual or lore reasons to do one or another but since there isn't, you either do one or the other and get a tough boss or a joke boss. It is bad.

I'm interested to be proven wrong but yeah, my 4 runs through have definitely given me this impression.

e: oh that was already pointed out and makes my post useless. Oh well

smuh has a new favorite as of 01:09 on May 30, 2016

smuh
Feb 21, 2011

Talos Principle so far has two things gettin me down:

So you have a great puzzle game, one where you really have to work your head to get the solutions to a lot of stuff, and it feels amazing when you finally get the solution after half an hour! So why not gently caress that poo poo up by having ONE puzzle that requires insane dexterity from the player instead of thinking??? Seriously, one god drat problem that I can NOT solve by taking my time to think through it. I know what to do, I am just not fast enough to do it. Spent nearly an hour on it and could not complete it only because I am not fast enough in aiming and switching my target on the fly. That absolutely would not be so bad if it wasn't the only puzzle in the game to pull this poo poo. Like how frustrating is it to get through everything else with brainpower only to realize I can never 100% the game because of one bad puzzle.

Another thing is that outside of puzzles, the game likes to challenge you on philosophical thinking. Except since all your answers and arguments are pre-made, you can't really say what you want and the game does its best to make you look like an idiot thanks to that. Putting this in spoilers just in case: The game asks me what I think should be equal in society. At first I say the amount of goods for everyone, meaning everyone should have a chance to get fed well instead of dying on the street. So the game asks me what the hell kinda bullshitter am I for wanting hard working people to not get any benefits over lazy ones? 'poo poo game, that's not what I meant' I want to say, but there is no other option but to double down on it with 'being lazy is like being literally brain dead' or backing out. So I back out and choose Liberty and Freedom. The game asks me if Stalin and Gandhi should be treated the same, then. Like what the hell? This is like trying to argument with a child, except you can't say what you want but have to choose only from extremes.

No huge spoilers there, only two conversation options. But two more things to surely drag this otherwise great game down :argh: At least I only paid :10bux: for it.

smuh
Feb 21, 2011

Digirat posted:

I found satan annoying the first time I played the talos principle because I wasn't quite sure he was supposed to be a self-insert for the writer or not, having finished the game I can say he's not and if he's annoying that is absolutely intentional. He argues by controlling the discussion and trying to force you into corners.

Not sure if I ever came back and said this after I complained about it once, but the talos principle is probably the closest thing to absolutely perfect I have ever played, it is incredible and everyone should play it
Ah, if it's the point that I should be arguing against an rear end in a top hat then that's fine I guess. Still sucks how limited the answers are though, since my character is actually supposed to be writing them instead of choosing from pre-made bullshit words. Haven't finished the game yet so maybe I will really like it by the end :shobon:

smuh
Feb 21, 2011

Digirat posted:

Press on, it's worth it and if the puzzle you're talking about is for a grey block then you can safely ignore it, you're not missing anything important (that goes for all the star-related things). I can only think of one puzzle that required any kind of speed, assuming you're talking about the puzzle where you have to control several mines and walls at once in the A star area.
Oh yeah, I already read the grey blocks are 100% optional but I don't exactly know what I'm missing by not getting them as of now. But I already gave up on star puzzles since I can't finish that gray block one (titled appropriately like 'nerve breaker' or something of the like too) :shobon: saves me a lot of stress too since those stars really made me dizzy tryin to figure them out. Will probably finish the main game in a few days anyways casually playing.

smuh
Feb 21, 2011

oxenfree timed dialogue choices really put me down on that game, I had trouble even reading them fast enough not to mention actually picking the option that I want. Plus it was impossible for me to listen to what others are saying while I'm panicking over what to say, and even then choosing an option made your character cut others off a lot of time!

smuh
Feb 21, 2011

Rampant Dwickery posted:

So, having played the poo poo out of The Witcher 3, and having through pretty much everything in the Blood and Wine DLC, I got this idea to go back to the start of the series and do a full series run.

Ohhhhhhhhhhh god. Was that ever a terrible idea. Between:

  • slack-jawed combat (whose difficulty is governed completely on whether the enemy can stunlock you endlessly or not)
  • bowel-churningly bad dialogue
  • event flags that are placed as far as they can loving be on the map (at infuriatingly vague times of day for zero reason whatsoever), and
  • meditation (i.e. time-skip) spots placed just as piss-loving-poor as they can be

...this "game" is such an infuriating, desultory slog that makes me want to smash Geralt's bored, monotone face in with a cannot-be-used-with-witcher-arts sledgehammer.

The Witcher 3 is a fantastic work of art. The Witcher 1 is a goddamn loving piss-poo poo of a mess.
Well, Witcher 1 got a lot of praise for the time, which is probably the only thing going for it these days. Thankfully W2 was a big jump forward despite being nowhere near the level of the third game.

As for thread content, Witcher 2 has a branching path that determines which 50% of the game you're going to go through. Normally I'd say that's amazing and a great thing, but as much as I loved W2 the first time through, the gameplay isn't quuuite good enough to warrant another full playthrough even with a completely different second act. Which I guess is ironic since everyone seems to dislike W3 gameplay too but despite it being a massive game I had fun playing through a second time on the hardest difficulty.

smuh
Feb 21, 2011

credburn posted:

loving chibi anything. I want to enjoy this game, but I can't pretend that this hypersexualized two year-old looking character is anything but a hypersexualized two year-old.
Well stop loving them then :downsrim:

smuh
Feb 21, 2011

As much as I adore The Witcher 3, both its expansions are very much enjoying taking all of the money you could reasonably have at the end of the main game. Which would be fine, but I spent all of that on dumb bullshit when I finished W3 for the first time thinking I wouldn't need it and now I don't have the cash for paying a runesmith, upgrading my crappy house nor getting grandmaster armor sets :argh:

I needed to spend that huge mountain of money on changing my skill allocations 10 times and buying useless garbage, why did you not account for this!!!

e: on the flipside this game has the best 'go to a bank to access your money' simulator sidequest ever and I've been laughing like crazy at this so its all forgiven

smuh has a new favorite as of 05:45 on Oct 11, 2016

smuh
Feb 21, 2011

Borderlands 2 is genuinely one of the worst designed games I've ever played. There's an actual shitload of reasons, but one was how apparently they made the weapon drops so lovely that you have to grind like a motherfucker to get weapons that are decent for whatever level you're on so for 99% of the normally played game all enemies are going to feel like massive bulletsponges. Because that's actually what a lot of people wanted. Sadly, as Darkest Dungeons' final version showed, most gamers are stupid assholes that think more time wasted on game=more skill and are the weird extremely vocal minority that devs most seem to listen to???

I also own the Pre-Sequel so god help me I pray it's much better whenever I dare try it.

smuh
Feb 21, 2011

Rise of the Tomb Raider. They still haven't fixed the problem from the last game where Lara very, very clearly aims her gun nowhere near where the crosshair is pointing?? It's like she aims at the crosshair itself which is floating right in front of her face. It is bizarre.

Also the aiming feels unbelievably inaccurate and lovely on the ps4, how can a game be released in 2016 and have aiming that feels like your controller has glue around the control stick. They perfected it when Halo came out for gods sake. Thankfully you can stealth through most of the game but the forced combat sections, oh boy am I never hitting anything in those.

Also since the ps4 version has all dlc included you get endgame weapons at the start in a game where you're supposed to slowly assemble them through the game so good job

smuh
Feb 21, 2011

I'm probably more than halfway through Rise of the Tomb Raider, and after spending yesterday being pissed at multiple sidequests making me run back and forth through an large empty area, I load the game up today to discover a loading screen tip telling me about a sprint button.

Coulda used that info earlier pals

E: VVVVV Well that's hella strange then, I guess I promptly forgot since the first game had no sprint and I've been playing this one with a lot of breaks in between. Maybe you're alright after all, RoTR.

smuh has a new favorite as of 12:51 on Nov 6, 2016

smuh
Feb 21, 2011

Sic Semper Goon posted:

I beat Resident Evil 4 before I realised that I could sprint by holding the "B" button on my Gamecube's controller.
This is hilarious as hell to imagine, having beaten the game a few weeks back for the zillionth time and still dying a good dozen times I can't imagine what a time you had. Also those time limited parts are a lot more lax than I thought!

E: VVVV me neither bud

smuh has a new favorite as of 23:11 on Nov 6, 2016

smuh
Feb 21, 2011

Weird Sandwich posted:

The Resident Evil 4 PS4 port has subtitles listed in the options menu, but they are greyed out and never selectable. What the hell? Why even have the subtitle option visible if it isn't implemented?
I think they're just for different language options or something, which is strange but I believe that's how its always been in RE4. I agree they shoulda hid the option though since if your game is in english it's just there to taunt you.

smuh
Feb 21, 2011

Digirat posted:

Most shooter communities are a sight worse than many other games but battlefield definitely had the best of what I've played. Rainbow 6 siege probably the worst, although I bounced off of that game fairly hard so I don't have hundreds of hours of sample size
Oh, R6 playerbase is awful. I have over a hundred hours at that game, and outside of fighting games have I never seen such a toxic community. I've complained about it in the Games thread for it too, but the fact that the game has a vote kick mechanic just causes people to always try and kick out the player that's the last of their team alive; leading to the mindset that the longer you live = the worse you are. Last guy taking his time, skillfully taking out the enemy team one by one? What an rear end in a top hat, wasting everyone's time! (tbf the latest patch or such seemed to make it so the entire team has to vote to kick one guy, instead of most of them)

Plus I've got a depressing amount of pissed of messages in that game, and I played a ton of CoD games over the years. People in those were waay more chill, despite their reputation. Good game otherwise!

smuh
Feb 21, 2011

Action Tortoise posted:

22 hours into Styx: Master of Shadows and I just learned that there is a Whistle button when I fumbled on my keyboard. The game had so far introduced all the stealth mechanics in the game but didn't put introduce this in the intro level at all. :psyduck:

and the prison level has this persistent background noise of glass harmonizing that is really loving annoying.
Speaking of Styx, whenever it was that I played it a long time ago I got really pissed at the latter half of the game where there were a shitload of guards everywhere and new enemy types that I seem to remember (very late game spoilers) straight up sensing you through walls and such when you were close enough. With those enemies as well as many other rooms earlier in the latter half I kept racking my brain on how to get through without being spotted, and it was very frustrating to me how I simply could not figure out a way to do it and had to force my way through. I'm sure there was actually a way to legit do it 100% stealthily but gently caress, I couldn't figure it out and it aggravated me so much !!! Plus I think the load times on PS4 weren't super fast and I don't believe any game on the console has ever made me reload as much as Styx, so that added to the annoyance. The final boss thing also loving sucked because while I don't remember what I was missing, I know it was either a power or an item or whatever that made the whole thing near impossible. I even googled how to get through that at one point and all advice was relying on something I didn't have. Related to that, the game Betrayer, a strange stealth action horror hybrid had a similar problem where I'd gotten through the entire game with a regular type bow just fine and the end boss fight straight up required a quicker one. It sucked!

And speaking of stealth games, Dishonored 2 has a problem where I played through with Corvo first so playing as Emily is painful because her Far Reach has nothing on Corvo's blink ability. Blink not only stops time when you're using it, it also has longer reach (ironically) and is vertically better not to mention how it actually shows where you'll end up after using it. Far Reach sometimes slingshots you way over where it shows you landing and I can't find rhyme or reason on why - I assumed it had to do with being in air while activating it, but even then it was inconsistent. Maybe I'll figure it out at some point but even then, my first playthrough was much less painful thanks to the vastly better travel option.

smuh
Feb 21, 2011

I disliked the Metro games' morality/ending-choosing-system if only because you have to absolutely commit to it if you want the more optimistic endings. Like I was actually pursuing it in the sequel, but because I didn't completely non-lethal like two encounters (and nonlethal is surprisingly difficult to do actually since you have to basically ghost through, especially in the first game!) I got the 'bad' ending. And while people tend to hate the 'chaos' system in the Dishonored games, I really liked it because you didn't have to do 95% of the game in a specific playstyle for the game to recognize it.

In metro 1, the morality system basically felt like an easter egg almost, and I kinda felt like they unnecessarily kept that mindset for the sequel even if that game did point out if you did good things more obviously.

smuh
Feb 21, 2011

Thing dragging Personas 3 and 4 down is that they're still not on a system I own. I've been waiting for a decade dammit, just do the rereleases and rake in the money you fuckers

smuh
Feb 21, 2011

OutOfPrint posted:

I'll spoiler this since you're a few hours away from it, but...

gently caress the Mayan temple. I skipped through most of it because it was dumb bullshit that didn't even fit the premise of the game. That case was also nothing but loose ends. How the gently caress did a Brazilian dwarf move those mechanized statues, and how the gently caress wasn't the guy who built those statues with super spear throwing action responsible for the corpse at the beginning of the case getting a statue's spear through the back?!

It seems like for every interesting mystery and story beat there was a bullshit part. The best part of the game was the realization that Jon Hamm would make a good Sherlock Holmes, since they obviously modeled Holmes off of Hamm.
Yeah I stopped playing after this case. Why would you make a game about solving mysteries if you aren't going to make any effort into writing solvable ones in the first place? Not a single thing about it made any god drat sense. I kind of assumed they would somehow maybe explain what the gently caress was actually going on later in the game but I didn't have enough faith in the devs to keep going.

smuh
Feb 21, 2011

Ugly In The Morning posted:

Condemned 2 had the thing where you had to drink to ward off the shakes if you wanted to be able to hit poo poo with a gun.
That mechanic stopped being a thing in C2 once you defeated the alcoholism demon inside your mind. After that you soon gain the ability to shout so hard it kills people.

Boy has there rarely been a sequel that went so far off the rails. Fun gameplay though!

smuh
Feb 21, 2011

Assassin's Creed Origins is really, really badly dragged down by the diablo loot, level system and stat upgrading. In fact so badly that I suspect a big part why they exist is so people would spend real money to bypass it entirely.

Like the combat only gets fun when you've upgraded nearly the entire skill tree for it which is like 25 levels of ability points (out of the 40 level 'world level cap'). Stealth mechanics are finally super good but gently caress, my ranged damage needs upgrading to pick off a lot of dudes with headshots and even the hidden blade needs to be upgraded to instantly kill certain enemies or anything above your current level, and upgrading this poo poo of course requires crafting components and way too many of them along the road. Hunting animals hasn't been fun for like, well since whatever open world game that did it first when it was still novel.
You can buy crafting materials but only around five per shopkeeper so you have to keep visiting them, which is the only reason you ever would. also I don't want to keep picking up new weapons and shields either, generally it's just a small numerical difference until endgame weapons so you just dismantle or sell 99% of that poo poo at which point why even have the entire feature outside of appealing to the weirdos who get their kicks from picking up stuff constantly.

Being at level 40 where I am now, the direct and obvious change the entire game has gone from 'tedious' into 'really fun' is super frustrating in a way. Combat feels great, stealth feels great, everything is like it should have been from the beginning. Why did I have to wait so long to get to this point? Comparing this game to AC2, that one had you be able to do everything from the beginning and weapon/armor upgrades were just bonuses you didn't strictly need but definitely helped your survival while giving you something to work towards - with none of it ever feeling tedious or something you need to have fun.

It always feels kind of hosed up when you realize a game could be better with less features. Remove all of the tedium here and you have a 9/10 game instead of a 7/10 game. Assassin's Creed 2 already had the perfect formula, they just needed to improve on it, not stack more poo poo on top !

smuh
Feb 21, 2011

I finished Prey over a week. During my first couple days of playing, I thought about writing a post about how insanely badly everything I saw of the game before release showcased all of the games strengths (partly because I was only very casually interested anyways), but after playing through it... Well, I might as well first write up pretty much my thoughts that I was going to write back then.

So the first things I saw about it were "oh, you're a guy on a boring space station shooting black goo monsters. pass!". After that, it was a video that was supposed to showcase the different ways to play, which I think I just absent mindedly skipped into the middle of the video and a guy was going like "You can be the guy that fixes up turrets and carries them around!" and I was, again, like "wow that sure seems fun. A single player Torbjorn simulator" and instantly shut the video off. From there on I just saw screens of the boring goo guys and so on until I played the PS4 demo, which you would think would finally get me on board if anything right? But poo poo, insane input lag paired with... the lovely goo monsters, and slowly turning around in a room hitting my wrench at the multiple mimics swarming me, at which point I died because it was absolutely impossible to actually hit anything. Woof, not touching that game ever again!

Fast forward some months, plenty of excellent goon recommendations and tales of the input lag having been fixed, plus the game on a serious discount... poo poo, why not I guess. Maybe I was super wrong somehow.

For my first eight hours or so? Holy poo poo, this game is loving amazing! Environments are full of different ways to approach situations, the weapons seem fun - especially the gloo gun which I used to bypass some stuff early on by creating DIY stairs, the writing is really good and the mystery of everything happening kept me glued to the game, and even the horribly boring enemy designs were actually ok once you were kind of afraid of them due to low resources and them being legit dangerous as hell. I'm an idiot for not getting on this sooner!

Aaaand then fast forward again to the last 6 hours on my 23 hour playthrough. Well they had introduced the Cystoids, an extremely frustrating environmental hazard enemy that seemed like a bad decision to include on every level. At least they seemed rare at first, but turned out to not be nearly as rare as they should have been. Then the the game world being populated with tougher and tougher enemies, as well as larger and larger numbers, to the point where it felt like the amount of resources I used on killing them felt absolutely not worth the resources I got from their corpses, so I started preferring to run from everything, and boy did that ruin both the pacing and tension completely. On my last hours of play, seeing Nightmare, the game's kind of a Nemesis equivalent (an unstoppable killing machine hell bent on destroying you), only got me to sigh in relief because holy poo poo, any enemy that I can just walk up to and shoot to death. How satisfying! And as you can imagine, that felt completely wrong in every sense. So overall, now the game had become completely not at all fun to play. But man look at all these interesting side quests! But now, look at the load times on the PS4 version! A minute of running through an area for a three minute loading screen, only to repeat again like... five times per sidequest? Yup, those people and their problems can go gently caress themselves, I just want to get this over with.

And now, the ending of the game. I had heard it was bad, and I suspected what was going to happen around halfway through. I wish I had been wrong, because the only thing that could have saved the experience at this point was an extremely satisfying final beat. Oh boy. Oh boy oh boy oh boy. I'm sure people have talked it to death so I'm not going to even try myself, just let me say that if you heard the ending was disappointing? Terrible? A wet fart of sorts? Something that kind of shits on everything you did and experienced? Well it's all true, pretty much.

Overall I'd say that was a mindblowingly good eight hours, and pretty good mid game with an insufferable last third. I'd say it's worth ten bucks nonetheless at least, but it is also the most frustrating down hill slide quality wise that I maybe have ever seen?

smuh
Feb 21, 2011

I've been chipping away at the Assassin's Creed Ezio Collection (ps4) every once in a while, having already played the three Ezio games to death but thought I could go for one more run through.
One of the things that became very clear from the beginning was how just how much faster Ubisoft had made climbing buildings in later games, as well as actually having to look for handholds occasionally makes the free run system feel surprisingly slow here. The combat also has a certain 'stiffness' that I didn't remember it having, though I got used to it pretty soon and I've never really been one to hate the old combat system as much as many others did.

The real problems however are with the remastering itself. They removed the colored tint from the screen which I always kind of thought was obnoxious looking in the originals, but boy, aside from that they really did basically nothing. For starters, there's no reason any of these games should be running at 30 fps anymore! Especially with how people still pop in and out of existence at the other side of the drat street - how this was not a big priority in a remaster, I have no idea, since especially with TVs being bigger and better nowadays you tend to notice it WAY more easily, not to mention the higher resolution of the game itself. But the biggest, most obvious problem is with the cutscenes; the exaggerated, hand animated facial movements never looked too good to begin with, but the fact that they have changed the lighting model a bit makes everyone look loving terrifying. Like the whites of their eyes almost look like there's no shading applied at all and the effect ends up looking like something from a horror game, combined with one of the only few improved things being way, way more detailed skin textures, the overall feel is like uncanny valley dialed up to thousand. This effectively ruins all cutscenes. Poor Leonardo, you used to be such a handsome boy :(

Overall I feel kinda bad having paid for it. They're still generally fun games with fantastic music and atmosphere, but paying money to have the worst versions possible does not feel like a smart thing to do in hindsight.

smuh
Feb 21, 2011

Yeah the combat system allowing chaining kills for taking out like 10 dudes in a single combo and the assassin pals appearing out of nowhere to do your bidding were kind of the only improvements for Brotherhood, the rest was mostly just the same as AC2 except a bit worse in all ways. The multiplayer was incredible though, sadly I can't imagine that having much of a player base these days and they completely destroyed it by attempting to nickle-and-dime the player real hard in the AC3 version of it.

smuh
Feb 21, 2011

AC3 pretty much had the worst possible setting for cool parkour and climbing, and even then that was the least of all the problems that piece of poo poo game had.

smuh
Feb 21, 2011

Just finished Hitman 2 (the new one). Man, I still love it the same as I loved the first season, but again I keep thinking all of these maps would be way more enjoyable if they were split into three separate maps. A huge part of the reason I loved Blood Money was that you could just load up a map and spend 10 minutes running through doing things completely differently but that feels like such a commitment with 2. Like you have to spend so much time in one area to complete all the objectives and see most that the level has to offer that it starts to get kind of dull? Plus with most levels being so open (as in the way that areas are open, I don't have a problem with open-endedness of completing objectives) you can't reasonably do the BM technique of getting rid of all the NPCs in fun and imaginative ways without raising all hell.

Yet, the new suburban map would be incredible and an amazing sequel to A New Life from BM because of the level design supporting free form stealth in the way of completing your mission with any means necessary, with all the nooks and crannies to hide in and fairly safely do whatever you want, except.. they make you collect three intel objectives before you can actually exit. Which ruins all the flow I have going otherwise since you need to visit so many areas of the map instead of just figuring the most effective ways to disappear the roaming targets. I just want to kill these dudes and leave, don't make me do something that ends up feeling like busywork! i would replay this level a million times otherwise!!!

Eh, I dunno. I still like it a lot but I just really need Blood Money 2. It gets so intimidating to start up a run through a level in these new ones, ya know?

e: also not being able to throw you weapons still sucks despite being at least able to do it after showing them in a briefcase first this time around

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smuh
Feb 21, 2011

Spider-man: Dialogue getting overwritten by new dialogue, all the time. Like just now I wanted to listen to a phonecall spidey was making but whoopsiefuck I swung too close to a side mission and he spouts out some dull two word sentence about it, making sure I will never hear the phone call. So if something is happening while you're swinging around, you loving stop right there and sit tight until the dialogue/event ends. This drives me crazy.

smuh
Feb 21, 2011

Chuck Buried Treasure posted:

If you’re playing Ghost of Tsushima with the Japanese voice track, the haikus very obviously don’t have anywhere near the right number of syllables, which annoys me more than it probably should. I guess they wrote them in English following the 5-7-5 rule then just translated them into Japanese without worrying about the syllable count. It’s the most minor thing in the world but I have to try really hard not to think about it or it drives me nuts
This is because they aren't haiku in the Japanese localization, but more general Waka poetry. Haikus didn't even exist when GoT takes place so it's actually more accurate too, but all anyone knows about Japanese poetry are haikus so that's what they went with I guess :shrug:

smuh
Feb 21, 2011

Far Cry 6: The game seems to have an impressive amount of accessibility options, and even starts with text-to-voice enabled so anyone can navigate and adjust options to their liking.

It does not allow you to remap the controls, nor does it have controller presets to choose from. Which makes me feel like nobody actually gave a poo poo about accessibility after all!

e: also Far Cry games always have a very small FOV and they refuse to let you adjust that either, loving hell

smuh has a new favorite as of 10:00 on May 20, 2023

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smuh
Feb 21, 2011

Bogmonster posted:

I just completed Assassin's Creed Valhalla with about 240 hours because I hate myself, and theres a number of annoying things about it. But one thing that really pissed me off was (end game secret weapon spoilers)...

Getting Excalibur, for which you need to collect 11 stone tablets throughout the whole game, take them to Merlin's cave, find the pillars with the sword in the stone. So naturally, this is in the end game area, and I've collected this poo poo over 200+ hours. You have to slowly interact with each of the 11 pillars, each one playing the same slow animation as you enter the tablets. I timed this, it was over eight minutes of playing the same lovely animation over and over for what ended up being a pretty mediocre weapon anyway.

Also, the game has somehow given me two skill points over the maximum, so it's constantly showed an unclearable notification on the skills screen for hours now.
Everything about Ubisoft's open world game progression curve in general has been completely hosed and unsatisfying for almost an entire decade now. I remember looking up where to find the armor pieces that fit my playstyle in Valhalla pretty early on, and once I'd also found a weapon I liked to use, there was never anything to look forward to anymore. Sure, you get levels, but most of what you get is loving boring and only makes your numbers go up which does nothing for me. In their defence I could have not looked up where the armor pieces I wanted were, but then I would have spent the entire game being pissed that the pieces I'm actually finding are useless to me.

Most recently I spent the first 5 hours of FC6 getting the best guns and attachments, and if I were a completionist, I would spend the next ~55 hours with nothing interesting to unlock. Unless I just wanted to see other, worse weapons for fun. Didn't even have to look anything up for these, the game literally tells you where to find each possible weapon. It's absolutely a bizarre path from Far Cry 2 where I would be scrambling for any piece of poo poo gun in the middle of combat because mine just blew up in my face and I have malaria and no cash and everything is horrible, but at least struggling to become better equipped was engaging , rewarding and gave you something to look forward to.

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