PYF Things Dragging Games Down: I keep getting distracted by his ass

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StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

MisterBibs posted:

Another generic, unfair dragging-down that's more about me than the games themselves:

Games where you have a lot of options/choices don't have the replay value they should because I become too attached to the options and stuff I've made. It's like the first time I played the game was the Official Way, and now I'm just playing What-If versions.

Take Mass Effect. I'm kinda getting the urge to play it again, but I know for a fact that I'd play it exactly like I've always done: Male, Paragon, Solider. Every time I've started a playthrough where I vow to do things differently, I wind up abandoning them because, deep down, I just want to play it the same way I always have. Which I've done enough to not want to play again.

Fallout? Shooter guy, works for good guys only. Kotor? Light side. Every game where I can do anything, I only want to do it one way.

That's not wrong, though. If you enjoyed it, more power to you.

If - and only if you want to try it - I highly recommend being a psychic in Mass Effect 1. It's broken in some silly ways, and high level psychic powers means you can throw the giant geth tank-things around, and it's great. Possibly my favorite implementation of that kind of psychic power in any video game.

# ¿ Jun 18, 2016 03:38

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 03:31

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

My two favorite roguelikes on Steam are Caves of Qud and Dungeonmans - they're both more traditional roguelikes, but Dungeonmans is like Dredmor but way, way better in terms of tactical combat and not becoming a grindfest.

If you're brand new to the genre, I'd rec Dungeonmans first as with every death your characters become more powerful and eventually you can just curbstomp the game with little to no trouble. There's a lot of variety in the skills and playstyles, and it's funny to boot. It'll get you used to the turn-based combat and diagonal movement and so on, which sets you up to enjoy the rest of the genre.

If you want something more hardcore and more survivalist-oriented, I'd rec Caves of Qud, as it hands you a boatload of mutations and choices, then sets you down in the world with a few quests and otherwise unlimited freedom. It's really, really hard, but unlike Dungeonmans it has an easily accessed debug option that asks "do you want to die y/n" and you can just say no repeatedly to avoid sudden death at out-of-depth enemies like slumberlings.

Both are goon-made (or at least the devs post in the roguelikes thread a lot!) and worth a look.

# ¿ Aug 17, 2016 08:12

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

Somfin posted:

gently caress any game that puts in a % drop chance on items that can only be gained from/during (not sure how Monster Hunter handles it) difficult fights.

One of the biggest grudges I have against Final Fantasy IX frankly.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2016 02:08

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

Evilreaver posted:

All this Pokechat makes me yearn for a full-tilt PhD-level -a-thon writeup of all the various sins of Gen1. Or any gen, but it seems like Gen1 has the meatiest thesis behind it. Reading thousand-word-count articles of the missteps of game design is my idea of a good time. Anything like that?

It's an LP, but it goes into how and why everything is broken: Pokemon Blue

# ¿ Sep 21, 2016 07:04

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

Maxwell Lord posted:

I don't consider it really bad because a bad run will end quickly (and even a good run will end quickly because it's a short game)- I think that kind of extreme randomness can be okay if the game is quick. Long and random would be a pain.

But I may also give it more credit than it deserves since it's a game about flying a spaceship that isn't about trading cargo and mining asteroids so it's already more interesting than 90% of the sci-fi games out there.

The runs are long enough to tick me off. Spending over an hour going places and fighting starships only to get randomly slagged by some lucky pirates is the worst feeling. I know there are supposedly ways to stack the deck, but jeeeeeez it's not fun when it does that.

Invisible Inc for comparison's sake takes a similar amount of time to play, but it's utterly transparent about screwing you over and even has the rewind feature, so I don't get so ticked off when I put myself into the losing box.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2016 23:21

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

As someone with really bad reflexes, I much preferred Deathstate over Nuclear Throne as you don't have to aim in that game and can instead focus on dodging alone. Much more compelling to me, particularly as with a lot of practice I got good enough to beat it, whereas in Nuclear Throne I can't make it to the sewers without a lot of struggling. :negative:

# ¿ Oct 6, 2016 00:53

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

Odallus, like most oldschool difficult games, justifies the existence of LPs for me. I have bad reflexes and no patience for tricky platforming, but it's fun to watch the game be played by someone competent. Same deal with the old Castlevanias and a ninja NES game I've forgotten the name of.

# ¿ Nov 7, 2016 08:15

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

yo rear end is grass posted:

Why do Argonians in the Elder Scrolls games have boobs? They are not mammals.

Lizard magic, I assume.

(The real answer is fanservice, but whatchagonnado)

# ¿ Nov 10, 2016 06:09

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

Leal posted:

Stardew Valley: While taking th-would you like to eat this grape?-ings out of my pres-would you like to eat this grape?-erves jars and ke-would you like to eat this grape?-gs I am con-would you like to eat this grape?-stantly stopped by mess-would you like to eat this grape?-ages asking if I wo-would you like to eat this grape?-uld like to eat the it-would you like to eat this grape?-em in my hand. If left clicking worked as well as right clicking for taking items out of kegs and preserve jars as well as putting items right back in this wouldn't be a problem.

Dude, just swap the selected item to a tool or whatever. I keep my scythe in 2 so nothing happens while I run around collecting crops/kegs/eggs.

...I say as I realize that yeah restocking kegs at the same time is, hm.

# ¿ Nov 12, 2016 10:16

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

MisterBibs posted:

There are so many games that look interesting to me in one way or another that I wind up passing on specifically because they are roguelikes. Renowned Explorers is the best roguelike because the first thing that pops up in the beginning is a prompt asking you if you want to be able to save and reload like a real game.

Honestly my favorite roguelikes on Steam have solutions to the "you died gameover" problem in the genre -

Dungeonmans has death baked into the system. You died? Good. Here's the upgrades to your Academy, here's your new hero, get back into the game. It's possible to play Ironmans and beat the game with one dude, but it's not balanced around it and instead you can explore and collect stats and cool gear and take on the boss feeling like a superman.

Caves of Qud unfortunately has this big expansive dangerous world that kills you quickly, BUT right there in the options menu is the debug "do you want to die y/n" prompt. Turn that on and the game will let you respawn whenever you die and then you can decide if that was a fair death or not. Random turret in the wilderness saw you and it killed you? No I don't want to die. Prolonged fight with a boss where I just couldn't pull it off? I'll take the death and build a better character next time. It's not a perfect system, but given how fun character creation is and how cool the world is to explore and fight in, it's a decent fix.

ToME just flatout has lives and I think saves. It's been a while since I booted it up.

... And then the rest of them just have short playtimes so it's not like it matters that Crypt of the Necrodancer doesn't have saves, or Desktop Dungeon, or Sproggiwood.

So yeah - it's not perfect, but in a death-happy genre the modern ones have been decent about mitigating the "I just wasted so much time" feeling that happens when you get screwed by being careless for a second.

# ¿ Nov 20, 2016 08:03

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

Okay, for the most part I love Burnout Paradise with all of my heart.

But.

Burning routes.

See: to unlock more cars, you have to drive specific cars to these "burning routes" where you do a race against the clock to some far off location, and they usually tailor the race to take advantage of what kind of car you have. The fast cars get straight lines, the heavier cars get more turns, etc.

Not so the Krieger 616 Sport. It's a fairly light, zippy car that does fantastic on highways and straight roads. It can't bump into other cars without crashing, and it's made of paper. I don't mind this! I enjoy running the fast ones and enjoying the world turn to a blur - but this is a complaint post.

The 616's burning route involves no less than three jumps, a turn onto a straight road, and you have to remember to get off of that road near the end of it or else you'll shoot straight into the other side of town. And the time limit is really, really tight - can't take more than two crashes before you're screwed - it's hard, in other words. Most of the burning routes haven't been this hard so far, and it's annoying to suddenly find a brick wall of difficulty - but this isn't why I'm making this post.

I'm making this post because the game doesn't teleport you back to the start if you fail, no. They make you drive all the way back every time, and since you can't take those jumps in reverse, it turns a 1:38 racing route into a several minute hike every time. :rant:

# ¿ Nov 28, 2016 01:43

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

Dartonus posted:

Iirc the Easy Ride menu has an option for "restart last event", check your bindings to figure out how to open it.

Hey thanks! Found it and it made another burning route way more tolerable - and, best of all, it introduced me to the skip song button, which is all I needed to make the radio perfect.

# ¿ Nov 29, 2016 04:04

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

Cleretic posted:

From about 1999 to 2005 is a really lovely time for games to go back to afterwards in general, particularly right now. On PC there's a lot of games that are just a pain to get rolling on modern machines (Deus Ex, Morrowind, and VtM Bloodlines all come to mind), and on consoles that point is where the systems aren't just able to be easily emulated with on-board hardware. If you want to play a game from the early 00s and it hasn't gotten an HD re-release, it's kind of a crapshoot how well you can play it at all.

And that's not getting near the fact interfaces and approaches have evolved. In my experience you can tell exactly how old a game is by exactly how it handles certain things. That's something I kinda like, though, because there's often a lot of consistency; you see Deus Ex and Morrowind's absurd amounts of numbers laid out in clearly separated ways and you know 'oh yeah, I'm playing that era of western RPG'. It's the same sort of thing as when you see some of the attempts at being overtly cinematic on the original Playstation (particularly Square getting borderline avant-garde), I just love that feeling of 'gently caress yeah, late 90s!'

My hands-down favorite thing about Titan Quest is the complete lack of fiddling to get it running. No compatibility modes, no weird hacks or patches, just booting up and telling the option screen I want widescreen windowed mode with a zoomed in hud - and then I could play.

I know GOG used to do this for old games and now they don't, but that's the biggest barrier between me and a round of, say, Doom: gotta fiddle with it.

e: X-COM is a better example. Even once you have the special launcher and it's set up, welcome to micro-management hell. No, the buttons aren't labeled.

It might be a fundamentally better game than XCOM, but ye gods the work to get there and enjoy it, from technical stuff to actually playing.

StrixNebulosa has a new favorite as of 10:12 on Nov 29, 2016

# ¿ Nov 29, 2016 10:08

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

The Lone Badger posted:

In Soul Nomad and the World Eaters there's an unbeatable battle early on in the plot. If you're in New Game+ then it is possible to beat it, at which point you get a nonstandard game over because you just short-circuited the plot. (After the game-over you can continue into new game++, as if you beat the full campaign again)

How is this a bad thing about the game? Were you expecting a full third route to be added to the game?

# ¿ Nov 30, 2016 22:42

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

The Lone Badger posted:

It's a good/fun thing. Slightly OT for this thread, but part of the conversation that had been happening.

Ah, my bad!

# ¿ Nov 30, 2016 23:58

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

ilmucche posted:

Stardew valley. I get there's a mod for it, but I can never find where any of the townspeople are. If they're not in their shop/house I'm completely boned.

Didn't realise I was supoosed to make friends with people either, I just want to chill out and farm a small plot of cauliflowers, making meager amounts of money

Befriending villagers gets you two things: random gifts in the mail (often of items you don't need, like 50x stone or a mushroom you can find in the cave) and recipes. The recipes are nice, but not essential.

A thing to keep in mind is that if you talk to a villager, it's a +20 point boost towards their friendship, and a -2 point loss if you don't talk to them, and gift giving is at least +20 if they like it, with way more on birthdays - so it's pretty easy to befriend them without turning it into a chore. Just talking to people you see while doing your chores often gets them maxed out before you know it. (And once they're maxed they never lose points if you don't talk to them, so you can ignore everyone in town forever once they love you.)

# ¿ Dec 3, 2016 11:01

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

Kontradaz posted:

Lol no roguelike is good unless you're a pc gamer sperg stuck in the 80's

You've never played one before, have you?

# ¿ Jan 8, 2017 11:47

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

Nuebot posted:

It sounds like a bad video game.

Anyway I started XCOM 2 and I'm not sure if this is a sequel or an alternate timeline. I murdered all those aliens, why is my cool sweater wearing soldier man now an angry drunk?

It goes off of my playthrough of XCOM, man. The one where my squads kept getting murdered by Thin Men. Sorry 'bout that, you'll have to fix the mistakes I made.

# ¿ Jan 11, 2017 02:52

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

Nuebot posted:

Kaine isn't actually trans though. Not that it makes anything about her backstory any better. Getting even further into the extended universe stuff, she's a copy of a real person who was always a lady. But the machine that made the copies broke and gave her a dick as well. Whoops.

Isn't that..kind of what being trans is? Suffering gender dysphoria, and not being in a body with comfortable genitalia?

# ¿ Feb 13, 2017 05:22

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

The Witness: I can't walk into any water, anywhere. My avatar refuses to dip even a single toe into the water, and c'mon lady, if you're going to offer beautiful fake water, I demand the opportunity to splash around in it. Talos Principle lets you do this, even!

# ¿ Mar 4, 2017 11:09

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

Another complaint about the Witness: I hate the puzzles where it closes the puzzle and makes you redo the last one just so you can try the current one again. I know it's there so you can't brute force it, but ughhhhh it's annoying.

# ¿ Mar 5, 2017 00:07

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

My favorite moral choice so far in A House of Many Doors is that you can run into a bunch of merchants stranded without fuel, which in the setting is a death-sentence.

You can give them fuel or not. There is no reward. So... either lose money or help someone in need. Straightforward, brutal, and there's no judgement.

(Well, the merchants will attack if you refuse out of desperation but they're weak and it's easy to just leave them behind. To die, alone in the dark.)

# ¿ Mar 9, 2017 12:18

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

Hitman escalation missions: I need to stop trying to do this one immediately after getting all of the challenges done in the Final Mission, but ughhhh I am tired tired TIRED of climbing the drain pipe to whack the Russian soldier in the back of the head with a hammer so I can dump his body and steal his uniform and grab his gun before Jasper freaks, then whack Jasper when he comes back in, dump him in the bathroom, then wait for the KGB dude to come in so I can shoot him.

...

And I still have to do this three more times in a row. Plus whatever goofy things they throw in, but ughhhh can I just skip doing this over and over again and get to the new stuff?

# ¿ Mar 22, 2017 11:56

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

Holy cow I'm suddenly interested in Persona 5. Are the enemies still boring faceless blobs? Are the protagonists still in high school?

# ¿ Apr 3, 2017 14:08

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

Slime posted:

The common mooks are back to being demons like they were in Persona 1 and 2, the protagonists are still in high school but basically operate under the principle of gently caress DA POLICE.

I suddenly need a PS5. This sounds like the series has finally returned to being something I'd dig.

# ¿ Apr 3, 2017 14:21

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

Len posted:

Imo this cat is worse than Teddie in almost every way.

What, you don't like going to bed?

# ¿ May 13, 2017 07:11

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

Leal posted:

I literally beat pokemon red with a charizard with a cut hm taught to him when I was 6. As in I didn't even use other pokemon. I would go into battle using charizard with scratch, cut, flamethrower and ember.

Same, but he didn't have cut, and I used the rest of my team to throw max revives at him when we hit that Elite Four boss who had a ton of ice pokes.

# ¿ Jul 30, 2017 08:16

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

FactsAreUseless posted:

I enjoy the idea of carefully optimizing your Pokemon team, but not realizing you can optimize a hot-dog by slicing it before you put it into the bun.

W-what?

# ¿ Jul 30, 2017 14:49

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

FactsAreUseless posted:

It's a MisterBibs joke. Also apparently I hyphenate "hot dog?"

I got the MisterBibs, but I don't understand slicing your hotdog before you put it in the bun. :downs:

# ¿ Jul 30, 2017 14:54

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

Testekill posted:

It's also about buffing yourself/debuffing bosses because *shock horror* it's an RPG where debuffs actually work on bosses.

SMT out and out ruined me for other jrpgs because I'd go all in on agility and buffs/debuffs and then realize the hard way that they didn't work... :negative:

# ¿ Dec 13, 2017 01:52

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

Cards Against Humanity improves vastly as a game when you play it online with custom decks made entirely of injokes and with buddies you know, preferably over skype or discord.

# ¿ Dec 25, 2017 00:06

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

X3: Terran Conflict.

After over an hour of doing the beginning Terran missions, I left the dock at the station in the asteroid belt, decided to go back to Jupiter for a side mission, set up autopilot....and flew into a metal object, exploded, and died. Goodbye, progress!

(thank god for autosave)

# ¿ Jan 12, 2018 16:00

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

Leavemywife posted:

How the gently caress do you even begin to defend something like that?

"I'm not racist but"

# ¿ Feb 7, 2018 14:22

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

Zanzibar Ham posted:

Sorry, didn't know GBS is full of these "totally a joke"-probes, I haven't looked in there ever since it became terrible.

...became?

# ¿ Mar 19, 2018 01:28

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

Far Cry 2: if I spend more than a minute at a guard post, that is not an invitation to spawn in a fresh set of guards!

# ¿ Jun 18, 2018 13:16

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

Ugly In The Morning posted:

That only happens when you leave the map square, but for based on the edge of a map square it�s easy to accidentally respawn everyone over and over.

Ahhhh that's what happened, then. I was at the very top of a square, trying to leave after a rough mission.

# ¿ Jun 18, 2018 14:52

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

Dying Light's plot is so freaking dumb that I'm going to have to start skipping cutscenes for the first time so I can enjoy the game, ughhh.

# ¿ Jun 20, 2018 18:17

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

Mokinokaro posted:

It's a shame Avellone has proven himself to be quite a hack (and possibly alt-right friendly given he seems to love posting on forums dominated by those types.) His name attached to a game now makes me mostly dread a ton of extremely dry exposition and the exact same plot beats (ex. "the truth is in the middle because all sides are actually evil/incompetent" being rammed down your throat) rearranged slightly.

This is precisely where I am re: "excitement" towards Dying Light 2. At least, hey, he'll get a setting where apparently everyone is evil, because the local humanitarian aid group decided to screw over the survivors because who cares, let's weaponize this zombie virus, we're the smartest people in the world.

# ¿ Jun 20, 2018 20:51

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

The Iron Rose posted:

You can do exactly that in your empire in Stellaris?

Given the context I think they want to shoot villains who would do such a thing.

# ¿ Jun 20, 2018 22:06

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 03:31

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

Cook Serve Delicious 2: gold medals being tied to doing a day perfectly. Give me at least 1 average/bad order of leeway please, doing a flawless day up until the last burger and I put on the wrong onions and I have to do it all over again :rant:

# ¿ Jun 26, 2018 02:25

The Something Awful Forums > Main > Post Your Favorite: Carefully Curated > PYF Things Dragging Games Down: I keep getting distracted by his ass

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