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GIANT OUIJA BOARD posted:I'm not sure that's really true, though. If Mass Effect 2 had been, say, a Tetris clone, even if it were the better than regular Tetris, then I don't think anyone would be defending that. Sure Mass Effect 2 may have been a great game (which I don't agree with), but switching genres for a sequel, changing the base mechanics of how the game and player interact, is a perfectly valid subject for criticism. If we're judging it for what it is, then that ought to include how it presents itself, which is "as a continuation of Mass Effect." Which would imply similarity to Mass Effect. It's like, if The Godfather had been marketed as Apocalypse Now 2, then it would be a fair criticism to say "but this is nothing like Apocalypse Now, it should not be presented as a follow-up to it." Yes, the big failing for Mass Effect as a franchise is the lack of cohesion. Many look at 1 generally positively, despite some failings, because it was both good and set a good foundation for the trilogy. Then 2 comes along and becomes a little divisive as it changes the game and somewhat disregards what came before it. To put it in an analogy, the first was a concrete base. It's not the prettiest, but it has it's own beauty and is promising. The sequel is a neat looking shed that stands on stilts above the foundation. Going back to the games, three comes out and heavily builds on top of while kinda disregarding two. Apparently the gameplay is great, the callbacks to choices were neat, and the story was adequate up to a very distinct point. To bring back around the building analogy, the hut now has a 5 story condo-complex situated right above it, all filled with beautiful 'quaint' living spaces, and on the top is a leaky pool. And that pool is dripping down into the condos, floor by floor, down onto the hut, and down into the foundation. Instead of a beautiful house I was hoping, there is now a condo situated on top a hut and a concrete pit that is water staining everything.
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Aug 5, 2014 08:55
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SpookyLizard posted:I think that despite very much enjoying the Mass Effect games when they came out, but now desiring to never ever play them again, stands out as a pretty decent criticism. Yeah, I played through 1 quite a few times, always intended to get around to 2, and because of the debacle with 3 I don't even want to bother with any of them.
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Aug 5, 2014 20:46
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Calaveron posted:Surely he means Joshua Shut up about Jeremy.
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Aug 10, 2014 00:07
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One other thing about TLoU, the save system can suck at times. The most egregious example is the last combat area, where you are fighting a small army of fireflies in the Hospital. Goal is to make it out of the floor you're on and up to another. As soon as the cut scene is over, you spawn with several human enemies, all who are unaware of your position but not your presence. The intention is to sneak around either stealth killing everything in sight, or slinking about undetected. Eventually you kill about five of these guys, and more show up. Then you take care of some more guys and even more show up. This happens for a bit until you reach the door to the next floor, where the last enemy who will be now labeled 'rear end in a top hat' spawns by barging through it. This guy notices you instantly and alerts everyone, read guys who are right behind you, to your position. Let it be noted that if you take it slow and steady like me, killing everyone in your way undetected, getting to this point can take well over an hour. Even a perfect run from beginning to end can take half an hour on normal difficulty. Now let me be clear, none of these things are what is dragging this game down. Nor is it the fact that there is no checkpoint from the moment you spawn to the moment 'rear end in a top hat' spawns. Early on in the game you learn that stealth sections means it's time to save-scum. I loaded up my save file, right before the 'rear end in a top hat' section, trying to figure out how to keep him from spotting me. For some context for those who don't know, the 'Load Checkpoint' button has a record of how long it's been since the last checkpoint. This is generally good to know whether or not to save or how far back the reset will take you. However, this countdown is not carried over when you manually save your game. This means when you load your save far away from the actual checkpoint, the countdown is reset to zero. Thus, when I loaded up the last save and screwed up again I noticed the countdown had reset. I thought I had triggered a rare checkpoint, and cue beginning the entire stealth section all over again. A digression, did you know that the auto-save in TLoU doesn't have it's own save file? No, instead it saves over the last one that was used, i.e. the last save loaded up. And did you know that when you reset to the last checkpoint, the game auto-saves? So, cue me reloading my latest save in order to try to overcome 'rear end in a top hat' again, and I start at the beginning of the level again. So, I had lost well over an hour of progress, and it would've taken me another 30 minutes to reach that point again, provided I ran it perfectly. So, I what I did was lower the difficulty to 'Easy' and just mowed down everyone like I was playing Uncharted. Took me maybe 15 min. Reached 'rear end in a top hat' and set it back to 'Normal' and played the rest of the game as I intended to. And gently caress you Naughty Dog for that goddamned save system. What the gently caress kind of game auto -saves after resetting to a checkpoint?
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Oct 6, 2014 05:40
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So then you're saying that the best game is WoW?
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Dec 11, 2014 09:55
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Yeah, playing on vita was excruciating after a point. I got as far as beating Mom with Issac once, beating her again with another character and dying within minutes. I felt like I had the skills to beat it, but the game is so stacked against me that I couldn't climb over that wall. I just hit a point that I needed a guide to figure out how to continue, which is really inconvenient when you just need a game for the bus. One personal thing for me was the near lack of persistence between games. Not to say that the roguelike insta-death is an inherently bad mechanic, but it's another to not go whole hog in it like BoI does. You can upgrade the shop with donations so you have a larger selection of items, but as far as I can tell that's it. If that's the one thing that can carry over between games, why can't other things like stats or items or such? I know the answer is probably, 'Because then the game would be easy', but then you get into the philosophical argument of what is fun and if difficulty is inherently good. Basically, to put it bluntly, what drags it down for me personally is that I can't personally get past what makes the game difficult. I'm fine with the game mechanics being challenging, it's just the bullshit that makes it impossible for a guy needing something to do on the bus to finish. I want to love the game and play it for 200 hours. But I want those 200 hours to come from loving the game, not because the game requires it. Now I just play Luftrausers. As for what dragged that game down for me was again, what I thought was a wall to another half of the game, but turned out to be the end game. So, a sort of lack of content, i.e. about a dozen parts total as opposed to what I thought was going to be fairly numerous.
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Dec 14, 2014 01:05
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Phobophilia posted:The problem with Red and Blue's characterisation was that it was done poorly. Red had a pre-defined character: female, artist, singer, and their decision to make her a silent protagonist badly hurt her characterisation. Their attempt to make Logan Cunningham the sold narrator was a mistake, because he didn't have a real character besides being Red's boyfriend. Neither character could bounce off one another. They could get away with making Bastion's Kid a blank slate, because Rucks did have a strong personality. I have similar feelings about Bastion and it's setting. An apocalypse is only an apocalypse if there was something to destroy. It's not enough to say something was destroyed, we have to have a frame of reference. And as Bastion starts, all we have is a promise that 'something happened' and that 'it wasn't anything like this'. We have no idea what was lost and what it means to lose everything, as far as the player is aware 'before' is just a black, empty slate. Especially when the farther you go along, the more apparent that the world is drastically different from ours. So as far as the player is aware, nothing was lost, the world is just a bunch of floating islands, and everyone is sad about it. The same effect would be made if in LotR we were told Middle Earth just went through cataclysmic changes due to end times. As far as we know, we missed one fantastical world just to see another, and we can't relate because everything is so alien to us, and yet is so familiar to them. The only glimpse of the world that was is in one of the endings, showing a world surprisingly similar to ours, where the kid works as manual labor even. To me, it was actually downright shocking when the entire time I was expecting a high fantasy world. Meanwhile, the other path just leads to the characters accepting the world as is, much like how the player has from moment one. Like how someone said the writer cares for the characters a lot more than the player, the same goes for Bastion's and the setting.
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Feb 13, 2015 18:24
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Lunchmeat Larry posted:I think that would have worked in a non-linear game. Like, I dunno, if completing the main quest in an Elder Scrolls or Fallout game actually turned out to be a really bad idea, and the villain laughs at you and asks why you did it except that it seemed like you were supposed to. I don't know. If you did that, the game goes from a pointed commentary to, well just going 'gently caress you for not knowing how to game right!' at approximately half the players in the best of times . Cause at that point, you either have a divergent story where the game's most effective story beat is nullified, or it's railroaded to all hell and the criticism turns to the pointlessness of choice. Plus, the narrative (up to a point) backs up the general lack of agency as a result of the protagonist's brainwashing. He's being told his route to salvation and is unable to deviate from it because, well 'a slave obeys'. Then you defeat Ryan and that kinda goes down the toilet, and the general pacing of the narrative is ruined, and then I never finished it myself. But still, because it's a crafted crafted linear experience the climatic moment hit hard and resonated.
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Aug 9, 2015 17:30
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Because some games play better on controller than keyboard. Keys are binary, where either you press it or you don't. Whereas some controllers have more analog/gradual buttons, triggers, joysticks, etc. Maybe not a majority of games, but it's a notable point that it should be a given among most goons.
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Sep 16, 2015 09:34
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