Steam Thread: you're not a kid any more and you want what you had when you were a kid

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Steam Thread: you're not a kid any more and you want what you had when you were a kid

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zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Mokinokaro posted:

I still don't get the love for this one. I found it far duller and blander than either Torchlight and those weren't great in the first place.

PoE is for people who put 5-digit hour counts into Diablo 2. For that market, the positive traits of POE are character builds that require spreadsheets and knowledge that 90% of the picks are garbage, subjecting active and passive abilities to the same loot grind as gear, and a de jure gameplay-affecting-item currency system. If you know how to navigate the character build systems, you can do awesome stuff beyond the customization available in any other ARPG but to get there are learning curve and item grind cliffs beyond any other ARPG.

A Fancy 400 lbs posted:

I know it sounds petty, but I can't get over how dull and ugly the art direction in Path of Exile is. Not from a "not enough shiny 3D effects" perspective, but in that it has a total lack of creativity and aesthetics, and the color palette that makes Gears of War look like Viva Pinata in comparison.

Oh, right, the other bonus for those with 5-digit hour counts on D2 is that the color palette and art direction are highschool goth notebook chic.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2015 22:29

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 05:01

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

That's still all missing the gist of FF13-2's QTEs. I'm not sure there are any other jRPGs with exactly that, the closest thing is really character action games since its most often a QTE cutscene in between boss phases.

# ¿ Feb 20, 2015 18:38

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Head Hit Keyboard posted:

You might want to go into more detail because the only non-scripted combat QTEs I can think of in 13-2 are Feral Links and to me that's exactly the sort of stuff FF8 and Paper Mario and other games have done.

Ragequit is talking about the scripted combat QTEs. You hit a time or Hp trigger and go into a cutscene with QTEs and depending how well you do you get some damage knocked off the next phase or a special item or whatever.

# ¿ Feb 20, 2015 19:28

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

CJacobs posted:

The flow of the game's changes based on how you play becomes more extreme if you go one way or the other, so playing specifically how you want to play is important on the first go because that's the first impression the game will leave on you. Save gimmick runs like no kills/kill everyone for after you've already beaten the game so that your personalized run happens first.

And more specifically, don't feel compelled to fight if you are caught. I found the pitched combat to be hot garbage especially before you have the crazier spells, while the escape gameplay is incredibly robust due to great level design and blink coming standard. The most important thing is don't save scum ghost. When you get caught, try out the pitched combat and escaping and do whichever you find more fun or situation fitting.

# ¿ Mar 8, 2015 17:31

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

SolidSnakesBandana posted:

Have you seen the graphics in the newest Naruto game? We are extremely close to having video games look like actual cartoons. We've been extremely close for a while now, but we can't seem to get over that last little hump. The Dragon Ball Z games are like that too. Almost there... but not quite.

They need to adapt that Guilty Gear game to visual novels so everythings going fine with your 2d waifu and then its time to get it on and the camera whips around and her boobies have actually been in 3d the whole time.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2015 00:42

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Logan 5 posted:

Yeah I would've completely overlooked it too if it wasn't for people saying its the new Sim City we should've gotten. Even so I guess its technically part of the Cities in Motion franchise, which outside of the sim city comparison elicts the same reaction out of me. They really shouldve come up with something sounding like a new IP, even it was just 'Skylines'.

Thanks for the info, but what I really want to know is how many fire tornados and alien ships I can send in frustration against the city I spent hous making becuase the advisors are fickle impossible to please assholes. Tia.

There's no button to hit for blow this poo poo up now, but you can force your citizens to shower and drink their own sewage with the right placement of water intakes and sewage outflows, and with clever drat engineering you can often flood large areas of inhabited city, or else reclaim a riverbed just to flood the idiots who move in at a later date.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2015 18:14

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

I remember Mafia 2 being relatively inoffensive. Don't even consider it if you want an open world game as the city map is supplied as a place setting for the occasional car chase. There are better 3PSs but if you've exhausted those and have an extra $10 its hard to recommend against.

# ¿ Mar 22, 2015 16:52

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Jonathan Yeah! posted:

Humble Uplay bundle

Any of it worth it?

"Some of these games are available on Uplay, some are available on Steam, and others are available DRM-free."

Super convenient if nothing else.

There's more obvious questions being asked in this thread everyday but I am surprised there are people who don't know where they stand on HOMM or M&M in 2015. But I guess fair question when the version of HOMM 3 offered is the janky no expansions HD version.

Dark Messiah is a decent early access version of Dishonored.

# ¿ Apr 28, 2015 19:20

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Fun Times! posted:

Lots of people say it's the game of the year though, but it's just killing the same orcs over and over? Maybe I won't get it unless I play it myself but it sounds repetitive. It doesn't get old after a couple hours?

You kill different orcs over and over. Things will be going wrong or going right in new and interesting ways for upwards of 30 hours.

Its a definite sum is not equal to the parts situation so if you are naturally that reductionist you might be able to skip it as you are likely to see past the illusion. If you can throw yourself at it with the open mind of a 14 year old you are in for an experience that isn't directly comparable to all the things the game is directly comparable to.

# ¿ Apr 29, 2015 01:04

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Jonathan Yeah! posted:

A game apparently so bad, the audience wills the wrasslers and ref dead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNYMFfc7xco

The first goodwill move for the future of this series is to bring back the wrassling machinima feature. The next, more important, but dependent move is to add a button that makes this happen on demand in your wrassling machinima.

# ¿ Apr 30, 2015 18:11

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Bobby Kotick has heard the Steam Community's requests for deeper discounts on the newly released, big franchise video games. That's why for this weekend only, you can get in on the Activision sale and get your copy of Duck Dynasty for 75% off!

# ¿ Apr 30, 2015 18:38

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Palpek posted:

Half of that list wasn't developed by Ubisoft.

When we're talking about nonsense like that then Far Cry 4 isn't any better "I neeeeeed to bury my mother's ashes in this specific spot in a foreign country, it should be a nice tourist trip with scenic views I guess." *the spot is in the middle of civil war with war attrocities being commited left and right* "I guess now I'll have to kill all those people and face an insane murderous tyrant because I really neeeeed to bury those ashes, like goddamn."

What made FC4 easier to digest is how it handled that. If it was just about the ashes you would have kept your head down at the dinner with who is acting like he is your eccentric uncle in between the tyrany and take him up on his offer to take you to the shrine. But no, you get self righteous about the actions of Pagan and start hitting the bees nest with a stick of your own accord.

I also liked how Pagan's admiration of your mother made him a bigger bro to you than your allies even as the military defends itself from you. Like he feels pretty bad about turning you over to the crazy drug prison, and to make up for it serves you Yuma's location. Its all still a bit cheesy but I feel like it hits more of the deconstruction notes than FC3.

# ¿ May 4, 2015 13:46

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Neddy Seagoon posted:

It is a singleplayer MMO. The project tanked before they could get it to the MMO stage and they salvaged it into a single-player game, iirc.

Nah they were working on an MMO since the studio started. Then decided what they need is a lore dump to get everybody ready for the MMO. So they bought a studio with a half finished game open world game called Reckoning and made them graft Salvatore's masterpiece MMO backstory into it.

# ¿ May 4, 2015 18:50

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Evil Mastermind posted:

Schilling was so confident he could succeed by making an MMO as his brand-new company's first game, he paid to move his whole operation from Massachusetts to Rhode Island, even going as far to pay for his employees to relocate.

I thought that was Rhode Island paying for that.

# ¿ May 4, 2015 18:57

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Palpek posted:

So it's Early Access to...allow the community to help in the development as if that somehow explains it. Also it doesn't really differ that much from the free release as that 15% left tells me they haven't touched Xen yet?

"We don't know how to fix Xen. Maybe you could pay us for the privilege to help us to fix Xen?"

Maybe they could just remove Xen and list it as a feature.

# ¿ May 5, 2015 16:12

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

theultimo posted:

drat region blocking might not exist soon

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/ec-outlines-plans-to-illegalise-geo-blocking-enforce-eu-digital-price-parity/0149042

Well it will just mean the collapse of the zones available in the EU, they can't exactly advocate for Australia or whoever.

I wonder what the bottom line will be for German censored versions.

# ¿ May 6, 2015 15:12

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Quest For Glory II posted:

Well at least they admitted it

This is a really bad look

GMG needs a better publicist, that was rather tame since the story practically writes itself. CDPR built a reputation about applying their acumen from the Polish market to be competitive worldwide by providing the least consumer effort in the value chain to play the game. I'm the first to suck corporate dick about regional prices because triple A gaming is already waffling on a crash because of production costs without wringing the stronger currencies of a few extra bucks, but now CDPR is making a triple A game and wants more blood from the stone so they are trying to play the wahhh contracts card despite their old philosophy meaning they failed hard at some point if someone else can make a profit (that they want) on lateral moves in the supply chain.

# ¿ May 6, 2015 23:35

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Mr. Fortitude posted:

I was under the impression that there would be two expansions for Pillars of Eternity, one which is integrated into the base game and fleshes things out and adds new stuff, the other which is postgame like Throne of Bhaal or Mask of the Betrayer and directly continues the story. Or am I mistaken?

Apparently Obsidian needs to step their marketing up because everyone is confused as hell about it.

The way I understood it was 2 expansions covering one new storyline (it was originally going to be 1 expansion but Obsidian thought they'd try episodic) involving at least 1 new story hub in each expansion. You can reach those hubs in the base game like the BG1 and IWD expansions.

If the finances pan out they made PoE with the intent of a character import into a PoE 2.

# ¿ May 7, 2015 18:10

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

After messing around with forfeiting races and abandoning championships in Dirt: Rally I am pleased to report it is a roguelight because there is a barrier to save scumming and a currency system that allows you to buy mechanics that give you permanent upgrades.

# ¿ May 8, 2015 03:33

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

EightDeer posted:

Can someone please explain the differences between the Patrician, Port Royale and The Guild series? I've never played any of them, and from the outside they all look virtually identical.

They are all ostensibly different coats of paint on the same buy low sell high spreadsheet games. Patrician focuses on riding the waves of the dynamic economy by figuring out the trade routes most likely to be profitable, with levers you can use to affect and hopefully improve your hometown. Port Royale is similar but you are a freelancer or government agent and have different levers to pull to affect the economy long term. The Guild is less about trade routes because you are a manufacturer buying raw materials to produce finish goods. The economy is fairly simple but good news! The finished goods are used to navigate the spreadsheets of home and courtly life.

Patrician 4 and Port Royale 3 are usually seen as treading water or a 3d graphics cash in so if you don't mind mind the 2d graphics and/or don't want to wait for a sale, you can get Patrician 3 or Port Royale 2 for dirt cheap.

The Guild 1 and 2 have a slightly sharper divergence. The Guild 1 is seen as having a better balanced economy but the social aspects are a little shallow. In the Guild 2, the economy is wide but very nearly an afterthought compared to all the stuff your character can do socially and its often been compared to The Sims instead of spreadsheet games.

# ¿ May 10, 2015 13:37

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Palpek posted:

That's the tutorial area, the game starts for real when you get to Flotsam where you're given a lot of freedom. I don't know what to tell you about dying to that dragon in the Enhanced Edition though as it's just a couple of easy qtes, it was really bad when the game came out but not anymore.

This is exactly what I think of when I think about games getting a little too open for their own good if Flotsam is supposed to be better than the tutorial. I think I've tried 3 times and every time I usually end up thinking "man this is pretty solid, why did I fall out with it before" through the tutorial and spend an hour collecting side quests and sorting crafting materials and inventory in Flotsam at which point its like "oh, yeah, right."

I still haven't experienced one of the highly lauded moral decisions from start to finish because I stall out in the moment it opens up too widely in both games.

# ¿ May 11, 2015 11:36

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Testekill posted:

Dead Rising II: It's good but Off the Record is an expanded version of it.
DMC 3: Amazing game, poo poo port. You'd have better luck emulating it.
DmC: Mediocre as hell. Lots of pretty enviroments but shallow gameplay.

DmC is pretty good sale fodder. Its perfectly serviceable for one play through over a couple long afternoons, but replays aren't as compelling as the devs thought it would be.

# ¿ May 15, 2015 14:01

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

RabbitWizard posted:

I lost the will to play about 1.5 hours in. Because then i had to start dealing with statpoint/skilltree fuckery.
I can only advise people to look it first up on a lets play or something if it is not your thing to divide upgrade-points between 10 or so base values, 10 weapon skills, 10 talents, 20 spells and 40 special abilities, deciding which one of the things is the best right now.

Yes, this was the first game i played with such an enormous stat-system, but i think others may hate it too.

edit: This isn't the recommend me a game thread....

Reminder that the Blackguards games are rooted back to The Dark Eye pen and paper system, which was created by German clerks for German clerks who thought AD&D was just too simple.

# ¿ May 15, 2015 14:43

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

MinionOfCthulhu posted:

How is Tabletop Simulator? It has a SHITTON of mods in the workshop for every board game you can imagine, but does it do this well?

There are universally better choices if you want to serious business play board or tabletop or card games if you are willing to jump into the deeper parts of the internet. But Tabletop Simulator has dumb physics and the Workshop so its not really targeting that other demographic and its perfectly fine at what it does.

# ¿ May 16, 2015 17:54

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Male Man posted:

I thought the point of Tabletop Simulator was to be a ridiculous multiplayer fumblecore game and not actually be a tool for playing games on.

Its best if you look at any game on it as being like Magicka where you can take it deathly seriously, but that misses the point of inadvertently trolling your friends when physics goes wrong.

# ¿ May 16, 2015 19:51

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

uber_stoat posted:

I like Alpha Protocol a lot, but the combat really is garbage until you get a decent amount of points allocated to your skills. It's like Deus Ex, you're an elite operative being sent into these combat situations and your gun hand shakes like a DT alcoholic hobo. Sort of fucks with your expectations.

Its original Mass Effect combat that had the misfortune of releasing after ME2. Its actually better than ME1 because you can take pistols and kill everyone with aimbot if you don't want to deal with it.

Drifter posted:

Every one saying how terrible the code or whatever is, It's best thought of as a straight console port (whether it is or not) and treating it as such. It's a great game, that's best played with a controller. It's one of those things where the combat and controls are 'okay' in general. People are hyperbolic to the extreme. That's gaming for you, though

It was a pretty common port for the period which means it was absolutely awful at release but playable a month later after everyone forgot about it.

# ¿ May 18, 2015 04:42

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Jordan7hm posted:

Eh, I don't ever trust a developer who says this.

e: If you like oldschool RPGs though you need to get this game it's really good. The combat is Wizardry, the rest is kind of ... gold box?

I'd call the whole package isometric Might and Magic before Wizardry or Gold Box.

# ¿ May 21, 2015 00:05

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Papercut posted:

Is there any word on how much longer Grim Dawn will be EA? Every time it comes up on sale, I waver back and forth about buying it.

I don't think they've shifted from the "sometime by the end of the year maybe" stance. The feature roadmap is nearing feature complete and the story content is approaching the end of the arc so its probably doable.

# ¿ May 22, 2015 22:12

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Palpek posted:

Every time I think I know a thing or two about the microcosm surrounding Steam where blood money is cleaned using rabbit head hats it turns out there are people making a living selling Greenlight vote bots or some poo poo. It's like every single thing Valve touches - it springs a whole new world into living.

Trickle down works thanks Reagan.

# ¿ May 26, 2015 13:39

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Accordion Man posted:

It's been mentioned but people enjoy Triple Triad far far more than the actual Final Fantasy 8.

The good news is you can turn off random encounters and sole source your means of character progression from Triple Triad halfway through Final Fantasy 8.

# ¿ May 26, 2015 18:20

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Mr. Fortitude posted:

Uh... no. The combat is kind of subjective but the Genesis one followed pen and paper rules more closely than the SNES Shadowrun and the SNES cyberspace was literally minesweeper except you don't have an indication of how close the ICs are to your squares. The Genesis cyberspace was turn based combat, Tron-style.

If there is anything to be understood by the Shadowrun games its that Shadowrun is probably more valuable as a theme than a fun game ruleset by the books.

# ¿ May 26, 2015 23:18

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

SynthOrange posted:

Not so sure about a game about sexual assault.

It is a little known fact that years of allegations of satanic ritual abuse all started from a popular video game depiction of Sir Arthur being stripped by Satan and touched in his no no spot.

# ¿ May 28, 2015 04:19

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Awesome! posted:

supposed to be real good even though its ea. #1 on my wishlist

now the head scratcher for me is distant worlds: universe. 50% off and it doesnt go on sale very often (and never that deep). i wouldnt really be surprised if it didnt get this low again in the summer sale

They started cashing in on wait for the sale expectations in the winter sale when a lot of the deals were pretty far off best recorded discount :tinfoil:

# ¿ May 28, 2015 23:00

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

il serpente cosmico posted:

It's been on my list to play for a while now, and I've really dug it thus far, so I don't really want to wait. But I can always do a second playthrough.

Thanks, I should probably stop worrying so much about screwng up my builds. I get a little anxious in games that provide a lot of customization choices.

Does hybridization tend to work out OK? Like say I want a melee tank with some magic or a wizard with a bow?

I'm fuzzy its all organized to make what I want to say make the most sense, but the active ability access pacing is such you can basically choose 2-3 categories to focus and stay up to date, while dabbling in some others that don't necessarily need to be focused on. That includes keeping up weapons so that's the only strike against gish like hybrids, and its a pretty small deal. Everything combos off of everything else including itself at some point so you can't really screw up a character short of splitting points between everything or dumping into the stuff that doesn't give you new active abilities.

# ¿ May 29, 2015 18:38

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Lakbay posted:

Anyone impulse buy Serpent in the Staglands? The trailer makes it look good for a old school/grognard RPG

I keep waiting to hear about it as someone has to have bought it or was on the Kickstarter. But the screenshots and some of the previews I'd caught don't fill me with confidence that the game isn't nostalgic in a lot of the worst ways.

# ¿ May 29, 2015 18:44

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

WarpedNaba posted:

I never did figure out if this guy was serious or not.

Would an insincere curator really be featured on main stream video game news site Kotaku?

# ¿ May 30, 2015 13:50

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

I feel like the Witcher 2 inventory and crafting is a sign of its times so as much as I hate it there's a little voice in the back of my head saying don't be so hard, its better than what Skyrim had out of the box.

# ¿ May 31, 2015 20:21

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

I haven't played it yet since I am finally playing Witcher 2 while contemplating a video card update, but Witcher 3's system seems like its the new sleek babby system for idiots like me. I expect I have enough ingredients to keep constantly juicing in Witcher 2, but the hoarder in my head demands I save potions for special fights, and the game structure is such I don't know a fights big until I try it and die and reload, which for autosaves is often at the threshold of combat anyway so I just end up not using potions.

# ¿ May 31, 2015 21:48

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Stabbey_the_Clown posted:

Insta-kill towers? I don't think there should be instakill towers. Lightning towers do significant damage, but they are slow to fire. Are you entering a spherical zone which hurts your Dragon? You're not supposed to go into those anti-dragon zones.

You can also still use healing potions in dragon form, by the way.

Chalk me up as another casualty of the early fjords as the prospect of shutting down anti dragon zones and constantly getting wrecked as you learn the dragon ropes was all a little much. If I remember right they dont even lob you the first ADZ "puzzle", its like land on this tower miles away from the ADZ and teleport in to where you actually want to go to shut it down.

# ¿ Jun 1, 2015 13:43

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 05:01

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Underground resistance is probably the objectively better setting for XCOM 2 but I can't help but feel a little sad it isn't ocean based nonsense like TFTD.

# ¿ Jun 1, 2015 16:44

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Steam Thread: you're not a kid any more and you want what you had when you were a kid

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