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brain dammej posted:Can't wait for the rest of that doc. Thanks for the heads up, I just bought Dishonored 2 and Death of the Outsider
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Aug 6, 2020 03:47
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D2 is really great, mostly because it took the pretty-good gameplay of Dishonored and said "what if we made the objectively morally-right low-chaos route NOT be a horrible slog of unfun gameplay to actually accomplish?" Like even just the addition of drop-knockouts is SUCH an amazing improvement.
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Aug 6, 2020 04:24
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Entropic posted:D2 is really great, mostly because it took the pretty-good gameplay of Dishonored and said "what if we made the objectively morally-right low-chaos route NOT be a horrible slog of unfun gameplay to actually accomplish?" Like even just the addition of drop-knockouts is SUCH an amazing improvement. My favorite was grabbing folks with Emily's far reach and hugging them to sleep Same for domino, sleep darts, and crafting a bone charm with the perk that gives a 25% chance to return sleep darts on looting stacked a few times 
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Aug 6, 2020 04:30
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Capn Beeb posted:My favorite was grabbing folks with Emily's far reach and hugging them to sleep My favorite way to play D2 is "Batman" mode -- not caring so much about absolute stealth, but being not-lethal. Just rampage through every room just knocking everyone out or stunning them but not actually killing anybody.
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Aug 6, 2020 04:43
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feelix posted:Is Arx Fatalis worth playing in tyool2020? I'm probably biased, as I fell in love with it ages ago and only got to replay/finish it last year (using arx liberalis). I liked it. The world is small and cramped, but feels lived in, there's a hell of a lot of small things to do since everything is handcrafted. Some people are turned off by drawing the magic runes, but I loved it and think of it as a good throwback to older crpgs (ultima?) and adds good tension to trying to spellcast mid-combat, something most games just hand-wave away. But yes, you do need to get the hang of drawing runes, as magic is both literally necessary and totally overpowered. It's probably the litmus test between people who bounce off of Arx Fatalis or love it, imo. It's low-poly, but not too hideous as first-gen 3d titles.
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Aug 6, 2020 04:56
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Philman posted:true.
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Aug 6, 2020 05:05
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Oh man I did not expect this game to still have a thread that's not in the archives. I just beat it for the first time a couple of weeks ago, but it's been occupying an unhealthy amount of my thoughts ever since. I'd tried to get into Dishonored a couple of times since I heard it was pretty close to Deux Ex but I couldn't get into the setting, and for some reason had the impression Prey was just a conventional shooter? But I decided to give it a go anyway and it completely blew me away. It's up there in my favorite narrative singleplayer games ever list now, I just wish there was more of it. The only bad thing I have to say is I feel like I've seen the entire station after a 30-40 hour playthrough, but nearly every moment of it was fantastic. It has got me interested in trying System Shock 2; how does it hold up in comparison? Old graphics aren't a problem (Deus Ex 1 is still one of my favorites too, and I don't use mods for it). Koramei fucked around with this message at 01:34 on Aug 17, 2020 |
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Aug 17, 2020 01:31
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System Shock 2 has a good reputation and strong influence for a reason, it's a great game. As you said, it's very low-poly, even for the time (they wanted to make sure it ran on everything). You can find no shortage of model/texture packs to bring things forward a bit. It's still very playable, it's weakest points are the UI dumping you in the deep end (thanks to its SS1 roots), and minor balance quibbles (eg get maintenance skill, etc). People who get past the first level tend to finish the game and love it.
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Aug 17, 2020 01:43
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SS2 is quite playable by modern standards. Some of the RPG systems maybe aren't explained as well as they should be, but the controls and readability of the game hold up well.
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Aug 17, 2020 02:01
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Once you get into its groove it's very playable. Looking at some basic skill tips (or asking here) might be advisable, though.
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Aug 17, 2020 02:17
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Koramei posted:for some reason had the impression Prey was just a conventional shooter? also, drat they f-ed up the marketing for this game
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Aug 17, 2020 02:22
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Rinkles posted:also, drat they f-ed up the marketing for this game What marketing?
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Aug 17, 2020 05:54
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Bethesda can't market for poo poo. Doom 2016 was only saved by word of mouth and a Nvidia tech demo trailer that wasn't even produced by Bethesda and Rage 2's advertising completely misrepresented the tone of the game.
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Aug 17, 2020 06:07
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deathloop delayed to q2 2021 https://twitter.com/deathloop/status/1295722189203832843
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Aug 18, 2020 15:08
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Gives me time to fit that kill 'em all alien powers only run in. Hope this doesn't mean they'll be under crunch until then.
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Aug 18, 2020 16:07
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Good, I keep telling myself to make the Games thread for it but then putting it off
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Aug 18, 2020 16:31
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Serephina posted:Some people are turned off by drawing the magic runes, but I loved it and think of it as a good throwback to older crpgs (ultima?) and adds good tension to trying to spellcast mid-combat, something most games just hand-wave away. Yep, you can trace that back straight back to Ultima. In Ultima 4 and 5 you'd cast a spell by actually typing in the incantation, so e.g. you'd select cast and then type in IN MANI CORP to cast Resurrect. U6 added the ability to pick the spell from a list (although you can still type in the first letter of each syllable in the incantation if you don't want to use the mouse). UUW wanted to keep that flavour (I assume) but without requiring the player to actually type in words of power in real-time while a skeleton was chewing on their leg, so they added the runes -- each rune corresponds to one of the words of power from the main game, and sequences of 2-3 runes form spells. You have to select the runes from your bag in advance, so at any given time you only have one spell readied, but the bag UI isn't so slow that you're completely screwed if enemies get the drop on you while you have something like Light readied instead of a combat spell -- while still being slow enough that you want to avoid being put in that situation if possible. Arx Fatalis is basically Legally Distinct Ultima Underworld 3, so they kept the basic concept except had you draw the runes on the screen instead -- which I personally think is extremely cool and, as you say, adds some welcome tension to trying to bust out spells in combat that you don't have pre-prepared. One of my fondest memories of Arx is getting in over my head in a fight against a lich, fleeing, and then remembering that I had to cross a spike pit to get in and trying to draw the runes for Levitate before reaching the pit on the way out but without slowing down.
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Aug 19, 2020 14:08
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I know the audience for this thread and the Deus Ex thread are 90% the same, but for the folks who just hang over here, I'm going to be a shithead and crosspost:Eason the Fifth posted:I don't know if you guys have looked into it yet but Core Decay looks like it's very much our kind of poo poo:
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Sep 7, 2020 22:41
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Isn’t Slipgate Ironworks John Romero’s company? Have they released anything before?
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Sep 8, 2020 16:46
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lol 3D Realms' name is on it too, I didn't think they existed as anything more than a name owned by some holding company or something since their dissolution upon failing to deliver Duke Nukem Forever.
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Sep 11, 2020 22:41
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I just replayed this for the first time in ages and I really think there ought to be an achievement for shooting the Nightmare with the nerf gun.
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Sep 15, 2020 03:35
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Entropic posted:I just replayed this for the first time in ages and I really think there ought to be an achievement for shooting the Nightmare with the nerf gun. Achievement Unlocked: You Tried!
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Sep 15, 2020 09:02
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There is one for killing the Nightmare with it, though. Sometimes it doesn’t trigger on the first one, though, sometimes you have to do it two to five times.
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Sep 15, 2020 16:35
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How did I not know until know that if you keep activating a Medical Operator when you're at full healt it will tell you bad jokes?
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Sep 18, 2020 02:57
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Really really enjoyed Mooncrash, that said I kind of wish it didn't end up being super easy at the end. I think it could have done with a system where characters start unpowered but each upgrade costs much less, to make things a bit more interesting. Past that it's only challenging if you do stuff like deliberately not use corruption decreasing items, or just wait around a bit, and that kind of stuff sucks.
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Sep 18, 2020 15:53
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That's true of Prey in general, to be fair.
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Sep 19, 2020 00:37
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I played through most of this when it came out but ended up going back and restarting and finishing it, and have some scattered thoughts. The warnings about consequences for using typhoon mods were very counterproductive, especially coming after Dishonored where low/high chaos is hugely consequential. It cuts off a lot of extremely fun powers for no real reason. The shuttle showing up and ensuing infinite stream of enemies was actually kind of an interesting idea that I can't remember if I've ever seen in one of these types of immersive sims. Since at that point you have a ridiculous amount of power and toolkit its probably the first time I've felt nervous at the post-godlike power point that these games always reach. Plot: I have a few nitpicks about the setting, although you could hand wave it all as being 'part of the sim' I suppose. The main one being that in this world the Typhon are found in 1960 by the soviets, which sends so many shockwaves through the USSR leadership that the Cold War ends and east and west unite for space exploration, which advances in leaps and bounds to the extent there's a massive, well known space station that's full of scientists. Yet... that the Typhon exist is still apparently a secret? 70 years later... every single one of the tens of thousands of people who would know, it never gets out? Also the not-actually-final choice for what to do was incredibly muddled by the game. First off, there's no reason that trying the transmitter and blowing up the station are mutually exclusive, there's even a line of dialogue about it that the rest of the game ignores. Second, blowing up the station REALLY OBVIOUSLY wouldn't work as presented in game so its frustrating that the characters would all treat it as a fait accompli. They try to sell it as a question of 'saving the tech and continuing to advance in space at the cost of human lives' vs 'washing your hands of it by blowing it all up and everything goes back to normal', but why on earth does everyone assume that the coral hasn't had any communication at all? The actual moral quandary that it sure seems like the rest of the game is leading up to would be that the transmitter, if it worked, would genocide a form of life, but that's never discussed at all, which is even weirder when the full simulation is revealed to be about determining the ethics and morality of the Morgan/typhon. The giant typhon at the end looked really cool though so points there. Also do the operators representing all the other characters always show up next to Alex post game or are they keyed to who you saved in the sim?. Also it's great, RIP immersive sims, my favorite genre of game. Yarrington fucked around with this message at 15:33 on Oct 2, 2020 |
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Oct 2, 2020 15:30
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I think the narrative is that the USA and USSR almost immediately struck an agreement to jointly study the Typhon while keeping their existence a secret from the general public. They maintained careful secrecy and used a small joint research staff at first, before the Information Age really got into full swing; when the feasibility of the Neuromod was proposed, they went OH poo poo and started courting a big loving tech company (Transtar) to pursue the project. As soon as retroaptic neurotomies or whatever were perfected, secrecy became an almost complete non-issue, since everyone involved is on an inescapable space station, has limited (and monitored) access to communication with Earth, and is required to get their memories rebooted before they leave.
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Oct 2, 2020 21:39
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I think the last part is easy to miss too, but there’s references in the games to pulling everyone’s neuromods to reset their memories when they’re done working on Talos or when there is an incident. It’s one of the reasons Mikhalia isn’t supposed to be on the station, since she can’t use neuromods
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Oct 2, 2020 22:54
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GoodApollo posted:I think the last part is easy to miss too, but there’s references in the games to pulling everyone’s neuromods to reset their memories when they’re done working on Talos or when there is an incident. It’s one of the reasons Mikhalia isn’t supposed to be on the station, since she can’t use neuromods That was one of the more interesting ideas in the game. I dont know if it's in other sci-fi very much.
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Oct 3, 2020 02:56
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Tbh prey world is bog standard cyberpunk setting where there are no real nations, it’s a neoliberal world in which corporate monoliths are global powers and the nominal states, like the USSR, suckle at the teat. This is pretty obvious in Mooncrash. The interesting bit about the core game is that it’s a cyberpunk setting as seen from the penthouse floor, rather than the 99.9999% of the world that composes the underclass
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Oct 3, 2020 06:02
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The more I think about a Prey sequel, the more I’d want it to focus on people like Morgan who have become unholy ubermenschen thanks to voraciously consuming the Typhon, who are probably even less concerned with preserving humanity than ordinary baseline Typhon.
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Oct 3, 2020 15:26
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Yarrington posted:I played through most of this when it came out but ended up going back and restarting and finishing it, and have some scattered thoughts. i just completed this and i will agree on the typhon neuromod stuff; i completed it without using any and i think it changes... whether the turrets on the station are hostile or not, whether january lets you leave the station without a fight, one line of dialogue in the ending cutscene? the respawning operators are an interesting gameplay device (more interesting than they are to fight) although i figured out pretty quickly that if you bludgeon them to the point they're disabled but don't kill them then they don't respawn. which is one of the many 'hey that actually worked' moments in this game i think the moral choice was more about whether you want to destroy the typhon research or save it - given the shitshow the station turned into and that the research basically involves you grinding typhon up into a fine paste to inject into your eyeballs, i picked to destroy it which seemed a bit less like tempting fate i'm not sure how i feel about the ending but the twist is an interesting way to justify the gamification of moral choices that a lot of these types of games do. you were being tested all this time! it makes sense anyway, what a game! i haven't played something this creative with gameplay in so long. still have mooncrash to play as well which i've heard nothing but good things about. has anyone said 'prey this game' yet? Generic Monk fucked around with this message at 16:04 on Oct 3, 2020 |
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Oct 3, 2020 16:02
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Generic Monk posted:i'm not sure how i feel about the ending but the twist is an interesting way to justify the gamification of moral choices that a lot of these types of games do. you were being tested all this time! it makes sense I can't recall any other game that pulled an "It was all a dream" that I wasn't mad about. That one surprised me the most – not the ending itself, but that I didn't flip my keyboard.
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Oct 7, 2020 11:21
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I started up a new game of Prey because I got it for my Playstation (I originally got it for the Bone) and oh man I'd forgotten how good this game is. Playing through it a second time with knowledge of what is going to happen allows you to really break the game in ways that a first timer wouldn't think to do. I'm doing a full human run and really once you get the fully upgraded shotgun the tone shifts from "Creeps and terror because everything is gonna kill you" to "some occasional spooks when a mimic jumps out at you or when the Nightmare shows up where you don't want him" and I don't remember having all of the physical upgrades as well as the super boosted jetpack so now I'm running around like the fuckin' Doomguy. I don't know if I'll be up for a second run right away (especially since other games are coming out at the end of this month) but I really want to finally do an "Alien powers only murder run". The biggest thing against that is that it takes a minute to get to the point where you can get alien powers since you can't do so without the 'scope, so I've always just decided I don't want to play the first few hours w/o neuromods but I think now is the time edit: ah I also forgot what a bummer the ending is. Not the It Was All A Dream but the mechanics of it. The game doesn’t warn you when you’re reaching the point of no return, which does kinda come out of nowhere (you can tell it’s wrapping up but there’s no indication that going to talk to Alex is gonna trigger Apex-alypse and I still had poo poo to do that completely went out the window, and from there game is only about another half-hour and is pretty much just running and waiting at loading screens. I went and finished with my ending (which also seems a little weird because you can end the game by getting on the shuttle and leaving while the giant thing is bearing down or going to nullwave everything to death when it would make a billion times more sense to just link them and have you head to the shuttle after pressing that particular button.) and it honestly felt a little anti-climactic. Like I suppose I’m glad it didn’t pull a bioshock and have you fight a roiled out Alex for control of Talos but this ending just ends with you frying your operator and calling it a day. At least when you blow the whole thing to smithereens there’s a big period. DC Murderverse fucked around with this message at 07:30 on Oct 19, 2020 |
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Oct 18, 2020 23:08
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For some reason, I decided to try Mooncrash for the first time today and holy poo poo, I wasn't expecting any of that. It's very good, albeit very different than the main game (and very difficult for me to acclimate to, since I'm a "slowly and methodically clear out an ever-expanding safe zone" kind of player). It stresses me the hell out, TBH.
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Nov 2, 2020 04:28
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Mooncrash is fantastic for "oh poo poo" moments for not preparing, like "oh gently caress me I forgot to pack a stun gun to deal with the typhon gates, gently caress gently caress gently caress"
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Nov 2, 2020 04:35
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KillHour posted:For some reason, I decided to try Mooncrash for the first time today and holy poo poo, I wasn't expecting any of that. It's very good, albeit very different than the main game (and very difficult for me to acclimate to, since I'm a "slowly and methodically clear out an ever-expanding safe zone" kind of player). It's so good. Immersive sims are supposed to be about choice, but a lot of players, including myself, make the choice of "I'm going to experience pretty much everything in the game". And you do by the end of Moocrash, but you have to divide it up between 5 runs and make a decision which stuff you're going to do on each. And if you play it again then it's obvious how to break it so you can indeed explore almost indefinitely.
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Nov 2, 2020 05:28
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Feels Villeneuve posted:Mooncrash is fantastic for "oh poo poo" moments for not preparing, like "oh gently caress me I forgot to pack a stun gun to deal with the typhon gates, gently caress gently caress gently caress" I feel this. It hurts me so much to always forget about typhon gate disabling.
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Nov 2, 2020 09:21
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Bought and played through Mooncrash. Doesn't seem like a whole lot of people did, although it could just be counting against the number of the owners of the main game: I enjoyed it, but it did start to feel repetitive in the second half of the playtime, by the time I explored everything. The clock says I spent 28 hours beating it - I think I would have preferred a completion length of about half that long. I'd say it's definitely worth it on a discount. I did freak out the one time I forgot a stun gun on a Typhoned up character's run, but then I thought "surely there is contingency the devs have thought of for this" and googled. Turns out control panels explode with an electric discharge. And the Harvesters drop control panels when you kill them (aim for their glowing blue butts) and there's two of them per crater. You can also just grab the ones in the basement of the Control Tower and bring back replacements later, if you have to. Grimthwacker posted:I Silly me for thinking there'd be a sneaky way to open Alex's safe for the listening module without having to hack it. . . if there is, I'd love to know. I googled that as well, out of curiosity. A sticky spawns... somewhere, apparently. I never found it myself, but I didn't really look all that hard, myself. I just kept the corruption at max delay when doing missions, because I'm lazy. Megazver fucked around with this message at 12:25 on Dec 4, 2020 |
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Dec 4, 2020 12:16
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