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Someone gave me a place to rant about Star Wars: Squadrons! Tagline: I love this game. I love it so much, and it is probably the best game that I will likely never play again because EA picked the worst time to try and buck the one thing they're known for! I played the X Wing and Tie Fighter games back in the day. We had a joystick and everything, and while I don't think I was obsessed with them or anything (I was in elementary school), I remember them being a pretty cool time. Having the joystick was a novelty just because it was the only kind of thing that had those kind of controls back then--analog sticks weren't a thing on the NES or Genesis, which were the only other game systems we had at the time. But of course the main draw was that you got to be an X Wing, which was the iconic ship that I loved the most out of all Star Wars ships (that was my default thing to make out of Tinkertoys whenever we visited my grandmother), and pretty much no game I ever played after that gave me the opportunity to try and recreate that experience. Fast forward to fall 2020, when I heard EA was putting out a game that was only starship combat on modern consoles with both story and multiplayer and I bought it day one on the PS4 (I have never been a PC gamer in the sense of making a build that will run that kind of poo poo, and certainly not anywhere close to what I'd need for VR. if I play things on PC at all I run them at low for pretty much everything) and fell in love with it pretty much right away. flying the ship just felt fun in the same way that I love swinging around in the new Spider-Man (and, before that, in Spider-Man 2 for the PS2), and while the story wasn't a masterpiece and you spent too much time as the Empire, I was willing to overlook that because the ships just felt great to fly. Then I read that this was like the ONE game that EA said "you know, we're just going to release this and let it be. No post-game content. We long for the days of yore, when a game was a complete product and you bought it all at once" and I was like "you idiots. you utter fools" because this game, out of any other game (except maybe the dogshit incomplete status they released Battlefront 2 in) could have actually used post-game support! to be clear: this game is playable without any major or game-crashing glitches and it's a ton of fun. however, two things, I think, led to what was pretty much the death of it in terms of multiplayer population: no additional maps, and fleet battles was broken as hell (maybe they've finally patched that second part, I don't know) Dogfight is my favourite mode. There is nothing like strapping into an A Wing and killing a bunch of mooks with the homing mines while you're zooming around an asteroid field trying not to smash your ship into pieces against some unforgiving rock and some other jerk is on your tail. It took me a little while to figure out what kind of build worked for me, but once I did, I played the game like every night for at least a month after it came out. At that point, there were still new players coming in to the game and I was good enough that things always felt fresh. The only problem is there are only like 4-5 different maps. I should say, this was not a problem for me, because I liked pretty much all of those maps, even the giant open one for the most part (people suck at dodging mines there), but it meant a lot of people quickly got bored of the rotation and the player base bled off. like seriously, the charts for this game were anemic a month or two after launch. this was 100% a missed opportunity by EA here. I would have paid for a map pack to add in some new locations. or paid for something else if they added new maps for free since fracturing player bases is rarely a good thing. but they picked the worst time to finally make a stand against the one thing besides being generally poo poo they are known for as a company, which is DLC. so because of that, dogfight quickly became a situation where you were either up against a gank squad or you were lucky enough to be on the gank squad, and while I personally didn't care that much if my team won overall as long as I had a decent round, I can imagine it still sucks poo poo to end the round with like 5-7 team kills total against like 30-40 or whatever it was. that brings me to the other thing: fleet battles. on the surface, fleet battles sounds awesome--you get a team together, and you either take on the AI or another team and use strategy to take down a flagship by destroying key systems and whatever. the only problems were that the AI was overtuned as gently caress to be the most difficult piece of poo poo and there was a literal game breaking glitch in PvP where due to where the AI fighters spawn in, a coordinated team could hide back behind their own line, go out and attack your ship, hide back behind their line again, and snipe the AI fighters to pretty much make it impossible for any team to ever catch back up. I could have probably dealt with one or the other, but again this contributed I imagine to a lot of people falling off of the game, which exacerbated things. Even on easy it was ridiculously difficult as poo poo to win a match against the AI with a full team. like I don't think I ever won once (and yes, part of it is because I'm garbage and randos are garbage and etc. etc., but part of it is also because it's horribly broken. like randos should be able to win a match on easy). I love this game, even with all of its flaws (I still have it installed on my PS5, even). there hasn't been an experience like it, and I wish they could have like set up VR stations around the country to let people try it (in a covid-free world) because it's not a part of my setup but I heard people rave about it once they got it to work right in the thread. but at this point I don't see a ton of people ever going back to it unless they make a bunch of new maps/content and put it out there on like PS+ or something, so it's probably going to be relegated to a niche population of people who will kill me in 5 seconds when I boot it up a couple months from now for laughs. RIP Squadrons. Dead before your time. 
morallyobjected fucked around with this message at 18:57 on Jan 11, 2021 |
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Jan 11, 2021 18:50
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fridge corn posted:I didn't quite get it from your write up, but were you playing the game in vr or not? I was not! I really would have liked to, as I heard a lot of cool things about it, but VR is not ever gonna be part of my set up for a long time. I just don't have the money to drop on the kind of PC I'd need (and I don't really like PC gaming anyway), and there's not enough VR content on PS4/5 to make me feel like it'd be worth it. I tried it out when Sony did the free like 2-week trial of it a couple years ago, and I'd be down if some day the price point were lower and it had more content
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Jan 11, 2021 19:22
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fridge corn posted:Okay cool. Im glad you liked it so much even without vr. Everyone who usually raves about it does so cuz of the vr experience. I got the game for Christmas and haven't played it yet but also dont have vr. I'm not that interested in the multiplayer and mostly in it for the x-wing/tie fighter nostalgia single player campaign. Looking forward to playing it! I am not kidding when I say I would immediately buy a story DLC that involved more starship pew pew. like I mentioned in the post, this game was uniquely suited to DLC/the usual EA poo poo of slow dripping content after launch to make it feel like the game you wanted when you bought it, and they decided not to do it this time  it's the only reason the game wasn't in my top 10 for the GOTY thread. I do think it's worth trying the multiplayer (dogfight, at least) if you can get some matches, because the feeling of chasing down an actual person is just miles away from doing it to AI, but it's possible you're only going to run into jerks who kill you in like ten seconds each time, so if it clicks then great, but if not, then don't spend too much time with it. you can also do solo fleet battles with AI helpers I think, too, if that appeals to you. e: I also played pretty much only at night in a dark room, which may have helped with immersion stuff morallyobjected fucked around with this message at 20:10 on Jan 11, 2021 |
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Jan 11, 2021 20:06
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The 1990s/2000s was like peak arcade sports game time (BMX, THPS, snowboarding, NBA Street, etc.) and for me there will never be another game that comes close to replicating the feeling I got from SSX3: It's hard to express everything I feel about this game but I'm gonna try. I never played the original SSX but I did play Tricky, and at that time I didn't know how they could possibly top it. My previous experience with snowboarding games was like Coolboarders on the PSX so the switch up to Tricky was a giant leap:  The shoulder button trick system on the PS2 controller was perfect in a way that just never really seemed to fit right with other controllers and that along with pre-winding to do the insane number of flips/spins you could pull off made it control like a dream. I played it for hours and hours without ever imagining they were going to make a sequel. And then it came out and you were treated to this as soon as you booted it up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQAP3sENX68&t=27s Already I was hooked. The original SSX and Tricky were both set up in discrete tracks that had nothing to do with one another, and (at least in Tricky) you would have race events and trick events on each--they were set up to be viable for both. In SSX3, they separated tracks into race tracks and freestyle tracks, which allowed them to hone in their focus on making race tracks speedy and making freestyle tracks insane playgrounds. But the biggest innovation and the part that blew my mind when I was a kid was that pretty much every single track is interconnected with the others. The mountain is separated into three peaks, and each peak generally has about two race tracks, three freestyle tracks, and one "backcountry" challenge that's more natural mountain geometry. To get to any of the events, you ride your board through the lodge area and follow the signs to get to whichever event you want--not just select them from a menu:  The kicker is that every peak ends with a race challenge and a trick challenge that spans the entire mountain that you've unlocked up to that point. The end of peak one challenge starts you in the backcountry, which then segues to the upper lodge area, then to a race track, then to the lower lodge area, then to another race track, and that's the end, but it happens all in one go--no loading between areas, no skipping the lodge zones. You ride through all of it. When you finish peak two, you start in the peak two backcountry and ride down all of peak two, then all of peak one, and by the time you get to peak three, you're looking at like a half-hour race/trick challenge down the entire mountain. No game I had ever played at this point had ever done something so ambitious--certainly not any sports game. The entire time you're playing, DJ Atomica comes over the airways talking about random mountain news: DJ Atomica posted:What's goin' around town? Well, I'll tell you. The three peak drive-in wants everyone to know regardless of the weather, they are open. Saturday's triple horror feature is Night of the Rabbit Garden Gnomes, Attack of the Zombie Comeback Nurses, and locally made Frozen Films feat. Day of the Cough Syrupers. Quality entertainment people. DJ Atomica" posted:Here's an update to some earlier news. Initial reports of competitors jumping ahead of lift lines has now been corrected to, competitors jumping over lift lines. Well you know, that's pretty much to be expected I think. The mountain feels like a place, and more specifically a place you want to come back to. When you fly up into the air, the music drops down to almost nothing, then comes in blasting again as soon as you land, and the soundtrack was honestly almost as iconic as THPS1. We're talking songs like Play It Loud by MXPX, Jerk It Out by Caesars, No One Knows (remixed) by Queens of the Stone Age, Do Your Thing by Basement Jaxx. They fit perfectly into the environment and made everything that much more exciting. SSX3 is like number one on my list of games I wish they would remaster. the PS3 entry was a great game that I played the poo poo out of, but everything is just a pale imitation of the real king of the mountain.
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Jan 27, 2021 01:17
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Fly Ricky posted:These spoilers have me so stoked to play the reboots. Honestly I think the first one has the best writing/characters, the second one has the best gameplay, and the third is forgettable (but if you just want more of the same gameplay, it'll give you what you want).
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Feb 11, 2021 17:13
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I haven't done any DLC because they haven't been able/it isn't profitable enough to release it on PS4 and I don't want to rebuy it elsewhere, but the base game is adorable and fun
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Feb 24, 2021 20:25
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Polo-Rican posted:Time for me to plug Legend of Grimrock 2 also if you're NOT going to play it, you owe it to yourself to go watch Iron Chitlin's LP of it. come for the minotaur named after Ayn Rand characters--stay for the accordion tunes.
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Mar 3, 2021 21:08
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exquisite tea posted:Words about Life is Strange some great thoughts here and I enjoyed reading them! I think Life is Strange is very much about being more than the sum of its parts. people here like to rag on some of the slang that was used as outdated or something but idk I grew up in Oregon and people said "hella", for example, all the time (plus we learn later in Before the Storm that Chloe got it from Rachel, who picked it up in California). rather than seeing it in any kind of binary terms, I think one of the great parts of Max and Chloe's relationship is that it exists in the void; it doesn't have to be *either* romantic or platonic--it can be both, and it is. whether you kiss Chloe or not, you really get the sense that Chloe is Max's extraordinary relationship and while they certainly took detours along the way, Max is Chloe's as well. btw if you haven't (I'm always kind of surprised that more fans *don't* know about it), you should check out the graphic novel series, which follows both of them after the events of the first game.
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Mar 27, 2021 16:23
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exquisite tea posted:Thanks for reminding me to order the first anthology. I got the first couple issues when they came out and liked the storyline well enough, but there's no comic book store near me that carries LiS and it was getting hard to keep up with. yeah, I've been waiting until the 4-issue collections come out on paperback and getting those, either from a local book store if they have it or online.
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Mar 27, 2021 22:43
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honestly Warioware games were more fun than they had any right to be. I want to say I had the Wii game but I honestly don't remember.
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Apr 12, 2021 14:54
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Josherino posted:For some reason I just haven't been able to shake off "Double Dash" as my favorite MK. I have no idea how I'd feel about it now, but I loved Mario Kart Wii when it came out, and I played it exclusively with the Wiimote wheel. pretty sure I even got three stars on all cups for all CCs. CTR will always be my favourite though, and the remaster that adds Nitro Kart tracks is great
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Apr 26, 2021 01:11
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