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I've been replaying Mass Effect 2 and I love all the little blurbs for the planets. One of them talks about the legend of an ancient pirate that hid massive amounts of element zero. It says no one had ever actually found any element zero on the planet, and when you scan it there isn't any. But the next planet over is loaded with the stuff.
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Jan 28, 2015 23:24
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grittyreboot posted:I've been replaying Mass Effect 2 and I love all the little blurbs for the planets. One of them talks about the legend of an ancient pirate that hid massive amounts of element zero. It says no one had ever actually found any element zero on the planet, and when you scan it there isn't any. But the next planet over is loaded with the stuff. For all of its other failings of Mass Effect (and Bioware in general) a lack of little details isn't one of them.
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Jan 28, 2015 23:48
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Mass Effect 1 uses the planet descriptions really well, because you can go read them as soon as you get the spaceship and a lot of them mention the remains of billion year old extinct alien civilisations that are older than all the old Prothean ruins you run through. It just seems like a nice detail to give the galaxy more history to it until you hit the big twist with what the Reapers are near the end of the game, where it helps the Reapers to come across as not just "the guys who killed all the Protheans", but also "the guys who have killed galactic civilisations over, and over, and over again".
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Jan 29, 2015 01:26
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In DotA 2, one of the fancy cosmetics is the Demon Eater Soul for Shadow Fiend.He is usually (surprise surprise) shadowy, but the Demon Eater makes him fiery. The ground smokes where he walks, but if he walks through the river, it makes steam instead.
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Jan 29, 2015 02:12
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Red Bones posted:Mass Effect 1 uses the planet descriptions really well, because you can go read them as soon as you get the spaceship and a lot of them mention the remains of billion year old extinct alien civilisations that are older than all the old Prothean ruins you run through. It just seems like a nice detail to give the galaxy more history to it until you hit the big twist with what the Reapers are near the end of the game, where it helps the Reapers to come across as not just "the guys who killed all the Protheans", but also "the guys who have killed galactic civilisations over, and over, and over again". In ME2 I liked that one of the side missions ends with you randomly finding a Prothean beacon, one of the macguffins that you spent the entire first game hunting down. It was a little thing but it really drove home how big the universe was, that years later people were still digging up the things.
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Jan 29, 2015 02:24
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Kaubocks posted:The sheer jank shittiness of SR2 definitely adds to the experience for me in a weird way. I can't explain it. Easily the best SR game. The rough edges were very obvious at the time, GTA IV came out about 6 months before. SR2 was a lot like GTA SA was to that series. They put a lot of stuff in there to see what works and its a little disjointed and unpolished but for a lot of people it's the standout. I could overlook some of the shittiness when they're trying new things from sequel to sequel and not being another semi-serious GTA clone. But that's getting harder to do after playing Gat Out of Hell side by side with latest sandbox games like Shadow of Mordor and Infamous First Light. On the PS4 edition I average 2 crashes a afternoon if I'm playing it.
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Jan 29, 2015 04:21
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Kinda going to dump a handful of little things here. First, in the .hack//infection game series, I loved the email/desktop mechanic. It really helped bring home that you're playing a game, but that the real world has a lot going on in it too (like when you get a news clip about scientists finally finding bigfoot). They also emphasized this with the anime DVDs included with the games. Also I loved being able to change the desktop music, which I always set to Harald's theme. Secondly, I love Kingdom Hearts and I refuse to apologize for its campiness, but I always liked how Yoko Shimamura handled the music, often displaying how certain characters are related by mingling their themes (like how Namine's theme borrows from Kairi's). She did this with world themes too, like the difference in the tone of The World that Never Was's theme (Sacred Moon) between KH2 (mystic and alien) and 368/2 (more friendly and familiar). I also noticed how they have evolved Riku's character throughout the series. When you finally see him again in KH2, he sort of lumbers all hunched over, like he's burdened. That goes away in Dream Drop Distance. Also, I've noticed that as the characters mature, their shoe/hand size becomes more proportional. The series itself is growing up and maturing in its design. Finally, to regain whatever little cred as a gamer I have, an anecdote from Dragon Age 2. Being the whore that I was, i managed to simultaneously romance both Fenris and Anders. Lot of fun, since I got back-to-back love scenes. However, thinking nothing of it I went about having both of them in a party with me to go gently caress poo poo up... they argued about me. Fenris was pissed once he realized I also had a fling with the mage. Also noticed that if you take your buddies with you to the tavern to check out the whorehouse, if you sleep with one of them, if someone in your party is in love with you, their love will go down. 
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Jan 30, 2015 07:44
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Resonance is a point-and-click adventure that is pretty standard, all things considered. You go through the usual puzzles and mysteries and rubbing your inventory on everything that exists so that you can just continue already ugh but it has two nice points (the second one is the big one for this thread): 1) At all times, there is an NPC next to you. Often puzzles are cooperative (thin, tall guy gets places short fatty can't fit, distract a guy, etc), but they are always there for hints if you get stuck. There's an achievement for never asking for their advice. 2) One character has a smartphone with a "Word of the Day" app on it. If you use that app, he will shoehorn that word into the next conversation you get into, often causing the second party to  since they're big-ticket words. If you don't, he talks like a normal person. This is pretty big for a game that is wholly-voice-acted, and there are several word-of-the-days, I think one per scene/chapter.Edit: 3) Oh, I almost forgot. He also has a password cracking app that you use three times in the game: the first two passwords you crack are password and letmein if I remember right Evilreaver has a new favorite as of 08:05 on Jan 30, 2015 |
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Jan 30, 2015 08:00
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Sleeveless posted:In ME2 I liked that one of the side missions ends with you randomly finding a Prothean beacon, one of the macguffins that you spent the entire first game hunting down. It was a little thing but it really drove home how big the universe was, that years later people were still digging up the things. Since it's a more intact beacon than the one in the first game, it even spoils the big twist about the Collectors (though you probably don't realize it at the time)
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Jan 30, 2015 08:01
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grittyreboot posted:I've been replaying Mass Effect 2 and I love all the little blurbs for the planets. One of them talks about the legend of an ancient pirate that hid massive amounts of element zero. It says no one had ever actually found any element zero on the planet, and when you scan it there isn't any. But the next planet over is loaded with the stuff. ... Watchmen: The End is Night is a terrible game in general, but it does handle the co-op component in a distinctly non-terrible way. You can only co-op locally (which is terrible), but since you're very likely to run the game solo, your partner is controlled by the AI. Here are the nice things which I don't recall from other co-op AI's: The gameplay is fairly basic, so your AI partner is surprisingly competent. They're capable of dispatching all the enemies in a manner that is efficient, if not spectacular. For instance, they prioritize kicking downed enemies to death. Though they give the generic "I'm in trouble over here" barks, they can't actually die. Which is fantastic in general, and particularly fantastic here - because trying to babysit the AI in this combat system would have turned the game from "fairly terrible" into "sheer loving torture".
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Jan 30, 2015 13:27
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muscles like this? posted:The thing I like about that is that they will lie/mislead you with them. Like they'll pop up in conversations with a person who will be dead by the end of the conversation. It didn't say they'd remember it for very long.
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Jan 31, 2015 01:02
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I just started playing Lords Of The Fallen, which is basically just an attempt at making a Souls game, and something I noticed is that the character will take more laboured breathes if you try and attack or run with a low or empty stamina bar.
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Jan 31, 2015 05:45
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The fight with the end in MGS3 is probably the best boss fight in any game ever made because it constantly tests every skill you have learned throughout the game.
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Jan 31, 2015 05:50
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Dying Light has the standard generic AAA protagonist, but this time around he's a bit of a dickweed, which is sort of refreshing. Also if a sidequest is about saving people he's usually into it but a lot of the fetch style ones get a "Uhh, yeah I got a lot to do, so maybe, if I can get to it  " response
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Jan 31, 2015 06:31
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EmmyOk posted:The fight with the end in MGS3 is probably the best boss fight in any game ever made because it constantly tests every skill you have learned throughout the game. Also forced us to confront the primary question, can love bloom on a battlefield?
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Jan 31, 2015 06:56
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ChiaPetOutletStore posted:I just started playing Lords Of The Fallen, which is basically just an attempt at making a Souls game, and something I noticed is that the character will take more laboured breathes if you try and attack or run with a low or empty stamina bar. His animations also become notably more strained the more tired you are. It's especially obvious when you're wearing heavy armour which already causes the guy to sag, particularly his weapon arm which just hangs down even if you're running at full pelt.
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Jan 31, 2015 07:39
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Lords of the fallen is a good game despite being a really bad game. I don't understand it. I finished it and it was so bad, but it was still good somehow?
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Jan 31, 2015 11:15
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Chard posted:Also forced us to confront the primary question, how do parrots taste?
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Jan 31, 2015 11:52
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Nekodoshi posted:Secondly, I love Kingdom Hearts and I refuse to apologize for its campiness, but I always liked how Yoko Shimamura handled the music, often displaying how certain characters are related by mingling their themes (like how Namine's theme borrows from Kairi's). She did this with world themes too, like the difference in the tone of The World that Never Was's theme (Sacred Moon) between KH2 (mystic and alien) and 368/2 (more friendly and familiar). With all the characters in Kingdom Hearts being various degrees of magical soul clones of each other, the stuff Shimamura does with mixing character themes without them sounding really jumbled is really impressive. I love the way the skill system works in Kingdom Hearts, it's a really fun way to do RPG character progression in an action game. You do get numbered stats that go up with your levels, but a big chunk of the character progression was getting more slots to put skills into, and the skills that come included with equipment. Putting all the skills, attack ones like longer combos and special attacks, utility ones like dodge rolling and just seeing the enemy health bar, into the same pool and then deciding which ones you wanted to take in your limited number of skill slots was probably my favourite mechanic in those games. The entire tone of the first Kingdom Hearts game is another thing I love. The ones after 1 are really anime-y, but the first one is very fairytale in style. There's a child hero, a magic sword, you have to save a princess. All the locations in that game that aren't Disney draw from the looks of background art in Disney films - lots of pastel colours or warm shades, all the architecture is a little bit fat and cartoony. Even the End of the World is a broken pastel landscape by the sea. The final boss is fought in a pitch black void. The series as a whole has some really nice design going on, but after the first one it went away from trying to really mesh with the disney stuff and decided to do its own thing, and I think it got a lot worse as a result of that. None of the first game's visuals would look that out of place in oldschool disney films:   
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Jan 31, 2015 12:07
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A little thing in the Punisher game: In one level you team up with Black Widow and if you throw people up in the air she will shoot them.
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Jan 31, 2015 13:01
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EmmyOk posted:The fight with the end in MGS3 is probably the best boss fight in any game ever made because it constantly tests every skill you have learned throughout the game. I agree completely. And to think, the first time I experienced it, I hated it.
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Jan 31, 2015 13:28
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EmmyOk posted:The fight with the end in MGS3 is probably the best boss fight in any game ever made because it constantly tests every skill you have learned throughout the game. It did indeed have shooting, and, stealth.
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Jan 31, 2015 16:30
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Another note about The End boss fight in MGS3. He can capture Snake and take him to prison, which is like a few screens back from where the boss fight is. Since The End expects(and probably wants) Snake to bust out, he's waiting for you and will instantly plug Snake with a bolt when you enter the area of the fight again.
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Jan 31, 2015 16:35
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Started playing the original Fable again, and there's a loooot of stuff that's horribly broken in that game and I love it. Stuff like: Marrying lady Grey so you can punch her for a long time, and since she's immortal she won't die and you can gain infinite strength experience. When given the opportunity to speak she'd divorce you though. Going into someone's house at night, killing them so you could buy it, putting up trophies to improve its value, breaking the door, selling it, and stealing the trophies to lower the value before repeating the process. Sleeping somewhere but leaving before the screen goes dark to avoid getting charged for trespassing. Maxing out your "goodness" so that the demon door that requires you to do evil to pass will be satisfied with eating crunchy chicks instead of killing your wife. The save system, which was intended to allow grinding by saving items and experience but not quest progress, was good and convenient, especially since there were no limits on what items you could keep, including silver keys, potions of experience, or the final bosses sword. I have fond memories of spending hours doing the arena quest repeatedly to make mad bank. First Fable was the only good one imo.
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Jan 31, 2015 18:04
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Herbotron posted:Marrying lady Grey so you can punch her for a long time, and since she's immortal she won't die and you can gain infinite strength experience. When given the opportunity to speak she'd divorce you though. Reminds me of my "favourite" piece of Before I Play Advice: quote:A trick to get a lot of strength XP relatively early in the game (which is important for defense as well as offense): max out your attractiveness so that you can get married and then when you are alone with your wife in your house, start beating the poo poo out of her. Position yourself so that she's trapped up against the wall or a piece of furniture or something so she can't get away and just repeatedly hit the attack button. This will drive your combat multiplier way up. You can do this forever without killing her but once you stop she will divorce you so you have to do it all at once rather than dole out a bunch of little beatings. Sometimes a guard will catch you but it's unusual and you can just teleport out of there before you have to pay a fine. 
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Jan 31, 2015 18:31
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Jesus wept. I like how in Shovel Knight, when you hold down, you crouch down exactly one pixel. Also 90% of the dialog is bad puns.
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Jan 31, 2015 20:20
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Herbotron posted:Started playing the original Fable again, and there's a loooot of stuff that's horribly broken in that game and I love it. Stuff like: You know those tests to see if you are a psychopath? I think Fable is the most elaborate one.
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Jan 31, 2015 20:53
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EmmyOk posted:The fight with the end in MGS3 is probably the best boss fight in any game ever made because it constantly tests every skill you have learned throughout the game. I don't know if I can believe this in a world where Steven Armstrong exists.
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Jan 31, 2015 20:57
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I liked how in the first Fable if you ate too much you got fat, and to thin out your character you had to eat a ton of celery. I also like how each Final Fantasy game tries to include Biggs and Wedge as characters. The last time i remember seeing them was in Xii, where they had their names scrambled. Come to think of it, XII could have been amazing if the characters (outside of Fran and Balthier) hadnt sucked so hard.
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Jan 31, 2015 22:03
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Nekodoshi posted:I liked how in the first Fable if you ate too much you got fat, and to thin out your character you had to eat a ton of celery. Biggs and Wedge are in Lightning Returns too. You have a sidequest involving them running a monster-killing arena that gets out of control. After you save them they become musicians who travel around playing a lovely version of Terra's Theme.
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Jan 31, 2015 22:22
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Lord Lambeth posted:I don't know if I can believe this in a world where Steven Armstrong exists. Somehow every single boss in every Platinum game is the best boss fight ever. I don't know how they do it but they always manage to top themselves. Nekodoshi posted:I liked how in the first Fable if you ate too much you got fat, and to thin out your character you had to eat a ton of celery. I could have sworn hearing that Balthier was supposed to be the actual main character but they wanted someone younger or whatever hence going with Vaan. I could easily be talking out of my rear end though.
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Jan 31, 2015 22:23
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Tracula posted:I could have sworn hearing that Balthier was supposed to be the actual main character but they wanted someone younger or whatever hence going with Vaan. I could easily be talking out of my rear end though. Basch was the main character early in development, before it shifted to Vaan and Panelo. The development team claimed it was because their previous game with a 'strong, grown man in his prime' hadn't done well. That game being Vagrant Story, with Ashley and his assless pants.
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Jan 31, 2015 22:30
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Nekodoshi posted:I also like how each Final Fantasy game tries to include Biggs and Wedge as characters. The last time i remember seeing them was in Xii, where they had their names scrambled. Come to think of it, XII could have been amazing if the characters (outside of Fran and Balthier) hadnt sucked so hard. They're even in FFXIV  (so is CId) 
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Jan 31, 2015 23:09
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Cid the Silver Fox, they call me
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Feb 1, 2015 00:52
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Herbotron posted:
So very very true I wish they'd keep making expansions onto Fable 1, rather than making much later sequels
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Feb 1, 2015 00:59
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Red Bones posted:With all the characters in Kingdom Hearts being various degrees of magical soul clones of each other, the stuff Shimamura does with mixing character themes without them sounding really jumbled is really impressive. Man, I always have a good amount of fondness for the first one; it was fun and it's whole tone was about recreating that kind of magic you feel at Disneyland as a kid without making teenage me feel like I was playing a kid's game. I never could get into the second one though, due to it's overwhelming amounts of "here's this thing we introduced in the GBA spin-off that you never played" and dumb lore.
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Feb 1, 2015 04:11
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Basically every single character in Punch Out!! (Wii). They've all got their remixed version of the punch out theme, most of them incredible and even though they're all based on cultural stereotypes, they're just silly and fun instead of offensive. Aran Ryan particularly stands out as really great. E: They also all speak their proper languages. Glass joe speaks french, etc. Really great touch. Austrian mook has a new favorite as of 06:43 on Feb 1, 2015 |
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Feb 1, 2015 06:41
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Herbotron posted:Started playing the original Fable again, and there's a loooot of stuff that's horribly broken in that game and I love it. Stuff like: I think in Fable 1 you could charge up your bow to do more damage. The longer you held it the more damage it did, and there was like NO DAMAGE CAP. Also there was a spell that made your bow shoot multiple arrows. I remember casting the spell, charging the bow for like five minutes, then walking through the final door and one shotting the ultimate boss.
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Feb 1, 2015 09:40
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AngryRobotsInc posted:Basch was the main character early in development, before it shifted to Vaan and Panelo. The development team claimed it was because their previous game with a 'strong, grown man in his prime' hadn't done well. That game being Vagrant Story, with Ashley and his assless pants. Vaan is nothing but the party gofer. The adults decide important things in the back room of some tavern while he has the important task of going out and buying 99 potions and taking Balthier's vests to the laundromat.
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Feb 1, 2015 10:16
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My Lovely Horse posted:It's this fact that makes me wish FFXII had a four-person party, because then I could just put the actual characters in that and leave the kids to their own devices. You don't even need a fourth slot, your A-team is Balthier, Ashe and Basch. Fran is less pointless than the kids, but she's still ultimately irrelevant.
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Feb 1, 2015 10:24
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