samu3lk posted:

I've been playing Hollow Knight like a fiend and at one point you rescue a shy NPC in a dungeon. She's sitting on a bench at the hub the next time you show up and makes a startled "OH!" sound if you walk past her. She won't talk to you and you can't interact with her.

If you leave and come back you can find her asleep in her room and you can read her diary where she's written romantic fanfiction about you and herself. It's got all this highly melodramatic purple prose and it's super corny and like 98% lies. The story updates at least twice (that I know of), each time detailing a different event in the story and your interactions with her.

Also there's a really weird, stupid boss in the sewer area and leading up to the fight you can hear him laughing and jabbering and it's really funny. The whole game has a lot of little touches that give the NPCs and the world you play in a lot of personality.

ToxicSlurpee posted:

Crusader Kings II is full of "little things" that are fantastic but this one takes the cakes for sure.

Now, in the game you don't play one person. You effectively play a dynasty. You play one person at a time but that person dies in battle/of old age/of disease/of murder...the point is they die. They can even die of loving. The game is chock full of ways to die. When you do die if you have an heir you play the heir. If you have no heir it's game over. So obviously since you're guaranteed to die you want to arrange things to have a good heir. The game has traits that are basically genetic. Attractive/ugly, smart/stupid, and muscular and such. The positive genetic traits are generally really nice and things you want to have. You aren't guaranteed to pass them on but having a genetic trait makes it more likely your children will which makes it easier to get good heirs. Of course there are no guarantees and that's what makes the game interesting. So of course if it's time to get married you also want to find a spouse that has those traits. You can also make extra babies with lovers, concubines, or extra wives, depending on how you're playing and what religion you are. Even so no matter how hard you try it's extraordinarily rare to have a ruler with two genetic traits. You just plain can't even plan on having one for every heir so you just do your best and hope you can sometimes get a genius ruler or a muscular one that lives to be 90 or something. The point is most of your rulers won't have strong genetic traits.

So anyway with one particular expansion you can pick a "focus" for your life. One of them is hunting. So while you're tooling around in the woods you can sometimes meet a random woman living in an isolated shack in the middle of nowhere. She'll be in her early twenties (as in, young and fertile) and invite you in complaining about how lonely she is. But when you look at her traits she'll be both attractive and intelligent. Mind those are both genetic traits and actually decent ones. Theoretically since she wants to hump and offers to become your lover you can have a better shot at having heirs with genetic traits. She's just too drat attractive for players to pass up easily.

So of course I did the first few times I found her in the woods. Since I play Vikings most of the time I just took her as a concubine rather than as a lover so the children would be legitimate. The problem is that she gives you syphilis every single time. It's such a perfectly constructed trap. So yeah if you meet the woods babe don't hump her.

jojoinnit posted:

Now I want to play this but I'm worried I won't like the gameplay. Pretty much the only type of game like this I've played is Civ 5 which I got in a humble bundle and found I really dug.

Jehde posted:

Conversely, in nearly every 3D GTA game, it seems the peds have a habit of just diving into your car instead of away from it. I imagine it has something to do with driving close enough to the ped to trigger the dive, but the direction of the dive is determined about where they have the most room to dive or something rather than just whatever direction gets them out of the way of your car.

Guy Mann posted:

I feel the need to post some links because Stubbs' licensed soundtrack is so good that it has stayed in my playlists for over a decade now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1D085ZvRM8

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhEFWuoeT54

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcIDwT9foQw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MOt5usKjEY

jojoinnit posted:

Now I want to play this but I'm worried I won't like the gameplay. Pretty much the only type of game like this I've played is Civ 5 which I got in a humble bundle and found I really dug.

Action Tortoise posted:

The main character in inFamous: Second Son is Native American. I was never aware of that going in and I don't think Sucker Punch ever made an attempt to market the game with that angle. The game just starts with you going to the tribe's lodgehouse. It's a nice way to introduce a character's culture without making it the only quality about the character.

He also happens to be a graffiti artist, which means it's got a graffiti minigame. I like that you have to turn your controller sideways so it's like you're holding a spray can and then shake it up. It even makes the rattle and spray noise out of the controller. When you get calls the ringtone comes from your controller as well, and the tinny quality of the sound makes it work. (I got my PS4 recently, so bear with me if I'm still amused by my controller making lights and sounds.)

ToxicSlurpee posted:

It isn't like Civ V at all, actually. The best way to describe it is "feudalism simulator." It isn't like Civ where you're trying to conquer the world. Conquering the whole map is generally pretty hard to do. Still, it's pretty fun. The way to enjoy it is to just embrace the chaos and accept that the game will repeatedly punch you in the dick and no matter how good your plan is you'll fail sometimes anyway. Managing a huge empire is actually kind of difficult sometimes as your vassals are all bastards that are probably trying to murder you. The game play isn't "build troops -> conquer poo poo -> use conquered poo poo to build more troops -> conquer more poo poo." Yeah that happens to a certain degree but part of it is dealing with succession, the laws that can fracture your kingdom if you aren't careful, and the balancing act of politics. If you try it get the expansions. The thread over in Games will tell you a lot more.

It's pretty unique and actually really fun if you can accept setbacks, a lack of an overall goal (there is no "win" condition), and the madness of it. One of the newest expansions introduces the black plague which does not gently caress around. Granted it will also turn you in to a baby-murdering psychopath. It's like hey this child ruler's heir is my cousin whose heir is me so if I murder the kid then murder my cousin I get that kingdom. Score! time!

Then your heir gets murdered by his wife and your idiot second son with an IQ so low it's negative is next in line and oh gently caress I'm 72 I'll die any day now. Then you develop Alzheimer's and live until you're 98 and you lose some titles in the process of dying.

Action Tortoise posted:

The main character in inFamous: Second Son is Native American. I was never aware of that going in and I don't think Sucker Punch ever made an attempt to market the game with that angle. The game just starts with you going to the tribe's lodgehouse. It's a nice way to introduce a character's culture without making it the only quality about the character.

Guy Mann posted:

I really liked the character of Code Talker in MGSV, when you meet him he looks like the biggest stereotype in the world as an old man in a cloak who smokum peace pipe with Snake but then you get to know him and he's actually an insanely gifted microbiologist who loves hamburgers and talks to you at length about the history and culture of the Diné. And he ties into the entire game's themes of language as a means of control with him being taken away from his people as a child and forced to speak English and adopt an American name, and how he gets roped into Skull Face's plan due to his fear of his native culture and language being wiped out by assimilation.

Action Tortoise posted:

as much as i hated the paz tapes in ground zeroes, i loved the skullface and code talker tape because it encapsulated skull face's level of villainy perfectly and still had restraint with the game's dark tone.

Guy Mann posted:

I really liked the character of Code Talker in MGSV, when you meet him he looks like the biggest stereotype in the world as an old man in a cloak who smokum peace pipe with Snake but then you get to know him and he's actually an insanely gifted microbiologist who loves hamburgers and talks to you at length about the history and culture of the Diné. And he ties into the entire game's themes of language as a means of control with him being taken away from his people as a child and forced to speak English and adopt an American name, and how he gets roped into Skull Face's plan due to his fear of his native culture and language being wiped out by assimilation.

ToxicSlurpee posted:

Granted it will also turn you in to a baby-murdering psychopath. It's like hey this child ruler's heir is my cousin whose heir is me so if I murder the kid then murder my cousin I get that kingdom. Score! time!

Action Tortoise posted:

as much as i hated the paz tapes in ground zeroes, i loved the skullface and code talker tape because it encapsulated skull face's level of villainy perfectly and still had restraint with the game's dark tone.

Chuck Buried Treasure posted:

Is that the one where Skull Face was ringing the bell because holy poo poo that one was good.

Inzombiac posted:

Any game that allows your character little flair movements is great to me.

Vindictus is a fun but grindy Korean action game. One of the characters is a magical girl with a huge scythe.
One of her combos makes a mark on an enemy that does extra damage depending on how long the combo was (I think. It's been a while).
To activate the mark you simply right click and she stops for a second to do a sassy click with her fingers and the mark explodes.

I also love any game with micro missiles or darts. Especially ones that are explosive but are on a slight delay. Like they stick in the enemy and a second later explode.

Guy Mann posted:

*mashes the Y button to constantly twirl lightsabers while running around in Knights of the Old Republic*

Action Tortoise posted:

the other thing i'm liking about inFamous is that it's set in Seattle, which where i took a trip this past year so it's the first open world game where i've been to the actual setting and it was cool recognizing certain spots like pike place.

Chuck Buried Treasure posted:

Is that the one where Skull Face was ringing the bell because holy poo poo that one was good.

moosecow333 posted:

I still remember how blown away I was when I visited Venice right after playing Assassins Creed II. I legitimately felt as though I could navigate around some of the city just based on my knowledge of the game.

Feonir posted:

Inzombiac posted:

Is that Binary Domain?
People have been talking about it a lot lately.

RagnarokAngel posted:

Similarly I live in Boston and while most of fallout 4 is just vaguely similar there's one part that actually made me stop and feel just...weird. it was so perfect to the real life area.

J.A.B.C. posted:

Skull Face is probably one of the better MGS villains because he is just that goddamn mean about everything. Using the Boss' honorary SAS wings to infect Zero,

Using BB's emotional crutch Paz to eliminate his only real challenge,

The entire Bell tape. Just loving all of it

It all paints a picture of a brilliant sadistic mastermind willing to tear the world apart by literally wiping out an entire language like some Bond Villain. All for revenge, the game's core theme, wrapping it up as a foil to BB's revenge.

Guy Mann posted:

*mashes the Y button to constantly twirl lightsabers while running around in Knights of the Old Republic*

Veotax posted:

I love the big twist of MGSV, I just wish it was handled better than "here is literally the last bit of story in the game, be revealed for no reason!"

Lunchmeat Larry posted:

and then at the climax he reveals his evil plan in a dramatic speech ten years in the making... to the wrong person, who doesn't care

I don't know why people hate that part because it's insanely funny

Lunchmeat Larry posted:

looking forward to the fourth and final climactic installment where you play as Famine taking burgers away from hungry kids like a reverse Diner Dash

Inzombiac posted:

Any game that allows your character little flair movements is great to me.

Vindictus is a fun but grindy Korean action game. One of the characters is a magical girl with a huge scythe.
One of her combos makes a mark on an enemy that does extra damage depending on how long the combo was (I think. It's been a while).
To activate the mark you simply right click and she stops for a second to do a sassy click with her fingers and the mark explodes.