|
I'm 4 hours into System Shock 2 and I'm bouncing off of it hard. I thought it'd be my jam for all the praise it gets but I'm only on Deck 3 and I'm like ehh. I just keep thinking about Prey and how I should finish Mooncrash.
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2020 09:55
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 28, 2024 18:07 |
|
|
The one thing that is absolutely a waste of time are long splash screens. Every game should have a quick start function like in Enter the Gungeon where you can immediately load up your last save, unless you do cool things with your menu screens.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2020 10:36
|
|
|
Blattdorf posted:The one thing that is absolutely a waste of time are long splash screens. Every game should have a quick start function like in Enter the Gungeon where you can immediately load up your last save, unless you do cool things with your menu screens. But then how would you know who made the game, who published it and what its name is? Clearly you need to be reminded of these things every time you want to start playing. You could have forgotten.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2020 11:07
|
|
|
look, some people can get by not knowing who supplied the physics middleware engine, but i for one know that you cannot truly judge a work of art without an understanding of the methods through which it was produced.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2020 11:17
|
|
|
I've cheated in games a lot because sometimes I don't like the feel of difficulty or just because I want to feel powerful, want unlimited money or don't want to choose a single path. It ends up ruining maybe 70-80% of games (which means I just drop them completely). In a lot of games the part that I cheated was the only thing the game had going for it and cheating exposed it completely. But I enjoyed cheating in XCOM 2 because I really like the aliens and items you can research and don't actually want to put any time into mastering the gameplay. I did the same with XCOM, UFO Defense and Terror from the Deep. I also liked playing for the story in the Shadowrun games because I like being able to play it more as a CYOA than what they were. The only Dark Souls game that I cheated in was DS2 where I spawned some items that had ridiculous drop rates from phantoms appearing only once per NG cycle.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2020 11:23
|
|
|
Ghostlight posted:look, some people can get by not knowing who supplied the physics middleware engine, but i for one know that you cannot truly judge a work of art without an understanding of the methods through which it was produced. If a game doesn't use Speed Tree is it really a game?
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2020 11:53
|
|
|
Rimworld, of all things, just dropped an expansion pack!
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2020 11:53
|
|
|
On the subject of loading screens and loving up leading to one, I just use that moment to reflect on where the gently caress-up was and maybe take a breath to not get tilted at a silly video game. This is partly because every computer I've owned is below average - average quality, but it's done wonders for me. I don't really mind them all that much in the first place since it's not that big a deal and I typically luck out with buying games that don't have lengthy times in the first place.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2020 12:02
|
|
|
Andrast posted:I give a pass on 4X difficulties because AI is really loving difficult to design, I don't think the devs are capable of designing better AI or they would have already done it. I agree, but I wonder if some things are still within the realm of possibility, like army compositions (with easier settings having loose rules, but harder ones trying to go for a handful of predefined provably good compositions) in games like Endless Space/Legends. Or a better/focused province build order in Total War games, going off of a few simple variables like "does this province have a resource that makes it a good target for specialization?" or "is this province currently bordering someone I'm at war with, meaning I should a garrison structure?", etc... It'd be something that would need constant attention and tweaking over time, but then again that's the current state of affairs as-is in some of these games right now: TW:W2 has a constant state of flux in what AI factions are doing fantastic and which aren't, and sometimes patching has to be done to bring factions more into line and keep them from snowballing.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2020 12:11
|
|
|
Started RE2 Remake, it's great so far but I have a problem with HDR: I have a TV (HDR) & a monitor (not HDR) plugged into the PC. The RE2 HDR only seems to work if I physically unplug my monitor from the PC. Not switched off, not using Win+P shortcut, has to be unplugged. Any way around this?
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2020 12:14
|
|
|
Finally finished Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines, although I had to god mode my way past the Ming Xiao fight. Somehow the rest of the game including the last boss fight was easier than that ridiculous bullet sponge boss. I really like what the game was doing and I like the world it's set in, so I'm ready to enjoy Bloodlines 2 whenever it comes out. Hopefully with less 2004 Source engine jank.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2020 12:23
|
|
|
Superanos posted:Finally finished Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines, although I had to god mode my way past the Ming Xiao fight. Somehow the rest of the game including the last boss fight was easier than that ridiculous bullet sponge boss. Huh, I just used a flamethrower on her.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2020 12:34
|
|
|
Gort posted:Huh, I just used a flamethrower on her.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2020 12:37
|
|
|
Superanos posted:Finally finished Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines, although I had to god mode my way past the Ming Xiao fight. Somehow the rest of the game including the last boss fight was easier than that ridiculous bullet sponge boss. I gave up maybe halfway through the game because I was really sick of the graveyard and sewer levels. Great writing and characterization for a game, though, and I really look forward to the sequel.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2020 12:37
|
|
|
anilEhilated posted:Well, the game makes it pretty clear that bullets do not do well against supernatural creatures, so you want melee or (ideally) aggravated damage. Guns work better against the other final boss. I mean, kinda? One of Jack's first lines to you is, "A shotgun to the head? That smarts, let me tell you" so between that and Nines gunning down Sabbat with his Desert Eagle the takeaway is more "You want big guns for vampires" than "Guns don't work on vampires".
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2020 12:39
|
|
|
I finished Sekiro yesterday without cheats and I don't think the game would have been worse with some difficulty settings. In the Souls games and Bloodborne you effectively have adaptive difficulty since playing longer gives you a more tooled-up character with better stats, and a worse player will play the game longer before they beat it. Sekiro does technically have a way to grind for stats, but it only comes in about 80% of the way through the game, so I didn't bother using it. It's a shame that Sekiro is a game I really enjoy that none of my friends will play because they don't have the patience for the level of difficulty it has.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2020 12:42
|
|
|
Gort posted:Huh, I just used a flamethrower on her. I saw that solution online and it did barely any damage. Just one tap of the mouse button takes like 80 ammo (you can hold 300 total) and it took about 10% of the health bar off after waiting for the fire to go out. I had no good melee weapons with me other than the hammer I bought in Hollywood to take down the gargoyle in that one side mission. It was not very helpful.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2020 12:44
|
|
|
flatluigi posted:beginning to think you don't even know how to read posts in general You mean how you took the one line from my post that fit your argument out of context with the rest of the post or other posts I made on the topic? Or how the games I described as inaccessible were either literal dick in beehive games or games who's main genre definition is "start over when you die"? Or how about RTS games, which I love but am so bad at playing outside of the gimped AI single player story rigged in the player's favor? How much should the developer dismantle the real time part so that I can play on the same level as most other players?
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2020 12:50
|
|
|
that post wasn't a response to you?
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2020 14:43
|
|
|
There are some people seemingly pretending that the argument is that games should just be easier so that everyone can play them, when all anyone wants is some way to engage with game mechanics other than the "intended" way to play. "Easy mode" is one possibility, but practice modes, cheat codes, assist modes, rewind/save states, and custom game rules are all possible implementations, and that's just a very general list. Most of these things don't even need to be balanced. Nobody is saying devs ought to add these things or they're bad, but plenty of devs already add them. Even for players who are good enough to play without them, it can still be fun to play with them. It's clearly something that a lot of people want.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2020 15:05
|
|
|
I played Doom II back in the day with God Mode all the way through and still had a blast with it. Likewise I've got all the trophies in Bloodborne + DLC & beat all the bosses with no summons and had a blast with that too. I think Celeste has the best recent implementation of an assist mode, the game makes it clear that it isn't intended to be played this way & disables achievements but you can go ahead and literally fly through all of the levels if you want to. Like Celeste, the FROM games are absolutely built around difficulty as a core mechanic, a big part of the reward is in being able to overcome that difficulty - assists would trivialise this. But if you want more health or for the enemies to do less damage then why shouldn't you be able to tweak it to your liking?
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2020 15:57
|
|
|
MZ posted:Like Celeste, the FROM games are absolutely built around difficulty as a core mechanic, a big part of the reward is in being able to overcome that difficulty - assists would trivialise this.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2020 16:58
|
|
|
Celeste started out with the achievements disabled in assist mode, but they eventually turned that off. If you want to get all the achievements while invincible and flying, you can do that.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2020 17:01
|
|
|
Here's a game that's not all that hard on its own, but the mechanics are odd enough that it's going to take most people some time to adjust. Platformebruary 2020: Ultimate Collector's Edition 1. Blasphemous 2. Duck Souls 3. Dune Sea 4. A Robot Named Fight 5. Sonic Mania 6. Izeriya 7. MagiCat 8. Runner3 9. Harold 10. Spirits Abyss 11. A Short Hike 12. Super Time Force Ultra 13. Touhou Luna Nights 14. Spark the Electric Jester 2 15. Serious Scramblers 16. PONCHO 17. Umihara Kawase 18. Noita 19. Rain World 20. 8BitBoy 21. Wings of Vi 22. MO:Astray 23. Total Party Kill 24. Dandara    Idea guys the world over hate to hear it, but there’s a lot more to making a great game than just having a great idea. Assuming you really do have a great idea, the details are what make it work for players, details like gamefeel, balance, polish, and so on. Dandara is an excellent case study on this topic, because on paper it sounds like it should work just fine. Leap effortlessly from surface to surface, traverse a vast, esoteric world, solve clever puzzles, all of that conjures images of a slick, stylish metroidvania. And in the end, it works well enough, I suppose. It’s those details that drag Dandara down, though, taking it from a slam dunk to a weak rebound as little irritations with the design mount. The world of Salt is a place of boundless freedom and expression, but all that is coming to an end. An evil empire is extending their crushing rule across the land, threatening to wipe out the very spark of creation. But before that can happen, a hero appears in the form of Dandara. Nimble, powerful, and driven, Dandara sets out on a quest to destroy the empire and restore peace to all of Salt. It’ll be a long and winding journey, though, as this world is a tangle of paths and chambers she’ll have to figure out how to navigate. Many of the residents will have gifts for her in the form of new abilities to open the way forward, while others will stand in her way and need to be faced down if she is to succeed. There are two oddities about this that have stuck with me in that hours I’ve been playing Dandara. The first and most prominent is how Salt makes absolutely no drat sense as a traversable world. Dandara can handle it because she can leap from surface to surface, but only designated white surfaces. I don’t know if other inhabitants can do that, but one of the first locations you explore is supposed to be a town, which does not resemble any sort of settlement in any way. On a similar story note, Dandara is not only a mute protagonist, but seems to have no motivations or backstory whatsoever. In the intro she is literally created to destroy the empire, and unless she gets a burst of characterization at the very end of the game, is just a blank heroic slate for other characters to fawn over. I’m thinking about these things because the game feels like such a long journey when it really isn’t. The world isn’t particularly huge, but a couple factors lead to it feeling larger than it is. One is that the movement system isn’t quite the genius invention it’s posed as. Dandara doesn’t walk or hop at all, but must be directed to leap to other surfaces by aiming with the stick and pressing A. You can do this in rapid succession but most surfaces can’t be landed on, and the further you get into the game the more danger is present. That means just basic movement in this game takes far more focus and effort than just holding right or left like you get to in most platformers, and over the course of several hours this mental exertion adds up. In fact, it adds up really fast once you see how puzzley Dandara’s world is, and how much you’ll have to work to get through some of the larger or more dangerous rooms. You’ll encounter plenty of enemies to avoid or dispatch, either with your normal charged shot or the additional weapons you unlock along the way. Here again, the fact that you have to charge your most basic attack and cannot move normally while attacking complicate even simple encounters far beyond what you see in most games. On top of this, they’ve borrowed the Dark Souls system of losing your accumulated Salt (treated as spendable XP here) on death, and the only way to get it back is to return to the spot where you died without dying again. I’m not against Dark Souls systems at all but they have their place, and a game where you’re already making an extra effort just to move and shoot is very, very, very, very much not the place for it. I feel like I’ve been trying to talk myself out of recommending this game through this entire review, but that’s because the complaints I have stick out so prominently. I’ve been right on the line almost the entire time I’ve played Dandara, but I have to admit it’s a beautiful world and an interesting adventure. As confusing as Salt is, it’s a fascinating realm of notions given form and symbolic existences. The puzzles are indeed quite clever, and one of the powers you get has a rather surprising transformative effect on the world. The combat is probably the weakest part but it works well during low-intensity moments, and only comes apart when battles get too complex for the mechanics. Ultimately I’d say Dandara is worth a look if you want a very different kind of metroidvania, but don’t go in without knowing what you’re getting. As clever as the movement sounds, it causes more problems than it really should and you need to be okay with those if you’re going to make it all the way through. Presentation, style, and exploration are all just fine here, if you can wrangle the controls to see it all. I’m not usually this divided on games but I’ll give it a nod, because hopefully most people are more forgiving of these details than I am.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2020 17:22
|
|
|
CLARPUS posted:I'm 4 hours into System Shock 2 and I'm bouncing off of it hard. I thought it'd be my jam for all the praise it gets but I'm only on Deck 3 and I'm like ehh. I just keep thinking about Prey and how I should finish Mooncrash. older games (<2005 or so) are very tough for me to put up with anymore but system shock 2 felt like it held up very well for its age. it definitely acts like the 1999 game that it is with some of the content in the back half of the game that goes on for too long, but I was surprised how much I enjoyed it & it’s probably the oldest game I’ve actually managed to finish in the last decade or so. but IMO, if you’re not enjoying the first three levels then you should drop it since I think it overstays its welcome and if you’re not enjoying it now, that’s probably not about to change.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2020 17:29
|
|
|
Superanos posted:I saw that solution online and it did barely any damage. Just one tap of the mouse button takes like 80 ammo (you can hold 300 total) and it took about 10% of the health bar off after waiting for the fire to go out. The fan patch nerfed the flamethrower is the long and short of it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2020 17:45
|
|
|
Volte posted:There are some people seemingly pretending that the argument is that games should just be easier so that everyone can play them, when all anyone wants is some way to engage with game mechanics other than the "intended" way to play. "Easy mode" is one possibility, but practice modes, cheat codes, assist modes, rewind/save states, and custom game rules are all possible implementations, and that's just a very general list. Most of these things don't even need to be balanced. Nobody is saying devs ought to add these things or they're bad, but plenty of devs already add them. Even for players who are good enough to play without them, it can still be fun to play with them. It's clearly something that a lot of people want. Somewhere in between there people write books about what difficulty could or should be on the internet while talking past each other in a discussion that shouldn't really have any more at stake than explaining why you like a game or dislike a game. In a perfect world every game has very well surfaced, understandable, uncompromising dificulty system, also I can pause and save at any time and it has an efficient software rendering mode so I can play it while I wait for a new graphics card and perhaps I also learn a thing or two about the physical world and myself. But there's an economy driving what you can and can't put into art and decisions are made and in personal consumption of art one may or may not like those decisions personally and that's generally ok because there's usually other pieces of art that can serve you there.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2020 18:04
|
|
|
John Murdoch posted:The fan patch nerfed the flamethrower is the long and short of it. Yea, no boss ever showed any resilience from what I recall. The chinese evil lady was more notable for having that dungeon prior to her than her fight itself, where she probably just got gunned down like everybody else. Also if your flamethrower isn't automauling everything you might wanna check your files, cuz that's just not right.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2020 18:15
|
|
|
I am gonna be honest and say that I enjoy from games more because not everyone can finish them. There is lots of poo poo I can't do in real life. To think that I would worry about a game I can't do is loving laughable.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2020 18:40
|
|
|
dilemma: Hitman 2. I've played the bajeesus out of it, but I'm not currently playing it. Since ETs aren't running I can't see myself boot it up anytime in the next few months, if not longer. Which is fine, any game that gets 100+ hours out of me is huge. the dilemma: I want that 150+ GB back for use. But if I uninstall and need to reinstall it for whatever reason, uh, 150+ GB to redownload. h mmm
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2020 19:26
|
|
|
StrixNebulosa posted:dilemma: Hitman 2. I've played the bajeesus out of it, but I'm not currently playing it. Since ETs aren't running I can't see myself boot it up anytime in the next few months, if not longer. Which is fine, any game that gets 100+ hours out of me is huge. Unless your internet is crap I'd say go ahead and uninstall it. You could also get a hard drive that's 1TB or larger and move the game there. I have a 4TB hard drive that I like to keep the super huge installs on since my internet is so slow that it literally takes all day to download a 60GB or larger game. wafflemoose fucked around with this message at 19:36 on Feb 24, 2020 |
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2020 19:30
|
|
|
StrixNebulosa posted:dilemma: Hitman 2. I've played the bajeesus out of it, but I'm not currently playing it. Since ETs aren't running I can't see myself boot it up anytime in the next few months, if not longer. Which is fine, any game that gets 100+ hours out of me is huge. All the levels are dlc so when I had the same dilemma I unchecked the levels I don't like and never play and that freed up a bunch of space, of course I eventually just ended up uninstalling the whole thing anyway so 
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2020 19:33
|
|
|
Done. Thanks for helping me rip the bandage, guys.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2020 19:39
|
|
|
Volte posted:The appeal of most Souls games to me is that they are actual super accessible, relatively easily learnable games cloaked in a sinister and heavily punishing aesthetic. Death is a narrative device in Dark Souls and the marketing reflected that. The idea that Dark Souls is some kind of absurdly hard game is a straight up myth. Fuckin Crash Bandicoot is approximately 1000 times harder than Dark Souls. I'm by no means a gaming wizard, but I semi-regularly do strolls through Dark Souls just for fun. I haven't played Dark Souls 2 as much but other than the absurd optional co-op areas in the DLC which I had to abandon entirely (talk about runs back...), it is similarly pretty accessible. Bloodborne is way faster, but the rally system and quickstep mechanic go a long way to level the playing field, plus you can get some pretty beefy weapon runes. In fact, I think Bloodborne is probably the game where I have become the most unstoppable out of any of the Souls games. The point isn't that the bosses or enemies are difficult, it's that they are there, and you can hit them until they die. Being difficult is a side effect of you just not knowing how to fight them. But somewhere along the way, around Dark Souls 3, the actual difficulty started to become the point, and to me that's like a core characteristic of the Souls series being left behind. I don't even like exploring Irithyll of the Boreal Valley, as beautiful as it is, because it's just filled to the brim with super fast horseshit enemies that aren't fun to fight more than a few times. That whole bit of the game I've generally just sped through, which is a shame because exploring every corner was always my favourite part of the other ones. It's always fun to remember that the trailer that popularized "Prepare to die" also cycled through lines like "Prepare to suffer" and "Prepare to endure" before ending with "Prepare to live" e: which is a way cooler line
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2020 19:58
|
|
|
Nice! Tank Mechanic sim adding in a parts highlight and splitting the parts list into collapsible sublists clearing up two of the biggest annoyances in one go. Now if they could just label parts like Ammunition Box A,B,C instead of just Ammunition Box for all 3 that would be great.
Hub Cat fucked around with this message at 20:01 on Feb 24, 2020 |
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2020 19:59
|
|
|
Reaper Bundle 2 from Fanatical STALKER 1-3 Jedi Knight 1+2 Day of Infamy Eagle Island Override Sim City 4 Re-Legion for 5$ worth it for the STALKERs alone
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2020 20:12
|
|
|
StrixNebulosa posted:Done. Thanks for helping me rip the bandage, guys. Hitman 2 is also available on GFN, which you can use for free, albeit an hour at a time.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2020 20:30
|
|
|
StrixNebulosa posted:Reaper Bundle 2 from Fanatical I'm surprised Eagle Island is already in a bundle. That was a sizable kickstarter success and only came out last year. It's definitely worth the $5 even for people who already have the STALKER games. The big thing in games I consider to be "not respecting a player's time" is long stretches between save points. Any game that demands an hour of uninterrupted time between save points at which I can shut it down isn't for me these days. I can't guarantee I'll have a significant length of time to play before something pops up in the house that needs my immediate attention.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2020 21:18
|
|
|
StrixNebulosa posted:Reaper Bundle 2 from Fanatical There's also a nice Arc-Sys bundle going on, too.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2020 21:23
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 28, 2024 18:07 |
|
|
Disco Elysium is up in the Weeklong Deals if you've foolishly not grabbed it yet, along with gems like Noita, SYNTHETIK, and Sundered. I got a big roundup list right here for ya.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2020 21:52
|
|