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al-azad posted:The setting is inherently flawed to the kind of game people wanted it to be because I don't know how you make stationary base building meaningful in a game where you're forever traveling. You just make a base you can deploy wherever you are, that'd suit me fine tbh. But we're digressing a bit, sorry about the derail
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Jul 28, 2020 18:23
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What really cracked me up in NMS was when they introduced missions where you have to get somewhere fast with a car, that you can completely trivialize by just taking your ship instead.
Chev fucked around with this message at 18:37 on Jul 28, 2020 |
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Jul 28, 2020 18:32
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In terms of horror sandbox, Stalker Anomaly is pretty fun but also not friendly at all. The first quest they throw at you is ridiculous and relies on meta knowledge of how ammo resistance was changed from vanilla. Rifles are your steel sword and shotguns are your silver sword, basically. But it's good to get back into the game, the whole premise is so well realized it's crazy to think that Roadside Picnic wasn't always about the Chernobyl exclusion zone.
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Jul 28, 2020 18:35
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Basic Chunnel posted:The game is designed so that there is, generally speaking, very little barrier to doing any of these, and no real obligation to pay attention to any one of them. I understand why it is the way that it is, and I enjoyed it for what it was, but its gameplay isn't symptomatic of post-Minecraft survival games which what was being responded to. It's symptomatic of being primarily about traipsing through alien landscapes with a lot of disconnected and easily trivialized game systems bolted on. It's why I compared it to ARK. I guess I could have just more succinctly said it's only a survival game in the way Dead Space 3 is a horror game, but eh. Man, speaking of horror survival I really should sit down and just finish The Forest some day. Did the full release of that shape up to be good? TGLT fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Jul 28, 2020 |
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Jul 28, 2020 18:48
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I haven't played it since it was in Early Access myself, but I've heard mostly very good things about it. The biggest issue that people seem to have with it is the constant increase in enemy difficulty, but that is easy to mod out, from what I hear.
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Jul 28, 2020 19:03
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I seem to be the only person who wasn't bothered by the length of Alien Isolation, but then I'm a huge fan of the very specific atmosphere it managed to invoke, so I guess it depends on how much you liked Alien?
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Jul 28, 2020 20:17
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Hungry posted:I seem to be the only person who wasn't bothered by the length of Alien Isolation, but then I'm a huge fan of the very specific atmosphere it managed to invoke, so I guess it depends on how much you liked Alien? Exact 
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Jul 28, 2020 20:21
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I really hated the immortal-except-by-boltgun android section, but the ending was a fine bugfuck escalation, and going through the hab complex was nicely effective.
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Jul 28, 2020 20:33
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WaltherFeng posted:Sounds like NMS would be a really cool space exploration game if it had a focused single player campaign with some sort of end goal It... kinda does now? I think mechanically that game is just fundamentally not very good but they did add most of the stuff people wanted.
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Jul 29, 2020 10:29
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In typical NMS style, it does have the things people asked for, but it's not what people really wanted. I last played NMS with the Living Ship upgrade and tried to follow the Atlas questline when I did so. What I found was that there is literally no reward at all for doing so. Once you have completely done the repeated grinding, travelling and fulfilling quest-milestones that is required to finish the Atlas quest, what you get as a "big reward" for doing so is the ability to create a new star, once. In a game whose entire big draw is an essentially infinite gameworld with millions of stars that are all effectively the same. None of the other ten unique items you need to craft to complete the questline do anything at all. You will probably get more of a sense of achievement out of simply reading the quest dialogue on a wiki somewhere, because I gave up after the first quest once I realized just what I was getting myself into. Everything about the NMS "storylines" seems like it is the most hollow experience imaginable: you invest immense amounts of time and effort (mostly time) into completing them and all you ever have to show for it is a handful of badly written sci-fi dialogue snippets. When you play an open-world game of this type, you should never feel like you've been wasting your time just doing things, but in NMS, everything feels like an unrewarding waste of time.
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Jul 29, 2020 10:39
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RightClickSaveAs posted:I bought this awhile ago but still haven't gotten past the first hour or so. I love the setting, I need to finish it someday. I legitimately wish most games were way shorter lately. Yeah as a parent I love the 6-12 hour game. It’s part of the reason I’m a huge sucker for big budget CoD single player campaigns (these games all have bad politics but they really know how* to make a 6 hour game that’s all set pieces). *And have the staffing a budget to pull it off
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Jul 29, 2020 18:44
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sigher posted:Actually, the first Alien encounter can be right at the beginning of the game, when you're following that dude around the station in the Tutorial phase of the game and he dies you have to run for the tram and in the tension you wait wondering if the Alien is going to come and get you. Well, it never does... unless you wait around WAY too long after the tram arrives and the doors open. Kinda neat that it can actually show up there and kill you. It got me there on my first playthrough because I'm dumb and bad
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Jul 29, 2020 18:49
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It's a shame how terrible Alien: Isolation looks and runs on consoles. There is something very off-putting about the surfaces and lighting in that game on Xbox, but it looks fine on PC. Can't put my finger on what it is exactly - it's like the lights are too bright and harsh and the shadows are too dark, like you turned the contrast and bloom to eleven for no good reason.
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Jul 29, 2020 19:14
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Pulcinella posted:Yeah as a parent I love the 6-12 hour game. It’s part of the reason I’m a huge sucker for big budget CoD single player campaigns (these games all have bad politics but they really know how* to make a 6 hour game that’s all set pieces). There's some good discussion going on in the adventure thread about games friendly to parents and other time-crunched groups, like hidden object games which are basically stripped down point and click adventures. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3573298
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Jul 29, 2020 19:33
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Cardiovorax posted:In typical NMS style, it does have the things people asked for, but it's not what people really wanted. I last played NMS with the Living Ship upgrade and tried to follow the Atlas questline when I did so. Counterpoint: laser chainsaw go brrr
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Jul 29, 2020 20:12
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A Machine for Pigs wasn't as bad as the 2013 reaction lead me to believe but it highlights all the common problems of modern psychological horror. I couldn't tell what was meant to be literal and figurative so taken literally you play as a mass murderer who built a machine AI to destroy all humans and then coincidentally got sick enough to forget which makes the whole idea of redemption laughable. And that leads to the second genre issue of paper thin redemption stories starring people far beyond redemption. Why psychological horror wants me to sympathize with the villain more than the victim I'll never understand but not once did the game make me care about Oswald, his kids, or the nebulous god-machine. It really highlighted how well executed Dark Descent is. Daniel discovers something that forever hunts him so he allies with a sorcerer to torture supposed criminals to fuel a means to save himself but he induces amnesia when he learns the people were actually innocent and the sorcerer betrayed him. Daniel is selfish and complicit in horrible acts but ultimately he's a victim of a greater evil and there's never a question that the events are in his head which makes immortal sorcerers and alternate dimensions far more believable than a man who runs a factory using pig hybrids to turn rich and poor alike into meat. We've heard nothing new from Amnesia: Rebirth when it's supposed to be an "autumn 2020" release but COVID has probably delayed it. I'm excited for a return to what looks like more cosmic horror.
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Aug 2, 2020 19:40
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I just watched part of a video playthrough of the succubus demo and I swear to god it's like blazing saddles.
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Aug 3, 2020 01:05
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Manager Hoyden posted:It's a shame how terrible Alien: Isolation looks and runs on consoles. There is something very off-putting about the surfaces and lighting in that game on Xbox, but it looks fine on PC. Can't put my finger on what it is exactly - it's like the lights are too bright and harsh and the shadows are too dark, like you turned the contrast and bloom to eleven for no good reason. The switch version is surprisingly good looking imho
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Aug 3, 2020 01:06
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Improbable Lobster posted:The switch version is surprisingly good looking imho Makes sense; I remember that A:I was remarkably performant on lower end machines when it first came out
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Aug 3, 2020 03:29
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It was also a cross gen game that came out on PS3 and 360.
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Aug 3, 2020 03:32
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Relin posted:get even is not a horror game. it's a psychological mystery where the twist throws out most of the plot, with no enemy variety and one gun that has a kinda neat gimmick. the sound design is out of this world, at least. But yeah, weirdly amazing sound design.
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Aug 3, 2020 03:46
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Discendo Vox posted:I just watched part of a video playthrough of the succubus demo and I swear to god it's like blazing saddles. Isnt that the devs that made that lovely Agony game? Improbable Lobster posted:The switch version is surprisingly good looking imho Yeah I heard the A:I port was super ridiculously good.
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Aug 3, 2020 03:48
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Yes. Looks like same assets too
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Aug 3, 2020 03:49
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Cool, I'm sure its super "edgy" and poo poo.
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Aug 3, 2020 03:50
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I didn't witness Agony, so this was my first experience. It's not simply garbage edgy, it's a full panoply of garbage edgy. The levels on which it fails to work form a decent high-rise. Tone swings from moment to moment, narm abounds (you surf a damned person's body down a slope for no clear reason, which would be hilarious if it weren't also out of focus thanks to a lovely camera), gore is thrown about with abandon from moment one so there's zero escalation; even potentially unpleasant interactions (including ones clearly intended to shock and get shared, like "rip baby from woman's womb, crack open and drink spinal fluid as 'health kit'") are so poorly handled as to lack any impact. Everything is incredibly predictable, so much so that it's not even unpleasant or disgusting in its misogyny. It's a messed up high schooler's notebook drawings, and not one of the artistically talented ones, nor one of the ones who's actually disturbed enough to move on to school shootings. It takes real skill to make me nod off while watching someone's dick get ripped off and stomped on.
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Aug 3, 2020 04:47
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It really shows the limits of the ESRB that they’ll have to rate it “mature”
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Aug 3, 2020 05:03
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CommunityEdition posted:It really shows the limits of the ESRB that they’ll have to rate it “mature” Should've gone for the rare "Mature  " rating
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Aug 3, 2020 05:27
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Machine for Pigs is hot garbage compared to the original Amnesia. Actually, it's honestly hot garbage in a vacuum. It's 3 hours of absolutely inscrutable, pretentious nonsense with no puzzles, items, or monsters that can actually catch you. Dark Descent is not only infinitely more interesting and better written, but there's an actual, you know, game to it. Machine for Pigs is one of my biggest gaming purchase regrets.
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Aug 3, 2020 08:10
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I think you could make a decent short story out of the core conceit. Was that some sort of anachronistic nuclear reactor near the end?
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Aug 3, 2020 08:16
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I think the Machine’s intent was explicitly magical instead of allegorical, it was a cross between a fully automatic abattoir and an Incan (Aztec?) temple made to process so many blood sacrifices that it would gain the power to euthanize humanity before the 21st century could brutalize it though it was ambiguous if the sacrifices were actually capable of this or if the Machine was just massacring everyone in a fit of hysterical misanthropy good idea, great ending monologue, terrible game
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Aug 3, 2020 12:20
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Darkwood is loving fantastic holy poo poo.
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Aug 3, 2020 14:24
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Another thing about Machine for Pigs was that it was originally going to be way shorter. They padded it all out with dull meandering on walkways and tunnels with crummy puzzles. I think, had it been shorter and more concentrated, and had it made a firm choice between linear walking sim and trying to be a survival horror puzzler like Dark Descent, it would've been remembered more fondly.
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Aug 3, 2020 14:33
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davidspackage posted:Another thing about Machine for Pigs was that it was originally going to be way shorter. They padded it all out with dull meandering on walkways and tunnels with crummy puzzles. You're probably right about this, but the conceit was so shallow and overwrought that it would have had to be very short indeed. I was completely exhausted with and bored by every plot twist the game was trying to wring out by the time I left the mansion. If the "kids dead" and "the pigs are people" ideas were meant to be obvious, then the game didn't need to spend hour upon hour pointing at them in different ways. They coulda done away with the entire pigmonster element, which very much did feel like it came from an entirely different design/game.
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Aug 3, 2020 14:38
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Honestly Amnesia: Justine is underrated as a horror experience. It is more psychological horror than Dark Descent, it's a little Silent Hill 2 in that it's meant to test your reactions in an unfamiliar scenario, and of course you're the villain all along. And it's 30 minutes long, one run, you die and it's over. A Machine for Pigs could've built off of that and I liked the brief encounters with the monsters especially the tesla pig which was a really striking visual of this cold blue monster that strobes into view but yeah, you juke the thing and flip a switch the end.
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Aug 3, 2020 16:01
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Motherfucker posted:Darkwood is loving fantastic holy poo poo. Its quite interesting how divided people are on this game.
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Aug 3, 2020 17:06
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Mindblast posted:Its quite interesting how divided people are on this game. As someone who dislikes it, I understand why people love it: the atmosphere is fantastic in a bleak way, the story is just vague enough and the overall concept of fortifying temporary safe havens is great. It really comes down to how you feel about the actual gameplay, crafting and poo poo like the line of sight system, all of which is weird enough that the game was always destined to be love it or hate it.
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Aug 3, 2020 17:21
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I mean I could KINDA see how people might get turned off with the combat because each phase of the game by design chokes you out so you're under prepared to it, including the first. So that when you arrive at each new hideout you are invariably gonna eat death a few times before you finally get out from under it. I mean, its no more disempowering than most horror games. But if you didn't like the controls to start with on TOP of that you might be unable to win and get frustrated. But I mean I just did the wolfman's quest and BOY GOLLY was I feeling grooly in a good way. Motherfucker fucked around with this message at 19:01 on Aug 3, 2020 |
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Aug 3, 2020 18:59
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Discendo Vox posted:I just watched part of a video playthrough of the succubus demo and I swear to god it's like blazing saddles. But Blazing Saddles is great? How is the studio still making games, and how the hell are people still getting upset with them?
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Aug 4, 2020 07:22
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It'd be cool if we got a sequel to A Machine for Pigs but instead of taking place on December 31st 1899, its set on December 31st 2019.
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Aug 4, 2020 08:18
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sigher posted:But Blazing Saddles is great? Because gamers will still slurp up utter poo poo like Agony just because it "triggers" the "SJWs," not because it's any good.
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Aug 4, 2020 09:23
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