Cleretic posted:I love XCOM, but it is a bit of a shame that there isn't really such a thing as 'turn-based strategy' outside of XCOM and XCOM-likes right now. There's 4x and grand strategy, which is totally legitimate and I love it for what it is, but the last thing that could legitimately be called 'turn-based strategy' outside of those molds was... what, the last Heroes of Might and Magic, in 2015? And that wasn't a good HoMM game. There's Fire Emblem and its ilk of Japanese Turnbased RPGs which include Super Robot Wars and the SD Gundam games as well as stuff like Disgaea. There's also a handful of them, though they probably fit under XCOM-like, under the Warhammer franchise most notably, imo, Warhammer 40k Mechanicus which is a lot smaller and simpler than XCOM but is a pretty neat little game.
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Nov 19, 2020 14:03
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Nuebot posted:There's Fire Emblem and its ilk of Japanese Turnbased RPGs which include Super Robot Wars and the SD Gundam games as well as stuff like Disgaea. Honestly, I have no idea how I forgot about SRPGs in my post. Fire Emblem is extremely my speed, right down to being willing to reward some good turtle play.
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Nov 19, 2020 14:08
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John Murdoch posted:Yeah I suspect that just like Bioshock Infinite before it the random nature of the equipment leads to weird variations in difficulty/general efficacy. Made worse because a bunch of mods are exclusively tied to the DLCs, but also some of them can leak through into the main game via board countermeasures if you're lucky but also a bunch of the mods are just insultingly bad anyway. IIRC the speedrun community for Bioshock Infinite has just accepted using a modded version of the game to give a specific piece of equipment because there's such a huge difference between getting the item and not that in order to level the playing field they just let people have it.
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Nov 19, 2020 14:10
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muscles like this! posted:IIRC the speedrun community for Bioshock Infinite has just accepted using a modded version of the game to give a specific piece of equipment because there's such a huge difference between getting the item and not that in order to level the playing field they just let people have it. Yeah, the Hill Runner's Hat. It gives you a speed boost whenever your shield breaks which saves like eight minutes of time across the whole run, but there's only a 2% chance of it dropping. So you basically have to throw out the other 98% of runs based on random chance, since the run where you get the hat is just gonna blow them out of the water. I suppose the other way they could've gone would be to ban the hat, but presumably speedrunners like lower times more than higher times.
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Nov 19, 2020 14:57
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I just finished playing through RE5 for the first time since like 2011, and it was actually a lot more fun than I remembered. The thing dragging it down though is they put the Wesker & Jill fight right at the end of a terrible chapter with a slow moving corridor and a tunnel filled with lickers where the ai teammate manages to shoot all the ones carrying gems into the abyss.
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Nov 19, 2020 15:13
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Cleretic posted:I love XCOM, but it is a bit of a shame that there isn't really such a thing as 'turn-based strategy' outside of XCOM and XCOM-likes right now. There's 4x and grand strategy, which is totally legitimate and I love it for what it is, but the last thing that could legitimately be called 'turn-based strategy' outside of those molds was... what, the last Heroes of Might and Magic, in 2015? And that wasn't a good HoMM game. Mutant is really good, but it's got a big ole difficulty spike
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Nov 20, 2020 00:58
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Horizon: Zero dawn Aloy's facial animations leave an awful lot to be desired. She has three expressions: Pretending to be sad, moderately concerned, and hint of hint of smug. Melee combat seems to be a complete waste of time outside of stealth, and stealth has a hard cap on how useful it is for killing things. Some of the mid-late machines can take upwards of four sneak attacks to kill. Resource scarcity is only a thing in the super early game. By the time I left the tutorial area I basically never ran out of materials for anything beyond specific things needed for gear. The climbing and running is somehow worse than in assassin's creed. It's a decent game, and I enjoyed it, but there were a whole bunch of little things about it that just grated on me.
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Nov 20, 2020 02:56
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There's a reason there's only a single melee attack: it's used to take down some weak enemies and that's it, the devs don't want you using it anymore than needed.
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Nov 20, 2020 05:38
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JackSplater posted:Horizon: Zero dawn Play on a harder difficulty.
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Nov 20, 2020 17:02
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Dienes posted:Play on a harder difficulty. I heard that the toughest difficulty was the way to play the game (before the Ultimate or whatever was patched in), and I agree. Things are lethal and you really need to think about how to take down them robots. (I mean obviously play on whatever difficulty you want, but if you're finding enemies die without you having to think about it, then yeah, raise the difficulty)
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Nov 20, 2020 17:07
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You're not really meant to use melee minus the occasional stealth kill or situational knockdown.
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Nov 20, 2020 19:19
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If you don't completely cripple a laser-breathed t-rex with Tearaway arrows then you're doing it wrong. Horizon isnt an RPG where you win by having higher numbers, but by exploiting enemy weaknesses.
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Nov 20, 2020 19:23
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I found some (the weak but fast) enemies definitely faster and easier to take down in melee combat. Dodge their charge, knock them over, stab 'em when they're down. Some of the bigger ones (those with annoying ranged attacks) too. Never felt melee to be useless. In fact, I always loved how it was a healthy mix of the two, depending on the situation.
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Nov 20, 2020 19:34
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Taeke posted:I found some (the weak but fast) enemies definitely faster and easier to take down in melee combat. Dodge their charge, knock them over, stab 'em when they're down. Some of the bigger ones (those with annoying ranged attacks) too. Never felt melee to be useless. In fact, I always loved how it was a healthy mix of the two, depending on the situation. Aloy's heavy melee has good tracking and it eventually does enough damage to cripple a watcher or bandit on Ultra-Hard, but on the higher difficulties it gets dicier because the machines also have more stagger resistance. A fully upgraded spear will still take 3 heavy melees to knock down one Ravager. Not useless, but situational.
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Nov 20, 2020 19:46
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Took a break from big new games to play a bit of the Crash Bandicoot original trilogy rerelease, and drat a few of the level designs are bad. Were 3D levels where you're running towards the camera ever a good idea? Especially when you're being chased and have to dodge or jump over lava that you can't see much ahead of time, and everything is an instadeath. A lot of the forward or side-scrolling levels are still fine, but that style is among the most unfun designs I can think of.
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Nov 21, 2020 01:14
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They nailed them in Crash 1 and 2 but I agree the camera is way too low for how fast you're running in 3. Moving it up and back a little would've helped a lot.
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Nov 21, 2020 01:21
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3D before the analog stick was tricky and often poorly done.
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Nov 21, 2020 01:24
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CJacobs posted:They nailed them in Crash 1 and 2 but I agree the camera is way too low for how fast you're running in 3. Moving it up and back a little would've helped a lot. I always start in 3 because I figure it'd be the most polished, then I get frustrated at stuff I don't like in the first world. Guess I'll go back a bit.
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Nov 21, 2020 01:31
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Yeah it's important to remember that nobody had the slightest idea how 3D was supposed to work. There had been a few 3D games in the past, wireframe stuff mostly, but for the most part it was trial and error.
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Nov 21, 2020 01:33
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You can really tell that in stuff like the jet ski level, it's just rough. I find that gen pretty touch to get back into in general, the Crash games in particular seem to be on the more reasonable end when they're sticking to the simpler stuff that minimizes actual 3D movement.
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Nov 21, 2020 01:37
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Crash 3 has too many gimmick/vehicle levels in my opinion. Until the recent release of Crash 4, I've always felt like 2 had the best mix of gimmick and platforming.
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Nov 21, 2020 01:51
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It's a very little thing dragging a game down, but in Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Eivor never seems to say anything to their horse. In Syndicate and Odyssey they did, even if was just "Come on!", "Let's go!" and things like that. It just makes things oddly silent if you're riding around the countryside compared to the same in Odyssey or the carriages in Syndicate (I can't remember if Bayek did or not in Origins)
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Nov 21, 2020 15:57
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Nov 21, 2020 15:59
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Danger - Octopus! posted:It just makes things oddly silent if you're riding around the countryside compared to the same in Odyssey or the carriages in Syndicate (I can't remember if Bayek did or not in Origins) as Senu, you're too far away to hear anyway
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Nov 21, 2020 16:14
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Danger - Octopus! posted:It's a very little thing dragging a game down, but in Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Eivor never seems to say anything to their horse. In Syndicate and Odyssey they did, even if was just "Come on!", "Let's go!" and things like that. It just makes things oddly silent if you're riding around the countryside compared to the same in Odyssey or the carriages in Syndicate (I can't remember if Bayek did or not in Origins) Eivor is just so much more subdued in general than I expected, outside of battle. It's a good game in its own right but I'm still trying to get through the mental whiplash after expecting a chatty Viking Kassandra conquering up the place.
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Nov 21, 2020 18:00
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Captain Hygiene posted:Eivor is just so much more subdued in general than I expected, outside of battle. It's a good game in its own right but I'm still trying to get through the mental whiplash after expecting a chatty Viking Kassandra conquering up the place. I like that Eivor is quite thoughtful and offers good life advice somewhat poetically on occasion. But yeah, very different to Alexios/Kassandra.
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Nov 21, 2020 18:31
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Assassin's Creed keeps putting chase sequences in quests and not a one of them is an actual chase. You're never able to actually catch a target. You have to follow a quest marker for a few minutes and then a cutscene triggers. Every time. Why even put chases in the game if none of them works like one? It's not like the world is clamoring for chase scenes and this was the only way they could fulfil a demand.
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Nov 21, 2020 21:22
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I've never minded those because they often had some fun visual setpieces, like I enjoyed the chase at the end of Assassins Creed 3 because of stuff like running through a burning boat. They're basically an excuse to blow up a whole level without destroying the flow of the rest of the game or locking out optional collectibles because "Welp now that building's not there anymore!" I always just saw those sequences in games as "If this was just a cutscene you'd complain about it, so have fun playing through the glorified cinematic".
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Nov 22, 2020 10:29
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In AssCreed: Odyssey an eyepatch or a small metalband provides more protection than a helmet that covers your entire head. Also, you can carry around a whole forest's worth of olive wood but if you carry one eyepatch too many you became overloaded and can only walk slowly. I also can't help but wonder why there are so many severed hands laying around and why there's a market for them.
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Nov 22, 2020 11:48
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Alhazred posted:I also can't help but wonder why there are so many severed hands laying around and why there's a market for them. They're handy. 
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Nov 22, 2020 16:43
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For some reason, when NFS Hot Pursuit Remastered on Switch can't connect to Autolog, it'll keep turning wireless controllers off. Can be hard to even quit the game when it starts looping the L+R dialog, you have to press Home immediately after reconnecting.
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Nov 22, 2020 17:15
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Alhazred posted:I also can't help but wonder why there are so many severed hands laying around https://i.imgur.com/GxqoU0L.mp4 There probably aren't as many as you think, they're just pretty mobile
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Nov 22, 2020 19:17
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Danger - Octopus! posted:It's a very little thing dragging a game down, but in Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Eivor never seems to say anything to their horse. In Syndicate and Odyssey they did, even if was just "Come on!", "Let's go!" and things like that. It just makes things oddly silent if you're riding around the countryside compared to the same in Odyssey or the carriages in Syndicate (I can't remember if Bayek did or not in Origins) Ghost of Tsushima was really good about this
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Nov 22, 2020 21:02
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christmas boots posted:Ghost of Tsushima was really good about this Upsettingly good. I came to love my horse in that game more than even the one in RDR2.
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Nov 22, 2020 21:04
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Mass Effect Andromeda has a laundry list of little things draggin' it down, but cruising around the world maps was not one of them. the party banter was really good and was the primary motivator for switching up my crew just because i wanted to see how everyone got along.
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Nov 22, 2020 21:25
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I'm pretty tired of games that start with a long load time just to get to a "press a" screen, then loads again to the main menu. Why do that? If there's gonna be a long rear end load time I'd like to be able to get up and get a drink or something and expect to have the load time over by the time I get back. Really glad the next generation consoles are doing away with that.
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Nov 22, 2020 23:05
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Just wait for a year, and its back. I mean, with Xbones and PS4 they implemented the idea that you can start the game while it still installs/loads the other parts of the game, and I am yet to see one that implements this beyond setting up the screen sizes and other non-gameplay stuff. At least now that the loading screen minigames -patent by Namco Bandai is dead, so you might see something else than the settings-screen or tutorial video for the first bootup.
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Nov 22, 2020 23:09
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The heretofore unknown #blessed picture/Weird Headline combo
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Nov 23, 2020 02:57
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This is more a criticism of a genre than an individual game, but I've been watching Star Trek Discovery recently and it made me crave a space game where I could jump in my ship, maybe order my crew around a bit, and explore the stars, come across weird and wonderful bits of space and engage in the occasional bit of space combat. Just chilling out exploring the galaxy, feeling that sense of being out in the unknown, wondering what mystery/disaster awaits me over the horizon. Having searched now for a few weeks, I can't seem to find anything like it. FTL? A lot of the right components but a dreaded rogue-like with a stupid "keep moving or die" mechanic, and an RNG dependent final boss. Elite dangerous? Great at the ship sim stuff, totally shallow universe with no real exploration or variety (I am intrigued by the new dlc). No man's sky? Super samey exploration and mining loop, silly cartoony graphics. It's got all the illusion of exploration with none of the fun. The Starpoint Gemini series is the closest I've got so far and each game has serious flaws and caveats. And don't even mention the X series, which best as I can tell is determined to turn itself into a spreadsheet simulator at the earliest possible opportunity. Having browsed and tested so many of these now, the thing that strikes me the most is this insistence of the genre that the most fun thing about being in space must be trading/hauling/mining materials, dogfighting pirates or picking a side in an intergalactic war. Surely the fun in being out in the unknowns of space is..... Exploring the unknowns of space? I'd love some recommendations if anyone has any.
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Nov 23, 2020 03:37
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RGX posted:This is more a criticism of a genre than an individual game, but I've been watching Star Trek Discovery recently and it made me crave a space game where I could jump in my ship, maybe order my crew around a bit, and explore the stars, come across weird and wonderful bits of space and engage in the occasional bit of space combat. Just chilling out exploring the galaxy, feeling that sense of being out in the unknown, wondering what mystery/disaster awaits me over the horizon. I don't think it has a crew or anything you can talk to but Outer Wilds is all about exploring space at least. But yeah you're not the first to pine for this, I had a friend who was talking about how weird it was that there's no Final Fantasy Tactics Esq 'Send people out to space to explore' and make ships and all that jazz game. When I end up exhausting a game's fun I wind up wondering about it with more mechanics in a theoretical sequel. Like, for FTL, I wouldn't mind a more well rounded combat system inside the ship. You get suits they're fireproof so you can invade burning ships and fight safely. Better weapons that put people on equal ground or above them if they're like the mantis, stuff like that.
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Nov 23, 2020 04:17
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