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Robert J. Omb posted:Conker: Live and Reloaded If memory serves it was even worse in the original!
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Jul 27, 2021 14:41
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Necrothatcher posted:I got mad at Little Hope because it ruined the multiplayer. In Man of Medan you could pass the controller between friends whenever the game switched characters. Little Hope has them changing player character mid-scene, so you can be halfway through a QTE action sequence and suddenly be making decisions for someone else's character. The Man of Medan online multiplayer was great. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it before in an adventure game
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Jul 27, 2021 15:23
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Manager Hoyden posted:The Man of Medan online multiplayer was great. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it before in an adventure game I know! I had a great time with it and it elevated the iffy plot if you work out what's going on and somebody else hasn't. It's mindblowing that they managed to gently caress up something so simple in the next game.
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Jul 27, 2021 15:43
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Crowetron posted:The grappling hook in Dying Light feels like playing Russian roulette. Either I'll effortlessly glide up to the rooftop like Batman, or I'll soar up next to the ledge and then drop 50 feet to an embarrassing death. when i played dying light i unlocked the grappling hook without knowing there was an event going on that made it have no cooldown time. i spent nearly my entire playthrough zipping around like spiderman and kicking rear end not knowing that it was only temporary. it was such a letdown when the event ended.
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Jul 27, 2021 18:32
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Prey has some really nice level design and I love checking behind every box and on top of every roof tile for goodies and alternate routes. The problem is that some rooms are massive and hold so much that it takes me about an hour to clear the entire area out. I’ve played the game for four hours and I’ve only done three story missions!
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Jul 27, 2021 19:23
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moosecow333 posted:Prey has some really nice level design and I love checking behind every box and on top of every roof tile for goodies and alternate routes. Just wait until you get the Psychoscope and start getting the FUN abilities that let you get into every nook and cranny you've walked past in the beginning areas 
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Jul 27, 2021 19:26
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Arkane are drat masters of level design.
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Jul 27, 2021 19:51
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Just about to finish Spiritfarer and Jesus Christ, I wish someone had told me that what starts out as a cute animal hugging simulator ends up with several violent/brutal emotional gutpunches. Good god Stanley and Atul nearly broke me. I mean, I get that's the point but I wasn't expecting a serious meditation on the nature and meaning of death in a cutsey animal hugging simulator. Does anyone have the fake FROM software trailer that talks about how "the world is dirty and disgusting but only you, the most dirty and disgusting of them all can save the world"
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Jul 28, 2021 00:37
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Frank Frank posted:Does anyone have the fake FROM software trailer that talks about how "the world is dirty and disgusting but only you, the most dirty and disgusting of them all can save the world" https://twitter.com/PsiHypo/status/1403406303792406533
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Jul 28, 2021 00:51
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That's the one - thanks! Also jesus christ Spiritfarer broke me. That game made me legitimately cry more than once.
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Jul 28, 2021 18:27
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The Surge 2 has not made a good first impression on me. They've decompressed the tutorial compared to the first game, but as a result it feels vastly worse. You could maybe argue that the first game went a little too fast before throwing you in the deep end, but here the player character starts without their rig, which means zero interaction with the energy system, no healing via implants, and most critically a complete inability to dodge and jump. I think this was a clumsy attempt to force the player to figure out the new block/parry system, but that's also not explained particularly well and the default controls on PC are so unintuitive that I'm only now learning how it actually works. The first real area is downright silly for how patronizing and excessive the shortcuts are. We're talking every 3-5 enemies, the game will serve you up another shortcut back to the medbay. There may actually be more real estate spent on the shortcuts themselves than the actual level.  I had actually missed one on my first run through, mostly by lack of observation, but it's also screamingly redundant: Connecting to the same exact place as a classic Souls-y "gate doesn't open from this side" is a bridge that takes you directly back to the medbay. Or you can run past the whopping 3 tutorial-grade enemies and be right there anyway.The shortcuts even fractalize. Many shortcut routes have additional one way doors that will eventually spill out from another route later in the game. But this starts to get tiresome real fast because it also means explorations devolves into stumbling across dead end after dead end with a single item tucked away before needing to come back later. This is even worse when areas are split by a loading screen. Every single one gives you a free goodie to make up for it, but then makes it clear you're not doing jack poo poo in that area without a later traversal upgrade or by coming in from a different direction. The second area is an aggressively brown slog where the kid gloves come off and now enemies are twice as tough, there's more of them inbetween the (still fairly frequent) shortcuts, and the environment itself is hazardous. It's also extra confusing with several overlapping-but-not-connecting paths. It caps off with the game's infamous first post-tutorial boss, which is a classic Souls-style fight against the camera to hit weakpoints on a downright out of place cartoonish alien tripod mech piloted by a blobby Harkonen-looking motherfucker who whines the whole time. The whole tone of the game has felt off like this. The first game could be uneven or obnoxiously cliche at times, but being trapped in the bowels of SuperAmazon's hell factory for assholes was A+ stuff more often than not. Now all of that has been replaced by a generic city-but-zombie-apocalypse kind of thing. Of course there's militarized checkpoints where you get hosed up by security forces, of course there's a cah-razy cult that worships the nanites and has a wacky tribalistic fashion sense, of course """""normal"""""  people are holed up in random strongholds ready to give bog standard sidequests while not really giving a poo poo about what's going on outside, etc. etc.They've added actual stats to the game! Oh wait they're highly simplified and there's really no build decisions to make whatsoever, it's clearly just a way to have a scaling factor so that you get nebulously stronger over time. Similarly instead of plugging in multiple redundant healing implants you now upgrade them directly over time to achieve the same effect, which again feels 100% like an arbitrary gate on your power and not an actual growth system. They've expanded the drone system and made ranged combat an actual thing! And then went completely overboard. First of all there's like 20 different drone modules now, all competing for use. Some of them are strictly utility-focused which means they'll never ever be equipped unless strictly necessary. This includes the new tagging features ala Dark Souls' messages. Your drone is now no longer a boring plinky laser that you mostly use to pull enemies. Now it's a full blown gun that deals appreciable damage!  Except to counterbalance it not using energy it now uses discrete ammo, so managing that is a thing. But also enemies, particularly ranged-heavy ones, love to drop more ammo and excess gets banked at the medbay. All of this sounds good except the end result is this incredibly awkward zero-sum situation where they employ setpieces designed to be shot up by the drone, then immediately refund your ammo, making it all pointless. They've also added drone modules that use their own ammo supply and are basically the equivalent of Dark Souls' firebombs and the like. Except they don't feel particularly strong and...I dunno it's hard to fully describe but they don't feel like they fit the pace of the game at all.In general the engine feels worse in every way. The first game was very snappy and responsive, but here everything feels mushy and unpleasant. Jumping isn't used for much compared to the first game, which is good because it's no longer snappy and to the point. Even dodging doesn't feel right. Attacks are missing the same impact they had in the first game. It's all very odd. One of the last things I did before calling it a night was backtrack to fight an early NPC. See, big surprise but the crazy cult is crazy and actually evil. There's a paladin sort of guy who initially points you in their direction fresh out of the tutorial, but once that non-twist goes off you can go freely antagonize him and try and nab his spear and/or armor. Oh wait, breaking all the design laws of soulslikes and as a giant gently caress you to the player, if he kills you he doesn't come back. Just totally fucks off. His gear can be acquired later in the game so it isn't missable, but there's still no warning or expectation that you only get that one single chance. Bullshit.
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Jul 28, 2021 22:00
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Probably can discuss a few of your points (though honestly I don't remember a lot of the specifics of the game) but jumping in the first game sucked rear end. It was bad everywhere it was used and there was a particular place in R&D where you had to use it to reach an item and if you failed (which you would, because it sucked rear end) you'd have to make like a fifteen minute loop full of enemies to get back to try again.
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Jul 29, 2021 04:30
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gently caress MMOs that include story-mandatory solo boss fights that are gigantic difficulty spikes. Spirit of Vengeance killed most of my lingering interest in The Old Republic, and now in The Secret World I've hit Freddy Beaumont. The MMO HMO thread at least helped me diagnose why I spent the better part of an hour abruptly dropping dead last night, but if I can't kill this fucker in an hour or so tonight I may drop the game completely. Hooray for inadvertently picking what's apparently one of the most complicated, tricky to play well dps specs in the game at character creation.
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Jul 29, 2021 12:26
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Cythereal posted:gently caress MMOs that include story-mandatory solo boss fights that are gigantic difficulty spikes. Spirit of Vengeance killed most of my lingering interest in The Old Republic, and now in The Secret World I've hit Freddy Beaumont. The MMO HMO thread at least helped me diagnose why I spent the better part of an hour abruptly dropping dead last night, but if I can't kill this fucker in an hour or so tonight I may drop the game completely. Star Trek Online has the same problem with quest lines that have never been really updated, or weren't designed for solo play. At least it has the decency to allow solo players to skip over story missions to advance the overall plot, so you are not completely stuck when the difficulty decides to spike up because Cryptic forgot a team mission on the story track.
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Jul 29, 2021 15:37
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Cythereal posted:gently caress MMOs that include story-mandatory solo boss fights that are gigantic difficulty spikes. Spirit of Vengeance killed most of my lingering interest in The Old Republic, and now in The Secret World I've hit Freddy Beaumont. The MMO HMO thread at least helped me diagnose why I spent the better part of an hour abruptly dropping dead last night, but if I can't kill this fucker in an hour or so tonight I may drop the game completely. Iirc that part has always been a wall for players going back to the launch of the original game. You could do fine in the first two zones but then you hit Blue Mountain and just no. I'd like to help more but I haven't used Blood enough to be helpful
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Jul 29, 2021 15:50
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Len posted:Iirc that part has always been a wall for players going back to the launch of the original game. You could do fine in the first two zones but then you hit Blue Mountain and just no. I was doing fine in Blue Mountain! I had a few challenging fights, but never died except for skull spawns that it turned out were meant for groups. I was chugging along perfectly fine until I hit Freddy and splatted. And since it's a single player story fight, I can't even get a friend to help.
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Jul 29, 2021 17:06
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Going back to branching storylines I think the best example may be Alpha Protocol, which did it so smoothly that I remember it getting dinged in reviews for being "too linear" (vs Dragon Age 2 which had a load of carefully labelled "THE NPCS WILL REMEMBER THIS" choices that were loving meaningless)
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Jul 29, 2021 17:36
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I think branching story lines work best it focuses on a relationship system like Until Dawn and leaves the way you get there and the ending somewhat linear. Branching storylines thay effect just the ending itself rarely works and leaves a bad taste in everyones mouthes more often than not it seems like.
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Jul 29, 2021 18:25
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ookiimarukochan posted:Going back to branching storylines I think the best example may be Alpha Protocol, which did it so smoothly that I remember it getting dinged in reviews for being "too linear" (vs Dragon Age 2 which had a load of carefully labelled "THE NPCS WILL REMEMBER THIS" choices that were loving meaningless) I played this game twice, nearly five or so years apart. The first time, did everything by the book, was charming and professional. Pistols, mostly stealth (before I knew that it was the 'top strat', I just liked stealth.) Great game. The second time, I played with friends, and we made the most absolutely rear end in a top hat-ish choices we could. Shotguns, loud. Was basically a different game. Knocking people on their rear end constantly, ignoring and belittling every NPC, smashing our way through every encounter, killing Marburg. poo poo, Alpha Protocol was so good. Almost would consider pulling my PS3 out for another run at it (and get those final few trophies...)
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Jul 29, 2021 18:33
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Morpheus posted:I played this game twice, nearly five or so years apart. The first time, did everything by the book, was charming and professional. Pistols, mostly stealth (before I knew that it was the 'top strat', I just liked stealth.) Great game. The second time, I played with friends, and we made the most absolutely rear end in a top hat-ish choices we could. Shotguns, loud. Was basically a different game. Knocking people on their rear end constantly, ignoring and belittling every NPC, smashing our way through every encounter, killing Marburg. This gets mentioned every time Alpha Protocol and Marburg come up so you probably already know this but my favorite detail is that the Marburg stuff not only tracks how you interact with him but how you've interacted with people in general. Marburg hates the smug, suave tone and you have to keep using it to provoke him into fighting you to the death, but it only works if you've been mostly using that tone just in general to people. If you're only being a smug rear end in a top hat to him it doesn't work because he realizes that you're trying to provoke him.
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Jul 29, 2021 18:57
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I've been playing HZD: Complete edition. And aside from the standard 'DLC/preorder/GOTY stuff is obnoxious and unadjustable, just gotta avoid it if you're not interested.', it reminds me of a thing I really dislike in sandbox titles: Skill trees that are shallow, allow for no real customization (beyond beelining for the things you're interested in, unless it gates them.), and feel like they're just there because it was mandated that a sandbox game needs a skill tree. When there's no real ability to specialize, or create interesting builds with the skill tree, then it's just busywork. Extra so when none of the skills change things notably. Like 1/5th of the tree is dedicated to 'slightly more loot'. I generally enjoy skilltrees and passive boosts and etc, but it's all too often that they're just slapped in because they're expected. It's a consistent issue that you'll basically be able to max out all the interesting skills in the first half or so of the game unless you purely and only beeline through story content, and then after that you're just painting in the skills you're the least disinterested in. If there's no meaningful way to specialize a character with skills , and no meaningful/noticeable change when you slap skill points in most of the time, why even have it?
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Jul 29, 2021 20:14
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SubNat posted:I've been playing HZD: Complete edition. It's ironic that Horizon's biggest problem is a lack of focus 
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Jul 29, 2021 20:30
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Skills/upgrades/gear/etc that specifically give you more loot or XP are a peeve of mine in general. Like it's almost always the "smart" move to take them ASAP so they can start accelerating your progression, but they're never satisfying to have compared to a skill that actually does anything at all. Feels bad to get them, feels bad to not get them.
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Jul 29, 2021 20:52
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SubNat posted:I've been playing HZD: Complete edition. I was paralyzed by choice when I first saw the skill tree then found out yes, you can get all the skills at 100%/max level, and just went mainly to stuff that made it easier to get resources and save resources. I'm pretty sure it doesn't actually make a difference as I'm usually running out of inventory space regardless. Making a game with a clear emphasis on stealth combat, you know hunting big game 'animals', then gating the stealth kills as a skill was pretty emblematic of this problem. It's an open world game, so traversal is a big deal, and it takes all the way down one skill tree to get the 'summon mount' ability. Something that most games just give you. You can still find and 'capture' a mount from the start but that's a lot less convenient then most games do it.
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Jul 29, 2021 21:46
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pentyne posted:It's an open world game, so traversal is a big deal, and it takes all the way down one skill tree to get the 'summon mount' ability. Something that most games just give you. You can still find and 'capture' a mount from the start but that's a lot less convenient then most games do it. I could be mistaken but I think you can call your mount to you as long as you've captured one and it's vaguely nearby. That skill lets you conjure one out of thin air even without capturing it. I'm not sure because the mounts are clunky to control and get stuck on things constantly so I hardly used them.
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Jul 29, 2021 21:54
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I forget can you harvest materials and plants and poo poo while you're on your mount in that game?
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Jul 29, 2021 22:05
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christmas boots posted:I forget can you harvest materials and plants and poo poo while you're on your mount in that game? You can if you buy the skill that lets you do that! 
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Jul 29, 2021 22:07
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Triarii posted:You can if you buy the skill that lets you do that!  That's better than not having it at all but still
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Jul 29, 2021 22:14
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Triarii posted:Skills/upgrades/gear/etc that specifically give you more loot or XP are a peeve of mine in general. Like it's almost always the "smart" move to take them ASAP so they can start accelerating your progression, but they're never satisfying to have compared to a skill that actually does anything at all. Feels bad to get them, feels bad to not get them. On the flip side there are games with so much xp that this is useless (or there aren't enough actual good skills to worry about xp.)
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Jul 29, 2021 22:19
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The newer Assassin's Creed games do it right where you can just whistle and your horse will appear out of nowhere behind you, as an ability you have basically right from the start.
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Jul 29, 2021 22:20
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Morpheus posted:Probably can discuss a few of your points (though honestly I don't remember a lot of the specifics of the game) but jumping in the first game sucked rear end. It was bad everywhere it was used and there was a particular place in R&D where you had to use it to reach an item and if you failed (which you would, because it sucked rear end) you'd have to make like a fifteen minute loop full of enemies to get back to try again. To me that was 100% the level designer being a dipshit and nothing to do with the jump itself. Every other time I had to jump to something (outside of maybe the very first time) I felt confident that Warren would go where I wanted him to and there wasn't going to be any physics shenanigans. I don't have that same level of faith in 2's jump. Also lbr it's being graded against Dark Souls, which has the most dogshit physics ever. Cythereal posted:gently caress MMOs that include story-mandatory solo boss fights that are gigantic difficulty spikes. Spirit of Vengeance killed most of my lingering interest in The Old Republic, and now in The Secret World I've hit Freddy Beaumont. The MMO HMO thread at least helped me diagnose why I spent the better part of an hour abruptly dropping dead last night, but if I can't kill this fucker in an hour or so tonight I may drop the game completely. Yeah I was gobsmacked when TSW put me into a solo-only boss instance. It was a pain in the rear end enough as a DPS class, because sure I could dish out damage but the boss could kill me in two hits. Meanwhile the person I was playing with had the audacity to be playing a tank, so did gently caress all for damage and had even more trouble. Makes no loving sense in a game with rigid class roles, even if you can theoretically freely spec into something else.
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Jul 29, 2021 22:20
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I gave State of Decay 2 a try and got sucked in pretty fast but just as quickly lost interest once I realized I'd be doing the same poo poo over and over again. Which is a shame because the general set up and at least the attempt at world building was pretty solid. But man did it get repetitive quick. Like the opposite of Witcher 3. I think games in general need to realize that bigger doesn't always automatically mean better - or even more. I'm reminded of games like Arkham Asylum where it's sort of just big enough and every gadget or fighting move you get opens up just enough more of the gameplay to keep you invested.
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Jul 29, 2021 23:58
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Triarii posted:Skills/upgrades/gear/etc that specifically give you more loot or XP are a peeve of mine in general. Like it's almost always the "smart" move to take them ASAP so they can start accelerating your progression, but they're never satisfying to have compared to a skill that actually does anything at all. Feels bad to get them, feels bad to not get them. Playing through Prey again after seeing it mentioned recently and it has a lot of this at the start. You need a skill to be able to harvest organs from dead typhons and another skill to harvest spare parts from destroyed operators, both of which are locked behind prerequisite skills in different tech trees and each costs a decent amount of neuromods. There's another one that makes recycling items provide 20% more materials which you'll want to unlock as early as possible. Expensive mods to open up more inventory space which is kind of in the same category since you don't want to have to leave stuff behind while you're exploring. I've spent like 20 neuromods so far and haven't really unlocked skills that actually do anything besides the first level of being able to lift heavy stuff. Biggest problem with the game is still the loading screens, it's been long enough since I played that I kind of forgot how intrusive they are. Every time you move from one zone to another you have to sit through two different loading screens, one with artwork and some flavor text followed by another one with a generic loading icon in the bottom right, both of which take a significant amount of time. Wishing at this point that I'd installed it to my SSD instead of HDD since you go back and forth between areas all the time and the distances from one to the next are relatively short, you spend half your play time looking at loading screens when you're quickly going from place to place doing side quests or whatever.
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Jul 30, 2021 00:36
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Triarii posted:Skills/upgrades/gear/etc that specifically give you more loot or XP are a peeve of mine in general. Like it's almost always the "smart" move to take them ASAP so they can start accelerating your progression, but they're never satisfying to have compared to a skill that actually does anything at all. Feels bad to get them, feels bad to not get them. Bravely default 2 has a particularly bad variation. You get 'solar powered' from white mage and 'lunar powered' from black mage, which grant mp regen and increased drop rate at day/night respectively. Each takes up a skill slot and the time locking means they cannot be active simultaneously, so either you spend a skill slot on something useless, or you switch the skill on every member of your party every time the day/night cycle happens.
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Jul 30, 2021 02:16
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gently caress, having any useful skills/gear that are only active in <circumstances> and then letting me navigate through menus to swap my skills/gear around when <circumstances> come up is like a game is trying to reward me for playing it tediously. I feel like that kind of thing only works if it's permanently part of a character, or it's a minor bonus attached to some other skill that's useful all the time.
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Jul 30, 2021 02:30
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Triarii posted:gently caress, having any useful skills/gear that are only active in <circumstances> and then letting me navigate through menus to swap my skills/gear around when <circumstances> come up is like a game is trying to reward me for playing it tediously. I feel like that kind of thing only works if it's permanently part of a character, or it's a minor bonus attached to some other skill that's useful all the time. This reminds me way too much of the Press navicust program from battle network 3.
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Jul 30, 2021 02:51
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Is it New Vegas that has the quirk where you're weaker/stronger depending on if you're indoors or outdoors?
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Jul 30, 2021 03:52
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John Murdoch posted:Is it New Vegas that has the quirk where you're weaker/stronger depending on if you're indoors or outdoors? Solar Powered (increases stats and heals in daylight) and Night Person (Night vision while sneaking, increased stats at night even while indoors) might be what you're thinking of?
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Jul 30, 2021 03:58
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Nah, those are the standard Fallout time of day ones. Found it: https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Claustrophobia Pretty silly considering whether or not you're indoors or out is entirely at the whims of whatever quest you're pursuing.
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Jul 30, 2021 04:02
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JackSplater posted:This reminds me way too much of the Press navicust program from battle network 3. In contrast there's the grappling hook in A Hat in Time, which lets youinteract with new platforming options and is needed to progress the story. It takes up one of your three badge slots. Not that there's much worth replacing it with, so in effect it's just a permanent yet harmless reduction to your badge slots, but it still sucks that it's taking up what should be optional space!
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Jul 30, 2021 06:16
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