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Never play games on hard mode because they're typically poorly balanced
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Dec 28, 2022 04:07
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I wish video games hadn't begun the trend of disallowing you from increasing the difficulty. Many of them let you turn the difficulty down, sometimes at the expense of cheevos and sometimes ingame accolades, but many just don't let you jump it up at all. I honestly think it'd solve the issue of players starting on Hard when they aren't ready and haven't seen the tutorials yet. Being encouraged to turn the difficulty up in Call of Juarez because I kicked the first level's rear end was really cool and I've never seen it done in a game again!
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Dec 28, 2022 07:42
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CJacobs posted:I wish video games hadn't begun the trend of disallowing you from increasing the difficulty. Many of them let you turn the difficulty down, sometimes at the expense of cheevos and sometimes ingame accolades, but many just don't let you jump it up at all. I honestly think it'd solve the issue of players starting on Hard when they aren't ready and haven't seen the tutorials yet. Being encouraged to turn the difficulty up in Call of Juarez because I kicked the first level's rear end was really cool and I've never seen it done in a game again! Yeah, I only turned the difficulty down in God of War 2 because of that annoying gimmick room where you push the statue past the constant enemy barrage and fire walls that keep pushing it back. That room wasn't giving me trouble due to the combat difficulty, it was just a stupid room that I wanted to be done with, and then I was stuck on easy for the rest of the game.
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Dec 28, 2022 08:06
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CJacobs posted:I wish video games hadn't begun the trend of disallowing you from increasing the difficulty. Many of them let you turn the difficulty down, sometimes at the expense of cheevos and sometimes ingame accolades, but many just don't let you jump it up at all. I honestly think it'd solve the issue of players starting on Hard when they aren't ready and haven't seen the tutorials yet. Being encouraged to turn the difficulty up in Call of Juarez because I kicked the first level's rear end was really cool and I've never seen it done in a game again! I recently played through Project Wingman, and I was pleasantly surprised to see it has this feature after mistakenly starting on normal instead of hard. I still think the best implementation of difficulty settings is what Kid Icarus Uprising and the recent Smash games use though, where you pick a difficulty level at the start of each stage, and dying reduces the difficulty, but also the quality of whatever rewards you get.
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Dec 28, 2022 09:00
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Also the difficulty "slider" in Kid Icarus was delightful, a skull-faced cauldron that got more evil and on fire as you filled it with hearts. Another difficulty system I really liked was the one used in The World Ends With You, where difficulty (enemy stats and attack patterns) determined what items the enemy dropped, and a separate slider reduced your maximum HP, and increased the drop rate. The drop rate could also be increased by chaining consecutive fights. So you'd run into situations where you either lose 90% of your max HP to guarantee a rare drop from a boss, or you chain eight fights in a row before the boss, or you can get it at a higher drop rate from another monster on a higher difficulty.
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Dec 28, 2022 09:29
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One game I remember having an interesting system for picking difficulty was Matrix: Path of Neo. The game would start and immediately drop you into a hand to hand combat scenario. It would start off with basic enemies and slowly scale up through boss level enemies and finally an Agent Smith fight. I'm not sure what the actual metric was, as despite my best efforts the Smith fight never lasted real long, but whenever it stopped the game basically said "OK, this is what difficulty we recommend you play at, but you can choose right now." And from there it would start the game for real.
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Dec 28, 2022 15:08
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BioEnchanted posted:Yeah, I only turned the difficulty down in God of War 2 because of that annoying gimmick room where you push the statue past the constant enemy barrage and fire walls that keep pushing it back. That room wasn't giving me trouble due to the combat difficulty, it was just a stupid room that I wanted to be done with, and then I was stuck on easy for the rest of the game. Difficulty in the old God of Wars only affects combat, not puzzle timing or anything else.
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Dec 28, 2022 16:23
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Byzantine posted:Difficulty in the old God of Wars only affects combat, not puzzle timing or anything else. I know, I dropped it so that the enemies would be less of a pain during the puzzle. There was combat getting in the way.
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Dec 28, 2022 18:18
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YggiDee posted:Another difficulty system I really liked was the one used in The World Ends With You, where difficulty (enemy stats and attack patterns) determined what items the enemy dropped, and a separate slider reduced your maximum HP, and increased the drop rate. The drop rate could also be increased by chaining consecutive fights. So you'd run into situations where you either lose 90% of your max HP to guarantee a rare drop from a boss, or you chain eight fights in a row before the boss, or you can get it at a higher drop rate from another monster on a higher difficulty. It's a system that rewards you for fine tuning the difficulty to where you can juuuuust get through it, forcing you to improve at the game while setting your own learning curve. Brilliant design.
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Dec 28, 2022 19:20
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John Murdoch posted:FC3 breaks down in the end because oops the natives were crazy and evil anyway. It punctures the white savior concept and then manages to be awful anyway. Man, I remember the writing in FC3 and the writer's insistent defense of his writing leaving a sour taste. Whether he genuinely tried to write what he said he was trying or it was a post-hoc justification, either way, the execution flopped. Ultimately it looked bad that he could not accept that people didn't like the writing. I think it was a major improvement that in FC4, they decided that the protagonist is a South Asian person going back to a South Asian country. And it's telling that Ubisoft has avoided touching the white foreign savior trope since FC3. Speaking of Herc, his best incarnation was as Urki in Far Cry Primal. After meeting him the first time, it took a second to realize why his unintelligible rambling seemed so familiarly unintelligble.
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Dec 28, 2022 20:11
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actually the best hurk is in the mars dlc for fc5, where he's stuck in a robot following you around and he's just telling stories about what a dumb himbo manbaby he is hurk going "haha yeah i put bombs on monkeys" in fc3 sucks hurk in fc5 mars going "yeah i went to laser tag and i got lost and cried, also this was my 30th birthday" rules, ditto his reasoning of "with great power comes great responsibility, i am very powerful (check out my massive strong thighs), ergo i am very responsible"
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Dec 28, 2022 20:37
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Caufman posted:Man, I remember the writing in FC3 and the writer's insistent defense of his writing leaving a sour taste. Whether he genuinely tried to write what he said he was trying or it was a post-hoc justification, either way, the execution flopped. Ultimately it looked bad that he could not accept that people didn't like the writing. it's also the same script that uses the incredibly cliche haha druggzzzzz Alice in Wonderland motif. Trying to puff it up as something so much cleverer was always a doomed proposition. Weirdly I actually prefer 3 over 4 because while 3 is very much akin to a trashy exploitation movie, it's more memorable as a result. Plus 4 has a lot of problems of its own... biosterous posted:hurk going "haha yeah i put bombs on monkeys" in fc3 sucks Hurk is genuinely one of my favorite parts of the series. He's got a bit of that Trevor from GTA5 "this is how Certain Players play the game..." energy and in general I always liked the concept of having these weird supporting character recur across the series while everything else changed around them.
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Dec 28, 2022 21:37
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He's like Patches.
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Dec 28, 2022 22:07
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So is FC6 actually any fun? Can you skip cutscenes? Does it still have no possible way to explain plot other than the villains blustering at you after you're forced to walk into an obvious trap and then they get you?  I enjoyed 3 enough to get to the second island but then it Got loving Old, and every one I've tried since has just been kinda  to me.
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Dec 28, 2022 22:44
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FC6 was a good amount of dumb fun for  , which is exactly how I felt about 5. Honestly, though, I barely remember anything about the plot or story/cutscene setup at this point. I don't think it was memorably egregious at forcibly yanking you back into story stuff like 5, at least.
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Dec 28, 2022 22:57
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Valkyria Chronicles 4 is a sort of strategy action war game in Fantasy Europe set during not-WW2, and you follow a squad leader during various assignments on the frontlines. The cast is like 4-5 main characters you can lead into battle with a few more supporting characters like supply officers or R&D personnel or naval crew you don't see directly in battle, but any story only has so much screen time so the core cast is small. But you can't go to war with 5 people. So there's like 30 other named and voiced characters with their own personalities and battle quirks you can fill up your roster with, but they don't really get any screen time - the only way you'll really get to know them is via their voice lines when selecting / controlling them and trigger their battle abilities and the like, they won't show up during the story proceedings at all. As mentioned, deploying someone for battle also gets you a quick voice line - but the great little thing i found is that all of them have their own unique voice line for when you assign them on a suicide mission that they know they won't return from. Like the timid sniper girl, which has such an intense stage fright that sometimes, when she gets spotted by too many enemies at once, she just freezes up, ending her movement action immediately - when deployed for a suicide mission, nevertheless shouts in a wavering voice "I.... I'm not scared!" The unpopular author, who enlisted mostly to collect material and inspiration for a war novel he's gonna write, solemny wonders "The climax of my own arc..." The sullen wife who joined the military just to find her soldier husband who went MIA, and who only recently found out he was, in fact, KIA, just says "Darling, i can feel you here..." when sent on that mission. The grumpy old Veteran dad who enlisted once more after his son was killed in the war grumbles, with some sort of relief "Ah, I've been ready for a long time." The cold, calculating logic nerd who's lauded for his trajectory calculations on the mortar and thinks everything can be put into a formula, admits with a sigh "Life is... unpredictable." Or the coward boy who got pushed into military service after his parents kicked his shut-in rear end out of the house, and who starts to panick every time he comes under enemy fire, adopted a fantasy god persona to cope with the mental stress of life on the frontlines. He'll psyche himself up with "I... am Odin. The GOD OF WAR!"" They really did the most they could to personalize the cannon fodder beyond what's otherwise just a name, a face and a handful of lines in a bio, and give them a gimpse of personhood.
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Dec 28, 2022 23:05
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Far Cry 3 opens with a montage of dude bro poo poo that made me instantly absolutely loathe the protagonist and all his friends. What a way to start. Here's a privileged white shithead with his shithead friends getting toasted and loving around in other peoples' cultures. No, your job is not to hunt them down, you're one of them, and you're supposed to save your friends. Great.
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Dec 28, 2022 23:23
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HenryEx posted:Valkyria Chronicles 4 is a sort of strategy action war game in Fantasy Europe set during not-WW2, and you follow a squad leader during various assignments on the frontlines. All the VC games are good with this, yeah. 
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Dec 28, 2022 23:32
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Captain Hygiene posted:FC6 was a good amount of dumb fun for I liked the stuff with the Despot's son, they did a decent job making him likeable throughout the game.
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Dec 28, 2022 23:42
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Far Cry has the great idea to make their big dumb sandboxes coop and that makes up for a lot of shortcomings. Getting a friend and loving around in that world is a top notch experience.
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Dec 28, 2022 23:49
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Far Cry 6 is ultra fun to play but the intro to the game is brutal. You're partying with your best friends on a rooftop, celebrating that you've finally found a way to get the hell out of Yara, when Giancarlo Esposito's thugs roll through the city and brutally murder everyone. You think you've finally escaped into an overcrowded cargo ship full of refugees, but then he shows up and scuttles the ship and drowns everyone inside. It is loving dark, especially for a game where I spend most of my time wingsuiting between giant explosive areas where I sic my pet crocodile Guapo on a bunch of unsuspecting grunts before blowing up everything in the area with my backpack full of fireworks. It honestly really soured me on the game and it took a while to pick it back up after the intro and get into it.
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Dec 28, 2022 23:58
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I'm at the final chapter of Run Like Hell, I love the game's vocal soundtrack courtesy of Breaking Benjamin, it's very goofy but sets a fun tone for certain setpieces. Like the buttrock in Sonic games or the Signal Bars setpiece in Get Even, which is probably one of my favourite uses of music in a game. Particularly I just did the setpiece to this tune: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yxPwS9Hh14
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Dec 29, 2022 00:00
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Caufman posted:Man, I remember the writing in FC3 and the writer's insistent defense of his writing leaving a sour taste. Whether he genuinely tried to write what he said he was trying or it was a post-hoc justification, either way, the execution flopped. Ultimately it looked bad that he could not accept that people didn't like the writing. It was kind of a trip reading that interview after playing the game. I actually came away with a somewhat positive impression after playing it, since at least it tried for something interesting and managed some memorable moments, even if it ultimately didn't succeed. But then I read that interview and it was basically the writer going "You see, I put quotes from Alice in Wonderland into the intro because it's, like, the protagonist is also going on a magical journey, maaaan". It was about then that I realized that any of the good parts probably just existed through a combination of sheer coincidence and good performances by the voice actors.
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Dec 29, 2022 00:30
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90% of far cry 3's goodwill can be attributed to michael mando's performance as vaas
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Dec 29, 2022 00:54
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biosterous posted:90% of far cry 3's goodwill can be attributed to michael mando's performance as vaas No, it was also legitimately a lot more fun to pay than Far Cry 2. Far Cry 2 had some interesting elements but ultimately too much stuff that just wasn't fun - FC3 was a big improvement in gameplay.
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Dec 29, 2022 01:01
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Kitfox88 posted:So is FC6 actually any fun? Can you skip cutscenes? Does it still have no possible way to explain plot other than the villains blustering at you after you're forced to walk into an obvious trap and then they get you? It still has the Gets Old problem that seems to drag down every Far Cry and most Ubisoft games. Maybe part of the problem is the way I play it. I'm initially excited to do everything, but several hours later I feel bored by the experience, and it becomes iffy if I'll even finish the main storyline. I finished FC5 but I didn't finish FC6. But that's probably not because FC6 is worse (in some ways it's better! I like Dani and many of the supporting characters), but I just had other things to play. So if you can get it for cheap, it's probably going to be far from the best or worst ~20 bucks you can spend on a game. But Rockman Reserve is likely correct that the value jumps a lot if you can play with a friend. Perestroika posted:It was kind of a trip reading that interview after playing the game. I actually came away with a somewhat positive impression after playing it, since at least it tried for something interesting and managed some memorable moments, even if it ultimately didn't succeed. But then I read that interview and it was basically the writer going "You see, I put quotes from Alice in Wonderland into the intro because it's, like, the protagonist is also going on a magical journey, maaaan". It was about then that I realized that any of the good parts probably just existed through a combination of sheer coincidence and good performances by the voice actors. credburn posted:Far Cry 3 opens with a montage of dude bro poo poo that made me instantly absolutely loathe the protagonist and all his friends. What a way to start. Here's a privileged white shithead with his shithead friends getting toasted and loving around in other peoples' cultures. No, your job is not to hunt them down, you're one of them, and you're supposed to save your friends. Great. I felt all of this. And maybe more, because Rook Island drew inspiration from my home country of Indonesia, and I haven't played a lot of games that are inspired by Indonesia, so it's especially deflating to have to play as one of the least likable video game protagonists in an equally unlikable situation. But it's okay because the writer says it's satire!! And if you don't appreciate the satire, that's your fault!!! Yeah, pass.
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Dec 29, 2022 01:02
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biosterous posted:90% of far cry 3's goodwill can be attributed to michael mando's performance as vaas PYF Big Thing in Games : Michael Mando
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Dec 29, 2022 01:08
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The best thing about the later Far Crys (4,5,6) is the head bad guys. Pagan Min is one of my all-time favorite video game antagonists, and Joseph Seed is legit terrifying.
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Dec 29, 2022 01:11
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gohuskies posted:No, it was also legitimately a lot more fun to pay than Far Cry 2. Far Cry 2 had some interesting elements but ultimately too much stuff that just wasn't fun - FC3 was a big improvement in gameplay. i also enjoyed playing far cry 3 a bunch but much more than that, i enjoyed michael mando's performance Cool Kids Club Soda posted:PYF Big Thing in Games : Michael Mando 
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Dec 29, 2022 01:48
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Speaking of open world stuff, I'm playing Ghostwire Tokyo at the moment, and its definitely an open-world-rear end game. Side missions, stuff to collect, random events, the whole shebang. But I really like the setting. An emptied Shibuya is interesting enough, but theres just a lot of detail to it all that I really appreciate while going through the place, enough so that I enjoy just walking around and taking in the sights, though it's often disappointing when I can't walk up a narrow stairway or check out a building I can see inside of or something. Makes me think of how often I'd do that in Yakuza, just idly wander around while learning the lay of the land.
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Dec 29, 2022 05:11
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credburn posted:Far Cry 3 opens with a montage of dude bro poo poo that made me instantly absolutely loathe the protagonist and all his friends. What a way to start. Here's a privileged white shithead with his shithead friends getting toasted and loving around in other peoples' cultures. No, your job is not to hunt them down, you're one of them, and you're supposed to save your friends. Great. I always figured that this was the point of the cutscene and intro's stealth sequence. You aren't supposed to like Jason or his friends at first. Your beefy older brother, who dies as you try to compress the wound, is the Far Cry protagonist, and you didn't manage to save him. So now you're stuck as Jason Brody. Then you rescue your even more capable younger brother the pilot. Ubisoft just uh, forgot to add the part where they slowly reveal later as you save them that they're actually people with depth. That part didn't happen. CJacobs has a new favorite as of 05:58 on Dec 29, 2022 |
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Dec 29, 2022 05:52
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Kitfox88 posted:So is FC6 actually any fun? Can you skip cutscenes? Does it still have no possible way to explain plot other than the villains blustering at you after you're forced to walk into an obvious trap and then they get you? FC6 was my first far cry and it started off really loving slow IMO, but once you get past the big fight that keeps you on the first island and it opens up to the rest of the world, I liked the game a whole hell of a lot more. The whole map is littered with little setpieces that can net you generic stuff like more crafting resources, other times you stumble something sick and unexpected like a one-seater gyrocopter at the bottom of a hidden cave or a ridiculous unique weapon. The story missions were enough that whenever I got bored wandering around the map looking for cool things to do, there's always something you can progress that feels like you're making a difference on the island and building allies with disparate revolutionary forces. plus some really cool/explosive setpieces it's also got some of the most satisfying batman poo poo you can do when you're clearing out bases. luring soldiers this way or that, getting all silent kills while disabling alarms, you can pretty much ghost an entire base until the last dude is left without them even realizing everybody else is donezo. this works doubly well if you can stomach going a few missions without guapo, chicharron, or chorizo, the best companion animals in any game ever, to use the lethal-stealth companion animal that just straight up loving aethers a dude from existence with a button press i think it definitely does get loving old after a while, but I put drat near close to 50 hours into it without feeling too burnt out, but that could be because i haven't played a lot of those ubisoft open world games. i can say for one thing that it's infinitely easier to take care of the traditional "conquer this
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Dec 29, 2022 06:06
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Yeah I forgot, Far Cry 6 is worth playing just for the animal companions alone. The basic attack alligator buddy is just a ton of fun, even if you don't branch out and go for various large cats, a wheely dog, or a terminator dog, or any of the other various oddballs.
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Dec 29, 2022 06:11
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gohuskies posted:No, it was also legitimately a lot more fun to pay than Far Cry 2. Far Cry 2 had some interesting elements but ultimately too much stuff that just wasn't fun - FC3 was a big improvement in gameplay. Which unfortunately led to literally the entire industry deciding to make nothing but Far Cry 3 with even more bloat for the next goddamn decade.
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Dec 29, 2022 06:23
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FarCry Instincts Predator was one of my fav FPS games but it was a weird Xbox360 exclusive and sometimes it feels likes no one but me and Adam loving Sessler from Xplay played it. fun game. but weird port if FarCry 1 where they made the game a corridor shooter. real good but again feels like no one else played it.
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Dec 29, 2022 08:39
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I legit really like the story of FC3 if you death of the author it, since he thinks it's the next coming of shakespeare and all. The bad ending to that game where Jason gives into the cult, sacrifices his friends and then is killed during sex with Citra is ludicrous and radically over the top... but to me that is how the game is meant to end. Jason Brody the yuppie whose boat crashed spends the entire video game sprinting like a madman through underbrush, hallucinating on mushrooms and being injected with soldier combat drugs whilst being told he has a magical tattoo that can call tigers to his aid. Of course the tatau doesn't do poo poo. Of course the cult's beliefs mean nothing. I love that if you DON'T engage with the more lighthearted content then Jason goes mad over the course of the game and doesn't realize it, ever, til the moment he dies. That "What have I become?" moment that got mocked is unironically well placed in the story, you're torturing your own brother to pretend you're on the side of the villains so you can kill them unawares.
CJacobs has a new favorite as of 15:38 on Dec 29, 2022 |
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Dec 29, 2022 15:31
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 Also in the survival mode for FC6 wherein you play as Vaas, the elite enemies are all just Jason Brody instead of Rakyat which is hilarious.
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Dec 29, 2022 15:58
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With how Remnant randomizes the enemies with each death it has a musical sting for when something special spawns and is lurking around and then another when the specials are all gone. It's made some tense moments where I start spinning around looking for whatever it is and see some big guy with two fuckoff swords walk through a doorway
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Dec 29, 2022 16:16
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Just beaten Run Like Hell. I love that the explosive crossbow is basically just a Delete a Brute button. Also my GOD the Bolt Thrower made super short work of the final boss. Didn't make much use of it, so didn't realise it did that much to bosses. It's also got the kind of cliffhanger that I don't mind, because you've done what you've set out to do, just because you happen to have pissed off the Race and got their dander up, and now they'll be coming after you in droves doesn't change the fact that the space station situation has been resolved, which was the key thing. It just means that the journey will go on offscreen, but the part that you had emotional investment in is over so I'm fine with it.
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Dec 29, 2022 20:22
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| # ? May 10, 2024 14:44 |
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Just finished playing this ARPG/colony management game Cygnus Enterprises. I can't say I can recommend it right now, being in Early Access and all, but there is one mission I had quite a bit of fun with. One of the characters you meet is a Future!streamer kind of dude, and yes, he can be kind of obnoxious. However, he does have one mission where he asks you to do a little asskicking on camera, and you pretty much have to go along since he's a big client of your employer. Thing is, when you go on the mission, you actually get to see his stream chat. It's dumb, but I liked it. To bad the rest of the EA content seems to descend into a pretty generic 'fight the ancient aliens' plot, but eh.
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Dec 29, 2022 21:46
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