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Inspector Gesicht posted:What other single-player games very much feel like they were the end-result of a cut-down multiplayer title? It does have multiplayer but Gotham Knights feels like a consolation prize where the single player experience in both a gameplay and narrative sense never lives up to the premise. Only multiplayer fulfills that and even that feels cut down. There are 4 Knights ostensibly working together but you're always by yourself in singleplayer. There can be 2 Knights if you have a second player join online but a max of 2 if you're playing the main game. The game can only handle the full team of 4 in smaller, multiplayer arenas separate from the base game.
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Sep 6, 2023 20:06
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Inspector Gesicht posted:I never played that one because I didnt want to give that sock-soiler money. I can't actually remember if I paid money for it or just reviewed it. I just remember putting a dozen hours or more into it and realizing how much of my time was wasted by fetch quests and how some crafted daggers I made were more powerful than anything I was ever gonna find.
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Sep 6, 2023 20:22
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I rented Amalur way back when and my god did it feel so by-the-numbers on everything, from the setting to the gameplay. In the words of Yahtzee, "elves and dwarves, elves and dwarves, elves and bloody dwarves!"
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Sep 6, 2023 20:27
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Written by R.A. Salvatore, who wasn't paid for some reason.
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Sep 6, 2023 20:29
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I'm pretty sure I've gotten Kingdoms of Amalur free on like six different platforms by now, 38 Studios was partially publicly owned by the state of Rhode Island which basically made deals with everyone trying to claw back anything close to the development costs. So you end up with it being a giveaway on PS Plus, the Epic Game Store, dropping down to five bucks on sale for months at a time, that kind of thing. So much wasted potential there.
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Sep 6, 2023 20:29
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Amalur perfectly encapsulates "collect 10 bear asses"
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Sep 6, 2023 20:34
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Morpheus posted:Wasn't Kingdoms of Amalur actually a reworked MMO, or was it just supposed to be a lead-in to the world of one? Nah, it's a game that was bought up and reskinned because the MMO was taking so long and they tried to recoup on the lore by having another game in the same setting.
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Sep 6, 2023 20:37
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I always heard it was a pretty good game, though?
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Sep 6, 2023 20:39
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credburn posted:I always heard it was a pretty good game, though? It had the bones of a decent game - combat was fun enough, and it looked good, but the quests were the most banal "Get 10 goblin ears" or whatever, the crafting system was absolutely busted making any treasures or rewards you found useless, plus there just was not enough actual content to support its length.
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Sep 6, 2023 20:43
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credburn posted:I always heard it was a pretty good game, though? It's a decent but shallow action RPG that sits in an uncomfortable middle ground where whether you play RPGs for exploration, loot, progression or story, there's a hundred options that do it better. I had fun with it, but it's always kinda hard to recommend over something else.
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Sep 6, 2023 20:43
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Breetai posted:Genuine question, is this usage of the word anymore part of the American vernacular, because what the gently caress? I mean I'm from the hellscape that is Ohio, I'm not sure you can judge the rest of America by how we talk
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Sep 6, 2023 21:02
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credburn posted:I always heard it was a pretty good game, though? It is aggressively average. It goes out of it's way to not do anything better or worse than "just ok"
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Sep 6, 2023 21:19
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credburn posted:I always heard it was a pretty good game, though? I mostly latched onto it because I had just finished the Fable games and was super into that type of combat system. The chakrams were cool weapons!
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Sep 6, 2023 23:19
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It had some unique lore, like Fate being a very real thing that everyone knows exists and that nobody is immune to. If someone was fated to die on a day, they were going to absolutely die on that day with nothing being able to stop it. Which tied into the villain army of evil fae. Since fae are fated to always be reborn when they are killed, their army had infinite soldiers. So the good guys set out to develop a way to resurrect the dead. Since no mortal is fated to be resurrected after death, if someone can be forcibly brought back then they will be outside of Fate and can break it. They succeed, which results in the player character being brought back to life at the start of the game. Making the player a Jesus analog, but a Jesus that can stop fated deaths and permanently kill fae. It's not ultra high fantasy, but it's entertaining.
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Sep 6, 2023 23:47
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Opopanax posted:AoM is fun, but only for an hour or so once you realize you've seen all there is to see Yeah I enjoyed what I played of it and even laughed at a couple of the gags but I just… never felt a need to go back. It doesn’t get the hooks in.
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Sep 7, 2023 03:16
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I think Agents of Mayhem could've had a really good sequel. Voliton's franchises always hit their stride with the second installment after the first one lays down a decent foundation, and AoM did have a pretty interesting foundation. I've always thought its biggest struggle was just that it wasn't enough like anything else on the market that it could be directly compared, but wasn't good enough at being an entirely unique thing to escape people trying to make comparisons. That sorta just led to lackluster response across the board, not because the game was bad (it was like, a 6 or 7/10) but because it never found an audience, if said audience even existed anywhere. It feels like the lower-budget game you'd get if you liked the bigger, better thing it was similar to enough to want more like it afterwards... but that bigger, better game doesn't exist. Cleretic has a new favorite as of 03:52 on Sep 7, 2023 |
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Sep 7, 2023 03:47
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In dialogue screens in Starfield, when two NPCs talk to each other they'll keeping staring at you. It's weirdly uncomfortable. Also characters talk over each other all the time, even when the dialogue is plot relevant.
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Sep 7, 2023 10:51
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grittyreboot posted:In dialogue screens in Starfield, when two NPCs talk to each other they'll keeping staring at you. It's weirdly uncomfortable. It's been like this for 20 years and is now one of the premier features of Bethesda games.
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Sep 7, 2023 11:18
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Vic posted:It's been like this for 20 years and is now one of the premier features of Bethesda games. Just before you said "Bethesda games" you turned on a dime toward me and I zoomed in on your face.
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Sep 7, 2023 13:10
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Vic posted:It's been like this for 20 years and is now one of the premier features of Bethesda games. when it breaks, it breaks hard though. like i've seen times they've tried to not do that in a lot of fallout 4 and it just doesn't fuckin work. yeah, creation engine is old and bad but i can't blame them for doing what works in it even if it's awkward.
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Sep 7, 2023 13:14
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So Starfield... pretty decent for a playthrough if I go into it expecting a Bethesda game then? Because most of the complaints seem to be "It's a Bethesda game, for everything that entails". Do I have to look for a kidnapped potatochild, or am I free of having to play "Find the family member"? Speaking of things dragging a game down: "Have you seen my son/father, Shaun/James?"
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Sep 7, 2023 13:31
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The ugly grey/green filter over everything in Starfield is driving me crazy. I thought I'd get used to it, but after 5 hours or so every dark environment looks like a grey mess. There's not even a brightness/gamma shader to fiddle with 
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Sep 7, 2023 13:36
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The story so far from what I've played is 'you dig up an alien artifact and get some kind of vision, so a group of explorers recruit you into them to hunt for more of them and solve the mystery of where they came from'. Any back story stuff for your character comes from the background and traits you set in character creation and come up in dialogue or some semi-unique random events.
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Sep 7, 2023 13:37
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Veotax posted:The story so far from what I've played is 'you dig up an alien artifact and get some kind of vision, so a group of explorers recruit you into them to hunt for more of them and solve the mystery of where they came from'. I mean I like Mass Effect 1 probably more than most, but I don't know why you're bringing it up in this conversation about an entirely different game
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Sep 7, 2023 13:42
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Lobok posted:Just before you said "Bethesda games" you turned on a dime toward me and I zoomed in on your face. NPCs when your Karma is maxed out but you keep stealing everyone's poo poo 
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Sep 7, 2023 13:43
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Starfield chat: Heller is a cutie and it's a shame he's not a proper companion npc. Hell yeah dude, I'd love to see your rock collection. (And thanks for giving me the pretty rock you just picked up.) Also the whole 'mediocre no-man's-sky' chunk of the game actively annoys me every time I accidentally start engaging with it again. I tried one of the survey quests Constellation has as a separate category, and it was the dullest loving poo poo, just running around for kilometers on the ground. Having to hop around to new locations multiple times to hope that one of the features spawned close by, etc.
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Sep 7, 2023 14:04
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kazil posted:Amalur perfectly encapsulates "collect 10 bear asses" It really doesn't though? I know I have weirder standards than most and I'm not saying the quest design is otherwise superlative, but somehow this claim always comes up about the game and it only makes sense if you really stretch the definition of "fetch quest". Or I guess morseo the bear rear end part, which means something even more specific and doesn't actually come up much in the game. Also  at the game being described as generic fantasy. Again, not winning any awards, but it's...just plainly not 1:1 cliche Tolkien poo poo?
John Murdoch has a new favorite as of 14:40 on Sep 7, 2023 |
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Sep 7, 2023 14:36
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John Murdoch posted:It really doesn't though? I know I have weirder standards than most and I'm not saying the quest design is otherwise superlative, but somehow this claim always comes up about the game and it only makes sense if you really stretch the definition of "fetch quest". Or I guess morseo the bear rear end part, which means something even more specific and doesn't actually come up much in the game. "10 bear asses" is the generic white guy of fetch quests, it's just used as short-hand to describe a quest where you kill X amount of enemies to get their drops, then turn in the drops for a quest. There are a number of non-generic quests in Amalur, but there are also just a lot of quests in general, and a not-insignificant amount of them are pretty bog-standard.
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Sep 7, 2023 14:57
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Hearing Jim Cummings's voice so early in the game is pretty much what made me jump off it.
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Sep 7, 2023 14:58
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John Murdoch posted:It really doesn't though? I know I have weirder standards than most and I'm not saying the quest design is otherwise superlative, but somehow this claim always comes up about the game and it only makes sense if you really stretch the definition of "fetch quest". Or I guess morseo the bear rear end part, which means something even more specific and doesn't actually come up much in the game. Admittedly, I haven't played through the entire game in a long, long time. But I did play some of the Rereckoning version recently. The first several hours are loaded with quests that are "kill a bunch of bandits" or "collect a bunch of enemy drops". And as Morpheus said, there are just so, so many quests in Amalur. And while it's not a 1:1 Tolkien fantasy, it is still pretty generic.
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Sep 7, 2023 15:03
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I think I've got about 4 hours in Starfield now and so far: I did the intro, one fight at the end on planet and one spacefight (god the space fighting is so bad) Got sent to another another planet to meet people, had to stop on my way to take care of some pirates on a base, so that's one 'dungeon' with a couple of small fights and a speech check at the end. Went to meet the people I'm supposed to meet. Did some fetch quests on that planet, got bored so advanced the story. Snuck past some pirates in space to get to a satellite which led me to a space station, which I'm currently making my way through just fighting randoms and I'm . So. loving. Bored. That's like 3 proper encounters in more hours, and everything so far feels underwhelming. Every element feels cribbed from other games that did them better, so it's all a reminder that I could be playing those games instead. It all feels dated. Like 10-15 years ago I would've enjoyed it I think, but now it feels like an old game I modded to look pretty. Also the story and characters have completely failed to hook me so far. I've got a forced companion now who's super generic and boring and I can't wait to get rid of her, but I don't know if I'm going to get to that point because the incentive to keep playing just isn't there.
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Sep 7, 2023 15:31
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Morpheus posted:"10 bear asses" is the generic white guy of fetch quests, it's just used as short-hand to describe a quest where you kill X amount of enemies to get their drops, then turn in the drops for a quest. I know the term, but to me it speaks to a specific style of lovely padded MMO quest design where the goal is to harvest 10 bear asses, but mysteriously only one out of so many will actually drop them. A time-filling grind. Amalur's quests are still simplistic and generic, yeah, but best I can remember very few if any are really grindy in that particular way. And the ones that are explicitly that actually get their own subcategory in the quest log. It's also a term that only ever seems to crop up these days in direct reference to Amalur, usually alongside the still ever-present confusion about it allegedly being an offline MMO.  Prolly doesn't help that regardless of what Amalur "really" is, it's extremely, flagrantly post-WoW nonetheless.
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Sep 7, 2023 15:47
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Though maybe the other trick of it is that in my experience most of the filler quests in Amalur were pretty intelligently designed. You might get "kill 10 spiders" tacked on at the end of a list of new quests but conspicuously one of the other quests would often be something like "go into the spider's lair dungeon and kill the spider queen" or "save so and so from a spider attack" (and then so and so would probably extend the quest and say his brother got taken by the spiders to the very same dungeon). The kill quest itself still isn't clever or interesting but it's also not obtrusive; nothing's forcing you to stop adventuring and just farm spider butts.
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Sep 7, 2023 16:09
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Another Bethesda-ism: Writing 1 specific line, and then having multiple voice actors repeat it verbatim. It's pretty typical of them to just have a pool of specific lines that all the incidental voice actors will say. I'm currently on a space cruise. Over the course of the last 2 minutes or so, 4 different characters/voices have repeated the exact same line about how 'it would be nice with an open bar, but of course trident is gouging us for every credit they can.' It's a bespoke line that is -probably- only used in this exact, unique, faction mission. And they still did the 'eh have every character repeat it and 2 other canned sentences' thing. Walking through a ballroom, having half a dozen generic npcs repeat 'Are you here for business, or pleasure?' takes it to the point where they feel like a parody of themselves. (I think there's 4 or 5 lines that get repeated constantly by every single npc in the room.) I'd forgive a lot more in the game if it had just given me a ME1-Mako equivalent to bounce glitchily around on the planet surface with.
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Sep 7, 2023 16:13
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Looking to protect yourself, or deal some damage?
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Sep 7, 2023 16:19
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I still haven't played enough to have a real opinion on it, because the game has some particular performance issues. Once it gets going, it runs perfectly fine on my machine until it has to load something extra, then everything just freezes for a bit. That feels like it could be solved by moving it from the regular hard drive to the ssd, but the Microsoft gaming environment is continuing to be its usual trashfire and getting in the way. I spent yesterday evening shuffling things around to get the game into the ssd, and then suddenly the gaming app doesn't think it's installed any more. Even though that's where it's supposed to install things in the first place by default. I dunno whether to delete and try reinstalling there again from the start, I'm just kinda tired of dealing with the game already, and I haven't even gotten farther than goofing around a bit past the character creation menu 
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Sep 7, 2023 16:24
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Don’t play Bethesda games
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Sep 7, 2023 16:26
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more like oldpainless
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Sep 7, 2023 16:36
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oldpainless posted:Don’t play Bethesda games
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Sep 7, 2023 16:41
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The Saints Row reboot is on PS Plus and I was annoyed just starting it up where it gives like 6 options for resolution and framerate.
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Sep 7, 2023 18:51
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