|
Prototype 2 fixed nearly all of the problems I had with the first one. Rockets had laser sights so you knew when one would be coming off screen, and now you can reflect them back! And then they expanded the types of infected enemies so the challenge was more even. The story wasn't as good in my opinion, and the red zone was a bit dreary and bland, but it was pretty good about recognizing what dragged down the original and fixing it.
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2016 02:34
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 5, 2024 11:30 |
|
|
Ugly In The Morning posted:Prototype 2 fixed nearly all of the problems I had with the first one. Rockets had laser sights so you knew when one would be coming off screen, and now you can reflect them back! And then they expanded the types of infected enemies so the challenge was more even. It also had a sense of humor about it and there was a thermobaric rocket launcher dlc weapon that loving rocked because it would gently caress everything up in a three block radius with a mixture of physics and fire. It was the best game to just listen to podcasts and tune the world out.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2016 02:38
|
|
|
It's hard to make the player feel meaningfully powerful, because you only have much of a sense of power if the things you're fighting and beating still feel like they're a threat--and it's hard to make them feel like a threat if the player is strong enough to easily beat them. If the game is always easy then getting stronger doesn't feel like it means anything. It's something dragon's dogma and to a lesser extent fallout 4 actually do really well. In DD nothing scales to you at all, so the things that gave you trouble at the start of the game become easier and easier as time goes on, which makes you feel like you're becoming buff and awesome when you go back and curbstomp a cockatrice, which used to feel dangerous and intimidating. Fallout 4 doesn't scale areas that you have already discovered so it has roughly the same effect. If the cockatrice never felt like it was a real threat then you wouldn't feel cool and powerful when you can walk all over it. The danger is swinging too far either way, because at either extreme you end up feeling less powerful, and a lot of games get it wrong.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2016 02:43
|
|
|
Tiggum posted:High point is either SR2 or Gat Out of Hell, depending on your personal preference. SR3 was worth getting when it came out, but I would no longer recommend it at all. High point was SR4 and its complete descent into self-parody in spite of its radical change in gameplay, and the only things worthwhile in SR2 were its story (lukewarm, but better than average for a GTA game) and its attention to detail. Literally everything in its mechanics, unlocks, and side jobs was hot garbage and none of it outside of its humor and little details should be praised. SR2 is a mediocre game made extremely enjoyable almost exclusively by IdolNinja and GOTR. I tried playing it again recently without mods and could not loving do it, it is a series of fantastic character-narrative diamonds sitting in an open-world of poo poo gameplay. The only reason anybody should play 1, 2, and 3 is to properly appreciate how good SR4 actually is 
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2016 02:58
|
|
|
Digirat posted:It's hard to make the player feel meaningfully powerful, because you only have much of a sense of power if the things you're fighting and beating still feel like they're a threat--and it's hard to make them feel like a threat if the player is strong enough to easily beat them. If the game is always easy then getting stronger doesn't feel like it means anything. It's something dragon's dogma and to a lesser extent fallout 4 actually do really well. In DD nothing scales to you at all, so the things that gave you trouble at the start of the game become easier and easier as time goes on, which makes you feel like you're becoming buff and awesome when you go back and curbstomp a cockatrice, which used to feel dangerous and intimidating. Fallout 4 doesn't scale areas that you have already discovered so it has roughly the same effect. The worst way to do it is to take away or limit abilities for the sake of difficulty, which is unfortunately really prevalent in games. Prototype is a pretty big offender, not only is there an entire chapter of the game where you lose all your upgrades but its idea of difficulty is just putting up more virus detectors and super soldiers so you can't actually use your cool powers. Psi-ops was another really unfortunate case of that, the first half of the game is amazing because of how you can use your psychic powers to utterly demolish the armies of grunts in your way, but then they add supersolders that are immune to your powers and it becomes a boring shooter. e. death .cab for qt posted:the only things worthwhile in SR2 were its story (lukewarm, but better than average for a GTA game) and its attention to detail. Literally everything in its mechanics, unlocks, and side jobs was hot garbage and none of it outside of its humor and little details should be praised. SR2 was actually amazing and fun to play at the time it came out, especially right after GTAIV wound up being a humorless slog of a game. If it doesn't hold up almost a decade and three sequels later that's hardly the game's fault. Sleeveless has a new favorite as of 03:02 on Mar 2, 2016 |
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2016 02:59
|
|
|
Yeah taking away your crap or making it useless for most of the game happens way too often. If you want parts of the game that are meant to be tackled without some functionality, then those parts of the game should probably come before you get that functionality, or at least have some kind of limit to its power that the player can understand and will expect ahead of time. Otherwise it feels like you've been robbed of your cool gear. Some people hate the way metroid prime and metroid prime 2 took away your abilities at the start of the game but I think they hit a perfect balance, where they needed to explain why samus doesn't have all her abilities from previous games but they make you lose it less than an hour into the games, so you only get more powerful from there. In metroid your power basically translates to how many places you can get to, and it's pretty much a straight path with no diversions to the point where you lose your abilities, so I never felt like I was being robbed of something I'd earned.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2016 03:11
|
|
|
Lunchmeat Larry posted:Prototype was really fun but god I hated Infamous. All the powers just felt like superpower-themed variants on cover shooter weapons and that's pretty much how you had to play most of it. I wanted more superpower fun and got a pretty bad third-person shooter. Infamous 2 felt so much better just with the addition of a melee button and a better focus on movement powers, really.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2016 03:41
|
|
|
My first Saints row game was SR4. Good points: I loved playing Crackdown, and for the most part SR4 was the true spiritual successor to Crackdown. Bad points: having not played any of the previous games, absolutely nothing (and I mean NOTHING) made any loving sense. Every single story arc, plot line, character, and set was obviously a shout out or nod to a previous game often to the point of absurdity. I had to read the history of the franchise just to figure out what the hell was going on and to even grasp 99% of the jokes that weren't obvious "scary Movie" style parodies of pop culture and video games. All in all though, worth the slog through the humor and plot just to play Crackdown set in a new city.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2016 04:06
|
|
Their flashing tongues, spitting out blood and poison.
|
Saints Row 4 models the White House with surprising accuracy and then doesn't let you, the President, use it as a crib.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2016 04:22
|
|
|
malal posted:My first Saints row game was SR4. I loved 4 BECAUSE of those throwbacks, and didn't realize how people who never played a SR game before would look at it. Which I assume is like, "why is this Gat guy such a big deal?" Or "why the gently caress is there a second, stoner, Shaundi?" I played 2 before 1, 1's mechanics are so bad that you're better off watching a play through. 2 is kick rear end. 3 is poo poo. 3 drags SR down. gently caress 3.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2016 04:42
|
|
|
gohuskies posted:For whatever reason my experience was the opposite, it ran just fine on my XP desktop and years later it was unplayable on a 10 laptop. I'm sure there are hardware differences that contributed to it but just a part of the mess that is SR2 on PC. razorrozar posted:I really like SR4 but Prototype and inFAMOUS did the open-world superhero gameplay so much better. MisterBibs posted:The thing that dragged down SR3 (and to lesser degree, 4) is that my first foray into the series was 3. All the pathos about Gat (his death, his return) didn't work for me, because it's just some dude. Same reason why I never played Gat Out of Hell. Action Tortoise posted:3 was my first saints row game. The story definitely feels off when you don't know who all these people are and why Johnnys death is such a big deal. It was fun to play through once, and it's got some good qualities, but the things it does well are done better by 2 and 4, and overall it's just fairly incoherent and not worth playing since the rest of the series exists.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2016 05:13
|
|
|
It was hard to get a good rampage going in Saints Row 4 as you progressed in the story and cleared the map. The heavy killbots and those tripods that could only be attacked from behind replaced grunts if you got any appreciable notoriety, rather than appear alongside of them, which made kill-based challenges and achievements a drag. If you're an obsessive completionist like me, getting the achievement that involves buying every weapon upgrade in Gat Out of Hell cost way, way more money than you'd get in the course of doing every mission and activity. Plus the ending for doing every activity tells the story of the Saints and their allies in Hell fighting an alliance of the previous games' villains, which would be a totally awesome thing to play in the game.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2016 05:36
|
|
Dr Christmas posted:It was hard to get a good rampage going in Saints Row 4 as you progressed in the story and cleared the map. The heavy killbots and those tripods that could only be attacked from behind replaced grunts if you got any appreciable notoriety, rather than appear alongside of them, which made kill-based challenges and achievements a drag. This is my single biggest issue with 4. They also quickly replace the basic grunts with the higher tier Sergent dudes which is just kind of a bummer. I really wish they had more than one faction for notoriety in that game, and I hoped they would after the SR2 throwback poo poo started up. EDIT: And then you either have to kill a stupid boss or catch a golden snitch to end your notoriety too. The snitch thing was silly and fun at first because "man that's a goofy reference" but then it happens like every few minutes early on in the game and it wears out its novelty. Nuebot has a new favorite as of 06:39 on Mar 2, 2016 |
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2016 05:58
|
|
|
Dr Christmas posted:It was hard to get a good rampage going in Saints Row 4 as you progressed in the story and cleared the map. The heavy killbots and those tripods that could only be attacked from behind replaced grunts if you got any appreciable notoriety, rather than appear alongside of them, which made kill-based challenges and achievements a drag. Yeah, the enemies outside of missions are pretty poo poo in that game. And the killbots are poo poo even within missions sometimes (specifically the Asha rescue mission) because they're just too bullet-spongey. The main issue though is how quickly your notoriety increases. There's even some weirdness with certain weapons seeming to raise it extra fast (specifically, I found racking up kills with the inflato-ray to be practically impossible since each one would give you a huge notoriety boost).
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2016 06:38
|
|
|
Counterpoint: There is a dubstep gun.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2016 07:09
|
|
|
So I was playing Spelunky and finally got the 'Low Scorer' achievement (finish the game without collecting any treasure). Good grief, the game goes out its way to gently caress you over at every turn. The main problem is that there are large parts of the game where its super hard to see the gold lying on the ground at all, in the jungle the ground is usually covered in grass that obscures the gold, in the temple there are big pillars that make it very hard to see whats behind them and worst of all are the ice caves, where you can randomly get levels that are covered in a coating of snow that make it nigh impossible to see whats underneath, you basically have to trust that you'll be exceptionally lucky and not hit any gold at all. And that's not to mention the dark levels where you can barely see anything without the torch, but bringing the torch can be risky since it will light background lamps that will vomit up a little gold and potentially ruin a run. I bring it up because its something that at first seems pretty small but ultimately makes what's otherwise a pretty neat challenge unduly frustrating, and there's no way to turn the visual noise that makes it so tough down a notch. Also sometimes exploding frogs and mines activated by events off screen can send little chunks of gold flying at you at high speed without you having done anything to cause that, which is not cool 
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2016 08:29
|
|
|
khwarezm posted:So I was playing Spelunky and finally got the 'Low Scorer' achievement (finish the game without collecting any treasure). Are you complaining about an intentionally difficult achievement in an already hard game? Low Scorer is supposed to be unfair. Welcome to Roguelikes.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2016 08:59
|
|
|
SavTargaryen posted:Are you complaining about an intentionally difficult achievement in an already hard game? Low Scorer is supposed to be unfair. Welcome to Roguelikes. This is pretty stupid. The complaints I have aren't about difficulty in general, the nature of low scorer is already extremely difficult since it effectively means each run has way more hazards than they would otherwise since you can't pick up even the smallest bit of gold, and the fact that you don't have any money means you can't use any of the shops at all, unless you manage to kill the shopkeeper without spilling any gold on what you want, which is unlikely. Its more that the game does a poor job accommodating the run, the snowy ice cave levels were particularly bad since its quite possible that you literally cannot see gold that's on a block at all, playing that kind of random guessing game is neither skillful or gratifying. And its not like the game doesn't make accommodations for other runs, one of the other tough achievements is speedlunky, where you finish the game in eight minutes or less, but there if you finish a level in less than twenty seconds they made it so that its guaranteed that the next level will not be a dark level so you can keep up the pace and not get bogged down unable to see where you're going.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2016 10:08
|
|
|
SavTargaryen posted:Are you complaining about an intentionally difficult achievement in an already hard game? Low Scorer is supposed to be unfair. Welcome to Roguelikes. Maybe it's difficult but badly designed and whether it's intentional or not doesn't make it any less badly designed
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2016 10:13
|
|
Digirat posted:Counterpoint: There is a dubstep gun. But this is the dragging things down topic not pyf little things. I loving love the second dubstep gun though, where you can kill dudes with polka music.
|
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2016 10:53
|
|
|
rear end Creed 4: No game has ever been improved by forcing you to interact with French-Canadians.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2016 11:43
|
|
Inspector Gesicht posted:rear end Creed 4: No game has ever been improved by forcing you to interact with French-Canadians. I dunno, I'd like a game where I could stab some french canada.
|
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2016 11:58
|
|
|
Thin Privilege posted:I loved 4 BECAUSE of those throwbacks, and didn't realize how people who never played a SR game before would look at it. Which I assume is like, "why is this Gat guy such a big deal?" Or "why the gently caress is there a second, stoner, Shaundi?" SR4 was my first (and only) Saint's Row game and while I didn't immediately understand a lot of the references, a lot of poo poo was REALLY easy to pick up just from context. This isn't exactly the most impenetrable story in gaming.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2016 14:44
|
|
|
Tiggum posted:The story feels off anyway. It was really common for people to not even realise Johnny was dead until much later in the game because of how badly it was handled, and there's all sorts of nonsensical stuff like Angel saying he can't just steal his mask back but has to earn it, followed by a mission in which you help him steal it back. The story overall almost makes sense if you play it in a certain order, but there's nothing telling you to do it that way so you get bits that seem to be out of sequence, or the plot seems to arbitrarily shift from one thing to another. Even playing it the "optimal" way there's just not enough for all the characters to do, so several of them seem unnecessary. i forgot about angel. i remember oleg and sasha grey but not the hulk hogan luchador who was only there for like a few missions and a talladega nights reference.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2016 15:02
|
|
|
It's especially weird because one of the game's main enemies is his rival so you'd think he would be more important.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2016 15:22
|
|
|
Action Tortoise posted:i forgot about angel. i remember oleg and sasha grey but not the hulk hogan luchador who was only there for like a few missions and a talladega nights reference. Sasha Grey was in SR3? 
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2016 15:49
|
|
|
razorrozar posted:Sasha Grey was in SR3?
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2016 15:51
|
|
|
razorrozar posted:I really like SR4 but Prototype and inFAMOUS did the open-world superhero gameplay so much better. Infamous Second Son is awesome but the thing dragging it down is I played First Light first and that game's Neon power set is so much more fluid than anything in SS that it was hard to get used to. Especially SS's neon powers. First Light might be my favorite game on the PS4.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2016 15:56
|
|
|
Nuebot posted:But this is the dragging things down topic not pyf little things. I loving love the second dubstep gun though, where you can kill dudes with polka music. Also the Christmas one that shoots dubstep Christmas music. I really wish it was possible to mod in your own music for the dubstep gun instead of buying tracks as DLC though.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2016 16:51
|
|
|
Sleeveless posted:Also the Christmas one that shoots dubstep Christmas music. I'd be happy if they let you use the in-game tracks. Flying Spaghetti Monster would be perfect.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2016 16:56
|
|
|
RBA Starblade posted:Infamous Second Son is awesome but the thing dragging it down is I played First Light first and that game's Neon power set is so much more fluid than anything in SS that it was hard to get used to. Especially SS's neon powers. First Light might be my favorite game on the PS4. I'd just settle for a bit more balance among the powers. Smoke is extremely weak, video is almost comically overpowered, neon tries to bridge the gap, and why even both with concrete when it only has 3/4 of the moves of the others and can only be regenerated from (increasingly scarce) DUP enemies.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2016 17:11
|
|
Sleeveless posted:Also the Christmas one that shoots dubstep Christmas music. Oh here's my little thing for SR4 again: I never managed to finish the christmas DLC because it broke.  Santa and the Boss just got launched up into the sky and wound up outside the skybox with no way to get back down.
|
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2016 00:43
|
|
|
All the DLC is buggy as poo poo for SR4.
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2016 01:09
|
|
|
Same for 3.
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2016 02:45
|
|
|
So in Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth there's this boss you fight with an AI partner. Halfway through the fight he busts out a one hit kill move that gives him a free turn. He uses that free turn to use the one hit kill move again until you have one dude left. You're expected to duel this rear end in a top hat one on one. The problem is that every loving boss in this game has way too much HP. It's like whoever was designing this, even on normal mode, just gave everything twice as much HP as it should have had. To the point where you can be fighting something that hits you for 16 damage and you're hitting it for over 400 a turn, but you're still only doing like 5% of its health bar with each attack. So now you're stuck fighting this strong guy who instantly kills all but one of your guys every time and while he's not going to kill you any time soon, the fight is going to take forever because he has more health than god. EDIT: there's another one like an hour later that not only has an obscene amount of health but continually buffs its speed so it gets five attacks for every one of yours. Any other game I'd assume this is a level issue, but my dudes are so over levelled I'm one shotting everything except the bosses. Nuebot has a new favorite as of 12:55 on Mar 3, 2016 |
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2016 11:15
|
|
|
Nuebot posted:He has more health than god. Already been mentioned a million times but this is the same as Binding of Isaac. Last 20 times I've fought Ultra Greed I've been hit by his attacks maybe 3 times but each fight takes about 20 minutes of me slowly chipping away at his health. It's not fun. It's not a challenge. It's just loving boring now. In Stardew Valley your sword swing directly in front of you no matter where you click (Unlike any other tool where you can click in all 8 directions around you) where this really fucks you over is there are bats/flies that have a kind of knockback arc, where when you hit them they can fly off to the side and circle around to your back and you have to physically move in the direction to face them. If you're trapped between a rock and a hard place(another enemy) you're going to get hit. Small thing, doesn't really bother me TOO much but still...
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2016 12:20
|
|
|
Nuebot posted:So in Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth there's this boss you fight with an AI partner. Halfway through the fight he busts out a one hit kill move that gives him a free turn. He uses that free turn to use the one hit kill move again until you have one dude left. You're expected to duel this rear end in a top hat one on one. Just adding a fuckton more HP than is fun is the classic fallback of bad game design. Maybe they ran out of time to design a good fight, or they genuinely believe that more time spent chipping away at some ridiculous health bar means it's challenging. It isn't challenging, it's just tedious. Most of the time with enemies like that you either lose through sheet attrition or maybe even just get loving bored and stop giving a poo poo and maybe even give up entirely because you're so bored. ChogsEnhour posted:Already been mentioned a million times but this is the same as Binding of Isaac. Last 20 times I've fought Ultra Greed I've been hit by his attacks maybe 3 times but each fight takes about 20 minutes of me slowly chipping away at his health. It's not fun. It's not a challenge. It's just loving boring now. Ugh god, Afterbirth just added bosses with inflated HP pools in general. Hush and Ultra Greed especially, but new bosses in general just have way too much HP to be fun. The bosses are actually pretty fun, but not fun enough to fight forever.
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2016 12:26
|
|
|
Slime posted:Ugh god, Afterbirth just added bosses with inflated HP pools in general. Hush and Ultra Greed especially, but new bosses in general just have way too much HP to be fun. The bosses are actually pretty fun, but not fun enough to fight forever. Oh wow, that makes sense. I though I'd just been getting poo poo pick-ups. It's crazy though how some bosses used to be an instant game-over are now just trivial, but boring slogs. Monstro 2 used to ruin me but like Ultra Greed I barely ever get hit these days.
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2016 12:46
|
|
|
Slime posted:Just adding a fuckton more HP than is fun is the classic fallback of bad game design. Maybe they ran out of time to design a good fight, or they genuinely believe that more time spent chipping away at some ridiculous health bar means it's challenging. It isn't challenging, it's just tedious. Most of the time with enemies like that you either lose through sheet attrition or maybe even just get loving bored and stop giving a poo poo and maybe even give up entirely because you're so bored. Hush and Ultra Greed both scale their HP to your attack power to prevent you getting a godly combination and taking them down quickly. They're supposed to take the same amount of punishment from you no matter how strong you are. Good in theory, I guess, but not executed very well.
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2016 15:17
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 5, 2024 11:30 |
|
|
That's not even good in theory. "This boss will take 400 hits to kill, regardless of how powerful the player is" is a terrible idea on its face.
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2016 15:20
|
|
