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I've picked up Just Cause 2 again recently, and realied something: Just Cause 2 is the only open-world game with vehicles that actually has useful planes.
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Jun 9, 2014 01:32
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This was staring me in the face for a while, sicne I play the game so much, but I just remembered something really clever about Civilization V that the Yogscast stumbled onto in one of their games of it. In rankings compared to other civs, the technological rating is typically 'Literacy', which tells you how much of the tech tree you've completed as a percentage. It's mostly a flat translation; if you've researched a fifth of the technologies in the game, it reads as 20%. Unless you haven't researched Writing yet. Then, no matter how much you've researched, it's at 0%. Because of course it is, your people are illiterate.
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Jun 11, 2014 16:34
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scarycave posted:Also, I like how the final bosses actually have an elemental/family weakness. Most RPGs I've played will have a final boss with no weakness/resistances so its a nice change of pace. This is something that Final Fantasy's never shied away from, which is always nice; usually, at least parts of the final boss have fairly easily targeted weaknesses. My personal favorite is that the final boss of FFXIII isn't immune to instant death.
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Jun 21, 2014 15:40
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bunnyofdoom posted:Is that vanilla, or enemy within? All the elements he's describing are form Enemy Within (and the guy in purple onlyw ears that because he's gene-modded), but the base game still has the soldiers chilling out with each other in the base.
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Jun 22, 2014 06:38
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Dark Souls II is pretty good, but so far while playing it I haven't been able to shake the feeling that it just isn't quite as good as the predecessor. Its mechanical changes are great, with a bunch of little elements that would fit into this thread (I absolutely adore how they handled Hollowing), but the level, encounter and boss designs seem to fall a bit short. Until I met the boss that knocked it so far out of the loving park that it might be my favorite boss in either game so far. The Skeleton Lords was such an awesome experience that I was grinning ear to ear the whole way through. The finale is far and away the best part, though: After fighting three giant lordly skeletons with different weapons, and a horde of smaller skeletons, the last thing it whips out: a half-dozen Bonewheels, the best enemies from the original! And an unrelated little thing I loved, the est trap I've ever seen: a door that opens to a bottomless pit. Nothing else, jut a death drop. You're practically guaranteed to die to it, but it's too hilarious to get mad about.The fact that sucha brutal, harsh game has a trap that cartoonish in it is fantastic.
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Jul 17, 2014 15:59
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Babe Magnet posted:I was looking up Otogi recently because I remembered it being one of my favorite games, and I made the shocking discovery that it was published by the same people that published half of my favorite games from back in the day. Echo Night, Chromehounds, Tenchu, Otogi, and King's Field. From Software's thing seems to be making games with absolutely no regard as to whether or not there's an audience; they're just gonna make this thing, give no regard to market demands, release it, and if you like it then awesome. I think the Souls games hit home because they tapped into something people really wanted, and did it really well. I've never played any of their other games, but it sounded like much the same approach. Cleretic has a new favorite as of 06:39 on Jul 28, 2014 |
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Jul 28, 2014 06:33
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Dark Souls II again. While it does largely aim to be its own thing, it doesn't shy away from referencing the original much at all. One of these instances has the game face you with a series of rickety wooden platforms and ladders, that look ready to collapse at any moment. It's a clear reference to Blighttown, the most hated zone from the original, and while it's fairly short the area is still peppered with player messages of 'This place again!?'. It ends with a chest. So what item could be at the end of a deliberate flashback to the worst part of the original Dark Souls? A one-off weapon from the original, maybe a little trinket reminiscent of what was in the predecessor zone? Nope, it's a minor PvP reward item... a Token of Spite. 
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Jul 30, 2014 15:24
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Nearing the end of Dark Souls II, and it's pulled off a genuinely very, very clever way to subtly direct the player. Near the end of the game, you enter the memories of trees formed out of giant's corpses in the first proper zone in the game. There's three of them accessible, but no clear direction as to where they are... until you find one. They actually form a circuit, silently pointing you towards each other. -One of them is behind a door opened by the King's Ring. It sends you to a memory set near where you fought the Pursuer, the area's second boss. -Near the Pursuer's arena is another one. Its memory is set around the fortress where you first met Pate, the NPC that gives you the white soapstone. -And just around there is where the third giant tree is. Its memory is of somewhere that got thoroughly wrecked in the battle and looks quite different now, but if you're keen-eyed you can still identify it as being around the walls where the King's Ring door now is.
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Aug 6, 2014 17:52
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Mr E posted:On the other hand, this would be better if the bosses after cookies and cream didn't suck. I dunno, I liked most of the bosses after Snorlax and Pikachu. The Bed of Chaos sucked, but everything else was good, even if DS2 outdid both Nito and the Four Kings. EDIT: And I'll defend the Bed of Chaos in theory, if not in practice. It's an interesting use of the game's mechanics. Cleretic has a new favorite as of 02:33 on Aug 14, 2014 |
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Aug 14, 2014 02:29
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RBA Starblade posted:They also took out details like the power beam starting to let off steam if you fire it for long enough. This is specifically only a problem for the original Metroid Prime, because all of those were actually 2D effects since the arm cannon didn't move on the Gamecube version. Prime 2's effects were all 3D models, so its effects remained in Trilogy.
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Aug 15, 2014 01:54
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Tiggum posted:My favourite mirrors that worked were in Duke Nukem 3D, because they worked by duplicating the room on the other side of the glass. That space had to actually exist in the level, and in the level editor you could put stuff in there, which meant you could have stuff that seemed to only be visible in mirrors. I can't find proof while looking right now, but I recall hearing once that one of the levels in Duke Nukem 3D was actually a 520 degree circle, which was done by using similar tricks as the mirrors.
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Aug 25, 2014 07:17
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Kimmalah posted:I thought people were just losing their poo poo about it because of Bungie. Oh, THAT'S what's been confusing me about these two games for months. I could never get straight which one was the Xbox title and which one wasn't, and that was probably because I assumed Bungie was making the Xbox one.
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Sep 14, 2014 02:20
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Taerkar posted:In the earlier games Iron and Steel weapons wouldn't affect many types of creatures but silver would. Silver weapons werea bit weaker than steel so were really only good against the supernatural. I can't speak for games before it (I played Morrowind, but never got to a point where it was relevant), but in Oblivion you could only hurt ghosts and Will-o-the-Wisps with silver, enchanted or daedric weapons. It can really be a bitch in that stretch of the game between when silver gets outclassed damage-wise and when enchantments become commonplace. Spells and summoned weapons work just fine against them, though, so mages can rock them at any stage of the game.
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Sep 24, 2014 15:25
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scarycave posted:Pikmin 3: Whistling at doomed Pikmin that you cannot possibly save, why do I do this? I'm not sure about 3, but at least in the first two this actually helps if they're drowning; non-blue Pikmin struggle in your direction if you whistle at them, which can get them to safety. Your encouragement saved them! 
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Oct 2, 2014 14:19
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RagnarokAngel posted:the nemesis system works just as well as they promised it would Mark this date: The first time a video game developer has actually delivered a full game mechanic that lived up to the hype.
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Oct 3, 2014 02:30
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Alouicious posted:I could hear that a bit, in that case it's Matthew Mercer, who is probably a vampire or something who's been feeding off Baker to gain his voice. He's been voicing Kanji since the second half of the anime's dub, and most people didn't even notice until Arena Ultimax.
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Oct 3, 2014 07:38
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I've talked about Smash Bros 3DS a little in the 'dragging this game down' thread, but it's a Smash Bros game. It's still great, and it's all about the little things. -They expanded the alternate costume choices to eight, which allows them to make some really deep cuts. Ness wears the Magicant patterns, Samus gets both colors of Gravity Suit, Link gets Feirce Deity, Toon Link gets a teal-ish Link Between Worlds tunic... -My favorite deserves a separate point, though: Little Mac was given wireframe costumes, to call back to the original vector Punch-Out. He also has a tracksuit costume. So of course, someone on the development team had the best idea ever, and gave Wireframe Mac a tracksuit costume. -Starman in Smash Run fights exactly like he does in the Mother games... by standing completely stationary and shooting you with psychic powers. -The trophy descriptions are fantastic. Someone seems to have especially had fun with the Mario ones; Thwomp's goes on about how they'd be a great home security system if only we could buy them, and Paragoomba's talks about people's fond memories of dying in two seconds flat against the first Goomba in Super Mario Bros because they forgot to jump. -The Master Ball item is like the Poke Ball, except that it will only ever give you big, useful legendary Pokemon... and Goldeen. -They seem to have really put forward the effort to make every fighter a viable choice this time, even the ones that fell behind. Jigglypuff has her instakill Rest back, Ness' specials are a bit better at their jobs and his yo-yo smashes carry a bit more punch, and Bowser is now so girthy that he doesn't even flinch to attacks until he takes an appreciable amount of damage. -And despite all the new, complicated stuff, this is probably the most user-friendly Smash Bros game. All of the stuff that you wouldn't get at a glance about characters is actually explained in loading screen tips. Cleretic has a new favorite as of 02:28 on Oct 5, 2014 |
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Oct 5, 2014 02:24
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scarycave posted:In Super Smash Bros. when Duck Hunt guards, he covers his eyes. He's seriously the goofiest loving thing and probably my favorite new comer so far. That character made me realize something that really makes this Smash stand above the previous ones; nearly every newcomer (clones excepted) has a 'special' fighting style. They aren't just 'fast light dude' or 'big slow tank', each one is clearly designed to do something with their moveset. For the most part, Smash characters are all pretty straightforward, the most differentiation in playstyle in previous games were the switching characters like Zelda (and most people just ignored that), the Ice Climbers who were weird and sort of hard to understand the intention of, and R.O.B. who was predominantly charging-based. Only a few 'unique' character styles across the entire roster, and it's arguable how well they actually worked. But now with Smash 4 we've got some really impressive variety in moveset direction. Villager and Wii-Fit Trainer are two separate types of setup character, Mega Man has more ranged capability than he has melee, Rosalina's essentially learning from the Ice Climbers' mistakes, Mac's the only guy with a meter, Palutena's built to be customized, Pac-Man's a bit of a 'utlity belt' character, Robin's ammo system completely changes how he approaches fights, Shulk's stat-shifting allows him to change his approach a lot, and Duck Hunt has some pretty good zoning capabilities. I suppose that's a bit major for a 'little thing', but that dawning realization of 'oh my god, these characters have direction' made me realize how much I appreciated this new Smash.
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Oct 6, 2014 16:18
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Captain Lavender posted:I don't really know how "engines" work necessarily; but I've notice that I love almost every game I play with the Havok engine. Havok's a physics engine. The most involved you've probably seen it is in Half-Life 2. I'm pretty sure all of those games run on different game engines, but use Havok for physics. I know Arkham's done with Unreal, but I'm not sure about the rest. So yeah, Havok's not responsible for the quality of those games, but if you had fun kicking debris around in all of them then it is responsible for that.
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Oct 8, 2014 05:55
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My Lovely Horse posted:If you've played Smash Bros. at all and Kirby's taunt isn't seared into your memory from constant use, you and your buddies haven't been doing it right, sorry. My favorite part about this: In every Smash, it's always been a different voice clip for Kirby's 'hiiii!' The same goes for Ness' voice clips; they could recycle and nobody would mind, but they've recorded different 'hiiii!' and 'PK Fire/PK Thunder!' clips for four games straight.
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Oct 10, 2014 04:09
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Heavy Lobster posted:I generally love that they do this, and I really like Kirby's recent clip, but I'm definitely disappointed that Dedede's new voice is just weird monster-y grunts rather than Sakurai making doofy Dedede noises. Also Fox's new voice is miserable, like holy poo poo how did this person ever find voice work bad. Fox's 'new' voice is actually his old voice; that's the original Starfox 64 voice actor, that they brought back for Starfox 64 DS. He's passable enough at straight, calm lines, but he has issues with sounding good when putting forward the energy required of a Smash Bros game. Falco's voice actor, also his original from 64, generally does better. There are some exceptions to their no-recycling in Smash 4, sadly; I'm not sure how many there are, but Zero Suit Samus has the same VA, which is especially weird since everything else about her was revamped.
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Oct 10, 2014 10:49
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Judge Tesla posted:I'd say it's probably down to the massive gap between Starfox 64 and the 3DS/SSB4 versions so his voice had probably changed a lot since then. His voice is a little shakier now in the 3D recordings, but it's still fairly stable. It's probably just the Smash environment that he can't handle; Starfox 64's lines were all pretty neutral, calm sentences unless you're getting shot down, but in Smash he's yelling short clips in the middle of a fight. It's very different, and it's entirely possible that he just didn't quite get a handle on it.
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Oct 10, 2014 15:04
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Edward_Lapine posted:After seeing many references for it and having a friend of mine recommend it, I picked up and started Persona 3 FES. I've played many video games that are from Japanese developers that have a setting in Japan but when the localization team gets ahold of it to translate it into an American/English friendly game a lot of settings, locations, and even cultures/customs get changed to relate more to an American audience. The Phoenix Wright series is a big offender of this and it makes it just seem off. This is probably because Atlus' first attempt at localization, the very first Persona title, actually did try to localize the whole thing into an American setting (and it was just as Japanese as the later Persona games, just for the record). Not only did they fail miserably at that, but it took so long for them to try that they didn't even finish translating/localizing the whole game. They cut a very substantial sidequest from the American release, that probably amounted to a quarter to a third of the game, because they just didn't have time to tackle it.
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Oct 11, 2014 15:13
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MY IMMERSION 
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Cleretic posted:-The trophy descriptions are fantastic. Someone seems to have especially had fun with the Mario ones; Thwomp's goes on about how they'd be a great home security system if only we could buy them, and Paragoomba's talks about people's fond memories of dying in two seconds flat against the first Goomba in Super Mario Bros because they forgot to jump. Bringing this one back up, because the Smash Bros thread has told me something really awesome about it. It turns out that the trophy descriptions in Smash 4 were written by Shigesato Itoi, the man that made the Mother/EarthBound series.
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Oct 12, 2014 15:19
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Every so often I pick up a classic game that I somehow missed, just to expand things a bit. It doesn't always work out--old PC RPGs tend not to fare well--but other times, it does great. Mega Man X was something I'd never played until today, and its wall-jumping is so well done that it has retroactively made every other game I've played with wall jumping worse in comparison.
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Oct 25, 2014 14:46
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The Secret World has consistently and unsurprisingly knocked their Halloween events out of the park, probably because they just use it as an excuse to write a completely independent story set in a world that's already very Halloween-y. This year's new Halloween quest is about number stations, and has you follow one back to its source; the station used to be a Russian message, but recently changed to playing old American radio broadcasts. In every zone in the game is a shortwave radio, playing a different classic radio play. And it's the full thing, too, you can sit by a radio and listen to the entirety of the Shadow People. Emphasis on 'can', you probably shouldn't. Because if you find all of them, you get rewarded with an item that lets you listen to them any time you want, including one that doesn't play on the radios: War of the Worlds. Cleretic has a new favorite as of 09:32 on Nov 3, 2014 |
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Nov 3, 2014 09:30
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Shin Megami Tensei IV finally came out here, and so far it's pretty good, if a little bit weirdly balanced compared to the other Megaten games (it's a little bit easier on you in combat, but compensates for it by being a lot harsher on everything else), but it's still pretty great. A gameplay feature they introduce with one of the first major bosses is mid-fight dialog exchanges, where buffs and/or debuffs are handed out accordingly depending on the choices you made. The best part, though, is that you're introduced to this when a minotaur delivers a burn so sick that your Spirit Points (mana) go down because of just how demoralizing that insult was. Sure, it was a bit of an arbitrary thing to lose to, but I just got served by a minotaur.
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Nov 5, 2014 14:47
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Jmcrofts posted:My favorite little thing about this mission is the music - I think this is the first time in the game that they play this track I know it plays in at least one other area: the beach during the Yakushima trip. Operation Babe Hunt is exactly as serious.
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Nov 25, 2014 10:04
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CJacobs posted:Then there's the classic "Mario decides not to save the world and instead goes back to bed". Wish more games had that just as a comedy option. I understand the complaints about Super Paper Mario, but I genuinely just couldn't hate that game when I started playing it with a friend and he tripped that ending entirely because he thought it was funny that he was allowed to keep saying no.
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Nov 26, 2014 09:33
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Mierenneuker posted:Judging by books in Oblivion, Morrowind went to complete poo poo after the events of the game. But on the upside, that guy you arrived with on the boat to Morrowind went on to personally kill every single Cliff Racer, before retiring to a nice, peaceful life in... Well, Kvatch. But Morrowind was happy!
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Dec 8, 2014 09:48
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scamtank posted:Everything about New Vegas makes me think they designed the game for the Fallout 2 engine first and then adapted it into a pile of Bethesda. You're wrong, but not entirely wrong. It was adapted from the original plan for Fallout 3, which was on a self-made third-person RPG engine.
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Dec 14, 2014 00:22
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Phobophilia posted:a better question is how can a crippled autist can even become a merchant a run a shop Wasn't the shop itself run by his dad, and Sandal just did the enchanting?
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Dec 16, 2014 05:18
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Who What Now posted:Speaking of Nocturne and cameos from other games, Dante from DMC appears in Nocturne. He features in the story and is even recruitable. He cannot be fused because he isn't actually the same kind of demon as all the rest and his moveset is unique and based on his abilities in his own game, including the ability to survive any attack with 1 HP remaining (technically he auto-revives). And one of his best moves from DMC, Stinger, deals great damage and can even insta-kill. Awesome. They only got to use Dante for the one release of Nocturne, so when it got re-released later on (I believe only in Japan), Dante was replaced with Raidou Kuzunoha. Raidou's pretty much just Dante with new move names and animations in battle, but they do have entirely new cutscenes. Raidou's completely silent in all of them, because he's a silent protagonist in his own games. Dante doe have a really clever little thing I like, though. The cutscene in which he actually joins you comes down to a coin flip; either you buy his services for an exorbitant amount of money, or for one Macca, depending on if you call the flip right. Dante has a double-headed coin. Nocturne doesn't tell you that, but the DMC games do.
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Dec 22, 2014 05:26
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haveblue posted:Someone (Namco I think) has a patent on that. I think Namco has a patent on full-blown arcade games in the loading screens, but stuff like Platinum's 'training room' loading screens are fair game.
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Dec 30, 2014 14:35
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poonchasta posted:What do either of those references mean? Platinum really likes referencing their previous games. The first one is to the most famous song form Metal Gear Rising, and the latter is a major character's weapon from Wonderful 101.
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Dec 31, 2014 05:25
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I still wish they did more with the Thalmor. They were a neat way to explore and respond to TES' utterly insane cosmology, a cosmology that they clearly wanted to actually explore in Skyrim given how much focus they put on the Elder Scrolls themselves, the dwarves, and the Dragon Breaks.
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Jan 1, 2015 09:39
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I honestly didn't like Skyrim, but I think they hit the right sort of setting for what they should be doing. They don't have the willingness and/or ability to pull another Morrowind, but they have the resources and backdrop to be able to paint some strange pictures. So go ahead, make the setting a generic fantasy of some kind, do that right, and then fill out the sidelines with stuff that's really nuts. That's why I think Summerset both should and will be the next game. The setting is pretty easy, it's a tropical area populated by elves, that'll look great. The base story is pretty simple, too: Oblivion had 'fight hell', Skyrim was 'fight dragons', and the Thalmor would make Summerset a pretty clean-cut 'fight elf nazis'. So we've got an easy base setting, we've got an easy base story, we can go utterly insane with the smaller components, and side-stuff like DLC. Not only is that something Bethesda can do, it's an arguably stronger way to do that weirder stuff for the general audience. It's present enough to grab people like us who are really interested in it, and it creates a unique world for those who aren't aware of it, but it doesn't get in the way of someone who just isn't interested. Plus, since Summerset's population is more magically-focused, they'd probably be inclined to make magic not terrible. That was really the worst part of Skyrim to me, it basically went 'gently caress you' to mages mechanically as hard as the game world did narratively.
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Jan 2, 2015 02:29
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Suitaru posted:Metroid Prime did the Dark Souls style of storytelling years earlier, and better. Read what you want, piece things together (eg. what the final boss actually is beyond The Title Of The Game) - or don't, just go explore and kill things, that's totally cool. Metroid Prime managed to give more character to people who didn't even appear than most games can manage with their main characters. Science Team was fantastic.
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Jan 3, 2015 03:24
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ArtIsResistance posted:Hey man it was nothing compared to the mountainside laser fortress I've been of the opinion for years that Metroid Prime is one of the best games ever, because it's just so good at what it wants to do, it never really falters. It's tough to compare it to Prime 2 in that sense, primarily because of Sanctuary Fortress. That area's exemplary of the fact that when Prime 2 hits the mark, it's absolutely amazing, but it doesn't always hit the mark. The beam ammo system is flawed, and it's got areas like that underwater part of Torvus Bog, that mean that ultimately, it's an imperfect game.
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Jan 3, 2015 08:57
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Neddy Seagoon posted:Isn't there one where they just about state that Science Team or Command are loving morons because of some fuckup or other? Yep! quote:Training Report, 07.200.08
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Jan 3, 2015 13:14
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