Sakurazuka posted:

There are indoor cats???

corn in the bible posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=068AFYvd58E

Phantasium posted:

In lieu of pretending to get sick to play Switch games, I went and actually got sick. Well, poo poo.

Franchescanado posted:

I was gifted two games yesterday, I'd be happy to play either, so I need an outside force to pick which one I play

Should I play Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 3D or Final Fantasy XV?

I've never gone past the Goron section of MM and I haven't played a new FF since X on PS2.

Help Im Alive posted:

I like Guitar Hero Live's control scheme better where it's two rows of 3 buttons

I guess it probably feels slightly closer to the real thing too maybe??? But I've never played a guitar so I don't know (Rocksmith always looked cool to me I don't know if that's still a thing)

StrixNebulosa posted:

Mass Effect, the Witcher....?

Nasgate posted:

I think the Zelda and Horizon comparison is interesting because it really brings forth the graphics vs gameplay debate in a new light. Graphics and Physics engines have both developed to the point where you can't have the best of both worlds.

The first example in those videos is grass but there's a couple interesting things to pinpoint.
1. For every blade of grass in zelda, there's at least 100 in Horizon.
2. The grass flattens before Link steps on it when it's short, which shows that the physics properties were created for the tall grass specifically

Something specificaly disingenuous about the comparisons though, is the camera focus. Horizon's focus is on the world itself, and the angle of the camera reflects that. You can see in the videos that the uploader has to constantly adjust the camera to keep it focused on the girl.
Meanwhile, Zelda is focused on Link interacting with the world. Likewise the Camera focused on Link in the center as the focal point.

As a result, I recall beautiful mountains in Horizon, none in Zelda. I recall the zigzag white stripe on Link's red bandana, and the girl in Horizon has a blue or green hair thing?

Lurdiak posted:

VideoGames posted:

Heheh. I saw this post and then stealth edited the title

FirstAidKite posted:

What's everyone up to this morning?

I'm watching this vid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvSDSuUJzKA

Hopefully by the time it is over, I'll be tired enough to get back to sleep. If not, they've got plenty more vids I can watch.

What about the rest of you, what are you all up to?

CJacobs posted:

You should, they're a really interesting combination of visual media and literature. It's a genre where I would barely classify it as a video game in the traditional sense but not having that label allows them to tell much more in-depth stories than games usually do.

edit: Although they do require a lengthy attention span because if your thoughts trail off while you're playing one you'll just be clicking through the dialogue without really reading it. So if you don't have that then maybe they're not for you, some people don't.

FirstAidKite posted:

Eeeeeeeeeeehhhhhhhh I'd argue these can also be seen as negatives since it leads to less imagination when it comes to picturing what is going on. Also, I feel like books have more freedom in what they can do while the visual aspect of a visual novel seems to hinder it to some extent since everything that happens has to be something that can be, to some degree, shown.

Sakurazuka posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTsaS1Tm-Ic

Macaluso posted:

I think Yooka and Laylee look fine, Yooka mostly. The rest on the other hand

Macaluso posted:

Lol yeah totally the best part is when the small child gets yanked by her arm really hard and dragged out of the room. Lol top memes

MinibarMatchman posted:

when you can climb anything and everything it's only logical that stamina is the equalizer. I haven't even upgraded my stamina once and I've never felt I was hosed over by it, even going to the tip top of the huger mountains.

Harrow posted:

I feel a bit better about sprinting stamina because Link moves at a pretty good pace by default, but I wish it wasn't used for normal swimming. It's not like you can't go out as far in the water as you want using the Cryonis rune, so it's not even that much of a limiter. It's just an annoyance.

My biggest issues with the game are all around combat balance, because the game goes from being crazy punishing to being extremely easy as soon as you get good armor and realize you can endlessly scarf down food in-combat. Weapon damage and armor defense have way too wide a range, which means that the balance between how much damage you take versus how many hearts you have is extremely spiky. It also makes the player far more gear-dependent in combat than I'd like--armor is so important if you don't want to spend all your time eating and waiting for fairies to revive you because some enemy's 40-damage weapon ate 10 of your hearts. In its current form, I think the game needs its easy access to fairy revival, temporary hearts, and instant healing, but I'd prefer a game with a little tighter damage/health balance and more limited healing instead.

Luckily the game is so ridiculously fun to explore, with great puzzles and so many cool little adventures that aren't even side quests to find, that the screwed up combat balance doesn't really hurt my enjoyment that much. But it could've been done a lot better.

Harrow posted:

As much as I'd like to agree, I think making the Champion weapons unbreakable would invalidate the game's weapon-scavenging system almost entirely unless the Champion weapons were also much weaker than they are now. Being able to reforge them is a good middle-ground, I think, though I'd rather it be more that you're repairing them because it feels weird to break an ancient heirloom and then make a replica like it's totally fine

I found the durability system started making more sense when I started thinking of weapons like guns in Halo or something. Like, I can only carry two guns at a time in Halo, and if enemies stop dropping ammo for the gun I like to use, I eventually have to ditch it for one of their weapons and keep going. As long as I think of Breath of the Wild's weapons like that it started to get a lot less frustrating.

ImpAtom posted:

Anyone who is stupid enough to think a perfect score means a perfect game probably has trouble figuring out that they should stop trying to breathe underwater.

Guy Goodbody posted:

Are there video games with a co-op mode but playing single-player is better?

Lurdiak posted:

I don't even know what I'm doing.

Sunning posted:

About half of Metacritic's top 20 best reviewed games contain games with performance issues. It includes Ocarina of Time (N64), Grand Theft Auto 4 (PS3/360), Grand Theft Auto 5 (PS3/360), and Perfect Dark (N64, RAM expansion for High resolution and most modes) Many remasters and ports with improved performance, such as GTA 5 (PS4/XB1) and The Last of US (PS4), scored about the same as their original releases.

This generation we've seen a number of games receive GoTY awards despite severe performance issues, such as Shadow of Mordor, Bloodbourne, and The Witcher 3. On the other hand, games with great performance and visuals but uninspiring gameplay or low content get eviscerated, such as The Order 1886. I guess the takeaway is that reviewers and players will forgive performance issues if the game is groundbreaking, fully-featured and engaging.

Harrow posted:

I don't agree that the stamina system is bad, beyond sprinting, nor the cooking system. I guess it'd be nice to be able to queue up multiple cooking recipes, but it's something that honestly has never crossed my mind so clearly the way you cook in-game isn't coming across as a flaw to me. The performance issues are undeniable, but when so much of the game is so good that I (a huge loving baby who is actually bothered by realizing I'm playing the game in 720p instead of 900p despite the miniscule difference that would make) can overlook them, the game must be pretty goddamn incredible.

While I think ImpAtom was being more combative than necessary there, I agree with the larger point that a game can still be a "10/10" game even with flaws. Even with noticeable flaws, even with non-subjective flaws like performance issues. It's why that "greater than the sum of its parts" statement exists, and while I think that might come across as meaningless nonsense to some people, it holds water with me. (Incidentally, I also think Dark Souls and Bloodborne are games that have serious flaws but that I'd also rate almost perfect to perfect because they subjective experience of playing them overrides their flaws). I guess I also draw a line between "flaws" (something that I think is an error in design or a technical problem but doesn't seriously hinder my enjoyment) and "defects" (a serious flaw that really does hinder my enjoyment) and I also acknowledge that the line between the two is incredibly subjective.

I think the other part is that when I see a 10/10 review, I know subjectivity is coming into it. I assume a pretty high degree of subjectivity with any review, but frankly, I don't think anything reaches 10/10 without a serious boost from the reviewer's subjective experience of it, and I'm okay with that.

ImpAtom posted:

No it isn't. If you think that the top score in a review means "literal perfection' then you are acting really dumb, yes. You're the one who decided I was somehow insulting you for not liking Zelda enough.

ImpAtom posted:

Okay, Bloodychill:

What game deserves a perfect score? Because right now your comment doesn't actually appear to differ between perfect score and literal perfection and the fact that you're taking it as an insult against you implies to me that is exactly what you mean.

ImpAtom posted:

If you're saying "approach that" then you've not actually answered the question. What is a 'perfect score" game. Not one that approaches it. A genuine game that you would go "This got 10/10 and deserves it." If you can't name a single game that deserves a perfect score then you're actually doing exactly what I said: creating an unobtainable ideal for no reason.

This is exactly the problem I mentioned before. Treating 10/10 not as "this is a top mark" but as a magical perfect unobtainable ideal which no game can match, and then getting upset when people actually use it.

ImpAtom posted:

That isn't a high standard. If you create something that nothing can reaching without you cheating (LBW has game-breaking glitches among other things so your argument that a game-breaking glitch disqualifies a game from a perfect score doesn't apply to it) then you're not holding things to a high standard, you're doing exactly what you claim you're not: creating an impossible standard. I

ImpAtom posted:

Again, a reviewer for a movie (for example) that gives it two thumbs up or four stars out of four isn't saying "this is a flawless masterpiece upon which no criticism can be made." Yet for no clear reason video game people want to hold 10/10 up to frankly absurd standards.

Andrast posted:

So does literally every reviewer. People who gave BOTW great scores didn't think the flaws were big enough to lower the score for them personally.

ImpAtom posted:

This is the exact same thing that gets said by every person who does this. "Oh, I have high standards" and then an utter refusal to commit to actually saying what lives up to those standards. You're hemming and hawing over saying LBW does (and understandably because LBW has a massive boatload of huge design flaws that are ridiculously easy to point out and nobody who actually has high standards would ignore.)

Again, why have 10/10 on a score if it is never used? Why insist that 'perfect' is the highest ranking when no reasonable critic is ever going to pretend like a work is flawless and without error. Even the best movies having gaffs, even the best games have glitches and design flaws, and sometimes something can be a flaw to one person and not to another.

ImpAtom posted:

Hell, I love LBW. I've finished it like half a dozen times and I think it's one of my favorite games ever. but here are just a few of its major flaws:

A) It is absurdly easy, basically impossible to die on after a certain point, and the 'hard' mode is locked behind finishing the game.
B) The dungeons are designed around specific items and as such have a massive constraint on how puzzles can be designed because it can never assume you have access to specific items, especially since you can lose items by dying.
C) The game's ease covers a massive flaw in that it overly punishes unskilled players by forcing them to grind money upon death or savescum just to advance the game.If you have genuinely bad players they're at risk of getting trapped into a constant grinding-losing-grinding cycle. If it was a harder game it would suffer badly for having a bad punishment cycle and it only gets around it by being so easy 90% of players probably die fewer than 3 times in the entire game. Connected to this is that the game is also absurdly over-generous with rupees because it has to compensate for that other 10% and so anyone even remotely good at the game probably has more rupees than the game gives you anything to buy with.
D) It's world map and general design is a straight rehash of LTTP and while it does enough to remain different it's hard to avoid that it only is a hair away from being the New Super Mario Bros of Zelda. This stands out most with Lorule which is just a budget knockoff of the Dark World and has very little original design to it, choosing instead to just limply repeat areas from the Dark World despite that making no real sense. It's actually very lacking in design creativity, pushing heavily on nostalgia to cover that fact. (And sometimes even relying on nostalgia to cover the fact it's doing a more normal thing, like how the Blind-knockoff boss is actually just a real boss and you genuinely save a girl instead of it being a trick.)

It's still an amazing game and one which I think is genuinely wonderful but I don't think it's perfect or even close, discounting glitches or other flaws. I don't think it's wrong for someone to give it a 10/10 though because the flaws I mentioned are serious to some people (especially the game's ease/locking away of Hero Mode which a lot of people have complained about) but that doesn't mean they're serious to everyone.