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Bicyclops posted:why, if i saw a game with this image i had the robot make, i would buy it day one, even if it were, say, just off the cuff, a medieval dating sim. even if it focused particularly on the thighs of the potential romantic partners, haha. do you think genAI knows what gender swap gas is? no reason i'm asking.
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Feb 27, 2024 16:02
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Bicyclops posted:why, if i saw a game with this image i had the robot make, i would buy it day one, even if it were, say, just off the cuff, a medieval dating sim. even if it focused particularly on the thighs of the potential romantic partners, haha. do you think genAI knows what gender swap gas is? no reason i'm asking.
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Feb 27, 2024 16:04
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Bicyclops posted:why, if i saw a game with this image i had the robot make, i would buy it day one, even if it were, say, just off the cuff, a medieval dating sim. even if it focused particularly on the thighs of the potential romantic partners, haha. do you think genAI knows what gender swap gas is? no reason i'm asking.
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Feb 27, 2024 18:52
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Bicyclops posted:why, if i saw a game with this image i had the robot make, i would buy it day one, even if it were, say, just off the cuff, a medieval dating sim. even if it focused particularly on the thighs of the potential romantic partners, haha. do you think genAI knows what gender swap gas is? no reason i'm asking. lol
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Feb 27, 2024 21:44
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Bicyclops posted:why, if i saw a game with this image i had the robot make, i would buy it day one, even if it were, say, just off the cuff, a medieval dating sim. even if it focused particularly on the thighs of the potential romantic partners, haha. do you think genAI knows what gender swap gas is? no reason i'm asking.
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Feb 28, 2024 02:30
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Thief (2014)         Ten years and one month ago, the remains of Looking Glass Studios were but a distant apparition, its haunting grounds making way for a new era under the development under Eidos Montreal. The entire development history was troubled, with the project hemorrhaging people, ideas being continually scrapped and reworked, and publisher Square-Enix deciding to shutter this and other properties when they didn't make enough numbers to fill the Final Fantasy pit. Reception was mixed at best - at worst, many fans of the traditional Thief games reviled it and voiced their disapproval. So is 'Thi4f' really as bad as they say? Is it worth sequestering from your wishlist in 2024? Well on the one hand, I don't think it's quite as bad as its reputation implies but on the other hand - spoiler alert: it really is something of a stinker. The first thing that I want to get out of the way is that this game really wants to be Dishonoured. The slightly-eccentric medieval fantasy trappings are swapped out for Victorian London. A mysterious plague of unknown origins is turning the townsfolk into zombies, causing the Monarchy to turn its power into a totalitarian state. The Queen of Beggars is an obvious stand-in for Granny Rags and the City Watch are made to look as much as the Abbey of the Everyman as much as possible. The story is a mess. You can tell they couldn't decide how much to tie this game to the originals, so what you end up with is a half-baked compromise that doesn't even make much sense. Your (obnoxious, insufferable) lady sidekick is supposed to be the girl that you see at the end of Thief: Deadly Shadows, and you have a previously-married friend/fence named Basso, but yet it's also supposed to take place 400 years or so after TDS, and this 'Garrett' is supposed to be either a descendent or a reincarnation of the original. The widow Moira is long gone and the Pagans and Hammerites have long been evicted from the scene. To add insult to insult, according to the lore, apparently the original Garrett is supposed to have died alone and abandoned in a prison under the City, losing his mechanical eye in the process. The game also seems to make quite a few references to Deadly Shadows: you have a level that tries to out-Shalebridge the Shalebridge Cradle, the color pallet involves the use of muted brown/grey tones with blue highlights, the use of Erin as a character. I liked Thief 3, but if they were going to make nostalgia bait then it seems to be a strange starting place. You'd think they'd opt for The Dark Project or The Metal Age instead. One level is faintly hinted to be an abandoned keeper compound. One thing that's really awful about the story is the vast amounts of cutscene incompetence. You can quietly sneak through each level without so much as raising a guard's suspicion, but in the cutscenes, Garrett gets caught all the time. The 'master thief' is revealed after hiding under a bed, gets his hand shot after being discovered by the villain, is continuously spotted by guards, and so on. In the original games, I believe the only time that Garrett was ever 'caught' was in the 'Ambush' mission, and he escaped out of that in a flash (literally). Of course, it also needs to be noted that the developers nixed any notion of having Stephen Russel voicing nouveau Garrett - who I might add looks like a malnourished European with a wisp-stache. So if the story and lore are such garbage, how is the stealthing? It's a bit of a mixed bag. In the interest of being impartial, I would say that the movement mechanics are actually quite solid. The 'swoop' mechanic works well with the way that Garrett's motion is paced and even the Assassin's Creed-esque platforming feels just about right with the way that the environment is set up. The notorious noisy tile flooring has not returned, but there are maps that will be populated with birds and dogs that will start alerting nearby guards if they detect too much sudden motion. This was a nice touch and added a bit of challenge to the proceedings. Mind you, using a gas arrow on them will keep them quiet, but it will count as a kill on your stats, which I found out the hard way. I also like the things that make Garrett more 'rogue-like': he can now disable traps and cut out valuable paintings to sell. On the one hand, you can steal unique loot which was a nice touch - but on the other hand, all of the other loot was utterly boring. Here we see a game where the 'master thief' is breaking into tiny apartments and shoving inkwells, scissors, and pens into his sack. Another weighty sin is that the developers seem to assume that since Thief uses a binary light/dark stealth system, that the maps then should all be monochrome and drab. But Thief 1 and 2 were very colorful, while still conveying a sense of darkness. Constantine's mansion is just one of many stellar examples of this. As well, I'm not crazy about having the City being explorable outside of missions, as introduced in Thief 3. It's difficult to put my finger on it, but I think overall having open world systems intrude on a non-open world game causes problems. Metal Gear Solid V did open world stealth right because they really committed to the concept. Thief 2014, however, not so much. AND ON TOP OF ALL THAT, I also think the introduction of RPG mechanics is kind of dumb as well. Thief is a skill-based game, and I really didn't find much use for the 'Focus' traits/abilities and I didn't really use it that much in the game. I think its primary use would be to make loot stand out from the drab environments, but that's hardly commendable. However, I would like to thank the city workers for applying white paint in all those places where you're allowed to jump, give those boys a raise. And although I didn't mind the thinly-disguised loading screens, this really annoys some people (same with the micro-cutscene you get when you blackjack someone) so keep this in mind. There was a kind of neat twist, how the zombies you encounter are afraid of light, so you have to sneak around in the brightness - but I kept thinking about how Splinter Cell 2 did this concept better 20 years ago. By now you can probably guess that I don't think that Thief 2014 is all that memorable or fun to play through, and you'd be right. If you can ignore the lore abominations and skip all the cutscenes, you're left with a few okay-ish stealth setpieces and that's pretty much it. Buy only if you're hankering for a Dishonoured-a-like.
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Mar 6, 2024 00:14
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Eurgh! Oh man, I didn't know about those lore changes at all. That sounds absolutely horrendous, TBH. I've got Thief on Steam (got it ages ago for a couple of bucks) but man, that makes it seem very unappealing
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Mar 6, 2024 00:24
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Major Isoor posted:Eurgh! Oh man, I didn't know about those lore changes at all. That sounds absolutely horrendous, TBH. I've got Thief on Steam (got it ages ago for a couple of bucks) but man, that makes it seem very unappealing Yeah it’s surprising because their Deus Ex games were really good, as were the first two Tomb Raider games (the third being just kind of okayish. I went in trying to be nice to the game, too =/
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Mar 6, 2024 00:35
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Seventh Arrow posted:
ugh this is so bad. Why do writers do this kind of thing?
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Mar 6, 2024 04:29
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Yeah they should at least scatter some banana peels, puddles of water and other basic hazards around levels, if they're gonna force that approach. That way these things can hinder players, to at least give the impression that Garrett isn't particularly observant, therefore making these cutscenes a little more believable 
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Mar 6, 2024 05:34
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lol I can imagine, Garrett steps on a cat then slams face first into an accordion  DID YOU GUYS HEAR SOMETHING
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Mar 6, 2024 05:53
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Never actually played it, but also making new-Garrett into a "kewl" character who steals things for their "sentimental value" so he can put them on display in his fancy clocktower hideout is much more lame than original Garrett being a more ordinary guy who has to steal to pay rent on his lovely apartment and always ends up unwittingly involved in saving the city. Love this thread by the way, it is making me want to go back and replay Thief more "properly" with little or no saving inside of levels instead of falling into the habit of quicksaving too much like I did when originally playing games like Thief and Deus Ex 10+ years ago. Item Getter fucked around with this message at 07:17 on Mar 6, 2024 |
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Mar 6, 2024 07:00
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This thread kicks rear end lol.
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Mar 6, 2024 12:46
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Wormskull posted:This thread kicks rear end lol. i was thinking the exact same thing lol
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Mar 6, 2024 13:08
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Seventh Arrow posted:Yeah it’s surprising because their Deus Ex games were really good, as were the first two Tomb Raider games (the third being just kind of okayish. I remember being concerned when this one was announced because their Deus Ex games are good as "jack of all trades" games. They're not particularly great at anything individually (mechanics, level design, AI etc). That's fine for Deus Ex (you could say the same about the original tbh) but Thief requires a very narrow focus done very well, and they had never shown any real aptitude for it. I definitely posted this long before the game came out but I cant find my post so you have to take my word for it and be in awe of my predictive skills.
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Mar 6, 2024 14:23
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Wormskull posted:This thread kicks rear end lol.
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Mar 6, 2024 18:40
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Wormskull posted:This thread kicks rear end lol.
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Mar 6, 2024 19:57
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Lunchmeat Larry posted:I remember being concerned when this one was announced because their Deus Ex games are good as "jack of all trades" games. They're not particularly great at anything individually (mechanics, level design, AI etc). everyone was saying it was going to suck poo poo back in the day, so i believe you
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Mar 7, 2024 03:38
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Wormskull posted:This thread kicks rear end lol.
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Mar 9, 2024 03:29
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 Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is currently selling for the low low price of FREE on the Epic Store https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/deus-ex-mankind-divided-4c6370
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Mar 14, 2024 18:11
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Gay Sex: Man's Hind Divided. Topic Locked.
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Mar 14, 2024 19:22
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Pablo Nergigante posted:Gay Sex: Man's Hind Divided. Topic Locked. got it now
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Mar 14, 2024 19:41
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Pablo Nergigante posted:Gay Sex: Man's Hind Divided. Topic Locked.
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Mar 14, 2024 19:41
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Gay Sex Men's Hide divide my wallet
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Mar 14, 2024 19:49
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when mans hind divides i will be rejoicing within my man, how can our pleasure perfect and rise with my tiny pen0r
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Mar 14, 2024 19:55
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Those cheeks do be spreading tho.
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Mar 14, 2024 20:16
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Lil Hologram of General Waterhouse: I've never seen mankind so divided. J.P.! I need you to get the Access Card in the Store Room.
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Mar 14, 2024 20:17
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Black friend about to be blown up in a massive fireball: J.P. you are leaving the mission area. J.P.!! J.Peeeeee!!!!!!!!
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Mar 14, 2024 20:20
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Pablo Nergigante posted:Gay Sex: Man's Hind Divided. Topic Locked.
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Mar 14, 2024 20:28
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Daikatana Ritsu posted:Lil Hologram of General Waterhouse: I've never seen mankind so divided. J.P.! I need you to get the Access Card in the Store Room. Daikatana Ritsu posted:Black friend about to be blown up in a massive fireball: J.P. you are leaving the mission area. J.P.!! J.Peeeeee!!!!!!!!
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Mar 14, 2024 20:33
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Daikatana Ritsu posted:Lil Hologram of General Waterhouse: I've never seen mankind so divided. J.P.! I need you to get the Access Card in the Store Room.
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Mar 14, 2024 20:42
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Gen’ral Wotohice.
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Mar 14, 2024 20:42
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Daikatana Ritsu posted:Lil Hologram of General Waterhouse: I've never seen mankind so divided. J.P.! I need you to get the Access Card in the Store Room. Daikatana Ritsu posted:Black friend about to be blown up in a massive fireball: J.P. you are leaving the mission area. J.P.!! J.Peeeeee!!!!!!!! Wormskull posted:Gen’ral Wotohice.
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Mar 14, 2024 20:43
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Aveliana         Aveliana is an isometric "adventure infiltration stealth" game made by French developer Romain Dupuis. There's not a lot to say about it, since it's a fairly brief experience and a bit of an obscure title. The graphics are hand-drawn on Dupuis' tablet and are quite stellar. They won't set your Nvidia RTX 4000000000 aflame, but they are stylish and make captivating use of color and light. As you might have surmised, you play a character named Aveliana in a fantasy setting. Admittedly, the main character is interesting but the story is just sort of "there", aside from a mild zinger late in the game. There are some light RPG elements to add interest, and these do give the gameplay a bit of a twist. After certain checkpoints, you can choose from one of two new abilities: at the first one, you can choose between a dash ability (that lets you bypass enemy line of sight) and a "stone skin" kind of skill that allows Aveliana to shrug off big chunks of data. I like this, because unlike many gameplay choices you see today, it will affect your strategy in approaching gameplay challenges. Another one allows to you choose between having a ranged attack and being able to create a decoy. And so on. There are also brief levels with side-scrolling gameplay, and these helped to keep things interesting - these levels don't overstay their welcome and have just enough environment puzzles to sustain engagement. You usually have the option of ghosting through a level, but you can also take out enemies with one strike of your sword if you get the jump on them. You can hide the bodies, but you have to be aware that their cohorts will vigorously search for anyone that they see missing. There are also some minibosses that take a bit of strategy to dispatch. Aveliana has frequent checkpoint saves, but note that these clear if you exit the game. When you reload, you will need to start at the beginning of the level again. Also, it has a super chill soundtrack, very listenable. Overall, I would say that if you tend to like isometric stealth games with a bit of action, this may just be the game for you. Aside from the art, it doesn't do anything exceptionally well, but it offers a pleasant fantasy stealth experience and is well worth considering.
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Mar 19, 2024 19:42
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Oh, interesting. The whole "checkpoints are only valid for the current session" thing seems a little bizarre and archaic for 2024, but otherwise that sounds cool Also, it's not a stealth game I know, but I just started playing Baldur's Gate 3 a couple of nights ago and boy, sneaking up behind hostile goblins and pushing them off cliffs is proving to be pretty darn fun! 
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Mar 20, 2024 00:24
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Oh, has anyone played The Saboteur, btw? I noticed it came out on Steam the other day, so I'm curious about it. Never played it years ago when it first came out, but I vaguely recall people liking it as a stealthy-action game at the time. No idea how well it holds up though, of course!
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Mar 20, 2024 02:07
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Major Isoor posted:Oh, interesting. The whole "checkpoints are only valid for the current session" thing seems a little bizarre and archaic for 2024, but otherwise that sounds cool Yeah I guess you can always alt-tab it or something but ehhhhhhh. Major Isoor posted:Oh, has anyone played The Saboteur, btw? I noticed it came out on Steam the other day, so I'm curious about it. Never played it years ago when it first came out, but I vaguely recall people liking it as a stealthy-action game at the time. No idea how well it holds up though, of course! I think it's been on GOG for a while now. I watched some gameplay and the atmosphere looks cool, but the stealth gameplay just looks kind of so-so. I'll check it out a bit more, though.
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Mar 20, 2024 03:09
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The saboteur had one mission halfway through the game I thought was bullshit, but everything else about the game ruled
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Mar 20, 2024 06:54
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Trying to decide if I have too much self respect to buy a game titled Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 on the Steam sale or not...
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Mar 20, 2024 10:26
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Lunchmeat Larry posted:Trying to decide if I have too much self respect to buy a game titled Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 on the Steam sale or not... SGWC2 is on my review list, but unfortunately I will be dog sitting at my sister’s for a week and will only have access to my crappy laptop. If it’s any consolation , I can post pictures of her doggos; I can assure you that they’re very good bois.
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Mar 20, 2024 10:50
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