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Captain Invictus posted:[dumb post] Keep your negativity to yourself in the post about games you love thread, thanks.
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Jul 18, 2022 14:13
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Fly Ricky posted:Bless you kind goon! Take your time. What a great coincidence. I envy your ability to make it through the whole Kiryu saga. I picked up 0 on a whim because I’m on leave and fell in love. Not to immediately follow up the "cut down on negativity in this thread" post with negativity, but...I would not recommend this. We found 6 to be very much a letdown, both as a Yakuza game and as the end to the Kazuma Kiryu story. If you're going to play more in the series, I'd recommend Kiwami 1 and 2 for your next steps. But don't feel like you need to stop there! We started this project in back in July 2018, so it's been four years and a lot of life changes between then and now. There's no reason to rush it, and a lot of cool stuff to see.
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Jul 18, 2022 17:00
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I absolutely loved 6 in every way except maybe the cut down kamurocho, but even still it's one of my favorites. Don't skip directly to it though, it picks up directly from the end of 5, and besides that the whole series is absolutely worth experiencing.
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Jul 18, 2022 17:23
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Y0 and YLAD are kind of the peak of the series writing and nothing else really reaches those levels. But one thing you can be sure of is that it's always going to be buckwild. Y6 suffers for being the first game of a completely brand new engine and has less content for it, but it also has a story thats surprisingly solid despite not really playing to the strengths of the franchise's history and characters for being Kiryu's last hurrah.
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Jul 18, 2022 19:06
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Planetside Planetside was an incredibly ambitious game released a year and a half before World of Warcraft. A massively multiplayer online first person shooter, it's one of the only ones of its kind, and none have pulled it off even remotely as well. An endless war between three fairly unique factions fighting over control of about a dozen separate continents, to say that it was a miracle it worked at all, despite its fairly lackluster graphics, is an understatement. There were no NPCs, it was entirely player-centric, if there were no people, there was no game really. And when there were people, holy poo poo, was it nuts. To this day, some of my favorite moments in gaming period were in Planetside. Hopping on Teamspeak to join a platoon of 29 other players to prep for a raid, to join 3-4 OTHER platoons of 30 players each, organizing vehicles and infantry loadouts to get ready to assault an enemy-controlled continent, the Commander-ranked players sending out global chat messages to signal the attack. a 27-minute gameplay video showing off the game. to say the game was buggy is an understatement, but it was still a joy to play. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMpjvz488XM&hd=1 The three factions had lots of universal vehicles and weapons, but also had unique ones that dramatically changed how they played. The Terran Republic, red-and-black fascists, were all about quantity of munitions. chainguns, multi-barreled tank cannons, filling the air with lead was their MO. The New Conglomerate, blue-and-gold corporate-backed insurgents, were about one-shot-one-kill. a triple-barreled gigantic shotgun and a tank that fired one-hit-kill shells extremely slowly, their weaponry made extremely distinctive sounds. If you heard BOOMCHICKABOOMCHICKABOOMCHICKA you knew someone had a Jackhammer Shotgun nearby. The Vanu Sovereignty, technocratic alien-worshippers who used unearthed alien tech to modify themselves and their weapons. Energy weaponry with unique ammo and hovertanks that could strafe were what they were all about. Having a billion globs of glowing energy bullshit flying at you at all times was definitely a common occurrence with these jerks. or getting run over by their hovertanks that could strafe into you. a squad of Vanu Sovereignty soldiers hopping into a Galaxy Troop Transport while under fire, taking off, and airdropping on a nearby enemy-controlled spawn tower: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4CMGT1wIWw&hd=1 During high population times, you could sometimes get max player occupancy of all three factions on a single continent. That means somewhere around 100+ players per faction in the same area. The servers would almost invariably chug and seem like they were dying, but sometimes they would run smoothly despite the insane load of players, and it was an absolutely insane feat to have a battle with 300+ people involved. Squadrons of aircraft dogfighting overhead. tank battalions thundering into base courtyards, shelling every doorway to kill anyone trying to exit. Platoons of infantry rolling in with heavy weaponry and anti-tank missiles to clear out the tank battalions. Cloaked Infantry sneaking in to hijack respawn terminals and enemy vehicles. Mobile respawn stations getting set up in strategic locations so that idiot zerg rushes could distract and overwhelm defenders. Players who had earned Commander Ranks through leading squads of players, if they were high leveled enough, had the capability to Orbital Strike locations, obliterating every player and vehicle in an area, helping to break stalemates and heavily-defending positions(or doing it to their own team out of spite or to troll) a video of the Battle For Amerish, there's a shot of the map near the start of this video, that shows tons of explosion marks and red dots. The explosions are heavy fighting indicators, and the red dots...well, each one is an enemy player. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBrJuVytvOA&hd=1 The game was not perfect. No Planetside player would say otherwise. There was friendly fire, and damaging/killing friendlies would earn you Grievance Points. Hit too many people with your bullets or vehicles, and you'd get locked out of shooting or driving faster than 5mph until the points ticked down, something like 1 point per 5 minutes. The inventory system was basically Inventory Tetris, which wasn't always bad, but larger inventories and better armors were locked behind level progression. You got XP proportional to the person you killed, so if they were on a killstreak, taking them out might net you hundreds of XP, while killing someone in a spawn tube would net you like 10. If you're not good at the game, it meant it was much harder to gain XP outside of being in a squad(which would probably kick you out due to being terrible) or capturing bases, which gave everyone xp. But at the same time, that difficulty in leveling meant gaining levels, which earned you certification points to buy new equipment and vehicle unlocks, felt meaningful. Driving and flying vehicles was...not always easy, but boy was it fun to fly a fighter jet around or run people over in a tank while your gunner splattered some dudes off in the distance. Dinkin' around with two buddies in a 3-person tank was an absolute blast. The character models or indeed graphics in general were NOT GREAT, but the dialogue and voice acting was absolutely hilarious. You had the gruff, tuff sergeant-sounding voice, the squeaky weenie newbie voice, there were like 5 voice packs per gender, and the lines of dialogue were pretty ridiculous and surprisingly in depth. WE NEED TO MAN OUR TURRETS! MAN A TURRET! GO MAN A TURRET! SOMEBODY REPAIR OUR TURRETS! As the game aged and especially after World of Warcraft released, the playerbase dwindled, which led to a death spiral since it was an entirely player-focused game. It eventually went free to play and then shut down a year after that. But to this day, I will say with confidence that Planetside is one of my favorite games of all time, warts and all. Planetside 2 came out a few years later, but my computer couldn't run it at the time so I never tried it, and I just kinda got distracted by lots of other stuff since then, so never got into it, but I heard it was troubled at the start and eventually hit its stride before getting sold off to some other company. some terrible screenshots from my 2002 Dell which could barely run the game: moments before disaster:  if the population cap was reached on a continent, the warpgates wouldn't let you teleport until someone left. this led to huge traffic jams at the warpgates of people waiting to get into the meat grinder:  a bunch of screenshots of just a shitload of people either gathering for an attack or in the process of attacking:     I love this shot of a hijacked Thresher by the new conglomerate ramping off a bridge into this sweet action shot while some tanks trundle along  the only time I ever saw a successful temporary ceasefire, all three factions managed to not kill each other for like...five minutes, then one person shot a single shot and that was the end of that:  when I say the game was buggy, it was buggy. tons of A-posing and glitching into things. the second image is of an unmanned upside-down vehicle which I didn't even know was possible until then   PHYSICS! Vehicles touching the wrong geometry or landing where they're not supposed to led to getting launched in the air or a million mph across the continent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuDzIXwfmDA this AMS got stuck in a bridge and touching it would instakill you from the physics  I hit a pebble and got slingshotted into the sky  ShallNoiseUpon posted:Keep your negativity to yourself in the post about games you love thread, thanks.
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Jul 18, 2022 19:55
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Jul 18, 2022 20:04
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Since there doesn't seem to be any mention of it in this forum yet, I'm gonna go ahead and nominate Teardown for inclusion.  It's a first-person game where you wreck stuff - essentially it's a voxel-based cross between Red Faction Guerrilla and Garry's Mod. Or to put it another way, imagine if Michael Bay directed Minecraft.  Almost everything is destructible in some way, shape or form.Also there are hundreds of community mods on Steam Workshop - everything from custom weapons (including gravity and portal guns) to remakes of well-known video game maps Here's a trailer to give you an idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttwBelIlLv8 It's the latest addition to my "favourite games ever" list. I picked it up earlier this year, and it's now my go-to for when I come home from work and decide I just want to switch my brain off and indulge in some mindless poo poo-destroying 
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Jul 19, 2022 16:08
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Teardown is amazing. A game I didn't think I would like at all turned into a week-long obsession. It's puzzly, but totally freeform. While playing, I couldn't stop imagining a heist planning scene with a bunch of suave con-men and hacker dudes, and then my character, loaded with guns and explosives, saying "I'm gonna set it up tonight, just follow the spray paint"
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Jul 19, 2022 18:47
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gently caress, that post made me immensely nostalgic for planetside circa 2004. it was a barely functioning mess of a game and it was a tremendous amount of fun im mature enough now to realize that telling war stories from old videogames long dead is super dorky and boring, but... i had a habit of jumping out of mosquitos with the light armor and a sniper rifle. i'd perch in a tree and just shoot enemies in the back of the head, racking up hundreds of XP in a go. a few times i managed to keep this up for so long i ran out of bullets, and i was able to coordinate with fellow goons to load up more sniper rounds in the trunk of an aircraft, so they could come to me and resupply me while i was still in the tree. this kind of thing was unprecedented gameplay at the time and it ruled or, holding off waves of enemies spawning in during a desperate assault. one way to capture a base is to hack the command console. the other is to destroy the reactor in the basement and keep it destroyed until the base runs out of backup power and flips to neutral. once a bunch of us vanu lodged in the basement, but we were unable to keep the terrans from controlling the command room and the spawn room. so it was a bit of an alamo situation, as we controlled a chunk of the basement without any source of resupply other than the corpses of the terran defenders. a group of us deliberately died, respawned, loaded up in heavy armor with no ammo and only medical and repair equipment, and charged back into the basement through the enemy lines, keeping our desperate defense afloat until the base was successfully captured V-T-T Mr. Fall Down Terror fucked around with this message at 20:22 on Jul 19, 2022 |
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Jul 19, 2022 20:16
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 Fire Pro Wrestling World, by Spike Chunsoft, was released on Steam in 2017, with a PS4 version following in 2018. While the WWE 2k series struggles with the limitations of a strict license and an engine old enough to drive, and fans hope for a revival of something like AKI's legendary N64 titles (the likes of No Mercy or Wrestlemania 2000), this goes in an entirely different direction- a fast, graphically simple wrestling simulator with a lot of depth under its unpolished surface. It's based on a series that started way back on the PC Engine in 1989, though PS2 and 3 users may be more familiar with 2005's Fire Pro Wrestling Returns, which for a long time looked it was going to be the last in its line.  On a basic level, the game uses a 2.5d approach with flat sprites in an isometric ring (which actually IS a full 3-D Unity model, but the camera never changes from its overhead view.) Whenever two wrestlers get lined up and close enough, they do a "grapple" animation, and to do a move you input it at the right time just as the animation finishes. You're likely to get countered if you try to do a big signature move or finisher right away, so the strategy is to start with light attacks and move up to heavier ones; you can also throw your opponent into the ropes or a corner, get in a test of strength, do taunts, go for submissions, etc., most things you can think of in a wrestling match are there by default. (As well as a few crazier moves, like breathing fire on your opponent, spraying mist in their face, or doing the legendary Eddie Guerrero chair trick.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQ7dbi1BSeY&t=59s Breathing is also an important mechanic here- you'll get winded as you take damage, and pressing the "breathe" button helps you recover a bit, but it's also at the core of the game's "Ukemi" mechanic. If you hit the breathe button while in the grapple timing, your opponent automatically wins the exchange and does their move, but you get a spirit boost which helps you kick out of pins or break submissions. It's how the game models wrestlers selling for each other's moves, and encourages you to let your opponent get in some offense, resulting in something like the back and forth of an actual wrestling match. Also helping is that each match gets a percentage rating based on how much it appeals to the virtual crowd. Another big advantage this game has is speed. By default it runs at about two times “real” speed, so matches go by pretty fast compared to their equivalent in WWE 2k. You can run an entire card full of matches in a couple of hours, or do a tournament in an afternoon. The ability to run like this and still have a certain amount of depth puts me in mind of the old Sensible Soccer games on the Amiga. The game comes with a modest roster of wrestlers (though the PS4 version includes by default the first big DLC pack, a New Japan Pro Wrestling tie in featuring such stars as Hiroshi Tanahashi and a pre-AEW Kenny Omega), but also has a generous creative suite allowing you to create thousands of your own- or you can just download a bunch from the Steam workshop, or in the PS4 version's case, the official website. The game also lets you import custom textures for rings and even customize the appearance and behavior of referees.  Seen here, Eddie Kingston battles Waluigi on WCW Monday Nitro. Aubrey Edwards officiates. The creative suite is part of why this game shines so much. The graphics are simple enough that you don't get hung up on trying to get exact facial likenesses, though it also helps that many of the parts offered are clear visual analogues to popular wrestlers past and present- there's an obvious Hulk Hogan face, a Rock with raised eyebrow, etc. The costumes are similarly simple enough that you can do a lot of tricks with layering to get unique textures and complicated looks with some practice, and you can also alter the relative size of body parts, or even make some (or all) invisible. The one major drawback is it doesn't do asymmetry- due to engine limitations a wrestler's right and left arms/hands/legs/feet are just mirrors of the same part.  You can mess around with their movesets, basic attributes, as well as set entrance music and voice clips, but the real magic, the part that makes this the ultimate game for wrestling nerds, is in a category called CPU Logic.   See, every wrestler in this game has their own AI, defined as a bunch of percentage chances to do a certain action under specific circumstances. Here is just one page of many, showing the options for a normal grapple- depending on how much damage their opponent has taken, you can see the wrestler is more likely to do some moves when their opponent is fresh and some when they've taken quite a beating. You can also set how often they'll do an Ukemi, chain together certain moves (so Hulk Hogan will be likely to follow his Big Boot with a Legdrop), set how often they'll do taunts and when, how often they'll go outside the ring, etc. The practical upshot of all this is that when you're playing, every wrestler you fight feels different, not just because they have different moves but because their overall pattern of behavior will be different. It also means- and this is the important part- you can have the CPU run all the participants in a match and just sit back and watch what happens. I have lost HUNDREDS of hours of my life simulating matches in Fire Pro; you can stage obvious dream contests, track your own E-Fed, or just occasionally cue up a Battle Royal and hit "Random Select" and watch the chaos. While you're partly counting on other editors to have created wrestlers with good AI, I've been more lucky than not- there are some very talented crafters out there. (And while you can't edit downloaded wrestlers yourself, you can create copies of any included or downloaded wrestler and simply tweak the new version to be more to your liking. I've fixed a few bad ones this way.) The game engine supports up to 8 wrestlers in a match at once (plus a ref), and there are plenty of familiar match types, though a few omissions- the game's not-quite-3D engine can't do ladder or table matches. There are also plenty of modes you wouldn't expect though, many emulating the "shoot style" promotions that popped up in Japan around the time MMA got big, and there is even an MMA mode itself, called "Gruesome Fighting", which takes place in a unique polyhedral stage. There are two major criticisms I’d make of this game. One, it’s not the most accessible in the world, with only an online manual that takes a little bit of searching. You should really go straight to Mission Mode and do at least the Tutorial scenarios so you can see how the game works before you start making wrestlefolks. This was made by a small subteam at a Japanese studio and there are a number of localization/translation quirks, said localization probably being done by whoever in the office knew a little English. The other is, well, it’s the Paradox effect. There’s a lot of DLC for this game and it includes a lot of new wrestlers and bespoke component parts/moves, which are sometimes necessary to download certain edits. Indeed a lot of stuff is locked off by DLC which you might expect in the base game, like the “Fire Promoter” mode which lets you run your own promotion, or the Entrance creator. At full price it’s a bit much, the base game is only $30 but the DLC is sometimes that much as well. The good news is, this game goes on sale a LOT so it’s often easy to pick up everything for a fraction of the price. Just keep an eye on Steam/PSN. Some of the DLC is notable in itself. New Japan had multiple DLC packs, including two separate “Career” modes (one covering the main heavyweight roster, the other the Junior Heavyweights.) The STARDOM pack has no such mode but introduces a lot of good options for female wrestlers (and features the late, much-missed Hana Kimura). There’s also a cheap charity DLC featuring and benefitting the injured/retired Yoshihiro Takayama, including a move based on his legendary exchange of punches with Don Frye at Pride. (Warning here for blood and violence.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le69DBh7YwY&t=164s Fire Promoter is, naturally, focused on running your own promotion. You start with a mere six wrestlers and can only try to hire one a month, and you go from running short shows in small venues to putting together big cards and poach titles from rival promotions. Fighting Road Beyond is interesting in that it’s a follow-up to the, shall we say, controversial storyline from 1994’s Super Fire Pro Wrestling Special, featuring a descendant of that game's protagonist who committed suicide at the end of the game. Both that game’s story and this new followup are written by the now-legendary Suda 51. Parts Craft lets you make and use new custom parts for wrestler creation; be warned that this involves drawing said part from 19 different isometric angles, so actual creation is pretty much for experienced pixel artists only, but fortunately there are many of those out there. Move Craft, which is free and was released as a final update, is even more hardcore- it’s basically a set of dev tools for creating moves, and again, people more devoted than I have spent a LOT of time making this work. And then there are the mods. PC users can download Carlzilla’s mod suite, a massive total conversion that lets you tweak the game in all sorts of ways. You can predetermine a CPU match outcome just like the pros do, set up multiple alternate attires, run full on 30+ wrestler Royal Rumbles, create and/or play interactive Story Modes, run a “Management of the World” mode that’s both more involved and more flexible than Fire Promoter, run interview segments, replace sound files, replace graphics, even replace audience members! The sky is very much the limit and while installing the thing requires running a custom patcher and some fussing around with DLL files, it’s well worth your time. There’s a Discord channel with current links and installation instructions, but be warned, the modder- who it must be said is doing this all for free and in whatever free time he has- is a bit cranky and the discord has all sorts of rules about posting, so you’re best off just lurking and getting the files and not saying anything. (In his defense, Spike Chunsoft haven’t really made the game mod-friendly, and the 2.0 release alongside the PS4 version broke the original modpack completely. They’re weird about this.) With all these caveats, I’ve still lost maybe a thousand hours to this game. It’s a perfect model train set kind of game, you have access to an entire world of wrestling to customize and modify as you see fit. It’s perfect for running an e-fed, simming dream matches, or just letting the Kool Aid Man and Andy Kaufman battle it out (and yes, both of those characters have been created and uploaded.) I always think it’s a shame this never showed up on any “game of the year” or even “of the decade” lists, because I think what Spike Chunsoft have done here is really special. They’ve managed to create a game which effectively simulates a scripted competition, without sacrificing playability. It’s a masterpiece, and for some it will be the last wrestling game you’ll ever need. Maxwell Lord fucked around with this message at 23:13 on Jul 22, 2022 |
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Jul 22, 2022 20:37
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I love the game in concept, I was one of those who got overwhelmed by the huge customizability of it all and all the options/systems in place and fell off playing, but I adore that the game exists and there are so many great mods/custom models/moves/set dressing etc available for it.
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Jul 23, 2022 04:01
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I love Fire Pro so much
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Jul 25, 2022 15:51
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Does Fire Pro still have most of the cool moves locked until you beat the campaign mode? Because I just wanted to simulate matches between dudes and they couldn't use half their moves because I didn't feel like slogging through the campaign. Maybe I am completely misremembering this.
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Jul 28, 2022 01:35
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There's like a few moves gated behind the Mission Mode but nothing I recall being particularly key. Like I haven't gotten far on the missions in the PS4 version and I haven't noticed any obvious omissions. That said the mod suite does let you unlock everything (including the point caps).
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Jul 28, 2022 03:07
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Good writeup Runa. It's hard for me to vocalize what the game does so right. Especially since it's different things at different times. You described the highs really well without spoiling too much.
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Jul 31, 2022 15:32
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My game of games, old faithful, the abusive relationship that has given me hundreds of hours worth of stockholm syndrome... Project Zomboid. This game is brutal, it hates you, it doesn't look that pretty yet it keeps making you come back for more. It takes place in Kentucky where a zombie virus has created a giant quarantine. You get to create a character and pick from a series of positive and negative traits for said character. You want to be a morbidly obese ex security guard who suffers from agoraphobia and has bad teeth? By all means sir please step over here. Want to be a crackhead who is really good at breaking into cars and houses but will probably die from withdrawal? A fine choice for a first time player! The game has a dynamic day and night cycle and goes through every season and weather condition in it's isometric world. You need to find food and water, make sure it's safe to eat, find shelter and weapons to protect yourself from the horde of undead. Once safely hidden away you can go out on small raids only to die in the following ways: Get scared by a zombie and accidentally scream, alerting a horde to chase you down. Accidentally set yourself on fire trying to burn a corpse...or cook on a stove. You can eat expired food and die from a flood of vomit and diarrhea. Step on a piece of glass and die from the infection. Drink bleach. Wreck the only working car you found into a telephone pole at 70 mph. Shotgun to the head. Honestly you can die in hundreds of ways. This game has one of the most robust modding communities out there. Anything and everything can be modded into this game. There is a mod that adds time period music so you can go collect all the 90's rock you want on vinyl, cassette, or CD. Another mod adds VHS tapes so you can watch "The Waterboy" on TV while the undead pound on your barricaded doors and windows. Want to skateboard into a group of undead? Mod for that! Want big anime boobs? Mod for that. The game is endless and you need to play. Also it now has multi-player.
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Aug 3, 2022 01:30
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loving Moron posted:Want to skateboard into a group of undead? Mod for that! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JETRh2rkLMc
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Aug 3, 2022 06:46
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I loving love this game. It's nearly a decade old now and it scratches an itch that other games just don't do as well in my opinion. Like the OP said, the game hates you. And absolutely yes, this game hates you. It's a brutal zombie survival simulation, looting and maybe base building game if you live long enough. And even in the base game you can be some normal dude or some fat, asthmatic with no skills or some talented gigachad. Zombies don't give a gently caress. They're lethal as hell. Scratches, lacerations and bites are 7/25/100% for it being lethal. Not instantly. The game doesn't tell you. You just get sicker and sicker and sicker until you die. There is no cure. You're just hosed. So often it's best not to get into combat and if you have to or want to, you dodge and never take on more than a few at a time. At least in the early game. And there are sliders for so many things. How long the power and water stay on. How fast zombies move. How many of them there are. Respawn rate. So much. It's basically a slider for how much the game hates you. The modding community is fantastic too. I used the hydrocraft mod which was pretty nuts in how much it provided in terms of what you could make to build a base. Do you like beekeeping? Crossbows? Smithing motherfucking maces, spears and swords? Making solar power generators and steam engines and flamethrowers? It can get super unintuitive at high levels but just this one mod, which is extensive and has been updating for years is fun as gently caress. To me, zombies sort of feel like the weather. One zombie is a mud puddle that you can splash through. A few zombies is a flood. Multiple floods sometimes. And you actually can deal with a flood with the right caution, tools and preparation. Which is to say fire. Lots and lots of fire. I will say it again. I love this game. Play the vanilla. Die a lot. Play with the sliders. Play multiplayer. Get mods. Because this game is pretty different from person to person depending on how you play it. Ice Phisherman fucked around with this message at 08:30 on Aug 3, 2022 |
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Aug 3, 2022 08:27
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Ice Phisherman posted:I loving love this game. It's nearly a decade old now and it scratches an itch that other games just don't do as well in my opinion.
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Aug 3, 2022 10:10
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In all seriousness, this looks like a hilarious game for couch co-op. Gonna enjoy getting gruesomely killed with my bestie.
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Aug 3, 2022 10:53
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Shine posted:In all seriousness, this looks like a hilarious game for couch co-op. Gonna enjoy getting gruesomely killed with my bestie. I bought it for my best bud. First time playing he ends up finding a working car while I was a few blocks away digging through dumpsters. He didn't tell me because he had a better idea. A bit later I hear a car horn honking over and over. He comes slowly driving up hitting the horn and blasting that trucker convoy song with about 60 zombies behind him in pursuit...about 40 of them being on fire. He made sure to lock all the car doors so I wouldn't be able to hop in. He is a bastard but I love him. Fucking Moron fucked around with this message at 11:21 on Aug 3, 2022 |
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Aug 3, 2022 11:15
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The game works best if you don't take it too serious and just goof around, listening to bavarian beer techno.
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Aug 4, 2022 13:53
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And just like that, it went on sale. Bought it to play this weekend! Perfect timing, as I just finished Heat Signature and certainly don't have a hundred games in my Steam backlog 🙃
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Aug 4, 2022 14:19
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Heran Bago posted:Good writeup Runa. It's hard for me to vocalize what the game does so right. Especially since it's different things at different times. You described the highs really well without spoiling too much. Thanks! It's a little weird talking about an mmo and not really talk about what makes it an mmo. Usually people talk about mmos in terms of the social experience, their guild, the friends they made. A specific moment in their lives that they remember with great fondness, one they can't go back to but which has left an indelible mark. Meanwhile here I am essentially blogging on a forum with a thousand-word book report, gushing over the guy who managed to beat Sephiroth in a Japanese poll for "Best Final Fantasy Villain." But that's just the kind of game FFXIV is, it's a Final Fantasy game first and an MMO second, and comparisons to, say, WoW as though it were a replacement for WoW cheapens them both. It doesn't offer the sort of second-life promise that other mmos do, it isn't built for the same sort of constant engagement. It's a vehicle to deliver stories, big and small, and when you're done you can just unsub and come back later when new content is released. It's perfectly fine, the devs even encourage this! They're fully aware of how exploitative MMOs and their cousins, the GaaS model can be and deliberately avoid the worst of it. But one thing FFXIV has over other mmos is that its emphasis on story being the content rather than the filler means that every player who has played through the main storyline up to the level cap has had a shared experience with every other player of the game in a more concrete way than any other mmo has. Almost nothing is skipped or obsoleted. Even reworked content is still there, largely, just refined. It's an uncommonly ambitious gem in the mmo space and it's almost a miracle it exists at all when you consider the state in which FFXIV 1.0 released.
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Aug 4, 2022 14:30
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 There is a an ancient proverb that states that videogames cannot be art. But what if they could be? What if you made a game so steeped in art that it was not only the goal, but also the journey, the tools and the community around it? Enter Occupy White Walls. With a building system reminiscent of Fallout 4's CAMP, you start off as a wooden mannequin in a no-space void* with a small stipend of imaginary currency, a varied selection of flat floors and walls to place as you please and the overarching task of attracting patrons to come view the art in your gallery. What art would that be, you ask? A selection of around 19.000 pieces of classic paintings, modern photography, sculptures**, and an unknowable but growing collection of music and soundscapes courtesy of the in-game collaboration with soundcloud. But I don't know art, I cannot name even a single artist you yell in desperation! Don't worry, DAISY has you covered. An in-game, ever-learning AI that, at your request, shows you a selection of (at first) nine random pieces from it's vast archive - from which you can pick and purchase one to hang in your gallery, or move on to a new page of suggestions. Every piece of art you dwell on, ignore or purchase teaches DAISY about your tastes, tailoring future suggestions to better fit with your chosen a e s t h e t i c, allowing you both a guided choice and discovery of pieces you might otherwise never have found.  Each art-piece comes with it's own information-screen, where art-history buffs or people who just Want To Know More about the work or the artist in question can both learn from the accompanying biography, summary or trivia section, and or share their thoughts with the community at large in the comment section. From here, art-works can also be linked to the community chatrooms if you find a piece you feel deserves a wider spotlight. You can also see other works by the same artist, or even just look up art-pieces in similar styles or with similar themes, essentially generating for you an endless chain of art-exploration.  Once you have your piece selected, you place it in your gallery - however you want. This is part of the beauty of Occupy White Walls, because whilst there are limits to what the engine can do, those limits are far and beyond the constraints of boring, normal reality.  A classical Wall filled with art, such as you might find in any normal museum? Check.  Neon-pink mansion complete with golden candelabras and floating chairs? Check.  Maze-garden? Check.  Synthwave Ziggurat? Check.  Bond-Villain study? Check.  The periodic table of elements? Check.  The Ideal Plane of Circles and Orbits? Check.  A broken Echer painting? Check.  Space? Check. You then open your gallery, and wait. NPC-Patrons will eventually spawn in and appreciate what you've done, and slowly cubes (the currency of this world) will accrue on your desk, which will allow you to purchase more art, more decorations, building materials and even cosmetics for your mannequin. This is also where the Multiplayer aspect comes in, because at any point in time, other players might opt to visit your gallery and view your collection. And, if they should like what they see, may even purchase a copy of the art in your gallery for their own - granting you more cubes in the process! What's more, should you at any point tire of your own gallery, you may venture forth into the unknown and visit one of the many thousands of other, player-made spaces out there, perhaps finding something that even DAISY could not foresee was to your liking, or enjoying the stories, obstacle courses and puzzle-mysteries that the community has come up with. The larger your collection grows, the more architecture and cosmetic options you unlock for your own gallery. But the truth is, you don't even really have to build anything at all, if you'd just rather chill and visit other peoples places. Play at your own pace, the cubes will come eventually, as long as you have at least a reception-desk and room for people to roam. The cost of new art is tied to your level, which is tied to the size of your collection, though architecture prices remain static throughout, meaning there is a certain built-in progression path for those of us that feel delight whenever a number goes up. Did I mention all of this is free? Because it is. The price of the game is zero monies. You don't even need a beefy computer to run it (although it certainly helps) - because even a free subscription to Geforce NOW is enough to get even a ten year old laptop to smoothly stream even some of the larger and maze-like museums some players have built. So how do the devs make any money? There is but one microtransaction in the game, and that is Art-Codes***. What these do is allow you to upload one piece of art to the game that you own the copyright too. Ever wanted to hang that cool robot you drew in 5th grade next to a Rembrandt? Ever wanted to see just how many people are willing to display your own artistic recreation of goatse in their virtual living-rooms? 7 bux gets you One Art in the game and the accompanying web-page-community, though there are discounts if you decide you want several codes at once. You could even gift them to someone else, if you felt like it, perhaps giving that down-on-their-luck artist friend of yours a small boost to their world-wide reputation by allowing them to display their works to a truly international audience. The copyright remains yours (or theirs) - with the only caveat being that other players may display your art in their galleries (as you can with theirs in yours) and take screenshots of it, and that the devs may end up using it for trailers or other in-game video captures for advertising purposes. The TL/DR is that Occupy White Walls is a winning combination of two of my greatest passions in life: building cool stuff in videogames and enjoying, creating and sharing art with others. In a world all the more closed off due to pandemics and war, it offers everyone with an internet access the chance to view the greatest works of the ages (and the dumbest, worst or most peculiar) in a curated or not so curated environment, at their own pace, without the crowds, queues or angry museum guards telling you to keep on moving and not touch the artwork. If you have ANY interest in art, the art-scene or just chilling in beautiful spaces I could not recommend this game enough. -- * The tutorial equips you with a pre-built art-studio, should you loath even the idea of manual labour to get yourself started. ** There are roughly a dozen famous statues in-game, with no as-of-now way to get custom assets into it. This is because the 3d photo-scanning to get a sculpture in-game at any acceptable level of quality is both expensive and time-consuming, but perhaps future technology will open up the possibility of player-added items? Only time will tell. *** If you have the time and patience, you could also just use the in-game custom mosaic function to pixel-for-pixel recreate whatever art you want for free. There are players who specialize in this and make whole galleries to play with the possibilities afforded them by this and other more free-form building techniques.  
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Aug 4, 2022 20:33
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You could probably do this for any game in this series, but let's do this one. Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate is an action RPG released in Japan in August 2017 under the name Monster Hunter XX (pronounced "double-cross") and August 2018 internationally for the Nintendo Switch. To understand MHGU, its appeal, and its impact, it's probably necessary to start with Monster Hunter as a series and go from there. Part One: Monster Hunter, the Series Monster Hunter began on the PS2 with the 2004 release of the same name. While the series has seen a lot of changes and refinements from that first game up through the modern releases Monster Hunter World and Monster Hunter Rise, the core gameplay loop remains functionally identical. Players take on the role of a nameless hunter who works for the Guild, an organization of hunters that works to keep communities in this world safe. In the world of Monster Hunter, the wilds are full of huge, terrifying, and profoundly dangerous monsters, and it's your job to, well, hunt them. The core loop looks like this: in town, a Guild representative offers a wide range of quests, most of which are of the "Hunt an X" persuasion. After selecting a quest, choosing your equipment and items, eating a meal, and maybe gathering with other hunters online, you set out into one of several regions, find your target, and either kill or capture it. Once the monster is defeated, you return to town with loot in the form of gathered items and monster parts, the latter of which you can give to a blacksmith NPC to turn into better weapons and armor to hunt bigger and more dangerous monsters. Not unlike Pokemon, the Monster Hunter games are generally considered to exist in generations, with each generation largely sharing certain gameplay mechanics and technical advancements compared to generations prior. However, unlike Pokemon there's no equivalent of versions: there's no Monster Hunter Tri Red and Monster Hunter Tri Blue, just Monster Hunter Tri. Prior to (and during the earlier years of) the DLC era, games in the series would get pseudo-sequels usually subtitled either G or Ultimate, that included expanded and refined versions of the base game as well as an entire new tier of monsters called G-Rank, that extends the endgame and difficulty significantly. Already long games with frankly embarrassing amounts of content, it is not uncommon for diehard fans of the series to spend hundreds or even thousands of hours on an Ultimate version. The Monster Hunter series biggest overhaul was 2018's Monster Hunter World, which kept the core gameplay and compulsion loop but dramatically overhauled the aesthetics and non-combat gameplay to appeal to Western audiences. While they were working on that game, however, Capcom decided to celebrate the four generations of the series that had already come out, leading to 2015/2016's Monster Hunter Generations, of which MHGU is its Ultimate version. Part Two: MHGU and an Embarrassment of Riches There's a lot of ways to measure the size of a Monster Hunter game, but maybe the best way is to look at the number of so-called large monsters, the monsters that form the targets of the majority of hunting quests. The original game had a paltry 17 large monsters. Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, my entry point to the series, had 52. MHGU has an astounding 93 large monsters, far more than any other game in the series, spread across Low Rank, High Rank, and G-Rank. Keep in mind that a hunt usually takes at least 10 minutes and against larger, more dangerous monsters can easily take half an hour or more, and that players will be hunting each monster several times to get the pieces they need, and you can begin to get a sense of the scale of this game. Mind you, not ever monster a winner--Capcom pulled deep from the series backlog for some of these fights, and in some cases did not get the chance to overhaul them as much as you might want for a new iteration of the games. Still, the vast majority of the monsters in the game are wonderful, and they even added a bunch of new monsters for series veterans to cut their teeth on, including the flagship Fated Four (Gammoth, Astalos, Glavenus, and Mizutsune), a new elder dragon called Valstrax, and the final boss Ahtal-Ka. MHGU also brought all 14 weapon types from fourth generation in, each bringing its own unique mechanics and playstyle. Want to play defensively and have the easiest access to items of any weapon? Try sword and shield. Want to flip and jump over enemies? Try insect glaive. Like having a big fuckoff sword that does big numbers? That's greatsword. Want to hang back and shoot a gun? You've got two options, the light bowgun and heavy bowgun. No matter what you like from action games, I guarantee there's something here you'll love (I use the switch axe, an axe that transforms into a sword. It rules!) On top of the weapon types, each weapon features six different "hunter styles", which change the gameplay in various ways. Guild Style is the closest thing to a default and closely resembles the gameplay in earlier iterations. Striker Style focuses on offense, Valor Style focuses on defense, and Adept Style focuses on dodging. Rounding out the styles are Alchemy Style, which lets you fill a barrel with stuff to get various interesting effects, and my personal favorite Aerial Style, that lets you jump all over the monsters and just generally ignore gravity. Oh but we're still not done with hunter customization! You also get access to "hunter arts", weapon-specific super moves you can equip and unequip in town to serve various utilities in fights. These can range from quick reload abilities for weapons that need it, powerful dodges that sharpen your weapon as you perform them, and ultimate abilities that dish out huge damage at a cost of leaving yourself vulnerable and exposing yourself to long cooldowns. And also the game continues the core customization of the series at large: your armor is composed of five pieces (head, chest, arms, waist, and legs), each piece of which carries points for/against certain passive skills, letting you either rely on a set from a specific monster for abilities that align with that monster's general theme, or letting you mix-and-match to produce your own overpowered combinations. Weapons carry a large number of variations even within a single weapon class, meaning that just because you and your friend are both longsword users, you might be playing very different games. Did I mention you can swap out all of this customization for free whenever you're back in town? Because you can. You can play this game however you want, and you can play it forever. Part Three: Hunting MHGU's hunts closely resemble those of all the games prior to it: you spawn into a large map made of individual zones. In Low Rank you'll always spawn into a camp area with a few items available to help you, but in High and G Rank you'll usually spawn in some random area. Your target monster spawns somewhere too, depending on where they nest in that region. You'll pick these up over time, which I think feeds into the central fantasy of the series: you aren't just playing a video game, you are hunting monsters, and over time you will pick up on tons of tricks to make your job just that little bit easier. Monster fights are often compared to the Souls series, being focused on big scary enemies, deliberate animation-driven combat, and harsh penalties for death. In most quests, three deaths across all party members will fail the quest. The game rewards learning enemy animations and behaviors--for example, many monsters are weak to certain status effects or items, so bringing in the ability to exploit those weaknesses can make those hunts easier. Struggling against Rathian? Throw a flash bomb at her when she's flying and she'll fall to the ground stunned, giving you time to get a few free hits. Fighting a Zinogre? Be sure not to use a shock trap on it, or you'll power it up! This has always been and will likely always continue to be the core of the Monster Hunter experience, and MHGU nails it better than any other game in the series. You will hunt so many monsters that by the end of the game you'll remember when you running in terror from an Arzuros and laugh--at least until you're fighting a G Rank Deviant Arzuros and it completely dumpsters you. Do you want a game made up almost entirely of Elden Ring-quality bossfights that you can play with your friends, where there's so much content that you'll never 100% the game unless you're completely insane and have thousands of hours to dedicate to it? Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate is your game. Conclusion I didn't even mention the Palicos, cat followers you can train and take on hunts with you, and can even play as a cat if you want. And I didn't mention the surprises the elder dragon fights have in store for you, even if you're a series vet. There's just so much to the game that it's impossible to do anything more than scratch the surface in a forums post--and we wouldn't have it any other way. Play Monster Hunter. quiggy fucked around with this message at 21:21 on Aug 4, 2022 |
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Aug 4, 2022 21:19
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Holy crap! I'm not entirely sure this would be my cup of tea to actually play but it sounds like a fantastic digital space to visit.
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Aug 5, 2022 00:44
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quiggy posted:
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Aug 5, 2022 02:07
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I should start working on another post.
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Nov 9, 2022 06:34
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Thanks for this post. I spent five hours building an art gallery yesterday and filling it with art. Such a neat game.
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Nov 10, 2022 14:10
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Final Doom: The Plutonia Experiment Everybody likes to make fun of video game franchises, especially FPS franchises, cranking out yearly releases that barely bring the gameplay forward. However, for id Software in the mid-nineties, that was a necessity. From 1992 until 1997, they put out a major release for each calendar year, from Wolfenstein 3D to Quake 2. It was a major part of their business model, making the most of whatever amazing new tech John Carmack had created while he worked on whatever the next big video game engine would be. During that time, they had transitioned from the old shareware model, releasing episodes of their games for free via the various BBS networks and exhorting players to obtain the full game via mail order, to ‘proper’ big box releases. The Doom engine got milked particularly hard. Besides the income from licensing the engine, id Software went from Doom in 1993, via mail order distribution, to Doom II in 1994 (big box), to The Ultimate Doom (big box version of the original Doom, with an extra episode), to Final Doom. The latter consisted of two level packs based off of Doom II assets, TNT: Evilution and The Plutonia Experiment. The Doom engine is often lauded for its efficiency, running amazingly even on an ‘average’ PC of the time. John Carmack’s engines weren’t just notable for pushing the technological envelope, but also for making these new graphical achievements accessible without needing an amazing PC. But the Doom engine was also notable in that it was very easy to make your own content for it. As a result, almost as soon as the first Doom came out, a healthy community of amateur map makers sprung up. This was noticed by id, and for the second half of Doom engine releases, they brought in a lot of outside talent. The final episode of The Ultimate Doom, Thy Flesh Consumed, was developed by a combination of id Developers (John Romero, American McGee, and designers that were recruited from the Doom online community. Tim Willits, Theresa Chasar and John Anderson were all recruited for the episode based on their work designing player-made levels. The next release, Final Doom, was developed entirely by members of the Doom community. TNT Evilution was developed by TeamTNT, a group of mapmakers from the BBS community, with id purchasing the rights to the level pack mere hours before it was released. The Plutonia Experiment meanwhile was developed directly under id’s supervision, by brothers Dario and Milo Casali. The Casali brothers had contributed maps to TNT Evilution, being recruited after their work on Memento Mori, one of the earliest community map packs for Doom II. Plutonia is perhaps most notable for pushing the envelope in terms of difficulty. Like most of the community, the brothers had spent more than a year playing official releases on the Ultra-Violence difficulty, which had definitely influenced their own mapmaking. In general, the desire for a new challenge was pervasive within the online Doom community. This becomes clear as soon as you start the first map. Within moments of leaving the starting area, you are confronted with the sound of an Arch-vile waking up. The Arch-vile is by far the most dangerous non-boss monster in the game, and most players will class it as the most dangerous monster, period. It’s positioned on a ledge with a chaingunner, creating a situation where you’re constantly running back and forth across a courtyard with the chaingun laying into you. You can kill it, but the Archvile is constantly reviving it, until you finally collect the firepower to deal with it properly. That one encounter is endemic of the two things that made Plutonia great: the Casali brothers had a deep mechanical understanding of how each monster worked, and how to combine them to create the best encounters in modern Doom, and they never hesitated to throw the player into the deep end, while also giving them the firepower they needed. The Casali brothers were never afraid to bombard the player with Revenants, Chaingunners, Pain Elementals and Arch-viles, but they always made sure to be equally generous with the firepower. The result was a set of 32 of the tightest, most aggressive maps you’ll find in a commercial Doom release. You’re constantly with your back against the wall, but never without the means to fight back. They also had an innate sense of just how big they could make the hordes of monsters without the levels feeling like a slog. Perhaps the most singularly influential level in Plutonia was the second secret map, Go 2 It. Right from the start, you’re given a Megasphere, and every weapon in the game. Of course this being Plutonia, you’re going to need it. The map is a pastiche of Entryway, the first level of Doom II. Just expanded, and filled with more than 200 monsters, including 13 Cyberdemons and 19 Arch-viles. It was the birth of what is a cornerstone of Doom mapmaking to this day - The slaughter maps. Slaughter maps take what made Plutonia in general and Go 2 It in particular so memorable and push it to the extreme. With the help of modern source ports, map makers can create levels with thousands of monsters, tens of thousands even, packed into wide, sprawling arenas. A single room can have hundreds of monsters in it, creating incredibly tight spaces for the players to dance in. The Plutonia Experiment brought the envelope pushing difficulty that had become the style at the time for the nascent online Doom community, and brought it to the masses. More than any commercial Doom release it forced the player to, as toxic as the phrase has become in recent years, ‘git gud’. The Casali brothers managed to walk the fine line of making levels that were intense and difficult, without ever truly feeling like a grind. Development of Plutonia had been an incredible grind for the brothers. In four months’ time, they cranked out the full set of 32 levels. Thankfully id was so impressed with their work that they ended up accepting the submitted level pack as-is. From there, the brothers moved on to Quake mapmaking, and were soon snapped up by Valve, working on Half-Life, Half-Life 2 and Left 4 Dead among other games. Plutonia bridged the gap between the hardcore Doom community sharing their levels on BBS communities with lovely dialup, and the general public. It also showed id, and game developers at large, that there was a definite market for the kind of ball-busting difficulty that the Casali brothers had perfected. It also showed that it was commercially viable to tap your community for talent in development of further games. In terms of commercial Doom releases’ influence on modern Doom map making, the Casali brothers stand above all.
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Mar 3, 2023 12:23
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Swedish Thaumocracy posted:
That looks awesome. I know what I'm wasting my Friday evening on!
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Mar 3, 2023 13:48
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Pathologic 2 I always considered myself to be a "gameplay over story" kinda gamer. In 2016, my now-husband showed me one of his favorite games, Pathologic. It's a cult classic from Russia, and frankly, I think it sucks as a game. This preamble is only here so that if what I'm about to post interests you, you're free to know: not only you can skip Pathologic, but the "2" in the title is a misnomer that doesn't even exist in the original name, where it's just "Mor" Pathologic 2 is a survival game where you balance your meters as you walk across the weird steppe town, collect trash, barter with NPCs, and sometimes craft a thing or two. Time never stops for you. And despite the description making it sound like a ton of other games on the market, Pathologic 2's themes make it seem new, and, to me, more exciting. I suppose part of that is because not many games have those mechanics combined with the story. And that's inarguably Pathologic 2's main feature. You play as Artemy Burakh (and, if devs won't go down, they plan to include 2 more campaigns like in the original), a young doctor who returned from the fancy city where he studied medicine into his little steppe town. It's a strange place with its own traditions and seem to be on the verge of reality and something else. The Town is a weird place. A big comparison can be made to Twin Peaks, as the game often goes into places that don't seem real. It features characters that should not exist and places that are impossible. Soon, the plague begins. A very specific type of plague that has already ravaged this town earlier, and was not defeated then. The way out is blocked, so you will spend 12 days trying to find the cure. What this mostly entails is speaking to weird NPCs and following their questlines as you're trying not to starve. However, this is a game about failure. Time doesn't wait, and you are NOT able to complete all quests on any day except for Day 1. Some quests will actively gently caress you over. NPCs lie, or might hide the truth from you. Then, as plague spreads, they can die if you don't treat them. In fact, in my first playthrough, some of the closest friends of my characters died. There is no cure, after all. You can treat them, and it raises their chances of survival, but nothing is guaranteed. There's a weird tendency to describe Pathologic 2 as "game that's not supposed to be fun", and I resent that. The original game was that. With no good quest log, barely anything to do, it's a shallow experience that's saved by the story. However, I was NEVER as engaged with a game as I was with Pathologic 2. The game IS constant pressure, but it's drat fun! Every step you take feels like a choice. Do you choose to walk, run, or take the boat? Do you risk going through a plague-infested district? Do you choose to do this quest or try and barter for some fish with the trash you found nearby? If this doesn't sound fun, don't worry. There are difficulty sliders in the menu. They won't make you into a super-human, but can help with some stuff. That said, various penalties aren't AS harsh as you might think, so I'd recommend playing without them. I would also like to add that I think this game is INSANELY funny. What I wrote might remind you of Lynch's works and, in particular, Twin Peaks, and that comparison is apt, as the dry wit permeates throughout the entire game. The NPCs feel alive, yet are sufficiently wacky so the game doesn't feel grim-dark. Fan favorite is Daniil Dankovsky, another city doctor, who is such a loving rear end in a top hat that he speaks like one of those people with marble statue avatars and just quotes latin randomly at you while not bothering to help. To you, the culture of the town is absurd, and maybe he's right. After all, autopsies aren't permitted and the town has no hospital. You can sympathize with him, yet he is such a jerk about everything that you can't help but laugh at him. The atmosphere in general is just incredible. It's deliberately theatrical, featuring Tragedians - extras that mostly appear throughout Day 1 to teach you the game's rules, along with spotlights highlighting spots of interest. The presentation is on-point, and the writing is some of the best I've seen in a game. Vookatos fucked around with this message at 11:43 on Mar 4, 2023 |
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Mar 3, 2023 13:52
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jesus i guess i should install that game again and give it another try i guess huh?
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Mar 3, 2023 21:40
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I want to gush at length about Guilty Gear Strive and also about how cool the community is around it. For a while, I've been trying out genres of games I found to be very "gatekeepy". You know, Touhou, Dark Souls, Kaizo Mario hacks. These games have a notoriety about how difficult they are. In every case, I found them to be more approachable than you would think as an outsider looking in. About 6 months ago I decided to give Fighting Games a shot. They always seemed really daunting and awkward to me, way more than any of the other genres. Playing them looks an awful lot like putting in cheat codes in games when i was a kid. I was certain I would bounce off them, but I wanted to understand why people found them fun. I watched a few beginner guides on Youtube like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCUlBX8E2BU I watched the live-stream of the big championship event EVO and some famous highlight videos, and started seeing what games were popular. Before that point, I had never watched a single tournament or played a game in the genre seriously. I did play a bit of King of Fighters '98 on PS1 at a friend's house when I was ~10 years old. But the only thing i remembered about that... was that it had a cute Jpop song on the disk if you put it in a CD player. Anyway, I started with Dragonball Fighterz. The game looked gorgeous, exactly like the anime. There were a ton of fullscreen beam attacks, you could do the crazy "teleport behind people and punch them" stuff from the show. But I found it really hard to get into after trying story mode for a few hours. Each player picks a team of 3 characters, and I didn't like feeling like I needed to learn multiple characters in order to enjoy myself... I was having enough trouble with 1! Not only that, but it seemed that the fanbase was dying due to the game having terrible netcode. DBFZ was a huge game, but only at in-person events because the online is terrible. Once covid hit it became super hard to play and enjoy it, so everyone moved on. So I kept looking around, and I ran into this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oA4G0dEDxmc And I was in love. This game oozes style, it's a love-letter to the creator's favorite music. There's a character named Testament (like the band) and another guy with an evil shadow demon living in him named Eddie (like Iron Maiden.) Every song in the soundtrack is done in the style of stuff like Killswitch Engage or Queen, you're certain to find something you'll love. Listing every musical reference in this game would be longer than this post is. Learning The game has a training mode called Missions that teaches you every important concept the game has, and even teaches you how to counter specific attacks from certain characters that might be hard to deal with. It's split into 5 levels of technical proficiency, and I did the first 2 before starting to play online. I didn't actually retain much the first time i did it, so I still come back to it from time to time. I still find it a really valuable resource. It does genuinely take some time getting used to the gameplay in this genre, but the single player Arcade Mode is a nice format to learn in. I played through it on a few characters until i found one I fell in love with (Testament). Pausing the game in single player or in the training mode lets you bring up every special attack your character has, which both shows and describes how to use it. There's also the excellent website Dustloop that can give you all the info and basic strategies about each character. in addition, there are several Youtube playlists I'll recommend here for fighting game basics: Core-A Gaming's series about FGs. kind of a grab-bag of topics but all excellent videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWIbhIYLOq-T7XwgHe2y2hBE8Zr_yeODi Sajam's "Learning How To Learn" series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6Zpep0TMBYQltmphkT0s2O5d3I4al2c6 This is a playlist I made of more theorycrafting stuff, mostly by Romolla: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL21UsmM0ZrJqmMvgnQa3pczqJt4P2VCmM Lots of other great assorted vids in here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTBWQ-LoR1wd0ByUXejW3ZL6ePMb60GlX I know it's a lot, but once i got engaged with this genre I consumed EVERYTHING I could find about it. I was, and am, hooked. Playing There's an open park area to play casual games, a room system to play privately, and a ranked mode called the Tower. The Tower has 10 floors and a "Celestial" floor for players who complete a gauntlet challenge to unlock it. This isn't like most ranked systems in games, there's no ELO or anything. This is purely designed to keep strong players from killing newbies. You'll start out around floor 4-6 probably. If you win a bunch you'll go up and vice versa for losing. The game tracks a hidden "player won/lost the last X games out of Y" stat and uses that to determine when you'll move floors. The longer you stay on a floor, the longer it takes to move up or down, but it never gets grindy or anything. Honestly, don't worry about it, turn off rating update notifications in the options menu. the game will put you on the correct floor pretty quickly and then you'll work your way up. I'm on floor 7 currently and the highest I've been is 8. I probably belong in 8 but I've been grinding my bad matchups lately. I think matchup knowledge is the biggest wall in the game to feeling proficient. You have the same tools you always do, but you need to use them differently for each opponent. Once you hit floor 10 you'll probably know all your most common matchups, then the main difference is in mental stuff and in optimizing damage. I went in with the expectation that I would have to lose a hundred games and be miserable in order to get enough proficiency to start enjoying myself. In Strive, this just isn't true. The game is popular enough that you'll go against other people who are brand new as well. It can be super hard to tell what's going on in a lot of fighting games. But in this one, when you or your opponent mess up, the game explodes and freezes with COUNTER filling the screen, giving the player who has the advantage loads of time to follow up with other attacks. In this way, it's easy to know when you have made a big oopsie and can reflect on it later, or rewatch that part of the fight in replay mode. I found that as I improved, I started to lose *more* at first. Since I wasn't mashing buttons randomly, my opponents would mash while I just defended until I died. Specials are risky in this game, if you play safe and force your enemy away with the block system, they will be forced to commit to using some big special move in order to keep pressure on you, so I learned how to beat some of those and got rewarded with COUNTER hits a bunch. As i started learning matchups, and when it was actually safe to attack, and started learning ways to keep applying pressure to force my opponents to make risky decisions on defense as well, I rapidly shot back up past my old plateau. Community: I was pretty worried about this coming in. Watch any number of famous fighting game videos, and you'll see all kinds of dumb behavior. People shouting in each others' faces, broken controllers... Strive is a bit different. People are by-and-large pretty chill. you still have your shitters, but so does every community. Several of the best players are trans or leftists, or both, and I really recommend those circles. Romolla's my favorite, she was one of the best GG Xrd (previous GG game) players and her streams are usually really fun. She's extremely insightful but her talk about RPS and risk/reward can be really confusing even if she's calmly explained it to her viewers 600 times. Here's one of the sweetest things I've seen recently: Umisho and Razzo are both godlike players who live together, they regularly both land in top 8s competing against each other. They always give it everything they've got, and this clip from 2 weeks ago made me tear up: https://clips.twitch.tv/FilthyResilientBearKeyboardCat-smYEedYLPUBaR4Le Another one of the coolest things about fighting games is how inclusive they are of new players. EVO, that huge tournament run every year? It's an open bracket, *anyone* can join. I'm going to go this year and play in it, if I can. There are also beginner brackets run every week for Strive, livestreamed on Twitch so you can have dozens or hundreds of people watch you play online, commentate, and cheer for you. It's incredibly stressful, but very fun and a cool way to track your progress over time. I competed in a couple, here's a video one of my opponents made with me as their first match in a recent bracket, I'm Jimmy_D. They won, but they made me look pretty cool still  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02FkxoZgiic Sure, it's still kind of a hard game, but I love it and the part of the community I'm in. I've made a ton of friends and happy memories through it in a small time. Strive is being added to Xbox, along with Xbox Gamepass and PC Gamepass next week. With that, you'll have access to all but the DLC characters and stages, so there's no monetary risk in trying the game out. Come play with me, I ordered a Bridget figure earlier today so I need to get good at her before it arrives.
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Mar 4, 2023 02:25
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Made a new longform video on the story of Transistor. Transistor is a strange one because the game hides much of the nature of the world from the player. Regardless, I still think there are some interesting elements that make me think of the fall of many previous online communities, and how we ourselves on SA almost fell. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vMEvf6MxGQ Sardonik fucked around with this message at 09:13 on Mar 4, 2023 |
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Mar 4, 2023 09:11
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please put a warning if you're gonna link a dunkey video, tia to all posters
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Mar 4, 2023 09:17
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Farming Simulator 22 (Or 19, or whatever, who cares? 22 is the newest for PC/Console, get that one.) Farming Simulator is a game that has transcended stereotypes a few times. A series of games from Swiss-German developers Giants Software, Farming Simulator is basically exactly what it says it is, it simulates (some) aspects of farming (apart from the high death rates, occasional bouts of animal cruelty, generally going broke, specifically going broke after Monsanto sue you because some of their GM, patented seeds blew onto your farm, and John Deere bricking your tractor because you refused to pay your subscription to Deere-net or some bollocks like that.)  When I first heard of it, along with the Swiss-German developers, I put it down to another one of those German style games where you can work after you come home from work. It is that, but it’s also gained a reputation of legitimacy outside of that style of game. One stereotype transcended. But then it falls back onto that stereotype when the developers did research and found out a lot of their players were actual farmers, and often they were farming in a way they couldn’t in real life. The guy with a small holding in Europe is driving massive machinery around the massive 16x US maps, while the US farmer is driving through the streets of a small French village with decades old equipment (and yes, also playing on maps with huge machinery destroying the planet  )And, of course, the main bit of transcending Farm Sim did was with SsethTzeentach’s Mad Skill | No Plow | 360 Crop Rotation video. A video that I’m sure played some part in bring Farming Simulator to a broader gaming audience. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEJHrmliVQw That’s all to say Farming Simulator is exactly what it says it is, and it does exactly what you’d think it does, but why it’s so good is because of continuous development, constant iteration, a great community, and an even better modding scene. When you get into Farm Sim the first time it can be a little intimidating, “How the gently caress do I plant barley? I have to cultivate? Or subsoil? AND subsoil?? Lime? Plow? Fertilize! TWICE?!? And I have to do all this in a specific order?!!” And that’s before you get to the animal options, or the production chains added in the latest instalment of the game. It is intimidating, and there is a lot of equipment to choose from, and you probably will watch videos to figure out the most efficient way to grow wheat because you’re a goon and can’t simply enjoy a game as it goes. But eventually you begin to enjoy it in a knowledgeable way. You’ve gone through the initial excitement in learning phase, you’ve bought your farmhouse, piece of land, tractor and attachments you need. You’ve got your grain silo. You’ve even bought a little powerwasher to keep your tractor clean... You’ve gotten into a nice lazy routine of driving up and down a field, being careful to go in a straight line, trying not to waste fertilizer or seed by going over areas you’ve previously fertilized or seeded. You don’t know how, but this is relaxing. This highly dangerous job in the real world, with a huge amount of stress and worry, when stripped back to a relatively simple video game makes it fun to drive a tractor around, and play with machinery, and do basic farm chores at 4am at night when the atmosphere and your mood is absolutely suited to mindlessness. Then the game really begins. You’ve been having a good time, doing your second or third harvest, maybe. But you’ve been driving your tractor to collect the grain from the harvester into your trailer a bit too often for your liking. The harvester only holds 4500l, and something around 8000l would be great. Less stoppages to unload! Less breaks to your flow! You saw one you liked the look of in the store even. It has a header attachment that’s an extra four feet in width as well. But, alas, you couldn’t justify it on a farm so small as yours... So I’ll buy another field. But then I won’t have the money for the new harvester. But if I work hard with the smaller harvester for a year or two I could afford the bigger one then, and I’d already have the bigger farm. It’d be a quick skip to my next expansion! So what will I plant? Soybean pays the best of the crops I can access. Unless I grow some barley to feed to chickens I bring in on the farm, selling the eggs for a much higher price. I’ve always wanted chicke... Oh poo poo! You’ve just destroyed a big swathe of your crops by driving the harvester through a field you weren’t harvesting while deep in thought about expansion. All because emptying the harvester could have been a little easier. You commit to getting back into the zen-like driving up and down fields state and tell yourself you’ll only figure out your next year’s plan when you’re in the middle of the field and really going dead straight (you’re never going dead straight.) This is a very similar pattern to a lot of video games. Get equipment, do a task, realise there’s better equipment to do bigger or more difficult tasks, or accomplish tasks more efficiently, so you work towards that, and again, and again. What makes Farming Simulator different is the pace all this happens at. You could have a small farm that takes 30 minutes work every day/month. You could turn all the difficulty settings down, playing with no weeds, playing with no need to plow, or lime, or pick rocks. You could just mess around with your buddies in multiplayer (playing farming sim with some friends you do silly poo poo with is a wild amount of fun.) Or you could have a massive operation where you hire workers to do as much as you can, while you’re doing other things (grappling with Farm Sim’s not great worker system is more management than an actual in the real world manager would generally do.) Or you could have your small farm, but do everything with antique, or at least, “classic” equipment, spending hours every day with old machinery doing things slowly and stopping off for a picnic of bread and cheese at the side of the field. And that brings up the equipment. Farm Sim and the developers Giants Software are, in my view, one of the most community focused, mod-friendly developers I’ve come across. There’s plenty of places to get mods online, from sketchy Russian Facebook-alikes to big unofficial mod sites, but Giants provides a central place for mods that adhere to their policies, and that’s a lot of mods. Whether you’re on a PC and downloading the mods to put in folders, or using the in-game menu on an Xbox or Playstation there is some level of guarantee with the mods from the official modhub. Namely, they probably won’t break your game or install a cryptominer. Giants tests all the mods that are submitted to them, that they won’t break the licenses they hold, for one thing, but also for general compatibility and that they do generally do what they say they’ll do. And it works. There are hundreds of mods on the Farm Sim modhub. From old, low horsepower, classic tractors to giant forestry machines. Three metre ploughs, available in all the brightest colours, to a machine that’ll do most of your silage baling work in one go. And that’s not everything. It’s not all equipment. There’s mods that’ll affect gameplay, give you superstrength, increase the difficulty of working with straw, new types of animal pens and pastures, sheds (oh so many sheds, because everyone loves a good shed), and new productions to funnel all your crops and animal produce into to make even fancier products for profit. Do you want to own a donut factory? There’s a mod for that, on top of the base game production that lets you make cake. If there is a recent criticism of Farm Sim that does have some validity it’s that they’re going heavily down a DLC route. It’s not as bad as some games, but there are “season passes” and some exclusives and the like. Combine this with the amount of mods available and you might think that Farm Sim needs extras to work, but it absolutely doesn’t. I have hundreds of hours on a base game map so far, mainly using base game equipment, and not using any DLC. I have the DLC, because I have hundreds of hours in the game and want the option, but it’s not gating anything necessary (unless you count the platinum expansion which specifically focused on forestry work and is very much an “expansion” in the old gaming sense of the world.) One real example of why Farm Sim is great is I was driving somewhere rural today. Coming up to a petrol station I saw a tractor pulled up to it. I wondered, “Is that a Massey Ferguson?” As I got closer I decided, “No, it’s definitely a Case.” It was a Case. A minor complaint I have about FS is that they’ve introduced grape growing in the latest edition of the game (FS22.) However, there’s no winery. I suspect this is because Giants Software don’t want to risk getting a higher age rating than their “suitable for all ages/ages 3+.” Sure, making alcohol in a proper industrial setting might only put a small warning on the industry guides, but that’s not really the point of Farm Sim. There’s something in it for people of all ages. Your toddler won’t be able to figure out the crop growing routine, but they will have a blast driving the big tractor through fields. Or simply telling you what to do and what to drive, which I’ve heard toddlers are very good at. Which goes back to my, “No, it’s a definitely a Case,” comment when I saw that tractor. This game, Farming Simulator 22, is proper childlike fun. It feels fun to get all the officially licensed, real world equipment. It feels good to be driving a giant tractor, with suitable engine sounds, cutting grass in your fields. It is the sense of “What do I want to be when I grow up... I WANT TO BE A...!” And you can fill in anything you want, but for now I get to be a farmer. I do get that childlike excitement, but at the same time I also get a game that is making me think about my choices in best expanding my farm, if I so chose, and it’s making me consider time constraints, worker constraints, financial constraints (unless I apply for the government subsidy (mod) and get sweet sweet taxpayer dollars to be useless.) It’s childlike excitement and a kind of occupation that takes place in the real world, that does engage the mind, except now it’s for fun because your sheep won’t die if you don’t feed them. They just won’t produce wool. You want to feed your sheep because A.) You’re not a monster, and B.) That’s how you make money. Now all the fun is in figuring out how to feed the sheep and do everything else on your farm. And, even on top of the childlike excitement, and the engagement and planning of a management game while also having to actually do the work, there are still the absolutely serene moments when everything else fades away and you’re really loving focused on driving that tractor in a good straight line. You’ve put yourself in first person view, you’re sitting in the cab of your new machine, you can hear the engine but it’s dampened down just enough for comfort, then sun is shining and you’re driving across a hilly field and you just know you’re loving nailing the plough lines you’re putting down. Get hosed office job! Get hosed stress! I’m a loving farmer now!
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Mar 4, 2023 19:57
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Absolutely fantastic writeup Mrenda. Your love of the game is dripping off this post.
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Mar 4, 2023 22:33
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I'll just add that in addition to the whole farming sim thing, Farming Simulator, of all games, has developed a competitive e-sports scene. Yes, you read that well. It started with modders making a team-based competitive mode, where two teams of 3 play on copies of the same map (but only see the score/multipliers of the other team) and compete over 15 (or 20, or more, not sure) minutes to rack in the biggest score. Teams score by putting bales of hay in the barn, and then there are twists, such as: - there is a first bale bonus based on how early you put in your first bale. - the barn has the ground level door and the upstairs door reached by dropping bales a bit more carefully on the conveyor belt. The upstairs door gets more points per bale. - by dumping grain in in your storage, you don't score points, but you increase a score multiplier for the hay bales and speed up your conveyor bales, making it worth coordinating the grain dumping and the bale scoring. - by scoring bales, you reduce the other team's grain multiplier, making it worth tracking the other team's score/multiplier and keeping some bales near the barn for emergency multiplier dunking. - teams get to deny a few options before gear (tractors, combine harvesters...) selection, then selection is done simultaneously by one player from each team at a time, allowing teams to adapt to current enemy selection. - there are a number of valuable additions (trailers, harvesters...) on the map on special pads. Whoever gets to it first claims the vehicle and more importantly, denies it to the other team (the vehicle disappears on the other team's map). - there are occasional air drops with special bonuses. - the map has farm and fields connected by a series of bridges which one can raise/lower all at once, except they don't all start in the same position. This leads to hilarious bridge flipping and guess-denial at times. Also, with the game's physics, to tractors jumping over a raising bridge, or getting stuck at the top of one until a teammate lowers it. - the last few seconds of a match may be super tense as the last few bales slowly climb on the travelator, leading some players to attempt a climb of the travelator with their tractor so they can score that extra bale and tip the score. And it goes further, as the mode became so stupidly popular in its niche that the company behind the game went on to make it an official league, with competing international teams sponsored by the farm equipment manufacturers themselves. Yes you read that well. There are teams of nerds officially competing in team pvp in Farming Simulator, while wearing John Deere or Corteva sports jerseys. And it's actually hilariously awesome. League site: https://fsl.giants-software.com/ Twitch page when the league is on: https://twitch.tv/giantssoftware Some random highlights of a past league: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7etimjT5BY A video showcasing the rules: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58NYQ0_cT-8 Of all games, this is one of the last I'd have expected to develop a competitive scene, but it works incredibly well, matches are interesting, the ghost visualisation of the other team in spectator mode is great, and the combination of premise and janky physics just add to the hilarious enjoyment.
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Mar 5, 2023 08:43
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