Video Games Thread: For the Love of Zeus, Give Me One!

[Slurktan]

So DA:Inquisition is on sale for psplus for like 15 bucks so thinking of getting it.  I haven't played it before due to my PC being old and not being able to run but I just picked up a PS4.  I've read various complaints on here though.... is it actually a good game?  I don't trust gaming sites at all.

I wasn't a big fan of DA:O due to it being the exact same recycled Bioware "3-4 fetchum quests for the MacGuffin" plot (Plus the dwarven area was a tedious slog) but I quite liked DA2 despite its shortfalls in combat due to the much better plot. Is DA:I more like the first or second?

[Jace, Extat]

DA:I is... kind of its own thing. There's a fair amount of fetchquesting, but it's fairly well presented as gathering crucial supplies for and advancing the Inquisition, so you're not just grinding and there's actually tangible benefit since the crafting system is pretty cool (I NEVER craft in games). The story is standard fantasy save the world fare and there are very valid criticisms to be made about the big bad, but overall I think it hits all the highs levels you expect from BioWare and then some. The real treat (even for a BioWare game) is the companions and characters, they didn't just hit their usual home run, they knocked the ball out of the damn park.

If I had to describe it in relation to the previous games, I'd say that it mixes the 'gather allies, save the world' theme from DA:O with the more compact and personal narrative of DA:2.

It's basically Mass Effect. Hope that helped.

[Fez]

To be fair the Ruin Sentinels fight was always optional.

I'm curious as to what really are your idea of swarms because the few situations I consider to be all have equivalents in either Demon's Souls or Dark Souls 1.  Usually you will get three or four if you just bull rush through stuff and don't play careful; but except for a few situations I don't find there is ones where you can't split them apart and fight them piecemeal.

Technically yeah. Although I think before the only way it was optional was to beat the Pursuer in the Forest, not the easiest of fights; or do a pretty glitchy jump in Lost Bastille.

To me, a swarm is any time 4+ enemies aggro at the same time no matter how careful you are. I never played Demon Souls. In Dark Souls 1, I can recall this only happened a few times and it was usually very weak enemies (the zombies on the second floor of undead church, the skeletons in the catacombs, etc.) or enemies that you could avoid entirely (like those flesh blobs in the Painted World).

In SOTFS though (and actually, to some extent in the base game as well, iirc), i'd say the majority of locations in the game (at least through the areas I've been to) rely on this happening for the game's difficulty. Compared to DS1, I'd say enemy attack patterns are more obvious, there are fewer areas where you have get around having little movement ability due to halls or cliffs (which I hated for the Capra Demon fight, but otherwise like), and there's less freedom to be creative in killing enemies (for instance, in DS1 I like powerstancing a slow heavy weapon and timing my attacks right to get the first hit and stunlock enemies until they're dead. In DS2 this rarely works because another enemy will come up behind me. Very careful sword and board is by far the best melee strategy now). 

I feel like in DS1, enemy encounters are a puzzle to be solved, while in DS2 SOTFS enemy encounters are about executing the same difficult strategy each time. Which is a shame, because in all other terms (atmosphere, music, physical level design, non-combat mechanics, UI, etc.) I think DS2 SOTFS is far superior.

[Melphis Amekia]

Yeah same EG.  The dota2 captain is ppd and he strikes me as being as big an asshole at Idra (who I really hated when I was following the WoL scene).  Idra coincidentally went and played HotS for a while, although not sure if he's still in the EG team there *checks liquipedia* nope, EG are disbanded in HotS!

Tastosis have been doing the professional casting gig since SC2 came out, they were over in Korea with GomTV so they are definitely at the 5 year mark as well.  I don't mind being able to tell who the casters favour as long as they are still balanced in their commentary, but there is a very clear line where it cases to be professional and that really ticks me off.

I believe Tasteless wanted to play pro during WoL beta(I remember him and Day9 playing pro tournaments) but wasn't at the level so started casting. And I forget Tastosis mostly because I've been away from the scene for so long and I support foreigners instead(TLO is my favourite player) Koreans, though I've grown rather attached to TOP. And casters in general never seemed to favour one player that much against some other(though for example during Blizzcon 2015 the casters clearly wished Lilbow as the only foreigner to win against Life(who went to finals and was last years champion) because he was the only foreigner to manage it, but he lost to three rushes because instead of preparing for the tournament he played to become good at Legacy of the Void(and he still isn't as good at Legacy as he was at HotS). I do feel that example is justified, though, because who wouldn't want for the foreigner to beat the Koreans in SC2?)

Dunno if you'd want to, but I really recommend getting into LotV, at least with watching the scene and the tournaments. The game is much more fun than HotS ever was, deathballs don't work anymore because of the units/spells that break them up(disruptors have an AoE shot that deals 145 damage to a unit if it hits(which is their only attack and it recharges), ravagers(which morph from roaches) have a small AoE "spell" which deals 65 damage if it hits a unit, Liberator siege zones, etc.) I've stopped playing it because for me it's either stay bad or play all day till I become pro, and I have other things now which I'd like to do instead(if I could've bought WoL or HotS, I'd have been a progamer by now), but I really enjoy watching the tournaments.

[Rhom]

DA:I is... kind of its own thing. There's a fair amount of fetchquesting, but it's fairly well presented as gathering crucial supplies for and advancing the Inquisition, so you're not just grinding and there's actually tangible benefit since the crafting system is pretty cool (I NEVER craft in games). The story is standard fantasy save the world fare and there are very valid criticisms to be made about the big bad, but overall I think it hits all the highs levels you expect from BioWare and then some. The real treat (even for a BioWare game) is the companions and characters, they didn't just hit their usual home run, they knocked the ball out of the damn park.

If I had to describe it in relation to the previous games, I'd say that it mixes the 'gather allies, save the world' theme from DA:O with the more compact and personal narrative of DA:2.

It's basically Mass Effect. Hope that helped.

Uggggh.  Don't compare Mass Effect with DA:I. 

I loved Mass Effect flaws and all.  DA:I was... as you say... kind of its own thing.  It wasn't bad... it wasn't good... it just was in my book.  I don't know if its the areas being too big or what, but it just felt like there just wasn't a sense of urgency at any one point.  A lot of the individual set pieces were really cool, but I just couldn't get into it.  I did finish it however.  I wouldn't tell someone not to play it.  And if Slurktan's main concern was being too similar to DA:O, then I wouldn't be worried at all.

[Red Tiger]

Uggggh.  Don't compare Mass Effect with DA:I. 

I loved Mass Effect flaws and all.  DA:I was... as you say... kind of its own thing.  It wasn't bad... it wasn't good... it just was in my book.  I don't know if its the areas being too big or what, but it just felt like there just wasn't a sense of urgency at any one point.  A lot of the individual set pieces were really cool, but I just couldn't get into it.  I did finish it however.  I wouldn't tell someone not to play it.  And if Slurktan's main concern was being too similar to DA:O, then I wouldn't be worried at all.

Agreed. I played Inquisition, finished it, but nothing makes me wanna go back and play it again. They made the same mistake ME3 did, only worse, you really can't get further into the story until you do loads of boring as dirt gruntwork (AKA rift-closing). I didn't like the story much either, getting the specialization I wanted was a pain in the ass and I didn't find the characters that interesting either (despised Vivienne and Sera especially), besides Morrigan who made a guest appearance.

[Muttering Bill]

I don't love all the Heide knights in Heide being automatically hostile and having a map-wide aggro radius after killing the dragonrider. The extra Pursuer locations in Lost Bastille are annoying, although only an issue a few times. The respawning Flexile Sentry in Sinner's Rise is really cheap and makes repeated runs to the Lost Sinner take way too long. And Iron Keep is a mess with all the extra enemies there now.

I didn't mind too much the extra enemies in the Forest, No Man's Wharf or Earthen Peak. I can't speak to later areas, since that's as far as I got. However, if Dark Souls 3 keeps going down this path, relying on swarms of enemies for its difficulty instead of well-designed encounters, I'm likely to say away from it.

I also really dislike the regular NPC invasions that now occur and all the extra petrified statues. There's more branches than before, but from what I've seen not enough to cover all the new places for them.

Is that what caused the Heide Knights to agro?  I didn't find them to be that big of a deal.  Sure, they agro quickly, but they're also a lot easier to beat than in the original game.

I actually enjoyed the extra Pursuer encounters.  Just because that was supposed to be his thing.  He was supposed to harass you.  But instead he only had a couple (miss-able) extra spawns.  Now I walk into an area and it's "Oh shit, this guy again?"  But in a good way.  I haven't seen him in a while.  I'm hoping for some more late game spawns.

I'm torn on the addition of Flex into Sinners' Rise.  On your first trip through the area, he's much easier to beat than the giant mutant things that were there before.  But I agree with you on subsequent trips.  After you've cleaned the place out, if you need a few tries against Sinner, then he becomes annoying.  The old mutants you could just run past, but Flex you have to fight every time.

I don't know that there are extra enemies in Iron Keep, so much as that they shuffled the enemy placements.  It's another situation like Sinners'.  On your first trip through, it's a bit easier.  Half the knights are blocked by the raised bridge, and the sniper on the far right is gone.  However, if you want to restock on Estus before facing Smelter, then it becomes much harder.  With the bridge down, the Alonne Knights have a huge agro range and will swarm on you.

But overall I think most of the changes were for the better.  Like the ladder ambush in the Forest.  Yeah, there are more enemies in there now, but they don't agro all at once anymore.  As long as you don't rush in, you can fight them all 1 on 1.  A couple of ambushes in Drangleic Castle have been removed.  Fewer spider...  things in NMW.  They removed the insta-agro sniper trio at Sinner's bonfire.  More NPC summons, especially near multiple bosses (Ruin Sentinels, Gargoyles).  They even added more story.

I've gone through the Shrine of Amana now.  No changes.  Excepting the addition of a Dragonrider guarding the King's door.  I'm very happy about that.  It was one of the best areas (yeah, that's right!) and I didn't want them to neuter it.

[Fez]

I just finished Life is Strange. Or rather, finished watching the GiantBomb East guys finish it (I did buy the game though, so I still supported the devs). Man, that ending...

I generally agreed with all the decisions the GBE guys were making through the game. But at the end they chose to sacrifice Chloe, and that's a really rough ending. Afterwards I went on youtube to watch the sacrifice Arcadia Bay ending, and I think that's the right choice.

First of all, time travel is exactly the reason the current mess is happening, so it doesn't necessarily even feel logical to assume that doing it once again is the way to solve the mess. And more than just that, I like the idea of finally needing to live with your actions rather than getting to change things again (even if the price is so much higher this time).

I also just don't think its a choice that the Max I saw would make (this Max was fully into Chloe at all times, and they got the kiss scene when they sacrificed Chloe; which apparently not everyone gets). Arcadia Bay was not a great place to Max. There were plenty of decent people there too, but overall it just wasn't a great place. And Max is a 17 year old girl in love, I don't see her just giving that up. I assume Max and Chloe are very close no matter what; but this seems like only a choice if Max went with Warren instead.

The sacrifice Chloe ending did go on longer and in greater detail, so maybe the devs consider that the right ending. But at the same time, the sacrifice Arcadia Bay ending did show the animals alive and wandering the streets, suggesting that the area is at peace again. And the sacrifice Chloe ending did show that damn butterfly at the coffin again, which could be read a lot of different ways; not all of them good.

 

Either way though, its a hell of an ending and quite a game. There were definitely a few rough spots here and there, but there was an awful lot to like. And it gave me feels, which very few games do. I enjoyed it a lot more than the recent Telltale games. Although I think my experiencing it as a movie (with commentary from people that I've heard a lot from the past couple years) rather than just to play it as a game helped shape that too. I didn't get frustrated by bad design choices, like that stealth sequence, because I wasn't the one doing it.

[karaddin]

Dunno if you'd want to, but I really recommend getting into LotV, at least with watching the scene and the tournaments. The game is much more fun than HotS ever was, deathballs don't work anymore because of the units/spells that break them up(disruptors have an AoE shot that deals 145 damage to a unit if it hits(which is their only attack and it recharges), ravagers(which morph from roaches) have a small AoE "spell" which deals 65 damage if it hits a unit, Liberator siege zones, etc.) I've stopped playing it because for me it's either stay bad or play all day till I become pro, and I have other things now which I'd like to do instead(if I could've bought WoL or HotS, I'd have been a progamer by now), but I really enjoy watching the tournaments.

I wouldn't mind getting back into watching it, although I just don't have the time/patience to build the skills to play it.  I just find losing streaks utterly crushing lol.  My foreign favourite is Scarlett, although I haven't seen how she's doing since LotV.  I haven't watched since GSL was the big thing though and am not sure which tournaments I should really be looking for.  I guess I could just follow Scarlett.

I just finished Life is Strange. Or rather, finished watching the GiantBomb East guys finish it (I did buy the game though, so I still supported the devs). Man, that ending...

Hidden Content

 

Either way though, its a hell of an ending and quite a game. There were definitely a few rough spots here and there, but there was an awful lot to like. And it gave me feels, which very few games do. I enjoyed it a lot more than the recent Telltale games. Although I think my experiencing it as a movie (with commentary from people that I've heard a lot from the past couple years) rather than just to play it as a game helped shape that too. I didn't get frustrated by bad design choices, like that stealth sequence, because I wasn't the one doing it.

I loved LiS as I played it through, and then a couple of weeks ago I did a "sort out your favourite games by doing a few hundred head to head match ups" and realised it's actually taken my #1 crown from the Mass Effect series.  As I'm getting older and changing, the thing that matters more to me than anything else is the way the game makes me feel (which for all it's flaws in the ending, ME3 did amazingly well at many points), and LiS made me feel like nothing else.  I identified with Max super strongly and I had no doubts about how my Max would choose 

Which was sacrificing Arcadia Bay without a moment's hesitation.  My Max was in love with Chloe, had gone through a huge amount, including an awful lot of suffering, in the last week to keep Chloe alive, and there was no way in hell I was functionally going to kill her to save the town.  I also think the rationality of the choice was set up so that both choices make sense from a certain point of view even taking the "learning to accept the consequences of life and you aren't in control of everything" as the point of the story.

On one hand, you go back in time and then stop yourself from ever going back in time and never realising you have the power in the first place, you are accepting the sequence of events that was originally going to happen instead of changing things, but at the same time you are ignoring the consequences of everything you yourself have done in the last week.  On the other hand if you choose not to go back, you are accepting things as they are at the time you make the decision - you've grown as a person, as has Chloe, and going back at this point is just one more attempt to play God.  You didn't choose the cyclone, it's a consequence that's spun out of the events of the week, stop trying to run from them and live with them now.

I was also just too invested in Chloe by this point.  She's changed a lot over the course of the week, she's found connection instead of feeling utterly alone - I can't send her back to die in that bathroom thinking she is alone, without ever having found Max again.

I also found some of the voice acting in it superb, Ashly Burch was incredible as Chloe and deserved the award[s?] she's received for it.  The scene where she

finds Rachel's body

was quite possibly the best voice acting I've heard.  I don't know whether she was having to channel some very personal feelings for that or not, but it's really stayed with me.

[Melphis Amekia]

I wouldn't mind getting back into watching it, although I just don't have the time/patience to build the skills to play it.  I just find losing streaks utterly crushing lol.  My foreign favourite is Scarlett, although I haven't seen how she's doing since LotV.  I haven't watched since GSL was the big thing though and am not sure which tournaments I should really be looking for.  I guess I could just follow Scarlett.

Scarlett said she wouldn't play as much as she had while she was still fully in the scene, but would attend at least some tournaments. I've seen most of her games, during Nation Wars III she was really good, at Homestory Cup XII she played rather badly(lost in the first group 0-4), then was really good later in qualifying for the main group stage of DH Leipzig(Blizzard introduced new rules for foreign tournaments which makes possible for 8 players to qualify for bigger tournaments(and get the trip and all expenses paid by Blizzard) right into the main stages while the rest have to go through open brackets/challenges, and DH Leipzig is next weekend, so she'll be there if you get the time to watch her. 

As far as tournaments in general go, besides the 2 GSL's and 2 SSL's(for Koreans), the only ones announced for now are DH Leipzig, DH Austin, IEM Taipei(for Chinese only) and IEM Katowice, all four of which are part of the new WCS Circuit. Can't tell you much more about the main tournaments for now.

Which race did you play? I used to be Protoss(and my heart still says "My life for Aiur!"), but in LotV Zerg suits me so much better. I don't find losing streaks that crushing, but the fact that I need so much more games and improve so much to feel good about how I play is crushing and now I have other interests outside SC2 which are more important to me, which is why I stopped playing. Though, if I could've bought WoL or HotS, I seriously would have been a progamer by now because that's what I'd be playing non-stop.

I loved LiS as I played it through, and then a couple of weeks ago I did a "sort out your favourite games by doing a few hundred head to head match ups" and realised it's actually taken my #1 crown from the Mass Effect series.  As I'm getting older and changing, the thing that matters more to me than anything else is the way the game makes me feel (which for all it's flaws in the ending, ME3 did amazingly well at many points), and LiS made me feel like nothing else.  I identified with Max super strongly and I had no doubts about how my Max would choose 

Hidden Content

I also found some of the voice acting in it superb, Ashly Burch was incredible as Chloe and deserved the award[s?] she's received for it.  The scene where she

Hidden Content

was quite possibly the best voice acting I've heard.  I don't know whether she was having to channel some very personal feelings for that or not, but it's really stayed with me.

Interestingly enough, at a forum of my now favourite streamer(Archengeia) there is now a vote for the Top 10 games of the forumites there and I was torn between putting Transistor and Life is Strange on the 1st place, and I did give the no.1 spot to LiS(Transistor 2nd, DA:Inquisition 3rd and ME1 4th) because there's nothing I didn't love about the game. I also identified with Max a ton and I actually loved Hannah Telle's voice acting more than Ashley Burch's(who did an amazing job, but a lot of why it overshadows Hannah's voice acting is the very specific voice she does for Chloe, which is very memorable... and yeah that scene was awesomely done by Ashley), but that's also because, for me and my Max, Max > Warren(obviously my Max's romance)> Kate > Chloe/Victoria. So my Max, obviously:

Chose to sacrifice Chloe, because she understood that some things happened and for all the rewind it would lead to such horrific consequences if she didn't let go...

[Fez]

I loved LiS as I played it through, and then a couple of weeks ago I did a "sort out your favourite games by doing a few hundred head to head match ups" and realised it's actually taken my #1 crown from the Mass Effect series.  As I'm getting older and changing, the thing that matters more to me than anything else is the way the game makes me feel (which for all it's flaws in the ending, ME3 did amazingly well at many points), and LiS made me feel like nothing else.  I identified with Max super strongly and I had no doubts about how my Max would choose 

Hidden Content

I also found some of the voice acting in it superb, Ashly Burch was incredible as Chloe and deserved the award[s?] she's received for it.  The scene where she

Hidden Content

was quite possibly the best voice acting I've heard.  I don't know whether she was having to channel some very personal feelings for that or not, but it's really stayed with me.

Yeah, it is quite a game. I can't remember if I had it on my 'best games of 2015' list, I think I didn't because I'd only seen the first three episodes at that point. But in retrospect its definitely going on there, either at #1 or #2, next to Shadowrun: Hong Kong (which didn't give me the feels like this, but also had very good writing and had more fun gameplay). I didn't necessarily identify with Max, but I certainly empathized with her and her story. Definitely agreed on your points about the ending. Voice acting was really good, even the various minor character. And the writing generally felt very true to life, which is so very rare in games.

Apparently Dontnod's next game is going to be an action RPG called Vampyr set in 1918 London, which will certainly be a change of pace from LiS. Hopefully there's still the strong writing and that in terms of gameplay they learned from the mistakes of Remember Me.

[Red Tiger]

Life is Strange is my game for 2015, but Dontnod has also done Remember Me, which was shit. I will keep an open mind for Vampyr.

[Slurktan]

Thanks Jace and Rhom for the comments.  I decided to pick up DA, I hope it's better than DA:O.

[Kalbear]

That dragon, cancer is fucking brutal.

[The Anti-Targ]

So DA:Inquisition is on sale for psplus for like 15 bucks so thinking of getting it.  I haven't played it before due to my PC being old and not being able to run but I just picked up a PS4.  I've read various complaints on here though.... is it actually a good game?  I don't trust gaming sites at all.

I wasn't a big fan of DA:O due to it being the exact same recycled Bioware "3-4 fetchum quests for the MacGuffin" plot (Plus the dwarven area was a tedious slog) but I quite liked DA2 despite its shortfalls in combat due to the much better plot. Is DA:I more like the first or second?

I've played it through 3 times...or is it 4? I like it, but then again I like all the Dragon Age games so perhaps I'm not sufficiently objective for people who only kinda sorta like it. I would absolutely recommend it for $15 even for someone who only thinks DA is an OK franchise. I think I had my most fun as a heavy weapon weilding elf maiden warrior. There's something about being in the thick of combat and not having to constantly flit around in fear of anything one hitting you.

[The Anti-Targ]

Shit! Why did I discover Gwent (The Witcher 3)? My main playthrough has almost ground to a halt as I travel around trying to expand my decks and win games. I still haven't managed to compile full decks of Monsters, Nilfgaard or Scoia'tael, so I am still playing as Northern Realms. And my NR deck has hit a bit of a plateau in quality as I keep winning cards from other factions. My deck is not good enough to reliably win games on Skellige, so I need to go back and play / buy more in Novigrad and Velen to get a better deck. I'm 3 cards away from being able to field Nilfgaards, but there are a few weak cards in there.

I really want to find decoy cards, those are so bloody annoying to play against. I also want to find some 1 power spy cards.

Is CDPR going to make an online stand alone version available? 

[briantw]

Shit! Why did I discover Gwent (The Witcher 3)? My main playthrough has almost ground to a halt as I travel around trying to expand my decks and win games. I still haven't managed to compile full decks of Monsters, Nilfgaard or Scoia'tael, so I am still playing as Northern Realms. And my NR deck has hit a bit of a plateau in quality as I keep winning cards from other factions. My deck is not good enough to reliably win games on Skellige, so I need to go back and play / buy more in Novigrad and Velen to get a better deck. I'm 3 cards away from being able to field Nilfgaards, but there are a few weak cards in there.

I really want to find decoy cards, those are so bloody annoying to play against. I also want to find some 1 power spy cards.

Is CDPR going to make an online stand alone version available? 

Once you get a full Nilfgaard deck you're basically unbeatable.  All those spies just destroy opponents.  Really the only way you can lose at that point is if you get an absolutely shitty draw to start the round, which happens maybe 1 in 30 games if that.

[The Anti-Targ]

Once you get a full Nilfgaard deck you're basically unbeatable.  All those spies just destroy opponents.  Really the only way you can lose at that point is if you get an absolutely shitty draw to start the round, which happens maybe 1 in 30 games if that.

I don't have all that any spies in my Nilfgaard deck and I have 19 units, so only 3 away from being able to use it. I have 3 spies in my Northern realms deck.

[felice]

I'm looking forward to this: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/idgi/consortium-the-tower

Sequel to the first Consortium, a highly interactive RPG taking place entirely inside a single plane where all the NPCs are people with their own lives that progress independently of your actions, and the twist that your PC really is being controlled by you from your computer in-game (it's relevant to the plot) - starting a new game is branching off a new parallel universe. There's a huge amount of optional backstory you can read up on via the computer terminals; I've only scratched the surface. The sequel looks like it's expanding the scale quite a bit, along with increased bandwidth on the interdimensional link allowing for a more detailed simulation of what your PC is seeing 8)

[The Anti-Targ]

Hmmm. Iron Maiden looking to do another video game, obviously with developers to do the actual work.

Apparently it's going to be a deep RPG experience...on a smartphone. I'm sure the intention to produce a deep RPG experience is genuine, I just worry that they've chosen the wrong platform for achieving it.