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

[A True Kaniggit]

9 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I feel like there is a need to petition the Nilfgaard Emperor, King Radovid and the Jarls of Skellige to recognise trolls as non-humans rather than monsters and accord them what little legal protections non-humans enjoy over and above monsters.

The case for Troll non-human status:

They can talk - most monsters can't talk, even monsters in the same class as trolls seem to be incapable of talking, or at least unwilling to.

They can be reasoned with - in virtually every encounter you cant talk your way out of conflict with trolls, they can bargain and strike deals. Even when they perceive a threat or are antagonistic they can recognise non-aggressive behaviour and be willing to talk rather than keep throwing rocks.

They are obedient - When they agree to do something they will do it, with almost single minded determination

They can think laterally and logically - See Trollolol's figuring out how to guard the boats, very creative  and lateral thinking.

They have a moral compass - Trollolol seems to be troubled by the fact the soldiers took the peasant's boats and he has to prevent the peasants from taking the boats back. But he's an obedient soldier.

They have artistic / aesthetic sensibilities - Trollolol likes to sing, and he can paint.

They seem to be less brutish by nature than some human societies - Skelligs in particular. Indeed it seems like the only brutish trolls are the ones that live in Skellige, so perhaps they reflect somewhat the societies around them.

They cook their food - cooking is a sign of sophistication, monsters don't cook.

They can aspire to higher levels of sophistication and civilisation - Ogg, Pogg and Rogg want to wear shoes, like humans do. So they acknowledge a certain more refined civilisation and aspire to that greater degree of refinement.

They can build things - again ref Trollolol's solution to being able to guard the boats is to build a fence, and he builds a fence.

Yes, they eat people. But I'm sure if they were more integrated into human and non-human societies they would agree to not eat people. They also need to be trained to wear pants.

 

You have me convinced. I sign your petition.

--- (indecipherable signature)

If I get killed by a troll the next I play, I'll be pissed.

 

[Werthead]

6 hours ago, Corvinus said:

Finished Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak. Very enjoyable game. Not quite as good as Homeworld 1 and 2, but still a really good game.

This is a prime example of the relativity of time passage applying to video gaming.  What I mean to say is the game felt very short when I finished it, I completed the campaign in 10 hours. But then I looked back on my playing time for HW1&2 Re-mastered, the play time was the same. However, at same time in the middle of the campaign, I was feeling exhausted, wondering how much more do I have to suffer. That is thanks to the intense gameplay, the many desperate defenses, and the struggle to acquire resources - to be clear, these are marks of a great RTS.

The game does bring all the feels of the old games. A powerful story, a great soundtrack (I cheered when one of the old themes played), and solid visuals and sounds. Actually that radio chatter was amazing, not just your run of the mill voice prompts. 

Despite not being set in space, the mission maps are still sizable and diverse (despite all of it being a desert), allowing you to move around not just with your little vehicles, but with everything you got. I moved my carrier around a map much more often than I did with the mothership in the old games. But then again, the carrier seemed better equipped to handle attackers than the mothership was. Also using the terrain to your advantage does come into play considerably, if not quite from the beginning.

It does suffer from one of the things that almost all RTS games suffer - unit movements, and unit getting impeded by terrain. Which is one thing that the predecessors avoided because... space. 

The vehicle models were not as impressive as the spaceship models from the old games. But in a way that is not a bad thing, as I didn't have to be distracted by them.

Also I didn't quite like the ending, it felt rushed.

 

Hidden Content

After playing this game I want:

1) Homeworld 3 - make it happen dammit!

2) A Homeworld game set on a watery planet with navies. Because calling sand vehicles cruisers is amusing.

3) A new Dune RTS game.

Yeah, I agree. It's a very fine game, stacks up well to any RTS from the last few years (not that there's been loads).

With regards to the spoilers:

Spoiler

The game finishes with the Khar-Toba being found, not excavated and fully explored. The Hyperspace Core was discovered weeks or maybe months later. The stone tablet wasn't found in the deep internal chamber until a few years after discovery, IIRC. They could have flashed forwards, but I think they felt that a lot of people would play this and then the original Homeworld and the intro to that fills in the blanks nicely.

 

[KiDisaster]

New Tomb Raider is pretty cool. Plays just like the last one from what I remember of it, but that's all good. 

Runs surprisingly well at 1440p. Thought for sure I'd have to tone down more settings than I did to maintain 60fps. Looks bloody gorgeous too. 

[Werthead]

Just finished StarCraft II.

WHAT THE FUCK BLIZZARD.

Spoiler

So the writing for all three games has been shit, but this took it to another level. The ultimate evil in the universe is defeated by the Protoss getting a fucking haircut. Then we get an epilogue in which Kerrigan turns into Space Jesus.

The writing department at Blizzard needs to be burned to ground and the very earth salted for all of eternity. Holy shit.

[Corvinus85]

11 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Just finished StarCraft II.

WHAT THE FUCK BLIZZARD.

  Hide contents

So the writing for all three games has been shit, but this took it to another level. The ultimate evil in the universe is defeated by the Protoss getting a fucking haircut. Then we get an epilogue in which Kerrigan turns into Space Jesus.

The writing department at Blizzard needs to be burned to ground and the very earth salted for all of eternity. Holy shit.

Your reaction is priceless. I like the Protoss campagin for the most part, but I agree with you on the epilogue.

[Melphis Amekia]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

Just finished StarCraft II.

WHAT THE FUCK BLIZZARD.

  Hide contents

So the writing for all three games has been shit, but this took it to another level. The ultimate evil in the universe is defeated by the Protoss getting a fucking haircut. Then we get an epilogue in which Kerrigan turns into Space Jesus.

The writing department at Blizzard needs to be burned to ground and the very earth salted for all of eternity. Holy shit.

Think about it from the brighter perspective: They got rid of all the fantasy elements, the Xel'Naga, the prophecies, etc. and even if Space Jesus Kerrigan exist, she(or the writers) have stated she would not return or continue the work of the Xel'Naga. (Also, I though that Legacy was the strongest writing-wise - just look at HotS, please - haircuts and all that aside(I only just realized that IS a plot-hole, given that the Protoss, to my knowledge still had their nerve cords on during the Aeon of Strife when they had no Khala; even though it is really hyperbolic, though perhaps not undeserved given what they've written as a whole, to say that Protoss getting a haircut was the thing that defeated the ultimate evil.)

Now, I'll completely agree with you if they somehow return all those fantasy elements into the next DLC packs/new SC game(which won't be coming out soon anyway).

[Werthead]

RPS has an excellent article on Hostile Waters, quite possibly one of the greatest video games ever made (and, more to the point, probably the single best-written strategy game of all time).

A Kickstarter for a sequel/remake of this would be very, very welcome at this point.

[Vels]

I just saw an article about Far Cry Primal and it looked interesting.

I have never played any previous titles in the series before - what is the gameplay comparable to?  

I would be looking to purchase it on PS4 btw.

[Fez]

And I'm done with The Witness. I didn't 'beat' it, but I'm just not interested in playing anymore; 20 hours in. I completed 4 areas, couldn't figure out how to even start 2 areas, and gotten to various points in the other areas where I had to give up after banging my head in frustration for too long. I know I was on the final puzzle in 2 of those. And there's I don't even know how many secrets I never figured out or even realized existed. It was an interesting experience, but not one I'd recommend for $40 I think. The Talos Principle was better.

I picked up Darkest Dungeon. What a neat game. I'm really enjoying nearly everything about it. At least, now I am. When I first started, the game was far, far too hard for me; but all it took to balance things was going into the options and turning off the 'monsters leave corpses behind' mechanic. Maybe I'll turn it back on once I'm more confident in understanding how to play, I'm not sure. I left all the other difficulty mechanics in place though, since they seemed more designed to prevent overly gamey tactics and that's fine by me.

 

9 hours ago, Vels said:

I just saw an article about Far Cry Primal and it looked interesting.

I have never played any previous titles in the series before - what is the gameplay comparable to?  

I would be looking to purchase it on PS4 btw.

Call of Duty meets Assassin's Creed, with a little bit of Just Cause.

[Werthead]

XCOM2 has been getting outstanding reviews, all labelling it as being superior to its predecessor. Given that the previous game was probably the best game of the last decade, that's very impressive.

Quote

I have never played any previous titles in the series before - what is the gameplay comparable to?  

It's a first person shooter, but this game looks like it will emphasise melee combat, crafting and survival much more heavily than any previous titltle in the series. I suspect it's going to be a small-ish game, though maybe 10-15 hours, so not as big as its predecessors. This game in particular will likely lose the more notable comparisons to Just Cause (no guns or explosives, so presumably no explosions).

[The Anti-Targ]

Given that Enemy Unknown worked very well on consoles I wonder why XCOM2 is only a PC release.

[Rhom]

Star Citizen is giving free access this week.  I've only been mildly interested... but hey, free is free!  Its downloading now.

[Fez]

28 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Given that Enemy Unknown worked very well on consoles I wonder why XCOM2 is only a PC release.

It worked very well, but I think it didn't sell very well.

I just hope they eventually release PC controller support. I use my living room TV as my monitor, I don't even have a regular monitor, and I recently upgraded TVs to get a higher res, larger one. Which is all well and good, but the downside has been that I can no longer pull up a chair and sit right in front of my TV. If I do, I get headaches pretty quickly. Which means I have to do all my gaming from the couch. I can still play with a mouse and keyboard, but its not super elegant; especially if I need to be reacting in real-time to things.

It also means that games need to have a text resolution that I can see from 8 feet away, which often isn't the case with games that are M+K only. Darkest Dungeon does, which is great, but Homeland: DoK does not; which is why I've unfortunately had to basically stop playing it.

[The Anti-Targ]

2 minutes ago, Fez said:

It worked very well, but I think it didn't sell very well.

I just hope they eventually release PC controller support. I use my living room TV as my monitor, I don't even have a regular monitor, and I recently upgraded TVs to get a higher res, larger one. Which is all well and good, but the downside has been that I can no longer pull up a chair and sit right in front of my TV. If I do, I get headaches pretty quickly. Which means I have to do all my gaming from the couch. I can still play with a mouse and keyboard, but its not super elegant; especially if I need to be reacting in real-time to things.

It also means that games need to have a text resolution that I can see from 8 feet away, which often isn't the case with games that are M+K only. Darkest Dungeon does, which is great, but Homeland: DoK does not; which is why I've unfortunately had to basically stop playing it.

It didn't sell bucketloads, but I would have thought the porting costs, even for PS3 would have made even modest sales on console profitable. And now with both PS4 and Xb one basically having PCs inside the box porting to console should be even easier. Assuming PC sales get the game past break even, just a few hundred K in sales on consoles should make console ports profitable too. Perhaps they'll do a console release later on.

[Fez]

23 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

It didn't sell bucketloads, but I would have thought the porting costs, even for PS3 would have made even modest sales on console profitable. And now with both PS4 and Xb one basically having PCs inside the box porting to console should be even easier. Assuming PC sales get the game past break even, just a few hundred K in sales on consoles should make console ports profitable too. Perhaps they'll do a console release later on.

Total XCOM: EU sales the month it came out was only 114,000 units, and I suspect most of that was on the PC. In June 2015, IGN said it was estimated that the game eventually sold 2.6 million units on PC, mostly due to Steam sales over the years, but that no console figures have been released.

Its entirely possible that the console versions did not ever reach even 100,000 total units, or if it did, that it took years.

[The Anti-Targ]

9 minutes ago, Fez said:

Total XCOM: EU sales the month it came out was only 114,000 units, and I suspect most of that was on the PC. In June 2015, IGN said it was estimated that the game eventually sold 2.6 million units on PC, mostly due to Steam sales over the years, but that no console figures have been released.

Its entirely possible that the console versions did not ever reach even 100,000 total units, or if it did, that it took years.

It's also the case that console prices typically stay higher than PC prices, so even if it takes a few years to sell good numbers the average price on console will be higher. A game like XCom will have a slow burn on consoles, so the first month of sales for console means pretty much nothing as a guide to what the eventual total, even in the first year, will be. Sure it has no chance of selling millions, but eventually making its way to 400 or 500K within a year across PS3 and X360 is possible, and probably worth the effort.

[Kalbear]

2 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Given that Enemy Unknown worked very well on consoles I wonder why XCOM2 is only a PC release.

They specifically addressed this. They wanted  to make the game easily moddable out of the box, wanted to have more ability to have greater depth in programming options and not be constrained by anything. They also wanted to optimize the UI for mouse/keyboard.

My suspicion is that all of that was true and it didn't sell super well on the consoles either. 

[The Anti-Targ]

10 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

They specifically addressed this. They wanted  to make the game easily moddable out of the box, wanted to have more ability to have greater depth in programming options and not be constrained by anything. They also wanted to optimize the UI for mouse/keyboard.

My suspicion is that all of that was true and it didn't sell super well on the consoles either. 

I don't see anything incompatible between those aims and making console versions. It all comes down to your lead platform for development. If your lead platform is PC then all of those aspirations are unencumbered by console limitations. There are going to be future games where the best PC mods (determined by who I don't know) will be ported to console. So modability can be something that is useful for console versions as well as PC. 

At least the article says that console ports might come along in the future. Though I suspect if that future isn't within the next year or two then it will never happen.

They should make it possible to mod the game to run on PS4 and Xb one. That way the cost of porting the game would be zero. If they ran a competition where the best PS4/Xb one mod got published for the consoles on XBL/PSN and the modder got X% of sales I bet there'd be lots of modders giving it a go. If the modder gets $1 per sale even if between the consoles they only get 50K in sales that's $50K earned by the modder.

[Kalbear]

It's not necessarily incompatible, but it is much harder. Same with making the UI focused on mouse instead of making it work with a controller.

Mostly I suspect that it was resources and value. Why do a console port for 150k sales when you could easily make that and more on the pc?

And I think you underestimate how modding changes if you have to have consoles in mind. Or at least sane modding. You can go the Bethesda way and simply make a super buggy game. You can also do this if you have like 20x the people.

[The Anti-Targ]

Doing a console port won't affect PC sales as the markets are pretty well separate. So the vast majority of 150k theoretical sales on console would be sales that will never happen if the game stays PC exclusive.

I still don't get why having consoles in mind would seriously affect PC game development, especially if the plan is to port 6-9 months down the track. It would affect PC if the plan is to release on all platforms at the same time, or if one of the consoles was the lead development platform. But that would not be the case here.