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Video Games: "Completeness" becomes important somehow


Rhom

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Despite my skepticism, I ended up buying the FFX/FFX-2 HD Remaster on Steam; 'cause I'm a sucker for nostalgia, even not great nostalgia it turns out.

FFX is what I remember it being, which is... okay. Its okay, but not great, and it'd be much better with a different main character than Tidus. I played it when it came out, which was only a year or two after I played FFIX, but I don't have nearly the same affection for it. Which makes me hopeful that my love of my recent replay of FFIX wasn't just nostalgia, it legit is a very good game.

I never played FFX-2, so that'll be an interesting experience.

In Stellaris, the Othari Consensus is beset on all sides by the treacherous "Harmonious Alliance," and has jumped across the great void to another spiral arm of the galaxy to establish new colony worlds to fuel the war effort. I haven't actually played a ton recently, both because of FFX and because I've seen what Paradox is planning for its major patch later this month and I kinda want to wait for those improvements.

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On 16/05/2016 at 3:53 PM, briantw said:

I wouldn't consider Stellaris to be incomplete at launch.  It's a finished game and there's a ton of content.  

I don't know, man.

Only two victory conditions, no viable diplomatic progression past forming a federation, bare bones diplomatic/economic/cultural systems, and complete lack of intrigue kind of make it feel unfinished to me. I'm having a blast, don't get me wrong, but I feel like the game is pretty much only centred around military expansion, it could (and probably will) be much, much better.

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3 hours ago, Fez said:

FFX is what I remember it being, which is... okay. Its okay, but not great, and it'd be much better with a different main character than Tidus. I played it when it came out, which was only a year or two after I played FFIX, but I don't have nearly the same affection for it. Which makes me hopeful that my love of my recent replay of FFIX wasn't just nostalgia, it legit is a very good game.

Yeah, Tidus is still literally the worst, and his awful voice acting doesn't make him any better.  He and Yuna just have godawful voice acting.  It's not much better with the other characters.  Wakka probably has the best actual voice acting.  Lulu isn't great, but is made tolerable because she seems to hate Tidus about as much as I do.  Overall, the actors just really had some awful direction there.  The writing doesn't seem all that bad, but there are so many awkward pauses in the line delivery.

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1 hour ago, briantw said:

Yeah, Tidus is still literally the worst, and his awful voice acting doesn't make him any better.  He and Yuna just have godawful voice acting.  It's not much better with the other characters.  Wakka probably has the best actual voice acting.  Lulu isn't great, but is made tolerable because she seems to hate Tidus about as much as I do.  Overall, the actors just really had some awful direction there.  The writing doesn't seem all that bad, but there are so many awkward pauses in the line delivery.

Wakka's the best because he's Bender. Ideally, DiMaggio would've used the same voice for both.

Apparently the problem was that the voice actors received literally no voice direction. John DiMaggio decided to that accent for the hell of it, the actress doing Yuna's voice was trying to sync her voice to the character's mouth animations (which had been sync'd to the Japanese voiceover work) and ended up with that weird delivery, etc. And no one told them otherwise. The early days for video game voiceovers were dark indeed.

I agree that the writing itself isn't terrible, although it has some pretty big problems. Its not just the voice that makes me hate Tidus, and the plot makes some pretty weird choices as I recall. The world itself also feels underdeveloped compared to all of the PS1 FFs.

And on the gameplay side, I'd forgotten how much of a precursor FFX is to FFXIII in terms of just running in a straight line for most of the game. Its not quite as bad as FFXIII, but its not great. Combat itself is pretty decent though.

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Microsoft keeps doubling down on it's greatest games lineup in Xbox history, having used it both last year and this year. But is it actually true for either year? Surely there are some years of the Xbox 360's life that were better than any Xb one year. 2007 seems like a pretty great Xbox year for games. 

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Bought Stellaris. Really addictive so far. My fanatic militarist Fungoid empire has rolled over one empire and vassalized another. The first empire's populace kept rioting so I've been purging them and replacing them with my own mushroom people. Also I gave some sort of brain disease to a primitive population I was studying, and later encountered a Halo style ring world. 

Anyway, I wish it had the sort of governance options that CK2 does, like a space-themed crown laws tab. 

eta: Blood and Wine trailer:

 

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13 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Microsoft keeps doubling down on it's greatest games lineup in Xbox history, having used it both last year and this year. But is it actually true for either year? Surely there are some years of the Xbox 360's life that were better than any Xb one year. 2007 seems like a pretty great Xbox year for games. 

I thought that the 'greatest games lineup' was about the entire game catalog available, including the 360 games available through backwards compatibility, and not just the new games. So every year was the greatest games lineup since its the previous years lineup along with whatever new is out.

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11 hours ago, The Drunkard said:

Bought Stellaris. Really addictive so far. My fanatic militarist Fungoid empire has rolled over one empire and vassalized another. The first empire's populace kept rioting so I've been purging them and replacing them with my own mushroom people.

 

Be thankful my Mace Hegemony is in another galaxy than yours. In the 70 years since they've achieved warp drives my Religiously Fanatical Collectivist Lizards have exterminated 3 different Fungoid species. :P

After this playthrough I'm thinking about starting a game where the USSR won the Cold War and achieves space flight with Stalin being the first leader. What do y'all think would be more appropriate? Super Collectivist and Militaristic or Collectivist, Militaristic and Xenophobic?

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I hear there's a rumour of a Spider-man game exclusive for PS4 being developed by Sucker Punch (of inFamous fame). It's kind of unusual for a licensed IP like this to be exclusive, but given the association of Spidey and Sony in the movie world, and deals done between Disney and Spidey to use him in Avengers movies it's possible an exclusive game was part of the deal. And of course Disney is out of the game-making business now.

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Meh. I'd rather just have another inFamous game to be honest :P Or something new and not about super heroes. But if anybody can make a good Spiderman game it'd be Sucker Punch. 

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