Video Games: Thread Simulator 2016

[Kalbear]

7 hours ago, Stannis Eats No Peaches said:

Does Sony really think a properly-marketed TLoU movie would have the same target audience as Ratchet and Clank?

Ass Creed's performance will be far more informative (though I think it will also bomb).

Honestly, I totally believe that Sony believes precisely that. I can buy that 100%. 

[Ded As Ned]

9 hours ago, A True Kaniggit said:

I saw a preview for it in theaters a while back. Haven't heard anything else about it since then. 

I saw it with my boys in the theater.  It was decent, pretty much in line with the games, but I'd say the target audience was the age of my sons (5 and 7).  Nothing ground-breaking

ETA:  @Pony Queen Jace.  Quoted the wrong post, dunno how to change it to the right one.

[briantw]

The Last of Us seems like one of the better games to adapt into a film.  You could damn near do a 1:1 adaptation and it would work because the game was pretty much like playing a film to begin with.

[The Anti-Targ]

9 hours ago, Stannis Eats No Peaches said:

Does Sony really think a properly-marketed TLoU movie would have the same target audience as Ratchet and Clank?

Ass Creed's performance will be far more informative (though I think it will also bomb).

yes and no. There is a lot of crossover of fans of the games, like me for instance, and a video game adaptation relies at least to some extent on fans of the game for a movie to succeed. There are two target audiences for any video game movie: fans of the game and fans of the movie genre. In many cases fans of the game may be quite a different demographic to fans of the movie genre. The first Ratchet and Clank game came out in 2002, that means 10 year old kids who became fans of the franchise then are now 24 years old and a lot of them will also be fans of the TLOU game. If they are still fans of the R&C games they would have been keen to see a good R&C movie, but it just wasn't good. Ratchet and Clank also failed with the target non-gamer movie-goer demographic. 

But that was not my original point, because I was being flippant.

Honestly the reason to be sceptical about video game adaptations is as simple as that the movie is a video game adaptation. For several reasons that fact alone makes it more likely to fail financially. So in some ways Ratchet and Clank failing as a video game adaptation is just another confirmation that adapting video games to movies just doesn't seem to work. There are two notable exceptions that have come out this year. But I think they are exception and not a sign that a corner has been turned.

Personally I think "creative differences" probably comes down to the budget Druckmann wants vs the budget Sony is willing to give. I think Sony totally trusts Druckmann on the actual creative stuff. Sony hasn't had a stellar year with the box office even ignoring the fact Sony didn't fund R&C and so they weren't financially exposed there. SO I think SOny is playing it conservative with movie budgets for projects that have a high financial risk. Ironically, one of Sony's most profitable movies for 2016 is Angry Birds.

 

[Rhom]

ME: Andromeda news.   Your ship is called the Tempest and there will be no loading screens when onboard.  Huzzah!

[briantw]

Really digging the Telltale Batman series.  Just finished the fourth episode and it does a fantastic job of setting up the fifth episode finale.  I was sad when it ended.  Not a huge fan of Joker's voice actor (although he's not really Joker yet, so maybe it'll change a bit in tone and presentation in the second season), but other than that another solid episode.

Definitely recommend it if you either like Batman or Telltale's style of "choose your own adventure" games.  The gameplay is as QTE heavy as ever, but the writing continues to be excellent, as has been the case with Telltale's games since the first Walking Dead game they did.  They've pretty much mastered it at this point.

[Ded As Ned]

On 11/23/2016 at 2:56 PM, Rhom said:

ME: Andromeda news.   Your ship is called the Tempest and there will be no loading screens when onboard.  Huzzah!

That's the thing that's killing me about the playthrough of Skyrim on PS3 right now.  The damnable load screens.  I'm playing from disc too which I imagine makes it worse.  I'm to the point of rushing to Alduin to get it over with, and I dunno how much I'll play past that.

[RumHam]

On 11/19/2016 at 4:59 AM, The Drunkard said:

Been playing The Long Dark again, this time in the Pleasant Valley map, with only a vague recollection of where things were.

For the first two days I was wandering around the fields like a moron looking for the farmhouse and some better clothes. On the third I went towards the radio tower that can be seen in the distance hoping to get a rifle, but ended up completely sidetracked after taking a detour to avoid a bear, looted some cars and some corpses, and spent the night camped against a cliff. On the fourth I made it to the radio tower, picked up a rifle, returned to the farmhouse and began hunting the wildlife. On the fifth I set out exploring, got caught in a pretty bad storm quite far away from the farmhouse, at which point I tried heading back but realized I'd be cutting it too close. Was on the verge of trying to wait it out in an ice fishing hut, but luckily I found a prepper's bunker, where I've left it for now.

Fun game. Can't wait for story mode.

I actually think may have heard of this game before, but I probably never would have bought it had I not read this. This is exactly the kind of immersive and emergent storytelling I love in games. I'm gonna give it a try sometime soon. 

On another note, I know I once said the Division was not worth buying on one of these threads. The new Survival DLC is out and since I paid for the season pass and heard good things I reinstalled the game to give it a shot. It is by far the most fun I've ever had playing The Division. It's a single encapsulated (~2 hours long max) mission where you start with almost nothing and have to compete with 24 other players for resources across the whole map. I haven't even touched the PvP mode yet. 

Honestly their virtual map of NYC was always the games best asset, and it's great to see them repurpose it for some end game content that's actually fun. It's also worth noting they've changed the interiors of buildings a lot and added a blizzard. Another plus is that since it's it's own sorta mode, it doesn't matter if you only have lower level gear in the main game.While at the same time the rewards you get do apply to the main game. So it was a great place for me to jump back in after such an absence without getting floored by players with max gear score. Anyway I really can't recommend it enough.

[Jasta11]

On 25/11/2016 at 7:47 AM, Ded As Ned said:

That's the thing that's killing me about the playthrough of Skyrim on PS3 right now.  The damnable load screens.  I'm playing from disc too which I imagine makes it worse.  I'm to the point of rushing to Alduin to get it over with, and I dunno how much I'll play past that.

Yeah, Skyrim's pretty notoriously broken on PS3 for some reason. I already don't adore that game, trying to play it on anything other than PC, mods and all, sounds like torture to me.

Anyways, I caved in and bought Overwatch. It's good fun, but actually seems a bit more imbalanced than during beta. Soldier: 76 in particular feels crazy strong, playing as him is almost easy mode. I mostly play Junkrat, Reinhardt and Mercy myself. Of those, ol' Junky is the most fun, but he doesn't work on every map and I always seem to land in teams where people auto-lock Genji and Soldier, so I often end up having to go tank or healer. I don't mind too much, but it's the same problem as in WoW, everyone wants to be a hero and play DPS.

[Proudfeet]

2 hours ago, Jasta11 said:

Anyways, I caved in and bought Overwatch. It's good fun, but actually seems a bit more imbalanced than during beta. Soldier: 76 in particular feels crazy strong, playing as him is almost easy mode. I mostly play Junkrat, Reinhardt and Mercy myself. Of those, ol' Junky is the most fun, but he doesn't work on every map and I always seem to land in teams where people auto-lock Genji and Soldier, so I often end up having to go tank or healer. I don't mind too much, but it's the same problem as in WoW, everyone wants to be a hero and play DPS.

You see how Blizzard put them in order (assault, defense, tank, support)? That's how people prefer to pick too. I went from being a tank main to a support main because nobody ever wants to play support. If I'm playing in quick play, I don't bother anymore. If the rest don't pick a tank or support, I'm joining them on assault/defense. The worst of the lot are those that complain about others picks but never change themselves. At least I can assume the others are maybe just unaware, those are plainly selfish.

[Jon AS]

6 hours ago, Jasta11 said:

Anyways, I caved in and bought Overwatch. It's good fun, but actually seems a bit more imbalanced than during beta. Soldier: 76 in particular feels crazy strong, playing as him is almost easy mode. I mostly play Junkrat, Reinhardt and Mercy myself. Of those, ol' Junky is the most fun, but he doesn't work on every map and I always seem to land in teams where people auto-lock Genji and Soldier, so I often end up having to go tank or healer. I don't mind too much, but it's the same problem as in WoW, everyone wants to be a hero and play DPS.

If you feel overpowered as Soldier: 76 you're probably not getting targeted a lot, as he can dish out damage very well but has only 200 HP.

As with any character, there are plenty of things that you have to look out for as Soldier. Roadhog can hook him and kill him in one shot, D.Va can block his fire and hit im on the counter, Sombra can easily ambush him etc.

 

I usually don't have the problem of people not picking a decent mix of characters, but sometimes I end up with teams that don't seem to understand that it's not deathmatch, but that there's an actual objective to fight over.

[aceluby]

Bought a playstation VR over the weekend on sale at Target, ended up getting everything for about $450 after discounts.  Batman is absolutely awesome, but only took about 2 hours to beat.  It's only $20, so I didn't feel ripped off or anything.  My fiance is now going through it and is enjoying the hell out of it.  Also got EVE: Valkyrie, but am so far underwhelmed by it.  You use the standard controller, but can aim based on where you are physically looking.  Wasn't able to play all that much of it because the update took 2 hours to download, so hopefully I can get into it.  May end up swapping it for something else.  In the meantime I've still got Skyrim & DS3 to play, though I think I prefer regular games on the TV than the VR based on first impressions. 

[Fez]

Started picking up Steam sale games. Its a bad idea, since I want to finish Witcher 3 and Tyranny, and get some more Civ 6 in, before I start playing anything else. But my wishlist was starting to get out of hand again, and anytime games are more than 50% off its hard for me to say no.

[Rhom]

19 minutes ago, Fez said:

Started picking up Steam sale games. Its a bad idea, since I want to finish Witcher 3 and Tyranny, and get some more Civ 6 in, before I start playing anything else. But my wishlist was starting to get out of hand again, and anytime games are more than 50% off its hard for me to say no.

I got Witcher 3 over the weekend when it was 50% off plus a discount for my PSN membership.  Its handy to have it fully downloaded on my PS4 hard drive because I can play it with the Remote Play.

I won't have time to really get into it much for a while, but didn't want to pass up the deal.

[briantw]

3 hours ago, Fez said:

Started picking up Steam sale games. Its a bad idea, since I want to finish Witcher 3 and Tyranny, and get some more Civ 6 in, before I start playing anything else. But my wishlist was starting to get out of hand again, and anytime games are more than 50% off its hard for me to say no.

I decided to pick up the Homeworld remake.  Somehow never played the originals even though that was right around when I started PC gaming in earnest (my family got our first PC right around when the original Half-Life came out...had a Mac before that so my gaming options were more limited).  Figured now was as good a time as any to get around to playing a classic.

Also picked up Endless Legend and Apotheon, both of which have been on my wishlist for a while now.

[Werthead]

Quote

Yeah, Skyrim's pretty notoriously broken on PS3 for some reason. I already don't adore that game, trying to play it on anything other than PC, mods and all, sounds like torture to me.

There's a hideous save file memory leak on the console versions of Skyrim. With the PS3 it kicks in early, with the 360 a lot later and with the PC never. Eventually the save games can take hours to load. AFAIK they fixed the problem for the remastered edition.

Quote

I decided to pick up the Homeworld remake.  Somehow never played the originals even though that was right around when I started PC gaming in earnest (my family got our first PC right around when the original Half-Life came out...had a Mac before that so my gaming options were more limited).  Figured now was as good a time as any to get around to playing a classic.

Homeworld is a classic, easily one of the very best video games ever made with amazing music and atmosphere. If you enjoy them, check out the prequel, Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak. It's not quite as good, but still pretty decent.

[Werthead]

FF15 reviews are out. Seems pretty solid with 8s and 9s across the board.

[KiDisaster]

I picked up Overwatch again the last few nights. Love the new Arcade mode, I've been playing Mystery Heroes almost exclusively. It's awesome, nobody whining about roles or team comps, not getting stuck playing support every game because no one else will do it (I like playing Mercy, Lucio & Symmetra well enough but it gets old after a while). Just play what you get. Plus it forces me to try characters I normally would never pick because I'm terribad at them (like McCree & Genji). Good stuff all around, glad it's a permanent fixture now. 

I am very sad that Zarya is getting nerfed

[Ded As Ned]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

FF15 reviews are out. Seems pretty solid with 8s and 9s across the board.

Good!  It's going to be my first purchase for the (kids') PS4 that is forthcoming for Christmas.

On that note... the damnable thing arrived today, shipped in it's own box.  Luckily I arrived home about 60 seconds before the school bus and craftily had it put away before they saw it sitting in the FedEx "hidden" spot. Whew! That was close.

[MerenthaClone]

1 hour ago, KiDisaster said:

I am very sad that Zarya is getting nerfed

She'll get less charge now, true, but the apparent changes to how her beam works should make her more powerful for people who don't have perfect tracking.  They seem to have changed how it senses whether its hitting something, so you're going to get more frequent hitmarkers for passing the beam over a target but not being able to hold it there.  So she'll be able to do more chip damage to Genji, Tracer, Sombra, etc while not being quite so ridiculously good all the time.  She ended up about the same for me, to be honest.  I just had to stick around fights a bit more before I was able to build a decent charge, but once there I was more powerful against fast targets and as strong as before against slower, larger ones.  If you were decent at skirmishing to get a charge, you'll still be a beast with Zarya, you just won't be able to go from 0->100 with a single Firestrike anymore.