Video Games: May the force of your wallet be with you

[Werthead]

11 hours ago, Clueless Northman said:

Interesting. I haven't seen as gushing praises about Mankind Divided and was under the impression that the opinions were more divided (pun intended). Good to hear it's still actually quite good - or are you of the opinion that Human Revolution was just OK ?

Human Revolution was outstanding, I just felt Mankind Divided was slightly weaker in terms of story and character.

One thing I would disagree with Kal on is length. I completed Human Revolution twice, the second time with the Missing Link DLC installed. The first time it took 25 hours, the second time (with the DLC) 28 hours. Mankind Divided I clocked in at 26 hours without the DLC. The Criminal Past DLC I know is a good 4-5 hours long and System Rift another couple of hours, so all included Mankind Divided should be the longer game.

It seems shorter because there's only one hub compared to Human Revolution's two, but MD's hub is enormous and there's a lot more quests and missions packed in there than in the first game's.

[aceluby]

Bought myself a switch over the weekend and started playing Zelda.  This is the first time I've ever played a Zelda game besides the original on the NES when that came out.  So far I'm really enjoying it and like the open world concept they are going for.  Excited to play some of these Nintendo exclusives for the first time.

[GallowKnight]

I bought Domina and Tooth & Tail during the Steam sale.

Of course I haven't been playing either since I also reactivated my The Old Republic account.

[Inigima]

DX: Human Revolution was infuriating. It is so close to being the perfect successor to the original game and fails in some incredibly frustrating ways. The biggest one, which drew the most complaints, is that you could put all your points into stealthy sneaking... and then be forced into a boss fight where not having any combat augs was a big problem. Another that bothered me is related -- you can't genuinely choose what to do, particularly with boss fights but also with story-related stuff. I remember walking into what was obviously a trap, but I couldn't choose not to, or not to fall for it -- the game forces you on to the rails, even though a child would know better. I wanted to love it and it was all the more disappointing when it tripped over itself getting out of its own way.

I picked up Blaster Master Zero on the Switch (it also got a 3DS release, but I didn't play it there) and it's terrific. Captures the gameplay of the original perfectly -- it's an expanded remake, not an all-new game -- but modernizes a number of the systems to take advantage of designs lessons learned since 1988. Dying just sends you back to a checkpoint, rather than making you start over, there's a map, everything. It would have been nice to have updated graphics etc. (preferably with the option for retro ones -- Wonder Boy and the Dragon's Trap did a great job with this), and the top weapon trivializes a lot of encounters, but the game is really top-notch. If you have any nostalgia for Blaster Master, pick it up, especially if -- like me -- the game's difficulty kept you from beating it before. The game is absolutely massive for an NES title, too. Zero is on sale for $7 right now.

[aceluby]

1 hour ago, Inigima said:

I picked up Blaster Master Zero on the Switch (it also got a 3DS release, but I didn't play it there) and it's terrific. Captures the gameplay of the original perfectly -- it's an expanded remake, not an all-new game -- but modernizes a number of the systems to take advantage of designs lessons learned since 1988. Dying just sends you back to a checkpoint, rather than making you start over, there's a map, everything. It would have been nice to have updated graphics etc. (preferably with the option for retro ones -- Wonder Boy and the Dragon's Trap did a great job with this), and the top weapon trivializes a lot of encounters, but the game is really top-notch. If you have any nostalgia for Blaster Master, pick it up, especially if -- like me -- the game's difficulty kept you from beating it before. The game is absolutely massive for an NES title, too. Zero is on sale for $7 right now.

I remember spending hours and hours on Blaster Master.  I also remember not knowing exactly what I was doing, but enjoying every moment of it.  Can't wait to try this out!

[briantw]

About halfway through Wolfenstein: The New Colossus.  Still hilarious how good this reboot turned out to be.  The first game was great, and the sequel is a worthy follow-up.  I also love all the subtle (and some not so subtle) digs at the alt right.  

The story is every bit as ridiculous as the previous game, but it's incredible how it still manages to be serious and dark when it needs to be despite all the crazy shit that happens.  The best scene so far features a guy playing a clarinet in the background while you have a drinking contest with a resistance leader in the midst of a background character having a firefight with Nazis.  

Main complaint thus far is that one of the early levels in the game (the ruins of Manhattan) is also the least interesting in the game.  It felt like a chore to get through and was just visually not very compelling.  We've seen a dozen bombed out post-apocalyptic cities at this point in video games, so there just wasn't any real impact to seeing New York destroyed, which seemed like what they were going for.  Fallout 3 did it much better by showing DC like that despite much shittier graphics.  

After the Manhattan level, though, the game really kicks into high gear and it hasn't been boring since.

[Werthead]

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DX: Human Revolution was infuriating. It is so close to being the perfect successor to the original game and fails in some incredibly frustrating ways. The biggest one, which drew the most complaints, is that you could put all your points into stealthy sneaking... and then be forced into a boss fight where not having any combat augs was a big problem. Another that bothered me is related -- you can't genuinely choose what to do, particularly with boss fights but also with story-related stuff. I remember walking into what was obviously a trap, but I couldn't choose not to, or not to fall for it -- the game forces you on to the rails, even though a child would know better. I wanted to love it and it was all the more disappointing when it tripped over itself getting out of its own way.

 

The Director's Cut edition fixed that. After that edition, you could use stealth or hacking to defeat each of the bosses in different ways. 

As for the granularity of your control over the game, you could only do that in the original Deus Ex because it was so primitive in terms of graphics and art assets. There is no way you can do that in a modern game, the art budget would be prohibitive to create stuff that say 75% of people will never, ever see. IIRC, even CDPR had issues with that on The Witcher 2 when they looked at the starts and realised only a tiny percentage of people have ever played the game more than once, so having the entire middle third of the game shift depending on player choice ended up being useless (and why they didn't do something similar for Witcher 3).

They could have probably done a bit more to change things up, but this is where they were boxed in due to being a prequel. No matter what happens in HR and MD, things are going to end up they way there were in the original Deus Ex (and MD shows that in progress).

[Clueless Northman]

Thanks for the replies about Deus Ex  
I had seen if in Steam sales and was wondering. I think I'll grab it in the Summer sales or in the next Christmas sales at the latest. (that's not a pressing issue or need, I already have way too many unplayed games and I'm quite busy with Stellaris and LOTRO right now, but I love Deus Ex so I won't wait too long before playing it).

I assume they won't make another one following right after Mankind Divided, and the story is quite advanced with the main Illuminati plot - so there isn't much room left for a 3rd game which would offer any kind of surprise or choice to the player ?

Witcher 2 was great with that middle section. Since I was going to play it twice to begin with, it was really awesome.

[Werthead]

Mankind Divided  was actually supposed to be followed up by a direct sequel. Apparently that's still happening, it's just been moved a notch down the priority list due to MD's somewhat (but not disastrously) under-par sales. HR takes place in 2027, MD in 2029 and the original Deus Ex in 2052, so there's still a fair chunk of time between the games.

Meanwhile, Witcher 3 was one of the biggest-selling Steam games of 2017. Valve won't say where exactly but it was in the Top 12. Which was kind of insane because it had no new content this year. It was one of the biggest-selling Steam games of 2015 (according to some, the second-biggest behind only Fallout 4) and it was the second-biggest-selling game of 2016, thanks to the Game of the Year Edition with all DLC. So for it to be in the Top 12 in 2017, over two years after release, outselling games like Fallout 4, Assassin's Creed: Origins, Watch_Dogs 2, the latest Call of Duty etc is pretty crazy. The only game we know that outsold it on PC for sure is PLUNKBAT, but only because that came out in 2017 and immediately sold over 20 million copies.

Bodes well for Cyberpunk 2077, if CDPR can let us know when it's coming out.

[Ferrum Aeternum]

11 hours ago, Werthead said:

Meanwhile, Witcher 3 was one of the biggest-selling Steam games of 2017. Valve won't say where exactly but it was in the Top 12. Which was kind of insane because it had no new content this year. It was one of the biggest-selling Steam games of 2015 (according to some, the second-biggest behind only Fallout 4) and it was the second-biggest-selling game of 2016, thanks to the Game of the Year Edition with all DLC. So for it to be in the Top 12 in 2017, over two years after release, outselling games like Fallout 4, Assassin's Creed: Origins, Watch_Dogs 2, the latest Call of Duty etc is pretty crazy. The only game we know that outsold it on PC for sure is PLUNKBAT, but only because that came out in 2017 and immediately sold over 20 million copies.

Bodes well for Cyberpunk 2077, if CDPR can let us know when it's coming out.

One thing about sales for Witcher 3 this year on Steam - it was on sale at a deep discount at numerous points throughout the year, both the base and GOTY editions. Cutting the price to under $20 bucks on a semi-regular basis is a great way to get folks to pull the trigger. 

[briantw]

5 hours ago, Ferrum Aeternum said:

One thing about sales for Witcher 3 this year on Steam - it was on sale at a deep discount at numerous points throughout the year, both the base and GOTY editions. Cutting the price to under $20 bucks on a semi-regular basis is a great way to get folks to pull the trigger. 

That sort of thing works for CDProjekt RED too since they don't owe a cut of their PC sales to a publisher.  

[Guy Kilmore]

On 1/8/2018 at 10:25 AM, aceluby said:

Bought myself a switch over the weekend and started playing Zelda.  This is the first time I've ever played a Zelda game besides the original on the NES when that came out.  So far I'm really enjoying it and like the open world concept they are going for.  Excited to play some of these Nintendo exclusives for the first time.

I have been loving my Switch, I picked up, Zelda, Mario and Stardew Valley.  All of which have been excellent.

[briantw]

Finished Wolfenstein II.  What a great fucking game.  I just love how they took this series and made you give a shit about all the characters.  This is a game where they take a woman whose mother is an evil Nazi and they make you care about her and like her because she changes sides because her mother treats her like absolute shit.  And at one point she slaps the shit out of a resistance woman who keeps calling her a Nazi and you root for her.  It's fucking great.  It's kind of sad that most games can't even touch the characterizations of a game that is basically all about mowing down Nazis by the truckload.  

The cut-scenes in the game are just so, so fucking good.  I read some complaints about how the game has something like three hours of cut-scenes, but for fuck's sake, most games don't even come close to the writing quality of this game.  There may be a lot of cut-scenes, but they are well-written and never boring, and to me, that's really all that matters.  From start to finish, this game sucks you in and never lets you go.  The characters are awesome and well-realized, and the bad guy just gloriously revels in how evil she is, which is fitting for a Nazi nemesis.  

Probably the best game I played that came out in 2017.  

[Clueless Northman]

On 9 janvier 2018 at 3:35 AM, Werthead said:

Meanwhile, Witcher 3 was one of the biggest-selling Steam games of 2017. Valve won't say where exactly but it was in the Top 12. Which was kind of insane because it had no new content this year. It was one of the biggest-selling Steam games of 2015 (according to some, the second-biggest behind only Fallout 4) and it was the second-biggest-selling game of 2016, thanks to the Game of the Year Edition with all DLC. So for it to be in the Top 12 in 2017, over two years after release, outselling games like Fallout 4, Assassin's Creed: Origins, Watch_Dogs 2, the latest Call of Duty etc is pretty crazy. The only game we know that outsold it on PC for sure is PLUNKBAT, but only because that came out in 2017 and immediately sold over 20 million copies.

They said Witcher 3 sold more in early 2017 than in early 2016, so odds are that, thanks to frequent sales, more games were sold this year than the previous one. There were reports a few months ago that the whole series sold more than 25 mio; W3 sold more than the others, clearly, and I wouldn't be surprised of total sales were now at 15 mio. But then, you still have some ludicrous lists there around which are only limited to physical copies, which is the biggest nonsense ever when it comes to PC games in 2018. If W3 was 2nd best-seller in Steam, it basically means that the worst-case scenario is that it was the 3rd biggest seller in PC games.

[KiDisaster]

So speaking of CDPR, the CyberpunkGame account just tweeted for the first time in about four years. 

 

It's a completely meaningless tweet obviously, but possibly a hint that we'll see some new info soon. Fingers crossed. 

Also it's been 5 years to the day since the original teaser was posted. Time is a hell of a thing. Does not feel like that long at all. 

[Ferrum Aeternum]

5 hours ago, briantw said:

Finished Wolfenstein II.  What a great fucking game. 

It was the only thing I picked up in the last Steam sale. I've heard good things and your description sounds right up my alley. 

 

13 minutes ago, KiDisaster said:

So speaking of CDPR, the CyberpunkGame account just tweeted for the first time in about four years. 

That Cyberpunk game needs to happen. CDPR upped their game so significantly with W3 that it makes me very excited for what's next.

[KiDisaster]

I loved everything about Wolfy 2...except the gameplay. I ended up just putting it on easy and blasting through it. Mowing down Nazis is great and all but too often it just felt like busy work in between the stuff I actually cared about. 

So many amazing moments in that game though. No surprise Giant Bomb had to give it its own category for their GOTY podcasts this year so it didn't dominate the regular Best Moments category  

---

Breath of the Wild continues to be fantastic. I've never been the biggest Nintendo fan (I was mainly a Playstation kid, so I don't have the same reverence or nostalgia for Nintendo that most people my age seem to. BotW is the only Zelda game I've even played properly) but they really knocked it out of the park in 2017. 

[Corvinus85]

And here it is, the next historical era/location for Total War games is China, specifically the Three Kingdoms. Lots of people predicted this. Personally I was hoping for the Warring States, as the 3K was done in other games, too, but maybe there are just more historical records to this era.

 

[Werthead]

 

13 minutes ago, Corvinus said:

And here it is, the next historical era/location for Total War games is China, specifically the Three Kingdoms. Lots of people predicted this. Personally I was hoping for the Warring States, as the 3K was done in other games, too, but maybe there are just more historical records to this era.

 

Warring State I think will be DLC, possibly An Lushan and the Mongol Invasion as well.

 

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That Cyberpunk game needs to happen. CDPR upped their game so significantly with W3 that it makes me very excited for what's next.

 

I'm hoping this means a 2018 release. They announced the game six years ago, and apparently it began pre-production after Witcher 2 launched and full production shortly before Witcher 3 was released, so they should have a hell of a lot of work done on it already. I think the unofficial word is that the game is much closer to completion than people realise and CDPR are going to do a FO4 and hype it up for 3-4 months and then blast it out there.

If it's even half as good as Witcher 3, it should very comfortably be game of the year.

[Fez]

16 minutes ago, Werthead said:

I think the unofficial word is that the game is much closer to completion than people realise and CDPR are going to do a FO4 and hype it up for 3-4 months and then blast it out there.

I really think that is the right way to market a game. It's less expensive and hasn't backfired yet for a big release (though I think only Rockstar and Bethesda regularly do it). Meanwhile, I think there have definitely been some examples of lengthy marketing campaigns leading to fatigue and backlash before the game even comes out.

E.g. Would so many people have demanded refunds for No Man's Sky if there hadn't been an extremely long (albeit, also vague) marketing campaign giving people time to develop unreal expectations about the game?