Video Games: A (Sonic 3D) Blast From The Past

[Inigima]

I picked up Prey in the sale and it fucking owns, definitely worth it at 50% off ($30). Super tense and creepy, really fun. I'm in Crew Quarters and just decided to take the plunge on Typhon powers.

[The Anti-Targ]

I decided to settle on the short campaign as an end point for the Greenskins. As my first ever run with Total War I feel like I managed things pretty poorly and even though I got to a pretty good and dominant place I feel like getting through the long campaign will merely be a grind. Politically the options for Greenskins is shite. At best the Greenskins are reluctantly tolerated, which means you can't really use the diplomacy function in an interesting way. Perhaps the long campaign for another race will be more interesting. Still had fun with the Greenskins. And I saved my place at the end of the short campaign so might go back to it some time.

[Werthead]

Started playing Battlefleet Gothic: Armada and it's just astonishing how, twenty years later, no-one has made a space strategy game as good as Homeworld. It's just embarrassing that these games come out with worse UI, controls, atmosphere and even graphics (at least compared to the remastered version) than a game two decades old by this point. It's just mind-boggling.

Not that BG:A  is a complete waste of time, and the Warhammer sense of humour is fully intact, but having a space game where you can't go up or down in 2017 is just laughable.

[Rhom]

5 hours ago, Werthead said:

Started playing Battlefleet Gothic: Armada and it's just astonishing how, twenty years later, no-one has made a space strategy game as good as Homeworld. It's just embarrassing that these games come out with worse UI, controls, atmosphere and even graphics (at least compared to the remastered version) than a game two decades old by this point. It's just mind-boggling.

Not that BG:A  is a complete waste of time, and the Warhammer sense of humour is fully intact, but having a space game where you can't go up or down in 2017 is just laughable.

Not being able to think on the Z Axis... that was Khan's fatal flaw as well.

[The Drunkard]

I'm being bullied in Age of Charlemagne. Started a Lombard campaign and it initially went well, but then the Theme of Sicily declared war on a vassal so I had to focus on southern Italy, then the Pope took Ravenna off me, then a civil war started (and they took a city on the other side of my kingdom from my armies) which is wrecking my morale and public order, and then Charlemagne declares war on me and rolls into Lombardy with 4 and a half stacks. I'm going to have to abandon my vassals to Sicily to defeat the rebels and Charlemagne, but I'll probably lose my capital at Pavia since Charlemagne has all his stacks nearby and has it under siege. I bribed Bavaria, Croatia and Venice into joining me against the Franks but I'm not sure how much they'll actually do.

[Talleyrand]

22 hours ago, Werthead said:

Started playing Battlefleet Gothic: Armada and it's just astonishing how, twenty years later, no-one has made a space strategy game as good as Homeworld. It's just embarrassing that these games come out with worse UI, controls, atmosphere and even graphics (at least compared to the remastered version) than a game two decades old by this point. It's just mind-boggling.

Not that BG:A  is a complete waste of time, and the Warhammer sense of humour is fully intact, but having a space game where you can't go up or down in 2017 is just laughable.

Despite its 2dness and repetitiveness (and horrendous load times on my comp) I enjoyed Armada for my run with it, maybe just due to the lack of any other space navy battle games for me to compare it to in recent memory.

On the highest difficulty the campaign was a pleasant struggle, realising the fight was lost and having to decide which ships would have to be sacrificed so the others could successfully warp away was always fun.

Plus I'm a sucker of over the top monologues about faith and duty.

[The BlackBear]

I guess this belongs here?

Marc Laidlaw has published his original plan for the HL3 plot. He published it with coded names (his website is currently down) but here is a corrected version.

https://github.com/Jackathan/MarcLaidlaw-Epistle3/blob/master/Epistle3_Corrected.md

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

On 22/08/2017 at 11:42 PM, The Anti-Targ said:

I decided to settle on the short campaign as an end point for the Greenskins. As my first ever run with Total War I feel like I managed things pretty poorly and even though I got to a pretty good and dominant place I feel like getting through the long campaign will merely be a grind. Politically the options for Greenskins is shite. At best the Greenskins are reluctantly tolerated, which means you can't really use the diplomacy function in an interesting way. Perhaps the long campaign for another race will be more interesting. Still had fun with the Greenskins. And I saved my place at the end of the short campaign so might go back to it some time.

I think most of the races end up being a bit of a grind, its a common complaint with most total war games as well. I think WH2 might help to solve this problem with its void stuff. Diplomacy really isn't a major tactic of the greenskins though, I like to play them in a pretty violent manner.

[Derfel Cadarn]

Finally finished Dragon age 2 last night, after almost three years starting with Dragon Age Origins.  It was ok, liked the engine and combat, but there was a lot of repetition.  Given that Hawke has apparently ventured deeper into the underground wilds than anyone else, I never really got that impression from the game. Still, brevity was a virtue given my eagerness to get to Inquisition. 

I've also been playing through the Assassins Creed series since autumn 2014 (or 2015, I forget).  I was approx. 2/3 through both AC and AC2, finished them both, and then started playing through the remaining games.  I enjoyed Brotherhood more than I expected, finding it one of my favourites.  Revelations felt repetitive, but was still enjoyable.  The mini-film wrapping up Ezio's story was interesting, expecially the hint that he was while already dying, he was assassinated by a Templar.

I played through in roughly chronoligcal order so played Black Flag and Rogue before 3.  Black Flag is another favourite.  3 felt a bit basic compared to Black Flag and Rogue, but was still a good story.  I'm currently playing Unity which looks gorgeous.  I'll probably skip most of the non-story stuff so I can get to Syndicate before the next game.

Also playing Final Fantasy 14 a bit, liking how I can play my PC character on my PS4.

 

[Werthead]

9 hours ago, The BlackBear said:

I guess this belongs here?

Marc Laidlaw has published his original plan for the HL3 plot. He published it with coded names (his website is currently down) but here is a corrected version.

https://github.com/Jackathan/MarcLaidlaw-Epistle3/blob/master/Epistle3_Corrected.md

Fuck.

After Eps 1 and 2 the general consensus was that there was no way that Ep 3 could live up to those games, and HL1 and 2 themselves. I think this outline shows that wasn't true: time rolling backwards and forwards and players getting to correct their earlier mistakes would have been an amazing mechanic in 2007. And I think the ending is pitch-perfect.

It turns out that Episode 3 would have rocked all this time. That makes it all the more annoying.

[RumHam]

Well my Long Dark voyager run has come to an end after 207 days. I thought I was gonna make the 500, I had so much food stashed all over. But then while out mapping thing a bear attacked and ate my pants. Sure enough a blizzard hit on my way back and I got lost and froze to death with no pants.

On 8/25/2017 at 5:06 PM, Werthead said:

time rolling backwards and forwards and players getting to correct their earlier mistakes would have been an amazing mechanic in 2007.

It sounds like an interesting idea, but I wonder if they had trouble making it work as a game mechanic? I can't figure out how it would work and be fun. 

[Werthead]

43 minutes ago, RumHam said:

It sounds like an interesting idea, but I wonder if they had trouble making it work as a game mechanic? I can't figure out how it would work and be fun. 

I suspect they were trying to find a way of making it work without it being a rip-off of Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. Later on (not long after Ep 2 came out, actually) Quantum Break was announced with its time-bending effects and I wonder if Valve panicked and thought they'd be beaten to the punch.

[The Anti-Targ]

On 8/26/2017 at 0:17 AM, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

I think most of the races end up being a bit of a grind, its a common complaint with most total war games as well. I think WH2 might help to solve this problem with its void stuff. Diplomacy really isn't a major tactic of the greenskins though, I like to play them in a pretty violent manner.

I just use it to keep one of my flanks safer while I overrun another.

I started a Bretonnia campaign, playing as the Fey Enchantress, the diplomacy in that is a lot more intricate and interesting. I finally managed to get the wood elves to calm down enough to get trade going with them. We had a non-aggression pact and the bastard Orion cancelled it. It took probably 50 rounds with non-aggression pact being at moderate success to get him to go for it again, and only one round of trade agreement being at moderate success for him to accept trade. Right at the start of the game (probably round 2 or 3) I went into the forest and kicked his arse, and immediately went for a peace treaty and after that I never ventured into the forest. That pretty much kept the Woodies out of my territory for the whole game. They only invaded other Bretonnian lords, until I took the other border regions via confederation. I've wiped out the Chaos threat now while they were still marauding through the Empire lands, so I don't think there's any possibility of actual military cooperation from the Woodies.

[Fez]

18 hours ago, RumHam said:

It sounds like an interesting idea, but I wonder if they had trouble making it work as a game mechanic? I can't figure out how it would work and be fun. 

Two much more modern examples of how it might've worked are the "Effect and Cause" mission in Titanfall 2, and the "A Crack in the Slab" mission in Dishonored 2.

Although the key to both is being able to seamlessly jump back and forth between essentially two different maps; and I don't know if most PCs had the kind of processing power for that back in 2007. If there's a lengthy loading process it ruins the effect and either wouldn't be fun, or the jumps would be very rare.

[The Anti-Targ]

On 8/26/2017 at 7:58 AM, Derfel Cadarn said:

Finally finished Dragon age 2 last night, after almost three years starting with Dragon Age Origins.  It was ok, liked the engine and combat, but there was a lot of repetition.  Given that Hawke has apparently ventured deeper into the underground wilds than anyone else, I never really got that impression from the game. Still, brevity was a virtue given my eagerness to get to Inquisition. 

I've also been playing through the Assassins Creed series since autumn 2014 (or 2015, I forget).  I was approx. 2/3 through both AC and AC2, finished them both, and then started playing through the remaining games.  I enjoyed Brotherhood more than I expected, finding it one of my favourites.  Revelations felt repetitive, but was still enjoyable.  The mini-film wrapping up Ezio's story was interesting, expecially the hint that he was while already dying, he was assassinated by a Templar.

I played through in roughly chronoligcal order so played Black Flag and Rogue before 3.  Black Flag is another favourite.  3 felt a bit basic compared to Black Flag and Rogue, but was still a good story.  I'm currently playing Unity which looks gorgeous.  I'll probably skip most of the non-story stuff so I can get to Syndicate before the next game.

Also playing Final Fantasy 14 a bit, liking how I can play my PC character on my PS4.

 

I thought the Dragon Age 2 story was great, and the support characters are great too. A pity the game design itself did not match. I still enjoyed the multiple plays through that I did because of the characters and story and was very willing to fogive it's many game design flaws. It introduced the badass horned look for the Qunari (I do wish they could patch DA Origins just to give Sten his proper canonical look), pretty much set up the major ongoing theme for a the next few games re mages struggle for freedom (hinted at as an underground movement in DA:O of course). Red Lyrium. And I really liked that the whole game took place in and around one city. 

[Centrist Simon Steele]

On 8/22/2017 at 5:19 AM, Inigima said:

I picked up Prey in the sale and it fucking owns, definitely worth it at 50% off ($30). Super tense and creepy, really fun. I'm in Crew Quarters and just decided to take the plunge on Typhon powers.

I just got it based on your mini-review here--it has a pretty cool opening. I like it.

[Durckad]

I also ended up getting Prey as well. It's pretty fucking awesome. I ended up wasting most of my weekend playing it which I haven't done in a long, long time. Exactly what I want in a FPS/RPG hybrid. It's a much, much better spiritual successor to System Shock 2 than Bioshock ever was... and I liked Bioshock.

Highly recommended especially for $30.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

Look wat you did, Ini.

[RumHam]

Since I died in The Long Dark I started playing with my Switch more. Fuck the flying battery zone in Sonic Mania. Binding of Issac finally clicked and I love it.

Splatoon 2 is fun, but my god Nintendo what the fuck. There's a co-op mode that for some reason can only be played during certain times. The multiplayer maps seem to also be locked into a weird two maps per time period. So you end up playing the same two maps over and over in one session. Then there's the chat system which I haven't even bothered with because it's ridiculous on it's face that it goes through a smartphone app. 

This is all especially frustrating because the motion control aiming is really great. I know it will never happen but if they ever did a Goldeneye remake I would want to play it with a version of the Splatoon 2 motion controls.  (1.2 Solitare where the left joycon is movement and the right is basically the N64 joystick) 

[Ded As Ned]

9 hours ago, RumHam said:

Since I died in The Long Dark I started playing with my Switch more. Fuck the flying battery zone in Sonic Mania.

I found that boss to be rather challenging... I'm since on to press garden zone but I haven't picked it up in a few days.