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Video Games: A Far Cry From E3


KiDisaster

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On 5/15/2018 at 3:25 PM, Rhom said:

I hate to interrupt this thread on Battletech (that is what we're talking about isn't it?) but I've been playing God of War for a few days now.  Having not played the original trilogy of games (it came out at a time that I was lost in the World of Warcraft and didn't do much console gaming), I am kind of assuming this is a big departure from a gameplay standpoint?  Or were all the games an Uncharted/Last of Us style game with axes and gods?

I think it's the same. How much murdering of naked, helpless women remains? How SO ANGRY is Kratos? Or is he wise and old now? 

Edit: I'm just going to stop beating around the bush. I think God of War 3 was so misogynistic and sick that it's kind of unforgivable given the undercurrent of hatred the perpetuates gaming. GOW3 came out at a time when I was oblivious to this kind of thinking, but it got to a point that the violence toward women was so great, I couldn't play it any longer. Apparently the games got worse in that department for awhile. 

Because of this, I can't fathom playing the God of War no matter how good it's supposed to be. This notion of "but it's a really good game" is the same kind of hype surrounding the old ones too. I just don't want to support the guy who hatched such ideas as brutally murdering a topless priestess of Poseidon--after leading her a giant chamber by a chain--just so you can progress through the game. 

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9 hours ago, Simon Steele said:

I think it's the same. How much murdering of naked, helpless women remains? How SO ANGRY is Kratos? Or is he wise and old now? 

Edit: I'm just going to stop beating around the bush. I think God of War 3 was so misogynistic and sick that it's kind of unforgivable given the undercurrent of hatred the perpetuates gaming. GOW3 came out at a time when I was oblivious to this kind of thinking, but it got to a point that the violence toward women was so great, I couldn't play it any longer. Apparently the games got worse in that department for awhile. 

Because of this, I can't fathom playing the God of War no matter how good it's supposed to be. This notion of "but it's a really good game" is the same kind of hype surrounding the old ones too. I just don't want to support the guy who hatched such ideas as brutally murdering a topless priestess of Poseidon--after leading her a giant chamber by a chain--just so you can progress through the game. 

This isn't the same director who made GOW3 (that guy is at Respawn Entertainment now) but I get where you're coming from. All of the original games were bad in that regard and this one does nothing to address the misogyny of the original trilogy. 

Dia Lacina published a great piece on Waypoint yesterday about the way women (specifically mothers) are treated (or entirely left out) in the latest game and while not as abhorrent as the older entries there's still a lot more that could be done. https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/wjb5jx/god-of-war-moms

 

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2 hours ago, KiDisaster said:

This isn't the same director who made GOW3 (that guy is at Respawn Entertainment now) but I get where you're coming from. All of the original games were bad in that regard and this one does nothing to address the misogyny of the original trilogy. 

Dia Lacina published a great piece on Waypoint yesterday about the way women (specifically mothers) are treated (or entirely left out) in the latest game and while not as abhorrent as the older entries there's still a lot more that could be done. https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/wjb5jx/god-of-war-moms

 

Thanks for sharing (h/t to Simon too) -- I was thinking of downloading this today. I'll pass -- there's plenty of other good games out there that I would prefer to give my money to. 

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2 hours ago, KiDisaster said:

This isn't the same director who made GOW3 (that guy is at Respawn Entertainment now) but I get where you're coming from. All of the original games were bad in that regard and this one does nothing to address the misogyny of the original trilogy. 

Dia Lacina published a great piece on Waypoint yesterday about the way women (specifically mothers) are treated (or entirely left out) in the latest game and while not as abhorrent as the older entries there's still a lot more that could be done. https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/wjb5jx/god-of-war-moms

 

Oh, that's interesting. The current lead (Balrog?) has insinuated that God of War was always his creation--but I don't know that I actually ever heard him say it. I might have created that info. The piece you linked is really eye opening too. The idea of mothers would seemingly be the ideal place to address the issues of the series, and I think would have done great things for the series. 

I'm kind of shocked how silent gaming media has been on this--especially considering how many intelligent women have moved into various, prominent roles. I wonder if they just are tired of the backlash. But this linked article is super thoughtful, smart, and shows how misogyny existed subtly in the series but was perhaps overlooked due to overt issues.

I checked the twitter feed for this article (linked under the site, not the writer), and it starts out pretty solid, but sure enough, anger begins boiling through. How dare someone not share universal praise for the game. 

Thank you for sharing.

4 minutes ago, Week said:

Thanks for sharing (h/t to Simon too) -- I was thinking of downloading this today. I'll pass -- there's plenty of other good games out there that I would prefer to give my money to. 

It's a tough call, and I'm sure not a lot of people think of the game the way I do. But I agree, so many good games. For God of War to lure me back, I think the devs would have to address past issues head on. 

On a side note, I watched some of Anita Sarkeesian's videos last night. I never had watched her before. I realized after I had written about God of War on here, that she was someone I thought of as a "problem." I still thought of her this way. My blind spots are pretty big. I went and watched her gaming podcast, and I found her to be really reasonable, smart, and, even with the short length of each video, she unpacks complex themes without villainizing "evil men."

I think how I approach gaming has to change.

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2 minutes ago, Simon Steele said:

Oh, that's interesting. The current lead (Balrog?) has insinuated that God of War was always his creation--but I don't know that I actually ever heard him say it. I might have created that info. The piece you linked is really eye opening too. The idea of mothers would seemingly be the ideal place to address the issues of the series, and I think would have done great things for the series. 

I'm kind of shocked how silent gaming media has been on this--especially considering how many intelligent women have moved into various, prominent roles. I wonder if they just are tired of the backlash. But this linked article is super thoughtful, smart, and shows how misogyny existed subtly in the series but was perhaps overlooked due to overt issues.

I checked the twitter feed for this article (linked under the site, not the writer), and it starts out pretty solid, but sure enough, anger begins boiling through. How dare someone not share universal praise for the game. 

Thank you for sharing.

It's a tough call, and I'm sure not a lot of people think of the game the way I do. But I agree, so many good games. For God of War to lure me back, I think the devs would have to address past issues head on. 

On a side note, I watched some of Anita Sarkeesian's videos last night. I never had watched her before. I realized after I had written about God of War on here, that she was someone I thought of as a "problem." I still thought of her this way. My blind spots are pretty big. I went and watched her gaming podcast, and I found her to be really reasonable, smart, and, even with the short length of each video, she unpacks complex themes without villainizing "evil men."

I think how I approach gaming has to change.

Barlog has been involved in some capacity on all of them. He was the art director for the first game, the head director on the second, and started out as director on the third but left the studio after the first few months for reasons that, as far as I know, have never been disclosed. The third game was then taken over by Stig Armussen who's now working on a Star Wars game for Respawn. The original creator of the series was David Jaffe, the Twisted Metal guy, who most recently put out that fucking atrocious 'Drawn To Death' game last year where the announcer talks about how hard his dick is whenever you get a kill. To some extent, Barlog has at least grown up whereas apparently Jaffe never has. 

Waypoint has become my favorite games media site and podcast for exactly the reasons you mentioned, they're one of the few high profile places regularly publishing this kind of criticism. Highly recommend following them. 

Personally I really enjoyed this latest game despite the flaws, but I have also enjoyed all of the God of War games. I was certainly ignorant of a lot of the issues with the originals when they were coming out while I was a teenager though, and looking back I find a lot of it incredibly cringe-inducing and off putting. Barlog and the rest of the design team are clearly aware of the issues of the original games, because they do at least make an effort to address Kratos' relationship with violence and anger issues in his lessons to Atreus about being a better man that he was (whilst also teaching him to be an extremely effective killing machine but hey...at least you're not slaughtering innocents this time). But they entirely fail to address the misogyny, whether that's because they feared the backlash from gamergate types or because they just didn't think it was important I don't know. I hope this is something they take to heart and work on improving in the inevitable sequels, but I'm not holding my breath. 

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On 5/14/2018 at 10:24 PM, Jon AS said:

I think you guys are playing through the Battletech campaign at a much brisker pace than I do. By the time I did the mission to take out the dropship my lance was mostly composed of heavies.

I found it useful to have a composition of 1 LRM boat that hangs back (if you can't get your hands on a Trebuchet the Centurion you get early on will do, though I turned mine into a Yen Lo Wang knockoff), 2 long range snipers (preferably sporting AC/5s because those things are ridiculously more powerful in this game than in the tabletop version and easily outperform PPCs) and one close range brawler. I used the aforementioned Centurion for that, later a Hunchback 4P and then a Grasshopper, which seems made for the role. This 'mech tends to take lots of damage and more often than not I'll have to eject the pilot to save them, but until then it's capable of downing others in its weight class with a single alpha strike to the centre torso (even more easily when you manage to get behind the enemy) while the rest of the lance mops up everything else. Short of being completely outmatched (2 lances of assault 'mechs vs. 3 heavies and a medium...) or the assassination target getting up from a knockdiown and immediately limping into the evac zone that spawned right next to it, most missions tend to go pretty smoothly.

Right now I'm trying to get the last two assault 'mechs missing for my collection, the Atlas and the King Crab, before finishing up the campaign.

I got an Orion in my last mission and an AC10+++. Gave that to one of my Dragons, gave the Orion a PPG and an AC10++ (to replace the Vindicator sniper) and, er, suddenly absolutely everyone is dying in like one or two hits. These ACs with bonuses are absolutely insane (rumour is they're going to be nerfed in a patch, which I can understand).

Will hoover up some more money and then take another crack at that tough mission. Something I did emphasis is morale-boosting stuff: building a state-of-the-art 3D entertainment system in the ship's mess and hosting a movie night suddenly gives you a massive morale hit and allows to to fire more called shots on the battlefield, which is amusing.

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26 minutes ago, Werthead said:

I got an Orion in my last mission and an AC10+++. Gave that to one of my Dragons, gave the Orion a PPG and an AC10++ (to replace the Vindicator sniper) and, er, suddenly absolutely everyone is dying in like one or two hits. These ACs with bonuses are absolutely insane (rumour is they're going to be nerfed in a patch, which I can understand).

Indeed. Just finished a merc mission, where I was supposed to destroy some heavy vehicles. One, armed with 2 AC20s, tore an arm off from my Shadowhawk in the first attack, no prior damage. One shot to strip off the armor, one to take the arm off. 

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21 hours ago, Corvinus said:

Indeed. Just finished a merc mission, where I was supposed to destroy some heavy vehicles. One, armed with 2 AC20s, tore an arm off from my Shadowhawk in the first attack, no prior damage. One shot to strip off the armor, one to take the arm off.  

The good old demolisher, the one tank to even give an Atlas pause. Luckily they, like all vehicles, are much, much less durable than a 'mech.

Finally got my Atlas and King Crab the other day. After never even seeing either one in any random mission, I encountered them in consecutive missions on the same planet. Oh that excitement when your sensors inform you that that 'mech over there weighs the mythical 100t. And then the sobering thought that you'll have to take out two lances of assault 'mechs to get to that sweet salvage...

And boy do they wreck enemy 'mechs, the King Crab in particular. Those dual AC/20s hurt. A lot.

Of course that means I'm now headed into the campaign endgame. Overall I really like the game, I hope we get more campaigns down the line, I don't think the procedural stuff alone is going to hold my  interest.

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12 minutes ago, Jon AS said:

The good old demolisher, the one tank to even give an Atlas pause. Luckily they, like all vehicles, are much, much less durable than a 'mech.

Finally got my Atlas and King Crab the other day. After never even seeing either one in any random mission, I encountered them in consecutive missions on the same planet. Oh that excitement when your sensors inform you that that 'mech over there weighs the mythical 100t. And then the sobering thought that you'll have to take out two lances of assault 'mechs to get to that sweet salvage...

And boy do they wreck enemy 'mechs, the King Crab in particular. Those dual AC/20s hurt. A lot.

Of course that means I'm now headed into the campaign endgame. Overall I really like the game, I hope we get more campaigns down the line, I don't think the procedural stuff alone is going to hold my  interest.

When the Highlander shows up (that you get at the end of the mission regardless), apparently if you shoot off its Gauss Gun (the only one in the game) and then claim it as salvage afterwards, you end up with two of them, and that's the only way to get two Gausses. Stick them on the Highlander or on a King Crab afterwards and it's pretty much game over at that point. You can waltz everything.

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1 hour ago, Werthead said:

When the Highlander shows up (that you get at the end of the mission regardless), apparently if you shoot off its Gauss Gun (the only one in the game) and then claim it as salvage afterwards, you end up with two of them, and that's the only way to get two Gausses. Stick them on the Highlander or on a King Crab afterwards and it's pretty much game over at that point. You can waltz everything.

I don't recall there being salvage for that mission.

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2 hours ago, Jon AS said:

I don't recall there being salvage for that mission.

I haven't reached that mission myself, but apparently it's a bug that generates a 2nd Gauss Gun, the only way of doing it in the whole game.

Went back to the Smithon moon (15 hours or so of ingame action after I last tried it) and completed the dropship mission. It was pretty tough, even with my newly-upgraded weapons and the Orion unleashing the damage. I also pulled out the LRMs from my Dragon armed with the AC20+++ and gave it tons of armour and more ammo, which ended up being the best choice as it sucked in a lot of the damage from the Catapult with the two PPCs (which kept firing so much it shut itself down, which was amusing). The Dragon just tore through the starting mechs like they were paper. I did run into some problems with the lance of heavies that landed at the end, mainly through the Firestarter they bring with them just not dying and overheating everyone. In the end I won the battle, but my LRM boat Dragon got totalled and I lost the pilot, and the mech's mighty LRM20++. I was tempted to reload, but it seemed cheap so pressed on.

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I caved after reading all the Battletech talk (damn you all!) and bought it two weeks ago, and have been binging ever since. Excellent game so far. Alternative was XCOM2 (loved the first one, but got put off it by talks of the second one having limited turns).

I've just finished the mission where you head to an abandoned base and at the end of the missions end up with an Assault Mech as reward. I think the idea was to run away and get extracted, but i kind of missed that memo and tried to take down the lance of Assault Mechs that shows up. Long story short, i managed to beat them, and got "lucky" with knocking out the pilot of the Awesome 8Q. By "lucky" i mean, i tried to blow that motherfucker up real good, but barely scratched it, instead knocked it down 3-4 times and the pilot got incapacitated :laugh:. And now I have a 3 PPC loaded Sniper Assault mech! (3/4 salvage was spent on this beaut).

Unfortunately, I haven't played with a PPC Sniper set up before as I couldn't find a set up to my satisfaction that suited my combat style (and manage the heat). My typical Lance consists of 2x short-med range and 2x long range. The lance setup evolved from:

1) 1 light scout (firestarter with 6 flamers <3)  - usually just spams sensor lock and then gets close to overheat/lockdown strongest mech for a couple of turns.
2) 1 LRM boat (stripped Shadowhawk with 35 LRM, no jumpjets or heatsinks) -  stand and deliver ridiculous stability damage
3) 1 Ballistic focused med-long range (Blackjack with 2x AC5, no jumpjets or heatsinks) - focuses on the LRM boat target for stability damage
4) 1 Med-range laser bot (Vindicator with 4 med laser, max jumpjet and heatsinks) - this dude was all about flanking, stacking evasion and generally trying to attract and avoid damage. And focus fire on the knockdown target.

This set up ran very well until more/stronger mechs started showing up with lots of firepower. None of the bots could sustain much damage as I ignored armor. Specially the light scout, which got sensor locked and LRM'd. So I usually ended up with a mech or two being severly damanged as a result (usually Vindicator and Firestarter!).

So I started focusing more on armour and durability and ditched the light Scout. So my lance setup changed to:

1) 1 Heavy damage soaker - Dragon with almost max armour, max jumpjets, decent heatsinks , 12 SRM and 2 support lasers - with a mechwarrior in Pilot specialisation for max evasion. Idea was to get close, soak/avoid damage and SRM fuckers up, with Melee if there is an opportunity.
2) 1 LRM boat same as above
3) 1 Ballistic focused - Hunchback with AC20, mostly max armour and max jumpjets - focused on getting behind or on the side and ripping apart armour for quick take down, usually working with Dragon target
4) 1 SRM Boat - Centurion with 18 SRM, max jump jet, mostly max armour and decent heatsinks - this guy was nuts, made me fall in love with SRMs

I love the amount of stability damage I can dish out and really fuck up a mech quickly with focus fire. But started getting caught out with Dragon and melee. Because if you melee, your evasion stacks aren't as high and can get focus fired/knocked down.  This is specially annoying when you are next to a mech, but the Melee attack option won't let you go behind the mech to attack (and possibly 1 shot em) even though in reality the Dragon is mobile enough to do so (i.e. just do normal move and lose SRM salvo instead). I wish they allowed melee as a normal attack instead of it being part of "move".

Anyway, I just got an Highlander and Awesome and will likely re-outfit both to suit my style. Highlander will be the new damage damage soaker/ballistic focused mech, with 2 x AC20 (*drool*), mostly max armour and max jumpjets. But not entirely sure what to do with the Awesome sniper. But i will try out the stock build first as it looks interesting, and if I don't like it I am leaning towards max armour, max jumpjets with 7 medium lasers.

As you can probably tell, I hate mixed loadouts! I like my mechs to be focused on a role and adjust tactics to suit.

When I get the opportunity, i might try 2 LRM boat and 1 long range ballistic and a scout build. Specially as more heavies and assault mechs start showing up.

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Been playing The Forest since it left Early Access a couple weeks ago. So far me and a couple friends have built a sturdy compound on the southern end of the peninsula to help us ward off the cannibals. It's pretty self-sufficient containing a fish pond, 3 water collectors, drying racks, a pair of breeding bunnies, and a small garden. I was even able to make us some ramparts using the walls, platforms, and tree walkways. We've explored the 2 nearest caves, but have yet to find our son. Tonight we finished a raft and we'll soon set out to find a suitable location for another base so we can continue our search from there.

We'll find you some day Timmy.

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3 minutes ago, A True Kaniggit said:

Been playing The Forest since it left Early Access a couple weeks ago. So far me and a couple friends have built a sturdy compound on the southern end of the peninsula to help us ward off the cannibals. It's pretty self-sufficient containing a fish pond, 3 water collectors, drying racks, a pair of breeding bunnies, and a small garden. I was even able to make us some ramparts using the walls, platforms, and tree walkways. We've explored the 2 nearest caves, but have yet to find our son. Tonight we finished a raft and we'll soon set out to find a suitable location for another base so we can continue our search from there.

We'll find you some day Timmy.

I bought that game like half a decade ago.

It's just now finished!?!

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2 minutes ago, Pony Empress Jace said:

I bought that game like half a decade ago.

It's just now finished!?!

Well.....it's left early access. "Finished" is probably too strong a word to describe it. Though it is waaaaay better than when I first played a couple years ago, there are still a "few" things that could use some fixing. And patches are still being released every week or two.

 

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1 hour ago, The Winged Shadow said:

Anyway, I just got an Highlander and Awesome and will likely re-outfit both to suit my style. Highlander will be the new damage damage soaker/ballistic focused mech, with 2 x AC20 (*drool*), mostly max armour and max jumpjets. But not entirely sure what to do with the Awesome sniper. But i will try out the stock build first as it looks interesting, and if I don't like it I am leaning towards max armour, max jumpjets with 7 medium lasers. 

The Awesome 8Q and the unique Highlander are some of the best stock configurations in the game (though neither the heatsinks nor the gauss rifle in the highlander are replaceable, barring the exploit Werthead descibed above, which I kind of feel like trying now; King Crab with two gauss, hm...). I feel like messing with the default setup for the Highlander is kind of unnecessary, except for replacing basic weapons with better variants.

 

Finally finished the campaign, which is clearly not balanced for a full assault lance as the two last missions were really easy, even considering you can't repair any 'mechs in between. As a reward you get what should be the only Atlas II in the Inner Sphere and Periphery and can then travel to even more star systems. Presumably you'll be able to do missions for Kurita and Steiner up there, as I never encountered them anywhere else.

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33 minutes ago, Jon AS said:

The Awesome 8Q and the unique Highlander are some of the best stock configurations in the game (though neither the heatsinks nor the gauss rifle in the highlander are replaceable, barring the exploit Werthead descibed above, which I kind of feel like trying now; King Crab with two gauss, hm...). I feel like messing with the default setup for the Highlander is kind of unnecessary, except for replacing basic weapons with better variants.

 

Finally finished the campaign, which is clearly not balanced for a full assault lance as the two last missions were really easy, even considering you can't repair any 'mechs in between. As a reward you get what should be the only Atlas II in the Inner Sphere and Periphery and can then travel to even more star systems. Presumably you'll be able to do missions for Kurita and Steiner up there, as I never encountered them anywhere else.

Not a fan of Awesome 8Q not having any jump jets (stock). I've changed the setup with 2 PPC and 1 Large Laser, this helped with getting some jump jets in there and still have decent heat management and armour (took off a lot of back armour for front armour, i figured i shouldn't be getting flanked on a damn sniper with jump jets). It seemed a bit bad at getting into position without jumpjets, although on the last mission the map was very hillly so probably skewed my first impression.

As for the Highlander, the varying damage output is what i don't like. I prefer a maxed out armour Mech as I don't run with a scout, so by the time i detect enemies i am pretty close and some of those long range weapons (LRM and Gauss) don't do too well. So I want to check out the build with 2xAC20 with 3 MGs for some serious short range flank bursts.

If I don't like it, I am thinking about changing the setup with Gauss/AC45/PPC loadout and try out a 1xLight Scout with 2xAssault and 1xHeavy/Medium long range Lance.

The different Lance/weapon setup and flexibility is what keeps me interested in the game to be honest. Really fun.

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10 minutes ago, Caligula_K3 said:

Yessss. Paradox (of Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, and Stellaris fame) is coming out with an ancient Rome game soon. I am so, so excited, but also terrified at the amount of time it will suck up...

Ptolemaic Egypt will rise again!

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