Video Games: In the Grim Darkness of licensed Games.

[Slurktan]

47 minutes ago, Mexal said:

I'm into Chapter 3 of RDR2 and I have to say, while it's a very good, immersive game, the lack of a true driving force through the narrative is making it hard on me. This always seems the issue for me with these big open worlds. Having played Zelda: BOTW, God of War and The Last of Us before this game, the difference is quite noticeable. I'll keep going because I'm curious enough to see where it goes but at the same time, "getting enough money for the gang to find somewhere in the west to live" is kind of weak. I need more Pinkertons.

Like any good story it builds.  Wait till the end of Chapter 3 if you want the narrative to drive.

[Mexal]

8 minutes ago, Slurktan said:

Like any good story it builds.  Wait till the end of Chapter 3 if you want the narrative to drive.

Excellent news. 

[GallowKnight]

So I finished up Red Dead Redemption 2 a few days a go. Spoilers for the entire game below
 

Spoiler

 

It is a very, very good game. It has been a very long time since I have been so caught up and engaged in a video game. It is a lot of fun and a great world to play around in, with a mostly great story and some fantastic characters around it. I even ended up really enjoying the hunting aspect of it to my great surprise, even if a lot of it was motivated by the craftable outfits. 

How ever there a are some things I do feel the need to complain about. First of, as great as the world is the are aspects of the gameplay that feel less than great. First and foremost the shooting and cover system, which is average at best. Now this is not  uncommon thing or even unexpected thing for a Rockstar game, but that shouldn't be an excuse. With the time, effort and resources they have spent on this game, such an integral part of it should be better and at times it feels almost embarrassing that it isn't. Maybe Rockstar should spend less effort on shrinking horse balls and more time on the gunplay.

I also have a few issues with the story. Towards the end of the main story it feels like Arthurs story is becoming a bit too much about John Marston and not enough about Arthur himself. And with John getting the epilogue I think he maybe should have featured a bit less in Arthur's finale. And I'm not sure how well Micah works as the main villain. He's just too obviously evil and I spent the whole game just waiting for the inevitable betrayal to come. I think it would have been more interesting if Micah had really been die hard loyal to Dutch, just an incredibly toxic and volatile influence on him. I also think he should either have been killed off by Arthur in the finale or not have his confrontation with Arthur at all with him being saved for the epilogue, not both, as it is he just feels like he is overstaying his welcome too much.

But, it is a great game, and I almost immediately started up an new playthrough after I felt done with the first one, this time with the intention of growing a really epic beard. But while it is probably a better game than the first Red Dead Redemption in most aspects, I don't think I liked it quite as much as I liked the first one back in 2011.

 

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

On 12/28/2018 at 7:59 PM, A True Kaniggit said:

You ever play it before? If not, then you're in for a treat.

Negative. Haven't played any console games since around 2010 until a few weeks ago.

[Rhom]

2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Negative. Haven't played any console games since around 2010 until a few weeks ago.

Last of Us is probably my favorite video game of the last decade.

Part of that is probably where I am in life and the parental relationship between Joel and Ellie.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

22 hours ago, Slurktan said:

Like any good story it builds.  Wait till the end of Chapter 3 if you want the narrative to drive.

 

22 hours ago, Mexal said:

Excellent news. 

He’s right. The end of 3 and start of 4 is when it gets rolling. I’m at the start of 6. I’ll layoff with the updates so I don’t spoil anything for you.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

7 minutes ago, Rhom said:

Last of Us is probably my favorite video game of the last decade.

Part of that is probably where I am in life and the parental relationship between Joel and Ellie.

It certainly sounds like it’s my kind of game. I just wanted to start with RDR2 because of my love of Westworld.

[briantw]

1 hour ago, Soylent Brown said:

I bought Far Cry 5 in the Steam sale so I'm playing that at the moment. Astoundingly, they've managed to make pretty much every aspect of the game worse than the previous games, and the flying sections are genuinely some of the worst things I've ever played.

The story is boring and ridiculous, the music is hugely irritating, the choice of weapons is made less clear than ever before. Baddie lorry drivers can now shoot you through the back of their lorries as they're driving away, apparently, and now there's fucking fishing that you have to do too.

And some people might suggest that you don't have to do the fishing in the game, just like you don't have to do loads of animal murders this time, except you do, because you need the perk points from the fishing and the murdering to upgrade your stuff, so nothing's really changed, just become less clear.

Fucking dreadful.

I'd suggest everyone save their money and just play Far Cry 3 again.

My favorite part of Far Cry 5 is how super diverse the Christian redneck Montana cult is.

I also enjoyed how they made a game about a bunch of religious gun nuts in the US and somehow managed to completely avoid making any sort of political statement of any kind.

[Werthead]

2 hours ago, Soylent Brown said:

I bought Far Cry 5 in the Steam sale so I'm playing that at the moment. Astoundingly, they've managed to make pretty much every aspect of the game worse than the previous games, and the flying sections are genuinely some of the worst things I've ever played.

The story is boring and ridiculous, the music is hugely irritating, the choice of weapons is made less clear than ever before. Baddie lorry drivers can now shoot you through the back of their lorries as they're driving away, apparently, and now there's fucking fishing that you have to do too.

And some people might suggest that you don't have to do the fishing in the game, just like you don't have to do loads of animal murders this time, except you do, because you need the perk points from the fishing and the murdering to upgrade your stuff, so nothing's really changed, just become less clear.

Fucking dreadful.

 

I'd suggest everyone save their money and just play Far Cry 3 again.

It's worth playing Far Cry 5 to the end to really appreciate how terrible it is. The ending to Far Cry 5 is comfortably the worst ending to a video game in living memory (like, people will never complain about Mass Effect 3 or the original Fallout 3 ending ever again).

[Werthead]

The game is immensely improved (i.e. made much shorter) by using Cheeseburger (the diabetic murderbear) and Airplane Guy as your two companions.

[briantw]

16 minutes ago, Werthead said:

It's worth playing Far Cry 5 to the end to really appreciate how terrible it is. The ending to Far Cry 5 is comfortably the worst ending to a video game in living memory (like, people will never complain about Mass Effect 3 or the original Fallout 3 ending ever again).

I think the difference is that Mass Effect 3 is a story-based game where your decisions are supposed to have a major impact on how things play out.  That turned out to be a bunch of bullshit, and the ending itself was stupid, random, and didn't really make any sense.  It felt cheap, and not like the reward for soldiering through the trilogy that it should have been.

Far Cry 5 is a sandbox game where the story is mostly in the background.  You're there to fuck around and have fun.  The story is just there to give you an excuse to keep fucking around.  I've never even finished a Far Cry game, nor have I ever really had any desire to see the story through because Far Cry's stories never matter.

[Werthead]

2 minutes ago, briantw said:

I think the difference is that Mass Effect 3 is a story-based game where your decisions are supposed to have a major impact on how things play out.  That turned out to be a bunch of bullshit, and the ending itself was stupid, random, and didn't really make any sense.  It felt cheap, and not like the reward for soldiering through the trilogy that it should have been.

Far Cry 5 is a sandbox game where the story is mostly in the background.  You're there to fuck around and have fun.  The story is just there to give you an excuse to keep fucking around.  I've never even finished a Far Cry game, nor have I ever really had any desire to see the story through because Far Cry's stories never matter.

FC5 is different in the sense that it has new mechanics that force the story on you. In FC3 and 4 you can ignore the next story mission and just go off and do random shit and side missions for 40 hours (a la Bethesda). In FC5 you can't do that: doing x amount of damage (killing enemies, liberating bases etc) triggers the next story mission, which kicks off with your being kidnapped (even if you're in a helicopter surrounded by allies 2,000 feet in the air) and taken to the next enemy stronghold. This happens nine times through the course of the game.

Far Cry 5's story will force itself upon you whether you want it to or not, making it by far the most obnoxious game in the series.

[briantw]

4 minutes ago, Werthead said:

FC5 is different in the sense that it has new mechanics that force the story on you. In FC3 and 4 you can ignore the next story mission and just go off and do random shit and side missions for 40 hours (a la Bethesda). In FC5 you can't do that: doing x amount of damage (killing enemies, liberating bases etc) triggers the next story mission, which kicks off with your being kidnapped (even if you're in a helicopter surrounded by allies 2,000 feet in the air) and taken to the next enemy stronghold. This happens nine times through the course of the game.

Far Cry 5's story will force itself upon you whether you want it to or not, making it by far the most obnoxious game in the series.

I mean, I get that, but it's still only small portions of the game that force you into the story.  For the most part it's like any other Far Cry game.  It's just hard for me to get angry about a bad ending in a game where I never really cared about the story and played as a character who isn't even actually a character.  

I only find myself worked up over endings when I care enough about the story and characters that the ending fucking everything up pisses me off.  That has literally never been the case while playing Far Cry.

[Werthead]

3 minutes ago, Soylent Brown said:

Really, that keeps happening?

Obviously it's mega annoying when it happens as you're forced into playing stealth through the section whether you like it or not and then you have to spend a ton replacing all of your ammo (now that you don't seem to be able to buy individual weapon ammo), but from a story perspective it's even dumber-

So I'm a guy who's completely messed up a whole region, and killed the big baddie's mate, but he's just going to keep kidnapping me and not killing me, even though I keep escaping and murdering all his dudes? You'd think he'd learn his lesson.

Oh yeah, this becomes an ongoing and ever more tedious thing. It turns a bit into Austin Powers, "I can go and kill this guy right now! Just let me shoot him in the head before he/she escapes for the seventh time and blows up our compound and then launches an air strike on our base!"

Far Cry 5 did give us this gem though.

[Guy Kilmore]

So in RDR2 I've been hunting the legendary animals down.  Anyways, when hunting the bear from chapter 2.  I ended up having to knife it to death.  Which was pretty awesome.  Then, basking in the glory of my kill, I took a step back and fell off a cliff to my death.  

[A True Kaniggit]

1 hour ago, Guy Kilmore said:

So in RDR2 I've been hunting the legendary animals down.  Anyways, when hunting the bear from chapter 2.  I ended up having to knife it to death.  Which was pretty awesome.  Then, basking in the glory of my kill, I took a step back and fell off a cliff to my death.  

Shit. I used the Leonardo DiCaprio joke in the last thread.

[Inkdaub]

17 hours ago, Rhom said:

Last of Us is probably my favorite video game of the last decade.

Part of that is probably where I am in life and the parental relationship between Joel and Ellie.

I am also going to start Last of Us once I finish Horizon.  Those were the two games that convinced me to buy the PS4 in the first place. 

[Mexal]

7 hours ago, Inkdaub said:

I am also going to start Last of Us once I finish Horizon.  Those were the two games that convinced me to buy the PS4 in the first place. 

How is Horizon?

[l2 0 5 5]

8 hours ago, Inkdaub said:

I am also going to start Last of Us once I finish Horizon.  Those were the two games that convinced me to buy the PS4 in the first place. 

I agree with Rhom. You'll love it. I've re-played that game all the way through a good 8-10 times. Beat it on Grounded and Grounded Plus which is damn difficult at times, and if I feel like going back on hard mode and playing with more ammo I'll do that. Such a fantastic game all the way through. Story, acting, gameplay, music... it really has it all. Easily the most inspiring and moving game I've played in my adult life. Enjoy.

While on topic of TLOU, I'm hoping we'll get a release date soon for LoU2. There was no PSX this year and they had a panel there last year where they gave a status update on the game's progress. I think Druckmann said it was around 50-60% complete, and that was just over a year ago. Then we get the amazing gameplay trailer at E3. Recently he tweeted that they just finished wrapping one of the most "complicated and heart wrenching scenes" they've ever worked on. I'm betting on a 2019 release but the year just started today so that's still a long time to wait. I want this game badly. 

[Werthead]

Been playing Subnautica for the last few days. Not a huge fan of survival games, but this one's very good. It helps that it's somewhat focused and there's various things going on that keep you interested in the (minimalist) story but there's also great incentives to just go off and explore the various biomes and locations if you want. I spent about an hour just moseying around the Floating Island by itself which was good fun.

One complaint is that the loot and resources drops are a bit too RNG-dependent. About 12 hours into the game I still haven't built any vehicles simply because I've only found a couple of vehicle bay components and I can't find the third no matter what I do. So I'm still trotting around on foot (well, swimming) when it feels like everyone else has their own submarine by the same point in the game. OTOH, I did develop the radiation suit and Gravity Gun (cough) really early and had explored the Aurora wreck and the freaky Mountain Island long before most people at the same timeframe (from what I can gather), so swings and roundabouts.

Terrific atmosphere and music as well. Not the technically best game around - the amount of pop in is slightly ridiculous - but it was made by a very small team on a very low budget over two years or so, so I give them the benefit of the doubt on that one. I'm also regretting playing with food and drink requirements on: it was fun for the first ten hours or so, but dropping dead of starvation when I haven't eaten for just 50 minutes of real time is slightly ridiculous.