Video Games: In the Grim Darkness of licensed Games.

[l2 0 5 5]

3 hours ago, Werthead said:

 

 

I was disappointed by Flashpoint. I think the missions are too easy for your end-of-game Assault lance (especially if you still have the LosTech still going strong), apart from the speed ones that require you to field a Medium or Light Lance. I thought that was going to be fun, but it ended up being a bit tedious.

I think Flashpoint works better on a full replay of the campaign with the flashpoints popping up as new mission options, but given that BattleTech is pushing it in terms of length anyway, I'm not sure making it significantly longer is a really good idea.

The Witcher 3 is comfortably the best CRPG released this century, so yes. You don't need to have played Witcher 1 or 2 (which is good, because they are both inferior to W3), although they help a little with context. The Witcher 3 is a sequel more to the books, but you don't really need to have read them either. The game does a good job of setting up context for everything.

The Witcher 3 has a genuinely open-world narrative, so the story shifts based on your decisions. The main story has a strong narrative drive to it, much, much stronger than say anything Bethesda has ever put out. You can ignore the main story and just do side-quests or optional activities (horse racing, monster hunting etc), but that's kind of ignoring the point of the game, which is the extremely well-written and acted main storyline and the fantastic (and seemingly infinite) side-quests. It should be noted that even the smallest side-quest in The Witcher 3 is many times longer and vastly better-written than a typical side-quest in, say, Skyrim.

In summary, The Witcher 3 is epic and well worth playing.

Agreed. I feel like that game has spoiled me for any game I've played after it. What I would do to play the game with no memory of how it plays out for the first time again...

And the DLC is brilliant, too. Heart of Stone was solid, but Blood & Wine was brilliant. Everything from the story, acting, and visuals was a pure masterpiece imo.

[briantw]

1 hour ago, l2 0 5 5 said:

Agreed. I feel like that game has spoiled me for any game I've played after it. What I would do to play the game with no memory of how it plays out for the first time again...

And the DLC is brilliant, too. Heart of Stone was solid, but Blood & Wine was brilliant. Everything from the story, acting, and visuals was a pure masterpiece imo.

Really the only thing I hate about Witcher 3 is that I'll never get to play it for the first time again.  

[kuenjato]

On 2/5/2019 at 11:40 AM, Mexal said:

 

I'm also going to look at Horizon Zero Dawn. I've been eyeing it for awhile now. I've just heard it can get quite repetitive.

Highly recommended, but please keep in mind that I just started playing video games after a 12 year hiatus, so that probably colors my opinion a great deal. I picked up a PS4 and several games during Black Friday (200 system and 15-20 dollar games), and decided to play HZD first just because I liked the way it looks. I've clocked in around 66 hours to complete the main storyline & the main quest for the DLC, and am only about 50% done with each. The game combined a lot of elements that I enjoyed a long time ago (rpg, adventure, stealth, strategy) and I felt the story was a nice take on the post-apocalyptic genre, with some careful detail woven in for the various cultures and underlying conflict & antagonist. It helps that the game is stunningly beautiful... I spent a lot of time just hunting machines and animals and enjoying the scenery. A good portion of it takes place in my native state / region, so that was a major factor in how involving it was. I'd recommend mostly tackling the main quest for your playthrough, as the side quests vary from good to just ok, and I think the story has more impact if you follow it directly through and do the side stuff later.

Lately I've been playing Nier Automata, and I can kind of understand the criticisms Zelda fans had of HZD, as Nier is quite restrictive in where you can go, what you can climb, etc. The combat is tons of fun and the story is intriguing so far. After it, I'll probably play God of War and then GTA V or Spiderman. I have Witcher 3, but as I've heard it's a major time-sink (100 to 200 hours, easily), I'm going to wait on that one until this fall.

 

[Werthead]

11 hours ago, kuenjato said:

Lately I've been playing Nier Automata, and I can kind of understand the criticisms Zelda fans had of HZD, as Nier is quite restrictive in where you can go, what you can climb, etc. The combat is tons of fun and the story is intriguing so far. After it, I'll probably play God of War and then GTA V or Spiderman. I have Witcher 3, but as I've heard it's a major time-sink (100 to 200 hours, easily), I'm going to wait on that one until this fall.

I completed The Witcher 3 in 88 hours including both DLC. I did dial down the combat to easy because I utterly loathed the combat in both W1 and W2, which probably helped keep the time down.

I have about the same logged in GTA5 (from singleplayer only), although GTA5 I definitely spent more time driving around gawping at the scenery and just chilling out.

[Mexal]

Thanks Wert. I'm going to give Witcher 3 a go when I finish RDR2.

[briantw]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

I completed The Witcher 3 in 88 hours including both DLC. I did dial down the combat to easy because I utterly loathed the combat in both W1 and W2, which probably helped keep the time down.

I have about the same logged in GTA5 (from singleplayer only), although GTA5 I definitely spent more time driving around gawping at the scenery and just chilling out.

It took me about 130 hours to complete Witcher 3 and the DLC but I also did a lot of the side stuff and fully upgraded almost all of the Witcher armor sets.  Technically I did upgrade every one of them but after the first several I got sick of grinding for resources (they get absurdly expensive later) and just used the console to give me the stuff I needed for the last few upgrades.  Wouldn't have bothered but I wanted to display them all in the house you get in the DLC.

I think I did every major side quest and monster hunt and also got basically every question mark on the Novigrad map.  Said fuck it on the Skellige map, though.  Too much work when those fucking harpies attack you every thirty seconds on your boat.

[briantw]

Finished up Spider-Man today.  What a great game.  It's got a couple of plot holes that don't really hold up all that well if you think too much about them, and the open world nature of the game made it seem as if the entire game's story took place over a couple of days, which feels logistically impossible, but it definitely felt ripped straight out of a Spider-Man comic.  

Main complaint is that they went full Ubisoft with the open world, packing it full of meaningless bullshit with no bearing on the plot.  There's really only one side quest that I even remember (the one where you confront Hammerhead).  The bulk of the other activities are just the same sequences repeated over and over again.  It's fine at first.  For example, I didn't mind taking pictures of landmarks, as that highlights the New York setting of the game while also providing some nods to other comics, like taking pics of things like Avengers Tower or OsCorp.  Similarly, finding Peter's old backpacks offered some fun nostalgia, as each backpack had an item from Spidey's past in it that he offers a few lines of internal monologue about.  I didn't even mind the first set of combat missions, which has you heading to a handful of Kingpin's construction sites where nefarious shit is going down and fighting off waves of enemies.  The problem is that the game later introduces several other factions and they all have their own set of these exact same missions, only less fun because you've already done half a dozen of them. 

The story is the best part.  It weaves a bunch of different narratives together and mostly does a good job with it.  I read a lot of complaints about mandatory stealth sequences where you play as MJ (or, a couple of times, Miles Morales), but I didn't really have an issue with them.  They're not really difficult at all, and even if you fail, the checkpoint system is very generous and thus you probably only have to replay about a minute at the most.  However, they do offer some nice story beats and/or foreshadowing for a potential sequel.  It also functions as an origin story for a couple of secondary characters who I imagine will play big roles in future games in this series.

The ending was really good.  It wrapped everything up in a satisfying manner while forcing a tough decision on Spider-Man and even had a couple of post-credits scenes to set up future events and potentially two of Spidey's most iconic villains.  

Gonna put it down for a week or so now and then pick up the DLC.  

On to RDR2 now.

But seriously, if you're a Spider-Man fan who owns a PS4...get this game.  It's great.  It's clear they very much ripped off the Arkham games, but that makes sense.  I think this game was better than any of the Arkham games.  It stuck the ending, something the Arkham games really struggled with, and also contained a cast of much more likable characters than those Batman games, where a huge problem is that the character you're playing as is a total asshole.  

[Red Tiger]

I have Resident Evil 2 and Metal Gear Solid V left. DMCV is coming closer and closer, with Sekiro soon afterwards. ,March is gonna be good to me.

[Mexal]

I started The Witcher 3 yesterday. This is going to take some getting used to after how slow RDR2 was, especially in movement and action.

[briantw]

4 minutes ago, Mexal said:

I started The Witcher 3 yesterday. This is going to take some getting used to after how slow RDR2 was, especially in movement and action.

Yeah your character can actually move at a reasonable pace in Witcher 3 and the physics system doesn't seem to exist solely to impede the player.

[Toth]

So I basically did something crazy yesterday: I got myself Need for Speed: Carbon. Despite having made massive advances with Most Wanted 2012, it is still an incredibly frustrating game, so I wanted to find out whether this is just me who sucks so badly or whether the changes to the game formula are just too absurd.

So started up Carbon, the true successor of Most Wanted that came out in 2006. And I must say that from the very first moment I felt right at home. The cars felt exactly as heavy and yet responsive as I remember they did, unlike Most Wanted 2012 where the only allowed way to steer is drifting (which makes evading sudden civilian vehicles popping up in front of you damn near impossible - the best you can hope is slamming sideways into them instead of full ahead). Carbon literally feels like the original Most Wanted in every way. Hell, even the police chatter is exactly the same.

But let's start with the story: So you are the same faceless mute from Most Wanted, just fled the city of Rockport after beating the Blacklist, with Sergeant Cross still on your heel. He actually wrecks your BMW M3 GTR one minute into the game because you can't have nice things. Bummer. Stranded in the city of Palmont you meet up with a bunch of old friends who all hate your guts because several years ago you fled the city with the prize money of a race that the police busted and got everyone else arrested. They still inexplicably give you a car and ask you help them win back the town from three rivaling street gangs by... well, beating them in car races!

Of course it's just an excuse plot full of clichés (and a surprising all-star casts full of people I recognize from Battlestar Galactica, Eureka and Stargate), but it serves its purpose well. Heck, Blackbox seems to capitalize on its In Medias Res storytelling from Most Wanted by making a Rashomon style perspective-flipping retelling of that faithful night when everyone got arrested the main focus of the story. That's actually surprisingly cool. Conquering the city one district at a time like in Saints Row feels neat and while the crew members who help you out during races seem a little unnecessary, their constant chatter and comments on your driving at least make you feel somewhat less alone on the track.

There is only one thing that bugs me even here as I just began. It's only the graphics, actually. I punched the details to max, but it feels underwhelming. Yes, I know, it's from 2006 and can't compare to the pretty if lifeless Most Wanted 2012 at all. But Most Wanted 2005 with its impressive light effects and constant orange bloom effect does look very good even today. Carbon doesn't have that because it takes place at night, so the really bad and stinted looking shadow effects are the most prominent, making the low polygon count on the cars ever more noticeable. There are also weird cartoonish lines that your car drags behind itself when it goes fast and look horribly out of place. Most Wanted 2005 with its blurry effects looked far better.

In comparison to Most Wanted 2012, my hatred for the latter now came back in full force because I notice just how much less frustrating Carbon drives. Not only is the steering in Most Wanted 2012 shit, I now also realize that the traffic in it is far more dense, so in combination with the shitty unresponsive steering the annoying constant crashes with their annoying unskippable crash cams are even more common than they already are. Carbon also doesn't really want you to drift during normal races, since you usually come immediately to a screeching halt and lose time. A hard lesson I learned after my muscle memory from Most Wanted 2012 made me mess up the first few sharp turns.

[Rhom]

15 hours ago, Red Tiger said:

I have Resident Evil 2 and Metal Gear Solid V left. DMCV is coming closer and closer, with Sekiro soon afterwards. ,March is gonna be good to me.

I loved the gameplay in MGSV.  I had Rebel Yell set as my chopper music (you can hear it playing faintly and getting louder as your chopper comes to evac you).  One day at work, I was sitting at my desk and felt my pulse start to quicken and started getting antsy and couldn’t figure it out... then realized Rebel Yell was on the radio playing faintly overhead.  

That said, the narrative was really disjointed and felt unconnected.  I also felt robbed of any true finale and was forced to read up on Kojima’s plans for DLC to even make a semblance of sense for some of the plot points.

[Jace, Extat]

7 hours ago, Toth said:

So I basically did something crazy yesterday: I got myself Need for Speed: Carbon. Despite having made massive advances with Most Wanted 2012, it is still an incredibly frustrating game, so I wanted to find out whether this is just me who sucks so badly or whether the changes to the game formula are just too absurd.

So started up Carbon, the true successor of Most Wanted that came out in 2006. And I must say that from the very first moment I felt right at home. The cars felt exactly as heavy and yet responsive as I remember they did, unlike Most Wanted 2012 where the only allowed way to steer is drifting (which makes evading sudden civilian vehicles popping up in front of you damn near impossible - the best you can hope is slamming sideways into them instead of full ahead). Carbon literally feels like the original Most Wanted in every way. Hell, even the police chatter is exactly the same.

But let's start with the story: So you are the same faceless mute from Most Wanted, just fled the city of Rockport after beating the Blacklist, with Sergeant Cross still on your heel. He actually wrecks your BMW M3 GTR one minute into the game because you can't have nice things. Bummer. Stranded in the city of Palmont you meet up with a bunch of old friends who all hate your guts because several years ago you fled the city with the prize money of a race that the police busted and got everyone else arrested. They still inexplicably give you a car and ask you help them win back the town from three rivaling street gangs by... well, beating them in car races!

Of course it's just an excuse plot full of clichés (and a surprising all-star casts full of people I recognize from Battlestar Galactica, Eureka and Stargate), but it serves its purpose well. Heck, Blackbox seems to capitalize on its In Medias Res storytelling from Most Wanted by making a Rashomon style perspective-flipping retelling of that faithful night when everyone got arrested the main focus of the story. That's actually surprisingly cool. Conquering the city one district at a time like in Saints Row feels neat and while the crew members who help you out during races seem a little unnecessary, their constant chatter and comments on your driving at least make you feel somewhat less alone on the track.

There is only one thing that bugs me even here as I just began. It's only the graphics, actually. I punched the details to max, but it feels underwhelming. Yes, I know, it's from 2006 and can't compare to the pretty if lifeless Most Wanted 2012 at all. But Most Wanted 2005 with its impressive light effects and constant orange bloom effect does look very good even today. Carbon doesn't have that because it takes place at night, so the really bad and stinted looking shadow effects are the most prominent, making the low polygon count on the cars ever more noticeable. There are also weird cartoonish lines that your car drags behind itself when it goes fast and look horribly out of place. Most Wanted 2005 with its blurry effects looked far better.

In comparison to Most Wanted 2012, my hatred for the latter now came back in full force because I notice just how much less frustrating Carbon drives. Not only is the steering in Most Wanted 2012 shit, I now also realize that the traffic in it is far more dense, so in combination with the shitty unresponsive steering the annoying constant crashes with their annoying unskippable crash cams are even more common than they already are. Carbon also doesn't really want you to drift during normal races, since you usually come immediately to a screeching halt and lose time. A hard lesson I learned after my muscle memory from Most Wanted 2012 made me mess up the first few sharp turns.

I also loved Carbon and recall being confused at multiple points in my life when seeing someone shit on it out of hand. 

It's obviously not as good as OG Most Wanted, but there's a lot of fun things going on as you described. Myself, I remember fondly (albeit vaguely) the drifting races where you had to rack up style points to win but would take large penalties for finishing more than a second or two after the fastest car to finish. I found those had a moderate challenge but an enormous satisfaction payoff.

For mine own Most Wanted 2012 story, I picked it up in '14 or '15 thinking it was just a remaster. There is absolutely no exaggeration when I say that I bought, played, then returned the game inside of the same hour.

[Toth]

14 hours ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

I also loved Carbon and recall being confused at multiple points in my life when seeing someone shit on it out of hand. 

I faintly remember that a games magazine I was reading at the time was also pretty disappointed in it. I agree, it seems rather unfair given how decent a game it is.

14 hours ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

It's obviously not as good as OG Most Wanted, but there's a lot of fun things going on as you described. Myself, I remember fondly (albeit vaguely) the drifting races where you had to rack up style points to win but would take large penalties for finishing more than a second or two after the fastest car to finish. I found those had a moderate challenge but an enormous satisfaction payoff. 

So far I had played only one drifting race. I remember drifting from Underground 2 to be ridiculously easy, so I was going in like a drunk idiot as well. Needed three tries until I got the hang of it (but then won decisively with a lead of 8.000 points). It seems they made it slightly harder (or I just suck more).

Right now I also notice that Carbon is a tad more stingy when it comes to money. I bought a second car to let the police heat rating of my Alfa go down a bit and chose the Mazda3 MPS because it it was dirt cheap. I haven't done any stylish visual tuning so far because I have to save for the next performance upgrades. Weirdly enough, the fact that I already unlocked the Lotus Elise in the shop despite not having beaten the first boss and that I remember it to be a mid-level car in Most Wanted, makes me feel like they are speeding up the path to supercars quite a bit. I somewhat miss the VW Golf though...

What also slightly bugs me is that the choice of music is utterly forgettable so far. I like the intention of widening the variety by having music styles attached to car classes (and since I don't have a Muscle Car yet, I don't know what songs they have), but so far I have been less than impressed. But this is just criticism in comparison to Most Wanted 2005, in which Carbon looks slightly less polished.

14 hours ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

For mine own Most Wanted 2012 story, I picked it up in '14 or '15 thinking it was just a remaster. There is absolutely no exaggeration when I say that I bought, played, then returned the game inside of the same hour.

Good for you. I actually got it for free in the Origin "on the house" thing that they did for a few years until EA remembered that they still are EA. Got me a couple of great games. So it's a good thing I haven't paid a dime for it.

Thing is, after a several hours of actually familiarizing yourself with the ridiculous drifting controls, it becomes a half-way decent game. But all of it still feels like a pointless chore since there is no goal beyond unlocking the 10 boss races. By now have finished 5 of them and they actually are the easiest part of the entire game if you take a ridiculous car like the Ariel Atom and then just floor it.

[Werthead]

On 2/10/2019 at 2:32 PM, briantw said:

Yeah your character can actually move at a reasonable pace in Witcher 3 and the physics system doesn't seem to exist solely to impede the player.

Not to mention the mystical teleporting horse (no idea if RDR2 does that as well), which on occasion is outright hilarious.

[briantw]

4 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Not to mention the mystical teleporting horse (no idea if RDR2 does that as well), which on occasion is outright hilarious.

If you get too far away from your horse in Red Dead the game tells you to fuck off and find him.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

6 minutes ago, briantw said:

If you get too far away from your horse in Red Dead the game tells you to fuck off and find him.

The only real downside I could find to RDR2 was having your horse die on you in the middle of no where. I felt like it took hours to walk back to town. After that, I followed Ari Gold's wise advice.

[briantw]

4 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

The only real downside I could find to RDR2 was having your horse die on you in the middle of no where. I felt like it took hours to walk back to town. After that, I followed Ari Gold's wise advice.

That early mission where you get drunk with Lenny pissed me off too because I woke up a mile away from anything and my horse was still back in town. 

Also, whoever did the UI for the game can fuck right off.  It's awful.  I didn't even realize it was possible to manually save for over an hour, as the save feature is inexplicably in the Story section of the pause menu.  No idea why games hide save functions more than one layer deep.  That shit should always be an option on the main pause menu if the game supports manual saves.

[Jace, Extat]

58 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

The only real downside I could find to RDR2 was having your horse die on you in the middle of no where. I felt like it took hours to walk back to town. After that, I followed Ari Gold's wise advice.

A Jeremy Pivven reference!!!

He may be a probably rapey asshole, but you're pretty great.

[Slurktan]

2 hours ago, briantw said:

That early mission where you get drunk with Lenny pissed me off too because I woke up a mile away from anything and my horse was still back in town. 

Also, whoever did the UI for the game can fuck right off.  It's awful.  I didn't even realize it was possible to manually save for over an hour, as the save feature is inexplicably in the Story section of the pause menu.  No idea why games hide save functions more than one layer deep.  That shit should always be an option on the main pause menu if the game supports manual saves.

Given that RDr1's save system (along with the GTA's) make you have to manually save only at certain locations this was a definite improvement.  Besides which unless you have other people playing your game too you should not need the save system, the auto save is perfectly functional even if you glitch on purpose to get through landscape.