Video Games: Keanu Re3ves Is Breathtaking

[Werthead]

12 hours ago, Toth said:

AJfjsdnsdjdgr. I'm now so absurdly in a conflict with myself and my wallet. I am really in the mood of some building sim, potentially with survival aspects and have been eyeing "Surviving Mars" for quite some time. And now I see that its "First Colony edition" including the Space Race and Green Planet expansions is on sale on Humble (and GOG) for 22 bucks... that's... a really good price, but have you any idea how long ago it was that I have paid so much for a game? Grnjkfdvnvensvneev... Aaargh, I don't know whether I should or whether I should not...

Surviving Mars is okay, and a step up in complexity from the same developer's Tropico series, but it's rather unintuitive, as in it's often a bit of a struggle to do things that you'd think would be much easier to do (like expanding to a new location on the other side of the map is far, far more laborious than it ever should be). The game also has that slightly annoying thing of being large in scope (big colonies can have dozens of buildings doing wildly different things) but also very focused on micro-management, which can get quite frustrating.

I've heard the latest patches and Green Planet do improve it though (Space Race is apparently mostly pointless).

[Toth]

8 hours ago, Werthead said:

Surviving Mars is okay, and a step up in complexity from the same developer's Tropico series, but it's rather unintuitive, as in it's often a bit of a struggle to do things that you'd think would be much easier to do (like expanding to a new location on the other side of the map is far, far more laborious than it ever should be). The game also has that slightly annoying thing of being large in scope (big colonies can have dozens of buildings doing wildly different things) but also very focused on micro-management, which can get quite frustrating.

I've heard the latest patches and Green Planet do improve it though (Space Race is apparently mostly pointless).

Thanks for the heads-up. I love the Tropico series (even despite them releasing virtually the same game again and again), so a game with a similar approach to city-building is welcome to me.

So... yes, I actually went and bought it on GOG now. 22 bucks for Surviving Mars with Space Race and Green Planet as well as most of the smaller DLC was a pretty fair offer. Yesterday night I played through the tutorial and I haven't gotten very far as of yet. The terraforming stuff looks interesting and complicated, but it's taking enough time already to build the forward base with the drones.

First impression: It is fun and relaxing. Yes, the micromanagement is more than a bit ridiculous. My first start I ended up with water and concrete being far away from each other, so I build my base at the concrete field and had to build a forward base at the water source, only for me to get irritated at having to set up a trade route with my transport RC despite the drones technically having enough range to go back and forth between what essentially ended up just different parts of just one large base. I reloaded and took one of the preset starting points where the resources were actually neatly clustered for me. Unfortunately there I acted stupid again. I started out with two concrete fields and a water source to create deuterium for my rocket, but then decided that I shouldn't build my habitat right there next to a rare metal field, but moved to the next area where there were two large underground metal deposits and two more water sources and built a second base from the ground up just for the sake of sustaining my dome. Unfortunately that stretched my drones quite thin and everything came down to a crawl, especially when I looked at my low funds as I ordered more drones and high end resources for maintenance and walked back to my initial base and built a second dome to be able to sell some stuff.

Aside from my constant beginner's mistakes, once again, it is quite relaxing and has the same immersive style like Tropico, even the different radio channels and their commentators remind me a lot of it. My only small complaint is that among the DLC building skins there is no option to make a more 'realistic' base or turn these goggly-eyed Wall-E drones into proper Mars Rovers. I must admit, I find it a little ill-fitting that everything has this 50s retro future look when the playable factions are modern players like the EU, Russia, India, China, Japan, SpaceX etc. and don't include the Soviet Union despite some of the icons clearly referencing it. It seems as if the game couldn't decide whether to go full alternate history or keep it modern and instead got stuck somewhere in the middle.

[Rhom]

After being reminded on this forum... I just finished Uncharted: The Lost Legacy.  It was exactly what I needed.  Short.  Fast paced and fun.  

[Centrist Simon Steele]

On 6/13/2019 at 8:05 PM, The Anti-Targ said:

So this trans image from CP 2077 has got people talking: https://www.polygon.com/e3/2019/6/12/18662443/cyberpunk-2077-trans-advertisement-cd-projekt-red-e3-2019

My understanding of trans people is limited, but I try to empathise. From what I've gathered trans-women generally  would really not want to have a big penis shaped bulge in their outfits.

Is this CDPR being terribly, and tactlessly lacking in awareness? Or is this them trying to convey the notion that perhaps in a very enlightened world, 50 years hence, there will be a great deal of fluidity in body image and gender identity and that the female penis will be so normal as to not cause feelings of self-loathing among trans women?

I don't like to pre-judge, but the average person is pretty uninformed about trans self-image issues, so I tend to think the image is probably lacking in awareness, rather than being hyper-futuristically woke. 

I agree with Ran's response to this, but I am less skeptical than some of these game outlets who seem to be really in CDPR's face about those tweets. I think the idea with the image is that what seems to be a controversy for many people now (that trans can even exist) is replaced in the future by exploiting all gender in the same ways media has exploited women.

So CDPR seems to be trying to incorporate the cynicism of the cyberpunk world with modern issues. The thought is that people will let go of prejudices against transgender people, yet CDPR seems to point to the next problem: exploitation. That's just my read of it though. I think Rock Paper Shotgun are super anti-CDPR (and so is Kotaku). It's too bad because this seems to be one of the few companies that wants to please its customers and not follow in the money gouging practices of bigger companies.

[The Winged Shadow]

I think their anti-CDPR bias comes from that fact that CDPR have pretty poor record when it comes to how the company treats their employees (Witcher 3 crunches) and previous anti-LGBT incidents. Even though their games are pretty great and they are pretty pro-consumer.

[Werthead]

2 hours ago, Mr. Fancy Pants said:

I think Rock Paper Shotgun are super anti-CDPR (and so is Kotaku).

This is not true. Both sites have given CDPR games hugely positive reviews over the years and have given plenty of excellent coverage to CDPR's pro-consumer moves with regards to GoG, DRM etc.

It is disturbing to see how legitimate criticism of aspects of a company's behaviour are seen as some kind of "super bias". It's like you're either a frothing fanboy of the company or you completely hate them, with no gradients inbetween. Like most companies and most people, CDPR have some excellent and positive aspects, which should be praised, and occasionally they do shitty or thoughtless things, which should be criticised.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

This is not true. Both sites have given CDPR games hugely positive reviews over the years and have given plenty of excellent coverage to CDPR's pro-consumer moves with regards to GoG, DRM etc.

It is disturbing to see how legitimate criticism of aspects of a company's behaviour are seen as some kind of "super bias". It's like you're either a frothing fanboy of the company or you completely hate them, with no gradients inbetween. Like most companies and most people, CDPR have some excellent and positive aspects, which should be praised, and occasionally they do shitty or thoughtless things, which should be criticised.

It's more the non-stop harping on singular issues from these outlets than legitimate criticism. For Rock Paper, they always go back to the tweets (and those employees were fired), and CDPR know they screwed up, but Rock Paper has to keep running opinions on how this company is not on the up and up. Fine if that's their take, but when they routinely use that evidence to make a point about the problem of CDPR, it seems agenda-ish to me. For Kotaku, there is one writer there who writes up everything he can about the inhumane nature of CDPR's business practices. Both of these examples are inserted into non-related news items on these sites.

I don't care what the agenda is--but the past is the past. The positive reviews once earned are now replaced by strange instances of outrage. I mean, the Rock Paper article that tried to explain the issue of the transgender image in the background being a problem because no in game context exists to explain the image in the trailer...that's really grasping at straws to find something to be upset about. 

[The Anti-Targ]

2 hours ago, Mr. Fancy Pants said:

It's more the non-stop harping on singular issues from these outlets than legitimate criticism. For Rock Paper, they always go back to the tweets (and those employees were fired), and CDPR know they screwed up, but Rock Paper has to keep running opinions on how this company is not on the up and up. Fine if that's their take, but when they routinely use that evidence to make a point about the problem of CDPR, it seems agenda-ish to me. For Kotaku, there is one writer there who writes up everything he can about the inhumane nature of CDPR's business practices. Both of these examples are inserted into non-related news items on these sites.

I don't care what the agenda is--but the past is the past. The positive reviews once earned are now replaced by strange instances of outrage. I mean, the Rock Paper article that tried to explain the issue of the transgender image in the background being a problem because no in game context exists to explain the image in the trailer...that's really grasping at straws to find something to be upset about. 

Would it not be more like the past is the past for games with great reviews, but what endures is business practices, employment attitudes and HR policies that may endure? It's a good thing, generally speaking, for games media to be talking about the games business and the well-being of workers not just games.

[Werthead]

10 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Would it not be more like the past is the past for games with great reviews, but what endures is business practices, employment attitudes and HR policies that may endure? It's a good thing, generally speaking, for games media to be talking about the games business and the well-being of workers not just games.

Yeah, and that's something Kotaku mentioned: CDPR at one point were going to try to get the game out in November/December this year but it would have involved crunch from hell, so they decided to drop it back four months, which is a good thing.

[The Anti-Targ]

50 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Yeah, and that's something Kotaku mentioned: CDPR at one point were going to try to get the game out in November/December this year but it would have involved crunch from hell, so they decided to drop it back four months, which is a good thing.

Indeed. And one wonders if CDPR would have taken that decision if the gaming media hadn't given a whole lot of attention to crunch? If one publication did one article one time only the whole issue of crunch would have been swiftly ignored by everyone after creating a brief tut-tutting from a few quarters. With some issues, the reporting media needs to be like a dog with a bone until the issue is properly fixed.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

3 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Would it not be more like the past is the past for games with great reviews, but what endures is business practices, employment attitudes and HR policies that may endure? It's a good thing, generally speaking, for games media to be talking about the games business and the well-being of workers not just games.

I just think they're harping on it and won't let it go when CDPR has taken steps. I don't see this from many sites, to be clear, just the two I referenced. I mean, if Cyberpunk sucks then it ought to get bad reviews, and the Witcher 3 should have nothing to do with that. It just seems to me that these game writers like to get really angry about very murky issues. It doesn't matter. I suspect Cyberpunk will do great business. 

I'm just not comfortable with attacking one of the last few customer friendly game studios over fairly murky issues. If the company that made some overtly racist game was the last bastion of making single player games--and they gave out free DLC, etc., then I'd say I guess it's time to move on from single player. CDPR seems the least of the gaming world's problems right now.

[House Balstroko]

Well to be fair, CDPR are still a fairly untested developer. They've only really made three games, and of those only Witcher 3 received near universal praise. The first two were uneven titles that had some great things going for them. They deserve credit for the level of improvement seen between each entry in the numbered series, but I'm also partially wary.

I loved Witcher 3, but the game launched with tons of bugs and assorted issues. In fact, when Blood and wine came out, one of their patches completely messed with the games targeting systems, to the point that I was not able to lock onto enemies for the remainder of the game. My friend experienced the same issue.

When it comes to Cyberpunk, and I know this has been brought up to death, I feel like a 3rd person mode will go a long way, since customization is said to play a large role. I don't want to only see my character model during cut-scenes and driving sections.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

15 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Indeed. And one wonders if CDPR would have taken that decision if the gaming media hadn't given a whole lot of attention to crunch? If one publication did one article one time only the whole issue of crunch would have been swiftly ignored by everyone after creating a brief tut-tutting from a few quarters. With some issues, the reporting media needs to be like a dog with a bone until the issue is properly fixed.

I agree with this, but why is CDPR the only one we're hearing about. It's one company being targeted as opposed to a journalist saying, "You know, CDPR's crunch is fucked up, let's see who else is doing it too and build a report." These targeted pieces toward a single company create an image that this company is the only problem. If Kotaku were writing non-stop about this issue, but they continued to include/reveal bad practices from many companies, then that'd make sense. Right now, all they're doing is acting like a watchdog for a single company among many. 

I bet everyone has already read this, but if not, here is an interview with the artist of the transgender advertisement: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-06-12-a-conversation-with-the-artist-behind-that-cyberpunk-2077-poster

She seems to be coming at this from a perspective of women being objectified through corporate advertisement, and she sees this as an extension of that. I think it's not hamfisted at all, but an almost Verhoeven style of satire. And that should be okay. But I have to point out--I am a straight white man. I don't think it's probably fair for me to say much more on this issue. 

Thanks for hearing me out everyone. I'd be happy to continue the discussion, but I don't want to beat it into the ground.

How about the Final Fantasy VII remake though, huh? I'm stoked.

[Caligula_K3]

1 hour ago, Mr. Fancy Pants said:

I agree with this, but why is CDPR the only one we're hearing about. It's one company being targeted as opposed to a journalist saying, "You know, CDPR's crunch is fucked up, let's see who else is doing it too and build a report." These targeted pieces toward a single company create an image that this company is the only problem. If Kotaku were writing non-stop about this issue, but they continued to include/reveal bad practices from many companies, then that'd make sense. Right now, all they're doing is acting like a watchdog for a single company among many. 

I bet everyone has already read this, but if not, here is an interview with the artist of the transgender advertisement: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-06-12-a-conversation-with-the-artist-behind-that-cyberpunk-2077-poster

She seems to be coming at this from a perspective of women being objectified through corporate advertisement, and she sees this as an extension of that. I think it's not hamfisted at all, but an almost Verhoeven style of satire. And that should be okay. But I have to point out--I am a straight white man. I don't think it's probably fair for me to say much more on this issue. 

Thanks for hearing me out everyone. I'd be happy to continue the discussion, but I don't want to beat it into the ground.

How about the Final Fantasy VII remake though, huh? I'm stoked.

I don't see this at all? We've heard a lot about crunch culture recently in many video game companies; Kotaku had the recent article about Anthem which was partially about Bioware's use of crunch. Then there was the Rockstar expose which more than anything brought this issue to the forefront this past year. Riot's been in the news a lot recently for their terrible treatment of employees and rampant sexism and harassment.

CDPR's crunch culture is well documented and is allegedly one of the worst in the industries; their PR response to it a couple months ago didn't allay fears (something along the lines of "we would never ever force an employee to crunch - they're always welcome to go home while the rest of the team stays because they have good work ethic!"). They're not some poor victim if their terrible employment practices are pointed out, even if they make good games.

As for this recent issue relating to transgender depiction, I think we'll have to wait and see depending on how it fits into the game (though I'm also a straight white man, so that's also not my place to judge). But it's easy to see why CDPR doesn't have a lot of good will here; the Witcher games, especially the first two, were pretty bad in their treatment of gender issues, especially compared to other RPG makers, like Bioware.

[Fez]

13 hours ago, House Balstroko said:

Well to be fair, CDPR are still a fairly untested developer. They've only really made three games, and of those only Witcher 3 received near universal praise. The first two were uneven titles that had some great things going for them. They deserve credit for the level of improvement seen between each entry in the numbered series, but I'm also partially wary.

I loved Witcher 3, but the game launched with tons of bugs and assorted issues. In fact, when Blood and wine came out, one of their patches completely messed with the games targeting systems, to the point that I was not able to lock onto enemies for the remainder of the game. My friend experienced the same issue.

When it comes to Cyberpunk, and I know this has been brought up to death, I feel like a 3rd person mode will go a long way, since customization is said to play a large role. I don't want to only see my character model during cut-scenes and driving sections.

It's a bit smaller a game, but don't forget about Thronebreaker, which was their standalone single-player Gwent game. It apparently tanked, since for a while it was a GOG exclusive, but it really good. Most importantly, the writing was great, which at least shows that Witcher 3 wasn't a fluke. 

Though, granted, its set in the same world as Witcher 3 and I don't know who worked on it, it might've been the Witcher 3 writers before they left the studio.

[Ran]

14 minutes ago, Fez said:

Though, granted, its set in the same world as Witcher 3 and I don't know who worked on it, it might've been the Witcher 3 writers before they left the studio.

Jakub Szamalek is principal writer on Thronebreaker, and was one of the senior writing team on The Witcher 3. I know this because he was at the Celsius 232 convention in Spain last year as a guest and talked about it. (He was asked about Cyberpunk 2077 and said he wasn't working on that one, by the by.)

[Gorn]

Cyberpunk 2077 was the best-selling game on Steam last week. Yes, you read that correctly. No, you haven't accidentally time-travelled to 2020. John Walker had a hilarious reaction to it on RPS

Much as I look forward to this game, I will never understand people who do this.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

1 hour ago, Gorn said:

Cyberpunk 2077 was the best-selling game on Steam last week. Yes, you read that correctly. No, you haven't accidentally time-travelled to 2020. John Walker had a hilarious reaction to it on RPS

Much as I look forward to this game, I will never understand people who do this.

I do it. I had the money right now to buy it, and I know I want it, and I know next March/April is going to be a busy month for awesome games. I'm on a budget, so to me, I'm just planning ahead.

[Jace, Extat]

1 hour ago, Gorn said:

Cyberpunk 2077 was the best-selling game on Steam last week. Yes, you read that correctly. No, you haven't accidentally time-travelled to 2020. John Walker had a hilarious reaction to it on RPS

Much as I look forward to this game, I will never understand people who do this.

Folks get hyped. CDPR exists in a funky moment of time where they are being (rightly) showered with praise for being consumer friendly and non-manipulative with advertising. But then that Jason Shire article came out and nerds care about workplace conditions now. Nevermind that Wal-Mart employees get exploited, pencil pushers get exploited, most workers get exploited... it's only a problem when dissatisfaction with the production apparatus hits a level conducive to the propagation of increasingly hostile responses.

[Fez]

13 minutes ago, Mr. Fancy Pants said:

I do it. I had the money right now to buy it, and I know I want it, and I know next March/April is going to be a busy month for awesome games. I'm on a budget, so to me, I'm just planning ahead.

Why not take that $60 and open a free interest-bearing savings account with any of the FDIC-insured online banks? Your money is totally safe, in a place separate from your regular funds, and in one year you can withdraw your money to buy a copy of the game and have an extra $3 you otherwise wouldn't have. Which you can use to buy a two-litter of something to drink as you start playing.