Videogames: "No E3 for you!" edition.

[Toth]

2 hours ago, Proudfeet said:

Steam's having a Bandai Namco sale right now and Project Cars 2 is 85% off if you're interested. I'm not into realistic racing games unfortunately. Wish they had something more like Mario Kart or Wipeout.

I already got PCars 2 from the same Humble Bundle I got PCars 1 and Assetto Corsa from, so I'm set in terms of racing sims. And honestly, I'm not really into them either, that was just a short-lived phase at the beginning of the Corona lockdown where I started watching the virtual Formula 1 and Formula E races.

2 hours ago, Proudfeet said:

I'm thinking of getting either Soul Calibur or Tekken. Any suggestions?

Umineko Golden Fantasia!

[Kalbear]

Soul Calibur will always hold a dear place in my heart. That it also uses real katas and other forms of real weapon fighting makes it something between a fighting game and actual beauty. Tekken...is not that. It's a fun fighting game, but it's not beautiful in the same way.

[Rhom]

3 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Soul Calibur will always hold a dear place in my heart. That it also uses real katas and other forms of real weapon fighting makes it something between a fighting game and actual beauty. Tekken...is not that. It's a fun fighting game, but it's not beautiful in the same way.

You got something against a game having a giant fighting bear in the roster?!!?

[The Anti-Targ]

On 6/20/2020 at 1:23 PM, Bonnot OG said:

 

I got my copy early thanks to a friend and his job ha.

 

So critics are praising it. Gamers, well, they're whining and calling it trash and are review bombing it. 

It's not a perfect by any means IMO. It looks great, it's acted great, and for the most part it hits upon what it's trying to do and say. I just think it fumbles a bit at times with getting to where it wants to eventually go. 

I played the last quarter of it again to see if the ending hit me this time given how drained I was when I first got through it.

It did hit a bit different this time. A second time a round I had a chance to kind a of think about everything without the fatigue from grinding through a really dark and bleak atmosphere that doesn't feel like there is hope at the end of the tunnel unlike the first game, that had some. Couple that with about 10 more hours of gameplay in a really bleak and depressive atmosphere, yea. It wore me down. 

 I cant go deeper into a mini review of my issues with it do to spoilers and how some people haven't played it let alone are near the end or finished. 

I'll just say, I have no issue with the end, but the lead up to the end was a bit of a mess execution wise for me. I like some of the themes they were touching upon. The short sightedness of characters enraged me, but it's a realistic thing that people have an issue with being and something that can piss people off, and I think it's apart of the themes it was touching upon in it's message. 

Just a heads up, if anyone is trans, they do dead name a character and talk about abuse they go through.
 

It's funny that review bombing on Metacritic is getting any sort of attention. Really, if you want at least a somewhat believable review impression from gamers you need only go onto PSN and look at the TLOU main page and see how many stars it has an how many people have rated it. You can't enter a rating unless your account has a record of the game being purchased. Last time I looked there were 4000 user ratings and 4.5 stars. That equates to 9/10 from users vs 95 Metascore. Seems to correlate reasonably well.

And for those who don't have access to PSN...why do they even care? I've never cared one bit about user ratings for games on consoles I don't own. Well, not never. I've taken momentary interest where user ratings differ to critic scores in the reverse of what's happening with TLOU 2, ie. user scores significantly better than review scores.

[The Drunkard]

I was a bit disappointed in TLOU2 by the end of it. Gameplay was great but I think they fumbled the story, which I was initially on board with even after the opening events. 

1. The Joel-Ellie relationship is the only seriously compelling one and this had nothing similar to that, just so many side characters that I mostly didn't give a shit about and that died so perfunctorily they didn't seem to matter.

2. The pacing was bad after the opening chapters. Particularly when it came to Abby, whose section of the game I was slogging through just to return to Ellie's story. I think giving her rather than Ellie the craziest setpieces (like the super-bloater thing and the war at the end) was a cheat way to get people invested. 

3. Speaking of Abby, she didn't need half the game dedicated to her. You learn almost everything you need to in that initial flashback with her father the doctor. David from TLOU was a better counterpart to Joel than Abby was to Ellie. 

4. It was so relentlessly bleak that I was numb to it by the end. TLOU managed to juggle hope and despair better.

I don't know if I want any more games in this series now.

[The Anti-Targ]

1 hour ago, The Drunkard said:

I was a bit disappointed in TLOU2 by the end of it. Gameplay was great but I think they fumbled the story, which I was initially on board with even after the opening events. 

 

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1. The Joel-Ellie relationship is the only seriously compelling one and this had nothing similar to that, just so many side characters that I mostly didn't give a shit about and that died so perfunctorily they didn't seem to matter.

2. The pacing was bad after the opening chapters. Particularly when it came to Abby, whose section of the game I was slogging through just to return to Ellie's story. I think giving her rather than Ellie the craziest setpieces (like the super-bloater thing and the war at the end) was a cheat way to get people invested. 

3. Speaking of Abby, she didn't need half the game dedicated to her. You learn almost everything you need to in that initial flashback with her father the doctor. David from TLOU was a better counterpart to Joel than Abby was to Ellie. 

4. It was so relentlessly bleak that I was numb to it by the end. TLOU managed to juggle hope and despair better.

I don't know if I want any more games in this series now.

 

Without revealing spoilers (because my copy of the game hasn't arrived yet) can you give some sense for why the story went awry? I get a feeling (based on nothing at all) that it could be like a bit of a Hobbit Movie situation, where with that Peter Jackson kind of went off the reservation with the direction he took the movies and it seems like no one was brave enough to tell him some of his ideas were not going to work. End result being very well made cinematic mediocrity. Or is it more just a matter of taste? The story didn't work for you, but you can see other's being very happy with where it ended up?

Spoiler

I did get spoiled with the "there is a significant death early" and I'm 99% certai I know who it is. But really I don't know why people would have been mad at that. The first game started with a gut wrenching death, which was a huge factor on the un-told life Joel lead in the next 20 years, and also a massive part of the remainder of the game. Why wouldn't that also be part of the theme of this game and a connecting thread to the first?

 

[The Drunkard]

1 hour ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Without revealing spoilers (because my copy of the game hasn't arrived yet) can you give some sense for why the story went awry? I get a feeling (based on nothing at all) that it could be like a bit of a Hobbit Movie situation, where with that Peter Jackson kind of went off the reservation with the direction he took the movies and it seems like no one was brave enough to tell him some of his ideas were not going to work. End result being very well made cinematic mediocrity. Or is it more just a matter of taste? The story didn't work for you, but you can see other's being very happy with where it ended up?

  Hide contents

I did get spoiled with the "there is a significant death early" and I'm 99% certai I know who it is. But really I don't know why people would have been mad at that. The first game started with a gut wrenching death, which was a huge factor on the un-told life Joel lead in the next 20 years, and also a massive part of the remainder of the game. Why wouldn't that also be part of the theme of this game and a connecting thread to the first?

 

Sure. My main issues are:

1. Less time than TLOU was spent on the relationship between Ellie & Joel in favour of new side characters who weren't as compelling. I think the Ellie & Joel parts were really good and a great progression from the events of the first game, but I wasn't invested in what happened to the newcomers. 

2. The pacing is nowhere near as tight as TLOU and most of the game feels like Pittsburgh. 

3. Two very big narrative decisions that ultimately I didn't appreciate. I thought the first had potential but the second I think was just a plain mistake.

I've read a lot of comments from people who had no problems with it so it's probably a taste thing. Overall I think they missed the mark on what made the first game so good, and that it could have used some major editting. 

[Nictarion]

I liked TLoU2 for the most part.

Although I got pretty antsy at times while playing as Abby because I just wanted to get back to Ellie. But they did accomplish the nearly impossible task of making me turn sympathetic towards Abby. By the end I was glad I didn’t have to kill her.

Also, I’m glad Tommy survived. That was a nice surprise.

[The Anti-Targ]

7 hours ago, The Drunkard said:

Sure. My main issues are:

1. Less time than TLOU was spent on the relationship between Ellie & Joel in favour of new side characters who weren't as compelling. I think the Ellie & Joel parts were really good and a great progression from the events of the first game, but I wasn't invested in what happened to the newcomers. 

2. The pacing is nowhere near as tight as TLOU and most of the game feels like Pittsburgh. 

3. Two very big narrative decisions that ultimately I didn't appreciate. I thought the first had potential but the second I think was just a plain mistake.

I've read a lot of comments from people who had no problems with it so it's probably a taste thing. Overall I think they missed the mark on what made the first game so good, and that it could have used some major editting. 

Thanks, interesting non-spoilery insight. It makes me wary about the flaws of the game, but not reticent to play it, and interested to see if I respond to these things in the same way.

It is curious that they decided to make a much longer game than the first, when I think post people would say the sweet spot for most non-RPG action games is 12-20 hrs. I'm not anti a long game as such, but if there is any hint of filler to pad things out I will be a bit miffed.

[Caligula_K3]

Games I've played in the last few months:

Animal Crossing. A lot of Animal Crossing. I'm probably reaching my limit now, but wow, this game was surprisingly addictive and fun and relaxing - it was my first one.

Middle Earth: Shadow of War. I couldn't get into it. I really enjoyed Shadow of Mordor and the Nemesis System, and I still think that part of the game is excellent, but the storytelling was just really horrible and adolescent (sexy Shelob, really?), and it felt like the maps were too packed with Orcs; I was running into a new rival every five seconds, which means I never formed those kinds of personal relationships with individual orcs that made Shadow of Mordor so fun.

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag. This was a replay, and main quest tailing missions aside, it was just as fun as I remembered. They completely nailed the ship combat in this game, and created a world that's fun to explore for its own sake. And the main plot itself actually isn't bad, which most Assassin's Creed games I've played can't say.

Now I'm playing The Outer Worlds, the new Obsidian game. I just finished up the opening planet quests and I'm enjoying it a lot so far. It's basically a less open world Fallout New Vegas; it's not a masterpiece, maybe, but it does what it's trying to do very well, and the world is intriguing. Plus there's something to be said for playing an RPG that isn't a massive open world 500 hour extravaganza.

I also just picked up the other space "Outer W" game on Steam, The Outer Wilds. I hear great things about that too and I'm excited to try it.

[Fez]

Almost 40 hours into Persona 4 Golden now; it's pretty much the only game I've played since I got it. That's a hell of a JRPG. I've no idea what I'm doing with the fusions, but so far I've managed to beat each dungeon the first day it opens (which I've been told you want to do), so all's well enough I guess. Up to mid-September.

[Inigima]

On 6/21/2020 at 9:33 AM, Proudfeet said:

I'm thinking of getting either Soul Calibur or Tekken. Any suggestions?

Both are respected series, both are good entries in their series. Tekken is probably the more hardcore competitive one. I personally find Soul Calibur more enjoyable as a very casual fighting game person; in Tekken I feel like I have to learn individual characters to have any sense of competence, whereas Soul Calibur tends to produce broadly similar results from the same button sequences across characters, so it's easier for me to play a bunch of different characters without getting my ass kicked as easily. 

[Mexal]

11 hours ago, The Drunkard said:

Sure. My main issues are:

1. Less time than TLOU was spent on the relationship between Ellie & Joel in favour of new side characters who weren't as compelling. I think the Ellie & Joel parts were really good and a great progression from the events of the first game, but I wasn't invested in what happened to the newcomers. 

2. The pacing is nowhere near as tight as TLOU and most of the game feels like Pittsburgh. 

3. Two very big narrative decisions that ultimately I didn't appreciate. I thought the first had potential but the second I think was just a plain mistake.

I've read a lot of comments from people who had no problems with it so it's probably a taste thing. Overall I think they missed the mark on what made the first game so good, and that it could have used some major editting. 

Thanks for this. I'm only ~4 hours into the game so don't have anything to add to this but was curious why some people weren't as much a fan. Good stuff.

[Kalbear]

16 hours ago, Rhom said:

You got something against a game having a giant fighting bear in the roster?!!?

IT IS NOT FAIR TO USE MY IMAGE OR LIKENESS WITHOUT COMPENSATION

[Jace, Extat]

Regarding The Last of Us 2. I had to work unexpectedly this weekend >_< so I haven't finished. Here's my rapid fire in-progress spoiler free thoughts:

 It's not as good as the first one. Just accept that. Its kinda like Alien 3. They tried to do too much, or maybe they changed script 9 times during production. Ultimately it just doesn't come together. You do not want to question the judgement of your protagonists more than once or twice as a character growth moment. Entire sections of the game should not feel like pointless indulgences in naivete. 

Not to mention how sloppily characters come in and out of the narrative. I kept feeling like I took the narrative path David Cage gave up on 3/4 of the way through, with characters just showing up and saying "I'm here!" It's pretty bad. 

All that said. The game is okay. Soft okay. Not unlike Alien 3. It's janky, the plot desperately needs a rewrite. The overall idea of the story is fine, but they waffle on tone. Go out of their way to present scenes in a certain sequence but it doesn't work because of previous narrative decisions... It's a fucking mess. 

Gameplay is a more evolved version of the first game. It's pretty fun.

In a day and age when games are released as slot machines or utterly devoid of playable material, this is a disappointment. It's not a travesty. So far I'd give it a C. And that's certainly a fall from the A- of the original. I don't regret buying or playing it though, just wish it could be better.

[Ran]

Interesting streaming news. Microsoft has given up with its Mixer streaming service, and is transitioning all current partners to ... Facebook Gaming, as they've partnered with Facebook for their XCloud service as well.

Well, almost all current partners. Two of the biggest signups they had, Ninja and Shroud, have apparently gone free agent after Facebook supposedly offered to double their contracts. But by going free agent, this allegedly means that Microsoft had to buy out the remainders of their contracts as they had been fully guranteed. There's claims that Shroud's contract was worth $10 million(!) and Ninja's $30 million(!!!). 

Almost certainly these guys are going back to Twitch, but maybe they'll give Youtube a try.

[Pecan]

Lots of criticism out there about TLOU2. I just finished the game this morning at about 7 am and I'm still organizing my thoughts. But one spoiler-free comment I can make is that the enemy AI is freaking amazing. Other studios should take a gander at what Naughty Dog did here. In particular, I hope fellow Sony studios Guerrilla Games and Sony Bend take note for their next installments of Horizon and Days Gone, respectively. Those were both incredible games in their own right, but the human on human combat were weak aspects in both. 

[Werthead]

20 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Without revealing spoilers (because my copy of the game hasn't arrived yet) can you give some sense for why the story went awry? I get a feeling (based on nothing at all) that it could be like a bit of a Hobbit Movie situation, where with that Peter Jackson kind of went off the reservation with the direction he took the movies and it seems like no one was brave enough to tell him some of his ideas were not going to work. End result being very well made cinematic mediocrity. Or is it more just a matter of taste? The story didn't work for you, but you can see other's being very happy with where it ended up?

That's a bit harsh to The Hobbit, where the majority of the problems were caused by MGM and Warner Brothers making some really moronic decisions during development. That's not to say that Jackson wasn't to blame for some things (like the 48 fps decision, which meant they couldn't use miniatures and also doubled the CGI budget and rendering time, which somehow no-one had thought of during development, so they ended up cutting a lot of corners which is why the films have breathtaking, amazing CGI one second and something from a PS3 game the next), but the biggest one - the dictate they have three three-hour movies - came from on high and was something Jackson fought quite hard until he was forced to implement it.

Quote

It is curious that they decided to make a much longer game than the first, when I think post people would say the sweet spot for most non-RPG action games is 12-20 hrs. I'm not anti a long game as such, but if there is any hint of filler to pad things out I will be a bit miffed.

There seems to have been a big shift in the market in the last few years where a lot of gamers are now hugely unsatisfied with games - particularly AAA games - which release at full price with much less than 100 hours of content, and certainly less than 50 hours. The financial under-performance of a whole slew of Bethesda games, from the last couple of Castle Wolfensteins via Dishonored 2 to Prey, was blamed on them being under that threshold (although both were 20-30 hour games, which is absolutely fine by my count), and even The Outer Worlds got heavily criticised by a small number of gamers for being ~30 hours (see below).

The result has been a massive ton of games being inflated beyond their natural limit to make them "big enough" to satisfy this new demand for huge games. It's not new, it started a few years back with Dragon Age: Inquisition (which was so bloated it became almost repugnant to play) and then become particularly obnoxious with Alien Isolation, which at 8 or 10 hours would have been one of the best video games ever made, but at 20+ hours was so overlong that it not only outstayed its welcome but threw up over the couch and then burned the house down on its way out. I wouldn't mind so much, but it didn't work, the game still sold poorly and the sequel got rejigged as a mobile game at another studio.

If your game is under that threshold it better not be full price, which seems to be the reasoning behind games like Star Wars: Squadrons and XCOM: Chimera Squad coming out at a cheaper price point.

That said, there are some games in the indie/mid-tier point coming out which are making good use of being longer games, like BattleTech (which at ~50 hours has moments where it teeters on being overlong but pulls it back), Two Point Hospital and Desperados III (which reportedly clocks in at 40 hours and is a slightly lower price point than standard as well).

Quote

Now I'm playing The Outer Worlds, the new Obsidian game. I just finished up the opening planet quests and I'm enjoying it a lot so far. It's basically a less open world Fallout New Vegas; it's not a masterpiece, maybe, but it does what it's trying to do very well, and the world is intriguing. Plus there's something to be said for playing an RPG that isn't a massive open world 500 hour extravaganza.

The Outer Worlds is excellent. I'm quite annoyed that there seems to be a small number of angry gamers who decided it was "too short" and have since gone around screaming blue murder about it continuously. It's a 30 hour game, maybe closer to 50 if you scour every map for secrets and all of the loot, which is perfectly fine. But there seem to be a few people who are angry it's not the length of a Fallout game (whilst ignoring the fact it had maybe a fifth or the sixth of the budget of Fallout 4, and certainly punched way above its weight in that category of at least looking a lot better than FO4 and having a vastly more reactive storyline and much better characters).

[The Anti-Targ]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

That's a bit harsh to The Hobbit, where the majority of the problems were caused by MGM and Warner Brothers making some really moronic decisions during development. That's not to say that Jackson wasn't to blame for some things (like the 48 fps decision, which meant they couldn't use miniatures and also doubled the CGI budget and rendering time, which somehow no-one had thought of during development, so they ended up cutting a lot of corners which is why the films have breathtaking, amazing CGI one second and something from a PS3 game the next), but the biggest one - the dictate they have three three-hour movies - came from on high and was something Jackson fought quite hard until he was forced to implement it.

 

Maybe Jackson felt he needed to try to make a silk purse out of the sows ear that WB was demanding he use, because if he didn't do it WB would have taken their toys home and made the movie somewhere else, by someone else. At the end of the day I am not convinced Jackson's sacrifice of his artistic integrity was worth it. So he made bad compromises so that he could maintain control over the final product, perhaps partly because he felt some noble obligation to the material, but I think he was also driven by his own ego thinking that only he can do The Hobbit the right way (which he failed to do). He forced the govt to bend over to WB and bust the actor unions (which as a right wing govt it was more than happy to do) and to hand over an even bigger pile of govt cash to WB than the already generous film production inducements that were put on place to get LOTR filmed here. Jackson should have told WB to eff off and if they want to adapt the Hobbit without him in another country they should more power to them.

I was not aware that WB was putting the acid on jackson to make a trilogy. At the time all the PR made it seem like Jackson's own bright idea to make 3 films. So, assuming what you say is true, WB forced Jackson to look like a total chump having to try to justify turning a 300 page children's book in a 9 hour movie trilogy and making it seem like it was his idea. My memory may be faulty, but I seem to remember Jackson explicitly saying in an interview he went to WB to try to convince them that the project needed to be a 3 movie product not a 2 movie product. If it was WB demanding it and my memory is not faulty Jackson straight up lied to the media and the public.

[Jace, Extat]

43 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Maybe Jackson felt he needed to try to make a silk purse out of the sows ear that WB was demanding he use, because if he didn't do it WB would have taken their toys home and made the movie somewhere else, by someone else. At the end of the day I am not convinced Jackson's sacrifice of his artistic integrity was worth it. So he made bad compromises so that he could maintain control over the final product, perhaps partly because he felt some noble obligation to the material, but I think he was also driven by his own ego thinking that only he can do The Hobbit the right way (which he failed to do). He forced the govt to bend over to WB and bust the actor unions (which as a right wing govt it was more than happy to do) and to hand over an even bigger pile of govt cash to WB than the already generous film production inducements that were put on place to get LOTR filmed here. Jackson should have told WB to eff off and if they want to adapt the Hobbit without him in another country they should more power to them.

I was not aware that WB was putting the acid on jackson to make a trilogy. At the time all the PR made it seem like Jackson's own bright idea to make 3 films. So, assuming what you say is true, WB forced Jackson to look like a total chump having to try to justify turning a 300 page children's book in a 9 hour movie trilogy and making it seem like it was his idea. My memory may be faulty, but I seem to remember Jackson explicitly saying in an interview he went to WB to try to convince them that the project needed to be a 3 movie product not a 2 movie product. If it was WB demanding it and my memory is not faulty Jackson straight up lied to the media and the public.

People lie. Especially when selling a product.