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Video Games - Sequels of Dread and Anticipation


Toth

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I remember the old Final Fantasy games used to have a note suggesting you save twice in case something went wrong. So I always saved in the same save slot twice. It wasn't until I was in my late twenties that I realized they meant save in two different slots in case you saved yourself into a corner. 

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I'm more happy about autoaim than autosave. There is no way I could have beaten either RDR2 or GTA5 without them. I played a lot of GoldenEye and Halp as a kid, but I don't recall those games making you shoot 25 people in under a minute with no protection. 

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1 hour ago, Werthead said:

San Andreas is where it became a much bigger problem, especially those bits of the game where you are doing jobs way out in the sticks and getting to a safehouse can be a fairly arduous journey. Thank fuck for IV and its autosave-right-after-the-mission-starts.

The travel time got real when you went from driving sports cars to dirtbikes. Forgot how big that game got after 3. Was a serious trek from the sticks to the city. Gave you plenty of time to listen to the radio stations that were always fun. Gained a nice appreciation for NWA as a group and its individual members due to those long drives. 

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50 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I'm more happy about autoaim than autosave. There is no way I could have beaten either RDR2 or GTA5 without them. I played a lot of GoldenEye and Halp as a kid, but I don't recall those games making you shoot 25 people in under a minute with no protection. 

The shooting in those games is designed for a controller, so with a mouse they become almost absurdly rote. I'm experiencing this right now in the GTA4 replay with the game clearly expecting it to be a major challenge to shoot your way out past 8-10 SWAT guys and instead with a mouse you can headshot your way past them with trivial ease. The non-existent AI doesn't help, of course.

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3 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

 

As someone re-playing Skyrim right now this video speaks to me on a deep level. Especially since I spent about an hour last night taking on a vampire squad way above my level try after try, quicksave after quicksave...

 

 

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5 hours ago, Werthead said:

The shooting in those games is designed for a controller, so with a mouse they become almost absurdly rote. I'm experiencing this right now in the GTA4 replay with the game clearly expecting it to be a major challenge to shoot your way out past 8-10 SWAT guys and instead with a mouse you can headshot your way past them with trivial ease. The non-existent AI doesn't help, of course.

I have to believe the snipping missions are so much easier with a mouse and keyboard. 

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Picked up Loop Hero.  It's like Slay the Spire and Darkest Dungeon had a baby and it was as ugly as Undertale.

I love it.  It's the perfect game to stream to my laptop while I'm watching TV, because the game is largely just looking at numbers and deciding which ones look better to you while it plays itself.  And that's honestly kind of refreshing for someone who does a lot of his gaming drunk and/or high.  

The game also has a lot of depth hidden beneath the surface.  It seems so simple when you're on your first few runs, but as you open up new classes and some critical new cards (you choose your deck before each run), some really varying strategies start to form.  You're still at the mercy of the game's RNG, as is the case with basically every game of this type, but your lack of control over your character's actions help mitigate this somewhat.  Your character moves in a perpetual loop and attacks whichever enemy they choose to.  All you can do is set up the map in an intelligent manner and give them the best combination of gear possible to succeed.

Great retro music too.  The tunes stick in your head after you're done playing.  I was taking the dog out earlier and found myself humming one of the game's tunes to myself.  

For the price, if you're into games of this sort, it's a fucking steal.  I think it's still on new release sale too.  

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I might play God of War tonight.  I feel like something I haven't played in a while.  You all talking about Tsushima makes me want to play that also. 

I have...

God of War

Spider Man

Ghost of Tsushima

Fenyx Rising

...all going on the PS4 right now. 

 

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Playing GTA4 made me realise how video games have gotten into this game of exponentially growing effort and expense for diminishing returns. GTA4 looks pretty fantastic and absolutely nothing like a 13-year-old game should. Comparing it to the last couple of big open-world modern/future city games I played (Watch Dogs 2, from 2017, and Cyberpunk 2077 from 2020), there's not a vast amount of difference. Probably the biggest thing is lighting (particularly ray-tracing with CP77) and more sophisticated LOD systems and facial animations, dedicated 4K textures and that's really about it. In terms of scale, scope, attention to detail etc, GTA4 pretty much nailed it back in 2008 and I remember it was some considerable time - probably not until GTA5 five years later really, that anything matched it (and GTA4 wiped the floor with the Bethesda open-world games, in terms of looks, all the way out to at least Fallout 4 seven years later).

The problem seems to be that all the extra time they're taking to make stuff - models and assets, lighting systems etc - isn't really resulting in manifestly better games. They're prettier, but not ten times prettier, which is what you can definitely argue GTA4 was compared to games released even five years earlier, and the price in ludicrously escalating budgets and especially time for game development (GTA4 took just three-and-a-half years to make) really does not seem to be worth it. Red Dead Redemption 2 took eight years to make and it might be something similar for GTA6 (taking account of overlapping development) by the time it appears: Take Two's recent financials reveal a massive marketing spend earmarked for the end of 2023, so we can assume that's when they're aiming to launch the game, with a reasonable chance of a slide into 2024 given COVID and Rockstar's usual last-minute multi-month delays.

On 3/7/2021 at 10:49 PM, Tywin et al. said:

I have to believe the snipping missions are so much easier with a mouse and keyboard. 

Oh yeah, and darts (even with the little waver thing it does to try to make it harder).

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3 hours ago, Werthead said:

Playing GTA4 made me realise how video games have gotten into this game of exponentially growing effort and expense for diminishing returns. GTA4 looks pretty fantastic and absolutely nothing like a 13-year-old game should. Comparing it to the last couple of big open-world modern/future city games I played (Watch Dogs 2, from 2017, and Cyberpunk 2077 from 2020), there's not a vast amount of difference. Probably the biggest thing is lighting (particularly ray-tracing with CP77) and more sophisticated LOD systems and facial animations, dedicated 4K textures and that's really about it. In terms of scale, scope, attention to detail etc, GTA4 pretty much nailed it back in 2008 and I remember it was some considerable time - probably not until GTA5 five years later really, that anything matched it (and GTA4 wiped the floor with the Bethesda open-world games, in terms of looks, all the way out to at least Fallout 4 seven years later).

The problem seems to be that all the extra time they're taking to make stuff - models and assets, lighting systems etc - isn't really resulting in manifestly better games. They're prettier, but not ten times prettier, which is what you can definitely argue GTA4 was compared to games released even five years earlier, and the price in ludicrously escalating budgets and especially time for game development (GTA4 took just three-and-a-half years to make) really does not seem to be worth it. 

Well, first of all, no other game from 2008 looks as good as GTA4 did; Rockstar is/was really, really good at their jobs. So it's not really a fair comparison to say that's what games looked like 13 years ago.

And second, even though GTA4 looks really good compare to its contemporaries, it doesn't look that good compared to modern games. I think there is actually pretty vast difference between it and the way CP2077 looks or The Last of Us Part II. I would not be happy to play GTA4-looking games only going forward. I agree with the larger point that we've hit serious diminishing returns at this point, but I wouldn't be willing to go back to the heady days of 2008. Now, I would be happy with games looking like Dragon Age: Inquisition or The Witcher 3 forever, so the 2014/15 era. But that's as far as it goes for me.

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You want to talk about old games and the returns they provide? 

Well. Having completed Skyrim, Oblivion, and Morrowind, the next one on the list was, no surprise, Daggerfall

Even with the Unity upgrade and assorted quality of life mods, this game still has the learning curve of the goddamn Matterhorn. 

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On 3/5/2021 at 8:28 PM, Tywin et al. said:

@aceluby, gotta say, so far the comparison to RDR2 is not accurate. I am enjoying the shit out of it, don't get me wrong, but this feels a lot more like what I've seen from AC videos on YouTube. The map stuff is still an issue too. It does look really good though.

I feel bad that I kept having to drop the difficultly because a giant guy with a hammer just continued to kill me with one shot essentially.

I never really played or watch AC videos, so I can't really compare it to that game.  Glad you like it though.

On 3/6/2021 at 5:48 AM, Tywin et al. said:

I'm digging it. I just liberated a dojo and a bridge (woke up super early so I figured why not game a bit). Still, I can't handle these guys with the hammers/mauls. One hit from them and I'm fucked and I'm terrible at countering. 

Gotta dodge those guys.  I don't think I really needed to do anything except dodge until after the first 1/3rd of the game.  IMO, max out your stance that deals w/ shields and then use the hold triangle and perform multiple slashes on any of the early enemies.  Then go after the multiplier for showdowns so you can get 3 in a row.  After you've done that, max out your parry tree, which will help out with guys w/ spears.  Then focus on your stealth skills.  Also, be sure to do a few of the early main missions first so you get some very important skills.  If you're like me and do a bunch of the early side missions, it shouldn't take you long to amass a ton of skill points.

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13 minutes ago, aceluby said:

I never really played or watch AC videos, so I can't really compare it to that game.  Glad you like it though.

Gotta dodge those guys.  I don't think I really needed to do anything except dodge until after the first 1/3rd of the game.  IMO, max out your stance that deals w/ shields and then use the hold triangle and perform multiple slashes on any of the early enemies.  Then go after the multiplier for showdowns so you can get 3 in a row.  After you've done that, max out your parry tree, which will help out with guys w/ spears.  Then focus on your stealth skills.  Also, be sure to do a few of the early main missions first so you get some very important skills.  If you're like me and do a bunch of the early side missions, it shouldn't take you long to amass a ton of skill points.

My problem is that I got the skill that turns your dodge into a roll... I was doing better before I got that!  I was just stepping out of the way and whacking them.  Now I roll too far out of the way! :lol: 

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Take Two's 2020 financials seem to be pointing towards a major title release in financial year 2023-24, with $90 million earmarked for marketing in that period. So yeah, that's (almost 100%) Grand Theft Auto VI. Nothing else they have on their books is going to warrant that kind of spend, bearing in mind their previous highest marketing spend was also around the same amount for Red Dead Redemption 2 (GTA5 seems to have gotten less, around $50-70 million).

Looking at the other games they (probably) have under development, I can't see Mafia 4XCOM 3 or Civilization VII warranting that kind of spend. I did wonder if they'd go all-out for BioShock 4, but even that seems excessive for a franchise with only 35 million sales from three games.

10 hours ago, Fez said:

Well, first of all, no other game from 2008 looks as good as GTA4 did; Rockstar is/was really, really good at their jobs. So it's not really a fair comparison to say that's what games looked like 13 years ago.

And second, even though GTA4 looks really good compare to its contemporaries, it doesn't look that good compared to modern games. I think there is actually pretty vast difference between it and the way CP2077 looks or The Last of Us Part II. I would not be happy to play GTA4-looking games only going forward. I agree with the larger point that we've hit serious diminishing returns at this point, but I wouldn't be willing to go back to the heady days of 2008. Now, I would be happy with games looking like Dragon Age: Inquisition or The Witcher 3 forever, so the 2014/15 era. But that's as far as it goes for me.

Mafia 2 looks as good (though doesn't play as well, or have remotely as much content or detail) as GTA4, or almost so, and that was just a few months later, so I'm not sure that's entirely true. BioShock as well, and that was a few months older. And obviously I'm talking about the PC versions, which were comprehensively superior to the 360/PS3 versions which looked distinctly yikes in comparison even at the time.

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I kind of reached my graphics saturation point in about 2010 as well. Sure, prettier graphics are nice, but I'm much more impressed with strong art design over photo-realism or textures. This is why I'm pretty happy to have the Switch be my main console while I occasionally play newer PC games on their lowest setting on my laptop.

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Having played the last two Deus Ex games back to back, Human Revolution and Mankind Divided, there has been a pretty major difference in graphics between the 2011 and 2016. I'm not saying that graphics make Human Revolution unplayable (like they pretty much do with the original Deus Ex), but having seen how the other looks like, I have no desire to go back to 2011 graphics.

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GTA V looks pretty good with maxed settings but it does look like far worse than Cyperpunk imho. 

Shooters used the be the games with the best graphics though. Half-Life 2 was incredible as were the Crysis games although personally Far Cry impressed me the most back in the day. 

Old 3D games don't age were well though unlike 2D games like Baldur's Gate 2 which still looks great imho. 

System Shock 2 for example is playable for me with some engine mods but it looks bad even with them.

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The Microsoft/Bethesda deal has gone through, so as of now Microsoft owns Fallout and Elder Scrolls (plus DoomQuakeDishonoredPreyEvil Within and new IPs StarfieldDeathloop and Ghostwire: Tokyo).

People waiting to see when the entire Bethesda portfolio lands on X-Box Game Pass, which I imagine shouldn't be too long.

21 minutes ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

GTA V looks pretty good with maxed settings but it does look like far worse than Cyperpunk imho. 

Shooters used the be the games with the best graphics though. Half-Life 2 was incredible as were the Crysis games although personally Far Cry impressed me the most back in the day. 

Old 3D games don't age were well though unlike 2D games like Baldur's Gate 2 which still looks great imho. 

System Shock 2 for example is playable for me with some engine mods but it looks bad even with them.

I'm tempted to hold fire on my GTAV replay until the next-gen version launches later this year. Hopefully the improvements will be back-ported to the PC version as well (although they may try to charge again for it).

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2 hours ago, Caligula_K3 said:

Sure, prettier graphics are nice, but I'm much more impressed with strong art design over photo-realism or textures.

100% this. The ongoing AAA circlejerk over graphical fidelity and extremely hardware intensive graphical effects and shaders is just such a waste of time and money.

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