Videogames: The Sequeling

[Durckad]

That's disappointing. I was waiting for the LE to go on sale a bit more before I bought it, but if so little work was put into modernizing it and fixing issues, then maybe I'll just stick with the super discounted copies I already own on Steam.

On soundtracks: I think the only game soundtrack that I've ever liked enough to even consider buying on it's own was FF6 (FF3 for us uncouth Americans). The actual soundtrack was difficult to get ahold of back in the 90's but I managed to borrow a friend's collection and copy it over on to cassette tapes. Yes, I am officially an old man.

Oh also, playing through Chrono Trigger recently reminded me how legitimately good the soundtrack is for that game. Man those 90's JRPG's had some killer music.

[Fez]

23 minutes ago, Durckad said:

That's disappointing. I was waiting for the LE to go on sale a bit more before I bought it, but if so little work was put into modernizing it and fixing issues, then maybe I'll just stick with the super discounted copies I already own on Steam.

Yeah, if you own the originals on PC or a modern console already, the only reason I can think of to buy the LE is to get the DLC if you're missing most of it. And maybe if it ever goes on deep, deep discount the changes they did make to ME1 would be enough to justify it.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

1 hour ago, Fez said:

Yeah, that's certainly true. I'm not that upset personally because I'm having fun playing the games again for the first time in 7 years. And I'd have to dig my 360 out of storage (and hoped that it still works) to play them if I didn't put the LE edition.

That said there's some pretty glaring shortcomings:

In ME3 they didn't fix the bug that prevents most of Zaeed's ambient Citadel dialog from playing. They didn't fix the bugs in the quest journal, or do anything to fix it's terrible layout. They also did not use the final patch version of original ME3; there were multiplayer balance changes made to some of the guns that were then brought to singleplayer, and none of those are present. It's also disappointing that there's no multiplayer in LE, but at least they announced that in advance.

In ME2 I don't think they brought any of ME3's combat improvements over to it. They also didn't fix the glitch in how Conrad Verner remembers you from ME1.

ME1 clearly got the most work, but the character models still look really bad compared to later games. Plus, as you say, they really didn't do that much to the combat.

 

That is frustrating about 2 and 3--I was hoping to see some work done there. 2s combat was great, but 3s really took it to the next level. Ah well, I'm stoked to get to 2 again. I started playing it last fall or in the winter, but decided to hold off for this, so I'm pretty excited to get there.

[IlyaP]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

That's the one that Doctor Who produced a near-identical track ("I Am the Doctor") to at exactly the same time, to the point that it's impossible for one to have influenced the other. Very strange.

Wait, what? 

This track? 

 

[IlyaP]

Interesting commentary on the Doctor Who connection here: https://www.reddit.com/r/doctorwho/comments/2r7sr2/why_does_i_am_the_doctor_sound_so_similar_to/

[Fez]

My personal favorite of the entire ME soundtrack is the credits theme from ME1.

It doesn't necessarily fit in with the rest of the soundtrack at all, the only other song like it is the credits theme from ME3 which was by the same band. But damn if it isn't a banger, and I thought the lyrics actually fit thematically pretty well with the game.

 

[Liffguard]

1 hour ago, Fez said:

My personal favorite of the entire ME soundtrack is the credits theme from ME1.

It doesn't necessarily fit in with the rest of the soundtrack at all, the only other song like it is the credits theme from ME3 which was by the same band. But damn if it isn't a banger, and I thought the lyrics actually fit thematically pretty well with the game.

 

The track is M4 part 2, by the band Faunts. Great band, great song.

[Week]

4 hours ago, Durckad said:

That's disappointing. I was waiting for the LE to go on sale a bit more before I bought it, but if so little work was put into modernizing it and fixing issues, then maybe I'll just stick with the super discounted copies I already own on Steam.

On soundtracks: I think the only game soundtrack that I've ever liked enough to even consider buying on it's own was FF6 (FF3 for us uncouth Americans). The actual soundtrack was difficult to get ahold of back in the 90's but I managed to borrow a friend's collection and copy it over on to cassette tapes. Yes, I am officially an old man.

Oh also, playing through Chrono Trigger recently reminded me how legitimately good the soundtrack is for that game. Man those 90's JRPG's had some killer music.

All of Nobuo Uematsu's FF soundtracks are on Spotify - which I regularly stream while working. Great background music with a little serotonin boost of the nostalgia of suddenly hearing the music from Mysidia, the Red Wings, or Dancing Mad (Kefka). 

[Kalbear]

IMO, System Shock was the best soundtrack, especially given how limited the music could actually be. 

DX: HR is still amazing though, and it's also weird to hear things like it in other movies or shows (like Expanse) and wonder how they got the rights to it

[Fez]

1 hour ago, Week said:

All of Nobuo Uematsu's FF soundtracks are on Spotify - which I regularly stream while working. Great background music with a little serotonin boost of the nostalgia of suddenly hearing the music from Mysidia, the Red Wings, or Dancing Mad (Kefka). 

I'm never able to listen to video game music passively like that. My problem is that a lot of it just doesn't do anything at all for me, but then there are the absolute bangers that when they come on I need to devote my full attention to (e.g., Mass Effect credits)

Like if "Not Alone" or "Kuja's Theme" from Final Fantasy IX popped on all of a sudden that's going to stop me in my tracks; and after it's over I'm going to insist on playing it again immediately.

[Caligula_K3]

22 hours ago, Fez said:

My usual Mass Effect playthrough back in the day and what I've been doing again through the remaster is to play about 80% renegade/20% paragon in ME1, around 50/50 in ME2 (mostly paragon with companions and renegade with everyone else), and about 80% paragon/20% renegade in ME3. I like the sense of character progression that gives, and also it fits with the vibes of each game.

In ME1 you're the detective with idiotic superiors, of course you should be a snarky, burnt out mess. And most of the game conversations are so sterile that it all feels lifeless unless you inject some chaotic energy. But there's a handful of "stupid evil" decisions if you go full renegade, and I never do those.

In ME2, you're back from the dead, that would be enough to change anyone's perspective at least somewhat. Also, the game is all about building a team, so it makes sense to have the camaraderie of a paragon there (except for a few renegade options that are really just some friendly chops busting). Meanwhile, the galaxy as a whole is still full of idiots, so they get the renegade.

In ME3, the apocalypse is happening, and it just feels right that Shepard would show a bit more compassion and is mostly paragon now. But there's a few times that paragon turns "lawful stupid", which is when it's time bring out the renegade. Also in favor of being more paragon is that those are generally the times that Shepard lets their guard down and is more emotionally raw, and Jennifer Hale absolutely nails all those lines as FemShep.

This seems like a great roleplay playthrough. I should also say that when I do replay Mass Effect, I never go pure renegade on every decision (I think I only did that one time). My Shepherds tend not to be space-racists, for example.

I think I could see an @Ghostlydragon playthrough working just as well, especially in Mass Effect 2, when you're working for Cerberus and have been raised from the dead.

I 100% agree with everyone that FemShep is so much better than MaleShep. I played MaleShep on my first playthrough... but once I went Jennifer Hale, I could never go back. Still, I find the Paragon version of the character to be pretty boring, even with her great voice acting. But maybe I'll try a Picard playthrough whenever I get the Legendary edition and see if I can get the fuss, at least for Mass Effect 1. I reserve the right to use all the Renegade interventions in ME2 though. Mercenaries have to be pushed out windows.

[Slurktan]

11 minutes ago, Fez said:

I'm never able to listen to video game music passively like that. My problem is that a lot of it just doesn't do anything at all for me, but then there are the absolute bangers that when they come on I need to devote my full attention to (e.g., Mass Effect credits)

Like if "Not Alone" or "Kuja's Theme" from Final Fantasy IX popped on all of a sudden that's going to stop me in my tracks; and after it's over I'm going to insist on playing it again immediately.

I'm mostly the same way. Although I could listen to like the Dark overworld theme from Link to the Past over and over.  Ludwig's theme from Bloodborne is legit the best video game music though.

[Werthead]

There is a sliding scale of how remakes/remasters work, and the Legendary Edition is definitely at the "brush-up retexture, modest gameplay changes, inadvertently roll back some balance changes from the original" end of the spectrum. If you want to play all three games from start to finish as one megagame with the same-looking character (especially FemShep), it's the best option, but if you don't mind that so much, you might be better off sticking to the orginal.

Oddly, considering it didn't sound that comprehensive in the notes, Rome: Total War Remastered was an absolutely outstanding remaster because they completely revamped the UI, made the AI better and completely reworked the campaign map as well as just sprucing up the models. Very impressive, making it a much more modern game without losing what made the original special.

Mafia Remastered is much more comprehensive. They had to completely rebuild the game from scratch in a new engine, which was a huge amount of work. I think they did lose some of the magic along the way, though (combat is way easier in the remake). And, hilariously, they forgot to base the absurdly brutal mission-critical race on the second patch, which allowed you to skip it or take a cheating shortcut to make it easier. So the remastered version of the game is way, way harder than the commonly-available version of the original game. Solid remake but too expensive given the game's modest length (10 hours).

I was thinking that Human Revolution could do with an upgrade. It wasn't fantastic-looking on release and the previous upgrade, the Director's Cut, didn't really help very much and actually rolled back some of the later patches to the original game, which made things like the stun gun and tranq gun work more reliably. In the Director's Cut you're back to seeing the projectiles clip right through enemies even at pointblank range and they've never fixed it in the seven years it's been available. The Director's Cut also integrated the Missing Link DLC, but the DLC is still pretty enraging in how it resets all your weapons and augments to zero and you have to rebuild to get them back at the end of the DLC and if you absolutely 100%ed the game up to the DLC, you're about 2 Praxis points short of where you were when you finish it, which is weird. They could also throw in Mankind Divided (which doesn't need much of an improvement) and maybe even The Fall (which does), rip out all the microtransaction bullshit and see if they can drum up some interest for a new DE game.

Also just saying that the bit where you can rescue Malik in Human Revolution is one of my favourite gaming moments of all time, and a clear inspiration behind a near-identical mission in Cyberpunk 2077.

[Mr. X]

On 7/6/2021 at 4:52 PM, polishgenius said:

I fucking love Hollow Knight.

Same.

On 7/6/2021 at 7:35 PM, Fez said:

Hollow Knight really is great, though I hated the Deepnest area, and not in a fun way. I'm really excited for whenever the sequel comes out.

I stumbled into Deepnest accidentally one night while playing with headphones on and had some trouble sleeping later on.  Will likely drop everything to play Silksong when it finally arrives.

On 7/6/2021 at 5:28 PM, Caligula_K3 said:

Hollow Knight is great. I replayed it a couple months ago and it really held up on the second time through. Though this time I tried to get to the "true ending" and after about 40 tries against the true final boss I gave up.

I never really got into gaming at any point in my life until last fall. For context, I'm old enough that our first home computer was a IBM PC clone and the original NES came out when I was in grade school. The original Legend of Zelda was a big deal back then. I remember friends bringing magazines to school to study the overworld maps together.  I might have played five or ten minutes of it at a friends house and died many, many times in that brief time span. My parents never let us buy any of the consoles, and, aside from the occasional casual multiplayer games at friends' houses, a brief obsession with whatever version of Civilization my college housemate had on his computer, and playing through whatever Zelda games were available on the GameBoy Micro during grad school, I played little in the way of computer games beyond Tetris and Minesweeper until last year.

It started with Night in the Woods shortly after Covid shut everything down. Then, in September, Xray texted me to say that a local store had Switches in stock for the first time in months. They placed the order, I picked it up on the way home from work, and bought Breath of the Wild that night.  (Well, not that night--somehow, our Switch arrived with no joycons, so I had to hit BestBuy on the way home from work the next day.)  Spent the next month or so playing through that, started looking around at other games, and bought Hollow Knight almost entirely on a whim.

(And by "on a whim," I mean it was on sale and the art looked awesome.)

Got hooked after a few hours of Hollow Knight. Got frustrated more and more as I got further into it and kept hitting the wall of my profound lack of skill (and/or experience) with games. Put it down for a week at least once or twice, but eventually ground my way through to completing the "bad" ending. Loved the world, loved the art, and loved the music. Learned the term "metroidvania" because of that game and went on to check out some other things in that genre, including both Ori games, which are also wonderful.

In the midst of a bunch of workplace drama and stress, some of which was Covid-related and some of which would be terrible in a non-pandemic year, I found myself needing an escape, so started Hollow Knight again from scratch. Sure, I absolutely benefited from having completed it once, but a lot of things went more easily more me, especially things like boss fights, where I realized I'd learned to be more patient and not just spam the attack buttons in a blind panic. At least one boss who took me a week to beat the first time around fell on the third try. And eventually, after way, way, WAY more than 40 attempts, I even beat the true final boss. 

I spent a lot of this year dealing with the combined stresses of teaching in hybrid and remote settings, commuting on the subway regularly in a city where the positivity rate was often in the 7% to 10% (or higher) range, and being gaslit and sidelined regularly by our school administration. It was exactly the sort of year where playing a void creature killing the shit out of a bunch of reanimated bugs counted as a positive mental health exercise and beating the true final boss, even if it meant spending an entire week fighting her over and over again, felt like a genuine accomplishment.

I still kind of suck at video games, but I suck a lot less, largely thanks to Hollow Knight.  And this school year sucked, but it definitely sucked less thanks to video games in general, and to Hollow Knight in particular.

So yes, I fucking love Hollow Knight.

[Kalbear]

30 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Also just saying that the bit where you can rescue Malik in Human Revolution is one of my favourite gaming moments of all time, and a clear inspiration behind a near-identical mission in Cyberpunk 2077.

It's absolutely brilliant, and also one of the best homages to DX they did. There's nothing saying 'save Malik' in the game, no quest, and even she says to get the hell out of there - but you don't have to. 

Dishonored does this sort of 'do whatever you want, it's cool' thing more frequently, but this one was pretty cool. 

[A True Kaniggit]

Downloading the old FF7 on my PS4. It's half off right now.

And it comes with FF7 background music for the PS4 main screen. Not that I don't like the Horizon: Zero Dawn one I currently have going. But I like to mix things up sometimes.

(Yes I own FF7 on the original PlayStation discs. But I wanted that background music)

[Fez]

Speaking of ME3, before starting the Geth-Quarian arc I just did the Omega DLC for the first time. It was the one DLC I never bought since I was still smarting from the ME3 ending at the time it released and I heard it wasn't that great. And yeah, it wasn't that great. There were some pretty good combat sequences, but the ratio of that to anything else was way off; and what else there was wasn't that well done. Curious, I looked up the production info about it and, surprise, surprise, it was the one piece of singleplayer content in the original trilogy made by Bioware Montreal, the studio that went on to make ME:A.

[kungtotte]

All this talk of ME:LE made me reinstall ME3 and give it a go. It's weird, I know I played this game but I remember very little about the opening stages of the game. It's also bringing back memories of annoying level geometry that's impassable for no good reason... But at least I get to roll around with my homeboy Garrus again.

[polishgenius]

10 hours ago, Mr. X said:

And eventually, after way, way, WAY more than 40 attempts, I even beat the true final boss

Hah, well done you. Being dyspraxic there's a semi-decent chance I never will (and a near 100% chance I'll never beat the TRUE true final boss). Still adore the game though.

 

On your differing experiences between first and second times playing it, there's a fairly interesting vid about how games frame themselves for new players or experienced players, framed via Hollow Knight being the first game the vid-maker's wife tried to play. HK is only really the jumping-on point but still.
 

Also did you ever play Cave Story in your game journey since? It's not a true Metroidvania since it's story gated more than ability gated, and graphically it's, ahem, a bit simpler than HK, but it's a remarkable game. The combat's more run-and-gun than the hand-to-hand of HK, mind.

 

 

eta: oh, just to add that us fans of Metroidvanias are in for a treat the next two years or so, there are so many in development - some obviously directly inspired by Hollow Knight, like the recently-released Ender Lilies which I've yet to play but has some interesting original ideas and good reviews so I will. But some more generally just clearly inspired that a Metroidvania is a great venue to make a really meaty indie game and find success with it. I actually made a document just to note them down and keep track of them, there's like twenty of the buggers to keep an eye on, it's mad. Just look at the likes of Kingdom Shell, Aeterna Noctis, or the rather unique-looking Worldless- Prototype. 

Not all will land but if even a small portion hit nearly as hard as HK or something like Iconoclasts, good times. 

[Werthead]

11 hours ago, Kaligator said:

It's absolutely brilliant, and also one of the best homages to DX they did. There's nothing saying 'save Malik' in the game, no quest, and even she says to get the hell out of there - but you don't have to. 

Dishonored does this sort of 'do whatever you want, it's cool' thing more frequently, but this one was pretty cool. 

There's also the bit at the end of Missing Link when you are told starkly to choose between two outcomes and instead you can do a totally undescribed third option and save everybody, and get credit for out-of-the-box thinking.

The final mission does suffer a bit from "and suddenly zombies," but still fun (I lost track of how many people I rendered unconscious in my attempted-nonlethal playthrough which once again failed, because I think a couple of guys I rendered unconscious were killed by a misthrown grenade.

ETA: Spent an hour with The Fall and good grief, that was bad. I know it was a ported mobile game but they could have put some kind of effort into the port. I wasn't expecting a full DEX experience, but being unable to jump and a lot of functions having no hotkeys, forcing you to go through menus every time, was execrable.

Onto Mankind Divided. First time with the DLC as well, so some bits of this should be new.