Videogames: The Sequeling

[Denvek]

Finished Horizon: Zero Dawn yesterday and I've got to say - that is the most well put together and well told story I've ever experienced in a video game and if I don't get to

Spoiler

punch Ted fucking Faro in his stupid fucking face even though he's probably been dead for centuries

in the sequel I'm going to be very disappointed.

[Rhom]

18 minutes ago, Denvek said:

Finished Horizon: Zero Dawn yesterday and I've got to say - that is the most well put together and well told story I've ever experienced in a video game and if I don't get to

  Hide contents

punch Ted fucking Faro in his stupid fucking face even though he's probably been dead for centuries

in the sequel I'm going to be very disappointed.

It was great wasn’t it!

[IlyaP]

If you system can handle it, Cyberpunk 2077 is so engrossing. It's a synesthetic melange of urban delights. 

I just could sit and watch and listen to it all day. It's such a wonderfully colourful, crazy, over the top, unreal vision of the near future as filtered through every singe cyberpunk reference I've ever watched, read, or heard. The ambition here is off the charts and oh man does it show. 

Between this and season 24 of Diablo 3, I have my cure for the Sydney lockdown blues.

 

[aceluby]

On 7/25/2021 at 6:54 AM, Denvek said:

Finished Horizon: Zero Dawn yesterday and I've got to say - that is the most well put together and well told story I've ever experienced in a video game and if I don't get to

  Reveal hidden contents

punch Ted fucking Faro in his stupid fucking face even though he's probably been dead for centuries

in the sequel I'm going to be very disappointed.

Probably my favorite story in gaming.  It's just so well thought out and I can't wait for Forbidden West to get back into the world.

I continued on my Returnal journey over the weekend and finally took down the final boss.  Now I have to go search for these fragments in all of the different areas.  The first five were actually quite easy to find, but this last one is giving me nightmares.  The RNG gods have not smiled on me as it takes a solid 45 minutes to get where I need to go, it spawns in a place that is right after one of the most difficult sections of the game that spawns 1-3 mini-bosses in a single room, and every time I don't get some of the toughest enemies and survive the encounter, the right area that has the fragment hasn't spawned for me.  Have probably spent 5 or 6 hours getting it when it took me maybe 2 hours to get the other 5.  One nice thing, however, is that in doing this I'm getting some better weapon upgrades, new artifacts, and collectibles that I'll need if I ever want to platinum.

If anyone here is a fan of Control, they would definitely dig this game.  Weird sci fi story wrapped in a fairly tough 3rd person shooter. 

[briantw]

Signed up for Playstation Now over the weekend and decided to replay Bioshock Infinite.

This game tells the story of what if Trump supporters all bought an airship and founded a racist kingdom in the sky.

[Fez]

Struggling to find a new game to play now that my Mass Effect extravaganza is done. I played some of the trial version of Monster Hunter Stories 2, and found the gameplay too repetitive and the story boring. And Cris Tales got pretty middling reviews, to the point that even though it's on Gamepass i'm not much interested in it. I could finish up Scarlet Nexus, but after being away from it from over 2 weeks I find I just have zero desire to go back to it. I also bought Griftlands about a month ago, but it never hooked me either. I also played the trial version of Samurai Warriors 5, and apparently I'm a very different gamer from 20 years ago because it seemed downright boring to me. I did buy Highfleet, but ended up refunding it; the diegetic interface looks amazing, but is far too finicky and buggy right now (also the core combat is too arcade-y for me). 

There are several games coming in mid-to-late August that I'm looking forward to, but that doesn't help right now. I might circle back to Baldur's Gate 2, but I'm just not really feeling that one right now either.

[Corvinus85]

This past weekend, nostalgia has finally defeated me, and I bought ME Legendary Edition on Steam. I have the trilogy on Origin, so why did I buy this?

1) I like Steam more

2) In the hopes that the first game's improved graphics increases game enjoyment (it does). Also, I never played the one DLC for it.

3) The profile transition between the 1st and 2nd game has always been iffy for me. Now it should be much smoother.

I started a FemShep playthrough. I only tried FemShep once, and I lost that file in a Window re-install event, never finishing it. I always play the Soldier class, and thinking of the Belters from Expanse, made her a Spacer and Ruthless. I tried playing Renegade at first, but once it came down to bigger decisions, just couldn't bring myself to not do the Paragon choices. Right now I'm somewhere around 65/35 Paragon favor. I go for the more ruthless renegade options on all the small mission, and in-mission dialogue options, while be more on the Paragon side when I'm talking to people between missions, and for the big decisions like the fate of the Rachni queen. Almost 25 hrs in, and have just started the Vermire mission.

[Fez]

Played a little bit of The Ascent on Gamepass yesterday. The game looks gorgeous, it's cyberpunk by way of a 40k hive city. But I'm not so sure about the gameplay yet, and the writing is entirely forgettable.

[Derfel Cadarn]

Finished playthroughs of Resident Evil 0, RE Remake (thanks to guides), and now playing through the new Resident Evil 3

[RumHam]

2 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Finished playthroughs of Resident Evil 0, RE Remake (thanks to guides), and now playing through the new Resident Evil 3

Is there a reason you skipped the remake of 2? 

I saw they delayed the multiplayer game that came bundled with Village to next year. 

[Derfel Cadarn]

8 minutes ago, RumHam said:

Is there a reason you skipped the remake of 2? 

I saw they delayed the multiplayer game that came bundled with Village to next year. 

It’s next, doing it chronologically, and 3 starts before 2

[aceluby]

Finished up Returnal this morning to get the "hidden" ending.  I think I'll have to read up on what the hell happened.  I still like the gameplay so I might just do some trophy hunting until I'm bored and move on to Valhalla or continue my Demon's Souls playthrough.

[RumHam]

49 minutes ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

It’s next, doing it chronologically, and 3 starts before 2

Oooh, that's right.

I wonder if they'll ever re-make Code: Veronica, I only ever played that one once. Got stuck for so long fighting the BOW in the tiny cargo hold of that plane. 

I should probably play Revelations 2. I enjoyed the first one quite a bit playing co-op. I've all but given up on following the plot of these games. 

[Ghostlydragon]

1 hour ago, RumHam said:

Oooh, that's right.

I wonder if they'll ever re-make Code: Veronica, I only ever played that one once. Got stuck for so long fighting the BOW in the tiny cargo hold of that plane. 

I should probably play Revelations 2. I enjoyed the first one quite a bit playing co-op. I've all but given up on following the plot of these games. 

If its anything like 2 remake or 4, I would definitely get it.

[Werthead]

Completed all of the original Dishonored DLC. I forgot that both The Knife of Dunwall and The Brigmore Witches were a lot tougher than the base game, but also a lot more dense in terms of stuff to do; on a stealth run the two DLCs take as long to complete as the base game, despite having fewer levels.

Replaying Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak before moving on to Dishonored 2. I love DoK's storyline and general presentation, and the gameplay is decent (especially the way you have to mix air power with your ground army to maximise results; it's the only RTS I know of which really emphasis bombing enemy infrastructure behind the front line). I think this is the fifth or sixth time I've played it right through and it's still great. It did occur to me that you could use the engine to make a spectacular new Dune game.

ETA: Also keeping an eye on Carrier Command 2, which is out in just 2 weeks and looks really great. The co-op crew mode and VR options sound amazing.

On 7/30/2021 at 2:43 PM, Fez said:

Played a little bit of The Ascent on Gamepass yesterday. The game looks gorgeous, it's cyberpunk by way of a 40k hive city. But I'm not so sure about the gameplay yet, and the writing is entirely forgettable.

This is on my list. There seems to be a review consensus that the game is a bit meeeeh to start with, but suddenly blows up when you unlock a few extra skills and then gets really, really good.

[Fez]

9 hours ago, Werthead said:

This is on my list. There seems to be a review consensus that the game is a bit meeeeh to start with, but suddenly blows up when you unlock a few extra skills and then gets really, really good.

I've played a few hours more now. It does get better, but not extraordinarily so. Best I can tell, you can have up to 3 active skills and 2 passive ones. I've got some equipped, but I only ever use the melee punch one. And there are a decent-ish number of guns, but I'm still just using the SMG you get like 15 minutes into the game. I've upgraded it a fair bit and it's damage tops all the un-upgraded auto guns I've found so far. The problem seems to be that the game is just too easy, and there don't seem to be any difficulty settings to change, so I'm just not engaging with the systems enough. I'm also never going into cover and never using the "press LT to raise your gun and aim higher to shoot over cover/have higher stagger odds" system. Just running around shooting everything and sometimes dodge-rolling is doing the trick, even against bosses.

However, the game's worth playing just to see all the environments. It's got one of the best art designs I've ever seen in a game.

[Werthead]

Valve are joining forces with a modding team to create Half-Life 2: Remastered Collection, which updates Half-Life 2 and both Episodes with modern lighting and higher-quality textures.

This is a huge expansion of Half-Life 2 Update, a pretty impressive 2015 mod which did the same thing on a smaller scale. I played Update a while back and was quite impressed with, especially the lighting which rose to modern levels of excellence (for 2015). The new version will apparently go way further in boosting graphical fidelity.

This isn't the same modding project which is trying to port Half-Life 2 to the Alyx version of Source, which would look absolutely amazing. That's still in very early days and I wouldn't be surprised to end up being a Black Mesa-length project (which took 15 years to come to full fruition).

Speaking of that game, Black Mesa itself is getting a remake (!) with Black Mesa: Definitive Edition, which will try to update the graphics again and will redesign some areas of the game they still feel are problematic, though sadly this doesn't include slashing Xen's length in half.

[Werthead]

Dishonored 2 is a masterpiece so far. The first game was outstanding, but in the second game the level design goes completely nuclear in how impressive it is, helped by the PS4 generation allowing the levels to be a fair bit bigger (but not so bigger they get tedious).

It's taken me 3 hours so far to do just the opening level (which is really just a prologue), the first full mission, which has a fairly sizeable chunk of Karnaca as a near-open-world playground of stealth and looting, and the start of the second mission in the scientific institute, which is a masterpiece of tight design and giving you so many options on how to deal with business, including an actual "release the hounds!" moment.