Videogames Killed the TV Star

[IlyaP]

On 9/13/2021 at 8:52 AM, aceluby said:

I see you’re getting to the first time I quit this game. An insurmountable number of ? to ever realistically accomplish, mixed with a fairly terrible 3rd person combat system.

You mean the fight with Eredin? 

Found it rather straigth-forward once I figured out his attack style, and learned to dodge and parry and slice between his attacks. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

9 hours ago, Gorn said:

The only one whose combat I really hated was 1. Combat in 2 was OK, and I even liked it in 3. Once I got used to mixing up the swordwork with signs and roll-dodges, I developed a rhythm and it became enjoyable.

In any case, I never played any of those games for the combat, but for the parts between the fights.

That's kind of the issue though. It wants you to string together so many different things and you're dealing with subpar angles and movements. I do really like the story so far, but there's a lot of room for improvement gameplay wise.
 

[Caligula_K3]

I think the main problem with the Witcher 3's combat is that it's pretty fun, but probably not fun or variable enough for the 100+ hours you'll spend in the game. At a certain point, most fights become the same. But I never really felt there was a problem with bad angles and movements.

The combat music is amazing.

[Darryk]

4 minutes ago, Caligula_K3 said:

I think the main problem with the Witcher 3's combat is that it's pretty fun, but probably not fun or variable enough for the 100+ hours you'll spend in the game. At a certain point, most fights become the same. But I never really felt there was a problem with bad angles and movements.

The combat music is amazing.

Yeah agreed the combat music is great.

I felt the combat was too easy with signs, had to make it more challenging for myself by focusing on just sword and potions.

[Caligula_K3]

10 minutes ago, Darryk said:

Yeah agreed the combat music is great.

I felt the combat was too easy with signs, had to make it more challenging for myself by focusing on just sword and potions.

Yeah, I had the same issue with signs making me OP. Next time I play I'll take an alchemy route just for some variety.

If I remember, the DLCs do introduce some more interesting enemies that force you to change up your fighting style a bit.

[Argonath Diver]

Bought No Man's Sky a second time, as I simply don't use my ps4 anymore and wanted it on PC. Still 60 bucks surprisingly but it's such great content that I don't mind. I am damn useless at thumbsticks and this late I always will be, so it's nice to use keyboard and mouse. Alas the menus and movement are clearly ported from a console. Absurdly clunky menu navigation. The game is such a great pace for me (my gamer tag is Slower, suits me here). 

Haven't even gotten close to any new content and probably won't for ages. Found a Paradise planet my very first system to stroll around and collect language stones for awhile.

[Fez]

Video games finally back this month after so many COVID-related delays. I'm still totally overwhelmed by the new Pathfinder game, but I'm also very eager to play Deathloop and Tales of Arise. And there's a ton of smaller games that released, or will release, this month that I want to play too, like Encased, Lake, and Lost in Random.

[aceluby]

I never found the combat in W3 to be particularly fun.  It has a style like Dark Souls and especially on harder difficulties even the small mobs of guys can kill you - but the controls are not nearly as tight.  The hit boxes are weird, the rolling is kind of spastic, and it's easy to find yourself out of position or completely surrounded.  Then you also have hordes, not unlike classic ARPGs like Diablo, but to deal with them requires a lot of time and energy - which gets repetitive and boring after a few hours.  I'm sure potions & signs help mitigate this, but in the middle of a battle where you are surrounded I had a very hard time stringing those things together.  It was just too much to manage for my smooth brain, and it felt required as soon as the game started when the first mob faced left me near death with no health potions.  My first time playing I quit a few hours after that.

Now, once I turned down the difficulty it wasn't so bad.  Trash mobs could be dealt with and the bosses could be handled with a bit of potion and sign prep, leaving me to work on a boss in a more DS like approach of getting attacks in when I could and managing my spacing.  So at least I could get around that problem.  But I've since put it down again because there is just SO much useless filler content.  Witcher gear that takes forever to get a set only to be ridiculously under-leveled once you find them all.  Witcher contract quests that get you materials, but rely on the enjoyment of the combat system.  Some side quests that are awesome, but most are just "go here, then there, then over there, then fight this monster and get some crap to sell" and no way to tell which is which when you start them.  There's also a ton of these.  If they cut those all these down by 1/2 it would still be too many.

But Gwent?  Gwent is awesome.  I have the most fun doing quests that get me Gwent cards, or have me playing Gwent, or get me into a spot where I can play a new player.  I basically only do side quests if the title seems like I'll be playing or getting Gwent cards.

I'll come back to it though, likely once I start my rewatch of the TV series in prep for S2.  I wouldn't say I have a love/hate relationship with this game, more like a meh/ugh - and given all the great praise over the years I really expected something... not necessarily better... but different.

[Toth]

1 hour ago, Argonath Diver said:

Bought No Man's Sky a second time, as I simply don't use my ps4 anymore and wanted it on PC. Still 60 bucks surprisingly but it's such great content that I don't mind. I am damn useless at thumbsticks and this late I always will be, so it's nice to use keyboard and mouse. Alas the menus and movement are clearly ported from a console. Absurdly clunky menu navigation. The game is such a great pace for me (my gamer tag is Slower, suits me here). 

Haven't even gotten close to any new content and probably won't for ages. Found a Paradise planet my very first system to stroll around and collect language stones for awhile.

Uhm... how is it still 60 bucks, it's been on sale for weeks because of the new settlement building update? Everywhere I look it's 30 bucks.

 

Well, what am I playing? Well, not much, too busy. Though one of my students ranting about Assassin's Creed Odyssey during a lesson about democracy in Athens caused me to boot up Assassin's Creed Origins again recently. I... still really want to see the pyramids and thankfully Giza is my next step in the main quest after I finished my target in Lethopolis with a twist so insanely obvious I felt really annoyed by it because it once again reminded me of how flimsy the motivations of everyone in this game are to do anything at all, really.

[Caligula_K3]

46 minutes ago, Toth said:

Uhm... how is it still 60 bucks, it's been on sale for weeks because of the new settlement building update? Everywhere I look it's 30 bucks.

 

Well, what am I playing? Well, not much, too busy. Though one of my students ranting about Assassin's Creed Odyssey during a lesson about democracy in Athens caused me to boot up Assassin's Creed Origins again recently. I... still really want to see the pyramids and thankfully Giza is my next step in the main quest after I finished my target in Lethopolis with a twist so insanely obvious I felt really annoyed by it because it once again reminded me of how flimsy the motivations of everyone in this game are to do anything at all, really.

I loved exploring Ptolemaic Egypt, but the plot and writing of Origins was really... not good. Odyssey had better writing, I thought, but it was too big for me. One day I'll go back to it.

What did your student rant about?

[Werthead]

When I played The Witcher 3 I played on Easy because I was having nightmare flashbacks to trying The Witcher 1 on Medium and having an absolute nightmare of a time. Of course, in the interim CDPR had fallen back on less hardcore difficulty levels, so Easy became effectively Story Mode (though you could create a challenge by going into areas 5+ levels too high for you). I ended up not regretting it too much because the combat is solid but unspectacular, and even on Easy mode it still took 88 hours to finish the game. Spending 20+ additional hours just rolling around wasn't something I felt I missed.

[Caligula_K3]

Just now, Werthead said:

When I played The Witcher 3 I played on Easy because I was having nightmare flashbacks to trying The Witcher 1 on Medium and having an absolute nightmare of a time. Of course, in the interim CDPR had fallen back on less hardcore difficulty levels, so Easy became effectively Story Mode (though you could create a challenge by going into areas 5+ levels too high for you). I ended up not regretting it too much because the combat is solid but unspectacular, and even on Easy mode it still took 88 hours to finish the game. Spending 20+ additional hours just rolling around wasn't something I felt I missed.

But think how many minutes of "LAI LAI LAI, LAI LAI LAI LAI LAI, LAI LAI LA LA" you missed!

As for the sidequests, I thought they remained consistently good. Sure, there were some monster hunt quests which were pretty basic, and I eventually got tired of needing to enter Batman detective mode to find tracks, but even many of these quests had fun twists, like the one where monsters put Geralt on trial. I don't think there's a reason to cut any of these out, because you get so much XP from just doing a couple that you're pretty much always overleveled - if you don't want them, you can ignore them.

It's the same with points of interests and treasure hunts. Once I figured out what these were like, I felt completely fine ignoring them when I didn't care, or just doing the ones I ran across as I explored the countryside.

[Toth]

51 minutes ago, Caligula_K3 said:

I loved exploring Ptolemaic Egypt, but the plot and writing of Origins was really... not good. Odyssey had better writing, I thought, but it was too big for me. One day I'll go back to it.

What did your student rant about?

He ranted about how repetitive and boring Odyssey was in between trying to figure out whether he already met Perikles whose funeral speech he was actually supposed to read. XD

Can't say much in regards to the writing as I am not too familiar with the franchise at all, with the prologue of Unity and Origins being the only ones I tried so far. I know I wanted to strangle Arno for being an irresponsible whiny narcissistic idiot quite a few times in just the little bit of Unity I played, so I did take an instant liking to fatherly heroic Bayek and especially his exasperated reactions to the more wacky quests. It's just that I regularly get whiplash about how the game doesn't even bother explaining why Bayek hates the 11 years old boy king so much that he tears down his statues and brutally murders every soldier who's just minding their own business, even long before his wife sided with Kleopatra. Or why I am supposed to keep killing the Order of the Ancients dudes despite successfully avenging Bayek's son once Alexandria is cleared. At least at the latter part even Bayek voices his confusion why he should care, but goes along with it anyway.

Though admittedly, last time I voiced my confusion about this here I was told I can go back to being Batman with a no-kill policy if I just equip my fists as my main weapon and now I feel quite a lot more comfortable continuing my initial pacifist run from before I got the hidden blade by just knocking people out.

And yes, the graphics are still absolutely breathtaking. I regularly just stop to take in the scenery when I see twilight above the Nile or find a particularly scenic farmstead where I watch the farmers busily go about their work.

[Caligula_K3]

9 minutes ago, Toth said:

He ranted about how repetitive and boring Odyssey was in between trying to figure out whether he already met Perikles whose funeral speech he was actually supposed to read. XD

 

Haha... Perikles in Odyssey doesn't have quite as many nice turns of phrases as Perikles in Thucydides. Where's my school of Hellas, Ubisoft?

Yeah, I completely agree with you about Odyssey's story. As you say, it starts out fine, but I quickly lost Bayek's motivation as we moved from villain to villain, each of whom kind of came out of nowhere and didn't have understandable motivations. I don't want to spoil anything for you, but it gets even sillier as the game gets to its ending.

[Argonath Diver]

3 hours ago, Toth said:

Uhm... how is it still 60 bucks, it's been on sale for weeks because of the new settlement building update? Everywhere I look it's 30 bucks.

 

 

Yeah, I was really surprised when I logged onto steam and saw that. It's been on such colossal sales in the past. I guess I simply have terrible timing as a bigtime new content update just released and I guess they ratcheted the price back up to what it was 5 years ago to get fools like me. I probably could have waited a few weeks for another sale (or even til Black Friday) but I had the day off and was really, really jonesing to start fresh. I don't mind, as I'll be putting a whole lot of hours into it. Unless Valheim's content patch coming out really soon pulls me back to that.

I like the leisurely sandbox pace of both games, but it's a lot more fun to just wander around in NMS, whereas I find Valheim's areas just too repetitive and relatively lifeless. On the other hand, I'm far, far more interested in building a colossal Viking fortress than a sci-fi outpost, so both games will still get plenty of play over the next year or whatever.

[Derfel Cadarn]

Playing AC: Odyssey and replaying AC:II at moment. Just got the last seal needed for Altair’s armour; those timed puzzles are a pain. This will be first time I’ve played the Bonfire of the Vanities and Forli DLC.

[Toth]

2 hours ago, Argonath Diver said:

Yeah, I was really surprised when I logged onto steam and saw that. It's been on such colossal sales in the past. I guess I simply have terrible timing as a bigtime new content update just released and I guess they ratcheted the price back up to what it was 5 years ago to get fools like me. I probably could have waited a few weeks for another sale (or even til Black Friday) but I had the day off and was really, really jonesing to start fresh. I don't mind, as I'll be putting a whole lot of hours into it. Unless Valheim's content patch coming out really soon pulls me back to that.

I like the leisurely sandbox pace of both games, but it's a lot more fun to just wander around in NMS, whereas I find Valheim's areas just too repetitive and relatively lifeless. On the other hand, I'm far, far more interested in building a colossal Viking fortress than a sci-fi outpost, so both games will still get plenty of play over the next year or whatever.

Mmh, yes, seems like bad timing when it comes to Steam, but... honestly, I recommend not buying on Steam. If I look at the Humble Store, the sale is actually still ongoing: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/no-mans-sky

[Argonath Diver]

Curses. I buy games so utterly rarely that I didn't even think to shop elsewhere. Alas I out in too many hours and can't refund. 

All good, I'll get likely a few hundred hours of the game over the years, provided eventually 'endgame' building is as engaging as early wandering.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

I got killed repeatedly from a griffin just after the game would restart. One hit every time. When I could finally look at it it's level was just "??" Awesome.

At least I am boat ready now.

[Inkdaub]

You are all high.  I loved every minute of Witcher 3.

I'm hoping to play a bit more Valhalla tonight.