Videogames Killed the TV Star

[Relic]

17 hours ago, Fez said:

Which one?

Pathfinder: WotR: Yes absolutely. There's still a few bugs, but nothing near where Kingmaker was at release; and overall it's a much more polished and engaging game IMO (though Act IV has a really annoying design to it).

Sorry, meant Pathfinder. Are the characters any better than in Kingmaker? I didn't really feel engaged with any of them, altho i enjoyed the gameplay. 

[Fez]

3 hours ago, Relic said:

Sorry, meant Pathfinder. Are the characters any better than in Kingmaker? I didn't really feel engaged with any of them, altho i enjoyed the gameplay. 

Yes, absolutely. YMMV on which characters you like and which ones annoying (from what I can tell, for instance, fan opinion on Nenio is extremely split), but all of them are far, far more engaging than in Kingmaker. They are way more reactive to plot, and there's a ton banter between them; not in the Bioware "while wandering around the map" way, but rather when you're in plot advancing conversations with NPCs. Which really helps with the replayability, since there's I think 11 standard party members and you can only have 5 at any one time in your party.

Most of them are well written and have interesting personal quest lines, and at least one has managed to actually subvert my expectations. There's also a few characters you don't often see well-represented in these kinds of games; for instance a Lawful Evil party member that focus on the 'Law' part rather than the 'Evil' part and is generally a kind and supportive person, so long as you accept his attitude that no sacrifice is too great to defeat the enemy.

There's also a surprisingly large number of party members you can end up killing, and, depending on the mythic path you're taking through the game, it would absolutely make story sense for you to do so. Some paths also have special party members that only they can recruit, I'm not on one of those paths, but I've been told they're generally not as well-written or active as the main party.

The non-party members vary more in quality, but that makes sense considering just how many of them there are. The ones you deal with regularly that are on your side are generally well-written, but they disappointingly often have nothing to say at moments when you'd hope they would.

The wrinkle in all this though is the Crusade system, which replaces the Kingdom management system. It's not in Act I at all, and (so far) isn't in Act IV, and is pretty linear in Act II. But Act III is extremely open-ended and large, I'd guess it's been close to half my playtime. You will spend hours and hours in Act III dealing exclusively with the Crusade system, as well as exploring non-story-related small map areas, and not interacting with characters at all or advancing the plot (And then when you do go to a plot-related large map, that flips on its head). It ends up all feeling a bit disjointed and can be hard to keep track of where things stand with different characters. And you don't want to just mainline the critical path of Act III (if you can figure out what it is on your first playthrough) because then you'll finish too quickly and a bunch of great side quests that have hidden timers before they trigger won't ever go off. It's just not at the level of polish that the much more focused Acts have, and the Crusade system itself is a pretty bad "Heroes of Might and Magic" knock-off. For Owlcats' next pathfinder game, assuming there is one, I'm hoping they drop having some extra system like this and focus on having the party adventure be as great as it can be.

[Werthead]

Switched to Empire of Sin and it's decent, but a bit underwhelming. It's basically Syndicate 1927 meets Crusader Kings if the latter was set entirely in Prohibition Chicago, which is great, balancing combat (turn-based rather than real-time) and detailed (crime) empire management. The problem is that the game's two sides don't harmonise very well, and after giving you these elaborate menus to manage your vast crime empire, you can pretty much ignore it and win the game by just focusing on a hardcore central team of gangsters and rampaging them across the city, taking down each enemy gang one-by-one (the only real way to run into problems is if you spread yourself too thin and declare war on multiple gangs simultaneously).

There's a lot of game systems, like the elaborate loot/equipment system, which you don't really need to pay any attention to and can still win easily (and if you do pay attention to them, you win even more easily).

It's got a lot of colour, though, and the XCOM-ish combat is pretty good, apart from your characters choosing the absolute worst places to take cover at the start of combat, meaning you waste your first time relocating to a place where you are less likely to die. There's some appealingly chunky shotguns and a crazy lady with a field machine gun who's answer to every single problem is to do a Cyril from Archer and lay down suppressing fire that is not very helpful but quite funny.

Also eyeing up Far Cry 6, which seems to be attracting a lot more positive reviews than Far Cry 5, although it's not exactly setting the world on fire with originality.

Diplomacy is Not an Option looks like a fun city-builder mixed in with a tower defence game. Free demo on Steam.

[Gorn]

GTA III, Vice City and San Andreas remasters have been officially announced by Rockstar. I am weirdly unenthusiastic about these news, considering the amount of time I've spent playing these games.

The only one that actually tempts me is Vice City, especially since Liberty City and San Andreas have already been redone in IV and V.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

All my online D2 toons appeared to have been swallowed by the void, including my MF sorc that was close to level 90. This is the kind of thing that will make a person quit a game they love.

[Rhom]

6 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

All my online D2 toons appeared to have been swallowed by the void, including my MF sorc that was close to level 90. This is the kind of thing that will make a person quit a game they love.

Also why having all games online is a bad thing.

(Insert Clint Eastwood on porch GIF here)

[RumHam]

6 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

All my online D2 toons appeared to have been swallowed by the void, including my MF sorc that was close to level 90. This is the kind of thing that will make a person quit a game they love.

I just saw an article that they were doing maintenance and it's done now, so you may want to check again if you haven't ready. I beat Baal at level 41 the other night and I think that's it for me. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Rhom said:

Also why having all games online is a bad thing.

(Insert Clint Eastwood on porch GIF here)

Game isn't solely online. Solo player just isn't how it was meant to be played imo.

1 hour ago, RumHam said:

I just saw an article that they were doing maintenance and it's done now, so you may want to check again if you haven't ready. I beat Baal at level 41 the other night and I think that's it for me. 

You gutless coward. The goal is to get to 99 and then kill all other 99s. The game within in the game is why you play. If you get far enough you can play D1 in D2. The hidden end game content is where it's at.

[polishgenius]

Playing Metroid Dread. It's good. Controls nice and smooth, which isn't always the case in Metroid, and those damn EMMIs add some nice tension - though they are apparently not to everyone's taste.

[RumHam]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

Game isn't solely online. Solo player just isn't how it was meant to be played imo.

You gutless coward. The goal is to get to 99 and then kill all other 99s. The game within in the game is why you play. If you get far enough you can play D1 in D2. The hidden end game content is where it's at.

Huh. I didn't even know there was PvP! as I mentioned before Diablo III was my first and only diablo before this. So I have no idea about any hidden endgame stuff beyond the cow level. I only just realized I could use the cube to upgrade my gems the other day. 

I might have liked it more on PC, but on the switch it seems almost no one is playing, and when you do find someone your communication is limited to a wheel of pre-set phrases. So half the time the other person would just fuck off to a later Act's zone that I could not get to! I've never had more than one other person in a lobby. Without other people it's just like...why bother getting the best gear and whatnot? I moved on to Castlevania and the occasional round of Super Monkey Ball (do not buy this for Monkey Target mode, they fucked it up.) 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 hours ago, RumHam said:

Huh. I didn't even know there was PvP! as I mentioned before Diablo III was my first and only diablo before this. So I have no idea about any hidden endgame stuff beyond the cow level. I only just realized I could use the cube to upgrade my gems the other day. 

I might have liked it more on PC, but on the switch it seems almost no one is playing, and when you do find someone your communication is limited to a wheel of pre-set phrases. So half the time the other person would just fuck off to a later Act's zone that I could not get to! I've never had more than one other person in a lobby. Without other people it's just like...why bother getting the best gear and whatnot? I moved on to Castlevania and the occasional round of Super Monkey Ball (do not buy this for Monkey Target mode, they fucked it up.) 

I'd only play it on PC. I can't see it really working with a controller when you're cycling through eight skills at a time.

And yeah, the cow level is just the tip of the iceberg. There's so much secret shit after that. Keep in mind this is a really old game, and with each patch they tried to add something new to it, just like with D3. 

[Argonath Diver]

I mean I still play a couple hours of an original D2 mod every week. I don't care about D2R's fancified graphics compared to my hundreds of hours of solo self-found guys, my colossal and meticulously organized hoard, and the incredible quality of life changes the mod brings. It's fun to watch a bit of D2R on Twitch as I game, though. Sure wish Blizz had said "Fuck it" and let people mod the hell out of it. I literally would pay a hundred or two for a D2R with full support of mods like Project Diablo I play. The core D2 experience is just inferior.

Tywin has it right though; D2 is like League of Legends or Runescape etc. Sure it's fun for a casual, sub 100 hour gamer. But it's really meant for the real grinders who'll repeat mundane content literally thousands of times without complaint. I know I do.

[Werthead]

On 10/8/2021 at 7:10 PM, Gorn said:

GTA III, Vice City and San Andreas remasters have been officially announced by Rockstar. I am weirdly unenthusiastic about these news, considering the amount of time I've spent playing these games.

The only one that actually tempts me is Vice City, especially since Liberty City and San Andreas have already been redone in IV and V.

They're making it clear these are remasters and polish-ups, not remakes. Completely redoing the games in the style of GTA4/5 I think is impossible without turning them into completely new games.

I'm expecting, at best, GTA3 and VC to be brought up to SA spec in terms of controls, handling, physics etc and all three given a texture polish-up like modders have been able to do with SA, with quite impressive results (I believe the system they used to do that was hard-locked for GTA3 and VC, so they've never managed to upgrade those games in the same way). I'm not expecting much more than that, except maybe a major draw distance upgrade for all three.

A key question will be if they've kept the soundtracks intact, since over the years they've had to pull tunes from VC and SA as licences expire and it became too expensive to re-up on them.

[Fez]

FYI, as a promotion for the upcoming Battlefield 2042, for the next week there's a bundle on steam of Battlefield 4, 1, and 5 with all their DLC for only $10 total. Or you can buy any one of the games with all their DLC for $5. 

I haven't played a Battlefield game since Bad Company 2, but I can't resist a deal that good. And I am still looking for an alternate game to play so I don't burnout on Pathfinder: WotR (I'm past 130 hours now, think I'm getting close to the end of Act IV. I just learned that it's actually a 6 act game though, not 5 acts; but I think act 6 might be just a single final dungeon).

[aceluby]

Was looking for a new RPG and decided instead of buying one I should give Witcher 3 another go. I’m focusing on just the story now and finally got to my first really fun gameplay about 60-70 hours in destroying some portals to save Ciri. Really hoping I can push through this time

[Rhom]

58 minutes ago, aceluby said:

 and finally got to my first really fun gameplay about 60-70 hours in 

This does not inspire me to give it another go...

[aceluby]

2 hours ago, Rhom said:

This does not inspire me to give it another go...

I've started reading the books and am only doing side quests and main quests under my level, and leaving the rest.  A good 1/2 of my playthrough has been doing stuff that I normally do in open world games, but IMO actually deters from the game in W3.  Exploring all the question marks I can, going after contracts, treasure hunts, racing, etc...  Game is just too big and too full of that stuff to make any kind of dent.  Now that I have a more focused approach and turned the difficulty way down so I'm not always pissed at the controls, I'm actually beginning to enjoy the game.  Only took 4 tries.

[RumHam]

I hit a wall in Castlevania: Circle of the Moon. The same thing happened to me twenty years ago, the damn Zombie Dragons. I dunno if I just suck at whipping shit or what. Thankfully I remembered the solution I used years ago. Some rooms have infinitely respawning low hp enemies that move towards you. So I just rubber banded the attack button down so the whip spins. I forgot to check it before I left the house this morning but I should have gained quite a few levels by now! 

[Toth]

1 hour ago, RumHam said:

I hit a wall in Castlevania: Circle of the Moon. The same thing happened to me twenty years ago, the damn Zombie Dragons. I dunno if I just suck at whipping shit or what. Thankfully I remembered the solution I used years ago. Some rooms have infinitely respawning low hp enemies that move towards you. So I just rubber banded the attack button down so the whip spins. I forgot to check it before I left the house this morning but I should have gained quite a few levels by now! 

 

[briantw]

6 hours ago, aceluby said:

I've started reading the books and am only doing side quests and main quests under my level, and leaving the rest.  A good 1/2 of my playthrough has been doing stuff that I normally do in open world games, but IMO actually deters from the game in W3.  Exploring all the question marks I can, going after contracts, treasure hunts, racing, etc...  Game is just too big and too full of that stuff to make any kind of dent.  Now that I have a more focused approach and turned the difficulty way down so I'm not always pissed at the controls, I'm actually beginning to enjoy the game.  Only took 4 tries.

I'd recommend doing the Witcher contracts.  They've all got a little story attached to them and some of them are quite good.