Videogames Killed the TV Star

[Fez]

A Saints Row reboot was announced at Gamescom, and based on the trailer...

I've seen some people deeply concerned online that it may have turned into a 4-player co-op game like so many other recent announcements have been. However, per an earlier press briefing, https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/saints-row-reboot-reveal this is not the case. There is drop-in co-op available, like the original had; but this is still a single player game where you play as a fully customizable Boss. One character in the trailer is just the default Boss I think, and the other 3 characters are simply your main crew. In terms of tone and content, it sounds like it's going to (or at least what they're aiming it to be) is the best parts of Saints Row 2 and 3 mixed together. So way more grounded than the way things got, but with at least some of the flair and panache that showed up starting in 3.

I didn't much care for Gat Out of Hell, and Agents of Mayhem was supposedly terrible (I never touched it). I'm really hoping this can be a strong comeback from Volition.

[Rhom]

I never played any of the Saints Row games.  It did pop up as the free game on Epic yesterday, so I did claim it.

[GallowKnight]

2 hours ago, Fez said:

A Saints Row reboot was announced at Gamescom, and based on the trailer...

I've seen some people deeply concerned online that it may have turned into a 4-player co-op game like so many other recent announcements have been. However, per an earlier press briefing, https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/saints-row-reboot-reveal this is not the case. There is drop-in co-op available, like the original had; but this is still a single player game where you play as a fully customizable Boss. One character in the trailer is just the default Boss I think, and the other 3 characters are simply your main crew. In terms of tone and content, it sounds like it's going to (or at least what they're aiming it to be) is the best parts of Saints Row 2 and 3 mixed together. So way more grounded than the way things got, but with at least some of the flair and panache that showed up starting in 3.

I didn't much care for Gat Out of Hell, and Agents of Mayhem was supposedly terrible (I never touched it). I'm really hoping this can be a strong comeback from Volition.

I'm not feeling that trailer at all. The characters remind me of Watch Dogs 2 and not in a good way.

[Toth]

On 8/24/2021 at 5:09 AM, kungtotte said:

I think I'll put those off for now since this game has capitalized my gaming time lately and there are other games I want to play.

Yeah, look at me: I just now was waiting at a train station and there was a helicopter hovering around somewhere close nearby. I was listening in closely waiting for it to crash down... Yeah, that's what playing Fallout 4 does to you. XD

Also I think your approach of rushing the main quest is actually quite sensible when I consider how irritated I am whenever I go back on track of the main quest and even though my character spent about a month dicking around the wasteland, he's suddenly shouting "WHERE IS SHAAAWN!!!11" as if he just crawled out of the Vault screaming for veangance.

... actually now that I think about it, why isn't there a dialogue reaction by Shaun going "I hate you, dad!" when you acted as if you couldn't care less about finding him.

There is also the issue that my level 60 character now has with the enemy scaling so high that even though I got all the gun perks, I still often end up emptying a whole magazine of bullets into someone's head and they just look annoyed.

On 8/24/2021 at 5:09 AM, kungtotte said:

The settlements feature is a bit bolted on and I think ultimately a bit pointless, and I ended up not really using it aside from building up Sanctuary a little bit and the bare minimum at The Castle, only to complete objectives. I think it would've been better if they had pre-planned building patterns for the various settlements that grew organically as the player invested time and resources into them rather than force the player to build them all up themselves.

I do like the settlement mechanic very much, I just feel they crammed far too many settlements into the game and with extremely crappy build areas as well. Why am I so often forced to build on a tiny ridge with no flat surfaces and barely 10 meters of space in every direction? This is bullshit! At least Vault 88 and the Bar Harbor settlements are fine. The letter are also interesting from a narrative POV as you establish them by helping the harbormen wrestle them back from the fog. And they are huge! I was especially astonished by a sawmill settlement that encompasses a huge building with four or five floors, an extremely lenghty river front and a fairground with a little stadium.

On 8/24/2021 at 5:09 AM, kungtotte said:

As I mentioned previously I think the SPECIAL/perk system is really smooth and streamlined in this version and I hope they repeat it for future games. The gun modding is way out of hand and feels really overwhelming at the start, and also very quickly turns the looting aspect of the game into just plain scavenging for materials. In previous titles every time a gun dropped you got a little bit excited because it might be an upgrade, and you had to make real decisions between different guns. Gun A had more damage, but Gun B had a better scope. Which do you pick? In FO4 you pick whichever and mod out the weaknesses.

Mmh... to be fair, I never touched any gun nuts perks and therefore ignored the modding and therefore always had to work with whatever I can grab. So... I guess for me it's not too much of an issue. Come to think of it, maybe that is the reason why my guns do so poor against the biggest enemies...

And in regards to the perks... well, the thing I wish for the next Fallout would be dialogue choices opening up depending on your skills just like New Vegas has. I do think the perk system makes that somewhat difficult to implement and makes it easy for Bethesda to go for the braindead dialogue wheel of Fallout 4.

On 8/23/2021 at 8:44 PM, Werthead said:

New Vegas is, from a narrative and thematic standpoint, infinitely superior to Fallout 4 and probably the best game ever made with that creaky engine. However, it isn't great at being what Bethesda does do well, an open-world playground. It's distinctly limited in that sense and there's bits of it which are a bit too on-rails compared to the other Bethesda games.

Well, that's the consensus I hear everywhere. That you can't explore as freely I don't mind if your agency during the story is respected that much. Though I guess I will try to get through Fallout 4 first. Just got back to the Far Harbor main quest line. I must say... Fallout 4 already burned me so much with my choices not mattering at all that I ended up super annoyed about the really good looking quest Kasumi gives you to spy on DiMa. I... at first dared to feel proud that I was able to do it when I immediately decided to collect all evidence and then confront DiMa with it instead of telling Kasumi... at least until I realized that I would have gotten the quest to infiltrate the children of the Atom either way. -.- For fuck's sake, Fallout, give me just that little bit of agency!

[Gorn]

Rebooted Saints Row looks interesting, I just hope they don't take it too far in the WACKY! direction that made me stop playing after 3. For me, 2 is still the pinnacle of the series. Unfortunately, the original PC port of 2 is practically unplayable without mods.

[Toth]

Interesting that everyone says so about Saints Row 2. I got it in a Humble Bundle and wondered the entire time whether this is just me sucking at the game so much that I was utterly unable to get anywhere with a car without crashing everywhere...

[Heartofice]

Fallout 4 gets a lot of flack on the webs but I do think it’s a good game if you play it in the right way. 
 

Ive never come close to finishing the main storyline, because I play the game as an apocalypse simulator, with survival mode on. It’s basically the only reason to ever interact with most of the mechanics of the game. If you just race through the plot you miss out on basically all the interesting stuff and atmosphere. 
 

Sure the graphics are a bit outdated, even more amazing they thought they could just reuse them for 76. But as an open world game it’s really well done.

As an RPG it’s quite shit though, as the plot is not great, dialogue is a joke and it railroads your into certain character types to cheese the game.

[RumHam]

15 minutes ago, Gorn said:

Rebooted Saints Row looks interesting, I just hope they don't take it too far in the WACKY! direction that made me stop playing after 3. For me, 2 is still the pinnacle of the series. Unfortunately, the original PC port of 2 is practically unplayable without mods.

I just saw an article yesterday about how the guy doing most of the work to fix it just died of cancer.

[Werthead]

Bethesda hitting the hype cycle this early is unusual for them. Let's see if it pays off.

[Fez]

18 minutes ago, Gorn said:

Rebooted Saints Row looks interesting, I just hope they don't take it too far in the WACKY! direction that made me stop playing after 3. For me, 2 is still the pinnacle of the series. Unfortunately, the original PC port of 2 is practically unplayable without mods.

I like the overall tone of 2 the most; but 3 was the best at nailing singular moments (the "Power" parachute, "I Need a Hero", things like that) and really fleshed out the rest of the non-Gat crew. 

[Werthead]

19 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

I've yet to finish Chimera Squad. Something about the game just isn't jiving with me. I find the unrest mechanic even more annoying than the nation support mechanic from Enemy Unknown on which this is based.

The unrest mechanic is much easier to manage, though, and the game is relatively short and sweet (you can put it away in under 20 hours).

I do think as an experimental side-game, it works very well. I'd be hesitant about some of the changes being made permanent in an XCOM 3 mainline title though.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Just finished RDR. What a great game! 

Spoiler

It's interesting that they made the sequel a prequel given how the game ends. I just guess that means RDR3 will be Jack's story.

Can't wait to see what the zombie version is like. 

[RumHam]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

Just finished RDR. What a great game! 

  Reveal hidden contents

It's interesting that they made the sequel a prequel given how the game ends. I just guess that means RDR3 will be Jack's story.

Can't wait to see what the zombie version is like. 

Just making sure, did you do the last stranger mission that's only available

as jack?

https://reddead.fandom.com/wiki/Remember_My_Family 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

8 hours ago, RumHam said:

Just making sure, did you do the last stranger mission that's only available

 

  Reveal hidden contents

as jack?

 

https://reddead.fandom.com/wiki/Remember_My_Family 

Yep, I did it, but sadly Nick Fury didn't show up after the end credits to recruit Jack to join S.H.I.E.L.D.

The game says I completed 76% of the missions, but I believe I did everything besides outside of two purple missions (the ones where you have to collect flowers and help build a plane). Not really sure what else there could be to do. 

[Inkdaub]

I just sorted out all my WoW addons for no real reason.  I logged in for a minute and it was very quiet.

[Slurktan]

10 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Just finished RDR. What a great game! 

  Hide contents

It's interesting that they made the sequel a prequel given how the game ends. I just guess that means RDR3 will be Jack's story.

Can't wait to see what the zombie version is like. 

Well the time period where RDR ends is just before WW1. Presumably they think you can't make a good western at that point. If they do an RDR3 I would guess back further or be about Sadie post RDR2. Doing a Jack story would be kind of redundant to John's in RDR1 as well.

[Rhom]

2 hours ago, Inkdaub said:

I just sorted out all my WoW addons for no real reason.  I logged in for a minute and it was very quiet.

I read somewhere that it has lost over 50% of its subscribers since 2017.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Slurktan said:

Well the time period where RDR ends is just before WW1. Presumably they think you can't make a good western at that point. If they do an RDR3 I would guess back further or be about Sadie post RDR2. Doing a Jack story would be kind of redundant to John's in RDR1 as well.

One of the narrative themes is changing with the times, though it doesn’t actually show up much. Maybe they could have Jack play a role in the early rise of the mafia?

[Derfel Cadarn]

Been playing a replay of Assassins Creed 2, albeit first time playing the remastered version. Looka good though Odyssey puts it to shame. Havjng fun, just starting sequence 6.

[Werthead]

2 hours ago, Slurktan said:

Well the time period where RDR ends is just before WW1. Presumably they think you can't make a good western at that point. If they do an RDR3 I would guess back further or be about Sadie post RDR2. Doing a Jack story would be kind of redundant to John's in RDR1 as well.

I think RDR3 would almost inevitably be about the gang in its heyday, 20+ years before RDR2.