Videogames: New Year, New Thread

[kungtotte]

13 hours ago, polishgenius said:

 

Games should be as long as they need to be. A Short Hike is one of the best open worlds of the last few years and I'm pretty sure you can complete the main objective in under an hour and finish absolutely everything in six or so. 

Sometimes pricing becomes a concern - like as much as I enjoyed Metroid Dread, it does feel a bit of a swizz that it's a full-price Switch game when comparable indie Metroidvanias of similar quality give you much more content for like half or a third of the price- but other than that, nah. 

Yeah I agree games should have a playtime that matches their story/content, but I feel like a lot of the time they are padded with fluff to artificially inflate playtime as a selling point. I'd rather play a really good game in 10 hours than slog through a game that's 75 hours only because they added so much fluff to be able to put "75 hours of content!" in the marketing package.

I wouldn't be thrilled about a €60 price point for that 10 hour game, which is a fair criticism of short games, but you then also have to factor in replayability in total playtime.

[Darryk]

18 hours ago, IlyaP said:

How long is Jade Empire? 

I'd estimate around 30 hours, I think. I don't remember there being a huge amount of side-quests.

[IlyaP]

6 hours ago, Darryk said:

I'd estimate around 30 hours, I think. I don't remember there being a huge amount of side-quests.

Thanks @Darryk. Will give it a go then! 

[IlyaP]

Picked up God of War and Pascal's Wager: Ultimate Edition on Steam today. 

Here's hoping neither suck.

[Ramsay B.]

God of War is amazing!

[Werthead]

Jade Empire doesn't even have inventory management, let alone side-quests, and was also BioWare's first-ever experiment with a real-time, directly controlled combat system (two years before Mass Effect).

A very interesting game. It also had John Cleese in it taking the piss out of World of WarCraft, which is random but amusing.

I have been looking at God of War, especially at the surprisingly reasonable launch price (which I can save another £10 on using the Epic Store coupon, but I think I'd prefer the convenience of Steam). Although I'm also feeling finally like embarking on the Mass Effect Legendary Edition playthrough.

I should really stay on target and finish my OG Final Fantasy VII replay though.

[IlyaP]

9 hours ago, Ramsay B. said:

God of War is amazing!

I don't understand this game's save system. Why even bother with having one if it doesn't take one back to the instance but rather to the nearest checkpoint?

[IlyaP]

8 hours ago, Werthead said:

A very interesting game. It also had John Cleese in it taking the piss out of World of WarCraft, which is random but amusing.

Wait, what?

[Darryk]

2 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Wait, what?

Yeah they got John Cleese to do the voice of a rather amusing character that shows up. It was one of my first experiences of a big name celebrity doing a voice in a video game.

[IlyaP]

11 hours ago, Darryk said:

Yeah they got John Cleese to do the voice of a rather amusing character that shows up. It was one of my first experiences of a big name celebrity doing a voice in a video game.

That is...wicked awesome. 

[Poobah]

Everyone enjoying Hades lately might appreciate the all aspects race from ADGQ this week, I certainly did. Very impressive runs from both racers, they play through using Demeter fists, Achilles spear, Nemesis sword, Eris rail, Beowulf shield, and Hera bow, with the last three runs using Extreme Measures 4 thanks to a donation incentive:

 

[Toth]

On 1/13/2022 at 11:52 PM, RumHam said:

I've walled Thrumbos in before so they couldn't leave while I tried to tame them. 

... seems I'm not fast enough for that. I soon realized that my animal handling skills wouldn't rise fast enough only from taming two muffalos, so I decided to hunt the Thrumbos instead. I noticed that one of the two was 200 years old and had a number of health issues, so I thought to go for that one first and relatively easily took it down (with all six of my colonists). The next morning I was looking around for the other one... aaaand it was gone. So much for that. I think they were only two or three days on my map. But hey, at least now I know that taking them is a very time sensitive job.

Other than that not much happened. The father of one of my characters was part of a raiding party. Luckily he was like 100 years old and his two companions were much faster, got mowed down and he then turned and fled. Soon afterwards the same faction invited me to peace talks. I accepted, went there, they ended in failure (I guess a social skill of 6 won't cut it) and on my way back a half-naked barbarian of their faction attacked me. I brought him with me as animal feed.

In the meantime Spring has arrived and my barn is still almost full. Now that the temperatures rise and the fruits aren't frozen anymore, I have a feeling it will spoil sooner rather than later now, so I've started to turn some of it into packaged survival meals while at the same time freely using it to tame two boomalopes that I kept in a pen faaaar outside my base to milk them for chemfuel and then sell them to the next traders. For the chemfuel and my explosive weapons I constructed a separate shack in a part of my base nobody regularly passes, solely for the sake of getting them a bit further away from my two pyromaniac colonists. I'm thinking about building a chemfuel reactor for emergency situations. It would be placed in the large room I built south of my second stockpile that I'm currently using as a secondary kitchen for survival rations (though getting to my freezer for meat is a chore), a gun smithy and, like, my fourth dining room. Fucking 'ate without table' mood debuff made me go overkill.

And yes, I still haven't managed to build my inside farm and my southern wall. I somehow have so much to do that I barely get to make someone cut the stones that I need for such an endeavor. I also had to do some mining trips because I keep running out of steel. But hey, at least now I've finished my geothermal generator. Sigh... still so much to do...

[Werthead]

Started off with Jedi: Fallen Order, which is splendidly old-skool. Very Jedi Knight/Jedi Academy in how it plays, complete with being able to die from falling off great heights (I'd grown so used to invisible walls in games preventing that, that was quite a surprise) or through otherwise just being an idiot. Refreshing.

Though once again I am mildly concerned that only 62% of people who've ever installed and fired up the game made it to joining the crew of the Mantis, which happens at the end of the first chapter, about 25 minutes into the game.

[RumHam]

1 hour ago, Toth said:

my two pyromaniac colonists.

Ouch! I hate those guys. Like I'm sorry you had to eat without a table but is igniting the chemfuel reserves really the answer?! I'll recruit just about anyone, but no pyromaniacs. 

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

Though once again I am mildly concerned that only 62% of people who've ever installed and fired up the game made it to joining the crew of the Mantis, which happens at the end of the first chapter, about 25 minutes into the game.

I'm one of those 62%! It was on Gamepass and I heard it was kinda Dark Soulsy. Which it wasn't at least in that early part. I think I was on a train when I lost interest? I should probably go back to it sometime. But I'd imagine most of those 62% were gamepass people. 

[Arakasi]

Got further into Hades now. Getting up to like heat 4-6 with bow and rail. Spear is like at 3-4 and Shield 1. Haven’t tried with sword or fist. I just find I don’t like the dash-strike playstyle that both of those armaments are built on. 

I do have four weapons maxed out now. Chiron bow, Eris rail, Chaos shield and Achilles spear. Haven’t talked enough with people to unlock any hidden aspects. Surprisingly having a hard time with chaos shield. I finally barely beat heat one with it. Just find the single target damage to be poor unless you just go dash strike and such. I really liked the Achilles spear first time I tried it. Lots of damage with an ice wine build. Chiron and Eris are both a lot of fun to play and I can try various boons with it.

Not sure who I’ll try next. Maybe Talos or something. I think I like fist more than sword. Sword hammer boons are just so boring for the most part. I guess I could try Zag sword for the cheese cursed blade build.

[IlyaP]

3 hours ago, Werthead said:

Started off with Jedi: Fallen Order, which is splendidly old-skool. Very Jedi Knight/Jedi Academy in how it plays, complete with being able to die from falling off great heights (I'd grown so used to invisible walls in games preventing that, that was quite a surprise) or through otherwise just being an idiot. Refreshing.

It's such a fun game. And with almost no padding. It's terrific. 

[Slurktan]

5 hours ago, Werthead said:

Started off with Jedi: Fallen Order, which is splendidly old-skool. Very Jedi Knight/Jedi Academy in how it plays, complete with being able to die from falling off great heights (I'd grown so used to invisible walls in games preventing that, that was quite a surprise) or through otherwise just being an idiot. Refreshing.

Though once again I am mildly concerned that only 62% of people who've ever installed and fired up the game made it to joining the crew of the Mantis, which happens at the end of the first chapter, about 25 minutes into the game.

I thought it odd you didn't make the actual comparison but I forgot you never really played the games but it should be called Dark Souls with a Lightsaber.  Still despite the combat being derivative it is a fun game.

[Fez]

Played the 5 hour (!l) demo of Expeditions: Rome, which comes out this week. Feels real solid, with some nice upgrades from Vikings to the gameplay systems.

Only thing I'm not sure about is the Legion battle system, though you only get one of those in the demo so maybe it gets better. It reminds me of the Pathfinder: WoTR crusade system. It functions differently, but it is yet another attempt to add a gameplay system to represent large scale battles and logistics. And in both cases it feels like a lot more time was needed to make something fun.

I also started playing the new Supraland game but had to stop when I softlocked it and my save checkpoint was after the softwood. From an online search, it appears I'm hardly the only one with this issue and not only in the place I did it. A game built so heavily around exploration and puzzles should not be so easy to sequence beak into a softlock.

[Poobah]

11 hours ago, Arakasi said:

Surprisingly having a hard time with chaos shield. I finally barely beat heat one with it. Just find the single target damage to be poor unless you just go dash strike and such.

One thing you can do extremely well with Chaos shield in single target is stack up things that stack on big single targets if you release the barrage of shields at point blank range. Unfortunately from what I've been told this doesn't work with Zeus special because it apparently has an internal cooldown on how often a lightning bolt can hit a single target (same reason it's not as good with Chrion as you'd hope) but it is incredible with Dionysus, and can be fairly good with Demeter if you get the boon that causes a damage explosion at 10 stacks. I haven't tried it with the stacking doom Ares boon but I imagine the performance would be decent enough too.

[Werthead]

15 hours ago, RumHam said:

I'm one of those 62%! It was on Gamepass and I heard it was kinda Dark Soulsy. Which it wasn't at least in that early part. I think I was on a train when I lost interest? I should probably go back to it sometime. But I'd imagine most of those 62% were gamepass people. 

62% on Steam only, not including Gamepass.

It is kind of Dark Soulsy (though lite) but the train bit is basically a tutorial for movement rather than lightsabre combat.