Videogames: New Year, New Thread

[polishgenius]

On 1/28/2022 at 9:35 PM, Poobah said:

Having put a few hours in to Pokemon Legends: Arceus I have to say I'm very impressed so far. This is a very fun game and the first Pokemon game in... forever really to actually innovate and improve on the formula they've been shamelessly re-using since 1996, and it truly elevates the experience; for the first time I'm actually immersed in the world of pokemon, and catching them actually feels fun. I've heard there are "only" 250 or so pokemon in PL:A and I where I was outraged when it came to Sword and Shield lacking certain pokemon here don't even care... I realise now that I never needed the thousand or so pokemon and their various forms all crammed in to one area, I just wanted a fun game.

 

 

Yeah this is fun. There's still refinements to be made, of course, a lot of the research tasks being completeable by bunging pokeballs around until they're done by force of numbers, I feel like that could be refined, but in terms of just the experience of finding and catching Pokemon, it's levels above where it normally is. 
 
Not a particularly strong focus on battling (which is to say, there's plenty of it, but it's mostly neither the main aim of the game nor are you expected to focus on a specific team etc). To the point there isn't a multiplayer battling system. So in that respect it definitely is a spinoff not a mainline game, but it's a good one and one I hope the mainline games to take things from when they get back to them.  

[Werthead]

Approaching the end of Jedi: Fallen Order. Pretty solid game, although it's not a patch on the older Jedi Knight/Outcast/Academy series. The fact that 20-year-old games have better lightsabre combat, better Jedi powers and more freedom in how you approach combat is a little bit embarrassing. But that doesn't mean that Fallen Order is a bad game, just a somewhat janky and underwhelming one, with clear budget and time concessions written all over it.

There's a huge amount of repetition in the game, with each planet having ludicrous sliding sections, immensely long wall-running sequences which then segue into double-jumping sections and an odd mix of you-decide-what-to-do-next and unskippable cut scenes at the end of linear levels. Not to mention half a dozen different varieties of spiders. The game gets confused and falls over very easily if you do things it doesn't expect: I put Dathomir off as long as possible because it sounded hardcore and the net result is that when I did go there, it ended up turning into a massively long slog rather than split between several smaller sections. Worse is that when I went back the second time (to get into the temple itself), it had "forgotten" almost everything I'd done first time, the entire Nightbrother village and all the secrets/chests there had somehow reset (although the actual route through the village seemed to still be open), which was extremely weird. I couldn't be bothered to do all that again.

Combat is very janky, with some of the worst collision detection I've seen outside of 30-year-old Amiga platformers. Boss fights are the worst. Seeing enemy lightsabres going through my character and causing no damage, but their special attack hitting empty air ten feet away and my character taking damage, was pretty poor going. It's also arseholeish how enemies can interrupt their animations to insta-block your attacks, but you are committed to your animations and can't change to a block mid-move. More than once I dodged an enemy attack only to see them doing a really weird bending move in mid-air to still land the attack after I'd moved out the way. Some sort of mid-air Force maneuver? Shame my character can't do the same thing.

The save system is also bullshit. As well as being extremely illogical (they just wanted to steal Dark Souls's system but Dark Souls's world is built around the idea of enemies resetting or respawning; in a Star Wars game it's just weird), it gets really confused between when you're just saving and when you're resting and thus respawning enemies. On multiple times I killed all the enemies in an area, saved (but did not rest) and on the next reload it had instead reset the environment. This happened mostly on Dathomir (and most egregiously before the final boss fight, where's three Nightbrothers who spawn just before you face him; kill them, return to the save point and do not rest, and they'll still respawn, defying the whole point of the system).

Still, once you've levelled up and can Force Push an entire platoon of stormtroopers off a cliff, it is pretty cool. Some of the puzzles in the game are solid, and the graphic design and the environments are pretty good. Some of the new characters are cool, especially Merrin, the semi-sardonic Dathomir Nightsister. The map is a godsend, especially in some of the more confusing vertical areas where the game doesn't do a good signposting of where to go next.

Intrigued by the sequel, especially if they solve the jank, improve the combat rules and perhaps have Merrin as a co-op character.

[Corvinus85]

So I am reaching what I think if the end of the first Act in Expeditions: Rome and I'm annoyed. The whole big battle is pretty cool from a narrative perspective and the soundtrack adds a lot of thrill, but why can't I replace companions with low health with others that are not being used? I have more legionnaires than the slots allowed and it's irritating to not be able to call on one of them and replace Bestia who's been with 1 point of health since the end of the first phase. I understand the strike team can't have replacements since they're behind enemy lines but the guys that are part of the frontal assault should have backup. I have the sinking feeling I'll have to redo the entire battle if I lose one my companions.

[Fez]

9 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

So I am reaching what I think if the end of the first Act in Expeditions: Rome and I'm annoyed. The whole big battle is pretty cool from a narrative perspective and the soundtrack adds a lot of thrill, but why can't I replace companions with low health with others that are not being used? I have more legionnaires than the slots allowed and it's irritating to not be able to call on one of them and replace Bestia who's been with 1 point of health since the end of the first phase. I understand the strike team can't have replacements since they're behind enemy lines but the guys that are part of the frontal assault should have backup. I have the sinking feeling I'll have to redo the entire battle if I lose one my companions.

How did you have more people than slots? I believe the max is 12 (you+5 companions+6 praetorians) and IIRC that first siege battle had 12 open slots across the teams. Am I mis-remembering things?

Or do you just mean narratively it doesn't make sense that the main assault couldn't swap out injured folks with some random, nameless fellas from the legion? Because that I agree with yeah; but the gameplay systems simply aren't there for that unfortunately.

[aceluby]

Sony plans on buying Bungie for 3.6B

 

[Corvinus85]

2 hours ago, Fez said:

How did you have more people than slots? I believe the max is 12 (you+5 companions+6 praetorians) and IIRC that first siege battle had 12 open slots across the teams. Am I mis-remembering things?

Or do you just mean narratively it doesn't make sense that the main assault couldn't swap out injured folks with some random, nameless fellas from the legion? Because that I agree with yeah; but the gameplay systems simply aren't there for that unfortunately.

I have 13 praetorians (the 5 story companions and 8 recruited from the legion) + my character. So 2 praetorians sat out the battle and I would have loved to be able to use them as replacements. I also had 3 centurions that did nothing for the biggest battle of the campaign. Anyway, I managed to pull through. Two of my companions had critical injuries.

[Fez]

6 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

I have 13 praetorians (the 5 story companions and 8 recruited from the legion) + my character. So 2 praetorians sat out the battle and I would have loved to be able to use them as replacements. I also had 3 centurions that did nothing for the biggest battle of the campaign. Anyway, I managed to pull through. Two of my companions had critical injuries.

Oh, it is 8 instead 6. I always forget their number because they are so interchangeable. I did think it was a 1-to-1 match between slots and available people though. In later battles I know it is; because I had to reload when I realized I had open slots because some of my praetorians were unavailable due to camp assignments.

[Werthead]

2 hours ago, aceluby said:

Sony plans on buying Bungie for 3.6B

 

Interesting. This feels more like a riposte to Microsoft buying Zenimax-Bethesda then it does to them buying Activision Blizzard.

It is small fry, though. Microsoft gets Call of Duty, Diablo, The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Doom, Wolfenstein, StarCraft, WarCraft, Overwatch and Guitar Hero, and Sony gets a potential future third Destiny game and maybe new IPs many years down the road?

If Sony really want to fight back they need to go after Take-Two. Destiny isn't a unit-shifter, but Grand Theft Auto very obviously is (and BioShock, Borderlands, NBA and Red Dead are nice bonuses). The only problem is that by buying Zynga recently, Take-Two have dramatically boosted their value and it might be that Sony find that a harder pill to swallow (some might even say that's the point).

The other option is EA, but buying EA would take a lot of Sony's financial resources and stretch the company.

[aceluby]

12 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Interesting. This feels more like a riposte to Microsoft buying Zenimax-Bethesda then it does to them buying Activision Blizzard.

It is small fry, though. Microsoft gets Call of Duty, Diablo, The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Doom, Wolfenstein, StarCraft, WarCraft, Overwatch and Guitar Hero, and Sony gets a potential future third Destiny game and maybe new IPs many years down the road?

If Sony really want to fight back they need to go after Take-Two. Destiny isn't a unit-shifter, but Grand Theft Auto very obviously is (and BioShock, Borderlands, NBA and Red Dead are nice bonuses). The only problem is that by buying Zynga recently, Take-Two have dramatically boosted their value and it might be that Sony find that a harder pill to swallow (some might even say that's the point).

The other option is EA, but buying EA would take a lot of Sony's financial resources and stretch the company.

It's definitely more of a Bethesda-like purchase than that enormous Activision/Blizzard.  Funny thing about all these big buy-ins is that I haven't played a signle game developed by any of these in years.  Skyrim when it first came out on PS4, but that's really it and I still have never even finished it.  I'm just sitting here with my popcorn to see where the chips fall.

[Fez]

22 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Interesting. This feels more like a riposte to Microsoft buying Zenimax-Bethesda then it does to them buying Activision Blizzard.

It is small fry, though. Microsoft gets Call of Duty, Diablo, The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Doom, Wolfenstein, StarCraft, WarCraft, Overwatch and Guitar Hero, and Sony gets a potential future third Destiny game and maybe new IPs many years down the road?

If Sony really want to fight back they need to go after Take-Two. Destiny isn't a unit-shifter, but Grand Theft Auto very obviously is (and BioShock, Borderlands, NBA and Red Dead are nice bonuses). The only problem is that by buying Zynga recently, Take-Two have dramatically boosted their value and it might be that Sony find that a harder pill to swallow (some might even say that's the point).

The other option is EA, but buying EA would take a lot of Sony's financial resources and stretch the company.

And for what they paid, it sounds like Sony isn't even getting Destiny to go exclusive. Basically all they're paying for is the guarantee that it won't go Xbox exclusive instead as well as some amount of the revenue.

[briantw]

Sony buying Bungie is huge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is what I probably would have said if it happened 15 years ago.

[Darryk]

Now we just need one of them to buy EA and wreak terrible vengeance on that company for all the suffering they've inflicted on gamers.

[Werthead]

56 minutes ago, aceluby said:

It's definitely more of a Bethesda-like purchase than that enormous Activision/Blizzard.  Funny thing about all these big buy-ins is that I haven't played a signle game developed by any of these in years.  Skyrim when it first came out on PS4, but that's really it and I still have never even finished it.  I'm just sitting here with my popcorn to see where the chips fall.

I have to say at over $3 billion, Bungie feels really overvalued. They have one property and Sony aren't getting dibs on it. Bungie have indicated they won't release a new game until at least 2025, since the Destiny 2 DLC cycle is planned to run through the end of 2024.

Bethesda, on the other hand, have two absolutely massive AAA-megatier franchises (Elder Scrolls and Fallout) and then a whole host of very solid-performing, name-recognition franchises (Doom, Wolfenstein) and a bunch of highly-regarded franchises which are more niche, but generate discussion (Dishonored, Prey). And the first game to really capitalise on that deal (Starfield) will be out in less than ten months.

It feels like Bethesda should be valued at 3-5 times what Bungie is, not barely twice.

18 minutes ago, Darryk said:

Now we just need one of them to buy EA and wreak terrible vengeance on that company for all the suffering they've inflicted on gamers.

This feels rather hyperbolic. EA have had some iffy working and monetisation practices, but from what we now know, it sounds like they're a better place to work than Activision Blizzard ever were.

I think anyone swallowing EA is tough. They'd be more expensive than Activision, though how expensive depends on the type of buyout. It might cost $80 billion, but it might cost over $100 billion, and even Microsoft might blink at doing that having just shelled out $77 billion on Activision and Bethesda.

For Sony to buy EA they'd need a really crazy financing package. It'd be tough going and would probably stretch the company more than they'd be willing to go. That's why I think it's much more likely they'll go for Take Two.

[Kalbear]

At this point Microsoft should just buy Sony and look very sternly at Nintendo

[briantw]

2 hours ago, Kalibuster said:

At this point Microsoft should just buy Sony and look very sternly at Nintendo

Meanwhile Nintendo is like, "Hey guys!  We just made a game you can control with your breath!"

[Arakasi]

As someone who has been at EA for ten years yeah I’d say it’s a good place to work at. Definitely worlds different from what I’ve heard of other at Activision. We’ve talked about stuff like that happening given recent news but not sure how realistic it is. Stuff like this has been going around as rumors for years though. 

[briantw]

1 hour ago, Arakasi said:

As someone who has been at EA for ten years yeah I’d say it’s a good place to work at. Definitely worlds different from what I’ve heard of other at Activision. We’ve talked about stuff like that happening given recent news but not sure how realistic it is. Stuff like this has been going around as rumors for years though. 

The argument against EA seems to be more based on the way they would buy up popular studios, run them into the ground, and eventually shutter them more so than their working conditions.  People dislike EA because they ruined studios like BioWare and a dozen others, not because they are a terrible place to work.

[karaddin]

Regardless of how big a deal Bungie is individually, the ongoing trend of consolidating everything into a handful of companies is not a good one

[Arakasi]

1 hour ago, briantw said:

The argument against EA seems to be more based on the way they would buy up popular studios, run them into the ground, and eventually shutter them more so than their working conditions.  People dislike EA because they ruined studios like BioWare and a dozen others, not because they are a terrible place to work.

That’s an old tired narrative too as seen by acquisitions like Respawn. Sure there was good arguments against things when Richitello ran things but that stuff has all changed since Wilson took over.

[Fez]

1 hour ago, karaddin said:

Regardless of how big a deal Bungie is individually, the ongoing trend of consolidating everything into a handful of companies is not a good one

I'm not sure it really matters that much. The Japanese companies will never consolidate very much because the government there won't allow it, and they remain a huge part of the games world. There may only end up being a handful of AAA developers outside that; but it'll still be enough for competition. And the beauty of games is that there will always be new studios popping up in the indie space. Plus, any of the big tech companies not really in gaming right now could make a big investment in the future.