Video Games - Waiting for a New AAA Game (that isn't Elden Ring)

[IlyaP]

I've completed my replay of Rise of the Tomb Raider (RotTR). The challenge tombs were a bit more gamified than in Tomb Raider: Survivor, but still mostly felt like logical extensions of the world the game presented.

RotTR is widely considered to be the best game in the Survivor trilogy, and understandbly so, as it built upon and improved the mechanics of the first game and maintained what worked and jettisoned what didn't - including the desaturated colors. RotTR feels much more vivid and colorful.

The game's central mcguffin - the divine source - is a bit vaguer than that of the first game, and leaves a lot to player inference. That said, it's still nowhere near as daft as Shadow of the Tomb Raider's mcguffin. Yes, it is vaguely more science-fictional in nature, but that's mostly ignored - which is probably for the best.

On the characterisation side of things: Lara's characterisation in RotTR is a logical progression from Tomb Raider: Survivor, but her motivations seem to be, like the game's themes, all over the map, and a bit of a jumbled mess. A history of the writing process of this game would be extremely interesting to read, to better understand what happened with the writing in this game.

The game is also very poorly optimised, with several locations requiring graphical effects to be turned down to stabilise the framerate - even on contemporary high-end systems. 

Finally, new composer Bobby Tahouri did an excellent job of taking the sonic textures and ideas established by Jason Graves and expanding upon them logically.

Onwards now to my replay of Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the final installment in the Survivor trilogy.

[aceluby]

On 8/7/2022 at 3:25 PM, Fez said:

Anyone played Nioh 2; how does it compare difficulty-wise to Elden Ring? Is it similar or significantly harder?

I think it’s a bit easier once you get the mechanics down. 

[Werthead]

Spider-Man looks like it's running great on PC and even on the Steam Deck.

[Werthead]

So I picked up Spider-Man and it's great, once you get used to the controls for staying in the air. It's basically the video game that lets you finally just be Spider-Man, doing Spider-Man stuff, like Arkham Asylum was the game that finally just let you be Batman.

[dog-days]

A remake of Pharaoh is the pipeline. I loved that game – the way it realised the annual Nile flood was beautiful, and could have been bottled and sold as a cure for world-weariness. The original is on GOG for less than nine pounds. Hmmm - very tempted. 

[Toth]

3 hours ago, dog-days said:

A remake of Pharaoh is the pipeline. I loved that game – the way it realised the annual Nile flood was beautiful, and could have been bottled and sold as a cure for world-weariness. The original is on GOG for less than nine pounds. Hmmm - very tempted. 

Just looked into my order history. I bought Pharaoh at GOG for 4.59 € during a sale. There are always sales all the time, so maybe a little patience can shave some more off the price tag.

[briantw]

Cult of the Lamb is some unholy hybrid between Hades, Don't Starve, and Binding of Isaac.  Absolutely gorgeous 2D visuals, fun combat, a lovely aesthetic, and you can make old people fight to the death.  What's more to want in a game?

[RumHam]

53 minutes ago, briantw said:

Cult of the Lamb is some unholy hybrid between Hades, Don't Starve, and Binding of Isaac.  Absolutely gorgeous 2D visuals, fun combat, a lovely aesthetic, and you can make old people fight to the death.  What's more to want in a game?

I've only got six followers so far but I'm loving it.

[briantw]

4 hours ago, RumHam said:

I've only got six followers so far but I'm loving it.

I think I was at around ten when I quit last night.  I played it for like five hours straight though which is exceedingly rare for me these days.  I am also loving it.  The art style is awesome when contrasted with the actual subject matter, and the gameplay is fun without being too difficult, at least on the default difficulty. 

The challenge seems to come from finding a balance between going out and adventuring and tending to your flock.  Spend too much time adventuring and your followers might start starving or sowing dissent, but you have to go out and explore to get the supplies to continue upgrading your base and keep everyone fed.

[RumHam]

I only just realized villagers have been asking me questions and the answer prompts are off screen on the steam deck. I got "refused quest" and couldn't understand what happened. Then someone else talked to me and just stood there and I realized I could see the bottom of the two response options at the top of the screen.

[briantw]

7 minutes ago, RumHam said:

I only just realized villagers have been asking me questions and the answer prompts are off screen on the steam deck. I got "refused quest" and couldn't understand what happened. Then someone else talked to me and just stood there and I realized I could see the bottom of the two response options at the top of the screen.

One of them made me feed him a bowl of poop.

[RumHam]

5 minutes ago, briantw said:

One of them made me feed him a bowl of poop.

Yeah, I got that too but I never realized I had a choice in the matter. I may start over now because my faith has bottomed out. First I've got to find some settings where I can actually see the whole screen.

The really weird thing is that it takes three poops to make a bowl of poop. so he wanted to eat a lot of it, apparently.

[Rhom]

12 hours ago, RumHam said:

The really weird thing is that it takes three poops to make a bowl of poop. so he wanted to eat a lot of it, apparently.

Wait… what?!!?

The $&@# kinda game is this???

[briantw]

2 hours ago, Rhom said:

Wait… what?!!?

The $&@# kinda game is this???

You have to cook meals for your followers.  One of the meals you can cook is just a bowl of poop.  There's also a grassy gruel that I believe you can unlock a perk for that no longer causes your followers to lose faith when they eat it.

[Fez]

I'm intrigued by Cult of the Lamb. But it seems strongly like the kind of game that would benefit from post-launch support, as I've heard the game isn't actually that long; despite the numerous system introduced at the start. So i'm going to keep it on my wishlist and check in on it in a year or two.

I think the next game I'm looking forward to is Soul Hackers 2, which comes out in 2 weeks. It's from Atlus, and sounds like something of a cross between the Persona and SMT series. I don't know much of anything about it, but Atlus is generally a mark of quality. And with such a dearth of big releases (I just don't care about Spiderman), I'm really hoping it and some of the other smaller games I'm following for this fall end up hitting the mark.

[Toth]

Well, in typical manner of me being late to the party, I today tried out Mount & Blade. Yes, the original one, I am well aware the others have more stuff in them. I got it ages ago in a bundle and now thought why not.

And damn... it is damn addicting to just go around questing and mucking things up, even though I have not really an idea what I'm doing. So... I... just started out creating Jaime Lannister in the character creation, made him a knight through and through with almost all skills put into combat. I was then dropped off in the kingdom of the Nords, oddly enough, where I started out training a nearby village against a bandit raid, then got scolded by their lord for doing his job. He then gave me the quest to squeeze the very same villagers for taxes, which I then did, and then asked me to get money he lent to another lord back, which I also did. From there on I started being the Nord errand boy, mostly delivering letters, doing some melees, and being very confused about the tournaments. It's really not fun that there aren't any jousts or stuff, but that it's all team melees where your team gets instantly deleted and then you get swarmed by four knights and can't really defend yourself. I then accompanied several caravans across half the country and as I did, and because I thought it dangerous, I kept hiring soldiers until I hit my cap at 40...

... and because of that when I returned to the land of the Nords, all bandits avoided me because I had gotten too strong and the Nords themselves were never at war with anyone else, so I got bored only delivering letters. So I went to the neighboring kingdom of Vaegirs that was involved in a three-way war with Swadia and the Khanate while apparently being allied with Rhodoks (at least I think so, I fought one battle where they helped out for some reason), there I offered my service as a mercenary and followed their king around as he headlessly marched straight through the entirety of Swadia without ever attacking any castle. After a couple of battles he said I did fine and made me his vassal... and I... kind of took my leave there, accepting a 'get lent money back' quest from one of the other Lords in the army and then fucked off, going home by way of the Kingdom of the Nords. Unfortunately the Vaegirs army is still fucking around god knows where, so I can't return the money and when I tried crossing the border to Swadia on my own, I got instantly attacked and lost half my army. So now I'm back being the errand boy, trying to level grind my way back to where I previously was while at the same time trying to make the Vaegirs lords like me as much as the Nords do. Well, those that are sitting out the war that is.

[RumHam]

8 hours ago, briantw said:

You have to cook meals for your followers.  One of the meals you can cook is just a bowl of poop.  There's also a grassy gruel that I believe you can unlock a perk for that no longer causes your followers to lose faith when they eat it.

Yeah the perk is under Sustenance, the second one I think. I got back to where I was without my faith being near zero. This time around one of the animals thought it would be a funny joke to feed poop to another, because they were a picky eater. That's so much worse.

[Ser Drewy]

Just played Mortuary Assistant. At night. Almost wish I hadn't. Genuinely spooky game, congrats to the developers. 

[Toth]

So, continued a bit with Mount & Blade. I figured out that I own a village. Apparently I spaced out during the oath of fealty and didn't notice that part, or less likely it wasn't mentioned, but apparently I found out in the encyclopedia entry of my own character that I own a poor mountain village at the edge of the map. Neat. Less neat was my first attempt to get to hit: I was suddenly rushed by a Khanate army that easily defeated mine. Though that resulted in a stupidly badass last stand with me standing with back to a large rock as cover and blocking all the arrows coming for me from their horse archers, taking down only those who bravely attempt a charge.

I loaded my last save and kept level grinding though, increasing my map movement speed and catching fleeing bandits. I also switched to a bow and a lance instead of crossbow and sword, which just makes a whole lot more sense as a knight. My equipment I then gave to my companions, having now realized how to equip them. Eventually got to my town, collected the taxes and ordered a mill to be built. Otherwise I mucked around a little to get more money. I raided a Swabian caravan, which paid off decently, but I lost 4 honor because I guess I was too harsh in my demands when I thought that answering option would make it possible to threaten them into submission. I also looted a Swabian village, which didn't cost honor, paid off even more drastically, but made my healer upset.

Interestingly, on my way back home I was followed by a Swabian army of more than 100 dudes. I had the choice between running away and trying to take them on, so I saved and tried taking them on for fun...

... and what the fuck, I didn't expect this outcome at all. Sure enough, I lost half my army, but still completely obliterated the Swabians. My surviving troops also managed to massively upgrade, making my tiny group now quite expensive. But I'm now more confident than ever that if my soldiers are this effective already, I can actually try to take a small castle with some more preparation.

[Caligula_K3]

I finally finished the Mass Effect Legendary Edition playthrough. Clones were killed, a giant party was had (Citadel DLC is so good), and the Reapers were destroyed (I ain't turning everyone in the galaxy into some magic half machine/half organic thing using stupid space magic).

It's interesting coming back to this ending. I still don't think it's good, even with the added lore from the Leviathan DLC and the expanded cut. There's still something dumb about the underlying logic of

Spoiler

machines and organics will always fight so we built machines to kill advanced organics before it happens. It'd be one thing if this were properly set up throughout all three games, except it isn't at all. The only major AI rebellion in this cycle is Geth vs. Quarians, and we learn that the Geth were content to just hide away from everyone else until the Reapers come around; there's no sense that they would have ever exterminated all organic life. Plus of course in Mass Effect 3 you can even end the conflict, as my Shepherd did, and you're hanging out with a friendly AI all the time.

But even though the ending still doesn't make much sense and feels pretty unsatisfying, with all the DLC it at least is a lot more coherent. If I'm remembering right, they also made a major change, which makes me happy:

Spoiler

the mass effect relays are damaged, not destroyed. This was one of my least favourite things about the original ending, since it essentially invalidated all the choices that you'd made and meant that every species was now going to die post-Reaper invasion.

All in all, the trilogy is still a pretty incredible and ambitious achievement. And the fact that so much of the first 2/3rds of Mass Effect 3 does feel like a culmination of your choices and journey makes up for the weaker ending.

(Though I just realized... my game not only somehow missed out on Thane even though he was alive, but even more importantly, Conrad Werner!)