Videogames 2023: Dreams of the Sandbox Kings

[IlyaP]

As the last thread wrapped up, figured it'd be good to continue on with what's happening in videogames, among other things. 

Having gotten frustrated with numerous titles that I've tried recently, I've found some solace and delight in the brilliant Pentiment, courtesy of Obsidian Entertainment. 

And speaking further of games, Eurogamer's Alex Battaglia wrote a very interesting call to action piece about console-to-PC ports. I suspect this might strike a chord with folk here.

[Rhom]

For anyone with PS Plus, the free games this month are Jedi Fallen Order and Fallout 76.

I already have Fallen Order on Steam, but never hurts to grab it when it’s free!

[Ferrum Aeternum]

12 hours ago, Rhom said:

For anyone with PS Plus, the free games this month are Jedi Fallen Order and Fallout 76.

I already have Fallen Order on Steam, but never hurts to grab it when it’s free!

Looks like I’ll finally get around to playing Fallen Order! 

[Caligula_K3]

It took me three months and about 100 hours, but I finally am done with Persona 5 Royal. It's a great game and I'm glad I played it, but holy shit can it be a badly paced slog. I would have been happy to see them cut 2-3 of the palaces, including the entire ending of the original game, and

Spoiler

definitely everything related to Okumara's palace and Haru. That part of the game was torture, and Haru was such a weak character.

I also wish they'd removed at least 75% of the repetitive text conversations and scenes whose only purpose is to repeat exposition that's already been delivered.

It's also too bad, because the final DLC section of the game is quite good- certainly a lot better than the original ending. But at this point I was just burnt out and rushed through it. I do really appreciate that they give you an ability to auto-kill enemies at least 10 levels lower than you - with this, I got through the last palace quickly.

The game at its peak was really something special and unique, though. I especially loved the Museum, Pyramid and Casino palaces. Not every confidant arc hits. Some of them were laughably bad, like the 10 year old arcade boy, and some were just gross, like your teacher. But enough of them worked for me to get attached to many of the characters, especially Futaba and Sojiro. I don't really play JRPGs anymore, and parts of this game reminded me why. But if I'm going to play one ridiculously long JRPG this decade, I'm glad it was one as stylish and (often) fun as this one.

 

[Fez]

Been really struggling to find a game that captures my interest for the past couple months. I dropped DarkTide pretty quickly after realizing how little content there actually is right now. Dropped Persona 5 Royal a while ago due to frustration with the writing. Tried and dropped a bunch of indie games not worth going through. Pretty much the only game that's kept my interest is Vampire Survivors, which I hadn't played in almost a year and has a ton of new content. And also there's Immortality, the recent Sam Barlow FMV game; which I've been playing through with my girlfriend.

I'm hoping the new Fire Emblem is good, because it looks like it'll be a couple more months before anything else decent comes along (unless Forspoken ends up surprising us all). I'm worried though about all the past Fire Emblem heroes being in the game. That seems like a recipe for bad writing that is just there for fan service.

[Werthead]

MechWarrior 6 - or at least a standalone game using the MechWarrior 5 engine and aimed for a simultaneous console launch - is now confirmed to be in development. Good news. MW5 was janky on launch but evolved into an excellent game over 3 major expansions (soon to be 4) and tons of modding and community support. Hopefully they get the chance to actually launch feature-complete next time around.

Also interesting that the current MechWarrior/BattleTech licence only extends until 2025, which means MechWarrior 5.5/6 will be out before 2025 and also that Piranha wants to put on a huge show to Microsoft (who owns the original IP rights) to show they can make a great game. I do wonder if Microsoft is thinking about taking the licence inhouse, making it an Xbox licence and doing something huge with it, which probably means moving it away from Piranha to a bigger developer who might not give so much of a shit about fidelity to the source material. It's probably less likely we'll get a BattleTech 2 as well that way, although that sounds a way off in any case as Harebrained are working on a horror game in the meantime, possibly an isometric RPG set in the World of Darkness setting (rumoured).

Piranha also said if the licence gets extended, they will make MechWarrior Online 2, so dropping the temptation of a live service multiplayer game into the mix as well (MWO1 is still reasonably popular, despite the janky engine).

[polishgenius]

I've been playing Chained Echoes, a recent indie retro-JRPG in the vein of Chrono Trigger and the like. Early doors it is very well written, the pixel art is lovely, and generally I'm having a lot of fun. Reviews have been great so my hopes are high.

[Rhom]

3 hours ago, polishgenius said:

I've been playing Chained Echoes, a recent indie retro-JRPG in the vein of Chrono Trigger and the like. Early doors it is very well written, the pixel art is lovely, and generally I'm having a lot of fun. Reviews have been great so my hopes are high.

I bought it for my Deck but have not played it yet.  It looks like a lot of fun.

[IlyaP]

10 hours ago, Ferrum Aeternum said:

Looks like I’ll finally get around to playing Fallen Order! 

Huzzah! This is a very fun game, and one that doesn't outstay its welcome. 

[Werthead]

About 25 hours in Death Stranding and it's certainly a curious egg of a game.

It feels like Kojima taking the mickey - a bit - out of open world games, so there's a lot of legwork and makework that is really not necessary. A lot of the side-activities in the game are really about dialling down irritation rather than providing meaningful side-stories, i.e. building roads through the mountains just removes so much frustration from trying to navigate around them without roads, despite the fact that if you just mainline the story missions you'd overall save a huge amount of time (because you'd generally need to make those epic journeys 2-3 times rather than the dozens of microjourneys you need to actually build the roads, not to mention collecting materials and raiding MULE camps in between, which are not trivial activities).

Every now and then you do suddenly get a really good side mission, like having to convince the junkyard dealer to join the network but he's not interested at all until you track down his missing, presumed dead girlfriend, and you get a whole side-story with her as well before reuniting him and that then leads to them periodically messaging you through the rest of the game. That also led to the acquisition of buildable trucks, which make life so much easier (at the cost of really having to invest in roads, as the trucks are poor off-road and the terrain just after you get them becomes very inhospitable.

The weird atmosphere, the Half-Life 2-esque brutalist architecture and the lo-fi soundtrack are all really great, and I gather I'm about 40-50% of the way through the game so I'll see it though, but it's interesting to ponder if the game is falling into the trap of open-world games or if it's some kind of weird Kojima metacommentary on the genre (or if it's the former but everyone thinks it's the latter).

Also, the Conan O'Brien cameo is pure WTF.

[IlyaP]

19 hours ago, Crazy Old Guy said:

I can't wait for Jedi Survivor!

Anyone else here played it?

As in, played Jedi Survivor? Which...isn't out yet? *confused*

[Jace, Extat]

2 hours ago, Crazy Old Guy said:

Oh, I meant to ask:

Anyone else here played the original first game? Jedi Fallen Order?

I have. Cal Kestus 

I like Evil Sister. She was my favorite. 

[IlyaP]

2 hours ago, Crazy Old Guy said:

Oh, I meant to ask:

Anyone else here played the original first game? Jedi Fallen Order?

Oh yes! It's terrific fun! Evil Sister, as @whatever... said, is delightful. Delightfully twisted, that is. 

The art design is terrific, the sound design wonderful, there's a minimal number of side quests, and the game never outstays its welcome. It's short, sharp, to the point, and fun. 

[Jace, Extat]

16 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

Oh yes! It's terrific fun! Evil Sister, as @whatever... said, is delightful. Delightfully twisted, that is. 

The art design is terrific, the sound design wonderful, there's a minimal number of side quests, and the game never outstays its welcome. It's short, sharp, to the point, and fun. 

That version of Darth Vader showing up and Turning on his RED LIGHTSABER was pretty fucking dope

[Jace, Extat]

So are any of these games allowed to be played with friends? 

[Jace, Extat]

Warning, my PC may be acting... odd

[Arakasi]

Just about finished Horizon Zero Dawn here. Good game but it’s got a big mix of great and meh. Main story is awesome sci-fi and the combat is of course great. Game looks great too but it’s also very much a single player MMO. A lot of the side quests are just forgettable and I don’t love the integration of the tribal stuff into the main story. (Other than the frozen expansion which you do interact with NPCs who care about the tech)

My son started Forbidden West which I’ll be playing soon and at least early on there are signs that the sci-fi and tribal elements are more weaves together which I hope makes for a more integrated story.

Also bought a steam deck last month which I’ve mostly used for heroes of might and magic 3 and civ 6. Might try PF wrath of the righteous soon.

Also got a PS5 (to play the aforementioned Forbidden West) which came with god of war and Elden Ring. Doubt I’ll play the first but I might try the second at some time. Depends on if I can find something that makes it not too punishing to play since I’m no gaming expert as far as real time games go. I can do okay with things like heat 32 in Hades and stuff like mass effect on insanity but that’s about my limits.

And lastly been watching some slay the spire streams and dipped into that lately to do some ascension 20 runs. Every six months or so the game scratches an itch and I go back for a few weeks.

[Rhom]

5 minutes ago, Arakasi said:

Also got a PS5 (to play the aforementioned Forbidden West) which came with god of war and Elden Ring. Doubt I’ll play the first but I might try the second at some time. Depends on if I can find something that makes it not too punishing to play since I’m no gaming expert as far as real time games go. I can do okay with things like heat 32 in Hades and stuff like mass effect on insanity but that’s about my limits.

I've not played Ragnarok, but the "first" God of War has really good gameplay and story.  Third person adventure similar to the gameplay of Horizon FWIW.

[Inkdaub]

I can't stop playing the anniversary edition Skyrim.

[Slurktan]

9 hours ago, Arakasi said:

Also got a PS5 (to play the aforementioned Forbidden West) which came with god of war and Elden Ring. Doubt I’ll play the first but I might try the second at some time. Depends on if I can find something that makes it not too punishing to play since I’m no gaming expert as far as real time games go. I can do okay with things like heat 32 in Hades and stuff like mass effect on insanity but that’s about my limits.

I'd strongly suggest playing God of War. It has one of the best stories I've seen in a video game and that's not even the mythology stuff which is also great.  Just the father and son stuff.  Ragnarok's story is just as good.  Gameplay wise there's some good puzzles, however to me the fighting is janky, slow, less responsive version of Souls fighting.  If you want to ignore the fighting switch to story mode.

Elden Ring I loved but it is excessive in pretty much everything.  No easy mode or anything like that in a Souls game though. However the combat is absolutely fantastic, very responsive.  The difficulty in any fromsoft game is learning how enemies work.  Once you know the patterns in each game (they change in minor ways mostly, except Bloodbone and Sekiro) the combat becomes quite easy as long as you are paying attention.