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Videogames 2023: Dreams of the Sandbox Kings


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Viva la Dirt League (youtube, facebook etc) parody games, particularly mmorpgs.

Here’s one of their Souls parodies (the sacred art of the forward roll). Their stuff is pretty good 

 

Edited by Derfel Cadarn
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20 hours ago, dog-days said:

I enjoyed Skyrim on my first playthrough, but have never gone back to it. I tried once, thinking I should get my money's worth, but gave up after a few minutes of playtime. I went through the map pretty thoroughly the first time round, and there's nothing I really remember as being especially good about it. No interesting quests that I wanted to revisit, for example, or locations that I wanted to see again. 

This, plus the music, are why I found Skyrim disappointing after Oblivion. Plus they "hand crafted" the caves but 90% of them are all still so samey. Dragur and those stupid spin the dial puzzles. 

Don't get me wrong I still put hundreds of hours into it.

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1 hour ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Viva la Dirt League (youtube, facebook etc) parody games, particularly mmorpgs.

Here’s one of their Souls parodies (the sacred art of the forward roll). Their stuff is pretty good.

They're pretty good. Sometimes obvious but sometimes quite entertaining.

Their D&D campaign where they play what would normally be NPCs who get roped into the adventure when the regular heroes are killed is quite amusing as well.

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When I started my Skyrim Re-run I thought I glitched through the tutorial because I was never asked for my primary skills, class and astrological sign. I'm fairly certain I had the same "Wasn't there supposed to be more to character creation?" reaction in my first playthrough more than a decade ago. Skyrim... does a decent job at being a dungeon crawler, but I always felt it scrapping, eh, I mean "streamlining" so many of Oblivion's mechanics was a shame. Especially after Oblivion streamlined so many of Morrowind. Sure, being able to play every way you want... is eventually what you did in Oblivion as well to max out attribute boni upon level ups. But I miss weapon specialization having an impact (how are swords and axes in the same ridiculously broad "one-handed" category? And where are my spears? Why no unarmored skill for mages?). Similarly I felt robbed of choice when it came to enchanting equipment or creating spells, something the series was always very powerful at.

... and then of course there is the really shallow and unengaging plot. Oblivion wasn't much better, but there you at least had some really memorable side quests and questlines. And the Shivering Isles. And I guess it was kind of cool to bring all of the counts together to send soldiers for Bruma, though the story was still really bad in terms of sounding extremely urgent, but never really being it. Meanwhile in Skyrim you have a main quest that.. seems dreadfully short and barely makes you visit a fraction of the world. A Civil War that is barely present. And faction quests that somehow are just all bad. Especially the Dark Brotherhood being so ridiculously evil and against the Empire that it's utterly ridiculous that an Empire aligned character wouldn't just slaughter them all and completely abort the quest, which... is the only thing you then can do with that. I, now after having finished Fallout 4 in its entirety, feel awfully reminded of the Nuka-World DLC, which... just breaks trying to play it with a Minuteman aligned character. Which is extra baffling because Fallout 4 railroads you into joining the Minutemen the second you leave the Vault. Oblivion just... didn't have that issue because the Dark Brotherhood conflict was entirely internal. And Morrowind didn't have it because the factions fighting each other and becoming mutually exclusive was baked into the quests by rewarding you with opening doors elsewhere when you had to close some at the moment. This was great for roleplaying. In Skyrim it's just "So you either do this series of same-y fetch quests or do not."

Don't misunderstand me, I still really like how polished and smooth it is in gameplay, but it's just another large step on Bethesda's ongoing disease of creating dreadfully shallow but fun theme park worlds. And I'm frustrated that it would be very easy to combine the fun gameplay loop with the more complex mechanics and roleplaying that the series used to have (though the latter admittedly only ever in Morrowind).

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16 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Their D&D campaign where they play what would normally be NPCs who get roped into the adventure when the regular heroes are killed is quite amusing as well.

I like them as well, but I must admit, I found their D&D campaign to be the most confusing mess of aimless murder hobo players that I had ever seen in a public Youtube campaign. I still remember vividly how they spent pretty much a week of ingame time at the beginning giving up their quest at the slightest hint of inconvenience to go drinking in the pub until the frustrated DM had all their quest-related NPCs screw them over for failing to get anything done in a reasonable amount of time. I give the DM a lot of props for herding these lunatics without loosing 30 years of his life in a session.

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7 hours ago, Slurktan said:

Yeah not boss souls to upgrade that, it needs colorless demon souls which means going full black tendency then finding the big wormy squid demons if which there is one per area (not level).

Found that one out last night haha. Need to make the world full black tendency to get them to appear as well. I got the one I could get from giving the talisman of God to Sparkly but that's it for now. Did get Dragon God out of the way and was surprised to realize that's the end of the 2nd world. ER messed is so huge I was expecting more, but that's fine

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In the Hogwarts game I greatly like that it's like the first game like this that I can think of since like Mass Effect or maybe even like Fable where you aren't actively encouraged to mass-murder the wildlifes with the magical/sci-fi equivalent of a grenade launcher. 

I like rescuing amnimals from poachers :) 

Also, tiny nitpick. But I wish there was like a dedicated button to put your wand away. I feel half a fool running through the halls with it :commie:

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30 minutes ago, karaddin said:

Found that one out last night haha. Need to make the world full black tendency to get them to appear as well. I got the one I could get from giving the talisman of God to Sparkly but that's it for now. Did get Dragon God out of the way and was surprised to realize that's the end of the 2nd world. ER messed is so huge I was expecting more, but that's fine

If you go black  tendency make sure you do all of that stuff at once if you want (all the extra black tendency stuff) killing the primevil demons who drop the colorless souls  gives +3 to world tendency so if you leave it will go back to normal

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Really hit my groove once I got used to the large sword of moonlight and levelled up a bit. Cleared 2,3 and 4 now so just the rest of 5 and then back to 1. I originally gave the first version a shot back on a PS3 and barely got past the first trash before deciding controllers were too hard so it's nice to come back to it and be up to it now.

Will probably pick up the dark souls trilogy next time they're on a good steam sale.

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Speaking of Souls and their -likes, I don't really follow the genre coz I don't play them, but I read a feature on the upcoming The Lords of the Fallen (not to be confused with its predecessor, Lords of the Fallen). Which got me curious about what else is coming up, just for comparison's sake. And fuck me, I know the industry has always been one to follow a trend but watching trailers for a few, it's like playing spot the difference. Bleak Faith: Forsaken and the aforementioned TLOTF seem differentiated only by the fact that Bleak Faith's gimmick is having some SF trappings, whereas TLOTF has a magic death-lantern. Art design etc is basically identical past the occasional mechanical elements in BF. 
Couple of others, like Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, have at least some more light and the trappings of other mythologies, but when it comes down to it are still basically similar. 

Not a new phenomenon really, I know, but it feels like the first time the triple-A/wannabe triple-A space is getting a bit crowded in that respect? I'm sure they'll be good games, at least some of them, but competing that directly both with the market leader and each other seems a risk to take with that much money on the table.


Also kind of funny because they've obviously been in development for a while, so the measuring stick will have been the earlier FromSoft games from the start, and now... well, now it's Elden Ring. 

But hey, at least we're getting this.
 

 

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Finally finished all the roads on Death Stranding, before realising that it's a bit pointless in the endgame unless you are really going hardcore 100% for platinuming the game. You don't even get any achievements for it which is mildly ridiculous, given how hard it is.

I did fire up MechWarrior 5, this time with all the DLC included. I'd re-purchased the game on Steam rather than playing it on Epic as last time, and I was pleasantly surprised to see it used the same save folder, so my Steam version of the game immediately recognised my Epic save and promptly gave me all the Achievements I'd pre-earned on my first playthrough.

I started stomping around and it's still great fun, but damn, I miss the old 3D HUD and enemy dropship mod. Those added a lot to the game but it looks like neither have been updated properly for the latest expansion (and they've announced a new patch for next month, so nobody's doing any mod development until that drops either).

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I just finished replaying Arcanum. I had forgotten how dark the setting is. 

Trigger warning.

Spoiler

Worst is probably gnomes setting up a rape facility to breed half-ogres bodyguards. First by abducting prostitutes and later switching to the wives and daughters of human political enemies because they were usually healthier than prostitues. Up to three "harvests" with c-sections before the women died. You only find the abandoned facility and there is nothing you can do about it as the gnomes have breed enough half-ogre females by that point and you can't find their current facility in game. 

Well you can join the big bad of the game and kill everyone on the world. :stunned:

 

Edited by Luzifer's right hand
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Playing Jedi: Fallen Order. Gameplay is fun but I often get lost which is frustrating. I could see the Prince of Persia type acrobatics getting tedious after a while as well.

I think I will stick with it in the long run though because I like the story, characters and visuals.

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MechWarrior 5 is the only game I've ever played which has made me feel nauseous or get motion sick. Absolutely everything else I've ever played, from flight sims to racing games to superfast FPS, has been fine. I've occasionally had games that gave me a slight headache, but usually pitching up the FOV to past 90 solves that.

I've fiddled with the game a lot, I'm using two mods that dramatically reduce the head-bobbing and weapons recoil shaking, I've whacked the FOV up to 110 and all of that helps a lot, but it doesn't eliminate the problem entirely. Genuinely baffling. I see quite a few people complaining about it. Even odder, people report suffering from it in MechWarrior 5 but not MechWarrior Online. MWO uses a different engine (CryTek versus UE5) but otherwise has a very similar UI, head bobbing etc. It's something inherent to the way MechWarrior 5 uses UE5.

Anyway, today's amusing MW5 "controversy" was someone on Reddit thinking they'd spotted a pop culture reference with the mercenary group "Ariana Grenadiers". They seemed incredulous to learn that the Grenadiers first showed up in the lore around 1994.

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2 hours ago, Darryk said:

Playing Jedi: Fallen Order. Gameplay is fun but I often get lost which is frustrating. I could see the Prince of Persia type acrobatics getting tedious after a while as well.

I think I will stick with it in the long run though because I like the story, characters and visuals.

The map can definitely be confusing.

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1 hour ago, Werthead said:

MechWarrior 5 is the only game I've ever played which has made me feel nauseous or get motion sick. Absolutely everything else I've ever played, from flight sims to racing games to superfast FPS, has been fine. I've occasionally had games that gave me a slight headache, but usually pitching up the FOV to past 90 solves that.

I've fiddled with the game a lot, I'm using two mods that dramatically reduce the head-bobbing and weapons recoil shaking, I've whacked the FOV up to 110 and all of that helps a lot, but it doesn't eliminate the problem entirely. Genuinely baffling. I see quite a few people complaining about it. Even odder, people report suffering from it in MechWarrior 5 but not MechWarrior Online. MWO uses a different engine (CryTek versus UE5) but otherwise has a very similar UI, head bobbing etc. It's something inherent to the way MechWarrior 5 uses UE5.

Anyway, today's amusing MW5 "controversy" was someone on Reddit thinking they'd spotted a pop culture reference with the mercenary group "Ariana Grenadiers". They seemed incredulous to learn that the Grenadiers first showed up in the lore around 1994.

You should try Ace Combat 7 through a VR headset. Got nauseous trying to evade enemy missiles!

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I started thinking about Super Mario Kart RPG where like you formed a party and player one drove while player two and optionally player's three and four tried to control systems and make decisions that would have an impact. Something like "transfer power from the engines to the shields!" in star trek. 

Now I'm thinking  take FTL and make it multiplayer by adding a sense of urgency and a race or "navigating hyperspace" 

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2 hours ago, RumHam said:

I started thinking about Super Mario Kart RPG where like you formed a party and player one drove while player two and optionally player's three and four tried to control systems and make decisions that would have an impact. Something like "transfer power from the engines to the shields!" in star trek. 

Now I'm thinking  take FTL and make it multiplayer by adding a sense of urgency and a race or "navigating hyperspace" 

Lovers in a dangerous spacetime is an absolute blast of a game in this vein.

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Grrr... god, why am I sucking so badly at this being social thing? I've been hurting quite a bit these days about whether I should drop out of the Dead by Daylight group Discord and cut all contact with them to put my mind at ease about my own childishness. Which... seems to be a thing I always do when my experiments in making social experiments fail.

To illustrate: A while ago, when I was still playing with them, they managed to make another member of that forum where we met join. He had already a bit more experience playing DbD and I found it interesting how his observations about our group dynamic matched my own. He expressed utter befuddlement at how everyone dropped everything the moment somebody was hooked and when he somehow managed to convince the others to let him do a rescue, they kept screaming at him to immediately go for the rescue now! now! now! Even though he was waiting for the Killer to go away first, which... should be the obvious thing to do. Of course after I was rescued the killer dropped out of chase to go after me again and he then expressed his bafflement at how quickly I always go down, so he also confirmed that it's seriously not normal how much I suck at this game. From what I gather from their current post-game discussions and trading of memes, he seems increasingly upset at their continued inability to do generators, their only objective, the second someone gets hooked. Almost all recent matches have also been total losses, apparently.

In the meantime they also managed to convince another total newbie in the forum to try the game and he... also keeps complaining about having an utterly miserable time in a way very reminiscent to me. So basically at its core the group still has four people who somehow have fun with the game and keep talking about it in the Discord, while I'm at the sidelines very backhandedly trying to talk about different games, which is what fuels my misery. They have fun, I don't. I refuse to play with them anymore because I don't want to get upset again about our horrible teamwork, but at the same time feel awful and selfish for secretly wishing they would give other more cooperative games a try. The thing is, I did play Vermintide with another Discord group two weeks ago and had... a lot of fun, actually. Something I never felt with Dead by Daylight, which was always only anxiety-riddled frustration to me. Unfortunately that core of the game group says Vermintide games are too long (and one argued that I would probably feel terrible there as well if things go wrong, even though again, I... never felt that at ease with DbD despite playing Vermintide with total strangers). But yes, yes, I know. It's selfish of me to want them to try something different when they have fun with what they have, even though I don't have fun with it... so that's why I'm feeling anxious every time I watch them converse, every time I watch the group call go on because they are playing through another evening, while I'm sitting here watching them like a stubborn snotty child refusing to play with the other kids.

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