Videogames 2023 pt. II: Can We patreon This Man an Alienware Already?

[IlyaP]

12 hours ago, Werthead said:

The System Shock remake is getting outstanding reviews, to everyone's surprise.

I remember trying to play both SS and SS2 a few years ago and neither had aged very well. Very interested in picking up this version.

Ty Franke has been talking about this for a while now, will be interesting to get his thoughts, as he's reportedly a big fan. 

[IlyaP]

5 hours ago, Werthead said:

When Dolph Lundgren's Ferrari entered the chat, I knew it was going to go wild.

Wait, what?

[polishgenius]

8 hours ago, Ran said:

I agree with comments suggesting that there's probably both a mixture of truth to the fact that he had acted inappropriately and was correctly fired, and that at the same time the moneyed interest in the company had used his issues as an excuse for what seems to have been shady, unethical double-dealing to take control of the company.

 

Yeah, it seems pretty unquestionable even from just watching the early part (will have to catch up as I have time) that there was some really dodgy dealing going on there, but Kuurvitz's story that he was just a poor innocent anarcho-communist waif helpless to stop the evil capitalist dogs move in from outside and steal his life's work falls apart pretty immediately when you hear how early on in the process that capital got involved and how intrinsic it was to the success Disco Elysium and the studio had. 

[IlyaP]

A rather impressive retrospective of sorts on the System Shock series was published this morning on Rock, Paper, Shotgun, for anyone who might be interested.

[RumHam]

aw, I see Diablo IV is doing that terrible "pay extra to play a few days early!" thing the last Battlefield game did. Playing off people's fear of "falling behind." 

Is the game any good? I didn't bother with any of the betas. 

[Gorn]

According to reviews, it seems to be a very good MMORPG, if that's what you're looking for. I'm not, so I'll pass.

[Kalbear]

It was a lot of fun. Very satisfying Skinner box with a much better story and world than D3. 

[Kalbear]

10 hours ago, IlyaP said:

A rather impressive retrospective of sorts on the System Shock series was published this morning on Rock, Paper, Shotgun, for anyone who might be interested.

Another article from Ars Technica on its design:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/05/interview-how-system-shock-balanced-faithful-recreation-and-modern-design/

It's kind of surprising to me to look back and see how influential System Shock was to the entire gaming world, and how many descendants of it exist. It's kind of like the Matrix for video games - we take for granted things like bullet time and Chinese-styled fight sequences in action movies and that look and feel, but that all comes from the Matrix. Same with System Shock - the immersive sim and the environment as an actor, the multi-choice of how to attack problems, the dark and dirty world, the use of sound and in-person scenes to establish the story and theme...so much comes from this seed.

I loved this game when it came out and really am looking forward to playing it again. 

[Rhom]

20 minutes ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:

It was a lot of fun. Very satisfying Skinner box with a much better story and world than D3. 

That was my take.  Much more involved than D3.

I wouldn’t call it a MMO in the sense that I think of them.  There won’t be 20 other players hanging around in your starting area.

I have a decent PC for gaming at home, but my office PC has finally fallen behind the current Gen requirements; so I ordered a custom built PC last week so I can play from here as well.  Also ordered a copy for PS5 so I can do cross play with my son.  First game I’ve had to purchase multiple copies for us to play together.

[Ferrum Aeternum]

2 hours ago, Rhom said:

That was my take.  Much more involved than D3.

I wouldn’t call it a MMO in the sense that I think of them.  There won’t be 20 other players hanging around in your starting area.

I have a decent PC for gaming at home, but my office PC has finally fallen behind the current Gen requirements; so I ordered a custom built PC last week so I can play from here as well.  Also ordered a copy for PS5 so I can do cross play with my son.  First game I’ve had to purchase multiple copies for us to play together.

I got this for PS5, after having way more fun with D3 on console than I ever did on PC. Played through the last beta and really enjoyed it. I agree that the MMO-like aspects didn’t detract from the experience. Mainly just folks helping out with events and a few hanging around town. I haven’t played a lot of PoE but the shared world felt more like that than a true MMO. 

[Argonath Diver]

I loathe the pay-for-a-head-start nonsense so much. I'm glad that I'm at two new jobs, trying to learn systems, products, coworkers and customers and simply have no time the next two weeks to game. I didn't get into the betas enough to develop that dopamine itch that keeps me logging back into a game.

Haven't bought D4 yet and likely will hold off until the first proper season begins. My graphics card has a very hard time running it, regardless. Very happy to see that early reviews are so glowing, though we'll see at launch if Blizzard servers can handle many millions of players from the get-go.  

That said I expect nearly every Twitch streamer I follow to be playing it this next couple weeks, so I'm not going to hold out on spoiling lore, etc. Even if I'm not playing it, D4 will be in my headspace plenty soon.

[Werthead]

3 hours ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:

Another article from Ars Technica on its design:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/05/interview-how-system-shock-balanced-faithful-recreation-and-modern-design/

It's kind of surprising to me to look back and see how influential System Shock was to the entire gaming world, and how many descendants of it exist. It's kind of like the Matrix for video games - we take for granted things like bullet time and Chinese-styled fight sequences in action movies and that look and feel, but that all comes from the Matrix. Same with System Shock - the immersive sim and the environment as an actor, the multi-choice of how to attack problems, the dark and dirty world, the use of sound and in-person scenes to establish the story and theme...so much comes from this seed.

I loved this game when it came out and really am looking forward to playing it again. 

There's a fair few games like that which did things that boggle the brain today, although a fair few of them don't get the recognition they really deserve.

Hunter is basically Far Cry but in third person, with you liberating an island whilst fighting enemies and using a vast number of vehicles in a totally open world in 1991.

Damocles (1990) is even more insane, with an entire open-world solar system with you travelling around vast, deserted cyberpunk cities, trying to stop a comet crashing into a planet and having total freedom in how you did that (with around a dozen possible endings). The game even simulates relativity, so roaring around the solar system at near lightspeed is a really bad idea unless you want the comet to hit the planet within a few minutes. 

Spoiler

This lets play has a crappy ending though, the best solution is to put the Novabomb on a nearby, uninhabited moon and blow that up when the comet is nearby. The gravity changes the comet's course and allows both the planet and the comet - a noted tourist attraction! - to survive, so you get a ton more cash. 

 

Edited May 31, 2023 by Werthead

[Durckad]

So far, I've put about 4 hours into the System Shock remake as of today and it's quite good. I'll be honest first though, I have played some of the original, but I think I only got as far as the Research level before losing interest. So I'm not like super familiar with the original, but I do have enough of familiarity to give me a proper enough baseline to compare the two. I do quite like the original, but man, that UI and control scheme is tough to get used to if you haven't played it in a while.

For the Remake, I like the weird mix of more traditional 3D graphics with the semi-pixelated textures that it uses, gives it kind of a weird charm while looking quite good. It does tax my old computer at times, but overall it runs pretty well. There is some issue with visual clutter, with so many items scattered about and many of the surfaces covered in blinking lights that it can be difficult to see what you can interact with at times.

However, it does introduce enough modern concepts and quality of life of improvements to make playing the game much easier and smoother without holding your hand on visual waypoints and showing you exactly what you need to do and where to go. I did end up wandering around Medical for longer than I needed to, thinking I needed an item to get past a certain puzzle, but no, I was just dumb and didn't get what I had to do to complete the puzzle. I have a feeling there will be much more of this going forward.

The combat is good. Melee can feel a bit weightless at times and sometimes there is sometimes a distinct lack of feedback on whether you hit something, but overall it's fine. Not fantastic, but it successfully modernizes the original's combat which also had some of the same issues. From what I remember, hacking is much better, more straightforward with less aimlessly wandering around a wireframe environment.

The sound and music... well, I'm a bit torn on this. The Remake has opted to go for more of an ambient-style soundtrack than the deep fried electronic music from the original. Now the ambient music is good, it fits the horror atmosphere, but man, was the original's music so good sometimes. That said, the music in the original was compressed, low-quality, and sometimes painful to listen to while overpowering any sense of ambiance. It did give the original a very unique charm and I'm not sure the remake would've been able to replicate that, but I kinda wish they would've tried.

Same for the sfx. Much of it is very subdued in the remake, to the point that it's possible to very easily not hear some of the monster's sounds as they wander around the station looking to murder you. In the original those same sfx could be very loud, very obvious, sometimes painfully so. While I'm glad the sfx in the Remake don't make my ears bleed, it was nice being able to clearly hear what might be lurking around the corner. That said, I do think they took the right approach here.

Overall, it's very good and I'm quite enjoying getting lost and stuck on simple puzzles in Citadel station. I'm glad that it takes a more old school approach and only modernizes when it absolutely needs to.

[IlyaP]

6 hours ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:

we take for granted things like bullet time and Chinese-styled fight sequences in action movies and that look and feel, but that all comes from the Matrix.

TBF, we did have Chinese-styled fight sequences in movies that came from China before the Matrix came out. But on the bullet time front, the closest we got to anything like that in English-speaking films were in Lost in Space and Wing Commander, both of which featured ideas that were similar to but not quite the same thing as bullet time (slowing motion, cameras spinning around people whilst they were frozen in space). (Apparently the Wachowski sisters were influenced heavily by Michael Gondry videos, though which I've never found out which ones.)

[Corvinus85]

I was right, Total War: Pharaoh is Troy 2.0, but it does have some added features like dynamic weather where as you fight a battle bad weather can roll through and penalize your units, as well as various unit stances, including one where you order your units to retreat steadily while still facing the enemy.

Sadly, still plenty of issues with the AI. Here's an example (still in the Alpha btw) where at one wall section attacking archers shot fire arrows at the defender, but some bounced off the wall and started to light the grass on fie - cool physics. But then the AI sent its troops with rolling ladders right in those spots, and not longer after the ladders caught fire.  

 

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, Corvinus85 said:

I was right, Total War: Pharaoh is Troy 2.0, but it does have some added features like dynamic weather where as you fight a battle bad weather can roll through and penalize your units, as well as various unit stances, including one where you order your units to retreat steadily while still facing the enemy.

Sadly, still plenty of issues with the AI. Here's an example (still in the Alpha btw) where at one wall section attacking archers shot fire arrows at the defender, but some bounced off the wall and started to light the grass on fie - cool physics. But then the AI sent its troops with rolling ladders right in those spots, and not longer after the ladders caught fire.  

To be fair, that kind of moronic strategy does sound plausible. "Sir, the grass is on fire, we can't advance..." "Nonsense! No excuses! Forwards!"

Also, I don't think the AI is really fixable for those kind of things unless you use real AI, which would probably beat any human player in the space of five seconds. The TW series has badly struggled with siege AI since Shogun.

Edited June 1, 2023 by Werthead

[AncalagonTheBlack]

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

On 5/31/2023 at 11:41 AM, RumHam said:

aw, I see Diablo IV is doing that terrible "pay extra to play a few days early!" thing the last Battlefield game did. Playing off people's fear of "falling behind." 

Is the game any good? I didn't bother with any of the betas. 

I decided to pay. Shocker, it's not working, lol. D3 launch was a disaster too. 

[RumHam]

4 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I decided to pay. Shocker, it's not working, lol. D3 launch was a disaster too. 

I too am a weak weak man. I'm supposedly queued for login <1 minute.

Edit: oh wait it's working. at least I got some options and a cutscene

 

Edited June 1, 2023 by RumHam

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

11 minutes ago, RumHam said:

I too am a weak weak man. I'm supposedly queued for login <1 minute.

Edit: oh wait it's working. at least I got some options and a cutscene

 

I'm in too. Now just how to find pub games.

I went with a barby. Usually the best way to start.