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

[Derfel Cadarn]

I keep meaning to play these gsmes again - I’ve got Empire, Napoleon, Medieval II, and Shogun II. My pc is almost 9 yesrs old and indont know how much life is in it. 
 

I played online once with Rome, in a 2v2. I spawned in the city while my ‘partner’ spawned outside. He didna running battle agaisnst one of the enemies while I defended the centre against the other. After wasting my cavalry in glorious stupidity (I charged at the enemy in the streets), I then did pretty well with what remained of my army.

I used defensive units to block streets while using archers to kill the enemy, and sent the odd unit to attack enemy units from the rear. Eventually Inran out of arrows and was literally down to one last archer running about with a dagger.

Also did a little bit of multiplayer with Empire. I held the high ground woth my infantrt and let the enemy come to me. They didnt bother defending their artillery so I sent my cavalry out to destroy/rout it, and harrass any exposes any units. A glorious vixtory!

[briantw]

Tears of the Kingdom effectively addresses just about every issue I had with Breath of the Wild.  The combat is more dynamic and fun thanks to all the crazy shit you can do with fuse and ultrahand.  Getting around is significantly faster and less frustrating than it was in the first game because of the towers that rocket you into the sky, the ascend ability, and being able to just teleport to a checkpoint on some sky island near where you're trying to get to and skydiving down to it rather than climbing a whole ass mountain.  Puzzles often have a variety of solutions or can be skipped entirely if you've got a rocket strapped to one of your shields. 

The vast majority of weapons you find lying around are no longer completely fucking useless, as you can use fuse to attach a high damage item to them and make them formidable.  The items monsters drop now have utility outside of making elixers, as some of them drop the high damage items you attach to your weapons.  Further, there's now a legitimate reason to fight tougher enemies, as they give you weapons with a better base damage (that you can improve further with fuse) and also tend to drop the more powerful fuse items.  Similarly, bows no longer feel wildly underpowered.  I use my bow far more than melee weapons in this game, and in many fights I don't even bother switching to a melee weapon at all.

There also just seems like far more to do.  It's not so much that the first game was short on content.  There was a metric fuckton of content in Breath of the Wild.  But the vast majority of it lacked any sort of narrative to go along with it.  In this game, every one of the dozens or so stables has at least one main side quest and several smaller things to do, like help the sign guy or a korok get to his friend.  There's also, like, an actual story in this game, and a bunch of cut-scenes.  It's not on the level of fantastic narrative works like The Last of Us or Portal 2, but it's at least more interesting than anything I remember from Breath of the Wild.  

It's definitely the best game I've played so far this year.

[horangi]

2 hours ago, Ran said:

Loved watching that one back in the day. Also, weirdly hilariously, a 21-year-old Ruth Wilson (Mrs. Coulter in His Dark Materials, etc.) was part of the Pharsalus episode:

That was a fun watch.  Kinda unfair to pit four people with no experience with split control against a single back-stage person with, presumably, Total War experience.  Cringy 'women cant do strategy' comment at the beginning by the 'general' only to have him make just about every mistake possible while the woman was actually seeing opportunities but being ignored.  I laughed out loud when they ordered their cavalry to charge the center mass of the enemy legions with their own infantry charging behind the cavalry, preventing them from breaking and regrouping.  Shambolic performance all around! 

[RumHam]

2 hours ago, briantw said:

snip

That's all good to read. I was surprised there hasn't been more talk about it. I'm curious do you find the re-use of the BOTW map detracts at all? That was the one thing I read that I was a little skeptical of. 

[Toth]

1 hour ago, horangi said:

That was a fun watch.  Kinda unfair to pit four people with no experience with split control against a single back-stage person with, presumably, Total War experience.  Cringy 'women cant do strategy' comment at the beginning by the 'general' only to have him make just about every mistake possible while the woman was actually seeing opportunities but being ignored.  I laughed out loud when they ordered their cavalry to charge the center mass of the enemy legions with their own infantry charging behind the cavalry, preventing them from breaking and regrouping.  Shambolic performance all around! 

To be fair, it's not like the show is intended to be competitive. It's actually quite ambivalent. In some episodes the opponent throws the team a boon bumbling around and falling into the most harebrained most telegraphed 'ploys' they had come up with, while at other times they go quite viciously about dismantling a comparably well coordinated team even though they did things mostly right. Still, there were some quite triumphant episodes. At the top of my mind I can think of the Teutoburg Forest battle with a team essentially going through the entire thing in one tight battle formation, clubbing down the attacking Germanics piecemeal.

The show actually inspired me to create a few lessons in a similar style, tasking my students to roleplay their way through historical battles and analyze the circumstances of the era. Mostly as a bit of a fun breather at the end or the beginning of a topic. Already did lessons around the Battle of Austerlitz, the Battle of Ilipa and, fittingly, Pharsalus.

[Mr. X]

4 hours ago, RumHam said:

That's all good to read. I was surprised there hasn't been more talk about it. I'm curious do you find the re-use of the BOTW map detracts at all? That was the one thing I read that I was a little skeptical of. 

I don't find reusing the map to be a detraction. It creates a sense of "this is very familiar but just a little bit off" that works well will the story line so far. [I am only (only?) 30 hours in and have focused mainly on exploration and shrines rather than the main quests.] Then there's the fact you have the main world plus the Sky and the Depths to explore, which literally expand the world both upwards and downwards.

[RumHam]

I started another round of stellaris, encountered the grey goo outside the L-gates and so figured that was what was locked away in the L-Cluster. Ok so I just won't open the gates until I'm good and ready to deal with that.

But I forgot my science ships were set to auto explore including "research projects." So all of a sudden I get a notice that I've fucked myself and most of the galaxy. I'm having a terrible run of luck with this game. 

[horangi]

5 hours ago, Toth said:

To be fair, it's not like the show is intended to be competitive. It's actually quite ambivalent. In some episodes the opponent throws the team a boon bumbling around and falling into the most harebrained most telegraphed 'ploys' they had come up with, while at other times they go quite viciously about dismantling a comparably well coordinated team even though they did things mostly right. Still, there were some quite triumphant episodes. At the top of my mind I can think of the Teutoburg Forest battle with a team essentially going through the entire thing in one tight battle formation, clubbing down the attacking Germanics piecemeal.

The show actually inspired me to create a few lessons in a similar style, tasking my students to roleplay their way through historical battles and analyze the circumstances of the era. Mostly as a bit of a fun breather at the end or the beginning of a topic. Already did lessons around the Battle of Austerlitz, the Battle of Ilipa and, fittingly, Pharsalus.

Yes, I watched a couple more episodes (Gov't gave us a half day!) including the Teutoburg Forest one.  Who would have thought priests make the best generals.  On one episode of Rome vs Macedonia I am pretty sure the OPForce was intentionally tanking to give the viewers something to watch beyond the terrible performance by the team that probably would have ended up with a loss in 2 minutes flat had the enemy played even a half-way mediocre game.

[polishgenius]

4 hours ago, Mr. X said:

I don't find reusing the map to be a detraction. It creates a sense of "this is very familiar but just a little bit off" that works well will the story line so far. [I am only (only?) 30 hours in and have focused mainly on exploration and shrines rather than the main quests.] Then there's the fact you have the main world plus the Sky and the Depths to explore, which literally expand the world both upwards and downwards.

 

This, plus even if you are exploring, the game just isn't built around exploration in the same way. It's there, of courrse but in BotW it was the focus, the entire reason for being for the game. It's why there wasn't any real story to speak of, among other things. Here, it's building shit, experimenting with the physics mechanics - plus there's much more story, and way more little sidequests and shit. And since, like briantw said, actually getting around is far simpler now, wandering is not the key mechanic anymore. 

 

You can see the change in focus in the way enemies are handled. The game pokes you in certain directions by placing harder enemies on routes intended for later in the game. Although that is also part of the fusing mechanic- a good raid on a den of monsters you're theoretically not prepared for can net you items to fuse up some really good gear, so it needed to adjust the scaling mechanic to allow for that anyway. Going wherever you want is still absolutely on the table, it's just you have to actively plan for that now, a bit more. 

[briantw]

7 hours ago, polishgenius said:

 

This, plus even if you are exploring, the game just isn't built around exploration in the same way. It's there, of courrse but in BotW it was the focus, the entire reason for being for the game. It's why there wasn't any real story to speak of, among other things. Here, it's building shit, experimenting with the physics mechanics - plus there's much more story, and way more little sidequests and shit. And since, like briantw said, actually getting around is far simpler now, wandering is not the key mechanic anymore. 

 

You can see the change in focus in the way enemies are handled. The game pokes you in certain directions by placing harder enemies on routes intended for later in the game. Although that is also part of the fusing mechanic- a good raid on a den of monsters you're theoretically not prepared for can net you items to fuse up some really good gear, so it needed to adjust the scaling mechanic to allow for that anyway. Going wherever you want is still absolutely on the table, it's just you have to actively plan for that now, a bit more. 

The nice thing is that fuse can theoretically make any fight winnable, at least so long as you don’t get hit.  Some of the enemies can one shot you even after you’ve added a few extra hearts, and I haven’t even fought some of the more powerful enemies like those three headed dragons or the lion things.  

[polishgenius]

Both Fuse and Ultrahand are insanely powerful gameplay tools as you start to get to grips with them. Like, ludicrously so.

 

Spoiler

Especially once you get autobuild to recreate your builds wherever you are.

 

[briantw]

1 hour ago, polishgenius said:

Both Fuse and Ultrahand are insanely powerful gameplay tools as you start to get to grips with them. Like, ludicrously so.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Especially once you get autobuild to recreate your builds wherever you are.

 

At what point do you get the thing in your spoiler?  Is it after a specific temple?  I've only done the Wind Temple so far.  I just got to the Goron town, so will probably knock out the Fire Temple (presumably) this weekend.

[polishgenius]

You can get it whenever you want if you stumble upon it or already know where it is, I believe, but you can unlock the quest that directs you to it as soon as you've completed a temple. Go to Lookout Landing and talk to the important people until you get sent on a particular quest which I will hide in spoilers below, though don't worry, it's only the vaguest spoiler. 

 

Spoiler

Specifically, you need to talk to Robbie and Josha and do the camera quest, then talk to them (Josha, iirc) again and she'll point you in the right direction.

 

[briantw]

11 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

You can get it whenever you want if you stumble upon it or already know where it is, I believe, but you can unlock the quest that directs you to it as soon as you've completed a temple. Go to Lookout Landing and talk to the important people until you get sent on a particular quest which I will hide in spoilers below, though don't worry, it's only the vaguest spoiler. 

 

  Hide contents

Specifically, you need to talk to Robbie and Josha and do the camera quest, then talk to them (Josha, iirc) again and she'll point you in the right direction.

 

Ah okay.  Pretty sure I already have that quest.  Just haven't done it yet.

[Werthead]

On 5/26/2023 at 4:23 PM, Corvinus85 said:

A nice write-up indeed. @Werthead your write-ups of the latter games were a bit shorter than the older ones. Can I assume it's partly because you didn't play them as much?

I played Rome II, Attila and Warhammer I a fair bit, and a bit of Warhammer II at a friend's. I did buy, play and refund Thrones of Britannia, which was terrible.

The direction the series went in from Rome II onwards - very dumbed down, very fast battles, very "streamlined" (people transforming into boats!), very limited city building options - became of less and less interest to me. I despise series where sequels are simpler, dumber and stupider than the earlier games in the series to appeal to the masses, which is the direction TW has gone in (the Warhammer trilogy is okay, but it's more of a spin-off series with a completely different focus and scope).

I think the period Rome I through Shogun 2 was really the series at its height (and even Shogun 2 started going down the road of simplification) and it seems unlikely they will return to that format again. That's why my most eagerly awaited title right now is Medieval II Remastered, as Rome Remastered was excellent, but Medieval II needs much more of a remaster (the original can still cripple modern PCs because it puts so much load on the CPU, and it can only use one core!). If they can port over the Middle-earth and Westeros mods, that would be amazing.

Quote

While Napoleon and Attila were improvements over their direct predecessors, the question remains as to why CA didn't dedicate more initial efforts to fixing Empire and Rome II and simply hightailed it to the next game. Ironically, CA did go back and quietly improve Rome II with multiple updates (and even released more DLCs) to the point that Rome II is now better optimized than Attila.

Napoleon and Attila were both supposed to be meaty expansions for Empire and Rome II. With earlier games in the series CA released a big, huge expansion for each game which worked as a bugfixing exercise and sometimes included UI revisions and even whole new features. So Barbarian Invasion fixed a lot of the issues in Rome and even featured new ideas, like you can now "see" neighbouring tiles, meaning the Pyramids appear in battles in Cairo and if your battle is in the tile next to a city, you can see the city in the distance, or fleets of ships off the coast etc. Really helped with immersion.

The problem is that because Napoleon and Attila were made into stand-alone games, their fixes were not backported into what should have been the mothership games, so their problems remained until they were fixed independently, which for Rome II took many years.

I do miss those kind of mega-expansions from earlier in the series. Kingdoms, the expansion for Medieval II, is legitimately incredible.

Edited May 29 by Werthead

[Werthead]

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.

[Raja]

I've been so behind on this story on Disco Elysium

 

Edited May 29 by Raja

[Werthead]

5 hours ago, Raja said:

I've been so behind on this story on Disco Elysium

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

[Ran]

Really fascinating documentary. I recall when the first rumblings of this matter came out in public, and the natural position was always to just assume that executives had taken advantage of creators... but seeing a number of employees confirm that Kurvitz (especially Argo Tuulik, long-time friend of Robert Kurvitz) had been a real problem at the company was eye-opening. 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.

 

[Werthead]

The Witcher 3 has passed 50 million units sold, making it one of a very small number of individual video games to do so. It is now at #9 on the ranking of the biggest-selling video games of all time (and, interestingly, now far ahead of Skyrim).

The entire Witcher trilogy has now sold over 75 million copies, and with Cyberpunk 2077 in the mix, CD Projekt Red has sold over 95 million games.

CDPR has also shot down rumours of acquisition by Sony, saying they are not for sale.

 

Edited May 29 by Werthead