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[Fez]

11 hours ago, Rhom said:

What would you pay for a new game on Switch?

But it's not new. And its become pretty standard, at least on PC, that straight ports of old games are heavily discounted. E.g., when Atlus finally brought Persona 4 to PC it was for $20.

[Ser Not Appearing]

Ports don't cost nearly the same $ d original creation. Uneducated layman that I am, full cost for old ports feels like a giant money grab and not reasonable.

[Caligula_K3]

15 hours ago, Rhom said:

What would you pay for a new game on Switch?

Sure. I don't do it often because of budgeting, but I have no problem paying $60 for a new game (hell, I recently payed $70 for the new Zelda). And I wouldn't mind paying $50-60 for a remastered version of a game, if there have been updates to it, especially QOL ones.

My main issue with paying $50 for a straight up port of a 10+year old game is that many of these games haven't aged well. I don't care about graphics, but just in terms of things like voice acting, UI, quest design, whatever: it can be hard to get into an old game if you don't have any nostalgia for it. Or even if you do: I tried playing KOTOR recently, which I loved back in the day, and gave up after a few hours. I also find it's really hard (for me) to judge these things unless I'm actually playing the game. So it's not worth the risk of $50.

And that's on top of what Fez and Ser Not Appearing say - porting does take some work, but nowhere near the amount of effort/cost as a remaster, let alone a new game.

Edited August 8, 2023 by Caligula_K3

[Werthead]

Yup, 0 work has been done on the game. Even if there wase a moderate remaster, you can say that's worth at least a bit more money (if not full price). But charging almost full price for just a port is ludicrous.

It's also worth noting that the entire game world space of Red Dead Redemption is in Red Dead Redemption 2, and the only reason for that (as it has fuck all to do in the game itself) was to put down early work for a full remake of RDR in the RDR2 version of the engine (and RDR2 does use an upgraded version of same engine as RDR1). So a good 30-50% of the work of a full remake of the game was done for them five years ago. Remaking the rest of the game in the RDR2 engine is still quite a lot of work, but people would also pay new-game money for that across multiple systems without a complain. Fans have been begging for that for years.

[polishgenius]

Finally finished Tears of the Kingdom. Obviously overall I loved the game, but I must confess there were a few issues with the way it played out. Firstly, the actual storytelling... isn't very good. That was true in BotW too and it doesn't hugely detract from the overall experience because the games aren't focused on that, but it's still kind of a shame when you think how well-presented some older Zelda stories are. 

Second I feel like the game just had one too many acts, so to speak. Broke the pacing a bit when it asked me to go find one more thing before the final boss even though realistically I knew it was coming. 

Thirdly (and this was also true in the first one, but it's no less disappointing:

 

Spoiler

The final boss himself is wank. Like, the previous bosses in the game are pretty great, even if a bit easy - great spectacle and fun to engage. Ganondorf himself was just a red guy in a gloomy cave - literally just a more powerful version of the Shadow Ganon bosses which makes logical sense but is dull. And there were no interesting or fun moments in attacking him- able to just tank the hits by healing with food and then just walk up to him and smash him in the face with the Master Sword. 

 

The final-final part is entertaining enough in principle, clearly leaning into what at least part of Nintendo believes is a good design choice -the reward phase of a boss, where you power up and have no issue with it. But in other games it satisfies coz the actual final boss is good. In both this and BotW it's not, so making the spectacular final phase being quite slow and very easy a let-down instead of a satisfying 'I earned that' moment. 

 

 

Oh well. I stacked up a backlog while playing it coz I'm addicted to buying games. One of those is Monster Hunter Rise, which should give me the 'big epic boss fights' hit, but I also want to get cracking with Dordogne, because it looks like this:
 

 

[IlyaP]

The Quake 2 Remaster has landed.

https://www.pcgamer.com/quake-2-remaster-release/

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

Should I finally give in and replace my 3DS with the switch or wait till it’s successor ?

[polishgenius]

The Switch has a great game library (especially if you're into indies, what with the massive warehouse of them on the eshop), if you can get it you totally should. 

[Toth]

After beating GTA V (was already fairly late in the game, so it went quickly), I suddenly found myself an itch for some Pokemon as a side gig while watching my streams and Youtube channels I haven't caught up with in ages. So I made another splash into the world of Pokemon Fangames, which... are just an awesome way to play with a far wider variety of Mons than the official games do, and on PC nontheless.

First I continued my old ass playthrough in Pokemon Omicron/Zeta. Basically the grandfather of fangames. Very large and complete world, lots of features, but in terms of graphics and animations very bare-bones. Still quite a solid experience. The main story is childishly edgy (which sums up 90% of fangames, really), but thankfully it comes rarely up and the trainers populating the world seem blissfully ignorant of it and sprout the same cheery lines you'd expect in the main games, aside a few bits of black comedy here and there (like a swimmer in the ocean saying he's too exhausted to get back to shore, fights you, then complains why you fought him, as he's about to drown). Interestingly, I enjoyed the "Vesryn Spear" part quite a lot. After beating the Elite Four and becoming champion you get to a long, narrow island with four "Sigil Halls", Gyms owned by the Elite Four members where you have to fight them again with significantly stronger teams. It helps that all battles on the Vesryn Spear give you about four times the XP of normal fights, allowing you to go through levels at a staggering pace. Despite that, my Mr. Fish reached the level cap only in the second-before-last fight of the entire region as my only Pokemon to do so. However... after that you unlock a second region, get handed a new starter and taken away your Pokemon until you beat that new region. And the whole game comes to a grinding halt as the first two trainers on the first route are already stupidly tough and you have no options but mindlessly grind levels in the four patches of grass before them. I must admit, I abandoned the game for the time being there.

Dabbled a little around with Pokemon Wilds. A very impressive fangame that is not an RPG Maker game, but rather coded from scratch in Java, using Generation 2 assets. It also kinda plays like a Pokemon version of Factorio. You play on a procedurally generated island with various biomes and buildings and have to survive by befriending or catching various Pokemon, breed them in open pens and have them generate resources that you can use to build stuff with a quite in-depth base-building and crafting system. Seems quite intriguing, but admittedly I didn't play much with it.

Instead I went to Pokemon Desolation. Not yet finished, but a still very decent story-heavy game in the vein of Pokemon Reborn (which it openly uses a foundation, taking many of its mechanics and unique Shinys). Reborn was already quite fun (though I never finished it either), especially with its interesting setting in a gigantic city with very few wild Pokemon, forcing the player to befriend strays in scripted encounters and building their team from that. Desolation doesn't do that and drops you on an untamed island after your cruise ship you and two friends are taking gets wrecked and the survivors get picked up by a weird cult, forcing you to take one of the now ownerless Pokemon and rescue them, before exploring the island and trying to find a way to get off it. The game is extremely stingy with money so far, leaving you with tough choices in regards to which of the many, many wild Pokemon you catch and which you don't. The very long areas are thankfully littered with healing stations, making navigating it quite easy and every settlement has a trainer with three suicidal Audinos who battles you for free, essentially as an XP dispenser, so there is zero grinding whatsoever (unfortunately meaning the game assumes you are always at the level cap). The only rage moment was the very first boss fight in said cult village, who has a high-leveled Aipom who can one-shot most of your team (and no fighting types available as of then) and a Roselia that knows Rock Tomb (with no fire types available, only bug and bird types). That guy comes up before the first settlement and forces you to grind to brute force your way through. I was severely tempted to drop the game there and then, but thankfully I didn't. After the first gym (which was also a fairly bullshit fight if you haven't picked up on the idea that you HAVE to use Rain Dance to undo the sunshine and burning field effects that boost the gym leader's fire types through the stratosphere) the game's pacing settles into a far more enjoyable ride, particularly with the quite elaborate quest system that also happens to be one of the only sources of money that you have.

I'm also contemplating more of a go with Pokemon Empire. Another unnecessarily grim story-heavy fangame, but I'm yet on the edge about the grinding involved there as it's quite possible to get stuck. The unique feature here is that Pokemon Centers cost money, with the sum increasing with each badge you earn. In return attacks have drastically higher AP and items are much, much cheaper. This all to encourage a very mobile item-based playstyle with little to no backtracking. The fights I have had so far were also significantly easier than in Desolation or Zeta, so the game is very much about judging risks and advancing carefully. Of course, knowing myself, I fear I end up savescumming like crazy because of this. I also caught myself mindlessly level-grinding whenever status effects force me to use a Pokémon Center, thinking so I might as well use up my remaining AP.

[Poobah]

In between Baldur's Gate 3 seasons I am completely addicted to The Planet Crafter and want to take a minute to gush about it. The basic premise is that you're dumped on an uninhabitable red planet and need to survive and eventually terraform it. Watching this lifeless barren world develop as a result of my efforts has felt very rewarding, it's such a nice vibe to be bringing life to a planet rather than ruining it with industry. I've loved seeing the changes over time and it's done so gradually that it feels natural, it's been great coming back from a trip to search for resources or explore a wreck to see that the moss has spread or the water has begun to pool and rise etc. And on that subject there is a lot to explore on and under the surface and a fair bit of storytelling done through various things you can discover to learn or infer the fates of those who came before and who crashed there. My base has begun to feel really homey so instead of rushing myself towards the end of the current content with all the resources I've gathered I've just been doing small things and letting the progress tick along slowly as I enjoy the vibes of the lovely paradise in creating and tweak the small things / build fun things and living spaces. 

If I have any complaints it's the inventory management typical of this sort of game. I really don't want to build some huge ugly storage area filled with tightly packed containers to hold all my resources on my beautiful planet but it doesn't feel like any of the storage options are really enough if placed naturally around what I consider to be a sensible sized base and similarly my own inventory size which did expand nicely to begin with hasn't really kept pace with my growing capability to explore and obtain resources which has resulted in a lot of running back and fourth. I'd like to see them add more inventory expansion and maybe some kinda compression for items later on, and especially a vehicle of some sort with more storage on it in the early/mid game (I've seen that you get drones way late on which I'm sure will take care of all of this and lead in to big automation but there should be a stage I'm between where you're just better at manually moving stuff around). 

[Toth]

Well, last week before the end of my summer break is nearing. I have been particularly lazy this year...

So today I tried out a little bit of Railway Empire, which I had as a freebie for quite a while and was curious. Am quite the strategy game guy, but not too much the train guy. The closest game I have played was Industry Giant ages ago, which was quite fun, but even more arcade-y.

This... reminds me quite a lot of it. But hey, it's from the developers of Tropico, so the exaggerated cartoon characters and snappy natural building placement was feeling like returning home. I must admit, I struggled a little bit figuring out how exactly trains behave. I noticed sometimes they magically turn around in stations, at other times when I built my network in circles they drove across the country to get themselves turned around. So I dabbled a little with building roundabouts everywhere so that my trains can turn... but eventually figuring out that if you build the pre-built "station with signals", this one contains a cross-gridiron which somehow causes the trains to turn around. Apparently they can't do it while sitting on the same track, but when they can back up into another one, this allows them to teleport around, despite making zero sense whatsoever.

This... not feels very intuitive. And wonder whether a railway turntable as a building would do the trick (but while researching how that thing is called, I stumbled across the rail wye as a concept... which is amusingly something I built between Washington and Baltimore in Mission 2, but that was not to turn trains around, but to connect Washington with my Baltimore-Pittsburgh track to do a high-paying side mission establishing an express route).

After that first stumbling block, the rest was smooth sailing. I finished mission two FAR earlier than the time limit set and it quickly got a bit addictive when the money started piling up exponentially, allowing me to expand like crazy. Unfortunately I am too nice and should have expanded into the "territory" of the two AI oppontents, since they kept building stations in my cities and so towards the end when my last mission was to buy out the smaller New York mobster guy, the other lady overtook me in company revenue. I must admit, I find the AI opponents and their relentless sabotaging and grabbing of opportunities quite annoying to deal with.

Edited August 12, 2023 by Toth

[A True Kaniggit]

Internet says Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth comes out in early 2024. 
 

I’m calling the name of the next one right now.

Final Fantasy VII: Reunion. (Easy guess). 

[Caligula_K3]

On 8/10/2023 at 9:55 PM, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Should I finally give in and replace my 3DS with the switch or wait till it’s successor ?

Normally I'd just say to get the Switch. But odds are that Switch 2 will be out by November 2024; we can pray that it'll have backwards compatibility. Obviously there's a lot of unknowns there, but if this will be your only system buy for a while, it might be worth waiting.

On the other hand, if you just want a Switch now and aren't worried about the future, then it's 100% worth it. Both Zelda games, Mario Odyssey, Mario Maker 2, Mario Kart, Pokemon Arceus, Metroid Dread, Luigi's Mansion, Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Animal Crossing, Smash Bros, Splatoon... It has a lot of great first party games, and there are even more I haven't played that are supposed to be great, like Pikmin 4. I'm not into JRPGs, but if you are, just between Fire Emblem and Xenoblade you'll be happy.

I also agree that it's great for indies. I find it very hard to play most indie games on my laptop anymore - but curling up on my couch with Stardew Valley or even Hollow Knight is perfect.

The downside to the Switch, of course, is that you're not getting ports of most recent games, though there is a lot out there from past generations. But as long as you know what you're getting into, it's not a bother. And again, for me, portability makes a huge difference for some of those older ports.

[Derfel Cadarn]

Playing FFXVI, pretty good, surprised there’s been no mention of it here.

It has elements of ASoI&F mixes with the usual FF stuff suxh as chocobos and the Summonses

[Toth]

Graaaaah. Spending half the day on mission 3 in Railway Empire and I still failed, utterly. Maybe I wasted too much time early one (which I definitely did), but the final part is just absolutely bonkers.

So... you start in Toledo and have to supply the construction of a bridge across the Mississipi with timber. There I already was quite baffled when I built a sawmill in Madison and even bough the lumber camps around to supply it... and yet all that was delivered to the construction site was meat. I realized far too late the button to manually upgrade the sawmill, increasing the lumber output enough so that I could actually get something done.

Then with the bridge completed, the second mission was to transport 100 passengers from Toledo to Omaha without any stops inbetween. So I laid down the tracks, established a route... and forget about it, spending the rest of the years developing the area west of the Mississipi... and then realized aghast that I had only two years left and so far transported only 16 passengers. I... must say, I still have no clue what I should have done better. The problem was that barely any passenger wanted to make the trip to Omaha. I put 8 trains on the damned route and it still made barely a difference. Just now looking at a Youtube video... and what the hell, he just spammed even more trains one after another to make it happen. That... can't really be the solution, can't it?

[Rhom]

19 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Playing FFXVI, pretty good, surprised there’s been no mention of it here.

It has elements of ASoI&F mixes with the usual FF stuff suxh as chocobos and the Summonses

I grew up on FF.  One of my fondest memories of my NES was taking it to my mom's school in fifth grade during spring break of 1989 (she still teaches at the community college... they'll have to take her out of there feet first someday).  She pulled one of those TV carts into the conference room and I spent hours grinding ogres east of Elfland because the Nintendo Power strategy guide said the best tip for the Marsh Cave was to take as many Antidote potions as you could carry.  I wound up overleveled for the rest of the game.    

Like many, FFVII was the console seller that had me switch from a Nintendo fanboy to Sony.  I remember in fall 1997 sitting in my dorm room with a fraternity pledge having a conference with me as I raced Chocobos.  We still laugh about that today when we see each other.

I still consider JRPGs to be my favorite genre.

FFXV was the first FF game that I never bothered to finish.  Now for FFXVI, the move to a Devil May Cry style action game really doesn't appeal to me (even thought I used to love DMC).  I might get around to playing it, but I've got a backlog of other games that look more interesting to me first.  It makes me sad.

[Toth]

Okay... Finished the damned mission. Once you know what you are doing, it's somewhat easy. Did it in just about five years. Which... was a bit more than needed, given how I wasn't fast enough and someone built a stupid cheese factory in Madison instead of the sawmill that I needed. Had to wait for the city to grow a bit more for me to have the space to put the sawmill in.

Then I did the most extreme way of solving the mission: I built a dedicated track from Toledo to Omaha that nobody else was allowed to use. Was actually quite a bit more of a hassle than necessary. The Mississippi bridge had only two tracks which were lined up with Rock Island's train station, with that one not having gridirons and me not being allowed to make space because any track was attached to the bridge and the game refusing you to delete any of it. Since my Express trains refused to use the added two platforms because they were insufficiently connected to the bridge, I had to build random gridirons at it in order to segment the tracks and be able to delete parts of them, so that I had enough space to connect the new platforms instead of the old ones. It looked hideous. But ultimately worked. And oddly enough that was enough for my Express trains to reach Omaha quite swiftly, though they barely got more passengers all things considered. I thought I could build a sightseeing building in Omaha to increase passenger attractiveness, but the town refused to grow even though I filled it up with all the goods it needed and connected it with every other station (using separate platforms of course).

This now makes me wonder. I have read that you should actually aim at using FOUR tracks to connect cities, using two for freight and two for passengers. But I feel like in the early game you don't really have the funds for that and the output of the cities is low enough that you get only a mixed train out anyway. And in the late game those annoying AI opponents wall you in with random tracks EVERYWHERE that you sometimes can't get around without much of a hassle.

Which brings me to my last point: The only (optional) mission objective I failed at was to buy out one opponent. That... seems still quite impossible to me as I need to focus on expanding, while they do the same and their worth increasing exponentially, making saving up money for buyouts seemingly impossible.

[Slurktan]

Started playing Aliens:Dark Descent; (goofy name aside) it has actually been really good 3 missions in.  Plays kind of like a streamlined Icewind Dale minus the DnD nonsense and with guns.  You can have your  squadmates doing things like welding a door, checking a box, dropping a sentry gun, and reading a datapad but when you move your squad moves as one.  There's even some Starcraft 2 esque in between levels in your base where you rank up, heal marnes, research stuff and get upgrades.

The environment and weapons etc graphics are really good, some bizarrely character models that appear to be early Ps4 aside.  Its quite hard with the aliens swarming you more and more, the more you kill and the tension is great partially due to them using the score from Aliens in it whenever the heat ramps up.

Recommending it thus far.

[Toth]

Railway Empire has this weird combination of being addictive, but at the same time super frustrating. I do a mission, fail, have to look up a Youtube video about what I did wrong, then come back and finish the mission. Rinse and repeat for each mission. That's because the mechanics may be simple, but the game does a horrific job explaining them to you. When I look at my previous posts here, I was confused in the first mission how and when trains turn around, then got blindsided how passengers work and now at the fourth mission it's how cities grow and how warehouses work. The first task is to make Louisville grow to 60k inhabitants, but the number stubbornly refused to budge from 56k and so I immediately lost. Despite me having made a vast network connecting all cities and directing coal, iron and wood for industry and meat, beer and textiles for the people's needs into Louisville. I upgraded my weapons factory to level 3 and the needs of the people were seemingly met, but the number still didn't move. I have seen online many complain about this mission, saying that you need to be extremely efficient and fast to account for a delay before the city starts to grow or be extremely lucky and get to hire a Promoter to force the city to grow. And for the efficiency I need to use warehouses, but the "tutorial" that is actually part of this mission just says "Here is a warehouse, use it!". What the hell, game?

[Werthead]

Damn. Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew comes out tomorrow. It's the latest game from Mimimi Games who are so far batting very high with both Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun and Desperados III. The latest game is similar (it has the same vision cones!) but it's more open-world and less focused on stealth: combat and magic are viable alternate tactics. You can also use whatever character you want on each mission, which is a major shift in approach.

The problem is that releasing your game exactly halfway between Baldur's Gate III and Starfield is probably not wise. I'll pick up a copy but it might be months before I get around to it.