Werthead Posted October 5, 2023 Share Posted October 5, 2023 That escalated quickly. Rhom, Prince of the North, Tongue Stuck to Wall and 5 others 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corvinus85 Posted October 6, 2023 Author Share Posted October 6, 2023 I finished Starfield's main quest + I think all the major quests. 103 hrs of playtime. No regrets. While the main quest started slowly, I liked the twists once the Starborn were revealed. Spoiler I didn't anticipate the multiverse angle, despite this theme being all the rage now in SF media. I suspected Earth's death was human caused, but not the actual thing that caused it. It put a damper on the rest of the questline really. By the end of it I was kinda meh on the Unity deal - there is no meaning of life here, Bethesda just shamelessly acknowledges that this is what players do in games, they loot and kill people, again and again. So I walked away from the Unity, because the loot like the unique weapon from the Emissary is cooler than proceeding to another universe. The Starborn suit is great, but the ship sucks. Why do Starborn even get that ship? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Not Appearing Posted October 6, 2023 Share Posted October 6, 2023 One of the most fascinating things I've seen about the NG+ is multiple people saying Spoiler ... they went into or maybe out of their first game not agreeing with the hunter but, after a few times doing new worlds, all they ended up wanting to do was to rush through and get the powers and move on and they stopped caring about bystanders or who got in the way ... and they realized they had become the hunter. Corvinus85 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Not Appearing Posted October 13, 2023 Share Posted October 13, 2023 I rarely play EA games, especially the rehashed annual sports content like Madden (I admit NFL Fever was superior and I'm still bitter about their exclusivity play) but the concept of this game sounds like an interesting mashup and I hope the execution merits my return to sports gaming: https://kotaku.com/ea-fc-24-tactical-fifa-mobile-rpg-release-date-soccer-1850923492 Arakasi 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Werthead Posted October 13, 2023 Share Posted October 13, 2023 Replaying Dungeon Keeper and it occurred to me that this is probably the oldest game (came out in 1997) that I replay regularly and it absolutely holds up really well. Bullfrog were so ahead of their time with minimalist UI, tutorials etc that it feels quite fresh, despite the iffy graphics (my sole concession to modernity was using the KeeperFX launcher, which allows you to up the resolution without the UI vanishing). I replayed OG Final Fantasy VII last year and it just about holds together, but I think the awful translation, awkward controls, annoying minigames and absurd difficulty spikes make it a much tougher proposition, not to mention the horrible low-res FMV and backgrounds. You really need one of the AI-driven upscaling mods to make it palatable. I've also played a lot of the LucasArts adventure remasters, but you really need the remasters to make them work well. Apart from something like Tetris I wonder what the oldest game is that still holds up really well without tons of caveats, nostalgia goggles and requiring a modern remaster to make it work better. I have been thinking about replaying Eye of the Beholder from 1991 and I suspect that and its forebears (like Dungeon Master and Captive) probably hold up quite well because the grid-based gameplay and realtime combat is a pretty good combination (the recent Legend of Grimrock and Might & Magic X showed that gameplay style still works with contemporary titles), it's just the graphics that look a bit low-res. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heartofice Posted October 13, 2023 Share Posted October 13, 2023 Super Mario World on the SNES is probably the oldest game that I can replay without ever getting bored, I really do think that is a perfect game. I look back at a lot of games I used to be totally addicted to when I was younger and can't believe how utterly basic they are. Golden Axe and Double Dragon I used to be obsessed by, I've replayed them and they are so frustrating. Dungeon Master on the Amiga was also maybe my favourite game of all time, the atmosphere is amazing, but actually you barely do anything in the game at all. Rhom 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kalbear Posted October 13, 2023 Share Posted October 13, 2023 Per Phil Spencer the Microsoft acquisition of activision-blizzard has completed. Darryk and Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rhom Posted October 13, 2023 Share Posted October 13, 2023 51 minutes ago, Heartofice said: Super Mario World on the SNES is probably the oldest game that I can replay without ever getting bored, I really do think that is a perfect game. I look back at a lot of games I used to be totally addicted to when I was younger and can't believe how utterly basic they are. Golden Axe and Double Dragon I used to be obsessed by, I've replayed them and they are so frustrating. Dungeon Master on the Amiga was also maybe my favourite game of all time, the atmosphere is amazing, but actually you barely do anything in the game at all. I played SMW on the SNES thing on Switch a couple years back. I agree, it really is still such a neatly constructed game. I was amazed at how many secrets I remembered. I'm running a stage and all of a sudden just remember that I have to use the Blue Yoshi and fly under the end of the stage and then jump off it to find the secret exit. Can't remember the name of the patient I just met 20 minutes ago... but those things are still in my brain taking up real estate. I also think that era of games have aged much better than the next generation. As we moved away from those cartoon quality pixel games and into the first efforts at 3D imaging, the quality just doesn't hold up. Durckad 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II Posted October 13, 2023 Share Posted October 13, 2023 26 minutes ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said: Per Phil Spencer the Microsoft acquisition of activision-blizzard has completed. Let’s hope we can finally get Warcraft 4 now that WoW is not blizzards sole cash flow ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
polishgenius Posted October 13, 2023 Share Posted October 13, 2023 Nintendo fucking nailed the SNES era. Rhom, Durckad and Ran 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gorn Posted October 13, 2023 Share Posted October 13, 2023 1 hour ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said: Let’s hope we can finally get Warcraft 4 now that WoW is not blizzards sole cash flow ! I see zero chance of that happening, and I say this as a fan of Warcraft 3. RTS is a mostly dead genre, Warcraft 3 community is dead (thanks to Blizzard, which killed it with Reforged), and any new sequel would interfere with the lore of WoW, which is untouchable. Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II Posted October 13, 2023 Share Posted October 13, 2023 (edited) 14 minutes ago, Gorn said: I see zero chance of that happening, and I say this as a fan of Warcraft 3. RTS is a mostly dead genre, Warcraft 3 community is dead (thanks to Blizzard, which killed it with Reforged), and any new sequel would interfere with the lore of WoW, which is untouchable. As someone who initially got into gaming with RTS titles like AoE and Rise of Nations, this is pretty sad to hear lol. I don’t think the genre is completely dead with sub genre games like the total war series still running strong but yeah it’s facing tough times. battle.net used to be my favourite multiplayer community servers back in the 2000s, they had some fantastic modded games.Hated what blizzard did with it through the disastrous launch of Reforged. They can still continue Warcraft 4 as an alternate universe to WoW canon.A man can hope…. Edited October 13, 2023 by Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Durckad Posted October 13, 2023 Share Posted October 13, 2023 2 hours ago, Rhom said: I played SMW on the SNES thing on Switch a couple years back. I agree, it really is still such a neatly constructed game. I was amazed at how many secrets I remembered. I'm running a stage and all of a sudden just remember that I have to use the Blue Yoshi and fly under the end of the stage and then jump off it to find the secret exit. Can't remember the name of the patient I just met 20 minutes ago... but those things are still in my brain taking up real estate. I also think that era of games have aged much better than the next generation. As we moved away from those cartoon quality pixel games and into the first efforts at 3D imaging, the quality just doesn't hold up. Yeah... a lot of early 3D games just... do not look or play all that well especially anything 3rd person or containing any platforming. Wonky cameras, blurry textures, weird UI's and control schemes. Companies and programmers were still figuring out how to do this new 3D thing properly. FFVII comes from that era and it really, really shows. It spends so much time showing off its no longer impressive graphics with wide, swooping camera movements during combat while the actual gameplay is not that much of a change from FFVI. Without a mod, the 3D models are simplistic and often ugly and the backgrounds are a blurry and muddy mess. Game changing (literally) when it came out, but just.... hard to look at for long periods of time now. I do think the cinematics hold up though, even if they are a bit simple in design. I think there are some NES games I would happily replay today and I don't think nostalgia factors in, namely Super Mario Brothers 2 and The Legend of Zelda. The original Super Mario Brothers is also good, just a very tight and focused platformer, but it's not a favorite of mine. It plays well, but it lacks some of the additional variety of 2 and 3. 3 is a bit too sprawling, even though I love it, and I just tend to get tired of it before I get even close to the end. 3 crawled so Super Mario World could sprint, honestly. And, while I do love Adventure of Link, I will be the first to admit that it is not perfect and that some of my fondness for it may be nostalgia related. Also, the brutal difficulty and unforgiving nature make it hard to play nowadays. Rhom 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rhom Posted October 13, 2023 Share Posted October 13, 2023 16 minutes ago, Durckad said: The original Super Mario Brothers is also good, just a very tight and focused platformer, but it's not a favorite of mine. It plays well, but it lacks some of the additional variety of 2 and 3. 3 is a bit too sprawling, even though I love it, and I just tend to get tired of it before I get even close to the end. 3 crawled so Super Mario World could sprint, honestly. I have almost no memory of Super Mario 3... mainly because I would play through and get the two warp whistles... and then get to the end. I'd beat Bowser and call it good. There are probably 20 levels in that game that I never played. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Not Appearing Posted October 13, 2023 Share Posted October 13, 2023 *whispers* I always preferred the original Sonic games to Mario. Rhom and Jace, Extat 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Durckad Posted October 13, 2023 Share Posted October 13, 2023 31 minutes ago, Rhom said: I have almost no memory of Super Mario 3... mainly because I would play through and get the two warp whistles... and then get to the end. I'd beat Bowser and call it good. There are probably 20 levels in that game that I never played. Probably the smartest way to play. Unfortunately, the last few times I played, I went for a "straight through" playthrough ie every world, beginning to end, no warps. It gets incredibly tedious, especially world 7 which just sucks. Play smart, not stubborn, kids. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Werthead Posted October 13, 2023 Share Posted October 13, 2023 4 hours ago, Gorn said: I see zero chance of that happening, and I say this as a fan of Warcraft 3. RTS is a mostly dead genre, Warcraft 3 community is dead (thanks to Blizzard, which killed it with Reforged), and any new sequel would interfere with the lore of WoW, which is untouchable. The WoW lore is a complete and total mess. They retconned tons of stuff from WC1-3, but then retconned stuff within WoW's own timeframe, which is extremely dumb. RTS is certainly a smaller deal than it was, but not wholly dead: the sales figures for StarCraft II were absolutely stunning (despite its crap story and ludicrous, five-year release schedule), and would have absolutely led to more games in any universe other than the deranged one when Blizzard counted its performance as disappointing because it was only 20% of WoW's, but that's still like 20 million sales. WTF? A WarCraft IV that picked up after Frozen Throne and continued the story without the bullshit retconning from hackmeister supreme Metzen (who's now back at Blizzard, like an insipid boomerang) would probably be completely fine. You could have a tie-in expansion pack for WoW explaining a divergence in the timestream or some bollocks and just carry on. Alternately, you could just do a prequel or interquel. This is where Elder Scrolls Online had the right idea by making the MMORPG the prequel, setting it thousands of years in the past, so the mainline singleplayer games can carry on into the future. Eventually. Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darryk Posted October 14, 2023 Share Posted October 14, 2023 It tickles me that among the franchises Microsoft now owns are the old Sierra adventure game series; Kings Quest, Space Quest, and Quest for Glory (my personal favourite game series ever). I guess it's too much to hope for remakes of those. Rhom 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II Posted October 14, 2023 Share Posted October 14, 2023 (edited) Microsoft just needs to buy EA and Ubisoft now to basically become a gaming monopoly (Sony and Nintendo seem too far fetched and absolutely shouldn’t happen anyways due to regulations) Edited October 14, 2023 by Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fez Posted October 14, 2023 Share Posted October 14, 2023 On 10/13/2023 at 1:53 PM, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said: As someone who initially got into gaming with RTS titles like AoE and Rise of Nations, this is pretty sad to hear lol. I don’t think the genre is completely dead with sub genre games like the total war series still running strong but yeah it’s facing tough times. battle.net used to be my favourite multiplayer community servers back in the 2000s, they had some fantastic modded games.Hated what blizzard did with it through the disastrous launch of Reforged. They can still continue Warcraft 4 as an alternate universe to WoW canon.A man can hope…. Most of the RTS space was taken over by MOBA games (DOTA, League of Legends, etc.). They are a continuation of the trends set by the hero-focused RTS games like Warcraft 3. There are still some indie RTS games that release now and then, but I think the biggest RTS game right now is probably actually AoE 2. It always retained some popularity, but got a big boost when the 2019 definitive edition came out; and has gotten 4 new expansions released since then. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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