Video Game General
#61
Someone post the God of War Amarna infographic. They made Thor a giant fatass in God of War: Ragnarok.
#62
(11-18-2022, 06:23 PM)Guest Wrote: Age of Decadence is one of the best 2010's RPG's. The sheer quality of the story and the writing is rivalled only by Planescape: Torment, even if they're different in many respects; the former offers an unparalleled freedom of the path you can take with your character

Can I climb that mountain? Can I pick up that can? Can I walk into that home and just appreciate the phenomena of inhabiting that three dimensional space?

[Image: image.png]
#63
There definitely is a button that you press and something awesome happens.
#64
(11-19-2022, 03:11 PM)Guest Wrote: There definitely is a button that you press and something awesome happens.

That's Dragon Age 2. And that game's problem wasn't that it wasn't an isometric rpg.
#65
(11-18-2022, 06:23 PM)Guest Wrote: Age of Decadence is one of the best 2010's RPG's. The sheer quality of the story and the writing is rivalled only by Planescape: Torment, even if they're different in many respects; the former offers an unparalleled freedom of the path you can take with your character who, for one reason or another, seeks an ancient temple built before the apocalypse, while the latter is a personal story of a man dealing with the consequences of his past life. There are similarities, though. The stories takes place in a unique setting, ruthless and unforgiving, with many wishing to take advantage of the player, and that it does not revolve around saving the world; while there's an ample opportunity to change and influence it, there's no single-minded doom looming over it that needs a hero to deal with it.

In AoD, in many ways you are the villain, willful or not, because often enough the other choice means failure. It is probably the only role playing game I know of which allows you to play a Conan or a Cugel the Clever, depending on the choice of stats and skills; you can play a brute killer, a machiavellian manipulator, or preferably to create a balance between the two. Every character origin you can choose from (a legionary, a merchant, a thief and others) offers a widely different perspective, allowing you to partake in events that seemed to be merely background occurences in your other playthrough; when previously, as a merchant, you've heard a passing remark about a massacre of the local garrison, you suddenly end up in the middle of it as an assassin. Out of easily understood necessity, all of these paths converge into one near the end, but the exact ending is determined by prior as well as present choices.

On top of entertaining dialogues and memorable characters, there's a complex and challenging combat system that gives plenty of tools of the trade: the classic hardware that one associates with the ancient era as well as nets, greek fire, powder bombs and poisons to aid in the deadly endeavors. At the start, you determine whether you'll avoid being hit or accept it by means of a shield; whether you'll focus on nimbleness of light armor or perseverance granted by a lorica segmentata. The only magic present is out of your grasp, taken to the grave by its ancient masters, but some of their tools are there to be found and put to use.

While it's often criticized for dated graphics, the difficulty and certain mechanical shortcomings, I've found that those disliking this game struggle to name any concrete flaws besides those pertaining to their own preferences. I personally found it amusing to read through the negative steam reviews and see people bend themselves into pretzels in order to say anything more than "I don't like it, it's too hard, the graphics are ugly and there's too much text". The downsides certainly are there: the traversable map limited only to the designated locations, and thus no random encounters, the repetitiveness of certain segments during multiple playthroughs, the not-great length of a single playthrough (although necessitated by the aforementioned design - the game was made by a handful of indie developers), beginner-unfriendliness when it comes to the character builds (still, a reasonably intelligent person will finish the game just fine). Other things, as I mentioned, are dependent on personal preference. Some RPG fans criticized the design of level-ups - upon finishing a quest you receive a pool of points you can freely assign at any time, with some small skill bonuses granted by killing enemies, opening locks, sneaking etc. As any design philosophy, it has its good and bad sides.

The developers are currently making a new game inspired by a sf novel by Heinlein, which looks very promising so far.

While overall I loved AoD and recommend it, it has serious flaws that are carried by the appeal of the setting and atmosphere. The characters are uniformly 'gritty' and 'realistic' in a very one-note and repetitive way, which actually detracts from the feeling of realism. Mechanically, the way skills work and the relative linearity of the game compared to something like Fallout creates the feeling of jumping through a series of arbitrary and narrow hoops. It's an interesting and original setting marred by a misguided attempt to be 'hardcore', and I think their new game Colony Ship will turn out similarly.
#66
Quote:The characters are uniformly 'gritty' and 'realistic' in a very one-note and repetitive way, which actually detracts from the feeling of realism.
My impression was to the contrary, because it's rare if not unheard of to have so many NPC's be overtly hostile to the player character and try to betray him on a regular basis. I might agree with the repetitiveness, but still there are some interesting and memorable characters (Miltiades is the first that comes to mind). A lot more emphasis was put on lore and worldbuilding. Still, the game reportedly has similar if not greater amount of text as the first Fallout. The number of side quests, interactions, locations etc. is definitely inferior, but it can be explained primarily by the budget and the size of the team; besides, as they said themselves, one of the design goals was to bring novelty instead of emulating the predecessors.

Quote:and I think their new game Colony Ship will turn out similarly.
The demo has been out for quite a while, you can see for yourself. The developers are open when it comes to player feedback, and from what I've seen, an easy mode has been added due to popular demand.
#67
Anyone who doesn't agree that Darktide's OST is kino tier is probably destined for servitude.
#68
(12-03-2022, 07:07 PM)Verl Wrote: Anyone who doesn't agree that Darktide's OST is kino tier is probably destined for servitude.

It's Jesper Kyd of course it's guaranteed to be kino.
#69
When i was a kid, i used to play so much Osu! my hands would shake for several minutes from pain, the right hand would hurt the most ofc. Very fun game, re-downloaded yesterday just to see how washed i am today but i still kinda got it, hehehe.
#70
(12-05-2022, 08:55 AM)ebisu Wrote: When i was a kid, i used to play so much Osu! my hands would shake for several minutes from pain, the right hand would hurt the most ofc. Very fun game, re-downloaded yesterday just to see how washed i am today but i still kinda got it, hehehe.

I enjoy Osu!. Would probably have given it a lot more time if I could find more music I was into on it.
#71
(12-05-2022, 09:54 AM)anthony Wrote:
(12-05-2022, 08:55 AM)ebisu Wrote: When i was a kid, i used to play so much Osu! my hands would shake for several minutes from pain, the right hand would hurt the most ofc. Very fun game, re-downloaded yesterday just to see how washed i am today but i still kinda got it, hehehe.

I enjoy Osu!. Would probably have given it a lot more time if I could find more music I was into on it.
What is your taste in music? There's been a lot more diverse music ranked recently (though it's still mostly Japanese stuff) and the graveyarded map category has exploded with different music. Just post what you like and I'll see if there's anything good.
#72
(12-05-2022, 11:16 AM)Guest Wrote:
(12-05-2022, 09:54 AM)anthony Wrote:
(12-05-2022, 08:55 AM)ebisu Wrote: When i was a kid, i used to play so much Osu! my hands would shake for several minutes from pain, the right hand would hurt the most ofc. Very fun game, re-downloaded yesterday just to see how washed i am today but i still kinda got it, hehehe.

I enjoy Osu!. Would probably have given it a lot more time if I could find more music I was into on it.
What is your taste in music? There's been a lot more diverse music ranked recently (though it's still mostly Japanese stuff) and the graveyarded map category has exploded with different music. Just post what you like and I'll see if there's anything good.

I can only get exposed to so much Japanese stuff so it's kind of a bottleneck on me getting into Osu! I played a few nightcore, Touhou, and anime tracks. Beyond that didn't really know where to go. Also I'm just not that good at it. Lately I've been listening to some breakcore or breakcore adjacent stuff, never sure where the lines are drawn on these things. Atsuo is very cool. Feels like music from the future.

And in other gayming news I'm playing SWAT4 at the moment and having a great time. Might make a post about it soon.
#73
I have just played COD Warzone, the battle royale game. I actually think its OK. In my opinion it is what COD always should have been. You have to tune out all the weird cartoonish merchandising shit designed for little kids.

Take the same map and basic mechanics and turn it into a battlefield-like game with realistic objectives, and it would actually be good.
#74
At what point did mobile games stop being for women and start being made to appeal to low-life incel males? The inflection point seems like it was around 2018 or so, but I could be corrected. Before that, mobile, and particularly gacha, games seem to have been primarily aimed at women. This seems similar to slots being originally designed for women, while men lost their money at 'real' games.

The transition seems like it's happened almost invisibly, more an absence of the once present vitriol in the type of lowlife obsessed with 8.8 and various other parts of the dead games-canon culture-war. Also seems to coincide with the type who have strong opinions about games, but primarily interact with them via game-adjacent "content." Did they just get older?
#75
(12-20-2022, 10:39 AM)kirukuni Wrote: Did they just get older?

I think that through exposure to declining production standards over time they eventually realised that 99% of what was going on in video games they didn't give a shit about. Many people were always only into video games for their trashiest elements, and to these types gacha is a liberation. At its peak western video gaming was merely dragging these people along for the ride, taste and success were significantly determined by the higher elements of the audience, with the lower orders taking what pleasures they could in things which mostly went over their heads. But now that art and craft have been severed games made by and for the low orders of humanity are everywhere. And they're all quite happy.

It was only ever so many of us who really got it. See also the Gaming Dysgenics thread and my 'The Mothership' post about Halo.
#76
I have wanted to invest time into RPGs like KOTOR and Runescape but lately I only have the time to treat video games as a way to stimulate intense focus. Touhou 6 and the original Insurgency have been my go-to's for this for the past few months. Anything to get me on the edge of my seat and make my palms sweat. I want to re-experience "games-as-art" that draw the player through a journey, whether through progression or story. It would be easy to start playing video games with friends as a social activity (Darktide, Deep Rock Galactic, Barotrauma) but I feel like that has its own pitfalls. Maybe this sounds weird, but I want that time to be more about the game than the people I am playing it with.
#77
(12-21-2022, 04:07 AM)godvvins Wrote: I have wanted to invest time into RPGs like KOTOR and Runescape but lately I only have the time to treat video games as a way to stimulate intense focus. Touhou 6 and the original Insurgency have been my go-to's for this for the past few months. Anything to get me on the edge of my seat and make my palms sweat. I want to re-experience "games-as-art" that draw the player through a journey, whether through progression or story. It would be easy to start playing video games with friends as a social activity (Darktide, Deep Rock Galactic, Barotrauma) but I feel like that has its own pitfalls. Maybe this sounds weird, but I want that time to be more about the game than the people I am playing it with.
Nothing particularly wrong or weird with disliking games as social activity to me. These always feel like hollow ways to spend time with friends, mostly done with people you've met online and can't see in person. Maybe could be called surrogate forms of truly hanging out. Games like TF2, Deep Rock Galactic, Minecraft etc. are not really good for playing with your friends, they're good for having fun with randoms to me. I think it really defeats the purpose if you play games to be with your friends rather than playing them for the game and to engage with others you don't know.
#78
(12-21-2022, 04:07 AM)godvvins Wrote: I want to re-experience "games-as-art"

Don't play RPGs in that case. The strength of video games is to give you new phenomenal experiences. The typical RPG is a stilted and awkward genre fiction novel crossed with a shit movie with strange abstracted chores between these.

My recommendations for getting good time out of video games are:

- Play structured games: That means beginning, middle, and end. No forever-games that lack clearly defined ending points or are designed to be played indefinitely.

- Look for games with a strong impression of a personal creator: Do people who like this game attribute how it is to one person, or perhaps a few? This is a very good general rule but not essential.

- Look for shorter games: Games are cheap and piracy is easy. We're talking about value for time. Very few games make good use of more than four hours all up. At the very least never look at length or potential length as a selling point ever again.

I think that these three rules will get you on track to not waste massive amounts of time having mediocre experiences. If you want I could also make some recommendations and summon some other people I believe to have excellent taste.
#79
(12-21-2022, 09:27 AM)anthony Wrote: If you want I could also make some recommendations and summon some other people I believe to have excellent taste.

I for one would appreciate that!
#80
(12-21-2022, 09:27 AM)anthony Wrote:
(12-21-2022, 04:07 AM)godvvins Wrote: I want to re-experience "games-as-art"

If you want I could also make some recommendations and summon some other people I believe to have excellent taste.

I would appreciate it.



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