Whatcha Been Playing?

This is where you can deliberate anything relating to videogames - past, present and future
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Alex79
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Alex79 »

duskvstweak wrote: March 12th, 2019, 2:58 pmGone Home spookiness
Spoiler: show
It's only spooky in the way wandering around an unfamiliar house. I don't think it's a spoiler to say there is nothing supernatural about the game.
It's just a brilliant story told in such an awesome way. If you play it, read EVERYTHING. Every letter, every leaflet, ever note.
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KissMammal
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by KissMammal »

Trials Rising.

The core gameplay is fun as ever - its Trials! - but I don’t think I’ve ever played a game that is so hamstrung by utterly baffling design decisions.

To start with, the UI is a confusing, cluttered mess - totally overloaded with unnecessary fluff that just gets in the way of the game - loot crates, xp based progression, irritating and lame Fortnite-style victory poses, annoying pop ups and notifications that constantly bombard you etc etc. If there was ever a game series where the joy of playing is in its simplicity, surely its Trials? Why bog it down it with all this garbage?

But the main issue is the progression - basically, it isn’t enough to complete a set of tracks to unlock the next set. No, instead you have to play and win a variety of ‘contracts’ in order to accrue a (unreasonably high) amount of xp. These are challenges requiring you to replay levels you have already completed under certain conditions. These start off fairly straightforward, albeit a bit dull (complete a few front flips or backflips, beat a designated opponent etc), but quickly progress into extremely fiddly and frustrating territory.

The resulting challenges are often far, far harder to complete than any of the ‘hard’ or ‘extreme’ levels in any other Trials game which makes a mockery of the difficulty level - it’s as if they didn’t playtest it at all. And they also force you to play in very specific ways that are - for me, at least - simply not fun. By all means put optional achievements in there to reward players with the required patience to want to, say, complete a track using no lean, complete several tracks back to back with no faults etc, but why on Earth would you force regular players to jump through these kind of hoops simply to unlock standard levels? I’ve got to the point where I have unlocked a fair few tracks and have gold medals on almost all of them, but am now completely stuck as I am well short of hitting enough xp to proceed and the only contracts available to me are both tedious in the extreme and borderline impossible.

I don’t want to be hyperbolic, but it feels as if Ubisoft are doing literally everything they can to alienate traditional Trials players like me, who simply want to play different tracks, compare their times to those of friends etc.
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Magical_Isopod
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Magical_Isopod »

Alex79uk wrote: March 12th, 2019, 5:46 pm
duskvstweak wrote: March 12th, 2019, 2:58 pmGone Home spookiness
It plays to that. It's only spooky in the way wandering around an unfamiliar house is. I don't think it's a spoiler to say there is nothing supernatural about the game. It's just a brilliant story told in such an awesome way. If you play it, read EVERYTHING. Every letter, every leaflet, ever note.
So what you're saying is... Gone Home and Hello Neighbour are the same thing. :3
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Alex79
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Alex79 »

Haha. No!
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Alex79
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Alex79 »

ThirdMan wrote: March 12th, 2019, 11:26 pm I think that's a major spoiler actually. I knew nothing about the game going into it and I completely bought into that whole supernatural red herring. I found opening the attic door almost unbearably tense because I still believed there might be something sinister about to happen. It would have been a much poorer experience without it.
Oh god sorry, genuinely didn't mean to post a spoiler, I absolutely hate them and would hate to have ruined the game for someone! I will edit my post now - you may want to remove the quote!
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Magical_Isopod
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Magical_Isopod »

Alex79uk wrote: March 13th, 2019, 8:09 am
ThirdMan wrote: March 12th, 2019, 11:26 pm I think that's a major spoiler actually. I knew nothing about the game going into it and I completely bought into that whole supernatural red herring. I found opening the attic door almost unbearably tense because I still believed there might be something sinister about to happen. It would have been a much poorer experience without it.
Oh god sorry, genuinely didn't mean to post a spoiler, I absolutely hate them and would hate to have ruined the game for someone! I will edit my post now - you may want to remove the quote!
To be fair, that's exactly the kind of spoiler I appreciate - if I'd played the game without knowing the "twist," I would have felt scammed. Like Ethan Carter. And Kona. In fact, it's such a cliche for walking simulator indie games to build tensions only to shit the bed with a mundane ending... It's like EDM tracks that build and build and build and don't drop a beat. You wanna dance and you're just standing there like, "Wait, what the hell?" I'm surprised more of them don't just end with "gunshot, fade to black." ... Like The Order 1866 did.
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Simonsloth
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Simonsloth »

I’ve just hooked up my “new” C64 mini and although the controller is a bit sensitive everything else is spot on. There’s a plethora of games some of which I had completely forgotten about and the system is designed to be updated. The keyboard itself is wonderful.

It’s precisely the opposite of PlayStation mini. Genuine thought has gone into it. It’s a harder sell admittedly but it puts other mini consoles to shame.

Now to get my head around paradroid.
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ratsoalbion
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by ratsoalbion »

Have you played NieR:Automata? It’s that...
😉


Which incarnation of 64 mini is this? There are a number of plug ‘n play variants.
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Simonsloth
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Simonsloth »

It’s the latest one as far as I’m aware.

THEC64 Mini https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0764BK6L1/ ... ICb056ED0X

Very nice bit of kit so I’m delighted.
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Magical_Isopod
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Magical_Isopod »

Simonsloth wrote: March 13th, 2019, 10:29 am I’ve just hooked up my “new” C64 mini and although the controller is a bit sensitive everything else is spot on. There’s a plethora of games some of which I had completely forgotten about and the system is designed to be updated. The keyboard itself is wonderful.

It’s precisely the opposite of PlayStation mini. Genuine thought has gone into it. It’s a harder sell admittedly but it puts other mini consoles to shame.

Now to get my head around paradroid.
Hey now, lots of thought has gone into the PS Classic.

... Not by Sony, but certainly by modders.
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ratsoalbion
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by ratsoalbion »

Thanks Simon!
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Scrustle
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Scrustle »

Just been playing a bit of Grid 2 as Humble Bundle is giving it away for free right now. Happened to be good timing as I've been thinking about that game a little bit recently having gone through the original not long ago. Kind of interesting to go back to it after so long. While it had also been a very long time since I played the first game properly, I had a couple of times popped it in over the years to just get a feel of it again. This one though, I don't think I've played it at all since it was new. I was always sort of disappointed with this for not living up to the original, and Autosport made it obsolete in my mind too. But I thought it would be interesting to see how I would react to it again with a fresh perspective and not so much expectations behind it.

Visually, it still actually looks pretty good. One of the things I didn't like about this back in the day was how it strayed from the aesthetic of the original. While it does feel like it is watered down in some ways, in other ways it does still retain a lot of the feel of the original game visually. It still has a muted colour palette with sepia tones and low sunlight bathing clouds of dust that hang in the air. It has a bit more colour to it though, and the level of detail in the environments is significantly higher in a way that fits the mood. Like early on they have you race on two of the best looking tracks in the game, set in Chicago and a coastal Californian road. The former with sparks and such flying down from the train tracks above, and the latter with the sunset cutting through the trees with god rays and lens flaring up the screen when you're driving towards it. There's a lot of post-processing over the image like that actually. People tend to dislike that sort of thing a lot, especially in racing games, but I think it's a real shame. It adds a lot of atmosphere here. It's a good evolution of the aesthetic from the first game. When it comes to environments anyway.

The cars however don't come across the same way. A lot of why I didn't like this game originally was because for some baffling reason they decided to shift the focus away from track cars towards road cars. Sports cars and super cars that is, but still, cars that don't really feel like they fit in with the gritty tone that the original game was trying to convey with its cars. Instead of being like harsh, mechanical, and dangerous tools, here they feel far too sleek and shiny. Too clean, and thus giving off less personality. The way they drive gives off a similar impression too, which is probably the biggest issue with this game. Although, I found my old impression of how the cars handled in this game was kind of the opposite of what it felt like this time. Originally I thought the game was far too drifty and loose, and too forgiving. This time however, having played it very close to digging in to the original, the cars feel stiff and rigid. What made the cars feel so great in the first game is that cars had just the right sense of weight to them. They were somewhat drifty, but also kind of twitchy. So it felt like cars had a real sense of inertia to them. That knife edge feeling that made the original so fun was because it felt like you could achieve a certain subtlety of touch to it, learning how your car responded to inputs so you could learn to pull off risky moves that were so satisfying. Here it doesn't really feel like you have that level of control. There isn't that same depth there. Although the cars do feel pretty drifty here, it's not in a way I remember it being. It falls in line with the stiff feeling. The limit of grip doesn't feel as natural or progressive as in the first game. It just happens sort of jarringly, and when it does, it feels like you've kind of already spun out as soon as it happens. Not much control over it. But I am pretty early in the game still. Maybe it gets better with better cars, or I can just get used to it. I don't remember it getting much better though.

There are also a couple of minor mechanical changes that feel like a significant step down. They hurt the game much more than one would expect given how small the changes are. In this one they do away with the little icon that suggests a good braking point for corners. I guess it's not a problem in isolation, but it does feel like an omission of something that would have been a good idea to keep around. They also cut back on the functionality of the instant replay mechanic. Instead of it being something you can scroll through at your own desire, pause, or change camera angles, it's just a simple rewind that runs without you being able to control the rate at which it's going, and which is fixed to the normal gameplay camera. So the feature doubling as a cool spectacle for looking at dramatic crashes is gone. Now it's just a simple "that didn't happen" feature.

I didn't want to be so negative so soon though. I want this game to stand on its own merits. Over the years after release I did cool on it, and I did genuinely find the visuals this time around impressive. I'll keep playing at least a bit more to see how things pan out. I wonder if multiplayer is still active. Probably not. But I remember that having some really cool ideas, that seemed baffling to not include in the main career mode. I also wonder if this game was the highest selling in the series. I can see how it would be, since I've noticed it seems to get a strange amount of promotion compared to the other games. Also being the hotly anticipated sequel to a much loved game, that ended up disappointing, often makes for a game that sells more than the ones before and after it too.
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by DomsBeard »

I have now given up on Left Alive.

Attempted Chapter 4 about 30 to 40 times and you need extreme luck to get to a check point. I am playing on easy by the way.

Wanted to battle on but nope too much to bother with
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Magical_Isopod »

DomsBeard wrote: March 14th, 2019, 11:55 pm I have now given up on Left Alive.

Attempted Chapter 4 about 30 to 40 times and you need extreme luck to get to a check point. I am playing on easy by the way.

Wanted to battle on but nope too much to bother with
I bought Super Paper Mario and Ys VIII with the credit I received after cancelling my left Alive preorder.

That being said, I *love* Super Paper Mario. It's like... a platform/puzzler, very similar to what you'd see from indie games on PC today. I tried Super Mario RPG and The Thousand Year Door, and neither of them were "for me" - a comedy plot isn't enough of a motivating factor to drive me through a 30 hour+ RPG.

But take the same sort of writing and theming and turn it into a game with smaller pieces of gameplay and way less down time? It works. Really liking this game - really don't understand why it got so much hate back in the day.
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Chopper
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Chopper »

Not very much at all, as work is taking up all my waking hours.

I did read SimonSloth's account of the C64 Mini on Wednesday, and I went into a kind of trance and immediately bought one. It arrived on Thurs, and I spent 10 minutes with Boulderdash. The joystick is a real piece of junk; I don't know if it was like that back in the day or it is poor build quality, but it's given me a new appreciation for even something so simple as a D-pad.

This morning I am on call and started playing a little Darkest Dungeon again, as I thought it'd be easy to pick up and put down in between calls. But there is so much of it. One of the most aesthetically pleasing games of the last few years (to me obvs), it's a pity it wasn't a bit shorter.
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Suits
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Suits »

Kid Icarus on the NES.

It's hard as tits, even with save states.

Really compelling though and the tower levels are really cool.
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by KSubzero1000 »

Suits wrote: March 16th, 2019, 11:58 am hard as tits
...Pardon my baseborn vulgarity, but this doesn't exactly seem like the most apposite analogy, you know? :lol:
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Suits
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Suits »

KSubzero1000 wrote: March 16th, 2019, 12:11 pm
Suits wrote: March 16th, 2019, 11:58 am hard as tits
...Pardon my baseborn vulgarity, but this doesn't exactly seem like the most apposite analogy, you know? :lol:
Yeah, probably not the best phrase to use on an international forum.

Just means its' double hard, like nails.

The more I type, the more I realise I make less and less sense.

Just means its a hard game :lol: :lol: .
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ratsoalbion
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by ratsoalbion »

Depends on the tits.
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Stanshall
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Stanshall »

There was a rumour at school that one teacher had wooden tits. 'Wooden Tits' we used to call her. Never confirmed one way or the other.
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