Whatcha Been Playing?

This is where you can deliberate anything relating to videogames - past, present and future
kintaris

Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by kintaris »

Well, I got Assassin's Creed Oranges.

Same old shit. I'm usually OK with that, but the story is curiously distant this time around too. I'm not given much reason to give a crap about any of the characters, which is normally the series' saving grace - alongside appreciating the view.

It's certainly gorgeous, but it suffers from the same problem as two other entries set in a similar region - AC1 and Revelations. It's too flat, and it's too monotone.

Other bugbears remain - the icon diaorrhea on the map and HUD, the shitty downward traversal. It really feels like Ubisoft did nothing in their year off to re-assess the series. If I'd been living in a vacuum and you told me this game came out this time last year, I would have believed you for sure.

Disappointing. I have stuck with this series for so long despite the slip-ups, because I love the concept... but I am really getting sick of it now.
Joshihatsumitsu

Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Joshihatsumitsu »

kintaris wrote: November 1st, 2017, 7:58 pm Well, I got Assassin's Creed Oranges.

Same old shit. I'm usually OK with that, but the story is curiously distant this time around too. I'm not given much reason to give a crap about any of the characters, which is normally the series' saving grace - alongside appreciating the view.

It's certainly gorgeous, but it suffers from the same problem as two other entries set in a similar region - AC1 and Revelations. It's too flat, and it's too monotone.

Other bugbears remain - the icon diaorrhea on the map and HUD, the shitty downward traversal. It really feels like Ubisoft did nothing in their year off to re-assess the series. If I'd been living in a vacuum and you told me this game came out this time last year, I would have believed you for sure.

Disappointing. I have stuck with this series for so long despite the slip-ups, because I love the concept... but I am really getting sick of it now.
You are far more patient and forgiving of this series than I'll ever be! Such a trooper. :D

And I agree that there is a lot of potential with the concepts, but it's too big and expensive a series now to take risks. And it's a shame... there is something there, something potentially amazing.

Although, is they did release a Assassin's Creed Oranges, where it was a fruit based conspiracy, and assassin's, and the freemasons for some reason, then it would totally peak my interests!
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Flabyo
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Flabyo »

I’ve been playing Elite Dangerous on the XBO since it went early access there, what, 3 years ago now?

They’ve added a lot to it since those days, it’s a much deeper and friendlier game now than it was.

It’s a very different beast to, say, No Mans Sky or Eve. It can be quite lonely, and it requires you to set your own goals because the game doesn’t really have any. But I find it very relaxing to play. It’s actually quite a good one to play when you’re listening to podcasts actually.
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Chopper
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Chopper »

I loved Elite Dangerous, and indeed hated it sometimes as well. It can be bewildering when you're trying to learn a new activity (mining, combat etc).

I started Echo last night, which is from some ex-Hitman devs and is strong in the looks department. Jury is still out on the gameplay - while it sounds very appealing, with your enemies 'learning' from you by replicating your actions, I think it has the potential to wear a bit. Hopefully the game doesn't overstay it's welcome.
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KassBot
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by KassBot »

Flabyo wrote: November 1st, 2017, 10:02 pm I’ve been playing Elite Dangerous on the XBO since it went early access there, what, 3 years ago now?

They’ve added a lot to it since those days, it’s a much deeper and friendlier game now than it was.

It’s a very different beast to, say, No Mans Sky or Eve. It can be quite lonely, and it requires you to set your own goals because the game doesn’t really have any. But I find it very relaxing to play. It’s actually quite a good one to play when you’re listening to podcasts actually.
I too liked Elite Dangerous alot, and played it in the beta a ton. Bought a HOTAS-setup and everything. But after docking became second nature, i slowly started to loose interest.

What i love about it is that it feels so good to control. Everything from flying, navigating the ship menus and even requesting for permission to dock, and trying not to mess up as you were flying into the station felt amazing. So when that started to become easy, there wasn't that much else there for me. I was interested in joining the racing group, but for some reason i never did. I also hoped that the CQC update would keep me playing but it didn't grab me either.
I still keep an eye on it, mostly through ObsidianAnt's YouTube videos, and i still think about reinstalling it from time to time.
Todinho

Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Todinho »

So after listenning to the Witcher 3 show I got the ich and started replaying the game, now with the intent of playing the expansions as well since I never touched those, btw for those who have played it at which point should I do them? At a particular point during the main story or should I finnish the main game first?

After the gameplay discussion I also decided to do a Quen-free run which is proving to be difficult but less then I imagined it would be, the negative side effect of not relying on Quen and instead having to dodge is that it inflated a problem I already had with the game and that's the controls and movement, I half expected to not have these problems when I started replaying but now after arriving in Velen I think I dislike the movemment and controls more then I did the first time around, controlling Geralt still feels very clunky alot of the time and you could argue that in witcher 2 you also controlled in a similar way but combat in that game was much slower then in 3, here if you're surrounded by a pack of ghouls that are quickly running and circling around it's very difficulty to dodge and weave I mean it's possible but even then it doesnt really feel that good, I mean you're basically just spamming the dodge over and over and the animation is not that good either, this problem is made worse by the shit lock-on system that really makes dealing with multiple enemies a nightmare, I think Quen helps mask that by reducing your need to dodge all the time and having to react very fast and not using that is really putting a damping on the combat for me this time.

Playing this now I kept thinking of Horizon and how that game controls perfectly in comparison and I know it's not 100% fair of a comparison since in one the combat is ranged and the other melee but both are open world action rpgs but Guerrila simply nailed the movement and not only that but the feedback on combat, everytime you hit a machine with an arrow you feel the impact and you know you did damage, in Witcher 3 there's times you hit and enemy with a sword and they dont even react and you dont feel anything.

On the other hand comparing these two really made me appreciate the quest design in Witcher 3 because the quests here are miles ahead of Horizon, hell even the basic monster contract is more compelling then most of the side quests in guerrilas game, while I think the main story of Horizon is great the writing in the side stories is really bland. In the Witcher the writing is on point all the time and even the main story that I complain about still nails the father-daughter dynamic(one Im sick of in videogames but when it works it works) so even if you're like and dont care about the Wild Hunt that connection is enough to drive you.

One last thing though I hate I mean absolutelly hate how gear is handled here, why for crying out loud does gear have level requirement?I know Witcher 3 isnt the only RPG to do this but previous games never had that and to do this on an open world is very frustrating, I mean it's not exciting to find a sword on a treasure chest if it's level 30 and you cant use until the end of the game!I could stomach it if it was something like souls where you dont have the stats for it ok that makes sense but it's something you can work towards but here it's just this arbitrary thing that I dont understand, does anybody like this!? I know it's a very minor point but it just annoys me so much, yeah other then these problems still a great game looking foward to the expansions.
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Stanshall
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Stanshall »

Totally agree about the gear situation in this game. It's inexplicably shit and convoluted. Pick up a sword, does 20 damage. Pick it up twenty hours later it does 200 damage for no reason. It's the same boring old sword. On a similar note, you do a load of busy work to get the top man to make you the best sword in the business. Half an hour later you slaughter a hen which drops a papier mache rapier which does 12 more damage.
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Alex79 »

I'm about 90 hours in and I don't think I've used Quen once! I only really use Igni and Axii.

Re: the gear levels - surely it's a simple mechanic to prevent you getting a sword after an hour in the game that can one shot everything you come across? I found it pretty effective way of scaling difficulty I guess, although admittedly there are probably better ways it could have been handled. Didn't have an issue with it though.
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Chopper
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Chopper »

Has anyone played The Surge, the sci-fi Soulslike from the guys that did Lords of the Fallen? I'm tempted by it in the sale, but I'm generally gravitating away from games with boss fights, and though the game got positive reviews, I hear one of the bosses has four phases :cry:
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KSubzero1000
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by KSubzero1000 »

Chopper wrote: November 3rd, 2017, 9:11 pm I'm generally gravitating away from games with boss fights
Oh, really? Care to elaborate a bit on why that is? Genuinely curious.
Todinho

Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Todinho »

Alex79uk wrote: November 3rd, 2017, 8:24 pm I'm about 90 hours in and I don't think I've used Quen once! I only really use Igni and Axii.
Me too, Axi is a great stun, Igni fullfils a similar function to aard plus fire damage and Yrden is worthless, unless you're dealing with wraiths where the sign is mandatory, which I dont understand because it was really good in 2 and you can upgrade the sign to work like that but I guess they thought it was OP.
Stanshall wrote: November 3rd, 2017, 5:42 pm Totally agree about the gear situation in this game. It's inexplicably shit and convoluted. Pick up a sword, does 20 damage. Pick it up twenty hours later it does 200 damage for no reason. It's the same boring old sword. On a similar note, you do a load of busy work to get the top man to make you the best sword in the business. Half an hour later you slaughter a hen which drops a papier mache rapier which does 12 more damage.
Yup, go through all the trouble of crafting a special witcher blade only to kill a random mook and have his regular sword be better just because it has a higher lvl, thinking on it do know a game that this type of loot right, Nioh! because in Nioh you could pick that shit sword break it down and use it level up your special weapon because the only reason that regular weapon was better was because it had a higher level, man now that im thinking about how Nioh handles it's equiment system Im getting more mad XD it's so smart and a gear has levels but it doesnt stops you from equiping any pieces. I understand why this gating was used since it's an open world but I think this was the worse way to handle it, it's a minor thing but it's so annoying because it's constantly in your face and you cant escape it.
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Chopper
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Chopper »

KSubzero1000 wrote: November 3rd, 2017, 9:16 pm
Chopper wrote: November 3rd, 2017, 9:11 pm I'm generally gravitating away from games with boss fights
Oh, really? Care to elaborate a bit on why that is? Genuinely curious.
Hmm. I've always leaned much more to the 'experiental' rather than the 'challenge' aspect of games. Perhaps that isn't the correct word, but I mean the experience of traversing the levels and seeing what the game is giving me is much more rewarding to me than dealing with the gates between those levels.

I don't really get anything much out of defeating bosses, except that it opens up the next section of game (or ends the game), and I have very poor pattern recognition, so I generally try a boss twice, then look up a strategy for defeating it. The personal challenge aspect, of learning and defeating a boss, doesn't really do anything for me.

If I start thinking that the game is running out of ideas, or I'm getting fatigued with the game, I unconsciously start weighing the pros and cons of beating the boss. For example in Dark Souls 3, I summoned for the last three bosses, because I was just running out of steam. At the same time, I helped a couple of dozen people with the Dancer boss in that game, because I liked the fight so much, but this is the exception rather than the rule.

A 'bad' boss will have a similar effect. I was enjoying Nioh immensely, but got to a boss in a crater where you had to hack at its big stompy feet for a while, knock him over, and then run to the top of the crater before he recovered and hit a glowing spot on his head, and then repeat that sequence several times. That kind of thing rubs me the wrong way.

You can probably add in age, declining reaction speed, inability to learn from mistakes, 'seen-it-all-before'-ness and souls-fatigue to the list in small amounts too :D
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KSubzero1000
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by KSubzero1000 »

Yeah, I can see where you're coming from. Thanks for sharing. :)
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Chopper
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Chopper »

*puts shoe on other foot* :)

Why was my original statement surprising to you?
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Alex79
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Alex79 »

I don't think it's uncommon for people not to like boss fights. For many years you'd often hear a game was great 'except for the bosses' because more often that not they'd become such a staple of video games that they'd get shoehorned in without being given much though about whether they should or not (the early Uncharted games, the Deus Ex reboot games etc). In more recent years though, there seem to be a new breed of games where the boss fights are often considered the high points of the experience - Souls, Bloodborne, Nioh, Cuphead etc I suppose, and even games based on nothing but bosses (Furi, Titan Souls etc) which surely all grew from the ideas Shadow Of The Colossus put in place all those years ago. I think bosses, on the whole, are a lot better these days (and that's a huge generalisation) but usually as I stand before a boss nowadays I don't get the same annoying feeling of the flow of the game being broken for an arbitrary 'hard fight' in the same way I used with, say for example, Resident Evil.
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Stanshall
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Stanshall »

I just...I just want to say...

*winces*

I don't really...like...most...Souls bosses.
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KSubzero1000
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by KSubzero1000 »

I wouldn't say it surprised me in the sense that I couldn't believe how someone could make such a statement or anything. I certainly understand how boss battles can frustrate some people, especially challenging ones. I was just curious as to your reasoning and thought this would make for an interesting conversation topic.

I've seen this dichotomy you described between the experimental and challenging aspects of games being expressed many times, with most people falling squarely into one camp or the other. I suppose I'm a bit of an oddity in that regard, given how I value both of those aspects pretty much equally. Some days, all I want to do is replay Flower, or listen to the Metroid Prime soundtrack, or admire Okami's world design, or spent hours browsing the MGS wiki... And on others, I'm all about beating my Resogun's highscores, or persevering until I've beaten Ludwig on my low-SL build, or formulating new Mercs strategies, or trying (and mostly failing) to keep my head above water in 4000+SR Overwatch matches.

Which brings me to boss fights. I love the good, well-crafted ones who very much represent the pinnacle of the challenge-based game design philosophy in my opinion. But it's the great ones that manage to combine both aspects (by delivering a powerful narrative climax as well as a rewarding mechanical experience) who are among some of the best things this medium has to offer. I understand why they aren't everyone's cup of tea, but I personally love them and am a bit sad hearing so many people deride them as irrelevant and obsolete in this day and age and seeing more and more developers choose not to include them in the first place.

But then again, there is plenty to go around and make everyone happy!

@Stanshall:
Boo this man!
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Michiel K
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Michiel K »

Alex79uk wrote: November 4th, 2017, 2:37 pm In more recent years though, there seem to be a new breed of games where the boss fights are often considered the high points of the experience - Souls, Bloodborne, Nioh, Cuphead etc I suppose, and even games based on nothing but bosses (Furi, Titan Souls etc) which surely all grew from the ideas Shadow Of The Colossus put in place all those years ago.
Boss rush games, or games mainly consisting of boss fights, have been around much longer. Treasure's Alien Soldier is a very noteworthy one. And I've always viewed Nintendo's Punch-Out!! games more as boss rush games, rather than boxing simulation.

In my opinion, a good boss fight is either much like a great puzzle to crack or an exam of sorts that tests you on what you've previously learned. I find that Japanese action games usually handle boss fights the best way and that in many Western developed games they're purely played for spectacle or put in place as an uninteresting hurdle, just because it's the convention.
Joshihatsumitsu

Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Joshihatsumitsu »

Because this game has multiple endings, and I've only got one so far, I'll place it in this thread. And that game is Doki Doki Literature Club - itch.io or Steam.

There's a few recent articles floating around about this game, which is initially how it came to my attention. However, as soon as I knew I wanted to play this game I avoided all other information about it. I wanted to go in as fresh as possible, no spoilers, no being influenced by others opinions.

And that's all I can really say about this game. I'll break it down like this: if you hate visual novels, this won't convert you. And if you do, you will be in for something pretty special, if you're willing to take the chance.

The only spoiler-free thing I will revel about the game is this, which is taken from the official website, and also displayed as the game boots up:

This game is not suitable for children or those who are easily disturbed.
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Chopper
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Chopper »

@Ksub and @Alex: Yeah, I was going to make the joke that people could be easily divided into both camps by simply asking the question 'Which do you prefer, ICO or SotC?' :D But of course it's a bit more complex than that - Demon's Souls is my favourite game of all time, but I cannot get on with SotC at all.

@Stanshall: my dirty little secret is despite finishing Demon's Souls 6 times, I have never beaten Allant in a fair fight. It's been sneaking up behind him and deploying Poison Cloud every time. What can I say, that level is too much of a slog to get through only to die in 2 seconds because you are a ham-fisted oaf. :)

In other news, I bought The Surge in the end. It is really good! All the weapons seem to be of the slow kind, which was a thing with Lords of the Fallen too (though none are that slow). I have beaten the first boss, and he does fall into Michiel's category of just being there because of convention. But hey, he wasn't too difficult to beat, so all good.
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